A Cheating Wife Story
By
Black Jack Steele
My name is Steve Simpson, and I want to tell you about my friend, Jimmy Brown?
“Woohoo!” yelled the young cowboy as he stood in the doorway of the Uranus Lawn Bowls Club, waving his hat over his head. I’ve ridden her to a standstill and have established a new personal best. Woohoo!”
It was just before ten o’clock on a Friday night, and the place was full.
“What are you talking about?” one of the club’s patrons asked.
“I’ve been fucking Jimmy Brown’s wife since ten o’clock this morning, and I’ve cum in her and on her seven times since we started. That’s a new record for me; a fact I’m sure she’ll support. Unfortunately, she can’t speak on my behalf at the moment because she’s over in my caravan park cabin and she’s out for the count.”
The attention of all the club members was on the flashy young braggart, so no-one noticed one of their number disappear into the men’s dressing room and slip out through the rear door.
—oooBJSooo—
Every town and village throughout Australia usually has two things: a community swimming pool and a lawn bowls club. Smaller or poorer communities may only have one of those facilities. Whether it is a swimming pool or a bowls club will often depend on how many kids live in the town and the general feeling of the parents of those children towards them.
With my experience of that particular town — I had the misfortune to be based there, with plans to stay for three years — I’d say that the vote would have gone towards the bowls club option. Most of the parents I’d had anything to do with during my stay, didn’t give a rat’s arse about what their kids got up to or who they got up to it with.
Being one of the more affluent towns in the southern New South Wales region known as the Riverina, Uranus had both a swimming pool and a bowls club. It also had a hotel. The trouble was that the publican, Pat Ryan, was a cranky old prick who wasn’t known to be a people person. Go figure.
His wife, Sioborn, though, was his complete opposite. She was one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet, and she put on an excellent meal in her dining room. Unfortunately, even her enviable reputations couldn’t counteract that of her husband.
What added to Pat’s downwards-pointing profit projections was the fact that he insisted on employing barmaids who were just like him. I’m sure it was the barmaids at Uranus’ Royal Hotel who were the foundation for the rumour that, ‘the barmaids in that part of the country have been known to eat their young’.
It should come as no surprise, then that when looking for an enjoyable night out, most of the residents of the town would head to the bowls club.
The town of Uranus sat on what was once — back in the old stage-coach days — the crossroads between four larger towns. Although small, it was steeped in history and had been a meeting place for many of the bushrangers — outlaws, to my American friends — who roamed the area around one-hundred-and-fifty years earlier. In more modern times, instead of stopping to change horses or feed their passengers, those who visited Uranus usually did so because it was on their route to somewhere else. They were simply passing through. As a consequence, Uranus was known far and wide as the arsehole of the world.
So affluent was the little town, however, that in addition to a swimming pool, a bowls club and a pub, it also had a large man-made lake and a caravan park.
The caravan park sat alongside the lake, and its owners — the local council — had installed four new, two-bedroom cabins so that those travellers who did decide to stay, would have somewhere comfortable to spend the night. The cabins were also used by members of the local farming and grazing community — the squattocracy — when they’d stay in town.
The squatters formed the membership of the town’s ‘other’ social organisation; the exclusive and secretive Uranus Lawn Tennis Club. When they’d decide to stay in town after a function or during a weekend-long tennis tournament, they’d stay in the caravan park cabins. There was probably no foundation to the rumour that they were not averse to sharing, and that they’d been known to squeeze somewhat more than the normal bed capacity into those cabins on such occasions.
They had their own bar at the tennis club courts so didn’t frequent the bowls club. They were seen in the dining room and bar of the Royal Hotel, however.
—oooBJSooo—
Up until the night of Scottie McFadden’s announcement, the only member of the bowls club who didn’t know that Jimmy Brown’s wife was the town bike was Jimmy Brown, himself. The poor bastard thought that the sun, moon and stars were sourced from her backside — Jimmy didn’t use words like ‘arsehole’. He loved her with a passion that very few women ever received.
If Jimmy Brown had one failing, however, it was that he was almost invisible. He was one of those people who could walk into a bank, demand money, then quietly walk out without anyone having noticed he was ever there. He was so nondescript that even the teller who had handed him the money from her drawer probably wouldn’t have been able to describe him.
