Our first summer storm arrived in the wee hours of a warm mid-January morning.
As lightning flickered against the curtains and thunder rolled out across the western sky, I imagined the farmers of the riverina staring at their ceilings, fists balled, cursing God through gritted teeth, because rain would mean a three-day wait for their hay bales to dry out.
I wondered if Jessie and Spence were awake. Jessie’s house stood on the hill next to the Methodist Church and its spire sometimes took a divine hit.
Yet, strangely, not a drop of rain fell. The storm rolled westward, needling the hinterland with its white forks, until a thin wailing filled the void. Not one, but both of our town’s fire trucks were departing. Moments later, others sounded in the direction of the bridge, which meant brigades from neighbouring towns had been called in. I wondered whose property had been struck.
By dawn, the harsh dry odour of the land had crept back into town, promising another scorcher. I waited outside on our street, between my dusty boots a duffel bag filled with beef olive sandwiches, a flask of tea, and a bunch of bananas. I glanced at my watch. 5:40 a.m. Old man Jackson, the hay-carting contractor, was usually a few minutes late, but after fifteen minutes I began to wonder. Then the house window swung open and Dad called sleepily through it. A phone call for me. I took the receiver and heard old man Jackson’s harried voice talking to someone in the background.
‘Hullo,’ I said.
‘Ben? Bad news I’m afraid, son.’
I waited.
‘Mr Davies’ barn burned down last night.’
***
That afternoon, with the temperature hovering in the mid-thirties, Mum yelled from the lounge room, ‘Someone at the door!’
I opened it to find Spence and Jessie standing shirtless in our driveway.
Spence Apiata was a big-boned seventeen-year-old with soft brown eyes and long wavy dark hair which he tamed with a blue rubber band. He lived south of the train tracks in a ramshackle neighbourhood we called ‘The Bush’. At eighteen, Jessie Noonan was a year older than Spence and I; a blonde-haired loner with a reputation for troublemaking who had dropped out of high school the year before and now scrubbed the boning tables of Ratchett’s Butchery on High Street.
The three of us had signed on with old man Jackson to cart hay for farmer Davies a week before Christmas. Now, having sacrificed the best part of January to shift twenty thousand bales of his rye grass, dock, and pea vine through one of Hawke’s Bay’s hottest summers on record, the barn burning down meant he couldn’t afford to keep us on.
Any hope of achieving our financial goals had gone up in smoke. Jessie wouldn’t make the money he needed to send his mother to Australia to see his brother in a Brisbane prison; Spence wouldn’t be able to afford his hairstyling diploma at Wellington Institute of Technology; and I would be short five hundred dollars of the fifteen-hundred that Doc Chalmers, our family G.P., was asking for his son’s old Suzuki TS125 trail bike.
Spence and Jessie stared back at me long-faced and silent. They had on shorts and towels wrapped around their necks. Their jandals were blackened with tar.
‘Wanna come down to the river and drown your sorrows?’ said Jessie. He shifted the old cloth bag over his shoulder and I heard bottles clink inside.
‘I know a shortcut,’ I said.
We were soon pushing through the tall grass of McGinney’s Transport yard, as grasshoppers leapt between the rusted hulks of stripped-down Macs and Kenworths each side of us. None of us spoke. There was nothing to say.
We crossed the embankment and stepped through the willow trees. ‘Geez, where’s the bloody river?’ said Jessie. The sun had baked the weed and silt to a white crust. You could see how far the water level had dropped; the river was now only a sliver, snaking back and forth across the gravel and greywacke. The water didn’t cover our knees until we reached the swimming hole upstream where the rope swing hung high above the slow-moving flow.
Beneath the willow trees, Jessie lopped off the bottle caps and passed out the warm beer, then together we eased into the water, bottles in hand, trying our best to seem happy.
Jessie looked at me. ‘What about that bike of yours, Bennie-boy?’
‘Lost cause.’
‘How much you short?’
‘Plenty.’
I looked at Spence.
‘Same,’ he said.
‘Fuck this shit,’ Jessie said, and took a long swig from his bottle.
We drank in silence, feeling the cool tea-coloured water gurgle around us.
‘What about the rodeo next weekend?’ I ventured.
‘What about the bloody rodeo?’ Jessie said.
‘The Bull Buck. It’s open to all comers. Fifteen-hundred in prize money.’
‘That’d barely cover your funeral, bro,’ said Spence.
‘Robbin a bank would be easier,’ said Jessie.
