Mateship With Birds - By Carrie Tiffany Page 0,15

the wound; to see the softness of the flesh and the way it accepts the blade – like fruit, or cheese – like anything soft and wet that can be cut. He binds the cut with his handkerchief, leans back and rests his neck against the prow of the boat. The light is coming up quickly and with it the whine of mosquitoes moving just above the water. He closes his eyes. Iris Glassop’s heavy globes bouncing, bouncing as she shoots for goal; Noreen Bird’s peaked volcanoes stretching her sweater, staring straight at you as you pay for your chewing gum. The spill of flesh around Dora’s armpits; the hair there, too, floating on the water when they are swimming. The twin rolls that jiggle over the top of the music teacher’s bra. His sister’s fried eggs. The dark outline of his mother’s nipples through her nightie.

There’s a clenching at the base of his cock. He braces his knees against the sides of the boat to steady himself.

The bicycle is painted black. Coming home from school Michael rides in the middle of the road as if it has been made for this purpose. He crouches low over the racing handlebars. The grey road slips away fast beneath him. Primary school finishes half an hour earlier than high school and if Little Hazel has made good time she waits for him at the intersection and asks for a dink. Sometimes he says yes. Sometimes he says no, and by the time she gets home he’ll have changed and prowled around the kitchen getting something to eat and headed off to the creek or to Harry’s.

Louie is curled up on the edge of the verandah. However casually cruel Michael might be to his sister, he leans down to scratch the cat under her chin and says her name as she blinks her yellow eye at him. There’s wood for him to chop and the vegetable garden to weed and water, but he’ll do that later – just before Betty gets home. Right now Michael likes to move through the empty house on his own. He likes the smells of the family; the stale milk in their bowls on the sink, the crumbs on the table, the jasmine that has died and dried out in its jam-jar vase. He likes the calendar from the co-op hanging on the back of the kitchen door with each square crossed out in black showing how much of the month is behind and how much is in front. With three pikelets in his hand he moves through the quiet rooms and out the back door where he pisses by the step and chews at the same time. His mouth gets so full up with the clammy dough he has to take in extra breaths to get it swallowed. He heads out across Foot Foot’s paddock towards Harry’s and has the sensation that he’s walking back into himself. That the day at school – lining up on the asphalt quadrangle, scuffing his shoes on the wooden floors, leaning against the concrete toilet block to smoke at lunchtime – has been a kind of skimming across surfaces; that he’s moved through the day without ever putting his weight down. Here, walking across the paddock, he feels his ankles soften to take account of the uneven ground. He picks his way through the clumps of cape weed and over the mounds of dirt left by the plough. There’s a rhythm to it. A way of placing your feet so they are receptive to the ground beneath.

In two years’ time he’ll have a bitter argument with his mother about a clerical traineeship in Swan Hill and he won’t be able to explain to her why it is he wants to farm.

Harry is in the machine room adjusting his new Baltic Simplex. It doesn’t require lubrication. It is fitted with a control tap to suit individual cows, and an unbreakable glass observation bowl with a hygienic removable plug. The natural action of the cups supersedes all others. A free book is available by writing to: The Man in Charge, Baltic Simplex Machinery Co, 446–450 Flinders Street, Melbourne. The Simplex breaks down, on average, every fourth milking. The rubber inflations, the part that fits over the udder, require constant tensioning and repair. They crack and wear out. So if it isn’t the motor or the vacuum or the lines, one of the cows will spring a leak at the peak of her let-down,