3. The great Australian emptiness.
First of December 1972 | 12pm
The paddocks surrounding Lance had a sense of leopard silence which engulfed him. This land was well-versed in eternity. It made its own boundaries.
Lance parked the Ute sideways in the paddock, as he bundled fence wire against the car door. He watched as the homestead in the distance glimmered in a sort of dull fortitude. The paddocks hummed their own dull fortitude. Slow western gusts moved over the great western emptiness from time to time, weaving in and around slow-moving cattle.
On the way over, he took the bumps in the grass without discernment, emulating Peter Brock winding around Mount Panorama in the Bathurst 1000. The truth was, he was angry. He was angry his boy knew more about politics than him. My son is disconnected from Oakstand. Is this all my fault? Is it all to get away from me? He spun around and around in his mind.
He’d spent years trying to understand the landscape around him. The patterns and contours were a language in which Lance was always learning. In this, he’d neglected to learn about the political landscape, or the recent life of Junior. He lit a cigarette which wrapped him up in its course, heavy comfort. The expanse before him stretched its flatness deeply into the dustpan of the horizon, as the smoke trailed off toward Wilcannia.
He was overcome with a swallowing fear. He tried to imagine what he thought Junior’s disappointment would look like if Labor lost.
If Labor won, Junior would be expecting to get his scholarship. He’d be waiting around for the news, disconnected from all things Oakstand, listening to the orders of the ABC. He’d be mowing the ute around the Western Highway, thinking it would all change overnight, and the scholarship would fall into his lap. He’ll be drowning under the fact that he got his hopes up, and Lance would be the public enemy who said ‘I told you so’ time and time again. Maybe it would have been a lifetime wasted because his time was poorly spent. Maybe he could have played it safe if he’d just listened to Lance.
All of it could be painfully real.
Am I wrong to want Junior to stay around? Am I wrong to want a son to tend the farm with? To hand down the farm to? Lance’s thick forearms and work shirt couldn’t withstand the change. He didn’t want to vote for Labor, and potentially enable all the disappointment for Junior to face. By voting Liberal, he’d feel like he was protecting Junior, saving him from his own upset. To him, university and Sydney was where the empty political promises lashed out, and dreams died. A slippery slope from dreams to disappointment. Where promising displays of a boy’s ambition became reduced to despair.
He could not be changed, no matter what Junior said. Do I vote for the kid? For me? Do I save him the disappointment? Do I let him decide for me? Maybe it is time. He pondered.
The slow movement of the cattle across the low horizon returned a memory of Lance and Junior, before the disappointment, pain, hurt, drinking, politics, solitude…
***
The boy was young. The man was happy.
They sat with their backs against the large stump of an Angophora tree, looking up at the sky. Between the matching beanies they sported and the blanket spread over them, only their faces felt winter’s cold sting. Something of the sky’s immense vastness was maternal to them both.
‘See that one, Junior?’
‘Which one?’
‘I guess I could’ve been a bit clearer, hey?’
Together they laughed. They laughed to the complexity, the multitude, the ease, of the stars. They laughed together knowing they wouldn’t understand their appearance, or their frequency. They laughed because they laughed. Junior felt the warmth of his father’s shoulder, and the stiffness of his moleskin jacket. He felt the safety of his father’s presence.
‘Dad?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Can you tell me another story?’
These very stars promised the boy something. He didn’t know what it was yet, but they promised him something.
‘Just a quick one, mate. This is from ‘Now we are Six’.’
‘I’m five, Dad.’
‘Yeah, but you’ll be six next week – don’t think I’d forget that!’
The boy liked his father’s affirmations. He felt like his father’s words could withhold the sky pressing down from above.
Lance began to recite.
‘When I was five, I was just alive,’
Junior began to nestle his head more comfortably into his father, closing his eyes.
‘But now I’m six, I’m as clever as ever.’
So under the soft light of a million distant lanterns, the man and the boy sat alone and content.
‘So I think I’ll be six now, forever and ever.’
Lance finished the book and carried a sleeping Lance Junior back to the house. The continent resumed its strange unvisited glamour, as the winter’s dark seemed to collapse in on the two…
***
Lance was returned by the rustling of an Angophora tree, which forced his gaze downwards towards its stump.
Something was starting to turn in Lance. Something that Junior’s words could hold more than just unrealistic expectations.
He’d never forgive himself if he voted for the coalition and Junior got sent to Vietnam, never to return. He could picture the conscription. The waves goodbye. He could imagine the battalion marching down Pitt St. The fear in the form of an ABC report, speaking of a devastating Vietnamese attack. A father’s solitude in a packed funeral. The slow renditions of Slim Dusty while friends and family shuffled around in grief and mourning. All of it could be painfully real.
