The Farmer’s Wife. Rachael Treasure

the last few years Harry’d been too sick to do much anyway and stuck to himself in his log cabin. But since he’d died, Charlie had noticed a shift in Rebecca. A restless frustration. Some days her moods were too much to bear.

      Then bloody Andrew Travis and his no-till cropping ideas and holistic grazing management seminars had got into Rebecca’s head and she had completely gone off the dial about how he should run the place from now on. She was chucking out over ten years of his good management all because of some Queensland guru who kept banging on about regenerative agriculture and all the profits to be gained from low inputs.

      Even though Charlie knew there wasn’t much profit at the end of the day on Waters Meeting, couldn’t Bec see their production was better than the other farms in the district? He remembered their shared passion in the early days when she’d brought him in as ‘cropping manager’ and, of course, her boyfriend.

      For the first few years the business had hummed, exporting hay that was cut from the rich lucerne flats to fancy stables in Japan. They’d even travelled to Tokyo for a month, living it up with fancy-pants racing people who couldn’t speak a word of ‘Engrish’, but could chuck back sake like you wouldn’t believe. But five years into the venture the Aussie government had pulled the pin on water rights due to salinity issues hundreds of kilometres downstream from the farm. Charlie knew it had more likely been due to political pressures after a documentary screened on prime-time television about the evils of irrigation. The water was shut off to them. Waters Meeting had become a dryland farming operation overnight. And once again, like when Bec had first returned from her time away at Ag College and jillarooing, they had had to fight to keep the farm afloat.

      In the midst of the fight over water rights, Rebecca had fallen pregnant and she’d become annoyingly philosophical about their situation, saying the irrigation ban was ‘meant to be’. She’d said over time she’d realised that it didn’t sit well with her to be carting hay around the world. It wasn’t environmentally sound, she’d said. Bloody women always changing their minds, Charlie thought angrily. They’d busted their guts to set up the operation and now his very own wife was turning green on him like the rest of the wankers on the planet. What was wrong with her? Didn’t people realise farmers fed the nation? And so they should be supported accordingly?

      Charlie glanced again in the mirror and watched the plough discs cut neat crumbling lines in the dry paddock he’d sprayed last week.

      A plume of topsoil eddied in the gentle breeze. He twisted his mouth to the side. It was too dry to be cultivating: Bec was right. There was something in his gut that told him what he was doing was wrong, but he just couldn’t help himself. Kicking up dust was better than sitting at home watching Ben and Archie fight. He felt a twinge of guilt, knowing how crapped-off the boys would have been when they found out they were being plonked with Mrs Newton, their elderly neighbour, for the night again. They could’ve easily fitted in the spacious new cab with him. They’d been so excited about the new tractor.

      Charlie swigged his beer and washed away the thoughts, instead choosing to focus on the new dream tractor. He loved everything about it, from the way the giant glass door pulled open, to the wide view from the cab through even more expansive glass. The massive John Deere was so sleek and modern it looked as if it belonged in one of Ben’s Star Wars animations. It didn’t just have a dash; it had a ‘command centre display’. There was even a gyroscope that automatically made steering adjustments when Charlie drove fast down the smoother gravel roads of Waters Meeting. He’d love to try it on the newly sealed main road. Plus the GPS, once he’d worked out how to use it, would mean that his furrows would be perfectly even and straight.

      He reached for his fourth stubby and popped the top off it, enjoying the gentle bounce the hydraulically sprung seat offered. It’s enough to give me a hard-on, he thought wickedly, toasting himself in the mirror and cocking an eyebrow.

      As he rounded up to the top of the paddock, his phone beeped a message. Murray, texting to say it was humming at the Fur Trapper, the locals’ nickname for the Dingo Trapper Hotel. Charlie sent a text back saying he was on the chain for the night. Cranky wife. But bloody nice tractor.

      As the sun dipped, and the fifth beer sank, Charlie settled into feeling a strange mix of boredom and friskiness at the same time. As if on cue, his phone beeped again with a text. He reached into his top pocket.

      When he opened the photo up on his phone, he smiled and chuckled. There, on the small screen, was the image of Janine Turner in some rare kind of silky purple number with what looked like a black salami thrusting up from her ample cleavage. Come get me later, cowboy! came the message.

      Charlie Lewis drained the last of his stubby. He paused for a moment. Knowing he shouldn’t, but with the blandness of his life pushing him on, he reached for his belt buckle with a wicked grin on his face. What was wrong with a little bit of play? Janine was always up for it. She was about to get a nice shot of his gear stick. That would fix her.

       Three

      Doreen and Dennis Groggan’s farmhouse was set in an over-grazed paddock in a narrow valley. Etched along that valley was a jagged, eroded tributary that, in times of rain, fed the larger Rebecca River to the east, the river after which Rebecca was named. The Groggans’ was a small, poor dirt farm surrounded by a swathe of bushland that swept up and over rocky gullies and ridges. The land and the isolation of the farm made it not so profitable, so as a result, on weekdays Dennis drove the school bus and Doreen worked at the school as the cleaner and groundsman. Judging from the state of the house, Doreen was good at keeping things in order at home too, Rebecca thought.

      On their silver wedding anniversary, Dennis had painted the weatherboards yellow-green for Doreen after being inspired by the colours of their budgie. Rebecca looked at the meticulous yet overdone house and garden. The colour reminded her not so much of a budgie as of a pus-filled cheesy gland on a sheep.

      ‘What would have been so wrong with cream or white? That’s just downright tacky,’ she said, gazing long-faced at the neat-as-a-pin budgie-coloured house. They rounded Doreen’s turning circle of conifers, strategically placed bush rocks, wagon wheels and concrete creatures.

      ‘Get over yourself, cranky pants,’ Gabs said, this time sternly.

      Rebecca almost hung her head in shame. Where had this dark mood descended from? And was it actually a mood? These days it felt more like a way of being. As if she had been like it for years.

      The notion scared her. She looked out the window again, not wanting to socialise here with these women. Not wanting to be anywhere.

      She could see most of the guests had arrived so the brittle yellow front lawn was already filled with a selection of battered dust-buffed country cars and utes. Rebecca rolled her eyes when she saw dark-haired Janine Turner totter forth aboard tarty ‘follow-me-home-and-fuck-me’ shoes of shining gold. Janine tugged down a purple negligee over ample Nigella-style hips while balancing a bowl of corn chips, her handbag and a purple horse-lunging whip in the other hand. She waved gaily to them as they parked.

      ‘Oh geez! Look at her get-up!’ Rebecca grimaced. ‘You never told me it was fancy dress!’

      ‘You never would’ve come.’ Gabs unclipped her seat belt, swung round to the back and dragged out a Woolies green bag. ‘Ta-da!’ she said, emptying the contents of the bag onto Bec’s lap. Rebecca pulled a face as she held up the items one by one: a sequined silver skirt trimmed with feathers, an orange boob tube, red high heels and a packet of red fishnets.

      ‘So? Do you like your kinky costume? I made the skirt out of one of Kylie’s princess dresses from the costume box. Don’t tell her. She’ll get the shits up. And I got the shoes on eBay. I think they had a bit of Baby Oil or something on them, but I cleaned them.’

      ‘You are joking, right?’

      ‘Shut up and get changed.’ Gabs grinned. ‘Or you’ll be the odd one out.’