Fifty Bales of Hay (4 page)

She inhaled deeply as she kissed him, the scent of him waking every cell in her body. Waking them from a dormancy spanning years.
Years
.

Suddenly Mrs Taylor was drawing off her cardigan, stepping out of her skirt and shedding her floral blouse. Suddenly she was Elsie. She stood before Mervyn Crank in her little red flats and black slip trimmed with lace. Goosebumps shimmered over her skin, despite the western country heat of the sleepy afternoon. She took Mervyn’s hand, looked deeply into the safety of his eyes and delivered him the gaze of the showgirl. Elsie, the Broadway star. She lifted his hand slowly, fluidly above her head, then did a
perfect pirouette, a girlish smile lighting her face, a distant youth coming alive in her sad eyes.

Before him she began to dance. Not the style of dance she taught the walrus-footed girls at the local hall, but the dances she
used to do
. The dances she had begun to practise again in the dead of her solitary nights in the time since her husband had gone. She flicked her leg lithely through the air, undulated her body this way and that, leaped towards Merv, brushing a beautiful hand around his neck, past his stubbled cheek and down to his chest. Then she danced away and slipped herself gracefully through the shearer’s sling, inserting both feet through the gap and sitting her tiny bottom upon it as if it was a swing. She suggestively arched her body backwards, her breasts angled towards the skylights and her toes pointed ballet-perfect to the cobwebbed rafters of the shearing shed. When she swung back upright, her hair had loosened from its ivory clasp and was tumbling in silver waves against the angled bone of her shoulders.

‘Come,’ she said to Merv, who was standing in disbelief, desire raging in his pants.

He stepped forward and stood irresistibly close to her. With grace and determination, she unbuttoned his fly and slowly moved forward, where her mouth fell upon his cock. Hungrily she sucked from where she sat on the sling. He set his big hands on her slim shoulders and moaned as Mrs Taylor gently bounced, her mouth sliding up and down over the shaft of his penis. Her tongue circling its helmet-dome head. Next, Merv was reaching down,
peeling away her pantyhose, pulling her pants down her legs. With the strength of ten men, he reefed on the rope and pulled the sling higher from where it was slung on the rafters, then guided Mrs Taylor to turn away from him. She lay on her stomach within the arc of the wool-covered sling that was marked with Merv’s sweat. Her bottom, swathed in the satin of her slip, angled upwards to him.

He caressed her along her back, moving the sheeny fabric up and over her skin. When he heard her moan with desire, Merv slid his thick fingers in to find her wetness and stroked her clitoris. Mrs Taylor cried out, a deep, surprising cry. Then, unable to hold back any more, Merv gently eased into her from behind. Slowly at first, then with more intensity, he began to plunge in and out of her. The shearer’s sling resisted each and every thrust and bounced them back together over and over again, the squeaking of the taut spring gaining a frantic rhythm. And then Mrs Taylor’s pleasure came in waves, her back and head arched, her hands grappling behind her to grip the flesh of Merv’s strong thighs. The sound of Mrs Taylor coming put Merv into a flush of desperation … it was too soon for it to end now, he had to have Mrs Taylor another way.

He guided Mrs Taylor to stand facing him so she viewed his glistening erection as he turned and sat in the sling. Then he invited her to straddle him, her sex gliding over his penis so that both of them gasped at once when they were joined, completely, deeply. The elasticity of the sling again gave them both lift and soon they were bouncing in perfect dancers’ time, his cock driving upwards into her,
she drawing downwards with her wetness. And then, as if singing opera to the gods, Mrs Taylor let go with a cry that set her dead husband’s old dogs howling on their chains a kilometre away at the grand old Pine Hills homestead. Mervyn Crank followed suit, orgasming into her with a throaty howl.

When they had caught their breath and stepped off their private stage, Mervyn took Mrs Taylor’s hand and on the shearing shed board, amid the bins of crutchings and the scent of fine merinos, Mervyn pulled her to him and began to guide her in a slow and beautiful waltz.

‘I love you, Mrs Taylor,’ he said, breathing in the gentle floral scent of her hair. ‘No disrespect to my Sheila, but I always have and I always will.’

‘Please,’ Mrs Taylor said, ‘call me Elsie. From now on, I am your Elsie.’

