deep south 2013
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dsj fiction
Toni not Tony
Tony had agreed to check the water supply everyday for her uncle. The chore began with unchaining Gyp, the more energetic of the farm's two dogs, and walking through a clover-filled paddock to the header tank. She enjoyed climbing the rungs screwed onto the wooden platform that supported the huge corrugated iron cylinder. Then while holding the rim with one hand, she used the other to check that the water was near to full. Even when the level was high, she depressed the float switch in the hope that the pump wouldn't respond and justify her going next to the creek.
She loved the undulating part of the farm and especially where bush covered areas too steep for pasture and the flowing water had cut a meandering path through the papa. Tony wore plastic sandals to paddle through a stretch of creek with glistening grey walls over twice her height, walls soft enough for a stick to scour. She often took a stick and wrote her first name in foot high letters. The y she made deeper and trailed its tail underneath until it had passed the base of the T.
The pump responded when she pressed the float switch. This meant that before heading for the creek, she would inspect the four circular troughs, each one straddled by the upper wires of a fence so that it supplied two paddocks. Tony's sense of duty came from appreciating Dave and Polly having her at short notice. And the niece was grateful that they were good company and didn't expect her to do just housework. She hoped to stay on the farm until her dad had moved out. No one had said this would happen. It was Tony's intuition that her parents' marriage had reached a point of no return; their only child's absence would mean more frequent and bitter rows leading to a hastier separation. She had gathered from friends that that the best you could hope for after parents split was a dad getting a place that was close enough for weekend stays. The worst had happened to a boy in another class; his dad had gone to Australia never to be heard of again.
While still holding the rim of the cylinder, she looked for the mountain that she regarded as part of her home in New Plymouth. Mount Taranaki evoked mixed feelings. It was beautiful to look at, but legends spoke of Taranaki fighting with another mountain and being forced to live alone. Although Tony had yet to see her favourite mountain from the farm, memories of its sheer size from driving around the base and climbing to Fanthams Peak made it loom large. The mountain also provided a link to her parents because they would see it every day in good weather.
Tony didn't want to ask her aunt or uncle whether the mountain was ever visible from the farm in case they said it wasn't. The last time she had stayed, Aunt Polly had taken her to Durie Tower and they had seen the white summits of Taranaki and his former wife, Ruapehu. Her aunt had explained how the curve of the Earth meant you could not see these mountains from the ground at such a distance. But the farm was closer than Wanganui to Mount Taranaki, so perhaps it just needed the right kind of day or something like a mirage would bring the summit into view.
Before descending from the tank, Tony turned towards the Tasman Sea as if today the Earth might curve a little less and make the waves visible. Her uncle's eight upper paddocks, each flat enough for a rough game of cricket, lay in two rows of four. The pasture nearest the sea was next to a road that looped from one part of State Highway 3 to another. Traffic consisted mostly of local residents and townies visiting the beach nearest the farm. Tony had heard surf crashing some nights when she had gone outside to the toilet. Polly had driven her twice this summer – their only outings – to the driftwood-strewn beach. They had gone at low tide and quite early in the day on both occasions, perhaps to make it easier to avoid others. Tony guessed that if she asked to go where people were more numerous her aunt and uncle would find it hard to explain why they preferred not to take her out.
Any of the farm's level paddocks would have been big enough for a cricket pitch except the one containing the hay barn-cum-tractor shed, the house with its gardens and outbuildings and the metaled parking area where Tony practiced bowling using a wooden apple box. Gyp retrieved the tennis ball as soon as she gave the command. A windbreak of macrocarpas laced with rampant box thorn separated the paddock with the water tank from the one with the buildings. One of the trees had come down in a storm and her uncle had men coming to trim the row and take out other trees a gale might bring down. Tony hoped she could see the chainsaws at work before she went home. Or better still, her mum would come and stay until Tony had finished helping the gang doing the trimming.
Gyp ran in circles as Tony followed the dried mud trail made by the animals through the pasture. A bee stung her ankle when she dodged a cow pat. The sting was soon out and she found a dock leaf to rub over the slight swelling. The bee killing herself for no good reason troubled Tony as much as the sting. Why bother to protect a flower that was one of millions? But at least a worker bee had no children. It would have been worse to leave grubs without a mother when their fathers were drones who sat on their striped backsides all day. That was what Uncle Dave had said while showing her the inside of a hive.