‘I’m not joking,’ I said with all earnestness. ‘A grand-and-a-half if you can last eight seconds.’
‘Gotta be eighteen years or over,’ said Jessie.
‘I’m not talking about us.’
I was looking at him now. His eyes widened and he laughed. ‘Hardy-ha-ha. You’re a hard case, Bennie-boy.’
‘You’re eighteen,’ said Spence.
‘So what?’ Jessie looked indignant.
‘You might have a chance,’ I said.
‘Of livin? Of dyin? Those bulls’ll tear me a second arsehole—and that’s if I’m lucky!’
‘Why do you think they make the Bull Buck open to all comers? Because everyone loves an underdog.’
‘A dead one, you mean,’ said Jessie.
I remembered the older brother of Craig Larsen, a kid in my class, who had entered the Bull Buck a few years ago. He hadn’t won, but he’d gotten a broken arm and his photo in The Hawke’s Bay Herald–Tribune for his trouble.
I drained my bottle, belched long and deep, and said, ‘It was just an idea.’
***
The Showgrounds were where town met country for the Agricultural and Pastoral in April—and the rodeo in late January.
To reach them you turned off High Street, crossed over the railway tracks, and followed MacKintosh Lane along the river embankment to its end. There, at the centre of a large field rimmed by elm and chestnut trees stood an oval arena with a grandstand on one side and stockyards on the other.
Jimmy Jardine, the local orchardist, opened a paddock to accommodate traffic, putting his fruit pickers in white coats with instructions to take five bucks at the gate and steward the convoy of mini-buses, caravans, horse floats, dune buggies, utes, quad and trail bikes, into some kind of orderly arrangement.
Generally, the townies arrived on foot, the country folk by car, and the two tribes converged on the ticket box at the Showgrounds gate. Relieved of their cash, they would then mix and mingle, enjoying a full day of events with pony rides for the kids, hot dogs, candy floss, and beer for the parched and peckish.
Spence and I met Jessie outside the rodeo marshall’s tent just before 8 a.m. He looked better than I felt, which was dreadful after sweating out the bottle of bourbon we’d shared the night before. It had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, to gatecrash a private schooler’s woolshed party, whereupon, brimming with Southern Comfort, Jessie had declared he’d enter the Bull Buck—but only if we’d be his seconders. In return, he’d divide the prize money three ways.
The bourbon had made our minds up for us.
Now, as the tent flaps opened and the riders who’d been milling about formed a queue to register for the Bull Buck, I had second thoughts.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ I said, watching Jessie join the queue.
‘It was your idea,’ said Spence.
‘I just didn’t think he’d be that dumb.’
‘Not dumb. Crazy …’
Unbeknownst to us, Jessie had come down to the Showgrounds the previous morning to see the bulls being trucked in and corralled. He’d spoken to the wranglers who’d given him riding tips, and had even been lucky to see practice rides. In the afternoon, he’d gone to talk with Mr Ratchett. The big High Street butcher had hit the till and handed him the twenty-five-dollar entry fee without hesitation. Win or lose, a photo in The Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune of Jessie wearing a Ratchett’s Butchery T-shirt with his arm in a sling would be deemed money well spent.
A short while later, Jessie emerged from the tent clutching a program and his number. ‘Lucky eight,’ he grinned, waving the cloth patch at us. The riders had drawn their bulls by lottery from a bingo ball dispenser. Fifteen riders, fifteen balls—the same number as on a pool table. That the eight-ball was always last to fall gave me little cause for optimism.
Jessie wanted to see his ride so we walked to the stockyards and outside pen #8 we stopped and peered inside.
‘Holy shit,’ I breathed.
A white colossus of muscle and horn stood nonchalantly chewing hay, gazing back at us with big, glassy eyes. I took Jessie’s program and read the spiel: #8 Crazy Train, 832 kg. Then below, Totara Hills Ranch bucking bulls are carefully selected for their athleticism, personality, and performance in the arena. The product of a specially designed breeding program which draws on the best characteristics of the brahman, angus, and Texas longhorn breeds, each bullock is raised on a nutritious and wholesome diet and given free range of our pastures overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
‘What a mongrel,’ said Spence.
To be honest, Crazy Train didn’t look that crazy. He stood, almost sleepily, with his hide covered in flies, chewing, watching us. Then he took a piss that lasted a full minute. ‘Geez, he’s worse than my old man,’ said Spence.
