Monday, November 13, 2017

TWO MADMEN & THE WEDGE-TAILED EAGLE

 TWO MADMEN AND THE WEDGE-TAILED EAGLE  

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     Once the ground dried up enough to get a tractor on it there was plenty of work driving, around the Lake. Anyone who could sit on a tractor was being wooed into work by the cockies that frequented Giltraps bar. I took a small job for good money. When that was over the cocky got me a job working with 2 brothers, miles out of Lake Cargelligo.

     The only reason I took the job was because the offer was so good. I was to be paid a dollar an hour for all driving done plus a fifty acre share of the crop. What this meant was, if the wheat crop averaged 10 bags per acre, my bonus would have been 500 bags of wheat which could have turned into a sizable amount.
     My luck, being what it was, things didn't turn out that way.

     The cockys' name was Dave. He had a younger brother called Bob. Dave was a big dumb-looking, retarded bloke who wore an old Bush hat, filthy clothes and a months' growth of whiskers. His teeth had never done battle with a toothbrush for years and if they had, they'd lost every round. His brother, who was about 18, was in a similar state. I say 'similar' because he was even more retarded looking.

     They lived in the Mali and very seldom went to town because a few miles away there was a garage/store where they could buy the basic necessities for survival.
     The living quarters were a small 14 foot caravan and a wooden hut which was precariously balanced on 4 - 44 gallon empty petrol drums. I used to sleep at one end of the caravan while the two brothers slept in the small hut which was about 8 X 6. After about 12 hours of knowing them, I decided to lock the caravan door each evening before I took rest.

     Their violent fits of temper used to haunt me, even in my dreams. I was never quite sure when one of them was going to explode. For example, if a piece of machinery broke down, they would set about fixing it. The first little thing to go wrong, they would explode.
"You fucking mongrel bred 4-wheeled piss-headed shit heap!", roared Dave at full volume. "I hope you get fucked and pregnant. If there was a way. I'd do it miself."
     He'd grab hold of a big iron bar and tell the, now-silent, tractor what he was going to do to it. He would explain in great detail to the tractor how and why he was going to give it a good hiding. Once he was satisfied that the tractor understood, he proceeded to beat the shit of of it. Ranting and raving, he would flog the tractor with the long, iron, jack-handle. Foaming at the mouth, he gave the poor old tractor the biggest beating of its life. The tractor, good-natured as it was, just stood there in silence as he flogged it. Its only protest was the sound its crunching body made as Dave laid into it with great zeal.
     He was nuts!
     Once Dave was completely exhausted, he would sit down on an old stump. Putting his big, heavy head into his hands with his elbows resting on his knees, he would stare at the ground. Sometimes he would cry and other times he would just allow the saliva to run out of his mouth into the red dirt.             After all of this was over, he would drop to his knees and put his hands together and then close his eyes in prayer, "Please Father, forgive me for what I have just done. (This was his opening line!)
     One day, I said to Dave, "Do you think he forgives ya Dave?"
"Oh of course he does Yorky. He loves me very much."
"What about the tractor?", I said.
"What about it?", said Dave. "I don't know what you mean."
"Well, look at all the dints you've put in it. Don't ya think you should ask it for its forgiveness as well?"
"Maybe you're right Yorky. I never thought of that."
     Immediately, he got up off the stump he was sitting on and went over to the tractor with his hands in the prayer position.

     One evening, after dinner (which was always cold mutton and mashed potatoes) he told me a story about his girlfriend.
"Yorky, she's an angel in disguise. She has blue eyes and long blonde hair with 2 red ribbons in it and her skin is like a porcelain doll with not a wrinkle on it."
"Shit Dave", I said. "You're a real lucky bloke. I wish I had a girlfriend like that. I wouldn't be out here in the Bush, miles from nowhere, driving a bloody tractor."
"She's got a sister, Yorky, who's only one year younger than she is. The sister's an angel as well."
"Where do they live Dave? Maybe we can go and visit 'em tonight?'
"Not far from here but I'm not allowed to tell ya where."
"Come on Dave, be a good sport about it mate. I haven't been around a girl for months."
"No, not tonight Yorky."
"Alright, if not tonight maybe another night."
"No, we've got to wait for a good while.", he said, with a deadly serious look on his face now.
"Alright mate. "I said, not wanting to upset him too much. "How long will we have to wait?"
"I've only another 6 years to go.", he said, as he lowered his voice into a whisper.
"Shit Dave, that's a long time mate."
"Not really ." he said, in a quiet voice. "I've been waiting twelve years already."  His whiskered face started to break out in a shy smile now.
"What d'ya mean Dave?", I said very gently.
"Well, she's only 12 right now but I've known her since birth. I've been waiting for her to grow up to 18 before I make mi move.
"Oh.", I said very understandingly. "And how old's mine?"
"She's 11.", he said. "So you're going to wait one year longer."
"Does she know you're planning to marry her when she's 18, Dave?"
"No, not yet Yorky. She wouldn't understand. She'd get scared."
"Well how d'ya know you're gonna marry her Dave?", I said, in a whisper?
     He checked over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening, even though we were alone. Then he put his left hand up to his mouth at a vertical angle, so no one could see his cracked lips move and said. "God told me when I first saw her at six months old."
     That evening, after he'd left the caravan and every evening thereafter, for the time I spent there, I not only locked the door, I slid the dead-bolt across and closed all the windows.

