Genesis

From Manfred Clootie's cabinet of curiosities

She opened the gate at the end of the back yard, a gate that, for fear of intruders, was seldom opened. She was aware of her own fragility but no longer afraid of it. Although she was not a woman built for heavy labour, yet she now felt within her a new possibility of power.

She dragged the large hessian sack through the back gate, which she then paused to shut. Nothing must appear to be out of the ordinary. Then she began to haul the soft, damp sack through the wet paddocks at the back of their house, paddocks that stretched to the railway line 50 metres away. The express would come through within 10 minutes and she could not be sure that her energy would last long enough for her to reach the line. Certainly she couldn’t leave the sack out in the paddock. Too many questions would be asked, and she would be the one expected to provide the answers. Nobody else lived within a five-minute walk of their house.

Panting, and conscious of the thumping of her heart, she reached the bright rails at last. But the trip across the wet grass, gruelling as it may have been, had been easy compared with the difficulty of hauling her burden up the embankment that supported the rails. Everything up there had been fashioned by machines, machines that crushed rock and pushed it and tamped it. Nothing about the raised line had been designed to accommodate a small woman hauling a soft, heavy sack.

Once up on the embankment, she rolled the sack and pushed it until it lay across one of the lines. Then she took hold of the closed end and pulled and shook until the the sack was free of its contents. Then she stood up as the entire embankment began to shake. The express was coming.

She knew that in the pre-dawn darkness she could not be seen from the train, so once she had scrambled down the embankment and into into the long wet grass she walked back to her house, carrying the now-empty sack, as calmly as if she were taking a midday stroll.

Much had been written in the local paper (published twice weekly) about the speed of the great express. Sooner or later, thought many local people, there would be trouble if the beast was not forced to slow its pace. She had agreed with her neighbours on that matter, but now she was glad of its speed. She had expected the train to pass through without even a bump to disturb its progress. But the driver must have sensed something. The great train screamed as its emergency brakes were applied. She smiled. The train had never stopped in that place before. It was pleasant to think of oneself as effective.

She walked into her house as if it were new. She made toast and tea, which for the first time in years she was able to enjoy in peace. A beginning, she thought, not an ending.