The Fine Color of Rust (9 page)

Like a grown man, Jake is reluctant to admit to being afraid of anything. Instead, he'll wait till the final minute of terror when he can't take it any longer and he'll burst into tears and start blubbering for his mummy. I recognize that quivering-underlip-and-stiff-upper-lip look.

“Terror,” I say to George, at exactly the same time as Patsy asks, “What are you going to call it, Liss?”

“Yeah, that's great.” Melissa is only half-listening.

“Terror's an unusual name,” Patsy says, looking at me with her eyes wide.

Terror the goat? This could be some kind of warning from the universe.

“What about Daisy?” I suggest. “Or Olive? Or Jodie or Julia or Kim?”

“I like Terror,” Melissa says firmly.

“You mean Terra as in ‘earth,' right?” My wonderful, wonderful sister.

“I guess so,” Melissa answers, mumbling because she has her face mashed into the goat's coat.

That will do. Terra. Although I know from now on I'll always think of the goat as Terror.

“Take Terror down to the yard and introduce her to her new home while I have a word with Norm,” I tell Melissa.

Norm turns hurriedly. He's halfway down the veranda steps before I can even point the finger of blame.

“See you tomorrow, Loretta,” he calls over his shoulder. We head to the front of the house to watch him from the front door. He's made it to his truck in record time. That old gammy leg doesn't seem to be playing up this morning. “I'll bring some stuff for Terror. 'Bye, George, 'bye, Patsy. Let me know if you need any materials for that smokehouse!” His last words are drifting off into the distance because he's already backed out of the drive and turned into the road.

After I've dropped Jake and Melissa at school, I come back and sit on the veranda with Patsy and George. We sip cups of tea, watching Terror munching her way through every speck of green in the yard.

“It adds a nice pastoral touch, having the goat.” Patsy must be warming to our rural paradise where children fall in love with goats. “Of course, it's you who'll be picking up the poo.”

“I know. So did Melissa tell you anything about the bush-pig business?”

Patsy rubs her forehead. “She said school was no fun anymore, but she didn't mention a bush pig. She mentioned some new girl.”

Terror clops up the veranda steps and looks menacingly at Patsy, who hands over her biscuit.

“Don't do that, darling,” George says. “You'll encourage it.”

“I'm not saying no to that brute.” Patsy hands Terror the last biscuit off the plate. Terror swallows and burps, noses the plate, jumps off the veranda, and returns to stripping the trees in the yard.

“What about the new girl?”

“It was hard to make out what she was on about. You know how kids tell a story as if you already know half of it? She was talking about a war, how the girl had been in a war.”

I knew there was something odd about the family I saw sitting away from everyone at the waterhole. They seemed so alone up on the ridge, five silhouettes against the white-blue sky of late afternoon. They probably never even made it to the water, what with the whole town watching them take every step down that hill. I remember when I first came here with Tony, how people stopped their conversations and turned and stared when I walked by. Mind you, that was probably because they were wondering what kind of birdbrain had hooked up with Tony. If only someone had said something . . .

“When are you going to send the kids down to stay with us?” George asks.

My neck cracks with the speed of my head turning.

“You want to look after Melissa and Jake?”

“For a few days,” George answers quickly. “We wouldn't want them to get homesick.”

Patsy's looking dubious. She's told me about the time they had Tammy's children to stay. James, twelve years old, suggested that George should have put a little more pesto in the lamb crust. Eliza, nine, tripped the power overload switch in the house one night by using a hair dryer, a hair straightener, electric tweezers, an electric footbath for softening feet before a pedicure, and a neck massager all at once. When the power
came back on, Eliza wanted to go home because her hair had gone frizzy and she needed the gel she'd left in her bathroom.

“
Her
bathroom?” I asked.

“The new house,” Patsy said. “They each have a bathroom. They're using enough water to irrigate the Mallee.”

“I suppose I could let the kids go for a couple of weeks,” I say, giddy with excitement.

“Days, Loretta, a couple of days.”

“Five days?” I offer. “Six?”

