The Hole on The Hill

“Right-o then.” Matt announces the end of afternoon tea by plonking his tea-stained mug onto the table, encouragingly makes the first move. “Concrete trucks arrive on Monday so unless you're keen on a Saturday...”
    The lads ached, had had enough. They all knew Matt was going back into the warm site office to gaze at the plans, play with his calculator. It was only about 15 metres from the shipping container that was their smoko shed to the hole, but it was far enough to kill any pleasure the reprieve had given them and by the time Casper's hand gripped the top of the ladder to check its steadiness, he was once again wet and cold.
    Down they go. Paul was the keenest, still had spring in his step. Then Colin, Neil and Sean; now his turn. The view of a grey rain-swept world was replaced with layers of West Coast history: mud, mine tailings, old mud, and clay that would soon be mud. The rain and sleet hadn’t stopped for nearly two weeks now and each morning he marvelled that the hole was still just that – a hole and not some evil water-filled death-trap. If Casper had known that this blanket of misery would eventually last for twenty-seven bone chilling days he’d have cried at the prospect.
      As a kid he loved the rare thunderstorms that rocked the family home. “Rain from the east, three days at least,” his old man would intone as the first big drops exploded in the dust. Back then rain was a treat, the drumming on the roof as he snuggled into bed as good as a Christmas eve.
Precious rain: living east of the main ranges meant each summer the land would curl up and die of thirst with cracks in the lawn big enough to put your hand down, road tar trickling into the gutters to snare bare feet, water restrictions and gossip about suspiciously green gardens. Pausing on the ladder, Casper looked upwards at the swirling layers of grey. He could see himself as a boy on the  porch hopping with glee, shrieking as lightning tore open the sky to finally let it all come down. Looking down at his boots he carefully resumed his descent, not wanting to slip and fall. Maybe on a Monday, but not a Friday afternoon. That would be stupid.
    The hole on the hill was a quiet spot, like a mass grave awaiting the bodies and bulldozers, and as he hit the bottom with a splash the dread quickly returns. Picking their way along the shallow trench destined to one-day become part of the floor, his "so what were we doing again?" draws an exasperated laugh from further ahead as they find their places amongst the steel, but no more. No one likes it here, no one wants to work Saturday.
    The hill had no proper name that he was aware of, it being an appendage of a steep ridge that loomed above Rununga, but obviously it was in the way of progress. On the Coast a lot of things are in the way.
    “This place is like Poland,” remarked a sodden German hitchhiker he’d rescued from the service station one day. “Stinking coal smoke, endless rain and poverty,” he'd peered out through the rain splashed windscreen, his relief at escaping evident as they swept past the last house. “Look, the people are all soft and gooey like your white bread.”
    Casper cracked up at that one. "Yep, no wholemeal round these parts mate."
    Before the rain and sleet had settled in, the gang enjoyed views of the surrounding bush clad hills, the town slumbering below with its unemployed and retired filling the pub each afternoon, century-old houses quietly rotting into the sodden earth, the cycle nearly complete. The local’s bitched about the rain as much as they did about any dry spells, the water tanks always half-empty. Two weeks without a good downpour was considered a drought and from their hilltop they watched  tankers deliver precious liquid to homes not connected to the town supply. The last 'drought' was now a forgotten memory, as was summer. It seemed only the weka's were happy. “The rain makes the bush grow,” he'd replied to the petrol station dude's ritual whinge-greeting. "I mean, could you imagine this place with no bush? It’d be like fucking Gisborne man.”
     There really shouldn’t be people here; it was fragile, beautiful and precious. One day their hammers went quiet to watch the rescue helicopters and ambulances race up the highway towards Cave Creek. Fourteen dead on the rocks at the bottom. The West Coast didn’t want Coasters anymore; it’d had enough of the whole blundering about fucking shit up thing they call ‘progress’. The mountains were unforgiving; the rivers treacherous, and simple human mistakes had tragic results. This hilltop was just one more ugly scar. A betrayal and an embarrassment.
    Hungry loggers had cleaned up anything worth a dollar, bulldozers stripped it naked flat and a massive concrete pad poured with wall framing due to start the following week. In the meantime they continued with the ‘tunnel’ that would be used to train coal miners. Of course at this stage it was simply a monstrous hole, concrete slabs would eventually be lowered onto it to form its roof, then a layer of mud to make it look authentic. He wondered if they’d plant something or just let it go to gorse, West Coast landscaping.
    “Fuck I'm a bit over the weather eh?" Casper lobbed into the stillness. Ditto with the humour. Fumbling for his wire cutters, he shuddered. While the rain didn’t really get down this far – it mostly blew horizontal – everything was wet, the mud slimy, and his tools were rusting along with the reinforcing mesh that lay about him.