Dave and Polly had no children, which was strange when they seemed to like their niece so much. She had first stayed at the farm without one of her parents at the age of seven when mum had been insisting on using Antoinette and, if she must shorten her name, then Ann or Toni rather than Tony. But the whole point had been to have a name that went with being a tomboy. Polly had made a cake and invited her niece to sign it with blue icing. Her aunt had smiled at the spelling. Tony had understood that, while Polly would not contradict her sister outright, the cake was a way of saying that people had the right to choose names.
Perhaps not having a kid of their own made it easier for Polly and Dave not to argue? They always seemed glad to see each other whereas her parents had only been happy to see their daughter. Mum spoke more to the cat some days than to Dad. Yet when Dave had come back from a meeting two days earlier, Polly had stopped weeding the vegetable patch as soon as she heard his car. They had potato cakes hot off the griddle with butter and Polly's prize-winning tamarillo chutney. And all through the preparation and consumption of the food and the pot of tea the couple had chatted about people he had seen and the women she had spoken to on the phone that morning. Or yesterday, Polly had returned from her pottery class and Dave had wanted to know all about it. Then he had said, “When am I going to see something I can eat off or drink from? We could go into business, use some of the farm rather than letting the rain wash the clay to the sea.” Polly enjoyed his teasing. She only tried to stop Dave when he teased her niece. Tony didn't mind; she knew the difference between fun teasing and the sort that really hurt.
The first three troughs were full and the steers looked happy enough. Some had been quite frisky, hopping on the backs of others. She had asked Polly earlier in her stay why they did this.
“Maybe their front trotters hurt and they want to give them a rest,” she said without looking up from her darning.
Her uncle had coughed behind his newspaper and said, “What were you saying about teasing earlier?”
A little later, Tony went to the toilet that had been added to the end of the veranda thirty years after the house was built. While there, she heard what sounded like the beat of a wing and a twig snapping as if under the weight of a chubby bird. She scanned the trees and taller bushes from the path that ran alongside the back of the house. The couple's chatter coming through the open window stopped her before she reached the lounge.
“...because she's only ten and it's not for you and me to tell her about the birds and the bees,” Polly said.
“I feel sorry for kids growing up in town. I understood the facts of life, at least as far as they applied to animals, before I started school.”
“What did you make of steers trying to mount each other at her age?”
“I saw it as a game, not hanky-panky.” He laughed and sang, “They were only playing leapfrog.”
Polly joined in the chorus and then sang by herself, “The first grasshopper jumped right over the second grasshopper's back.”
They laughed and she said, “Let's teach Tony the song.”
And they had all sung it after Tony had come back via the veranda and the dim corridor at the centre of the house that was otherwise full of warmth and light.
In the days that had followed, Tony often took the path alongside the house when the adults were both sitting with the window open. They confirmed what she had suspected; her parents had wanted her away not just from their bickering and shouting, but also from other children because people were linking Tony's rejection of girl's clothes and interests with what had happened in the last week of term.
“If only it was a bigger country or gossip didn't travel so easily,” Polly had said.
Tony could not decide whether people really thought she was a threat to other children.
The last trough was also full. Tony tossed her lucky coin high to decide the route to the creek. The queen uppermost would mean using a track—just wide enough for the tractor—that began on the side of the farm with the buildings. The kiwi meant following the fence to the east. Tails won.
The top strand's knotted barbs were easy enough to avoid if you put your hands between them and your feet on the wood that supported the corner post, climbed on top and jumped clear. The next barrier was a sagging wooden gate between stretches of gorse tolerated because the bushes helped to preserve the last few feet of level land by reinforcing the soil with roots and keeping hoofs off the crumbling edge. Dave had warned that this gate was too rickety to climb. Tony didn't know if that applied just to a stocky adult, but it was better not to risk leaving a hole for the animals to wander through. She unchained, dragged the gate until she could squeeze by, summoned Gyp and then lifted the gate back to where she could refasten. The dog raced down the steep sweeping curve of the hill, using a diagonal that intersected the one made by the grey gravel track dividing the yellow stubble. Gyp reached the pump house and then ran back as if to tell Tony to hurry up. She made him sit with her while she studied the many miles of rolling land belonging to dozens of farms. He didn't seem to mind; perhaps because his lolling tongue meant he needed to cool down and he liked the arm draped over his neck. Some patches of the view into the distance were bright green, other parts darker with trees and bushes. A few areas were in shades of khaki as a result of sparse rain. Steepness made where Tony sat the driest field on the farm. Water was pumped only for the animals; the supply for the house came from the corrugated roof and the garden depended on a rusting old tank connected to the gutter that had been added to the barn.