     Old Dave was as mad as a cut-snake. A few weeks later, I found out that there was a family who had 2 young girls that fit the description Dave had given me. Just in case Dave went completely overboard, I told the bloke at the garage to warn the cocky next time he came for supplies or petrol.

     One afternoon, I was doing some welding at the garage. Some of the tynes had snapped off the stump rake. As I was working away, a bulldozer driver stopped at the garage for a couple of drums of distillate. When he saw me welding he came over for a chat. Before he left he said,
"D'ya wanna young wedge-tail eagle?"
"How old is it?", I asked.
"4 or 5 days probably. It's covered in down so it can't be that old."
"Where is it?"
"It's in a box in the front of the Ute. Go and git it if ya want it mate."
"Where did ya get it from?"
"It fell out of the nest when I was clearing some dead trees off a blokes place."
"What would I feed it?"
"Oh raw meat. Just skin a rabbit and then cut pieces off for it. It should live on rabbit easily."
"Alright, I'll take it.", I said as we walked across the dusty garage courtyard.
     When I looked in the box, the wedge-tailed eagle was the sweetest thing I'd ever seen. It was snow-white, about the size of a small chook with a huge, black beak and jet black eyes. He was hungry.  As soon as he saw me, he opened his beak up as wide as he could and squawked out loud.  I put him in the shade of the garage till I finished mi job and then I carried him back out to where I was working.

     It was late afternoon so there were lots of rabbits hopping around in the shade or making their way over to the banks of the dam for a drink of water. As soon as I got back, I grabbed mi rifle from the caravan and set off across the paddock on the small tractor. It only took about 45 minutes before I had
a young, tender, juicy rabbit for him. As I was skinning it, his strong sense of smell detected that dinner was about to be served. He could hardly contain himself as he flapped up and down in the large, cut-down cardboard box.  Once I had the rabbit cut up into sizable chunks, I very carefully dangled a large piece of raw met above his gaping black beak. His mouth was open so wide, I could almost see daylight coming through his rear end.

'Plunk.' The piece of meat landed on target, straight in his mouth. I don't think he even swallowed as the meat disappeared from sight. The rabbit meat was 3/4s' gone now and he was still squawking for more. I decided not to give in to him as his crop was so big he kept falling forwards off his feet.
     Of  a night time, I kept him in his box next to my bed and during the day when it was brutally hot, he lived under the caravan where it was cool from the slight breeze that blew.

     Each day he grew a bit more and after a week he was easily eating a rabbit a day, which meant I had to ply my hunting skills to the max. His soft, white down was now disappearing as the black/brown pin feathers took their place. He was going to be quite a responsibility, especially from the feeding point of view. He was worth it, I had decided.

     Some evenings it could be quite hot and at those times I'd leave him outside, under the caravan. One morning, as I went to pull out the cardboard box, it was wet through and a piece of it came away in my hand. On closer investigation, I discovered that the whole box had been hosed down and the eagle was slumped in the corner, half-dead. Now I was really fucking cranky! I took off looking for Daves' dumb-shit brother. When I found him, he said he'd hosed down the eagle with cold water in case he got hot during the night. When I told him the results of his actions all he could say in his retarded way was, "sorry."

"Sorry, you fucking lame-brained retard!", I screamed at him but the words just bounced off. They couldn't penetrate his dumb mind. So what could I do? I just had to drop it.

     When I got home from work that day the eagle was in the same corner of the new, dry, cardboard box I'd put him in but it was too late. He was as stiff as a board, dead as a door-nail. As I stood there holding his stiff body, I realized it would have been very difficult to keep the food up as he grew. So all that was left was to get rid of his corpse and forget about the whole painful affair.
   
     Soon after the death of the young eagle, I left dumb Daves place and went back to the lake to look for more work.