Before I came here, which wasn't that long ago now, I suppose, I did a short stint as a farmhand on a cattle yard up north. I say a short stint because drinking on the job and leaving gates open is frowned upon in the cattle world. Farmers don't appreciate that sort of thing, as I've learned. Anyway, onwards and upwards. One rusty paddock gate doesn't close and a train door to the city opens, as they say. I'd just had enough of it, really. You can imagine the work. It's not so bad if you don't mind cow shit and fences. I have an allergic reaction to dried lucerne as well so that didn't help, and the farmer I was working for refused to believe that such a thing was even possible.
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"I've hired hundreds of hands in me time," he'd say. "And you're the only one who reckoned he needed gloves to shift hay."
The bastard. Most types of grass are fine, never had any trouble with Couch or Kikuyu, for instance, but I guess they don't come in heavy bales and I've never had to lift any Buffalo over my head. Actually, lucerne isn't a grass at all. I remember that. It's a legume; perennial (although some varietals are semi winter dormant), drought resistant, sowed at one to five kilos a hectare, must be grazed or cut on rotation. I recall this as proof I'm capable of retaining information.
The farmer, Henry his name was, was about as typical a cattleman as you'd imagine. As thin as my pay cheque and as leathery as the gloves he for some reason hated. Wore an Akubra unironically, drank worse than I ever did, and had more dogs than friends. Kicked them, too, which never sat right. I would've said something to him but I figured it would have been unreasonable, given we were only raising and keeping the cows alive to kill them later. I remember feeding them and thinking I might as well have been caring for a herd of ghosts. Seemed a bit pointless after that, and I'll concede that it did affect my performance in the field somewhat. Henry did have one outstanding quirk that bears relating. It spares him from relegation to the bloody boring category, I'll admit.
Of a Thursday night he'd set up a table and chairs outside his house and listen to classical music on an old vinyl player that was practically a gramophone. He'd drink a bottle of Bundy and start calling the cows by name. From my bunk in the shed I'd watch through a cracked window as they came running. He'd lay on his back, on the grass, under the stars, and the beef would surround and lick his body from sole to scalp. It might not have been a sexual thing, I don't know, but his missus had taken off a few years beforehand so maybe it was. Sometimes he'd lift the bottle to their bovine lips and let them have a little drink. I thought that was nice. You can have the volume up very loud out there, louder than you'd think, and I'll go to my grave with the image of him blaring Beethoven's Fifth with twenty head of prime Angus licking him for company. I was never invited to these gatherings.
I wasn't really cut out for it . . .
Even though we were working with cows he'd call me Pigboy, as an insult meaning I was too dirty and dumb to work cattle and would've been better suited to life in a piggery. Which is funny because at this point we all know that pigs are smarter and cleaner than cows.
"You've stuffed up again, Pigboy," was one I'd hear a lot. "Come and see what you've done now, Pigboy."
That sort of thing, you get the picture. I wasn't really cut out for it, to be fair, and truth be told it's much more interesting to wander up and down Beaumont Street with a shine on than it is in a field full of cows. And people are a bit like livestock, I've noticed. There's a certain herd mentality that we all adhere to, especially on the drink, and it brings me a fair amount of amusement to think about and witness. I was in the Kent last Thursday, karaoke night, not doing much just drinking it in, observing the local wildlife, and this creature, a big mullet on him, got up and sang Horses. You might have seen him there yourself. I'd clocked him before he got up, a sort of ambling dazed look on his face, nothing to separate him from the rest of the crowd, but then he took the stage and was transfigured before us all; a vision resplendent. His voice wasn't great, but enough audacious confidence came through that for those present he might as well have been Daryl Braithwaite himself. Then came the moment. You know the one. The moment where everybody sings. It was like being in church, I swear, he was lifted off the floor in a radiant glow and the heavens were shining through and it wasn't the voice of a man anymore but the voices of us all combining and rising up through the sticky ceiling and connecting us to whatever connects us out there.
Did I join in? Of course I did. I'm only human.
Afterwards, at closing time, we spilled through the doors like a flock into fresh pasture. With no farmer to guide us we melted in our separate directions, some going this way, some going that, snatches of Braithwaite's masterpiece echoing into an obscure, dark, silence.
I went and ate a beef kebab. I realised something then, that at that exact moment, as I sat there digesting, Henry, miles to the north, would be surrounded by his rum and his Chopin and his cattle, likely cursing my name.
And it hit me. I'd far rather be the Pigboy than a cowboy.
