Owen Marshall Selected Stories by Vincent O'Sullivan Page A

say that at the very end the water is accepted, and that the past life spins out vividly. In Leslie’s case it may well have been the future rather than the past he saw.

 
    Descent from the Flugelhorn
    I t was the third in a series of summer droughts. North Otago must be as bad for droughts as anywhere in the country, I guess. In March the landscape lay stretched and broken like the dried skin of a dead rabbit, shrunken away from the bones and sockets. The pale yellow clay showed through the tops of the downs like hip bones, and even the willows along the bed of the Waipohu Stream had the blue-grey of attrition.
    Wayne Stenning and I were selling raffle tickets so that the club could have new jerseys for the season. All over the district we went, and despite the cost of the petrol it was worth it. Most we called on had some connection with the club, and even if they didn’t directly, then as country people they identified with the district name and gave anyway. Usually they bought whole books, not single tickets, which made the tripping about worthwhile. Wayne and I had been at it most of the afternoon and we were cutting over the old quarry road to call at a last few houses. The dust was bad. Some people had oiled the road outside their gates, but it didn’t seem to do much good. In any case you couldn’t see where the dust had settled, for everything was much the same colour.
    Wayne was pleasant company, always ready with a joke, or a laugh at somebody else’s. He’d been training most of the summer. Keen as mustard he was, and with some cause. Last season he made the local representative side and got his name in the rugby almanac’s list of players from lesser unions worth watching. He had the rightbuild for a prop — not all that tall, but his chest was so thick that his clothes hung out all round and made him look fat, which he wasn’t.
    I hadn’t realised that Bernie Dalgety lived on that road, but we turned into a farm and found him at the yards, drafting sheep. I’d met him a few times at the gun club. He took three books. The only drawback was that Wayne got some grease on his slacks when we sat on the drill, waiting for Bernie to get the money. Wayne said they were his best trousers and his wife would be peeved. He hadn’t been married long. He couldn’t stay worried, however, and told Bernie the joke about the librarian and the lion tamer. He did a bit of running on the spot, too, before we got back into the car — said he’d been having some trouble with cramp in the thigh muscles. Bernie and I told him the cause of that and he laughed, but said he was serious. I hadn’t begun any training myself. I’d reached the stage at which the most usual adjective applied to my game was ‘experienced’. Anyone who sticks with the game reaches that point eventually — a sort of watershed after which you’re no longer capable of improving, and it takes cunning to disguise the fact that you’ve gone back.
    We nearly missed the place after Dalgety’s. It was in a fold of the downs, and well back from the road. New farmhouses go for a view: prominence before all else. The old houses of the district seem to have been sited chiefly with the idea of escaping the wind. There was no cattlestop and no name on the letter-box. Wayne opened the gate and told me he’d close it and run up after me. Needed the exercise, he said, so I went on. The drive wasn’t used much, I could tell, for the dry grass in the centre strip scratched and flurried underneath the car as I drove. I could see Wayne in the rear vision mirror, jogging easily along, doing a few quick knees-ups from time to time. He let his arms hang loosely and flapped his hands to ensure relaxation. Our coach was very keen on relaxation; he trained anyone who would turn up three hours a night in the name of relaxation.
    The house was of old-fashioned dark brick. It had bay windows