from her first preschool drawing
right through to the last,
when even her fingers
wouldn’t hold a pencil properly.
The rest we placed in a big cardboard box
and made sure it was in the heart of the bonfire.
The tractor is parked nearby
with the front-end loader attached.
Dad has pushed up the rubbish,
making the bonfire higher,
more compact.
I’ll help him later
with the hessian bags.
But now, I want to go
to the hayshed, remember
the times we made cubbies,
tunnels, our own private castles.
I wonder if the cubby Leah made
is still there or if the rain and winter
have knocked it away, or maybe Dad took
the bales to feed the cows. I don’t know
but I’ll check.
Trigger comes and nuzzles my hand.
Funny how my dog knows when I feel
sad.
Then I open the hayshed paddock gate.
Close it again. I remember once Leah
left the gate open and all the cows raced in
and ran round and round the hayshed
all night long.
Rubbing, knocking and nibbling,
snatching at hay in wild mouthfuls,
pooing everywhere and running in
an unstoppable flow of legs, swishing tails
and belching moos.
It was both funny and sad.
Dad was angry and Leah
was sorry.
My sister …
I brush the words away,
look at the old bales of hay
thrown on the ground,
too mouldy for the cows to eat.
Cows are fussy eaters,
or they might get sick.
This haystack area
is sometimes used to nurse a sick animal,
like a calf, or a cow, back to health.
Hard work.
I remember one time, one special calf.
I’d bring a bucket
of warm milk, a tube and rubber teat.
Try so hard to get it to drink,
rub its legs, make it stand,
but after a while it died.
I cried
so much.
‘You tried hard son,’
Dad had said, ‘but the calf needed to be
able to stand for longer, to drink more milk.
A sick calf takes a lot of attention and care.’
And Dad had ruffled my hair.
Farms are for new life
and new death.
We know.
Trigger is bounding up the bales,
they are wide, thick steps
but tricky steps.
A bale could be soft, broken,
and Trigger could fall down to the next layer.
Trigger is always full of energy;
brown kelpies are like that. He loves
chasing, running, exploring.
All these things he can do all day
if he wants to,
on a farm.
He’s sniffing again.
How many mice live
in this hayshed, I wonder?
I follow, I want to see over
the farm, the land is flat.
Trigger sits with me,
wanting me to scratch his ears.
I remember Leah climbing
these hay bales, looking for the right layer
to change and switch the small bales
until they made a house shape.
‘Don’t move too many bales,’
Dad had warned,
‘they could cave in,
smother you.’
So Leah had climbed back down
to the bottom two layers,
and I’d helped push, shove,
pull those bales to where Leah directed.
Jaxon had been over that day,
and we’d each made a little room
and played pirates racing from
top to bottom of the hay bales.
Our arms and legs were scratchy afterwards
and Leah’s little arms had been bleeding,
so Mum had quietly said, ‘No more moving
the bales, Leah. Take a rug for your house
next time.’ But there had been no next
time for Leah and our cubby
had been knocked down
by the front-end loader, by the weather.
Luckily Leah had taken a photo that day
of our cubby, and each time I see the photo
it makes me smile.
Trigger nudges me.
I see a wedge-tailed eagle
soaring up above;
maybe it sees mice too,
or a hare.
I hear Dad’s motorbike rev again;
he’s out to check on the cows,
see if they got to the day paddock
alright.
Then I see a small spiral cloud
coming down
the dirt road beside our farm.
A ute passing,
dust tracking its
progress like a light flashing.
The blue wrens dart for insects
several bales away.
I am quiet,
steady, watching.
The wind makes little scurries
in the loose straw
right down below
at the base of the haystack,
and I sigh.
I don’t understand how we can leave
this farm. I don’t.
But I’m trying.
Funny, suddenly there are lots
of things I don’t understand.
At least here, leaning on the highest hay bales
with Trigger, looking, feeling
the softness of summers past,
imagining Leah with me,
I can try.
The blue wrens dart
away.
Trigger looks at me with mournful eyes.
Does Trigger know we are leaving too?
