STELLAR CHARLIE CALLOWAY

Following the assessment of her physical condition and suggested treatments by the course leader, Bec Grinnell left the reception area of the health retreat to make her way to the villa assigned to her alone for eight days.  The first surprise was the sight of three apparently tame grey kangaroos grazing on the close-cut grass outside the swimming pool.  The roos scarcely looked up, but a joey’s tiny head popped out of mum’s pouch for a couple of seconds, then dived back down.  No wonder tourists adored such a sentimental picture of this native animal, 'so cuddly sweet'.

But for Bec, those unfettered kangaroos running rampant brought back memories of her father, a farmer currently doing it very tough on the land.  A few months ago a stolid buck, all of six foot, kicked out and made to swipe and grapple.  Such was the desperate competition for scraps of comestibles between his own stock and starving kangaroos that the buck lashed out, raking dad's chest, his shirt shredded.  He’d locked down a couple of paddocks to prevent any cattle from grazing there so as to cultivate feed for his breeders.  So dry was the baked soil during the drought that even this precious area kicked up dust.  With a lack of feed drops as well as rainfall to sustain both soil and pasture for the dairy cows, he was obliged to sell them off.  'I'd be gutted a damn sight worse if I was forced to lose the farm.'  Words almost spat out, pudgy lips sullen.

Whenever obliged to cull numbers of his best breeders, Herbie Grinnell fell into moods black as the coal gouged out of Newcastle, just a ninety-minute cruise along the highway.  The heavy loss he took personally, for he knew the personality of each cow.  When roving his fields, he’d always sense the cattle staring at him.  Particularly painful was the day when a portion of his stock was sold.  Toward the usual milking time the herd would wend its own plodding way to the sheds.  He’d head them off, coax them into changing direction while staying patient because they blindly followed the afternoon ritual, so that some still blundered forward.  Eventually, he would muster them around the truck that would whisk them off to the slaughterhouse.  Barely could he hold back shudders and tears.  It was as if the cows sensed their fate, for their very countenance appeared to droop, lowing with such aching hearts.  His final memory of his too trusting cattle was to glimpse their heads above the tail-end of the truck, all staring back at him, resigned to his betrayal.

Yet it was imperative that he should sell even his best breeders before he sold his land, however dry-rotted, dusty, unproductive; it might be just his one remaining asset - apart from his teenage daughter.  But Bec too was drifting away, for Herbie was no fan of young Charlie Calloway, apparently ‘on the way up’ according to media reports on Aussie Rules footy. ‘That young tearaway should leave his ego in the bloody locker-room,’ dad’d mumble, always dreading the bull-necked Charlie dropping in to see his girl, often unexpected too.  ‘He’s a noisy bugger,’ recounting Charlie’s light-footing up and down the stairs, as if doing step-training for his precious quads.  ‘Doesn’t know his limitations.  A bloody reckless yahoo!’

Perhaps it was due to the transcendence of Charlie’s limitations that attracted Bec in the flush of their relationship.  Hanging above her bed-head, a super-enlarged, glossy-coloured photo of Charlie.  Long blonde curls flying behind him, he was captured in what was described as ‘the ‘classic pose of crashing the pack’:  namely, taking off from a long lead with the left knee bent at 45 degrees, right leg trailing on an extended diagonal, body smashing down on broad shoulders, jolting heads forwards on toppling bodies, spilling the projectile to the ground.

And another framed image on the wall:  Charlie taking a screamer or hanger, as if suspended in time, standing on a back man’s scrunched shoulders.

If only her Dad didn’t regard him as reckless, gung-ho, an excitement machine. ‘What’s he going to look like when he hangs up his boots?’  Dad would bang on so.  ‘Arthritic knees, kidneys bruised to a pulp from constant kneeing in the back.  Worst of all, slurred mumbling from permanent concussion.  Someone should knock some sense into that young bloke’s noddle,' he muttered, challenging Bec with a hard stare and one half-cocked eyebrow.

Even she would cringe at the Blues antics on Mad Monday at season’s end.  Unabashed, a bewigged Charlie would flaunt about in drag, green eye shadow and glossy red lippy that made a gash of his mouth, his long flyaway limbs exposed beneath a flaming red gown split provocatively down the middle to the waist, tottering on sky- high heels and – he couldn’t resist – a jumbo set of inflated falsies.