Tony continued in a near straight line with her soles skidding over what sheep had left of the grass. She fell backwards at one point. Thrown-back arms dampened most of the impact yet she gasped. It was not what had just happened so much as a memory that returned as if the event was unfolding again. How was she to have known that Jason's thick skull would crack on the asphalt?
Her fall happened near the track. She got up and made her way slowly to the gravel and followed the dusty stones to the path created by the animals alongside the creek. She took this trail as far as the sheet metal pump house. The heat seemed to leap out when she opened the door. Tony waved an arm inside and sensed warmth bouncing between the zinc-coated walls. She checked her favourite spider still had his web high in a corner. No one knew if the critter was a he or a she, but Dave had joked it had to be a male because any female with such hairy legs would shave them. Tony couldn't wait to have hairy legs so that she could show she wasn't like other girls.
The first time she had approached the pump house, all had been quiet and she had assumed from the dimensions that it was a toilet. Although she had wondered what a dunny was doing there and why it had a power line, finding the machinery and industrial-type switch rather than a plank over a hole in the ground had come as a surprise. She was grateful that Dave hadn't noticed her confusion; he had been busy attacking ragwort with the grubber he tended to carry around the farm.
“Whoa,” he had shouted on seeing Tony inside. “Let me show you what you're allowed to do.”
What was permissible when she was alone was limited to pressing the Reset button once if the pump wasn't working, a rare event so far. Hearing the pump come to life was thrilling and when Dave was busy elsewhere Tony loved to press the Off button, walk to the back of the farm and, on her return, press On. By then, the float switch in the header tank had dropped enough for the pump to roar into action.
But that morning, Dave hadn't said what he would be doing. He might come down and find the pump switched off. Tony decided to have her fun by walking up the creek. It was easy enough to enter where the sheep and cattle drank. Gyp hesitated until he saw the girl was not waiting for him once she had selected a stout stick. Then he ran past splashing and into a stretch cutting through swampy ground. He startled a pukeko, chased and caught it by the neck. Commands came too late. By the time Gyp had finished shaking and let go, there was blood as red as the bird's beak trickling through the gaudy blue feathers. The beady eyes were too still and the pukeko hadn't so much as a tremor.
“You stupid dog. If it's got young, they'll die too. And it's not even worth eating.” Gyp tipped his head to one side as if trying to understand the words.
“It's no good saying you never meant to do it or that the bird started it by running away. The fact remains, you killed him.”
Gyp approached and put a muddy paw on her khaki shorts. The idea that he was saying sorry released the tears that had been building up. It was the first time she had sobbed since the day mum had sat her down to say that Jason had died in hospital.
The dog stayed close until she stopped crying and then licked her leg in a way that reminded Tony of mothers kissing a minor graze better. She patted his head before using her stick and hands to fashion a shallow grave in the oozing papa. After the coolness of the clay, the warmth of the pukeko came as a shock and she watched the burial through a curtain of fresh quiet tears. While washing her hands in running water, she noticed the trail of mud and blood gradually disappeared as the current moved it along. If only what she had done could be swept away and she could feel cleansed from the taint of being a killer.
As she followed the track up the hill, the growl of a chainsaw made her run, much to the delight of Gyp who got so excited he almost tripped her up. From the gate at the top she saw a man in a blue shirt up one the tallest macrocarpas. Gyp saw the man and barked. He saluted them with his silenced chainsaw and Tony kept waving long after he resumed cutting. His grey hair suggested that he was too old to be climbing trees.
She went to the windbreak as soon as she had chained Gyp. Polly had brought tea and scones and two younger men in check shirts were tucking in with Dave. And good old Polly had brought the mug that Tony had saved to buy when her parents hadn't responded to her hints; it had Born to Bowl on one side and featured a wicket with no bails and the middle stump askew on the other.
