Free Jacko by Thomas Keneally Page A

watching from the homestead verandah, amongst all the beds and all the Thomas Mann. Further along the verandah railing stood a hulking, ample-gutted man who wore only a shirt and had no pants. This was my first sight of Stammer Jack. He had nothing to say to Chloe. If by some chance of destiny I’d been hired to paint the cattle nabob Stammer Jack Emptor and his wife, this is the picture I would have painted. It said, as pictures should, everything about the casual power, the lasting hostilities, the persistence of marriage. Everything too about Burren Waters ennui. It answered, unposed, all questions.
    After a time he was gone from the railing: the suspected hypochondriac Stammer Jack Emptor.
    Evening light came in like a tide and turned the earth of Burren Waters’ main pasturage lavender. We went off with the stockmen to the red-brick dining room and ate a thumping meal of steak. In the middle of it Chloe Emptor – who had apparently dined at the homestead – appeared in the room. Working her way towards us, she spoke to various stockmen and then straddled a bench to sit opposite us.
    â€”I was thinking, I hope you blokes aren’t going to coat all this in bloody sugar. If it wasn’t for the quarter horses we wouldn’t make a decent living eh. As for the Aboriginal stockmen everyone considers too bloody cute for words, they’ve been useless since they unionized. You can’t work with the buggers any more eh. I mean, there’re still a few good ones … Anyhow, you won’t get any points for sentimentalizing us. That’s what’s been on my mind all afternoon, and I thought I’d better out with it.
    She took a drag from the can of Carlton Draught she’d picked up in the kitchen and carried in her hand. It was the Territory’s favourite beer, and half a dozen cans had been issued to all hands along with the steak. She turned her can in her hands.
    â€”Anyway, she told me, no reason for someone like you to be writing about us at all eh. There’s got to be a lot that’s more interesting going on in your life.
    I explained that the Brits and plenty of Australians wanted to hear about her kind of existence. At least there was a British book packager who thought so, and had put up money for such a book.
    Chloe bent forward.
    â€”Yeah, but you’d rather be writing about something else. You’d never find someone like Michael Bickham wasting his time writing about people like us. And you’re not interested in cleanskin bloody cattle eh. Don’t try to tell me that.
    â€”I’m sorry, Mrs Emptor, but I am interested.
    â€”Jesus, I’ve got a verandah full of books, and all the ones I like are by blokes who just write about their own world. About what they know.
    â€”Okay, I don’t have a private income like Michael Bickham. I can’t afford not to do this book. And I am fascinated just the same. I never knew that people lived like this.
    â€”You didn’t eh. Well, it’s quickly discovered. I think you’re wasting your poor bloody talent.
    There are always people who say that to a writer, but one doesn’t expect to hear the voice of God, the appeal to higher integrity, in Burren Waters.
    â€”You know your book on Abos? she said. A lot of city liberals liked it eh. But you know bugger-all about Abos. You’d be better writing about when you were a kid or something, or your first love affair.
    A few of the white stockmen were sipping from their cans and listening intently. I found that unnerving.
    â€”I’m not trying to be rude or anything, she pursued. But something must have happened to you that you could write about.
    â€”I’m not the sort of writer who writes about himself, I told her. I’d rather visit Burren Waters and that Chloe Emptor.
    â€”No, she said frowning. Take me seriously for Christ’s sake.
    Though she was the living judgement that ultimately embarrassed most or all