Uncle Jasper and the Eighty Acres, Page 4

about a thing; the lawyers will set it all up. After I’m gone the farm will be yours. —And what a laugh. Granite Meadows? It’s not worth a bloody cracker. Jolene’ll think it’s some sort of bitter revenge, see, or the result of a family feud or something.

  “Course it’ll be a terrible shock to your mother; it’ll disappoint her something awful. But that’s the way it has to be. I have to make sure that after I’m gone Jolene don’t come sniffing around up here – or anyone else she might get mixed up with for that matter. If she thinks you’re all battling she’ll keep as far away as she can, so you can’t put the acid on for some of her money.

  “And look; I always was a disappointment to your mother anyway, so there’s no need for me to upset her opinions. —So Jolene gets everything, your Mum’ll get nothing and you’ll be stuck with a worthless, blight ridden farm.

  “What you’ll have to do then, me lad, is keep the place going, just like you’ve seen me doing – you know, slow and steady like. I’ll tell you later how to sell your stuff on the quiet, so it don’t show nowhere. And don’t take too much at a time from the well, neither. You have to live frugal, see, and not splash your money about. That way no bugger’ll get suspicious.

  “There’ll be plenty to look after your Mum and Dad and help young Gerald when the time comes, but you have to do as I say. Go down to the city occasionally – you know, to the races. Make a few bets and buy a ticket in Tatts while you’re there. And if someone asks questions… Well, this outsider you backed got up or you took a second division Tatts prize.

  “—Nothing too big of course; don’t overdo it. And remember, winnings are tax free.”

  My head was spinning fit to bust. “But what are you … getting … down there?”

  “Oooh, let’s see now. Some alluvial gold, a few sapphires, the occasional diamond...

  “Gold mostly – and a lot of gravel. See the alluvials up the valley and out on the flats were all worked-out years ago – before the Nineteen Hundreds. Nobody ever found any more. But down the back near the gully there’s a deep little side lead they all missed.

  “Course there was always the chance you’d notice something in the wheel-barrow but I never worried too much about it. The gravel was all dirty and there’s no really big nuggets in it anyway”

  “But … how did you find it?”

  “Digging a bloody well of course; how do you bloody think? —And remember boy: not a bloody word or we’re buggered properly. Just forget everything I’ve told you. —Well, except for the bit about my Tatts Lotto win. That’s important.”

  …Which is how I come to be living out here on my eighty acres of granite and gravel, a farm so worthless you’d be flat out giving it away – even minus the prickly pear and the lantana and rabbits.

  Oh, they come along every so often and put up notices or issue a summons. But I don’t worry too much; we always seem to sort it out.

  My brother Gerald owns the fuel depot in Ferrets Junction these days – the old Skeeter McCutcheon’s Garage and Mcchinery business. I gave him a hand with the finances when he bought it – from a Second Division Tatts win I seem to have landed.

  Easy come easy go, I told him. I’ve got everything I need. And if you make more money than you know what to do with you can always pay some back.

  He couldn’t believe it.

  Don’t worry about it, I said. That’s what brothers are for. I mean I’ve got no responsibilities. But the sign has to stay.

  It’s still there. He couldn’t resist it.

  Sometimes his boy Jake rides down for the day or stays over for a weekend. He’s a great kid. We have a bit of fun together and he gives me a hand with this and that. I try and teach him a bit of practical stuff, too, like how engines work, and pumps and stuff.

  Gerald and Trish think he’s helping me clear the lantana and prickly pear, which is natural enough I suppose. Course I don’t say anything contrarywise.

  Sometimes for a bit of a change we might drive over to Bolter’s Gully and pull a couple of buckets from the well – the young feller and me. We don’t bust our guts though. Slow and steady, I tell him. That’s the way to do it.

  “Leave the gravel in the barrow for now, little mate,” I say to him. “Let’s get back to the house and have a bit of lunch. I’ll sort it out later.”

  “‘… sort it out later’ – heh heh heh. That was Uncle Jasper’s little private joke. Jake doesn’t know about it of course. Not yet anyway. That’s still a long way off. Decades even.

  Seventeen metres the well goes down and there’s still no sign of water. Course there wouldn’t be, would there. Not after Uncle Jasper spent thirty-odd years digging horizontally a couple of bucketsful at a time. No wonder I couldn’t see the old rascal working.

  There is a boulder, though. And as he’d said, the well is crooked, but only by about thirty centimetres.

  Nor am I surprised by his only going down there every two or three months. Six or eight buckets of gravel a year was all he needed. And from two buckets I generally get something like fifteen or twenty ounces of gold-fines, a handful of little nuggets, half a dozen cornflower sapphires plus an occasional good-looking diamond. What more could a bloke ask for?

  And me? …I mean what do I know? I’m just doing like Uncle Jasper said – rest his soul. I’m following his example, taking it steady and not busting my guts.

  In the end it was the old feller’s heart that gave out. We buried him a few days later in the Bungleup cemetery. Had him done up properly, too, we did, in his black and yellow-checked jacket and his two-toned shoes and everything. I mean he looked a treat. And wouldn’t he have loved it.

  You’ll have heard that joke about the old bloke that married this young beauty then only lasted a week? …and how the undertaker couldn’t prise the grin off his dial? Well, that was how Uncle Jasper looked. Gees he must have had a good time.

  Mind you, he and Auntie Jolene had nearly fifteen years together. Most of it they spent at the farm, doing up the house and clearing out the rabbits etc from some of the more productive patches of gravel.

  You see, even though she talked about having a big house at Surfers, deep in her soul my Auntie Jolene was a farm girl. She loved farming and she loved the farming life. But only on a small scale. And all Granite Meadows was ever good for was a bit of hobby farming, so it suited her perfectly.

  Uncle Jasper had long given up on the “well” project, too, by then – because of the climb as much as anything but also because he didn’t require any more wealth. And water wasn’t really an issue; they made do with their rainwater tanks and the little solid-granite dam he’d built by bricking up a notch near the top of the gully.

  Course Mum and Auntie Jolene were both inconsolable at the funeral, but I never imagined it was simple grief that Jolene was hiding behind her veil. I reckon she’d seen the Will; I reckon between the tears she was laughing fit to pee herself and between the laughter she was crying fit to die.

  Whatever the case, I know she was fairly biting her handkerchief in half. Probably it was to stop from busting out loud with one or the other.

  But I had problems of my own; I knew the score.

  He was a good bloke, my Uncle Jasper. Did us all proud. And I was crying my heart out for him, too – while trying not to laugh at what the old bugger had done and the way he’d done it.

  And didn’t I raise a few eyebrows, lugging that rusty old bucket into the cemetery, half full of gravel. Not as many, though, as when I tipped the contents in on top of him.

  Bloody hell, it didn’t half make a racket when it landed on the coffin.

  It’s a bit of fresh stuff from the well, old mate. I’ll leave it for now. You can sort it out later.

  * * *

  © L A Johannsen 2014

 
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