Friday, October 12, 2007

67 Jack


Jack , our bare-footed dancer, visited. He enjoyed walking in the paddock but was horrified at the possibility of stepping on any of the poos. Jane used to avoid walking on the cracks in pavements but Jack’s challenge was much greater. At that stage around 150 kangaroos were visiting our River Paddock nightly and depositing a fair number of large black and hard currants, sadly not suitable for jam, right near the yurt where Jack liked to tippy-toe. The wombats also made regular forays dropping their much larger greenish-brown square cobble stones. His walk became too difficult because to advance 20 metres required a staggering jagged path nearer to 200 m. Wearing gum boots improved the situation slightly in that between-toe-cleaning was redundant. The farm was both a high point and low point of Jack’s stellar life.

He was at that mental stage where people fell into two clear categories, either baddies or goodies. I was one of the latter because he liked my farm for its space, its spirited wild animals and the river that gladly accepted thrown stones with an answering splash. He learnt though that killing animals was bad and all people who had a gun were bad. He also learnt that all farmers had guns. This was perplexing because I was a farmer and I was a goodie.

He had to sort this out. Are you a farmer, he asked. I thought it was safe to say yes. Do you have a gun? Again, yes. Do you kill things? This was starting to lead somewhere so I had to be careful. I had been listening with pleasure to Mr Ruddock, our Attorney General, not answering a simple question put to him by a journalist on the radio, so I wondered if I too could try obfuscation. I didn’t think Jack would know that word. I gave him a 10 minute Ruddock-style answer with 25 sub-sub plots tiptoeing around each other without making contact. Jack wasn’t confused. He just ignored the answer by asking the question again like I was an idiot and hadn’t understood the content. I came clean. I have killed rabbits Jack with my gun but I am such a good shot they didn’t feel a thing and anyway they are vermin. In one sentence I had sunk from Goodie right over the horizon to Baddie. He accepted no further discussion.

Jack was half way to being violently opposed to the old adage of “If it moves, shoot it and if it doesn’t, chop it down”. I didn’t think Jack would ever be able to live in the bush and stay sane.

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