‘Pure ego,’ Dad dismissed, with a curt sideways swish of his ‘good’ hand, the other still sore from the kanga-clawing that left lacerations half way up his arm. ‘That’s just asking for trouble.’

‘Dad, he’s the club’s salvation,’ Bec was pleading close to tears, lips puckering.  There was faint hope now of recruiting Mum to her cause:  She’d hoped to claim permission for Charlie to move into the family farmstead in a bedsit make-over to assist the young couple to save for a mortgage.

'With regard to that young upstart what's taken a shine to you, Bec, I say Tuck your head in.'  To Vera, he declared, 'That lass needs a thorough detoxing if she's to get her bachelor's.'

It was the word 'detoxing' that gave Vera the hint.  'Perhaps we could send her away for a week or two, ' she said, peering over the rims of her specs that had slid  a fraction down a nose while needle-tatting her ring-edged doilies.  'Somewhere reasonably close, but far enough away that she can rest up, yet at the same time find some peace while she gets her head down and revises for her finals.'

Giving no sniff of enthusiasm, Herb offered to pay for an eight-day escape at the Golden Gate Health Retreat nestling in the Hunter Valley. ‘The lass’s lost her marbles, Vera.  She needs a break from this gallivant.  He’s not a sound feller.  Not good enough.  I reckon you’re right.  She needs a thorough detoxing if she’s to get her bachelor’s.’

Satisfied was Vera, peering over the rims of her glasses that had slid a fraction down her nose while needle-tatting her ring-edged doilies.  And so relieved that she wasn't compelled to utter that dreadful word 'testosterone'.  Herbie might have blown a gasket.  His wife offered a nod of approval, but not without thinking it strange, given that she had recently come across hubbie gasping for smokes again.

Day two at the Golden Gate Health Retreat, Bec was already up and bustling from her plush double bed at ten to six before the wake-up call and rap at the door from one of two cleaning ladies driving their buggy of mops and brooms at snail’s pace along the narrow footpath.  Bec’s villa faced the spa complex gently rising from a mound of grass, in particular the 25-metre swimming pool.  Same length as the further end:  sauna, spa and massage cubbies.  It merely required a brisk walk to Meditation Hill by following the paved path winding up round to the hollowed-out mini amphitheatre.  She’d tucked her hands into a pair of woollen socks, such was the biting chill in the air.  Every day she’d find a handful of keen, rugged-up women mainly in their thirties and forties looking over the vast valley of renowned vineyards stretching way up the distant slopes in regulated rows of young vines.  And in a mild spring, five hot-air balloons with a cargo of tourists wafted across the valley, their distant voices resounding above wisps of frosted breath.

Within this constricted stone circle, Bec was musing:  Tai Chi was not Charlie's cup of tea.  He'd be a clod-hopper or restless horse, incapable of matching the instructor’s spoken words to the subtle actions of over-arching arms, the imagined lifting of water in cupped hands, even confusing left hand with right without sighting an imaginary Sherrin.  Could he ever imagine in the valley charging the rising sun’s rays of freshly bestowed energy back into the earth?  He would act as edgy as a nervous tic.  So it was well nigh impossible to imagine Charlie rapt in the stillness of time, its absolute serenity, the overall calm.

On the late-afternoon meditation walk, each participant allowed a ten-metre gap between sauntering neighbours. Then once they passed the fenced-off organic vegetable garden, it was up to individuals to open their hearts to this breathtaking sweep of verdant upland.  Demonstrably slowly, their instructor was ambling off down the thin dirt track between grassy stubble. Gradually, all dozen walkers filtered through the fence, then turned right onto a more regular pathway shaded beneath branches of woodland.  Whenever anyone felt inclined to halt and turn towards the valley floor, he or she would face the uplands yonder and take on a reflective attitude.  Those following behind would also abruptly come to a standstill and revel in the speechless surroundings, where even the occasional distant tourist car motored in silence.

