Shearers' Motel Read Online Free PDF Page B

potatoes, and a ten-kilo net bag of brown onions, their tops furled back for access. Along the narrow shelf above the stove he arranged other bottles and jars ready to be grabbed: Podrova stock powder, mixed herbs, salt, pepper, soy sauce, chutney. Anything spicy or savoury, except for the chilli and garlic sauce, he had brought himself.
    When the contractor faxed through the OpeningStore order for Five Stand Shearing Team he thought he had been sent a superseded list by mistake: tinned jam, condensed milk, tinned peas, tinned beans. It suggested a diet from before refrigeration. In Bourke he’d had the same feeling in the corner store where he’d rung the rockmelon grower; where everything for Opening Stores was on the shelves of the shop — nothing foreign, no perishables, no variety. He remembered the meals of his childhood: the mutton cutlets, the tinned beetroot, the kidneys on toast, the Sunday roasts either flaky like damp cardboard (mutton) or unchewably gristly (beef).
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    Two thumps up the dining room steps, another two across the floorboards, and the sound of a metal refrigerator catch being opened. A male voice called, ‘Which one’s the beer fridge?’
    â€˜Please yourself,’ he answered, thinking: beer fridge? All the space was used.
    He heard bottles being crushed against each other where he had judged there wasn’t another square centimetre available. Then a tall, black-haired, trim-bearded man of around thirty stepped into the kitchen clutching a cold VB stubby. He was wearing thongs, jeans, and a blue singlet. ‘Hot enough,’ he announced with a sharp grin, extending his free hand to be shaken. ‘I’m Davo.’ His eyes took in the state of the kitchen. ‘How’s it going, Cookie? Been here long? Where’d you come from today?’ He leant back against the door jamb, tucked the stubby under an elbow, and rolled himself a cigarette. ‘Some cooks arrive on Saturdays.’ (This felt like a criticism.) Then Davo moved around the kitchen inspecting the stores and draining his stubby. He went out to the fridge and got a fresh one. ‘Tell me, what did you do before you came cooking?’
    This was a question he didn’t want. He hesitated a long moment before answering. When the contractor had asked the same question he had been evasive. And he could have been anyone as far as the contractor was concerned — a poisoner looking for fresh challenges. But,sight unseen, Clean Team Alastair gave him the job anyway. ‘I always hang on to the fella with the car. He’s less trouble in the long run.’
    Davo shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me about yourself if you don’t want to,’ implying that everyone had their secrets, and who was he to pry. ‘Like a beer?’
    â€˜Not right now.’
    He could have shut up right then. He had his opportunity. He could have gone down the path of cantankerous anonymity beloved to generations of snarling, incommunicative cooks, and never been sprung.
    â€˜I’m a writer,’ he said instead.
    Davo’s eyebrows shot up. He remembered the name of a book. ‘Well, fuck me rigid,’ he said. ‘Yeah. Yours? ’ This title had been on television. Others were all non-starters in the public mind, and in Davo’s. Then the grin again. ‘So you’ll write about this?’ Thinking that was why a writer had come to the ends of the earth. ‘Us?’ His fingers splayed out from the stubby, indicating the kitchen, the shed, the holding paddock, the rest of the team that hadn’t arrived yet, and looked as if it never would.
    He told Davo he didn’t know. Maybe he would. But it wasn’t why he had come out here, cutting everything off behind him, letting responsibilities fall away. He told himself that.
    More footsteps then, and Davo’s wife came up behind Davo, resting a hand on his shoulder.
    â€˜We’ve got