    Paul stretched up, flexed his back. “Jeez, really need a crap after that coffee eh. Gonna be a long wait.” The others laughed while Casper, the butt of the joke, worked silently on. He was the only one who lived on site – security officially, but it was more about free rent and a ten second walk to work if you asked him – and relied on Matt's idea of 'facilities'. The long-drop for a while was pleasant enough as far as long-drops go, but it leaked like a sieve and had filled up with foul smelling water, making his morning fumble with layers of wet-weather gear a depressing ritual. The places you end up in eh?  As a boy he'd soaked up the back country exploits of Barry Crump like the bog paper that would swell almost instantly on it's wire cradle. Good old Baz huddled in wet tents with wet dogs and no smokes left. Jeez, what an adventure eh? His old man would throw in his own back country exploits: dragging their arses up ‘the puffer’ by candlelight on a Friday night to beat the Uni wankers to the best bunks. He would always be laughing at this historic misery, never realising just how high he made those mountains seem to his only boy. Casper wondered if he’d ever felt like crying as he sometimes did, living like this, on top of a hill yet under water, or if they were just tough bastards back then.
    He wondered when tough crossed the line into stupidity.
    Snorting water and snot out of his nose, he straightened to flex in a futile attempt to ease the pain. He laughed despite it all. "Fucking Barry Crump, pig."


    He'd jacked up the house truck to take weight off the springs and tires, but the chocks had sunk into the mud and the wheels themselves were now slowly following. Could read a lot into that eh? Home was parked up on the eastern side of the site, chosen mainly because it was out of the way more than for any aesthetic reasons and while the sun was shining it had been sweet. The solar panel powered the lights and stereo, the leaking skylight had been forgotten about... but lately things were pretty grim. None-the-less, inside was a warm sanctuary and for that he was grateful. He would be there soon; he would be home.
    Quietly humming a song he stepped methodically from one steel junction to the next; two twists and a snip. Next one. Next one. Colin was dragging lengths of steel past him and paused in head-shaking wonder as Casper raised both fists high to shout towards the sodden world above them: "I am a loser, I am Satan, I am Jesus Christ, I am me, there are no winners in this fucked reality." Laughing out loud he stepped back to survey the mess. “Colin!" he exclaimed with a laugh. "What the fuck are we doing in this wet version of hell building a pretend mine out of concrete?”
    Yeah, how did we draw this reality?
    Colin cocked his battered cap back on his grey hair and had a good scratch; his face was filthy and wet; Casper knew he ached like hell. “I guess cos this is what we do and it's pay day next Wednesday eh, so hang in there buddy.” His shrug says it all – fucken kids. 
    Colin was from Blackball, a town that really defied description. Massive open drains hinted at rain that fell like an Indian monsoon every bloody day. They're born waterproof up there, like  fish; fish with roots. Maybe that was what he lacked – roots. Essentially he was really only a tourist seeing everything in black and white. Y’know, "that town sucked cos it was raining the whole day we were there," type of shit. The secret spots were for the locals only, generational treasures to be only shared amongst family and friends and you couldn't blame them for being so protective eh. Who the hell wants a platoon of Maui campers parked out front of your 'historic' pub?
    While Casper took some comfort in Colin’s contentment, he wondered about the lifetime of decisions that had led him to such a place, to this hill. Pushing barrows of cement at sixty couldn’t be a shit-load of fun, and he hoped never to be in a similar situation. What part of his dream did it play?
    When Casper broke ranks at the age of seventeen by refusing to follow his mates on the path of the expected and sign up for a BA at Vic or Massey, he literally pulled the plug on life as Mum and Dad had constructed it. Dreams in his family were always solid; things that you saved for and a lifetime of hard yacca was how you got there. That was when the spiral down began. His dreams were just a little more abstract than wanting a Holden or gadgets for the lounge - shit, he didn’t have a lounge anyway – and for some reason that really infuriated his old man. He marvelled at the ability of others to find happiness in just chugging along, doing what was expected as they turned into their parents. It was easy, and he was sometimes envious of this. The lure of conformity, to snuggle up to it like cotton wool, safe in the knowledge that everyone would be mowing lawns and washing their cars again on Sunday arvo’.
    That was on a bad day though. Other times he knew that he had a head start on that creeping realisation that the suburbs where a death trap, how the illusions of success can quickly become a noose. They jumped, dropped pills, pulled triggers and ran for the hills.
    Hills like this one.
