Illywhacker

No one noticed little Ernie Vogelnest who was nervously hovering around the edge of his front paddock.

"What's the snake for?" Phoebe said.

The tin flapped again. The ewe resumed its bleating.

"It's a pet,"' I said. I did not wish to admit I needed the five bob so badly. In any case, it was no trouble to lie. I always lied about snakes. I always lied about women. It was a habit. I did it, in both cases, charmingly. I was so enthusiastic that I could convince myself in half a sentence.

"Did your plane crash?"

"No," I said. "It didn't. I am surveying." I paused. "For airstrips."

"This will not be suitable then?" She smiled.

"No," I said.

"Is he really your pet?"

"Yes. He escaped when I landed. He bounced out of the cockpit."

"Isn't he dangerous?"

There is no doubting the power of a snake, which is something I've proved time and time again. "Not if you know how to handle him," I said. "A snake can smell your fear. If you feel fear it will attack you. If you show no fear you can be its friend and it will protect you", I said, "from enemies."

Listen to the bullshitter. If snakes could smell fear this one would know that I was soaked with it. I wasn't thinking about what I was saying. The snake and girl both demanded my attention. The nor'easterly blew against her and pressed her extraordinary dress against her legs. It was a "flapper's" dress, made far away from Balliang East. I had never seen such skin, such creamy skin. I spewed out words about snakes, like muslin out of a medium's mouth, but all my thoughts were full of Phoebe's skin. I wondered if she thought I was old.

"You hold that snake", she said, hardly moving her lovely lips, "as if you are frightened it will bite you. I don't think", she smiled, "that it is a pet at all."

In those days I would have done anything to get written up in the papers and anything for the admiration of a woman. If it hadn't have been for those two factors I would probably, by 1919, have been the Summit agent in Ballarat. I would have had a lot more than four and tuppence ha'penny in my pocket.

"Not a pet?" I raised my eyebrows.

"Is it?"

Look at the fool! I shudder to think of the risk I'm taking. The king brown snake is cranky and cantankerous. It can kill with a single strike. That dull Mr-Smith-type name is an alibi for a snake almost as deadly as a taipan. But Herbert Badgery will do anything to insist his lie is true -I let the snake run down my arm, across my trousers, to the ground.

And there it should have ended, with the five bob slinking off through the grass. The pet declared free. A good deed done, etc. But Phoebe came forward and picked the damn thing up herself. She held the writhing, deadly twisting rope out to me. My throat was so dry I could not speak. I took it with a shudder and got it into the hessian bag and tied the top with binding twine. I had to shove my hands into my leather jacket when I'd finished. They were trembling.

It was then that Ernest Vogelnest chose to make his entry, scuttling crab-style round the end of the good lower wing. He didn't beat around. He launched into his conversation before I saw him.

"How fast does it fly?" he said.

He made me jump, speaking up like that.

"Sorry," he said. He was a funny-looking little coot. He had thin wiry arms, a red face with a walrus moustache that was far too big for it. He wore his moleskins with foreign-looking leggings. He smiled and ducked his head.

"A very nice aeroplane, sir," said Ernest Vogelnest, nodding his head to the young lady. "Very nice…"

"I apologize", I began… "No, no, no. It is very interesting." He patted the air in front of my chest with the palms of his hands. There was so little of him. What there was was held together by dirt and sinew.

"Where will you go now?" He patted the nose cowling like a man admiring a neighbour's horse.

"Nowhere," I smiled. "It's no good. Broken. Kaput."

As it turned out we had quite different ideas about the aeroplane. From the corner of his eye Ernest Vogelnest saw his wife come out of the shed with a shovel. She carried the shovel to the fence and waited. A shovel was not such a wonderful weapon. He should, perhaps, have told her to bring the fork, but it was too late now.

"Kaput," I said.

"Oh no," Ernest Vogelnest said firmly. "Where to next?"

"We stay here," I said.

But Ernest did not want anything as strange as an aeroplane in his front paddock. It would bring crowds of people who would stare at him. He rubbed his papery hands together and saw them, in their teaming thousands, writing things on the road. They would think the plane was his. They would decide he was a spy. God knows what they would do to him.

I misunderstood him. I offered to pay.

"No, no," he rolled his eyes in despair. "No, no money."

"I will pay three shillings."

"I will pay more," Ernest Vogelnest said desperately, smiling and ducking his head. "Much more."

"He doesn't understand," Phoebe said.