Is Junior right? I mean, this Whitlam bloke does reckon he can bring the boys back home. Oh my god. I sound like Junior. Lance the Farmer butted heads with Lance the father.
He imagined another future: one where Labor won, and Junior got his scholarship. He imagined Junior’s waves goodbye. The dust from the fleeing car. The fading red brake lights as the car traversed the driveway. The letters from Sydney. The once-in-a-blue-moon postcard that would politely inquire how Lance was doing, politely decline his invitation to Christmas lunch, politely wish them the best.
All of it could be painfully real.
The ever-growing world around him invited him in, the world beyond Oakstand. Beyond him. Beyond the election.
That was it.
Maybe I am a bit tone-deaf. Maybe Junior was right. Lance thought. If he could thrive in the droughts and heat, he could survive in an air-conditioned university. Lance realised that even if the electoral promises were never delivered, Junior was his boy, and they would brave the new world together.
He finally saw how their lives in that week had slowly slipped away. How the silence of the bush and the noise of Canberra and the words of Junior sank him into an ignorant state of fear. The timeless smells of eucalyptus and earth and dryness restored him to a self that he’d almost forgotten.
He knew who to vote for.
4. Theirs to keep. Held tight.
Second of December 1972 | 8pm
As the family sat together, the last traces of the sky’s red were saying their last goodbyes.
The four sat on chairs on the veranda again, with a bottle of Blue Rhapsody on the centre-table amongst two boxes of Wynn’s wine. Eileen sat between the two, legs crossed underneath a long white dress. She tapped her boot against the deck periodically as the knitting in her lap began to take shape. Clancy was off somewhere with the wire.
‘Election results are out in a minute or two,’ Lance said.
‘What does it matter whether there’s a change or not, you won’t be happy anyway,’ Junior muttered.
‘Who knows, Junior. I think we have to be prepared for change in this day and age. I think that’s most important,’ Lance said.
Junior sat up sharply in his chair, spinning his head to look at his father. What’s gotten into him? Since when did he believe me?
‘Saying that won’t change who you voted for earlier. It was you that said Labor was a lie,’ Junior said disgruntledly.
From his shirt pocket, Lance revealed and flashed before Junior a how-to-vote card. A red one. A Labor one. He threw it in Junior’s lap. Junior held the card before him, as the veranda breathed a collective sigh of relief.
‘Wait… does this mean you voted for—’
Lance looked at Junior and winked. Maybe Junior’s right.
Junior held the card to his chest and smiled. Maybe Dad’s right.
All the arguments and hurts and pettiness of the previous weeks dissipated. The veranda filled with a sense of family, with all its arguments and hurts and loves and petty victories. Lance’s decision was a flickering hope in the vast expanse of a new world. Perhaps the hope was closer than Junior thought. The ABC’s percussion began.
“…Hello Australia, I’m George Negus, and from the newsroom, this is the results of this year’s Federal Election. The Australian Labor Party, headed by Gough Whitlam, has won the election, securing 67 of the 125 seats in the House of Representatives. They form a government for the first time in 23 years ….”
Promises. Change. Junior. Lance.
Junior smiled.
They all sat in silence, but not from disappointment, or pain, or hurt – but triumph, as the change the election promised them began to take effect. Triumph. Because dim through all the droughts, heat, floods, cricket, elections; that moment on the veranda was theirs to keep. Junior held that how-to-vote card in his hands, with no intention of letting it go.
The talkback of the radio began.
“Would you believe my wife left me to be a flamingo dancer?”
“…The word is ‘Flamenco’, but thanks for calling in!”
‘You hear about that terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics?’ Lance began.
‘That was terrible. Imagine that happens here. Imagine some guys take a radio station hostage or something,’ Junior replied.
Lance smiled, then said, ‘Junior, I can’t imagine anyone enduring the horrors of a two-week endeavour to Sydney to take over the ABC.’
Junior began to laugh as he said, ‘They could make demands to the government.’
Lance held his fingers in a way that indicated a gun, closing an eye to aim, then replied trivially; ‘Tough ones too; a million dollars – or talkback radio gets it.’
It was honest laughter. They weren’t so different, after all. Lance removed a cigarette with his teeth from his crumpled Benson and Hedges pack and sat back as the smoke trailed off towards the blackness, punctuated by a light of stars both familiar and strange. He gave one to Junior.
‘It’s Time, son.’
THE END