Finn at the Festival

When the magpies warbled Finn knew it was spring. The parents had left the nest and the new baby bird was taking its first tentative steps. He sat on the porch surveying the scene. The firebreak was cleared, and the apple and pear trees were loaded with blossom. The tractor needed some work, but it always needed some work. He sighed. There was an article to write for Farmer’s Monthly and his book to complete.

Finn sometimes wondered how he had drifted into the cul-de-sac of rural journalism. He was no farmer and little better as a journalist. He supposed that circumstances created him. When his parents died in the plane crash, and he was in Melbourne doing a journalism degree, he, as the only progeny, inherited the farm. He had returned to sell it, and yet twenty years later he was still living here. It was forty-five hectares and it only provided subsistence living. The chooks were happy, the milk cows provided rich cream and the sheep ate the grass, but it was the writing that kept Finn off the dole.

He was naturally curious, and his monthly columns were popular and widely read. He had even authored two small books. Though Hobby Farming, the Pitfalls and Perils was not a best-seller, it was profitable enough to encourage the publisher to request a sequel, and Subsistence Agronomy from A to Z made the top ten best-selling “how to” books in the state for three weeks. Finn was now working on a third book. Sheep Dagging and De-lousing was the working title. He was finding the subject less amenable to wry humour than his earlier works.

He wrote on his MacBook seated at the rickety trestle table on the porch. At mid-morning he stopped for a cup of coffee. Sometimes, looking across the vegetable garden and the paddocks beyond, he wished he had found a wife, but the local lassies had all been snapped up by the time he returned to the farm, and the occasional city girl he knew from university who visited was underwhelmed by the bottled gas and tank water.

Finn poured an extra cup and on cue the postie, Jackie, drove down the drive in his Ford Thames van. It was a daily occurrence. The postie sat down with Finn to drink his coffee. He handed Finn a small bundle of mail.

“Your fan mail,” he said.

The two old friends discussed the local wheat crop and the parlous state of the local cricket team, and after Jackie finished his coffee he left to get back to his round.

Finn opened the mail. He occasionally did receive, if not fan mail, at least a congratulatory letter from a reader. Most of the envelopes left by Jackie were bills for feed, advertising junk and offers for vouchers from local pubs, but today there was one letter that stood out. It was in a large cream-coloured envelope with an ornate Gothic embossed symbol. He opened it. Inside was a card. It was an invitation to be a presenter at the Palmerville Writers Festival in South Australia. Finn was surprised. He had heard of the event. It was well-recognised and prominent. He wondered if there had been a mistake. Surely people would not be interested in his jottings. They were hardly literature.

Finn was not the first author in the family. His grandfather, also Finn Flaherty, had been a poet, albeit a minor one. He had been dead for thirty years, and his works were long out of print. He died in middle age after spending much of his adult life on the road humping a swag and drinking hooch. Surely the festival could not be mistakenly inviting a long-dead unknown poet.

Finn examined the envelope carefully. The letter was correctly addressed. “It must be me,” he decided.

Curious, he accepted the invitation. Five days later he received a return air ticket, a hotel confirmation, and a cheque for five hundred dollars. He packed his only suit and drove to town to board the flight.

Finn was surprised to be met upon disembarkation and whisked off to the large festival hotel in town. He was given a gold badge, indicating he was a presenter, a gift bag of books, paper and pens and his room key.

After unpacking he examined his gift bag, where he found a brochure from his publisher. It contained a list of new and forthcoming titles. Included was Sheep Dagging and De-lousing. It was said to be a new collection of postmodern poetry and word theatre by the master of the rural literature genre Finn Flaherty.

He rang his publisher. “I’m at the Palmerville Writers Festival. Your brochure says I’m a poet.”

His publisher, a chain-smoking middle-aged former political consultant, was sympathetic. “I know,” she said, “it was a new young assistant, Lucy, who must have got you mixed up with your grandfather. By the time I found out, you had already accepted. Just do the best you can. You write very well, you know, your prose is quite poetic.”

