The Tractor Job

Abstract

The Tractor Job B. R. Dionysius (bio) for Abdul Salim, aged thirteen You only got to drive your stepfather's Ford tractor, youcan't remember the model number, tattooed along its frontpanel's steel forearm—a few times before you gave up onthe idea of becoming a farmer. It was his trip, inviting youup into the cab's open capsule to bond over ripping up thewhite earth; filling in for a father's duty to pass on life skillsto a new son. A kind of ritual you supposed, shutting yourbook, your mother telling you to go outside & get some air.A rite of passage carried out in the back blocks; a debutanteball for boys who didn't dance with local girls, self-doubtseeded long before any rich harvest of youth was gathered.The mountains a dark blue sash wrapped around the earth'smiddle. You got the hang of cultivating though, as he rodeshotgun with you, keeping the front wheels out of divots,going around the field, churning up sandy clods & weedswith steel tines that dug into the loam with a dull heavinessvalley teenagers picked up who didn't quite belong here.Those arrow-headed tines, polished bright as a silver horse-bit, rang a tune as they tapped the earth's drum; a tan skinthat stretched taut from horizon to horizon. The tractor'swar-noise vibrating over to the next village. The Ford waspainted blue with a white trim, a copy of the Southern Crossflag you'd seen once in a market, complete with its brightpoints of starlight where the paintjob had rubbed off thechassis by close contact with boulders & almond nut trees.You waved from the pilot's seat as your stepfather left you,clambering down metal steps like an astronaut alighting ongreyish regolith. Besides, you had the hang of it after yourtwenty-minute crash course, he'd said. He'd be back laterto check when the fuel ran out. At first you felt panic; storiesof tractors overturning on steep hills & crushing their driversfilled your mind like a dark sutra, but when you didn't die outright,you fell into a groove, tyres the height of a grown man'shead obeying your every turn of the spoke; rubber revolutionbroke apart the soil's resistance to change. But for all youryouthful success you still couldn't recall the tractor's model [End Page 260] number to the older farm kids' satisfaction; who all lookedat you askance on the monthly bus ride into school. Your folktalesof giving soil a good workup, of helping scarce water todrain better, of bringing nutrients to the surface, all for nothingfor a lack of horsepower; manhood's machinery more interestedin the velocity of figures. Your breakout pressure too lightas your stories failed to dig up any godly glory. Then one crispblue day sitting around at smoko with the men, your tractor stillas a resting beast, just before you began loading hand-grenadesizedonions, red beards fell on your party like vultures on goats.The dervish wind kicked up a brown fog that misted everythingas you hid under the Ford like a kid in its mother's fleece; goodsteel to protect you from the foreigner's sharp beaks. Man-shapesmaterialised in the dun pall as if from legend—dust devils who'dtake your soul. But you could not be sure as you hugged a blacktyre like an ancestral shield. The earth was cool on your cheekas you knelt wrapped under the tractor's shadowy wing. Wheelgreaserubbed onto your chin as though you were a mechanicrepairing a leak. Any day now, your stubble would break through. [End Page 261] B. R. Dionysius B. R. Dionysius was founding director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. He has published four collections of poetry, two chapbooks, an artist's book, and a verse novel. His ninth collection, The Wet Tropics, will be published in 2022. He was shortlisted for the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize. He teaches English, lives...