First Draft of The Songbook Chapter One:

 

Rosco Bryant wiped an arm still flecked with metal from the black grease that wouldn’t wash off with just soap and water, pointed to the window.

‘What the fuck is that?’ he said, his other hand waiting, poised to pick up his beer the moment Kathryn Morgan, the pub’s owner set it down.

‘Oi!’ Kathryn might have had to stand on tip-toes to reach the change on the bar and, when she ran the bar, Rosco always put his cash where she had to stretch reach it. Always peering into her cleavage as she did.

‘G-wan, you love it.’

‘Not me you tool,’ she dragged the beer mat toward her deliberately spilling the froth down the side of the glass just before he caught it. ‘I’ve told you I won’t tolerate racist remarks in my pub.’

‘Jeeze Kathryn, your little Irish brain jumps to conclusions quick,’ Rosco was feigning hurt, ‘I was looking at his bike, ex Australia Post if I’m not mistaken.’ He lifted the front of his blue singlet and bending to wipe it across his sweat beading forehead only to shift a blob of grease from the singlet to smear a spot just above his right eye. ‘It’s not something you see out here every day, a redback spider riding a Honda step-through,’ he said and stretched the singlet back over a tangle of wire like hair that matted his more than ample belly.

‘Bullshit,’ she turned to serve the only other patron who just sat, staring at the dregs slowly draining to the bottom of his glass. He only nodded as she reached to take it from him, ‘Wouldn’t hurt you to jump in and defend me, George.’

‘Oh – yeah s’pose,’ was all he said and went back to staring at the spot, to where as if by magic, a new glass would always appear in front of him until his money ran out.

The morning had pushed the mercury in the thermometer way past thirty and Rosco had been changing a bearing in his harvester. It had to be well over forty degrees in the feeder throat where the bearing on the top roller of the feeder chain had let go. He had pictured himself roasting like a turkey in an oven and thinking a turkey lucky, at least for the bird, there would be no chaff working its prickly scratchy way into every crease and fold of its skin.

Rosco was a strong man, and his doctor had been warning him off the booze for that many years, but his advice was never heeded. Now, it no longer came up when he had use of the physician.

From outside a horn on a four-wheel drive blew a long and two short blasts.

‘Noon, gotta go,’ he picked up his change stopped and slapped three, wet with beer, two-dollar coins back onto the bar towel, ‘here Irish, buy this nig-nog a beer on me, just to show him I got no problems with race.’

‘Fuckwit,’ George said under his breath.

Kathryn found it hard to contain herself as the stranger and Rosco danced around each other trying to get through a door ample enough on other days that it could allow a pair of lovers holding hands through its void. Rosco, shorter than most of the men in town, resplendent in baggy, pink boardshorts, a faded navy-blue singlet complete with a mandatory hole worn through over the years by being stretched over his belly button hair. Steel capped boots with the toes out of them should never make disparaging remarks about anybody.

In contrast, the stranger was spiderlike. Yes, his skin was black and his limbs looked as if he had been overstretched, but it wasn’t that. His flat black ex-biker’s helmet had been festooned with an array of different sized costume eyes, supposedly to keep magpies from swooping. On his back a guitar case with red racing stripes clung to him as if it was glued there.

To stop the farce, he put his arms around Rosco waltzed him two turns into the bar and said, ‘thanks for the dance, I’m Jamie.’ Kissed his fingers and tapped Rosco on his bad spot with them.

‘Fuck off,’ Rosco said, annoyed to have been made look a fool yelled at a closing door and stepped off the curb to where his thirteen year old daughter was waiting.

‘You’re such a dick Dad, c’mon Mum wants us to pick up milk eggs and cream on the way home.’

‘You’ll have to go in,’

‘What? I’m all gritty and covered in dirt and chaff, I can’t. I’m not having my friends seem me looking like your lacky’

‘Sure, you can, look do your old Dad a favour. Christ you know that ever since that oxygen thief cheated me, I’m not allowed in there anymore.’

‘Like,’ she rolled her eyes, ‘old Mister Rasheed has ever stolen from anyone, you were trying to put one over him and you know it.?

‘Go on girl and ask him for a job after school while you’re at it, tell him he can take your wages off your Mum’s tab.’

‘That’s your tab too, Dad. She only buys what we need, It’s not her who puts money on horses, shouts the bar for his mates, or leaves a tip on the bar for his dance partner.’

‘You keep that to yourself my girl.’

‘Why? Kathryn and old George will have that story all over town by tonight.’

He raised his hand and remembered the remorse that fell like cloak of misery, drowning him for days the last time he hit one of the kids. That and the threat that Liz made when he went to hit her for coming to their aid. He dropped it.

‘And I got it all on my phone,’ she held it for him to see, ‘now where’s that Insta app?’

Rosco reached for the keys and as he did saw a flash of lights in the drivers’ side mirror, ‘Fuck,’ he threw the keys to his daughter.

‘Rosco?’

‘Constable.’

‘Not thinking of driving, were you mate? I reckon you have been here about an hour and the way you knock-em back I’m guessing there’s about three or four schooners sitting inside you.’

‘Yeah, spot on Chris, I was just getting the kid here, to call her mum tell her to ride her bike in and pick us up.’

‘That right, Bella? He said ending down to look her in the eyes,

Bella might be just a little over thirteen and be packed full of sass, but her parents had instilled in her truth was always the only policy. Now she had to choose between loyalty to her dad or their teachings. ‘I’ve got the keys.’ She said jangling them so he could see, ‘and my phone.’

‘It’s okay Rosco,’ Jamie burst out of the door they had been tangled in earlier, ‘Kathryn said she’ll put me up. So, if you can help us get the bike on the tray,’ he turned to the policeman, ‘Chris is it?’ and shook his hand before he registered what was happening. Turning back to Rosco, he continued, ‘I can drive you and Bella home and do a bit of sight seeing on the way back.’

Chris helped bike lay on its side among the grease tins, loose spanners and other tools in the back of the old ute, ‘everyone got a seatbelt on?’

‘Hell yeah, cried the teacher ‘and damn tight they are too.’

Chris felt Kathryn slide her hand onto his shoulder as he leant against the veranda post. ‘What as that?’ He asked.

‘That my man, man is our new English teacher making friends with the town bigot.’