Free Jacko by Thomas Keneally Page B

writers, she didn’t have any malice. This gave her even more the air of one who might have been right. Meanwhile, Larson was embarrassed to silence for my sake, and that at last seemed to produce confusion in Chloe.
    She stood suddenly.
    â€”God, a woman’s probably said too much eh. Listen, no question you’re welcome. That’s not what I’m saying. Anyhow, I’ve got to get back to the homestead to make a poultice for the mongrel. See you boys later.
    She went, looking a little lost, as if she weren’t proprietor of the place. As she passed them, various stockmen asked her how the boss was, and she said, Whingeing bastard.
    â€”That’s a bad ankle he’s got though, a senior stockman named Merv told her. We’d met him that afternoon. He was a wiry little man with a skew-whiff thatch of grey-black hair.
    â€”Don’t give me bad ankle. You’re all a pack of malingering bastards.
    â€”Sit down, Chloe, Merv invited her.
    But she wouldn’t. She wandered up and down the trestle tables. At last she stood behind Merv. He could not see her. She pointed downwards at the bald crown of his head. Then she bent her arm and raised a fist, grasping the biceps of that arm with the fingers of her other hand.
    In case we didn’t understand this meant Merv was virile, she added to the impersonation a plunging motion of the thighs. And then she winked.
    It was not a snide wink. The Emptors were totally lacking in snideness, that morbid rump of envy.
    Outside, later, we could hear generators and see the lights shining in the Wodjiri quarter of Emptorville, administrative centre of Burren Waters cattle station.
    The universe seemed immensely in evidence as we sat under the open-sided brush shelter by the cookhouse with the white stockmen and Petie and Sharon and watched a television set for news of the wider world. By grace of the satellite saucer in Chloe’s green backyard, there was not only a set at the homestead for wan Sharon to stare at by day, but also one out here on a counter under the brush shelter; a beast on a long lead from an electric socket in the kitchen, the video mastiff from whose first, rare bite Jacko Emptor had never recovered.
    In the spirit of this fact, the studiously motionless stockmen frowned at the screen, as if it needed to have an eye kept on it.
    Larson and I were quartered in an empty room in the brick stockmen’s quarters. Not only was the door not locked, it was not closed. The outer wire screen was pulled across however. Flies were still active. The night was hot and even humid, as if Burren Waters were being asked to pay in discomfort for the lushness which set in a few hundred miles north and north-west. We lay in the dark and could see more stars through the square of window than are seen in an urban month.
    â€”Why did she tell us that about Merv? I asked Larson.
    â€”Well, he said, surer with bush people than I was. To make up for taking you apart over writing.
    â€”Bit of a contradiction, isn’t it?
    Larson laughed one of his profound, last laughs.
    â€”That’s no contradiction. Same thing viewed from a different end. But the point is, how would she bloody know?
    So we fell asleep with an engorged memory of Chloe Emptor whose day it had been. We had our alarm set for four-thirty in the morning, and it was a little before that time that Chloe appeared again, wearing the morning star on her shoulder and rattling our wire.
    â€”I got the cook up early for you boys. You can’t travel without a breakfast eh.
    We opened the door to her, and we brushed our teeth as she chatted with us. She seemed to be trying to feel out and expiate whatever follies she had been guilty of the night before.
    She said to me at last, Look I’m sorry for coming the heavy with you like that. None of my business eh. But Jesus, I do like a good read. I wanted to ask you, do you know Michael Bickham?
    Bickham was the now aged novelist who had