THE PLOUGH STAR AND THE FENCE

The stars overwhelmed him. He’d been so long in a place of crushing weight and darkness, a black hole swallowing all the light, that he now felt he’d been freed and nothing would ever be bad again. He looked over his shoulder into the spotlight illuminating damp dust, and checked that the guide wheel of the disc plough was running in the furrow made by the castor wheel in the previously ploughed row, and then looked back to the stars. The tractor rocked beneath him, its pneumatic seat covered in an oily hessian sack absorbing some of the impact. The huge dual rear wheels threw up clouds of soil which thumped into the mudguards and added to the confusion of engine, cut and movement. But up through the floodlit vision of unploughed and ploughed field, there were the stars. He could only recognise two constellations – the Saucepan, or Orion’s Belt, and the Southern Cross – but the rest filled him with a hunger to know and name. His old thirst for knowledge was back.

When his best mate’s father, Serge, had suggested he head up to their farm to do some ploughing, he’d filed it away where he filed away most things, other than drugs: in the can’t-do, won’t-do, not-interested place. Scratching his chin, his face, his arms, his chest, he’d said, Nah, mate, I’m not suited to that kind of work.

Then what are you suited to? Serge had asked. Not much, he’d laughed. Normally his mate Jess would laugh along with him, but he hadn’t. Jess’d stopped laughing along, months and months back, when he got straight. Now Jess wouldn’t even lend him twenty bucks when things were tough, and they were always tough. In fact, he’d only seen this so-called best mate twice in three months: not that Jess was avoiding him, rather that he avoided Jess. Best stick with those who understand, and the only ones who understand are those using; not those who once used, but those who were hanging or stoned.

But things weren’t good. His own family had cut him off after he sold the complete contents of their houses when they were over east. And his girlfriend had OD’d and dropped dead on him. There’d be an inquest about that, but he hadn’t injected her or even scored the dope that killed her. She’d been earning enough to keep them both high, but that was gone now. He’d resorted to petty dealing and ‘doing favours’ for those further up the food chain. When he could manage it, he’d sometimes driven girls from his dead girlfriend’s agency to clients, and waited outside in the car to make sure it all went smoothly. But once, he’d got so stoned that he missed a girl being beaten to a pulp, and the agency didn’t want much to do with him. It was a long way from his uni days: studying for Honours, writing a dissertation on ‘Satan and Redemption in Paradise Lost’.

He had no idea how to handle a plough. He’d scarcely been out of the city. It’s not hard, his mate had chimed in, you just keep it straight and learn how to figure-eight the corners of the paddock. We’d put you on nightshift, Serge had said. We start when the rains come – I reckon in four or five weeks. Get off the shit and come up. Free board and lodging, and I’ll pay you a hundred bucks cash a day. It’s not much, but it’s better than the crap you’re doing.

Being a person of extremes, and with the world and the law closing in on him in so many ways – a small bust and a failed deal in the same week, the cops and a dealer after his blood – he went cold turkey. He’d done it before, but it hadn’t lasted. It’s not the way if you’re serious, the counsellors had often told him. Come in to the drug unit and do it under supervision. And take up the program in the months, or even years, that follow. We’ll see you through to good health. You make the decisions, you do the work, and we’ll be there. But that wasn’t his way.

He’d been ploughing that night for about five hours when the ground started getting tougher to work. He dropped the gear range to get through boggy low ground. There was a lot of moisture in the clear night air. Low on fuel, he lifted the discs and brought the tractor to rest near the ute. He fuelled the tractor with diesel, and greased the plough and the tractor in the way he’d been shown. He was a sharp, quick learner when he was straight. His mind was wandering, thinking about scoring. He wasn’t even hanging out. His mind was full of the stars.

With the tractor motor off, he sat by hurricane lamplight and ate his sandwiches with diesel hands. Serge’s missus had made them and they bulged with goodness. She’d taken a shine to him. She didn’t say much, but she gave him a look that said, I’d be proud to have you as my son. And he and her son had a past … and a future. He munched, and listened to the night. In the distance over the paddocks, through lines of she-oaks planted as windbreaks, he could see the house lights, and hear the generator that fed them. He was alone, but close as well. He turned back to the stars.

One in particular fascinated him: high overhead, a reddish bright light that seemed to pulse. It was mesmerising, up there in the firmament, at the heart of the heavens. He thought, I must get a star chart. It’d be nice to be able to identify it. In the meantime, I’ll give it a name, I’ll call it the Plough Star. Watching over me.

He started the tractor again and shifted into gear, steel pedals clunking against metal floor. It was a good but oldish tractor. The radio didn’t work, and it was noisy and even dusty inside the supposedly sealed cab, but that was okay. He worked the boggy ground in that corner of the paddock and found it impossible to get even close to getting it right. But he reassured himself that in the end he’d do a figure of eight and finish off the ‘missed bits’, and see the whole paddock ploughed out.

He’d finished off three corners of the now ploughed paddock. It was the early hours and the ground was getting heavier. It was time to knock off. Serge would pick up the tractor in the morning and start on the next paddock, which was a few miles away.

Funny at that hour of the morning. The stars were shifting faster than they should, and he was tired and a little strung out. His body was telling his mind something it couldn’t process. He missed his girlfriend. He was sorry she was dead. She shouldn’t have died. He‘d known she was shooting more than she should: it was a strong batch. She’d got it from one of her clients, who wasn’t a user: rather, he dangled it in front of girls with habits to help facilitate their ‘understanding’. He was one of those with ‘special requirements’. It’s a world of euphemisms. It was strong shit. He’d been chasing the dragon; she’d mainlined it. He’d nodded during her shutting down, her … suffocation. A bit of his abandoned dissertation came to him, or Milton himself:

O for that warning voice, which he who saw

The Apocalypse heard cry in heaven aloud,

Then when the dragon, put to second rout,

Came furious down to be revenged on men,

‘Woe to the inhabitants on Earth!’…

He’d never been religious. In fact, he argued that only unbelievers could try to contemplate what Milton had to say. Some of his mates had survived the scene by finding God. Some of them stayed stoned and danced around at Potter’s House dos.

He went into the last corner, the dual wheels sticky in the heavy soil. Intently, he looked out into the night sky and searched for the Plough Star. But he couldn’t find it. He arched out over the steering wheel, which he was pulling hard left to complete the curve of the right-angle corner, eyes rolling back in his head. He caught sight of the red pulse just as the far-right rear wheel caught the barbed-wire fence, crushing a star picket and yet riding up onto it so the tractor turned hard in on itself, and the plough rode up on the inside duals. He hit the brake and the clutch and stopped the juggernaut before it completely jack-knifed. The whole lot was perched at forty-five degrees, ready to buckle.

*

You’re lucky to be alive, mate, said Serge. There was no anger, no irritation in the older man’s voice. I’ll go down and sort it out. Might need to call up my neighbour. Helped him out once, maybe twenty years ago, when he did the same thing. Did you finish the paddock? Good, good. Okay to go back into the saddle tomorrow night? Good, good. Oh, my boy is coming up from the city tomorrow and he asked if there’s anything you need?

A star chart, thanks.

What?

And a book on the southern skies?

Ah, yes. Amazing out there, isn’t it. They distract you a little …?

Yeah, they did. But it won’t happen again. There was one star that caught my attention …

What did it look like? Where was it? If you point it out tonight I could probably identify it.

Nah, nah. Need to find out for myself. Really, I just want to see what others have called it. I already have a name for it and it works. It works.