What unnerved me weren’t the awry-angled horns, hippo-sized girth, or the massive neck with a sail-sized dewlap. It was the obsidian eyes; they were as dark and fathomless as a deep sea trench. Crazy Train was a seasoned bucking bull with fifty-three rodeos to his name. I wondered how many of the fifty-three cowboys had lived to tell their tale.
‘Why Crazy Train?’ asked Spence.
‘After the song, prob’ly,’ said Jessie. ‘Someone up in the hills must like Ozzy Osbourne.’
‘Never heard of it,’ I said.
‘Well, Bennie-boy, you’ll be hearing plennie if I win. I guarantee it.’
The Bull Buck was the last of the day’s scheduled events. It was the finale, the climax, the reason you went to the summer rodeo. By six p.m. the local crowd would be so liquored on caravan beer, they’d cheer a local boy to Hell and back. There had been one other local rider in the queue that morning: Lars Coward. He worked at the Mobil Service Station and rode every year, out of bravery or stupidity no one quite knew, and although he’d never won, you had to admit—he was consistent.
Spectators had begun to arrive in dribs and drabs, and we all knew that the day would get hotter, noisier, and more crowded. Jessie didn’t want to wait around; there’d be junior barrel races for the kids on their ponies, then the mens’ and womens’ calf-roping and barrel racing, followed by the bronco riding, before the bull buck commenced at six p.m.
‘Wanna swim?’ he said.
‘Now?’ I said.
‘What else we gunna do?’
‘Don’t you want to check out the other riders?’
‘You think watchin kids race ponies is gunna help me?’
He was right; his fate didn’t rest on research—or luck. It rested in the hands of God.
‘Alright,’ I said.
We got pass-outs at the gate, climbed the embankment and walked downriver for a half-kilometre. But when we stepped through the willow trees and onto the stony bed, we gaped in disbelief. There was no river. Upstream, two large polythene pipes snaked from the stones and into the trees. I suspected they belonged to Jimmy Jardine. With January all but over, the river was nothing more than a swathe of hot and dusty gravel. It depressed me to think that the drought had forced the farmers to suck the river dry, even though their survival depended on it, and by default, our town’s survival, too.
Jessie put a cigarette between his lips and lit it. ‘If somethin happens,’ he said, exhaling, ‘Can you let my old lady know? She thinks I’m carting hay tonight.’
Spence and I nodded and mumbled our ‘yeahs’. I wondered what we would say if something did happen. Would we tell her that he’d done it for her—so that she could fly to Australia to see her son in jail—or, that it was just a dumb-arse thing teenagers did to get their names in the newspaper?
‘Ta,’ he said. Then he left us, saying that a bone-dry river depressed him more than the thought of a death-by-bucking-bull, and that he’d rather go home and get some sleep.
***
It was just after five p.m. when Spence and I returned to the Showgrounds to wait anxiously in the shade of the giant elm tree. When the PA system crackled and the announcer thanked the bronco riders, I began to fret. ‘Where the bloody hell is he?’ I said.
‘Might’ve piked,’ said Spence.
Then out of the haze Jessie wobbled, wearing a checked shirt with long sleeves, and over it, his orange Ratchett’s butchery T-shirt. One hand held a black riding vest and helmet with a face grill, the other gripped a can of beer. He looked as if he’d already ridden Crazy Train.
‘You’re late,’ I said.
Spence looked on unimpressed. ‘How many you had, bro?’
Jessie was grinning now. ‘Jussa few—to loosen up, fellas.’
Any more loose and his head would have rolled off. The PA system crackled again and the announcer’s voice thanked the rodeo sponsors and declared that ‘the moment we’ve all been waiting for’ had finally arrived.
Jessie dropped his vest and helmet and gripped my shoulder. ‘Reckon I can do it, Bennie-boy? Reckon I can ride that big bloody cow for eight seconds?’
I nodded—for lack of an alternative. The fifteen bucking bull riders were divided into three groups; Jessie, riding #8, would run in group two. Spectators, who’d been milling about with drinks and sausage rolls in hand, now made their way back to the grandstand. Kids abandoned their beer can scavenging to find peepholes in the arena walls.
The bellowing of an agitated bull filled the hot dusty air over the stockyards. Jessie pulled a fresh can from his back pocket and punched the tab.
‘Christ, you can’t ride blind!’ I said.
‘Youse are meant to be sportin me, not ridin on my back.’
