‘School’ by Peter Cowan

The class-room was hot, and outside the sun was hard on the dusty earth and the grass was
going brown on the playing fields. The boy looked at his exercise book, at the figures and
the red-pencil corrections, and they were nothing, related to nothing in his experience. He
raised his eyes very slowly and saw the hard light and the bare ground and the drying grass.
Over by the fence the two old jarrahs with the spread tops framed and piled houses of the
suburbs. He had his hands to his head and he looked out of the low window and then back
at the figures on the papers, and slowly the tears began to force their way on him. He made
no sound and the others working did not know.

Now out beyond him were the wide flat acres of wheat, heavy in ear and the cut patches
bare to the earth dotted with the stooks. The wagon moved slowly out, and when they
readied the stooks his father began to pitch the hay. The sheaves thumped on the wagon.
He helped Ted, who worked for them, to build the load. As the wagon started for the next
stook he felt the jolt and looked at the load to see if it would hold. High up he sat when it
was built and they drove in to the stack. He got on the stack and Ted threw the sheaves to
him and he passed to his father. The sun was hard on the paddocks and the dull scrub and
the few trees. It made the wagon hot and the hay held a heat, and his clothes were hot. It
was hard to say when the shadows first started to come on the ground, but they began to
shift out from the stooks and from the stack and about the few shade-trees. When they
were tired with the mid-afternoon he saw his mother coming out with the tea. They sat in
the shade of the wagon and he listened to the talk and he knew the people and the wheat
and the town and the bulk bin and when he said something they listened and answered.
The colours began to change slowly, to deepen, and the shift from the smooth acres of the
wheat and the fallow and the old stubble, and from the dulling scrub that was making a dark
edge about the paddock. The sun went from the hot ground and they left the wagon
outside the stack and took the horses out. Ted led them to the yard, while he put out the
feeds. In the quiet darkening stables, after Ted’s father had gone, he watched the heads in
the boxes and listened to the noises that the horses made, together, feeding. When the
stables and the shed with the bags of stored wheat became dark he pushed open the iron
door and went across the yard. There was light in the house and they sat at the meal and
there was talk and if he wanted to say something he listened.

He could feel the tears and he was afraid to move lest the others see. He looked at the
symbols on the paper and they blurred and made no pattern. His hands sheltered his face,
and he looked slowly up and to one side and he saw the blackboard and the desks and
shelves and the maps that were pinned to the walls.