If I could have a holiday from the children I love so much I sometimes want to smother them, who knows how my life would improve. I might take up gardening and cake decorating. I might discover a talent for painting watercolors or writing poetry. Brilliant small-business ideas would pop into my head as I worked up a sweat jogging around the Wilson Dam, knocking one more centimeter off my tiny waist and toning my long slender thighs.

“Oops, hang on a tick,” I tell Patsy and George, putting down my chipped mug. “Got to get the chicken fillets out of the freezer for tonight.”

When I get back the tea party is over. Patsy and George are packing their things inside, and Terror is nosing around the plates, checking for crumbs.

“Shoo! Off the veranda, Terror,” I say. Terror stares at me without budging. She has pale green eyes and black horizontal pupils. “People sacrifice your type to the devil,” I tell her. “Shoo.” I point down the stairs, but Terror bends her head toward my hand. Her top lip stretches out and, like a hand in a mitten, her lips probe all over my fingers and the back of my palm. “You are one spooky goat,” I tell her, drawing my hand away and stroking her side. Her coat is softer than it looks. She pushes her head against my belly.

“Sucked in,” George says from the doorway. “I guess I won't be making goat curry out of that one.”

“It's not a pet, George. It's a lawn mower.”

“Sure. Next time we come I bet the lawn mower has its own place set at the table.”

Terror nudges me once more before she heads back down into the yard.

“How about Easter?” Patsy says from behind George. “The kids can come and stay for a few days. I'll take a break from uni. We can do the aquarium, things like that.”

“Great.” That's all I have to say. Otherwise, I'm speechless. This will be my first holiday from the children in eleven years. I can see myself transformed. The pudge has magically fallen from my hips and I'm wearing a long, slinky silk dress. I'm in the function room of the golf course, tossing my newly blond-streaked hair and full of ennui or some other French feeling at these boring rich men crowding around me. I'm certain something like this will happen when I'm child-free. All I need to do is to stop eating immediately.

In the meantime, it's only a week until the minister comes to Gunapan. We have to get organized.

AT TEN THIRTY-FOUR
on the day chosen for his Gunapan tour, the minister arrives in the manner of royalty, chauffeured inside a big white car that glides soundlessly to a stop in front of us. He steps out of the car, unplugs the mobile earpiece from his ear and tucks it into his suit pocket, smooths back his hair with the heel of his palm, and clears his throat.

We're standing in a line along the school fence like a bunch of schoolkids. The headmaster steps out of the welcoming committee line to thrust a hand in the minister's direction.

“Welcome to Gunapan, Minister.”

The minister gives a regal nod.

I remember the day I first heard they were going to close the primary school. My whole pathetic do-as-you're-told life reared up in front of me and I said, “No, I'm not going to be walked over again. I'm going to stop this.”

Helen, always supportive, suggested, “Can you end world poverty and bring peace to the Middle East while you're at it?”

Norm asked how my four-year-old découpage project was going.

They were both right. I've never finished anything in my
life. The ghost of some radical from the sixties must have taken over my body. I started using words like
mobilize
and
comrade
. Norm nicknamed me the Gunna Panther. I wrote letters and painted signs and demonstrated in front of the school to a crowd of mothers picking up their children while Melissa hid, humiliated, on the floor of the car. Jake did a protest war dance—one of the mothers thought he was busking and threw him a dollar.

Now, finally, the Minister for Education, Elderly Care and Gaming is here to visit Gunapan Primary School on his way to open a new agricultural campus farther up the highway, and I'm struck dumb. The radical spirit has deserted me, and all I can think about is how to ruff up my blouse to hide the butter stain from Jake's greasy breakfast fingers.

In front of the school, the minister, the mayor, and the headmaster shake hands vigorously, nodding and looking around, frowning and smiling in turn, as if they're having a whole conversation without words. After a moment I realize the minister's flummoxed because no one's taking his picture. I pull my old Kodak from my handbag and aim it. The flash lights up the gathering and the minister, obviously relieved, lets go of the headmaster's hand. I meant to get film yesterday, but the chemist told me it's cheaper to buy a new digital camera than to process three rolls of film so I didn't bother.