‘Long as you can see, we will,’ said Spence.
‘Good as gold, fellas.’ He raised the can and drank.
From the PA speakers the announcer called the Bull Buck’s first group of contestants. Applause lifted from the grandstand. There was now standing room only. More bellowing sounded, and a violent kicking of hooves against wood came with it. When the gate opened, the atmosphere exploded. Hoots and whistles filled the air as the commentator’s voice rose to fever pitch.
Jessie drank faster.
When the second rider was called, the grandstand crowd stamped its feet in a thunderous drumroll on the wooden planking. Had I been a bull, it would have terrified me.
‘Hold this willya,’ Jessie said, thrusting the beer can at me.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Gotta drain the dragon.’
‘But you’re up soon.’
He left his helmet and vest in the dust and swaggered towards the toilet block which stood behind the grandstand.
The sudden wail of the St. John’s ambulance siren departing the Showgrounds said rider #2 hadn’t fared well. It did not dampen the announcer’s enthusiasm, imploring the crowd to raise more noise for rider #3.
***
Moments later, inside the men’s toilet block, I called Jessie’s name. Both urinals and stalls were empty. Then I heard shouting outside. There I found Jessie, groggy and bloody-faced, sitting in the dust behind the block. He wasn’t alone. To my horror, I recognised the three private schoolers whose party we’d crashed the night before.
The tallest kid had bleached hair and wore a pink Lacoste polo shirt. He pulled Jessie up by the collar and socked him hard on the jaw, sending him reeling in the dust.
‘Hey!’ I shouted.
They turned around but didn’t seem to recognise Spence or myself—or care even—because they simply resumed their business.
‘And that’s from my girlfriend,’ said the stout, ruddy-faced kid, planting his boot square in Jessie’s stomach. He glanced back and to us, said, ‘You still here?’ Then something changed in his expression. ‘Hey, I know you guys …’ He advanced on Spence and I with his fists clenched.
I’d never been in a fight in my life, but something told me that was all about to change.
Spence took a bunch-o-five neatly on the cheek, and the sound it made was like one huge conga drum beat. It barely stunned him.
‘Fuck off!’ I shouted, hurling Jessie’s helmet. It bounced off the kid’s shoulder and tumbled away in the dirt.
Shafts of sunlight streamed through the giant elms. They cast the world in a soft sepia light, though I was unable to fully appreciate the aesthetic from the inside of a headlock. The stout kid then introduced me to the business end of his fist—again and again—until warm blood streamed down my chin and I tasted iron. Suffice to say, the country boys really went to town that day.
It is difficult to describe what happened next. A tornado came from nowhere, a vicious gust of whirling air that broke grips and unlocked choke holds, sent bodies flying with grunts, thuds, and groans. Spence said later it was like watching human hay bales fly through the air. There was only one person I knew who could throw that kind of weight around.
‘Off you bloody idiots! Fore I knock ya blocks off.’ Farmer Davies’ gruff voice reached through my fog of semi-consciousness. I raised my head in time to see the three country boys slinking away. ‘Wankers!’ the blond one shouted.
‘What the hell’s all that about?’ said Davies, red-faced and breathing hard.
‘Just country boys who don’t like townies much,’ I said. Spence helped me to my feet, and then together we raised Jessie.
‘You alright young fella?’ Davies asked Jessie, who nodded and then collapsed in a heap. Blood streamed from his nose and over his chin, and his left eye had begun to darken.
The announcer’s voice sounded: ‘Rider number eight, make your way to the marshalling area …’
‘Shit!’ I said. I looked at Jessie, then at Spence, who shook his head.
Davies noticed the helmet and riding vest. ‘Christ almighty, please tell me you’re not that crazy.’
‘Rider number eight, Jessie Noonan!’
I began pulling off Jessie’s orange T-shirt.
‘What’re you doin?’ said Spence.
‘Get his boots off. Hurry!’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m crazy enough,’ I said.
Farmer Davies, the man who had been both our boss and bully for the past three weeks, watched on in astonishment. There was no time to explain and there was nothing he could have done, anyhow. I exchanged my blood-stained shirt for Jessie’s long-sleeve one, pulled Ratchett’s Butchery T-shirt over the top, put on the boots, and finally the riding vest with the ‘8’ patch affixed to it. Spence scooped up the helmet and tossed it to me. ‘You’re dumb and crazy. Good luck, bro!’
I took off at a sprint, fearing that if I slowed down or stopped, my good sense would catch up.
