By Ruairi Walsh
Rain pitched down on the paddocks, drowning the bellows of the prime steer prepped for market. The gravel dirt tracks streamed water downhill, filling the trenches and spilling onto the road in a swirling coffee and cowpat brown pattern that pooled across the property. Miserable.
Simon observed the storm from his kitchen window, hunched under an elbow-less knitted sweater and holding an empty mug. He stared at the cows walking around in circles and edging towards the rear fence.
He put the mug top down in the sink. Taking his dual walking sticks from the back of the frayed office chair behind him, he hobbled to the back door.
‘You’re not going out there in this maelstrom,’ Susan said, glancing up from her third crossword of the morning. ‘You could drown a fish out there.’
‘Paddock twenty-three needs to be moved uphill,’ he said gruffly.
‘Well call someone to help then. Get Mick Dillon down here. Or one of those Brick lads, God knows they’ll have nothing to do today.’
‘Bah!’ Simon waved her off, limping towards the back door.
Small against the high steel fences of the stockyards, he stooped towards the line of plastic chairs by his pen while the crowd of farmers, butchers, distributors, and onlookers wandered about, inspecting the herds of cattle.
Simon rested on the hard plastic seat, careful to avoid hurting his hip. He crossed his arms as he appraised his own herd against the others. He tried to keep a proud grin from his face while he watched jealous competitors furrow their brows, and potential buyers raise them in admiration of his stock. A broad man in black pants and a matching polyester jacket approached with an iPad, holding his hand out.
‘Another fantastic herd, Simon. You’ve done well mate. Congratulations.’
Simon shook the man’s hand, then returned to his cross-armed position. The broad man glanced down at his iPad, held his hands up half-defensively and began rambling.
‘Look mate…and I hold my hands up here because I don’t like being the bearer of bad news. I want you to know, it’s not my call. I like dealing with you Simon. You know that…and I’m sure this’ll only be a once-off. And I know you’re probably aiming at slowing down now anyway after the surgery. So I’m sure we can probably work out some kind of different arrangement moving forward but…’
‘Spit it out.’
The man faltered under Simon’s gaze. His hands fell.
‘Look, Simon. I’ve spoken to head office and… well… they’re keen to purchase Mick Dillon’s lot this quarter. You’ve raised a fantastic herd…like I said. But, well… Mick’s outdone you this time. I know you’ll still sell for plenty. It’ll just be with someone else this time ’round.’
Simon had stopped listening. He stared across the cattle yard towards Mick Dillon’s lot, where a crowd of people were gathered.
Simon stopped the quad bike at the half-sunken gate to paddock twenty-three. He surveyed the cattle huddled together by the tree line on the far side of the paddock. The creek at the base of the field was rising steadily, and the cattle were sure to get bogged in the mud and drown if he didn’t move them to a higher paddock fast. Getting to them at all would be hard enough. Filthy water rippled around the bike, creating tiny waves against the thick tyres. Simon took the beanie from his head and tried to wring the water out, before shoving it in his pocket. He could try laying a trail of wooden planks down across the slurry. Or sheets of hard plastic, leftover from pallet bases. They’d sink just as fast, though. Besides, there was no hope of leading a herd of twenty-eight across a thin path maybe sixty metres long. Pointless to even waste the time.
Simon shivered, squirming his feet within his wool-lined rubber boots to bring back the feeling to his toes. The rain was unrelenting.
He thought of his wife inside the house, warm and dry, awaiting her weekly visit from Timboon’s new priest. He preferred the old one. The old one left him alone. Respected his work. Wasn’t so caught up in all this “love-thy-neighbour” shit that he tried to force it upon him by making house calls. The old priest, Simon remembered had told him all a man needed to do to get into heaven was to find work, do it well, and be committed. The new one was too preachy for his liking.
‘You know Simon. There’s no shame in asking for help,’ the Cornish priest said, both hands wrapped around a nearly empty mug of English Breakfast tea.
Susan searched the pantry for a container of biscuits.
‘As it says in Corinthians ten-seventeen: Because there is one loaf, we are one body, although we are many individuals. All of us share one loaf.’
Simon poured himself a second mug of tea, ignoring the priest. His wife returned to the dining table with a container of Arnott’s biscuits, holding it out for Father Lanyon, who took a chocolate ripple and smiled his thanks.
Simon took a ginger snap, dipping the hard biscuit into his tea to soften it.
Father Lanyon paused, then leaned forward. ‘I admire your grit Simon, I do. But with your hip the way it is, it’s a wonder you’ve not hurt yourself more. Giving others the opportunity to help brings you both closer to God.’
Simon glared across at Father Lanyon, his fingers tapping the vinyl tabletop in a deliberate, heavy rhythm. He stood as abruptly as he could manage and shuffled towards the door.
‘Where are you going, Simon?’ Susan said.
‘Calves aren’t gonna feed themselves.’ He said.
‘Can I give you a hand with the feeding then Simon?’ Father Lanyon stood. ‘I’ve no other calls to make today, and my experience with my last parish means I have some skill in wrangling noisy creatures.’ He winked at Susan.
‘Bah!’ Simon waved him off and hobbled to the back door.
The muddy gravel crunched underfoot when he left the quad bike. He grabbed the mismatched wooden crutches from the rotting box on the rear of the bike. The crutches sank an inch deep into the road when he leant against them and slowly made his way towards the hay shed that stood by the long-abandoned dairy.
He’d pull the fences down along the tree line and let the cattle move uphill along the edge of the paddocks, avoiding the cascade of muddy water flooding the lower fields. The trees should keep most of the water away from that stretch of paddock. And the steer weren’t stupid, they’d know to get out of danger once he gave them the opportunity. They just needed some direction.