‘W
ell? You still wanna give it a go?’ Kelly said, looking up at the long skinny stretch of a jackaroo standing before her.

She couldn’t believe what she was about to do, let alone imagine what it would be like.

Wayne Carter, the jackaroo, had hips as thin as a greyhound, his torso was a long concertina of wide-spaced ribs, and his legs were lengthy enough to be used as upright posts in a hay shed. Old Snooza, the grader driver, reckoned the boy was so tall and thin you could swing him round above your head by his boots and crack the hat off him. No wonder the fellas on Bilga Station had given him the nickname Narra, a name that had stuck like dam-side clay.

It was only natural that Kelly and Narra were teamed up often for jobs, because Kelly had the nickname of Sparra, and it gave the staff on Bilga the opportunity for a great deal of mirth to have Narra and Sparra working together, one of them barely making five foot, the other nearly reaching seven. Kelly was the sort of pint-sized kid who had never grown and even in her mid-twenties still remained as tiny as a field mouse. When she had first
turned up in her Subaru ute for the job as a jillaroo on Bilga, the overseer had looked down at her. Frowning, he had said, ‘What are you? Twelve?’

Snooza reckoned Sparra would fly away in a strong breeze and whenever he entered the jillaroo–jackaroo quarters, he’d call her name and pretend to seek her out under the couches. But as the team got to know her, Snooza reckoned Kelly was so big in spirit that she had more guts than an offal pit and more determination than a dog digging into a bitch’s box. The blokes all liked her, including Narra, who stood before her now at the watering hole that was dotted with cow dung from a recently departed herd of cattle. Kelly tried to search for some eye contact with Narra to gauge if he was still willing. She had to crane her head right back to search his expression because it was hidden under a broad cowboy hat, way up above the ground. He glanced down at Kelly and blushed, biting his lip. On his high cheekbones, a constellation of pimples spread out in a galaxy across his skin.

‘No need to go shy on me, Narra,’ Kelly said, looking up at him. ‘A dare is a dare. I lost it fair and square. And if you’re up for it, I am too. So let’s just get our gear off.’

She stooped and removed her boots, flinging them onto the dam bank, and reached for her belt buckle.

‘C’mon … it’ll be a hoot. Think of it as skinny dipping with extras.’

Kelly was talking bravely, but in truth, she was just as nervous. She liked Narra.
Really
liked him. And if he said no to her now, she knew she’d be cut up rough.

Narra was the latest of the new recruits on Bilga Station, and for a jackaroo, Kelly thought, he was more than ‘not bad’. If you looked past the pimples and the fact he looked like a ute’s aerial, Narra could be considered cute. Over the past few years on Bilga, some of the boys who had come and gone from her musterer’s swag had been arseholes, but not Narra. There was something about him that made him stand out, and she knew it wasn’t just his almost seven-foot height. She smiled every time she saw him and found herself hoping the overseer would team them up together again. She liked just being around him. He may not have been the handsomest, but he was the sweetest fella Kelly’d ever found on the place. He stayed clear of trouble and came out with the wittiest of one-liners at perfectly timed moments, grinning a crooked grin.

While this was Narra’s first muster and cattle drive, Kelly had been at the work for three seasons now. She’d gone from jillaroo to the drovers’ team leader. It had been good to climb the ranks towards her goal of overseer. Most of the girls only came for the one year, but not Kelly. She’d stuck it out and earned her stripes, wearing her nickname of Sparra proudly amongst the men.

The work was hard and the days were hot, but she liked the company of dirty, dusty men and women who soaked their troubles away with a cold beer and rum in the evenings. Social life was mostly played out on the station. It was too far to the pub in town, three hours’ drive away. So, in the evenings, they would gather with a box of beer and hang on the yard railings as each of them worked
stockhorses round the cattle for a bit of social competition, as was their way.

