In the Shade of the Shady Tree: Stories of Wheatbelt Australia

the porch

57 • the porch It’d be safe to say that he’s been sitting on that porch for a good portion of thirty years, sitting there in a blue singlet and greasies whatever the weather. He retired eight years ago, and since then his time spent on the porch has increased. Maybe 80 percent of his waking life. Back when he was a shearer, he’d get home and sort out his grinding straight away, have a shower, make his tea, then settle out on the porch for three or so hours drinking beer. If mates came around, they squeezed extra chairs onto the porch, sat on the wooden steps, or just inside through the flywire door, which opened straight into the lounge, which was convenient because he could look sidewise from his perch on the porch (his chair always faced out to the road) and catch graph-paper versions of the footy or cricket. The blokes on the shearing team hadn’t liked it being called a “porch,” thinking it sounded vaguely ethnic and poofy, but he said it was too small to be called a verandah—no more than eight foot by eight foot, and stuck on the front of the weatherboard house like an afterthought, the roof just enough to keep the weather off, though in winter the rain blew in almost Wongan Hills 58 j o h n k i n s e l l a as far as his chair against the wall. And anyway, he told the younger shearers again and again,“verandah” is a word from India—it’s not even Australian!They never believed him, thinking it dinky di, refusing even to look it up to confirm or deny. After he retired, only one other shearer (also retired) kept regularly visiting him. It was as if he’d never been part of a social order. Gone and forgotten. But by way of compo that one friend came most days and sat for a few hours drinking tinnies of Swan lager. People in town had given up wondering why he sat on the porch so much. It was impossible to prise him from it unless by something already written into the fabric of his life. His friend, to whom he never referred to by name, had learnt long back, in fact, early in their shearing days, not to ask him why he just sat there. And drank. And waved to passersby. Drink was actually the answer most wonderers resorted to: the obsessive, compulsive regularity of the alcoholic, safe in his patterns. The porch dweller chatted with his mate about the footy and the cricket and the old days and even the news at times. He wasn’t really that moribund. His friend did, however, have his suspicions. He had a hunch. And in some ways it involved him, and maybe that’s why he stuck to his mate, attending the porch throne, drinking with the Lord of the Porch, and going nowhere fast. And as they sat there one afternoon, drinking, looking out at the scant traffic on the road heading north out of town, and thinking, really, that the dry grass along the front should have been cut back before it got too hot to do so, the friend decided that he alone knew the truth, and it was time to stop beating around the bush in his own head, but also to confront his friend as he sat there, immovable on his chair on the porch. The sky is really blue today, said the friend. Yes, it comes with the bloody heat. There was a ring around the moon last night—gunna be a storm this evening. You wouldn’t think it. Not a cloud to be seen. 59 t h e p o r c h Nope, but as you know, it brews fast here. It’ll start coming in around there. Mark my words. His friend thought best to come right out with it. So he did: You know that time we met and did the run on Barry’s team down around Katanning? Yep, sure do. Five months it was. A good run. I made a packet. Helped go towards a deposit on this place. Thirty-one years, four months, and three days ago—when we first met. His friend baulked and looked across at his mate. Gee, that’s weird, how did you know that...