‘Come on back to the machinery shed,
we’ve got some sorting to do,’
I tell him.
In the machinery shed
I like this sorting,
well, that’s one
good thing that comes from selling,
getting ready for the clearing sale.
Dad has boxes of useful nails, bolts,
screws, all jumbled together,
and I love to sort them
into the same sizes, new or old.
I find other trays,
heavy cardboard boxes,
keep sorting, try not to think
too much.
Mum comes and peers in;
she’s looking for Dad
and says, ‘Wish you were able to sort
them out years ago …
but you would have been too young.’
She looks at me, then smiles.
‘You probably would have done
a good job then as well.
Lucky it’s school holidays, Toby.
You’ve missed so much school this year …’
And there is a catch in Mum’s voice.
She stops, wipes her eyes
and says,
‘Tell Dad I’m looking
for him, if you see h
im before I do.’
Mum gives me a small hug.
Lately she wants to hug me every time
she sees me.
A hug good morning
and a hug goodnight are enough really.
But then I look at Trigger
and I know I hug him a lot more lately.
And he doesn’t mind at all.
So perhaps I’d better like hugs more.
For Mum.
My fingers are getting greasy
and my tummy is rumbling.
‘Morning tea surely,’ I say to Trigger.
He wags his tail.
Anything I say
is good tail-wagging material,
except if I growl and that’s not often,
well, not much anymore now
he’s no longer a puppy.
I remember a time when he chewed
everybody’s boots at the back door,
and he chased the chooks
when they were let out of a morning.
Chooks are not hunted on our farm,
except by foxes and if a fox comes
close to the house at night-time,
Trigger howls.
I run back to the house.
Rush inside, grab an apple,
some biscuits, water and maybe
some grapes if there are any left.
I think of how much Leah liked grapes
and stop right on the spot.
It hurts to remember special things
about Leah.
Now I have a tummy ache.
How can I stop these thoughts?
Is that wrong?
I don’t know.
Wish my pa still lived here,
I could ask him.
Dad is inside again and making coffee.
Mum and Dad are talking,
I hear snatches:
‘They will come for a look tomorrow.
See if more fencing needs to be done
in the bull paddock. They have prize bulls now.
Look at the pumps, look at some of the machinery
we are selling. They might make an offer before
the clearing sale.’
I don’t want to hear any more.
I find a bag to put my food in
and jog outside again.
‘They are coming,’ I chant,
‘I don’t have much time left,’ I chant.
I run back to the machinery shed,
my morning tea bumping along.
Trigger is jogging also. He waits while
I find the biscuits. Sits when I show him one,
then wolfs it down before I’ve even
found one for myself.
I sit on an upturned crate
and drink water, munch an apple,
look at the sorting I’ve already done
and the pile of broken bits and pieces
that probably need to be thrown out,
but I’ll have to ask Dad first.
I tidy away my morning tea and slowly begin
to sort again, and that’s when I find the project
Leah and I did last year. Hammering nails
into wood and then looping thread around
the nails to make a picture.
Leah was clever at this. Her picture is a heart
and I can’t help it, tears just come.
I put Leah’s picture up on Dad’s wide bench.
‘We’ll take this with us,’ I tell Trigger.
He wags his tail. It’s good having a friend
who approves of everything you say.
I want to go outside,
I’ve had enough of sorting.
I have the chooks to feed.
And the silky bantam
to watch;
she might have hatched more chickens.
I take the apple core;
chooks are always hungry.
I have to check their water
and their pellets.
Later, I’ll go back and collect the eggs.
We don’t need so many eggs now.
I think we can take the bantams to our new place.
Leah would have liked that.
Trigger knows where we’re heading.
It’s like he smells feathers and dust
and the scrap bucket as soon as we
take the short cut past the bonfire
and the sugar gums to the chook house.
Or maybe he can hear them scratching
and the contented way they sing and mutter
when they’re hunting in the grass.
I say, ‘Steady now,
don’t frighten the chooks.’
Trigger pants and slobbers.