The horses were the main reason Kelly loved her job so much. There were some good types on the station, well-bred creatures from Australian stockhorse bloodlines and quarter horse stock, but for this mustering trip the very best nags had been left behind because there was a big draft near Mt Isa next week. The tidiest, most talented horses had been spelled back at the homestead, so the horse droving team this trip was a mixed bag of ‘the seconds’, including Kelly’s back-up horse, Motley. Her boss had given Motley to Sparra because the horse was the most spindle-legged mare on Bilga and was as lightly boned as Kelly. The men were too heavy to ride her, or if they were light enough, weren’t game to. The flecked, undernourished grey that had been caught as a brumby foal was a sweetie on the ground for anyone handling her, but under saddle and mounted when fresh in the early mornings, she would proceed to buck like a pro-rodeo bull. But Kelly was a tough little rider. Not once in three years had the mare tipped Kelly into the dirt. The team thought Motley and Sparra made a great pair, and thought the same of Narra and his massively wide horse, Gordon, a big droop-lipped Clydesdale cross who had been around for so long that no one remembered where the patchy horse of white and brown, with feathery hocks, had come from.

Soon Narra and Sparra were making a great team too. They had become good mates on the two-week long muster and drove, but now Kelly wanted more than ‘just mates’. This was her last chance to fire something up between
them. She stood with her horse beside the edge of the dam, looking at Narra, the challenge she’d thrown down to him lying between them.

‘Well? Are you in?’

Narra grinned. ‘Are you for real, Sparra? Are you sure?’

Kelly grinned back. ‘Why not? Blame Snooza if you like, but I reckon we oughta give it a burl,’ she said with a gleam in her eye. She drew her leather hobble belt from the loops of her jeans and squatted before Motley, fixing the hobble around the mare’s skinny fetlocks. The grey laid her ears back and swished her tail, disgruntled she wasn’t travelling back with the rest of the horses to her home paddock.

Standing, Kelly began to unbutton her jeans. When Narra saw Kelly was for real, an expression of utter terror combined with sheer excitement slid across his face. Following Kelly’s cue, Narra dropped the reins of his big feather-footed Clydey. He stooped to scoop off his boots, cast off his hat, hastily drew his T-shirt over his head and dropped his strides. Kelly matched him so that within seconds they both stood starkers, grinning at each other.

‘Get him naked too,’ she said, nodding to Narra’s horse, Gordon.

Within an instant, Narra had uncinched the girth and thrown the big stock saddle to the ground, the smell of pungent horse sweat releasing from the soaked and dusty saddlecloth. Then both Sparra and Narra began leading Gordon into the dam, the warm brown water washing up over their hot dusty legs, the mud squelching between
their toes and laughter bubbling up. When Gordon was knee-deep, he began pawing the water with his big cannon-boned legs, frothing brown droplets of muddy sodic dam water all over them.

‘Gordy!’ squealed Kelly as she felt the blissful cool of the water splash onto her sun-parched skin, making her nipples rise.

‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Narra said, glancing over at her, taking in her little pink rosebud breasts and lean white stomach … a stark contrast to her deeply tanned arms and chest. He felt his penis starting to fill, and hoped they would move deeper in the water so Kelly wouldn’t see his desire.

‘Well, we’ve got to prove Snooza wrong…’ Kelly said, ‘and…’ she turned to face him and reached for his hand, ‘I really want to.’

Narra swallowed again and squeezed her tiny hand. ‘I really want to too. With you,’ he said.

He looked at her with such sincerity and such a lonely boyish innocence, that right at that moment, under the bright outback sun, Kelly felt her heart melt.

The reason the pair were in the dam had started on stock camp the night before, when Snooza had driven the truck out to help pack up the droving camp. As they sat about the campfire, the dry wood crackling bright sparks into the dark night, Snooza had looked over to the crew of horses tied on the night lines between two scraggly trees and said of Gordon for the fiftieth time, ‘He’s so quiet, that horse, you
could have a bonk on him.’ Then he’d slowly swigged his rum, shaken his head, kicked the dust with the toe of his boot and said again, ‘Yep. I reckon that horse is so quiet, you could have a bonk on him.’

The mustering and droving team, a bit full on rum and beer due to the fact it was their last night camped out, had made their way over to the big old draught horse to view the width and flatness of his back. A conversation ensued with the dusty and drunk crew standing about looking at Gordon and trying to figure out how two people would go about having a bonk on a horse. What would be the most effective position? Would the old horse stand still? Would he be best tied or hobbled? The conversation lingered on late into the night until the campfire was just smoke and ash and most of the team had drifted away to their swags.