“My new book is about removing crap from the bums of sheep. The festival crowd is hardly likely to find it uplifting.”

“Just do your best, Finn. At worst you might get a wider audience for your work. Go with the flow.” At this she hung up.

“Go with the flow,” Finn muttered to himself. “The flow of what, sheep shit?” With some reluctance he went down to the lobby to meet his fate.

The lobby was teeming with attendees. Finn noticed the almost complete absence of men. There were one or two wispy-bearded old chaps and a few youngish people of indeterminate gender, but most of the crowd were middle-aged women with odd-coloured hair and loud clothes.

Finn queued at the buffet and took his tray of food to a table. He sat with several of the middle-aged women.

“I see you are a presenter,” one said. “I read you have a new book coming out.”

“Yes,” Finn replied, “It’s due in three months.”

“What is it called again?”

“Sheep Dagging and De-lousing.”

“How very droll. What a perfect metaphor for modern life. The title alone captures the essence of the vagaries of society.”

Fortunately for Finn, a bell rang, and the crowd began dispersing to various festival sessions. Finn escaped up to his room to consider his position. His presentation was that evening. He was not sure what he could say. He was no poet. He would have to simply tell the truth.

There was a fine turnout of women with odd-coloured hair at his presentation. There were even one or two men sitting nervously alone.

Finn was introduced by a lissom young woman with long blonde tresses and a winning manner.

“I would like to introduce the next sensation, Finn Flaherty. His new release is Sheep Dagging and De-lousing. It will be out for the Christmas market.”

There was subdued applause.

Remembering his days at university, where the clever professors turned their classes over to the students, Finn rose and said, “Rather than make a speech I will take your questions.”

A woman in the front row was handed the portable microphone.

“Why have you chosen this subject, Mr Flaherty? It seems rather gross.”

Well, here goes, thought Finn. “It is a significant problem for sheep. The shearers and farmers must frequently cut away the dirty and turd-encrusted wool from the anuses of sheep. If they do not, flies will lay their eggs in the wool and within a day maggots will hatch and burrow into the skin and feed on the flesh of the sheep.”

There was dead silence for a moment. Then a tiny woman with purple and orange hair rose.

“I commend you, Mr Flaherty, you clearly understand that postmodernism is dead. It sounds like your idiom is what may be called New Realism. You are combining bucolic existence with the drama of Mother Nature. I cannot wait to read your new book.”

The woman was apparently something of a lightning rod. A torrent of questions and comments followed, ringing with approval: “Animal Farm meets The Corrections”, “have the film rights been optioned”, and “it’s about time we were asked to confront the natural forces of agrarian enlightenment” were some of them. Finn found he had to say very little.

After ten minutes or so, the young lady closed the session with a further endorsement and began taking orders for books. As Finn collected his papers and thoughts she said, “By the way, I’m Lucy, from your publisher. Meet me in an hour and I’ll buy you dinner.”

An hour later, Lucy took Finn to a steak house. “It seems apt,” she said.

After their orders were taken, Lucy took a sip of red wine.

“This book will do better than Subsistence Agronomy from A to Z,” she said with a chuckle.

“So, you knew?”

“Mate, my folks are from the Riverina. My dad can’t wait to read your columns. I’ve been brought up with the bloody things.”

“But surely you couldn’t have known there would be a positive reaction to a book about sheep shit.”

She laughed. “It cost us a grand to plant the little purple-and-orange-haired reviewer, but it paid off in shovels.”

Finn was not sure whether to be angry, worried or pleased. Lucy noticed his perturbation.

“I wanted to meet you. You are a bloody good writer. All you need is a new subject.” She smiled and placed her hand on his.

Finn was already beginning to think about his next book, and one new subject in particular. A novel this time, perhaps, about finding unexpected love at a writers’ festival.

Anthony Graham, a retired barrister and judge, is the author most recently of Snippets of Other Lives, a book of thirty short stories, including this one.