***
What drives a sixty-nine kilogram teenager to climb onto the back of an eight-hundred kilogram rodeo bull?
Granted, I was seventeen and desperate, but had I known that the St. John’s ambulance, whose siren I’d heard wailing earlier, contained Lars Coward and his broken pelvis, I might have thought twice about ‘having a go’.
But sometimes taking any action is better than taking none at all, and though Jessie, Spence and I had become a tight unit through the hay carting season, loyalty never entered my mind as I’d pulled on the helmet and vest. Propelling me was an urge to close out this summer of lost causes and get on with life. Which was ironic—given the risk I was about to take.
The steward’s voice arrested me. ‘Number eight, Jessie Noonan?’
I nodded, safe in the knowledge that Jessie and I were practically the same height and build, and with the helmet on, townsfolk would be none the wiser.
‘You’re cuttin it fine, mate,’ barked the steward. He directed a young wrangler to shepherd me through the gate and into the riders’ marshalling area. When the wrangler asked me if I’d ridden before, I nodded again.
‘How did you get the blood nose?’ he said.
‘It’s the heat.’
‘You got gloves?’
‘I lost them.’’
He eyed me curiously. ‘You can’t ride without them, mate. Here, take mine,’ he said, handing me a pair of sweat-stained leathers from his back pocket. ‘Right or left?’
I stared back at him.
‘If you’re right-handed, roll up that sleeve. Don’t touch the rope or the bull or yourself with your freehand, or you’ll get disqualified. Got it?’
I nodded.
‘Don’t say much do you?’
I shook my head.
‘You’re up after Road Rage.’
Before I could ask what that meant, he leaped onto the plankway and disappeared over the top of the stockyards. Chains clanked, shouts and curses flew, a beast bellowed low and deep. My breath quickened. Blood beat like a war drum at my temples. The miasma of nervous sweat, urine, excrement, old leather, cigarette smoke, and Coppertone, hung so thick in the air that I wanted to choke.
When the announcer revved the crowd with, ‘Give a big hand for rider #7, Miles Nicholson on Road Raaaaaaage!’, a shout went up, hinges squealed and a gate flung open. Hoots, whistles, and cheers filled the air as man and beast danced.
A collective gasp rose from the grandstand.
In the silence that followed, the announcer called for immediate medical assistance to the arena. A St. John’s ambulance crew swept through the gate moments later carrying rider #7 on a stretcher. His neck brace said he’d been a victim of Road Rage.
I repressed a whimper and turned away. When I looked up, it was into an eye so dark and glassy that I could see my number ‘8’ patch in its reflection. The eight ball. A gate opened, a wrangler shouted, and the eye moved onwards. ‘Number eight, Jessie Noonan?’ said a voice. The young wrangler’s hand reached down and hoisted me upwards.
As I walked the plank to the chute, I never saw the recovery team watching from the arena sides, I never saw the waiting rodeo clowns in their coloured wigs, and strangest of all, I did not see the faces in the grandstand who cheered and hammered the boards with their feet when the announcer called, ‘Number eight, riding Craaaaazy Train, Jessie Noonan! A local boy!’ I rapped my hand against my helmet, tugged my vest zipper, pulled on my gloves, and put one foot in front of the other.
Crazy Train shifted restlessly, his enormous girth rubbing against the chute sides. As I lowered myself onto its back, a hot green mess spurted from his rectum. The massive head lifted, the nostrils flared, and a bass-heavy bellow issued from its mouth. It felt like riding an earthquake. There was a flat-braided rope secured to the bull’s chest, and on top of it, a hand-hold which someone had rubbed with a gluey pine-smelling substance. This, instructed the young wrangler, was my ‘handlebar’.
‘Member what I told you,’ he said. ‘Keep your free hand clear and the judges’ll smile on you.’ He slapped me on the back. ‘Call OPEN when you’re ready, mate. Good luck.’
Jessie hadn’t explained the rules because he hadn’t needed to. Only later did I learn that a bull rider’s score depends on two things: seeing out eight seconds in the arena and the athleticism of the bull—or ‘energetic performance’, as the Totara Hills pamphlet writer had deftly put it.
Before either could be put into motion, Crazy Train lurched violently to one side. A sharp pain shot through my ankle. I gave a loud yelp, and this the wranglers took for my call.
The gate swung open.
Sometimes you read news stories or see TV interviews of people who have survived train wrecks, race car smashes, or plane crashes, and they all say the same thing: that the terror happens in slow motion.