So how might Charlie, deprived of raw excitement and the thrill of the crowd, respond to all this, this sacrosanct natural world?  Would he ever be listening for the tumultuous see-sawing roars from the bleachers dinning in his ears, the swooning adulation of the teenyboppers and come-hither floozies who’d reach out to grab him for a selfie as he trotted alongside the boundary fence with one hand languidly outstretched for token hi-fives as well as the grunts and sneers of the bearded hoodies who could pack a wallop?

An hour or so later, Bec was retracing her lingering steps towards the meditation walk in a mood of reflective solitude.  She focused hard upon the physical detail of the landscape laid out before her, rather than drift into some kind of vague numinous oneness with that sense of peace, both inward and outward.

By contrast with her parents’ property, the Valley flats held rich alluvial soils from which sprouted white and yellow box, angophoras and red ironbark that Dad used for fence posts or polished for dining-room chairs.  How about those lush carpets of spear and wallaby grasses, even swamps bound by sphagnum moss?  Such a glorious water wonderland!  No wonder all those various vineyards were thriving with a welter of easily accessible water.

Mum’s a real battler too, she thought.  Not only a battler against the elements, but also facing hardships, barely existing on the breadline to make ends meet, just as Dad’s own dreams crumble to dust.

And it’s bizarre, she suddenly latched on, Charlie also loves a good fight.  He’s forever banging on about going into battle:  it’s war out there . . . on the battlefield . . . stadium as theatre of war . . . testing your mettle against the enemy . . . proving you have the beating of them . . . you have the upper hand . . . it’s an arm wrestle . . . ever hunting for the ball . . . a damn mis-shapen ball, for god’s sakes . . . diving head first into the melee . . . putting your body on the line . . .  standing up to the onslaught . . . standing tall . . . the jarring of bones . . . cranium on cheekbone . . . tearing ligaments . . . doing your hammies.  ‘Let it all hang out there!’  he’d often yell out.  ‘Leave nothing on the field of play!’ 

Oh yeah, Charlie was a warrior all right.  At nineteen years of age.  Full of derring-do’.  Or as dad would mutter, ironically, ‘Or derring-don’t!’  No wait, he’d be more down-to-earth, more scathing:  ‘Full of bullshit.  A bullshit artist.’ 

‘Do I really want this kind of life?’ she’d sometimes wonder.  ‘Can I handle all that media frenzy?  That blood-lust of leering dyed-in-the wool supporters?  Might it just be a blind infatuation, a crazy leap in the dark?'

At Macquarie University Hospital, Bec was training to be a clinical physiotherapist.  Her focus was on the evaluation of sports and testing of rehabilitation strategies, with the aim of acquiring a major in human movement.  She was drawn to the motto, ‘Health professional to make ‘a real difference’, as the recruitment posters tempted.  She was also drawn to regular photos in the sports pages to a young man emerging from the ocean with a ripping muscular physique, cavalier hairstyle and flashing smile, coyly crossing bulging arms in front of chest and six-pack, the sea water freezing assets first thing Monday morning in light training.

All too frequently Bec would find herself running her eyes over Charlie’s gun-barrel straight spine alignment of head and pelvis, just as Feldenkrais himself would have approved.  Besides, her professor argued that in deportment, the human species is regressing towards the caveman’s ape-like stance:  head tilted forward and down with shoulders hunched, mainly due to the manipulation of screens by electronic devices.

Charlie was as exhilarated as any juvenile about screen toys and sucked up social media like a bowlful of lasagna.  And digitally dazzling fast.  Yet physically, he flew way above the retrogressive physical trend noted by her professor, his bull neck and broad brick shoulders brushing off chopping hands, fists and arms of opponents hacking him down and hopefully out.

Thursday’s programme, following a dinner of a central portabella mushroom dominating a melee of finely cut vegies variously coloured, climaxed with an eventide saunter through the grounds and observation of the night sky.  A handful of participants plus Mel, the forty-something guide who loved to give hugs, had acquired an app that clarified the galaxies with startling intimacy brought down to earth.

‘Now let’s have a sticky-beak at Taurus,’ said Mel.  ‘Gather round, stargazers!’

As everyone shuffled up close to peek at the screen between shoulders and craning necks, Bec conceived that Charlie’s aerial onslaughts reminded her of Pegasus, the immortal winged horse.  Biting her lip, yes, she acknowledged Charlie too daredevil for his own good.  For the good of both of them, in fact.