    Watching his old man coming home each night too buggered to care was an epiphany he knew many children missed. While Casper was as guilty as any other teenager in that he thought of little else other than himself, because the only stereo in the house was in the lounge it meant that he spent most evenings silently observing family life. With headphones clamped tightly to his skull, screaming punk obscenities - they’d almost paid the mortgage when the system dropped the bomb - attacked his brain as he watched his father down brandy and stare blankly at the TV. Imagine climbing that ladder, on and on you go, only to find that when you get to the top it's leaning against the wrong wall.
    "You mean have I ticked up a washing machine, sofa and telly? No," was once his reply to the standard "so have you got a job yet" greeting from his Dad. That was the extent of their communication: expectations, followed by the implication of failure.
    How wonderful.
     See this misery Dad? All this filthy fucking mud. Ain't it a right laugh all these mistakes I’m making eh? Well love me for my courage at least – and quit bloody worrying that I aren’t riding the escalator up to the furniture department with a credit card in my back pocket.
     No; so what was he trying to prove? He watched rivulets of muddy water streaming down before him.
    "It was a choice you made mate."
    "Talking to the little mud men?" asked Paul
    "Yeah, they can predict the future y'know," he dead-panned.
     "And and? Glorious sunshine and a female apprentice?"
    "Who shouts Monteith's every Friday I believe."
    Pack this shit in man and hit the road; that's what the little voice had whispered. Run.
    Run? Again?
    Dad? Super, love it when you just drop in to chat.  
   Look this is it boy, the normal working life – and you can’t do it? Or is it that you just don't want to do it? It’s only rained for two damned weeks and those sure pale in comparison to forty years on the job.
    A quick look over at Colin, a look into the future.
    Bending back down to work, rain and snot running once more, he quickly twisted wire. Did his Dad still have dreams? he wondered. Maybe it wasn’t as screwed up as it looked and there was a cunning plan driving him on that only he could see. He hoped so. He hoped it was all worth it,  screaming kids, stressed out Mum and a weekend of maintenance to look forward too.


    Two hours later Casper dropped his boots onto last weeks newspapers spread out inside the door of his truck. He lit candles, turned on the gas heater, and after washing and changing, settled himself onto the couch. With a beer raised he toasted: The job maketh the man; which makes me a fool, or is that a good keen man?
    The truck rocked in the wind as though it were at sea, vicious rain drumming hard. As he watched the lights gradually switching on down below he pondered the labyrinth of decisions that had led people to Rununga. These people who had chosen to live at the bottom of this hill, was there contentment and satisfaction? Or frustration and a yearning for more? Did the rows of gumboots outside the pub signal a happy fraternity or the drowning of dreams? Was the pub half-full or half-empty? Fuck knows was the answer, plain and simple.
    Maybe it was his kinda town; maybe he would be back some day and his boots would join the line-up. Yeah, who knows? Better stop knocking it then eh? Then again the rain shadow was only two hours drive away and he could be packed up ready to roll in even less time. Easy. Easier than this anyway. A phone call to Matt, another apology. He'd done it before and it was tempting... Jeez, you’re running away again; quitting...  but nah not this time.
    Chicken shit. This is it boy, the normal working life.
    Shut up Dad, this time it's different, it's all sorted.
    And it was; he had several grand saved and would leave with a good reference. It was going to be a good summer, one long party.
    He caught his reflection in a window and it almost startled him, the chin, the narrow face. Again, he toasted. “Sorry Dad, but man, fuck you and your bloody protestant work ethic.” He moved closer to the glass, closer to his old man. “Now I’ve heard you say how mountains can kill you in the blink of an eye, the rivers rise and before you know it there’s no going back. Am I right?” He winked at his Dad who winked right back. They both drunk deeply in confirmation.
    Well he was keeping a close eye on the rivers around here that's for sure. Extend his contract? No thanks. Score a cheap flat in town? No. Get a loan from the bank? Start ticking shit up? Are you mad?
    He deflated; grabbed another beer and settled back onto the couch. Christ it wasn’t his old man's fault, and no point getting wound up cos he only knew what he knew. That generation of fathers who had lost control over their lazy sons. It's cool, work just meant different things to different people. Shit he'd had more jobs in the last two years than his Dad had in his whole working life. It was funny how a persons reluctance to stick at some boring, monotonous shit made them a lazy shirker, yet pushing the same piece of paper for forty years was admirable.
    Stepping out onto the porch step he tossed the empty bottle towards the rubbish pile, heard it clatter in the darkness. He could make out some vague shapes, out there in the misery: sheds, packs of timber, mounds of mud, the leaking dunny. It was shit and he hated it all desperately, but hey, not long now. He stepped back into the soft warmth of his home, cracked another beer, time for one more toast:
    “Hang in there sunshine; I’m coming.”