the stockmen

Belfast, port Phillip 1856

The boy could hear COWS bellowing as they searched out their
calves in the boggy dockside yards. He breathed in their scent and
the bracing sea-breeze as if it were God's greatest perfume. Exhaling a long breath, which was more like a sigh, Jack ran towards
the docks, ducking under the noses of draught horses and diving between ponies and carts that passed each other on the wide street. At the yards, Jack climbed onto a post-and-rail fence to
eye the cattle that milled about nervously.
'Well, if it isn't me young stockman-in-waiting, Jack Gleeson,'
called old Albert from the yard, his little terrier dancing in circles at his muddy boots. Behind him stood Mark Tully. Jack couldn't help being envious of Mark. He barely had to go to school and
spent most of his days helping down at the Port.

'Hello to you both,' said Jack.
Albert coughed a raspy cough
'Mary, Josoph and holy Jesus, I'm workin' for me whisky today,' he weezed. 'A peny for your thoughts on these beasts me boy?'
Jack cast his eye over the cattle and bit his bottom lip.
'Mostly a nice lot, but I wouldn't take her.' Jack pointed to a small heifer on the rail. 'She has a head on her like a gargoyle and her teats are set all wrong.'
'Ah, well done. Couldn't agree with you more. And this one?
What of her?' He pointed his worn cattle cane towards a short
black heifer with shining, up-turned horns.
'She's all right.'
'All right nothin'.' Albert banged his stick on her rump. 'She'll have a devil of a time calving with pins as narrow as that. Look out for the likes of her, Jack. It's like eyein' over a woman, you
need the gift to see beneath her clothes and even beneath her skin if she's going to be any good to you in the long run.'
Jack didn't quite understand what Albert meant but ran his eye
over the heifer and nodded anyway.
'where are they going?'
'Not goin'-they're comin'. They've sailed all the way over the devilish seas and they're about to be walked hundreds of miles up the road to Glenelg. If you ask me-which most folks don't; i wouldn't ship the likes of these COWS halfway over the world, not a
mixed lot like this. Theres a real art to picking God's beasts, Jack,
and some of those toffs back in the Mother Country just don't pay   attentiont to what the Lord packaged up for us, 'they're too busy
with papers, pedigrees and prestige to pick a good beast by eye,
Its an art you'll need to learn if you and Mark are going to be the
stockman you stry you are.'
Jack noticed two men riding towards them. They were big
men with broad shoulders who sat lightly in the saddles of their ambling horses. Their saddlebags were full and every loop had
something tied from it. A bed-roll, a pannikin, a billy full of tea and flour. Loaded up for the long drove. Jack felt his heart beat faster. Arthur tapped Jack on the knee with his cane and nodded towards the men.
'Those lads have the gift-just look at them. Watch their stock- horses, look at their dogs. Watch how they take the cattle quietly along that busy street.'
The drover's dog loped forward to inspect Albert's terrier. The
big black working dog circled the small wire-haired one. They sniffed at each other's rear ends. The black dog held his tail high while Albert's dog wagged his low and fast.
'See them dogs, lads? See how they sniff each other's arses like that? Do you know why they do that?'
'No.' said Jack, leaning forward, eager to learn more from the old man.

'It happened long, long ago, when God was creating this very earth I'm standin' on now.'
Albert moved closer to Jack and lowered his voice.
'Well,' he began, 'God had been at it for days. Creatin' and creatin' away. By the tenth day He was getting a little bored with it all, so he thought he'd play a joke... Just to liven things up a
bit. So, he pulled all tho arseholes off  all of the dogs, 'Albert began
to pluck at the air with his thumb and forefinger, 'and then He put them in a big bag and shook it up ' Albert shook his imaginary bag.
'Oh God was chuckling all right when he did it, he thought it Was
a right joke. So, after he had mixed up all the arseholes, He put them back on the dogs again. And that, Jack my boy, is why dogs are havin' a sniff whenever they meet each other, in the hope of
findin' their real arsehole. . .

Jack looked at Albert with a frown. Albert thumped him on the
leg, beginning to wheeze, cough and laugh all at once.
'Ha! Get it, boy? You'll learn the ways of animals from me, all right! Ha ha!'
Albert hobbled away to let the sliprails drop down in the mud, The drover whistled and the black dog forgot about looking for his backside and ran around the heifers, Pushing them through the gate, Jack watched them as they moved in unison, man and
beast, away from the town and towards the land that Jack longed
to see. Then he heard his Aunt Margaret's voice on the wind and turned to see her waving from the buggy loaded up with supplies
for their trip home to Codrington. He got down from the fence and
jogged over to his aunt with his hands shoved deep in his pockets
and a frown on his face.
'Lookin'for their arseholes my arse,' he muttered in the broadest Irish accent he could muster.