Free Coming Rain by Stephen Daisley

laughing
his head off whenever he says hello. Or his mother got hit by a fuckin’ tram. No
difference. He laughs and hates like a snake who he laughs for.’
    ‘Righto then.’
    ‘Righto?’
    ‘Don’t go on about it. There’s no changin’ your mind.’
    ‘Y’know, I sometimes wanted those women to just stop laughing at old Baldy like he
was some sort of a good bloke. He wasn’t, I can tell you. Dear old Paddy, the horse
right? That bastard Reid used to knock him about too.’
    ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ Lew said. ‘Treatin’ Jimmy like that.’
    ‘Everything to do with it son,’ Painter said and stared at Lew. ‘I didn’t want to
believe in Jesus for the same reason. End up in China, laughing your cunt out.’
    ‘Get away now. That makes no sense at all.’
    Half an hour later they gathered their shearing gear and walked down a side track
towards the woolshed. They wanted to prepare their stands and sharpen their cutters
for the start of the next day’s work. Towels over their shoulders. They had left
the tail soup cooking.
    Cirrus in the western sky like a red thrown fleece, scattered clouds and blue sky
rising beyond them.
    ‘Footsteps to heaven,’ Painter said. ‘That sunset there. Fine tomorrow, you good
for a start before light, mate. Four?’
    Lew, walking beside him. A bandolier of combs over his shoulder and carrying a Gladstone
bag that held crepe bandages, liniment and plasters. Spare wristbands, a bottle of
aspirin, a box of matches and a tin of Dr Pat’s tobacco. He didn’t smoke but he always
kept a spare tin in case Painter ran out and they couldn’t buy any more for while.
Told Painter he was a cranky old bastard without any smoke. There was also a tourniquet,
a bottle of antiseptic and Condy’s crystals. Eyewash and a pot of Vicks. Emu oil.
Goanna oil, a sterilised needle and suture thread. An arm sling and a pair of scissors.
    ‘I’m good for four.’
    At the front of the shed three enormous white gums. Here before Captain Cook, Drysdale
had told Painter. Bark was peeling off them in long, pale shreds and hanging down
like scalded skin or a half-shorn fleece. If they could talk, Drysdale had once said
to him. Painter had thought him a little touched to say that. If the fuckin’ trees
could talk.
    The first thing that struck them as they entered the closed shearing shed was the
smell, a heavy nitric smell of sheep wool and dung and urine. The startled clatter
of feet as the penned sheep shied away from them.
    ‘Leave the door open will you son?’ Painter looked over a catching-pen door. ‘Don’t
look too bad,’ he said. ‘Two-tooth wether and ewe hoggets.’
    ‘Merino? Clean?’
    ‘Merino cross. Pretty clean.’
    Lew found the Villiers motor which powered the sharpening grinder. He checked the
fuel level and primed the motor. Pulled the cord to start the engine. The metal discs
onto which the emery paper was attached started spinning, slowly at first, then more
and more quickly, settling into a steady hum. Painter stepped forward, said thank
you.
    Lew walked to the shearing board and looked down the empty length of it. Sat on an
old wool classer’s high chair with flat wooden arms on which to write. A pen groove
and an ink well. Ink spatters from a thousand tally books. Fading light coming in
from the windows. Long white spider webs in the overhead drive wheels and porthole
doors closed. The stained board worn into smooth hollows from the passage of countless sheep and countless shearers. Something like a barefoot boy was running a clacking
stick along a corrugated-iron shed. He had seen large teams of shearers and roustabouts
posing for photographs outside a hundred woolsheds. He had sat among them. Soldiers
and miners too.
    Only their two catching pens had been filled. All along the rest of the shed, the
immensity of an abandoned space; the other pens, other stands, empty now and for
a long time.
    Lew stood and looked at the board as imagined angels flew: