Leave Taking Read online

  To all those who have been touched

  by cancer, take heart.

  By the track

  I shiver in my sleeping-bag.

  There’s dew on the grass,

  and the faint silver of dawn,

  but dark shadows hide the everyday

  world outside my tent.

  There’s the first magpie call,

  then

  Dad slams the back door,

  the motorbike revs.

  It’s cow-milking time,

  and the sun is not even awake.

  Dad yells, ‘Morning Toby!’ as he passes by,

  and I smell exhaust fumes, sharp, strong.

  It’s every morning, every evening,

  milking our herd,

  150 cows trekking

  from paddock to milking shed,

  then back out to a new, fresh, juicy

  paddock for the day.

  I unzip the tent,

  peer outside.

  I am camping on the grass

  near the farm track,

  on our farm, once Pa’s farm,

  and his father’s before that.

  I look around as if

  I’ve just landed

  on this tiny piece of rural

  planet Earth.

  ‘Deep Well Farm’ –

  that’s how it’s always been known.

  Once families came from all around

  in horse-and-drays to bucket

  clean water.

  That’s one of Pa’s farm stories,

  ‘How Our Farm was Named’.

  ‘All covered up before my time,’ said Pa.

  ‘But the original well is somewhere

  in that little orchard

  behind the house.

  My father showed me

  how to divine for water.

  Maybe I could show you and Leah,’

  Pa had said.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ we’d shouted,

  and even though Leah’s

  arms weren’t strong,

  we each had a forked twig

  and held it just like Pa,

  then walked up and down

  the little row between the mulberry tree,

  the peach tree, the apricot tree, the apple tree,

  until Pa’s twig moved and pointed down

  like an arrow.

  ‘Oh, that hurts my arm, all that water

  energy. Perhaps, Toby, you should just have a go.

  Not you Leah. Maybe when you’re stronger …’

  And Leah’s face had gone stormy,

  so Pa had held her twig too

  and walked with her,

  and the water energy had shaken

  along her twig. ‘You’ve inherited the skill, Leah.

  You could be a water diviner,

  but it’s hard work. Although some people think

  it’s a joke.’

  And we’d placed a big rock where the well

  once was.

  ‘It would take a lot of digging out.

  Maybe if there’s another

  drought we could dig,’ said Pa.

  And we hadn’t gone back to the old well

  lately, not since Leah had to spend so much

  time in hospital.

  But Pa and I still talked

  about our farm’s namesake.

  Maybe I will visit the site this morning,

  have another go at water divining.

  Maybe.

  I hear the first cows

  coming up the track.

  Whoosh of urine –

  walking always makes the cows’ bladders active –

  the stop and start

  of the motorbike,

  Dad chasing those straggler cows,

  the tearaway cow,

  bringing them down to the cowshed.

  Morning milking time.

  Trigger comes

  to look in the tent,

  to sniff for crickets

  or chocolate crumbs left

  over from my midnight feast.

  ‘Help me cook breakfast,’ I say.

  I light a fire at the tent’s front,

  a little fire dug into the ground,

  kept safe by a ring of rocks.

  Twigs flare.

  I find the frying pan.

  ‘A sausage for you, two for me.

  An egg as well, Trigger?’

  Trigger licks his doggy lips.

  ‘Alright, an egg it is.’

  Sizzle noises,

  eggshell cracking noises,

  then I put bread on

  a toasting fork.

  But I remember not long ago,

  it wasn’t just Trigger and me,

  but Leah too. Mum and Dad as well,

  all of us together, cooking,

  sitting, laughing,

  throwing twigs on the fire.

  We’d gone camping at One Tree Rock.

  Just for one night; Pa milked the cows

  the next morning so we could all go together.

  ‘Family time for Leah,’ Mum had said.

  ‘We’ll keep her warm, extra safe.’

  And there was Leah toasting bread,

  Leah melting marshmallows,

  Leah making a song about

  a campfire, about sparks and fairies

  and eyes of coals and smoke

  leaping into the morning light.

  Mum and Dad laughed at her song,

  telling her she was a born story maker …

  That was maybe five months ago, not long before

  Leah died and Mum had held her close

  and whispered about the baby to come.

  And I drop my bread,

  my hand seems weak

  remembering that camping time,

  then I quickly pull the bread out of the ashes,

  knock off tiny pieces of charcoal,

  sticks and dust. I place it on the toasting

  fork once more.

