Forked Creek – Chapter 2
Tea with Aunty Glenda
‘We found hoof prints in the soft ground down by the creek. Wild pigs, a big mob. They came up in the night from the reedbeds and broke through the fence. After fallen apples in the orchard, probably.
‘Bella and Ferdi were brave pups, but too green to stay out the way. Must have tried to see them off. She took a tusk through the chest; he was all torn up, poor boy. One hell of a fight, I reckon. How come we didn’t hear it, over at the house? Beats me … The adult dogs followed their training and stayed with the sheep, thank God.’
I stop to wipe at my tears and blow my nose.
Glenda nods, grimaces, gives my arm a comforting pat. Pours me another cup of tea from the pot and pushes the plate of biscuits at me. The longcase clock in the hall strikes ten.
Glenda’s kitchen always smells a little musty, yet somehow clean. Fresh-cut herbs from the yard and a hint of woodsmoke. Well-scrubbed lino and old Formica. It’s a smell that I associate with age, peace and kindness. With Glenda. Today, a spray of autumn clematis in a vase on the mantel adds its perfume to the mix.
She was three years old when they came for her and her little brother. Skin a shade too pale, so her mother had to give them up. Glenda has a vague recollection of a woman’s wet, distraught face; of a voice crying, pleading, screaming.
Glenda and Roy never found out exactly who their parents were, but mum was probably a Wiradjuri woman from the Orange area.
At the children’s home near Nowra, they were told that she would come for them later; that she was a bad woman; that she didn’t want them; couldn’t look after them; was dead. The story drifted through the lonely, confusing years, shifting and intangible as smoke.
Stripped of family, culture and language, furnished with a basic education, they were pushed out into a hostile whitefella world at fourteen to take their chances. It was called ‘resocialisation’.
Glenda is eighty-seven now, and my neighbour. She and her Polish immigrant husband, Pawel, ran sheep on their eighty acres of rocky hillside and scrubby flat for many years. When Pawel died, seven years ago, Glenda leased the land to other farmers, keeping only the half-acre house block for herself.
She’s doing pretty well for an old chook: bustles around the place and still chops her own firewood. Her distance vision is failing, though, and she won’t be able to drive much longer. That will mean a move to sheltered housing in Mudgee or even distant Bathurst. A move which she resists. Fiercely.
A car trip with Glenda at the wheel is already terrifying. The time she parked slap-bang in the middle of the flower bed outside the district nurse’s clinic is local legend.
Otherwise the old girl is as sharp as a tack, and a cuppa and a chat with Aunty Glenda is always entertaining and enlightening. She knows all the local gossip and is the genuinely wisest person I’ve ever met.
‘… So we’ve moved the sheep and the dogs out of the orchard, for the time being. I’m going to put the word out around town for someone to come and hunt the pigs.’
Glenda tuts, shakes her head. ‘No. Keep this quiet, love.’
‘Sorry?’
‘If you invite pig hunters on your place, local boys, you’ll never get rid of them. They’ll break fences, light campfires, get on the grog, make mischief. They’ll bring pig dogs – big, nasty mutts. You want the Johnson boys, Rick’s sons, on your property, pissed up, with rifles and dogs? Hanging around after your little German girlies? No, love. Keep this quiet around town.’
‘So how do I get rid of the pigs, Glenda?’
‘Get a pro. Someone who’ll do the job without a fuss.’
‘A professional hunter? I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘I can ask Adam. My great nephew, Frank’s son. He lives over Lithgow way. He can do this for you, if he has time.’
‘Will it be expensive?’
Glenda shrugs.
I consider all of this. The first winter after I bought the grazed-out hundred-and-fifty-acre property, I was often woken at night by spotlighters shooting rabbits. A few times, I found roo hunters driving across my land in broad daylight, like they owned it. They would bring a greyhound to chase down the quarry and two Rottweilers or pitbulls to pin it down, while the hero with the rifle, bow or knife finished the poor animal.
Once word somehow got out that the city lady down at Forked Creek Farm was a top Gangland lawyer and a good pal of Chopper Read’s, they stopped coming. Sometimes a girl has to embellish her résumé to get a little respect.
No, I don’t want those bastards back. Not if I can help it.
Adam it is, then.
With thanks to Susan Fendt for the audio reading.
Next week in ‘Forked Creek’
Meeting Adam
Adam arrives, and is not quite as Marg expected.