Free The Vintage and the Gleaning by Jeremy Chambers

planning on it, I say.
    Well, good for you, Smithy, she says. Good for you.
    At the table, the boys are already flushed with drink. Wallace skols.
    It is the time of arrival and men arrive. It is the quiet time and men have few words for one another. A nod here and there, men stand together with glasses in hand and the silences are long and the talk is talk between closed lips. The men gather and wait. They are at the counter coming away with pots, glasses and jugs, the empties stacked high, carried in one hand. They drink in the pauses of quiet conversation and they still have the pride of the day and the work about them. Wrists tip and glasses empty and men go back to the bar and I know what they are waiting for. More men arrive.
    Nah, this is slack work, easy work, Wallace is saying to one of the boys.
    It’s hard work though, says the boy.
    Boy says it’s hard work, Wallace says to me.
    What’s that? I say.
    On the vines.
    It’s a holiday, I say. I’m retired from hard work. Vines is a holiday.
    It’s only the sun gets you, Wallace’s telling the boy. The other day, day you dropped, that’s the sun, the heat. We knock off if it gets too hot.
    How often do you do that? asks the boy.
    Wallace shrugs.
    Not often, he says. Hardly ever.
    More men, more voices, noise rising, low and dull, but growing loud all the same. They stand at the bar, sit on stools, flicking glowing cigarette butts into the trough at the bottom of the bar, the trough smouldering, resting their elbows against the brass pole that runs flush with the bar, the plating scratched and gouged through to the steel by the knives of men bored or angry or just drunk and the many silver cuts flash along the pole and the men lean against it, pots in their hands, pots on the bar towel, pots on cardboard coasters with the emblems of breweries going sodden from running suds and they take off their hats, weary from the day.
    Roy, Wallace is saying. Oi, Roy.
    Roy is smoking, holding his cigarette overhand, watching a group of girls at one of the pool tables. Wallace reaches over and pokes him in the shoulder.
    Yeah, what’s that? says Roy, watching the girls.
    You remember that day? says Wallace.
    How’s that? asks Roy, still looking at the girls.
    They are young girls, local girls in blue jeans and blue denim jackets. The jackets have studs and stars and gold sequins on them and patterns sewn in shiny coloured thread, fine and gleaming in the light. Some wear necklaces of cowrie shells and their faces are made up, heavy black lines around their eyes and their eyelids painted green, make-up thick and uneven over their faces, caked and cracking at the sides of their mouths and their foreheads, showing up their unpainted necks white and freckly. One girl has taken off her jacket and wrapped it around her waist with only a singlet underneath and that is the girl Roy is watching. She leans down to take a shot and Roy looks back at us, grinning.
    Real scorcher, says Wallace. You and me went for a counter meal.
    Oh yeah, says Roy.
    So me and Roy are driving back to the cellar, to tell Boss we knocked off and there’s Smithy still out on the vines. Out there on his own, still working. It was that hot wasn’t it Roy.
    Yeah, it was, says Roy.
    Bloody hot, says Wallace.
    It was hot all right, says Roy. He is watching the girls.
    And Smithy didn’t knock off at all, says Wallace. Worked the full day.
    Vines is a holiday, I say. For me it’s a holiday.
    Older men wear their work clothes and the young ones come showered and changed and there is cream in their hair. The older men make fun of them. A lot of sheilas here tonight, they say. The men are fat in singlets and shorts, stained and dirty, bloody from the abattoir, gaunt in flannel shirts and workpants, all wearing elastic-sided boots, thick socks rolled over the tops, filthy and bristling with sawdust and burrs. And there are hats, all styles, most of them too old and worn to