But that’s not how it happened at all.
***
My left hand reached for the sky while my right one gripped the rope with diamond pressure. I’m not ashamed to say it, but my sphincter could have cracked a Brazil nut at that very moment.
Then something truly bizarre happened.
The world didn’t tilt or turn upside down. Crazy Train stumbled from the chute like a drunkard. Unsure of whether to move forwards, backwards, or sideways, he wavered. Wranglers, stewards, clowns, peeping kids, the ambulance crew, and the entire grandstand, watched on wide-eyed. I might have been Atilla the Hun on his war elephant for the stunned silence which enveloped the arena.
Crazy Train just stood there, trembling.
When the eight-second buzzer sounded, a spasmodic tremor passed through his entire body. His front legs gave out, his rear ones followed, and in the way that a condemned building is often demolished, he teetered, and with a rush of air collapsed in the dust.
I leapt from his back to save myself.
The wranglers darted in to whisk me to safety, but their concern wasn’t necessary. When the dust had settled, one of them looked towards the judges, waved his hand and shook his head. Veterinary tests would later show Crazy Train died of valvular endocarditis, a rare condition caused by a lesion on the heart. Who would have guessed that one of Totara Hills veteran rodeo bulls would wait for the twentieth anniversary of our town’s rodeo to make his grand exit?
A tractor arrived, the wranglers fastened chains to Crazy’s limbs and dragged him away. And just like that, the rodeo was back on. With the announcer’s voice in my ear firing up the crowd for rider #9, I returned the wrangler’s gloves and limped from the arena, an anomaly in the world of modern bull riding. Passing out of the marshalling area gate, someone clutched my arm.
‘Far out, bro!’ Spence’s eyes were as wide as his grin. ‘If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes …’
‘Where’s Jessie?’ I said.
He led me past the grandstand and through a gap in the food caravans. There, in a dusty space littered with hot dog wrappers and empty beer cans, sat Jessie smoking a cigarette. He looked as cast-off as the rubbish around him.
‘Bennie-boy?’ he croaked. Despite a swollen left eye, a cut lip, and blood-crusted nostrils, he managed a grin.
‘Did you see it?’ I pulled off the helmet and vest.
‘He passed out just after you left,’ Spence said.
I took off his shirts, kicked off the boots and snatched up my own shirt and sneakers from the dust beside him.
‘Ben,’ Jessie said.
I turned, astonished to hear my proper name exit his busted lips.
‘Yeah?’
‘Preciate it.’
‘Don’t thank me yet. There are better riders to come. Anyway, the bull carked it.’
I don’t think he quite understood what I’d said, but I was right. Rider #12, Robbie Maxwell, would go ten seconds on Little Willy, and that effort would earn him his photo in The Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune holding a cheque for fifteen-hundred dollars.
What I didn’t know was that there was a prize for Best Sportsman, and that presently, the announcer would call on ‘Jessie Noonan’, the only other rider to have technically ridden his bull for more than eight seconds, to receive it. The judges had awarded a cash cheque of three hundred dollars to the local boy—and the crowd loved them for it.
Spence and I watched on as Jessie stepped onto the podium, smiled awkwardly, thanked the judges and waved to the spectators. The prize money, we would divide three-ways, and although a hundred dollars wouldn’t see our goals achieved, it was better than a kick in the guts.
***
Jessie would struggle to make up the shortfall for his mother’s air ticket to Australia, but he would find a way to do it legally by shovelling pig shit for fertiliser at Ratchett’s piggery. Spence would receive a quiet loan from his mother and that would see him through his first term of hairstyling school in Wellington.
As for me, it wasn’t a summer of lost causes afterall. The storm had passed, leaving destruction and destitution in its wake, but from the ashes hope had risen. Doc Chalmers, who’d been in the grandstand on the day of the rodeo, suspected it wasn’t Jessie Noonan riding Crazy Train, but some other crazy kid he knew; someone who wanted something so bad that he’d been prepared to risk his life for it.
It reminded him of his own youthful days, and though I never confessed to being that kid, he said he’d sell me the Suzuki trail bike at a thirty-percent discount.
*
Learn more about Simon on our Contributors’ Page.
Simon’s latest book, Mami Suzuki: Private Eye, was published by Penguin Random House in 2023 and is available here.
(Photo: IQRemix/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
- Crazy Train by Simon Rowe - January 2, 2025