I know that I can’t completely trust him;
he wants to chase them.
The hens are chortling, the dust flying
as they enjoy their day.
They always race out when I prop open the door
first thing in the morning.
I remember making this chook house from
old fencing wire, mesh, an old door, tin.
Dad helped.
It was fun.
We haven’t done anything like that for …
I shut my eyes, will my mind
not to think.
Then I remember how we scratched
our initials in the concrete
of the machinery shed.
And now I want to paint my initials on the beam
of the chook house door.
To make some history of my own.
There are some half-empty tins
of paint I found when I was sorting.
‘Come on Trigger,’ I call. Can’t leave him
here alone.
We run back to the machinery shed.
I grab the red paint, a small tin
‘Come on Trigger,’ I yell again
as I head back to the chook house.
He thinks it’s a game; his pink tongue
hanging out, ears back, he runs, runs
and tries to chase the big black rooster.
‘No,’ I shout.
‘Stop,’ I shout.
And Trigger pulls up, sits down
panting, looking back at me. Waiting.
‘Ah Trigger, don’t chase the chooks,’ I growl.
I pull over a stump of wood,
open the red can, stir the paint with a stick,
dip in the brush, stand on the log
and reach to write my initials.
Then I wipe the brush on the grass
and dip it in the yellow paint.
I write Leah’s initials and a curve for a smile.
There, it’s done.
Time to check on the silky bantam.
I’ve made a little nesting room
for her (with Dad’s help)
by putting up mesh and a frame
on the back of the old outside toilet.
There’s plenty of straw to make
a warm nest.
Two days ago, I counted six eggs.
I remember Mum answering Leah’s questions.
‘Clucky bantams,’ Mum had called them,
‘always wanting to go broody.’
‘What’s broody?’ Leah had asked.
‘When a hen wants to sit and hatch eggs,
not lay them each day.
Count how many days that bantam sits
on the nest, then watch for a surprise,’
Mum had said.
&nbs
p; I look at a spot lower than me
on the door post and I can just faintly see
the marks Leah wrote as she
counted twenty-one days.
Leah had squealed with joy
at the chicks.
Will I see chicks today?
Yes, I hear the peep, peep of chickens
and there I see a tiny puffball of gold,
then another and another peering from under
the thick feathers of the mother bantam.
‘Yay!’ I shout. ‘Six chicks!’
Leah would love to hold one chick, in her tiny
thin hand, like she did the last time
a bantam went broody.
I check on the water, the feed for the bantam
in her nesting pen,
then go back to the main pen.
I know we will take some chooks with us
and leave others.
‘Goodbye chook house,’ I whisper.
I have time to visit the deep well site.
See if our big rock is still there,
the one we helped Pa put in place
to mark the site of the long-ago
freshwater well.
I take the two paint cans with me
and a broken piece of wood from
a crate as a marker, of sorts.
I sit on the big rock, stir the red paint
and write ‘Deep Well’ on the wood,
and alongside it draw
a yellow smile.
Then I push it into the moist soil.
There! Another piece of my and Leah’s
farm history.
‘Goodbye hidden deep well,’ I say.
I’m not really brave alone in the machinery shed
for the night. Mum comes to check on me
just as the sky turns into darkest blue with its
own thousands of pinpricks of starlight.
‘Dad told me about the snake,’ she said.
‘I know you’ll be fine with Trigger.
But the back door will be left unlocked
if you change your mind.’
Mum hugs me and somehow
I know she also knows about
my goodbyes.
Trigger wags his tail.
He wants a hug too.
‘The two cats are coming to share the shed
with you. Good to keep mice away,
good to keep snakes away as well,’ says Mum.
I nod and yawn.
Saying goodbye is tiring work.
Next to Pa’s old truck
It’s so early, but I feel as if I’ve had a good sleep,
even though concrete
is harder on my back than the earth.
The two cats are
rolled up next to me, warm, soft.
One purrs as if she knows I am now awake.
‘Shelley,’ I whisper.
That’s the name Leah gave to her cat.
Tilly stretches and her claws