‘Bec,’ he’d said.  ‘I’m gonna buy a quad bike, so as I can hoon around on your old man’s place.’

Her cheerful disposition vanished in alarm bells banging about her head. ‘What?’

‘I need you to go in and bat for me.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Tell your old man . . .’

‘My father, you mean.’

‘Tell Herbie that I wanna test my new GMX 250 cc Mudder Farm Bike on his land.’

‘Quad bikes?  Oh no, Charlie, you can’t be serious!’

‘Course I’m serious!  I’m not talking Monster trucks.  Not yet anyway.’

‘Riding any bikes round these hills can be dangerous.  What happens if they tip over?  Even you can do serious damage to yourself, especially if you drive fast.  You’ll get  airborne in a flash!’

‘No way I can be driving fast,’ his hackles rising at the absurdity. ‘The Mudder is only capable of 70 ks per hour.  Besides, it has a physical kill switch to cut the motor and another dead man switch clips onto the rider.  If the rider is dumb enough to get thrown, the motor cuts out.  Don’t worry, darl!  The only spanner in the works is that this shiny beauty’s got a red body and huge black tyres - the Bombers’ colours!’  He gave a fierce thumbs-down with a sharp snort of derision

‘I know you.  You’d try to get airborne even if it killed you!’

‘Look, don’t get your knickers in a knot.’  Charlie heaved out a big sigh.  ‘Can’t you put in a good word for me?’ he pleaded, though sounding peevish.  His puzzled frown and thick pout revealed his characteristic impatience or lack of understanding with the task he’d set.

Fluent he might be, he nonetheless committed hari-kari over dinner:  ‘Mr Grinnell, Herbie, scusi.  Can I go for a spin on your tractor?’

Dad’s face rounded out in apoplectic purple.  ‘Most definitely not!’ he spluttered.  ‘I’m running a farm, not a playpen!’  Oh the cool cheek of it!

Charlie remained outwardly calm, though his brow furrowed in disbelief. ‘But . . .’

‘No buts, that’s final,’ Dad blurted, whipping an open backhander across his own chest. ‘Farming is deadly serious business, especially in times of dire drought.  Where the hell do you think you are?’

It seemed Charlie was smouldering, but Bec suspected he’d already drawn up a game plan.   

‘I’m considering,’ he said, lowering his voice confidentially, ‘to buy a quad.  Now if you allow . . .’

‘What?’ shouted Dad, who’d turned flinty.

‘Just give me a moment, Herb,’ he said, then gathered momentum.  ‘If you give your permission for me to drive my new GMX 250cc Mudder Farm 4-speed manual gear box . . .’

‘No way!’ cut in Dad, in his basest, snarling, put-down voice.

‘. . . over those rolling hills of yours,’ Charlie pointing airily out the window, ‘I’ll pay you hush money for the privilege.’

‘Look, laddo, whatever you call yourself, I don’t want you setting foot in here again, making fools of us all and insulting our way of life.  Nor do I wish to shovel up your broken-necked body and present it in a sack to the police.  Now I think you’d better take your leave quick smart so we can reclaim our precious daughter.’         

‘Phew that was the pits,’ sighed Bec, as Charlie slammed out.  ‘And Mad Monday’s next week.  O my god!  I’m getting into a real tizz!’  After a fruitless attempt in her bedroom to meditate and glide through her yoga routine, she opened her tablet to email Charlie.  There was no message from him yet, no comfort.  Yet wait on.  There was one name in the inbox that intrigued her:

Dear Rebecca Grinnell, I am a programmer of six years.  I interrupted your web sight a few months ago using Malware.  Next job I instaled Trojan to spy on you.  I have the list of all your contacts.  Your freinds will shock at hundreds of crazy hot shots of Charlie Callaway and your secret lifes.

You must pay $5,000 via Bit coin.  I send you my BTC wallet number separately.  You can not be too carefull these days.  Never use an insecure sight!  I give you 48 hours to make over payment.  If not your device will be blocked.

Do not reply to this email.  No use going to the police.  They won’t help you.

                                                                                                                  Michael Small

August 26 – November 10, 2018