A tree. A potted plant. A field. It’s economy that rises. It’s economy of movement, economy of form that rises up, against the pettiness of things. I try to step well in my rubber boots. I try to hold firm, not to fumble, not to drop. Cold fingers on wood. As I put the fencepost in there’s no questioning the phallic nature of it, the hole in the ground with the new mud squelching up chocolate, too smooth somehow, velveteen, around the base. There’s no other word for it as I thrus— I’m sorry. It’s cold down here. It’s cold and lonely at night and there’s not many others around these parts. I’m not talking others as in likely lays, either, just others. There’s no one here and my hands are cold on the early morning fencepost and I’m thrus—
I’m sorry. One foot. In front. Of the other.
Speaking metaphorically of course, as now I’m not moving. I was, but not now. I’m laying a fencepost: it’s phallic, as some things are. That’s all there is to it. There’s a hole in the ground and I have a large pole, and if you’ve done this before you’ll know what I mean. It’s not like you can just dump it in. It’s matter of easing and edging and knocking in, it’s not like you just thrust it in any old way. There, I’ve said it. And the new mud seeping out. And a worm I cut in half with the sharp spade wriggling, white, grubbing away blindly into the side of the new earth that hangs there, a clean orange edge with layers all exposed like the rings of a tree. But it won’t die, the worm. Those things live weirdly on, yes they do.
That’s what these city folk don’t understand. Stuff moves slow out here, and things don’t die that you’d think would, and you might think life’s simple but it’s not. Each Sunday I pick up my groceries at the store, a little store on the edge of the highway next to the petrol station, and if you miss the petrol station then you’re screwed, so I don’t miss it. Sam the owner, that’s what he says to me about some damn thing or other, every Sunday, that’s what city folk don’t understand, he says, so I’m starting to sound like him.
I’m the first one to admit I’m lonely. When my mates email from the city up north I tell them, I do, it’s not like I hide it or anything. I’ve always been honest. That’s my problem. It was my problem in the business world and it’s my problem now. They tell me about everything, Matt, Howard, Bill, the boys from marketing, and it sounds so small, so meaningless, like numbers passing by on a screen. They tell me how they went out with such and such, or saw so and so, and that’s what I’m interested in, not the old office politics. And then I think of the city girls and the way everyone wears high heels up there like the town’s a big metropolis. I do like a good leg in a high heel shoe. Out here it would be ridiculous, but. A woman wearing high heel shoes!
I knock it in, there, one, two. I keep my muscles going in the frosted air and I knock it in. There, there, I knock the shit out of it, they’d say in these parts. And the bugger’s still askew. The heels: they look Ok in town but as soon as you get into the country it just looks clumsy and pretentious.
I feel good about living out here, on my own. And that good earth smell, that rich smell, is all around. It’s honest work. I don’t have gloves on though I should because it’s nearing winter, the frost’s coming up in the mornings and the snow’s come in high up on the mountains at the edge of the plain. But then of course it’s Maria, that time years ago when we travelled through, waxing lyrical about it all: the rocks, the empty hills, the farms, we could have a farm out here, she said to me, grow fruit, and it was snowy then too and she loved the snow on the mountains, she said, frilled out, she said, like icing on a cake.
And when our daughter was six years old Maria wrote her a poem, in a book, Now We Are Six it was called, and the poem went
Now you are six
you’ll get new teeth
with frilly edges
for your tongue to play with
She was like that, Maria. Lyrical.
I push the post heavily into the hole for I think the last time, but it’s not. So I heave and lift and there’s a burn that goes all down my back but it’s just the muscles working and it’s Ok, it’s not like I’m hurt or anything, and it’s the sort of thing I can’t really tell my mates about, in the city. What am I going to say? It’s a physical thing, a beautiful thing, working on the land? Simon would get it but, Simon, my journalist friend. I could maybe tell him about this sort of feeling when the day is cold but not too cold and the post is stubborn in your hands and your breath is coming fast but it’s good, it’s a good feeling, an honest feeling.