We've planned a tight half-day's entertainment for the minister—primary school, Country Women's Association, local industry, and lunch at the pub, where he can see his portfolios of elderly care and gaming taken care of simultaneously in the gambling room.

Last week we had a meeting about the visit. The first thirty minutes was spent discussing what we're supposed to call the
minister. The headmaster was convinced we should address him as “Minister.” Norm wanted to call him “mate.” I preferred “Mr. Deguilio,” but in the vote I lost because half the people in the room couldn't pronounce it.

“And if we mess it up we'll sound like a bunch of hicks,” Helen said, as if that would be a surprise.

First stop is morning tea at the Country Women's Association Hall. The minister tells his driver to wait because he'd like to walk and see a bit of the town so we follow the mayor and the minister in file down the street. Bowden, our very own local hooligan, drives past in his hotted-up Torana, leaning on the horn the whole way to the milk bar, where he screams to a stop with a flourish of smoking tires.

“Membership of the CWA is very strong in Gunapan,” the mayor tells the minister on the way into the hall. We crowd inside and jostle for a place near the food. “We're a tight-knit community, working together, and the CWA has a proud history in this town. If we have an emergency such as a bushfire, the CWA ladies make tea and sandwiches for the volunteer firefighters and prepare bedding for anyone who's had to abandon their home.”

“Homemade country scones.” The minister breathes a sigh of pleasure as he sits in front of the mound of freshly baked scones Kyleen bought first thing this morning at the supermarket. “You don't get food like this in the city anymore. It's all focaccias and squid-ink pasta.”

“We have focaccias too, Mr. Minister,” Kyleen says, “but I've never heard of skidding pasta.” She pulls out the chair beside the minister and the headmaster dances around behind them in a panic. I don't think Kyleen's his first choice for ambassador of Gunapan.

“I always thought black pasta looked odd anyway,” the
minister replies. He takes the cup of tea Kyleen has poured for him and helps himself to a scone.

On that signal, the rest of us launch ourselves in rugby-team fashion at the two trestle tables, load up with the scones and jam and cream, and settle down on the seats around the walls for our free feed.

I'm stuffing the last scone into my mouth when the headmaster sidles up. He's gripping his saucer so tightly the cup is rattling.

“You've got to do something about Kyleen,” he hisses.

I look over and Kyleen waves to me. She's sporting a cream moustache. So's the minister. Kyleen's laughing. She leans in and whispers in his ear, leans back and laughs again.

“What? They seem to be having a great time.”

“Kyleen's telling him the story of last year's power blackout.”

I scuttle over, still chewing my scone, and stand beside Kyleen, grinning like an idiot.

“That's so funny, Kyleen. Maybe . . .” I interrupt as she gets to the part where Norm's stripping the copper wire from the old electricity substation while farther down the road the newly privatized power company is preparing to run a test surge on the safety equipment they've installed.

“Norm's never had a lot of hair,” Kyleen goes on, ignoring me. “Well, not that anyone can remember.”

She explains to the minister how she happened to be driving backward past the old substation at the time because every other gear in her car had stopped working and it was the only way she could get to the mechanic.

“Jeez, I got a crick in my neck. And as I'm passing the substation—”

The minister's smile is so rigid it's as though someone
sprayed his face with quickset cement. I imagine this is one of the skills a politician needs.

“Minister!” I shout. “We're running behind schedule. It's time to visit Morelli's Meats.”

“Oh, we'd better be off. Terribly sorry to miss the end of your story.” The minister puts out his hand to shake with Kyleen, who offers to ride in the government car with him so she can finish. But the headmaster has placed his hands affectionately on her shoulders and when she tries to stand she finds herself clamped to the seat. The mayor waves at me to hurry the minister away.

So I'm stuck with him. I rush him outside and take another pretend photo in front of the CWA Hall before racing him back to the car. Kyleen's in the background of the shot, struggling to get away from the headmaster.