It was Narra and Sparra who, lying in their swags next to each other, still talking dribbling drunken shit about Gordon, finally did a rock, paper, scissors best of three on the matter. The dare was that Kelly would give it a go bonking Narra on the horse, to see if what Snooza said was true. Under the bright twinkle of midnight stars, Kelly had lost with her scissors to Narra’s rock and the secret deal was set.

Everyone was quiet on the next day’s droving. Hangovers took up the morning, made a little better by lunch, but as boredom and heat exhaustion set in as they tailed the cattle for home, all Kelly could think of was the cool dam that they would reach by that afternoon and getting Narra naked on his wide-backed horse. She was
glad she had lost the bet. She was feeling the sexual tension build in her body as she sat astride Motley. She couldn’t wait to get to the dam and send the rest of the plant ahead, offering up the excuse that Narra and she would ride on a bit and check a windmill and a bore a few kilometres to the east on the way home.

Now, in the water, she could sense Narra’s arousal building. His hunger for her. She moved closer and drew him in under the water, her tiny breasts brushing his chest. The world morphed into wetness and darkness as they reached for each other beneath the surface. Fingertips met with skin. Palms on flesh. Her torso pressed wet to his. She felt the nudge of his erection and when they surfaced, they were kissing, Narra bending his long body down and over to reach her lips. His huge hands spanned the bulk of her tiny back. The hard point of his erect cock feathered her nipples every now and then. She felt a giggle rise up in her. He was so tall, if he stood straight, Kelly thought, she could put his dick in her mouth without even bending down. She made a mental note to herself to try that with him later, but first things first: Snooza’s insisting that ‘that horse is so quiet you could have a bonk on him’.

‘Let’s get started,’ Kelly said, leading Narra by the hand deeper into the dam, Narra in turn leading Gordon with them. When the horse was in up to his shoulder, Kelly said, ‘Bunk me up.’

And right away Narra was lifting her up, naked, onto the hot, dusty and sweat-crusted back of Gordon. She felt the odd sensation of her bare bum on the skin of the animal
and looked down to her legs that barely reached down his side. They stuck out like she was a little kid on a pony ride. It was then Kelly lost it. She began laughing and could not stop. Narra began to laugh too.

‘Oh, man, this is crazy,’ he said with his cute crooked grin, blue-grey eyes shining, eyes that were framed by long, wet dark eyelashes.

‘How do you ride this thing! He’s huge! And he’s so hot he’s burning my arse cheeks.’ Narra lifted his head to the sky, laughing harder, and Kelly caught a flash of perfect white teeth.

‘I’ll take him deeper,’ he said, and soon the horse and Narra were being swallowed up by the waters and Kelly could feel the coldness of the dam rising up and over the back of Gordon and meeting with her hot sex.

‘Do you reckon this counts as bestiality?’ she said jokingly.

Narra frowned. ‘Jeez. I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Maybe don’t think of it! It’s a bit of a turn-off.’

‘You’re not a turn-off,’ Narra said quietly.

Kelly felt her heart thudding in her chest. He did want her.

‘Well, c’mon, Casanova,’ she said with forced casualness, ‘up you get!’ Like a circus performer, Kelly placed her hands on Gordon’s neck and plonked herself forward onto his withers so Narra had room to swing up behind her. When he was on, she felt the wet press of his warm torso against the bare skin of her back and couldn’t help the gasp that escaped from her. The laughter and
the humour of the moment slipped away and flowed into something else. Another kind of mood. One of desire.

She felt a rush. Narra put his hands on her waist and dropped his head down towards her, kissing her along the line of her neck. She felt his cock fill and press against her small wet buttocks. Gordy shifted suddenly, wanting to go deeper and swim. The big gelding pivoted on his hindquarters and spun about.

‘Whoa!’ Kelly said, nearly pitching off sideways. She drew the giant horse around with one rein and steadied him. ‘Snooza may be wrong.’

‘I’m not giving up yet,’ murmured Narra, who kept on with his kissing, his lips searching out her ear lobes, and she could feel the goosebumps sweeping over her skin, her nipples growing pebble hard. She felt a longing to have him penetrate her so she lifted herself a little and tilted her arse back towards his cock, but when she tried to lower herself onto him the water stole the juices from them so that the friction burnt.

‘It isn’t going to work this way,’ Narra said. ‘You’ll have to spin around.’