When I told Simon I was going south to grow persimmons he made some kind of wordy joke, some sort of joke like he likes to make where he rolls words around. It annoys most people. Because, I said, it made complete sense, going south. And growing persimmons. Why not? Why bloody not? And so he said. And so I said, and we were boozed by then, I said well I plan to surpass all my own expectations, I plan to climb that mountain, I plan to conquer the mountain of persimmons and we were very drunk by then I remember, on not-inexpensive champagne. We were in the business district and he said I do hope this venture is persimount to your current success in the business world and I cracked up. I mean, it’s not even funny. But I do really do love Simon, you know. He’s a stupid son-of-a-bitch.
I grin as I thrust in the pole once more and this time it sticks upright, almost there, and there’s a fierce joy in this city slickers wouldn’t know anything about, because you haven’t had to contend with the frost on the ground and the white-iced grass, hands cold in the early dawn.
So then I said, Persimount, adjective, as good as a persimmon and he said, Persimount, noun, 1) pinnacle of persimmon production, and I was laughing and he kept going: 2) also noun, summit of mountain of Persimmons, as in I will conquer the Persimount and I was laughing more, bent double on the table and I said that’s why I like you, Simon, you’re such an ass, and I said, yes, I will conquer the Persimount, one step at a time, one beautiful step at a time, and we moved on to whiskey then, and later he cried. Because that was the night that he told me he’d cheated on Sarah.
Gorgeous Sarah, his wife. I cheated on her, he said. He had been in Kuala Lumpur on business. Then he cried, right there in the private lounge of our favorite bar and I said Simon, mate, but haven’t we all.
The soil is stubborn. But there’s a satisfaction in knowing I won’t have to get Sam’s boy out here to help with the fence like he offered. It was a test, really, his offer. He was checking to see if I could fence my land on my own, get the posts in by winter and not have to call the locals in. The mud round the base of the pole is smooth and good, like chocolate or butter and I swear to God I’m hungry for it. I get the axe handle and turn it so the head of the axe is facing downwards and the blade towards me and I knock that bastard one more time. And that’s when I cut myself, a quick deep slice to the ball of my palm.
You know what I said to Simon then, I said, mate, I know you cheated and I know you love her and I know you’re sorry. And I said for God’s sake just don’t tell her. I said a man’s a man and all that, and I know how it gets on business trips I said, not excusing it or anything, but. And Simon held his whiskey and he looked me in the eye.
I moved down here last August. Best choice I ever made.
The post is in there, perfect, upright, the pole flush with the hole I dug for it. My hand starts oozing blood. The pain’s delayed for a long moment as I look and see it, the mountain sharp in the cool air, the plains, the hole, the perfect post, what I’ve done. It stands abruptly at the end of a long line of posts, and I imagine it’ll be here when I’m gone, that I’ve put it in so firmly and so well that it won’t fall in a storm or flood. Then I get my gear, and the pain comes down on my hand like a flame.
That’s the good thing about Simon. He’s a smart guy. He understood.
It’s as I take a step away from the post towards my buggy that the white comes in front of my eyes and my feet slip in the yellow clay. I’m on the ground, the cold hard ground, and I can see my crib far, far out over the plain, and the store, further still, and close up and sudden the blood pumping out, pumping strongly now, and the cut much deeper than I’d thought, and I try to hold the edges together, but my sight is going black.
I didn’t have to tell Simon about my Singapore stop-over, what happened after. Maria throwing plates against the wall one after the other when I told her. The custody battle. The flat in the city that almost killed me. The way you have to go through everything, old things, photographs, books, pictures, trying to remember whose are whose. My little girl, only coming once a week to see me. My little girl.
Simon knew there was some reason for me moving south. But I didn’t need to tell him about Singapore; the waitresses laid on by the company who were really call-girls, the cheap drinks, the free hand-job that I didn’t even want but I was drunk. Hand-jobs lead to other things, it’s inevitable. There’s something about honesty though and I just had to come clean about it with Maria. Yeah it was free, the hand-job, paid for by the sponsors. But it was the most expensive hand-job I ever had.
