J.B. In Charge Chapter 5

Big brother works for me

At home I was now the farm manager, but BIG brother soon showed me I was still LITTLE brother. It all started on the following day after Dad got sick.

We woke up at five as usual. We needed no timer, not even a rooster. Waking up was as unavoidable and instant as sneezing. Brian as usual tweaked my nose.

I jumped out of bed and began putting on my work clothes.

There were no such little daily pleasures as tooth brushing and bathing. We Browns bathed once a week on the Saturday wash day. We boys bathed in a tin bath in the washhouse.

Our bath water was the hot water from the copper that had at first been used for boiling the clothes. As for cleaning our teeth, we rubbed our teeth with a cloth sprinkled with salt.

Every morning and evening of the year on our farm, Dad, we boys and Bruce rounded up the cows and milked them in the cowbails. Every milking by the time we had completed all our jobs took around three hours. So that was six hours milking each day. There could never be any sort of an excuse not to milk, because the cows would come to us and moo more accusingly than any human could accuse us.

On Sundays when we only had to milk and go to Church, we considered our rest days! On Mondays to Fridays on most weeks, I still had school to go to. On Sundays, after morning milking, Church and lunch, Dad and we boys had our rest time, three hours each week! Then I stretched out myself in my hammock under the apple trees. Every muscle and bone in me relaxed deliciously. Then it was I who lived between the dog eared pages of Brian's second hand books.

Get up Brian!, I said in my new no‑nonsense voice.

Brian got up meekly. I could see he had been firmly instructed by the grownups that I was now his boss. After we had put on our work clothes and gumboots, we went outside to untie Bruce and bring in the cows. I continued to boss Brian. It was like all my birthdays and Christmases at once. Even the cows stuck their noses up at Brian. Our cow Pompadour purposefully kicked over Brian's milk bucket and then mooed at him as if to say, Hoped to get it in the bucket, eh?

You daft boy! I shouted.

That was Mum's favourite expression. I was truly upset. One day we might need that lost milk to save us all from Old Bootles.

Brian's lip dropped and his cheeks went scarlet red. He stood up from his stool and kicked Pompadour in her rump. I was now terrified. Brian could lose his senses, but I knew that another kick could end Pompadour's milk supply. Brian looked as if he was going to kick her again. Then he thought better of it and to my great relief came towards me as if he was going to kick me instead. I jumped up and started running out of the cowbail and towards the house. What primary school kid can out run a determined high school boy?

Brian flung me to the ground and then sat on me with his arms twisting my neck. I lay perfectly still and silent in that trusting way a mouse lies down with a cat. I mean, I thought I knew exactly what was to come and it was best to get it over with as quickly as possible. I soon knew how wrong I was.

Brian picked me up by my heels and carried me to the long‑drop dunny. He stood over the long‑drop dunny and gently lowered my head until my shoulders nearly blocked the hole. I was sure he was going to drop me and kill me. My stomach churned at the blowflies crawling and buzzing in the mucky hole. Blowflies outnumbered thousand of times all the rest of our animals. In my mind's eye they seemed almost as big as cows. They dive‑bombed the dunny like German planes and spoilt a pleasant view of our orchard.

That's what we do to smart little brothers, said Brian.

He began to double over with laughing and one of his hands slipped from my heel.

My face touched the muck below. I felt clogged up and my head swam. I began to cry with humiliation and helplessness. Brian suddenly wrenched me up and laid me on the ground.

Let's call it pax, he said. I won't shirk work and you don't play the big boss.

I nodded. You can't fight what's bigger than you are. I remembered how Mum had coaxed Lloyd George into that paddock.

This is the first time I have ever mentioned this little quarrel between Brian and me. I am sure Brian has never mentioned it. He is now a University Professor.

From then on Brian and I worked well together. He never more shirked. He followed behind me carefully doing the same things. When he got clumsy, I quietly took the job away from him and did it instead. With his stories and funny songs he filled in the weary hours when we sat on our stools with our milk buckets between our knees and our heads pressed into the cows' flanks. They brightened me up and kept him working.

They were especially useful when we operated the cream separator. This had to be done after every milking. While Brian rotated the separator handle sixty times a minute, I with my ltttle billy kept the separator topped up with milk. As I poured the billy, I cunningly plied Brian with questions from his books. With greater and greater excitement he spun the separator. The cream funneled out by the spinning separator went in cans to the dairy factory. The milky and watery left overs was skim milk. We fed this to our pigs and calves.

Some of the milk we took to the house for Mum's cooking. None of us would ever drink the stuff, as its memories of cows and mud sickened us.