  Machinery brrrs into life,

  the rhythmical hiss and sigh

  of milking machines.

  The huge steel milk vat

  purrs like a big-stomached cat

  ready for endless thick milk.

  The day has officially begun

  with the first set of milking cups

  on the first cow

  who is always the leader

  and is always first.

  Cows are bossier and love routine

  even more than my friend Emmy.

  And the very last cow is always last too.

  Now I explore this farm,

  our family farm,

  as if it’s my first visit, like I’m a cousin

  or a friend coming to our farm, learning,

  seeing our family’s treasures,

  but I try to hide that it’s really close

  to the last time I will be able

  to wander and remember how our farm

  is right now.

  Soon it will change

  and another family will work things

  out a different way, maybe pull down a building,

  make a new laneway, build a new cowshed …

  I don’t know, but it won’t be the same. It will

  be their farm, no longer ours.

  I walk to touch ea
ch hand-planted tree:

  red gum, sugar gum, melaleuca,

  bottlebrush, wattle. Mum grows all these trees

  for farm shelter,

  bird shelter,

  ladder steps to the sky

  for me.

  Some trees hold my history:

  my growing-up falls,

  my tree house skills.

  I touch the scars left by my building

  and climb my favourite

  tree just for fun.

  Now up high I look across

  the flat farmscape,

  try not to see or remember the huge

  ‘For Sale’ sign hammered into the soil

  near the fence of the paddock closest to the road,

  and the bright red

  ‘Sold’ sign

  plastered across it.

  Mum and Dad had talked about selling,

  about moving on, a fresh start, but I’d

  said, ‘No, no! What about Leah?’

  And I’d shouted and shouted and run

  to the haystack. Trigger had come too.

  And he’d licked all my tears until I couldn’t

  cry anymore.

  Then after a week or two had gone by,

  somehow I’d grown used to the idea.

  A little bit.

  Then Dad had talked to me, shown me

  the rolled-up map he’d drawn as a boy.

  How he’d marked important spots around the farm

  with little sketches and coloured them in

  with pencils,

  labelled them with names and hints of mysteries.

  ‘Several generations of little stories,

  yours now,’ he’d said.

  And I’d taken that map

  and looked and looked, until I’d named it

  ‘Leave Taking’ and made my own version.

  Leah would have liked that.

  She liked all the places around the farm I liked.

  I’d wanted Dad to tell her about the farm too

  and Pa to tell her his stories. And they did,

  often when she was in for a hospital stay;

  the farm stories helped her to forget

  about her pain,

  about her tiredness.

  Leah would have made a great farmer.

  She was gentle. Dad said Leah was good

  with calves,

  with cows. Gentle is good for the milking shed.

  I rub my eyes and look again

  from up high

  and see the silos

  higher still than me.

  The sheds are dotted

  around: machinery,

  calf sheds, storage sheds,

  welding, mechanical repairs sheds

  bursting with it-might-come-

  in-handy odds and ends

  accumulated over many years.

  Yesterday, Dad began to sort

  them into clearing sale lots.

  Trigger is barking for me

  to come down.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘We have to move camp

  anyway.’

  I have a plan to visit different

  sites around the farm and camp

  at each one before we shift.

  It will be like a special goodbye tour,

  my way, for Leah, for the farm

  stories she didn’t have time to hear.

  I have my ‘Leave Taking’ map with me,

  and I can add new labels for Leah’s and my

  farm history.

  I’ve seen a spot from my treetop

  lookout. A concreted corner

  of the machinery shed.

  I want to find my initials that I

  wrote in the wet cement three

  years ago.

  But first I throw the breakfast scraps

  to the magpies; I know them.

  They don’t swoop me, generations

  have been born and lived here:

  that big sugar gum over there

  is their home nest.

  ‘Just in case I don’t get

  another chance, goodbye,’

  I say, then add,

  ‘fly well and thanks.’

  The words my grandma used to say,

  every time she shook the tablecloth

  out the back door

  and the crumbs were scattered.

  On the last word, I toss the scraps

  and the magpies squawk and pounce.

  I pull out the tent pegs

  and start the packing up.

  I move to

  my new sleeping spot.

  Trigger sniffs for mice.

