Phillip

Phillip slumped around the shearing shed the morning after they had marked the spring lambs- putting in ear tags, drenching against worms and docking the tails in preparation for their sale. The process had taken the full day, so by the time they had finished and herded the sheep across the causeway and around the lake the sun had dipped below the horizon and twilight’s lid was beginning to close for the night. Their late finish had meant that the drench-guns, ear tags and tailing rings, and an assortment of syringes, gadgets and spraycans were left strewn about the shed floor.

Phillip had taken it upon himself in the morning to head out and clear up the mess. The pungent stench of sheep shit, urine and lanolin hung in the air of the shearing shed. Diesel, grease and engine oil wafted over from the machinery shed next door to intermingle with those of the shearing shed to produce the unmistakeable odour of a well functioning farm.

            

           In previous years the whole process of dealing with the sheep wouldn’t have taken nearly as long, or taken quite the same toll on Phillip’s body. But he couldn’t escape the fact that he could no longer keep up with his younger self; all the physical effort and labour needed to make a successful go of it seemed to be just out of his grasp. He was now becoming more and more dependent on others to help get through each day.

           The news that he had been hoping never to hear again had passed through him with the same force of dread as the first time- the cancer was back. And it had brought friends. It was in his prostate, his liver and his bones- those very things that were holding him up were now breaking him down, crumbling and turning into rubble. The doctors started him on an intense cocktail of drugs and radiation, all the while knowing it was likely to be a futile exercise against mortality. He was that much older, the cancer that much more advanced and strong, not even his formidable strength and tenacity could be counted upon to conquer it all over again. Like Samson, he was weakened with the loss of his hair. They recommended he seek the services of palliative care. They told him the brutal truth. He should get his affairs in order. He was going to die.

At first Phillip tried to put on a brave face, defy the doctors’ bleak outlook and shrug off their dire warnings. He was stubborn. He resolved not to just sit around waiting for the cancer to over-run him. He tried to remain the humorous and carefree man he had always been, to make light of the situation and present a stiff upper lip to the world.

But deep down he knew the truth, could feel the cancer marching through his bones and metastasising beneath the skin; that he really was going to die. Through sheer pride and love he would never admit this, even to his wife, the one that had been his rock, his crutch for all these years. But she could tell for herself what was occupying his thoughts. After 50 years at his side she could read every line on his well-worn face. She could tell that he was abandoning hope, that she would be cast alone against to the world, and she started steeling herself against the day she would lose the other half of her soul for eternity. She tried to remain stoic, but every day she would catch herself crying, crumbling.

Now, as he picked up the odds and ends of yesterday’s labour, Phillip ruminated on his life. The life he wanted to continue living on that very land. The changes he’d seen and overseen. The advances in agriculture, the advent of herbicides and pesticides, those chemicals designed to kill. He thought of his dear daughter Olive, the sole heir to his throne. A girl, a woman who had, in partnership with her father, predicted and pre-empted the latest movements in agricultural markets, technologies and enterprise. Together they had expanded their empire, diversified their agricultural regimes, almost doubled their profits. They always had their eyes peeled for the next niche market, the next big thing.

On a day like any other day, as Olive was on her way into town to negotiate a deal with a local distributor for the delivery of several bins of eschallots to the city, she turned out onto the highway from the gravel road and into the path of a truck laden with potatoes. The collision sent the car spiralling into the culvert as the truck flipped and skidded to a halt, shrieking metal and sparking off the hot black bitumen. Potatoes spewed from their bins and out across the road. Hundreds were crushed beneath the weight of falling bins, mashed into the gaps between the stones, creating a waxy white film over the road.

Petrol flooded from the ruptured fuel tank, sparks ignited the vapour and the inferno that followed left no doubt as to the final outcome.

Ignatio came to make his silent vigil every day in the culvert where the car had fallen. He was powerless to do anything else. Eventually the weight of his grief became more than he could bear, and wandered away, trying to outrun the demons now settled on his soul.

Potato residue stained the spaces between the tar-packed blue metal for months, until winter brought the rains to clear away the wax from even the deepest cracks. It served as an all too visible reminder of what had transpired. Every time they ventured from the sanctuary of their farm Phillip and Beth were met at the highway by this reminder of their beloved baby girl.

Olive’s death had marked the foreclosure of the dynasty. The end of the line. With Phillip the era would end. He would be the last reminder of the Spring’s. A family of relentless workers, of innovators and dreamers. They had come to seek their paradise amongst the giants in an inhospitable wilderness. They would leave having succeeded to this end.

Tears welled along the rims of Phillip’s eyelids as he recalled the memories. The toxins hung in his mouth, coating his tongue and teeth with the taste of steel and death. It was a taste he could never get used to, and a sign of his fate to come. His body was simultaneously trying to keep him alive and trying to devour him. The chemicals and heavy metals the doctors jettisoned into his bloodstream traversed his body attacking everything they could cling to. He licked his lips and spat the rank poisons into the gravel. Still the taste persisted. He scraped his tongue against the roof of his mouth as if trying to remove all of the gunk from his body through this single pointless act.

As he assigned tools to their relevant bins, he looked out over his life, the life of his ancestors, a dynasty of wood and water and earth. This was the valley of his birth, his growth, and his life. He knew it better than the leathery wrinkles and sunspots on his face and the face of his wife. The ridges and crevices sculpted by a life of vigour. Wise faces, full of the knowledge of life and the frailties of man. He knew every trunk of every tree, had felt every blade of grass beneath his feet. He had been cloaked by the calm darkness of the lake’s frigid waters, he had breathed in the dust of the dry summer’s soil and wallowed his toes in the sucking mud of winter. He ruminated over his life with a melancholy fondness. He had reached that point in his life where he afforded more time to the past than the future. When he was young he only had time for looking forward. He set himself goals and aspirations, no matter how fanciful. As he aged, his attention turned to the present and near future, and now he was of an age where he only ever seemed to be dwelling in his own history, his achievements and opportunities missed. He had resigned himself to his own fallibility and the final inevitability of life.

He wiped the dust off his hands by rubbing them together. They were hard, cracked and stained brown from a lifetime of labour. Immortal grease and dirt packed into the crevices of skin, drawing dark lines across their fraying parchment. He groaned and bent back into his work.