The grey-haired man descended with a nimbleness that suggested his crinkled face had been joined to a much younger body. He sat with his mates and Dave on the trunk of the tree brought down by the storm. Tony joined the men a little further down the tree where it was easier to take a seat while carrying her tea. She took it without milk and sugar, which tasted vile, because no girl who wanted to be dainty would ever drink tea that way.
Tony was quiet after being introduced. She studied the men to see if they treated her like a killer. They didn't as far as she could tell. Was it because they don't know or don't care?
The chatter concerned a bounced cheque that had prompted the men to quit another job and come to the farm at short notice. Tony asked during a pause in the conversation what she could do to help.
“She's a good keen girl,” said Dave. “ If we let her, she'd climb to the top and wield a chainsaw.”
Tony beamed to see the men nodding approval.
“I'd love to have a go with the chainsaw.”
The older man said, “If you were a lizard, I'd let you. They can grow back a missing limb. But if you're going play first class cricket, you'll need all four limbs and every finger.” He held up his left hand to show part of his index finger was missing. “The Cricket Council ignored me after losing this.”
She was thrilled her uncle had told the men about her love of cricket. And she was hardly disappointed about the chainsaw because she hadn't expected to hold one unless it was switched off.
“You can help me clear up what they cut,” said Dave, “Provided you put your boots on, wear gloves and go no closer than where I put the logs.”
Tony didn't mind putting on boots and fancied a pair with exterior steel caps as worn by one of the younger contractors. But she would have preferred to work bare handed as the men did for most of the time. Dave let her use the wheelbarrow to take boxwood logs to the woodshed on the condition that she piled no higher than the barrow's rim. By the time Tony delivered her eleventh load, her hands were sweating inside the leather of Polly's gardening gloves. She placed them on a bush to air. All went well until a log fell from the pile along the shed wall as she placed more on top. Her eyes saw only a crude outline in the gloom. Something cut the side of her left wrist. She had no intention of letting the considerable pain make her cry; it was the sight of the blood trickling as she stepped into the sunlight that spooked her. Without thinking, she stuffed her right hand over her mouth, stepped back into the shed and shuffled her back along the uncluttered wall to where it was darkest. After Jason had banged his head, his blood had stained the asphalt.
Jason had been in the same class since they started primary school on the same day. Even at the age of five she had the shortest hair among the girls and wore shorts every chance she got. He was so used to her being different that he had wondered why other kids, usually those new to the school, asked questions about Tony.
A gang of boys playing cricket in the holidays had allowed her to join them when they were short of fielders. Jason had known she could catch and throw well, but he hadn't expected her to bowl over arm with speed and accuracy. That had meant others wanted her to keep joining the games and within a few weeks she was the best batter as well as the best bowler. Jason resented being knocked into second place and especially by a girl. He had sought to irritate Tony by saying she was more like a boy than a girl. She didn't like the nastiness behind it, but otherwise welcomed his observation.
He had more success annoying her after a boy who lived next door to Tony told him about the rows between her parents. The next time Jason saw Tony by herself he asked if it was true that her father swore at her mother. Tony walked away, but not before Jason knew he had hurt her feelings. He began to consort at weekends with the boy who lived next door to Tony and, given the chance, Jason ensured they stayed near where they could hear voices from her house. After three trips to his friend's, he heard a row and noted choice abuse to repeat in front of the girl he hated.
Polly appeared at the door of the woodshed before Tony had time to stifle her sobs. The child was cuddled, led into the light and taken to the bathroom without stopping to remove her boots. Polly washed the gash, said it was nasty enough, but didn't need stitches to heal, and applied ointment and a large plaster. Then she wet a flannel and dabbed it around Tony's face.
“What is it, dear? It's not like you to cry over something like this.”
Polly held up the girl's left hand and turned it over. The middle nail had a patch of blood underneath where a sliding door had caught it two weeks earlier.
“I reckon that must have hurt more than the gash. What's going on?”
Tony shook her head. She was already cross with herself for crying and didn't want to talk in case more tears came. Besides, how could she say that her parents hated each other or she felt like a murderer? You just didn't talk about things like that.
“Take it easy for the rest of the day. It'll help the wound to heal.”
“I'll keep the gloves on and use my right hand more.”
“Will you help me take out the lunch first?”