  ‘Chase them all out before

  tonight,’ I say.

  Then I remember Dad and the cows,

  look across to see the number

  of cows left in the yard.

  Last two line-ups of cows, the backing gate

  moving down slowly.

  It’s my cue.

  I change my sneakers for

  gumboots, walk to the shed.

  My job is hosing down

  the manure,

  all green and thick

  from the yarded cows.

  It covers every speckle of concrete.

  There’s a system, a rhythm,

  and I power away the manure

  in thick rivulets, directing

  the flow towards the manure pit,

  the manure pump on.

  I had to show Leah how

  to fire the hose so it sweeps

  away the manure.

  The hose was almost too thick

  and heavy for Leah to hold. Even though

  she was two years younger than me,

  she wanted to share the jobs.

  She was determined to do it.

  Dad waves to me

  from the pit of the milking shed.

  It’s too noisy to talk.

  We wave and smile.

  Co-cow workers.

  Once the yard is clean

  and the hose rolled up,

  I head back to my new

  camping spot.

  I want to look for my initials

  and see if Leah’s are there too.

  When the concrete was poured,

  Leah had just begun to write letters.

  She said, ‘Wet cement and a stick

  are like writing on the beach in the sand.’

  Even though we’d only ever had one seaside

  holiday, she remembered.

  Leah made thick furry letters

  and she had tried hard.

  I search in the corner,

  scratch at the dust with my boots.

  Yes, like a little sandwich triangle

  of concrete, crusty,

  but there are my initials

  and nearby Leah’s initials

  and a half-moon shape

  as a smile.

  I squat down and move my fingers

  across Leah’s initials, then jump up

  quickly because Trigger is still sniffing,

  whining at some

  stacked hessian bags.

  Snake, I think, snake

  hunting for mice.

  I run back to the cowshed.

  Dad is just switching off

  the machines, he’s ready

  to head back home for

  breakfast.

  ‘Snake,’ I blubber out.

  ‘Snake, in the machinery shed,

  Trigger’s there.’

  ‘Get Trigger out
,’ orders Dad.

  I remember one of our cats

  getting a snake bite; I don’t want

  Trigger to die. I want to take

  him to our new place, part of

  my old life coming with me to the

  new.

  I call then, pull Trigger away,

  my knees are shaky.

  We run from the shed

  just as Dad runs in.

  Lucky the machinery shed is close

  to the milking shed.

  I hear Dad grunting,

  pulling the bags back,

  scraping, his boots scratching

  and rasping on concrete.

  Then silence.

  ‘Dad, are you alright?

  Dad?’

  Dad reappears.

  ‘Yes son, it was a brown snake,

  fat from all the mice.

  Those bags have got to go,

  we’ll put them on the bonfire

  after breakfast.’

  I remember Dad’s dog White Tail.

  He’d chase the cows home, follow Dad everywhere,

  not let anyone else pat him. Just Dad,

  and occasionally Mum.

  Then one night when Dad was out

  switching the irrigation channel to flow water

  down another bay,

  White Tail was bitten by a tiger snake.

  And White Tail died, even though

  we’d taken him to a vet an hour away.

  And Dad cried.

  First time we’d seen him cry, Leah and me.

  But since then I’ve seen Dad cry a lot.

  Even when he doesn’t mean to cry,

  he does.

  So do I.

  ‘Are you camping in here tonight?’

  Dad is looking at my tent,

  my sleeping-bag, my cooking gear,

  and nodding.

  ‘Yes.’ I feel my eyes begin to prickle.

  I don’t want to tell him that I’m following his map,

  have made a map of my own.

  I’m not really sure why I’m doing it,

  but it feels right,

  and I have to do this before we leave for good

  in less than a week. But Dad seems to know

  what I’m thinking, why I’m doing it

  even though I can’t explain.

  ‘Okay, that’s fine son, just keep Trigger

  with you. I’m sure we won’t see

  that brown snake again.’

  Dad heads to the house

  and I walk to the bonfire.

  So many gardening scraps, bits of old

  boxes, paper, anything that will burn,

  to clean up the farm

  ready for the new owners.

  I helped Mum, a few days ago,

  to sort through Leah’s drawings;

  she had so many.

  ‘We can’t keep everything,’ Mum explained,

  and she’d smothered a sob.

  So together we chose a little history of Leah’s life,