Simon stopped beneath the shed and switched off the power to the electric fences before resting on a soggy bale. The flood rushed down the broken concrete path from the dairy like a river, melding with the mud at the top of the paddock. He looked up towards the ageing dairy. It had sat empty now for nearly nine years. He hadn’t sold any of the equipment in it. Wouldn’t have made anything even if he’d tried. There was newer equipment readily available from whichever manufacturer you chose to buy from.
He could have tried, though. He could have scrapped the equipment and sold the copper. He could have done a truckload of things rather than let it rust. But he wouldn’t have been able to alone, so what was the use? He’d be damned if he was going to pay someone to tear apart his dairy, just so he could scrape together some change. Better to leave it to the weather.
Paul Brick had offered to give him a hand pulling the dairy down. He said even if the equipment was old, it was a waste just letting it sit there. The dairy would turn into a pest hideout.
Simon had gone around to see about buying some feed off the family when his lot had gone mouldy. He’d still stunk of the musty hay when he’d arrived. Brick had wasted no time showing off his own dairy.
‘The R nine thousand five hundred,’ he said, holding his arm out like he was in a showroom, rather than a shit-stinking dairy. ‘Don’t even have to attach the suckers anymore. Just lead them in and the machine does the rest.’
Simon stared at the row of machine stalls, pristine white and blue with shining metal poles and multi-coloured pipes, all leading in different directions. The touchscreen leant out on a monitor arm from the side of each machine, displaying constantly changing graphs and data that Simon couldn’t read without his glasses. Simon chewed the inside of his cheek, staring around at the high-tech machinery without saying a word.
Paul beckoned him over to an empty stall, knelt, and pulled out a grey undercarriage with four rectangular blue pipes sticking out like fingers from some metallic creature. Paul pointed to the vertical nozzle at the tip of each finger, explaining each function as Simon shuffled towards him.
‘Time-of-Flight technology, they call it. Every MilkRack…that’s capital M capital R by the way…fuckin’ trademarked the thing of course…has a three-D camera. The machine looks at the teats in three-D and adjusts the position of the nozzles, before shooting up and auto-attaching. Fuckin’ incredible it is.’
Simon leaned heavily on the steel gate. His breath was short. The machines stood lined in a row, twenty on each side and a row of jersey cows behind each one. The cattle seemed calm, chewing on the fresh feed neatly restored in the hydroformed troughs by small pipes of grain.
Paul beckoned him closer.
Simon struggled to contain a groan when he knelt on the freshly washed concrete to inspect the contraption.
‘Five-stage nozzle,’ Paul said. ‘Performs every step of the process. Stimulation, teat cleaning, forestripping, milk harvesting and post-dipping. All automated. And here…’ He stood and moved away, not pausing for a breath.
Simon didn’t follow Paul. He held his chest with a gloved hand and looked around at the shed. Full of automated milkers. Automated feeders. Automated manure removers. He took a breath and pulled himself up off the ground, using the gate as support and made his way out of the dairy. Away from the machines.
He was already by the doors before Paul called out after him.
The cattle called out to Simon in desperation while he pushed downhill through the mud. By the time he’d reached the final fence, the bike was struggling to move at all. It had taken him ten minutes to move less than a hundred metres, revving and throttling against the stubborn sludge. The line of fences behind him were cut and pulled away to make a path leading up towards the hilltop.
He stopped the bike beneath a crying pine tree and tried to use a pile of needles as some protection against the bog. The needles were already sinking when he clambered down, leaving his walking sticks on the bike.
Simon took the wire cutters from his drenched denim jeans and carefully approached the last fence. The cattle huddled together on the other side, bellowing in fear and desperation. He waved them back as he approached, trying to get more space and grabbed hold of the wonky fenceposts for support, cursing as he tore his boots from the mud with each step.
When he reached the second post, he held the wire cutters out, making a clean cut through the top wire. The cows surged forward, kicking mud and pleading for help.
‘Back! Back!!’ He waved them away.
The cows backed up before pushing forward again, nudging him with their faces and pushing him off balance while he moved to the next wire. He clung to the fence and pulled himself back up. His arms strained at the effort, and he wrapped his arms around the fencepost, chest heaving.
‘I’m trying to help, you stupid animals!’ He yelled against the wind and tried to hold an arm up against the sheets of rain hitting him in the face.
Simon bent down to clip the lower wires, tipping his head against the torrential downpour, before being tossed backwards. He flailed into the stinking bog as the cattle rushed through the small gap in the fence, stamping mud up onto his face. They stampeded past him, storming single-mindedly away from the flood, up towards the safety of higher ground.
Simon gasped and desperately grabbed for the fence line but was already firmly stuck in the unyielding slurry. The mud clutched him tighter, pulling him backwards into its cold grip while he pushed against it with wet hands, sinking into the cold. He spat and sputtered against the rain that pitched down on his spotted head, unable to stop it from streaming down his face and distorting his vision.
Stuck on his back, he squinted blurry-eyed towards the cattle, safe uphill and watching him. They huddled against each other for warmth, brushing heads and pushing the calves further uphill under the canopy of the tree line. Their bellows dimmed as they got further uphill, and soon Simon could only hear his own cries, the heavy splash of rain and fists hitting mud as he thrashed around.
‘Help!’ Simon cried. ‘Help!!’
The cattle only watched while he sank deeper and deeper into the mud, the dirty water filling his open mouth as he cried for help. The mud hardened like concrete around his body as he stared up to the storm, disappearing into the iron-willed bog.