Tony agreed without showing her disdain. She would much have preferred the contractors didn't see her carrying a tray. She couldn't imagine one of the young men in tartan shirts doing something like that. How she would have preferred such a shirt rather than her sugar-and-spice plaid skirt. Her Mum had bought it and argued Tony shouldn't have a problem wearing it when the men in the Pipe Band wore kilts. However the skirt was flimsier, tighter and shorter and made from the kind of pastel tartan a marching team might have chosen.
After eating and smoking, the youngest man of the three said he wanted to see her bowl. Tony led the men to the apple box. She bowled all four out in quick succession. They were gracious; not even pointing out that the box was much wider than three stumps. Then they took turns trying to bowl her out until the older man said she was too good and they had to get back to work.
Dave ruffled her hair and said, “The Cricket Council is crazy not to let someone like you even apply to play.”
“Is that because I'm a girl?”
“I'm afraid so.”
“But how would they know if I dressed as a boy?”
“Search me,” he said.
Tony sensed he held something back.
They followed the contractors to the windbreak. The oldest picked up the smallest chainsaw and beckoned to Tony.
“Your uncle says we can cut a branch together provided you say nothing to the missus.”
He gave her goggles and explained how to operate and cut before starting the chainsaw. Because he stood behind controlling her hands, Tony sensed no danger to herself. However, the speed with which the branch fell apart reminded her of how easily an accident with a chainsaw might happen when you took it up a tree. And if you lopped off a hand or foot where you needed a rope to climb to, how would you ever get down before you bled to death? The idea of the grey-haired man bleeding to death reminded her of Jason.
On the day Jason fell, he had been standing behind Tony as she played Four Square after school. She had felt her face getting redder and redder in response to his taunting and was aware that she was clenching fists and clamping her teeth together. Tony was also missing easy plays. She hadn't responded to the jibes until Jason had asked, “So why don't your parents just split up instead of screaming at each other?”
Before Tony knew what she was doing, she turned and punched. Later she could not recall if the chin was what she had aimed for. Her next clear memory was the noise of his head hitting the ground, perhaps because he had forgotten that his satchel was behind his heels. The thud had frozen the children until a trickle of blood appeared. A girl had then raced to the staff room. One teacher ran back to ring for an ambulance, two others stayed with Jason and a fourth took the stunned children inside and asked who had seen the accident.
Tony, between bouts of crying, had explained as best she could to her teacher and then the head teacher. Mum got a call and arrived at the same time as a policewoman. Tony had to repeat the story to her mum and the officer. When she tried to race through it, mum said to take her time as if Tony had been pigging a sundae. She gave them the details except for claiming not to remember what Jason had said to annoy her. Then Tony had to take them to the spot and demonstrate what had happened.
She didn't go to school again. The policewoman came to the house two days later and spoke with Tony while her mum was making tea. The officer shared how she knew from the kids that Jason had been picking on Tony and what he had said just before the punch.
“I understand you being angry because bullies singled me out as a kid for being a tomboy. And later, some people tried to make out I was odd for wanting to join the police.”
“What's odd about joining the police?”
“Some reckoned it made me even more of a tomboy. If it did, that was their problem and not mine. I was proud of being different. And there are more of us old tomboys about than you might think.”
The day after the policewoman's visit, things seemed to be settling down until the news that Jason had died in hospital without regaining consciousness. After Tony's parents had assumed she was asleep, they had argued about whether mum or dad was more to blame. Tony reckoned that if they tried to blame each other for the way their kid wanted to be, causing Jason's death wasn't just a terrible accident that could have happened to anyone.
She thanked the agile man for letting her hold the chainsaw and managed to suppress the urge to cry that had begun with sensing how lethal the machine could be. Tony held back her feelings by putting on her gloves and gathering logs as quickly as she could. Her anger gave energy for loading, wheeling and stacking. She kept up the pace despite sweating and only eased a fraction after panting had started. Tramping up the mountain had taught her to choose a pace that was sustainable. The wound on her lower arm reopened and she could feel the blood flowing before seeing it. She kept working.
Paul Burns was a primary school teacher in Naenae and Wanganui before working in London, where he has lived since 1978. His two novels, Mr Vitriol and The Bush Baptist, are available in print and e-book formats. http://paulburns.site50.net/.