That was why he was able to leave the club that night without anyone noticing. In fact, most of the patrons would not have even remembered he was ever there.
He worked for the local council as its tradesman carpenter; a position that was ideally suited to both his skills and his solitary personality. He wasn’t the lowest man on the council’s totem pole, but trade qualifications weren’t as highly recognised in local government circles as they were in other industries.
He could have earned a much higher wage if he were to move away from Uranus, but Marleen wouldn’t hear of it. And what Marleen wanted, Marleen got. Which is why in addition to his council job, Jimmy had to work on most afternoons and most weekends to make ends meet. There was no recreational downtime for Jimmy Brown, just different work. But he never complained.
“A change is as good as a holiday,” he’d once told me.
I liked Jimmy, and I had noticed he was there that night. I’d even had a chat with him. I’d seen him come into the club, but I’d had to search him out. I finally found him tucked into the corner of the bar out of everyone’s way. He was very shy, was Jimmy.
He’d told me that, as it was his rostered Friday off, he’d spent the day doing a bit of carpentry work out on one of the grazing properties. He said he’d left home before daylight and hadn’t returned until after dark. His sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary — he and Marleen had been married for almost seventeen years, and they had four children — told him that their mother had left home that morning to go to work and that she hadn’t returned.
According to him, his daughter had told him that her mother had to clean the caravan park cabin that had been occupied the previous night. She also had to prepare the three vacant cabins for occupancy that night. Apparently, there was some sort of tennis club function scheduled for the weekend, and all three were booked for Friday and Saturday nights.
She had also told their daughter that once she’d finished at the caravan park, she’d be heading off to do a bit of shopping and housework for a couple of the older ladies she’d been helping out for the last couple of months. She’d told her that she could be a bit late getting home so it would be up to Mary to look after her younger brothers and sister. As was happening more frequently, there was no mention of making sure that her father was cared for, so he’d had to see to himself when he’d got in from work.
“When she hadn’t come home by nine o’clock,” he told me, “I decided that I’d better start looking for her. After searching everywhere else, I thought I’d call in here to see if she’d come in for a drink and got caught up with her girlfriends and lost track of time.
“I’ve tried calling her, but she must have left her phone at home. My daughter heard it ringing and answered it. I guess all I can do now is head home and wait for her. I just hope she’s all right. Although she’s on foot, so I suppose I’d have heard if anything had happened to her.”
We talked for a bit longer before I was called away to fill in for an absent darts player.
I was standing on the opposite side of the room when McFadden made his announcement. At first, I thought he’d just broken a difficult horse and was skiting about his achievement. He was a well-known horseman, and many of the local graziers used him to break and educate their horses for them.
It was only when he responded to the enquiry with, “I’ve been fucking Jimmy Brown’s wife since ten o’clock this morning, and I’ve cum in her and on her seven times since we started”, that the penny dropped. It was then that I glanced over to where Jimmy had been sitting. He was no longer there. All I saw was a shadow of someone disappearing into the men’s dressing room. Of course, Jimmy could have left earlier, and it could have been someone else’s shadow — the men’s dressing room was also where the men’s toilet was located — but I somehow didn’t think so.
I said earlier the Jimmy must have been the only member of the bowls club who didn’t know about Marleen’s sluttish behaviour. I have to admit that I’d be another. I had no idea. But, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised at being kept out of the loop. After all, I was a blow-in. My wife, Liz, and I had only been in the town for about eighteen months at the time.
Truth be told, Liz had been closer to Jimmy and Marleen than I was. She saw them as good people in need of a bit of a hand. From the little I knew of Jimmy, he was not one to accept a handout, though. I thought he might accept a bit of help, but just so long as it wasn’t offered as charity. I warned my wife of this, and she kept it in mind in her interaction with Marleen.
I also tried to apply the same principles in my dealings with Jimmy. I recognised him as a highly intelligent man who had been held back by his environment. I encouraged him to take every opportunity that presented itself to broaden his knowledge of those things that interested him. And his interests were many and varied.
He was so skilled with his hands that he’d become known throughout the area as ‘Mr Fixit’. The only things he wouldn’t touch were anything that plugged into an electrical socket. He even supplied most of the townspeople with their winter firewood.
The few times I’d met Marleen, I’d been impressed with her outer beauty. She had a very pretty face which was surrounded by long, loosely-curled dirty blonde hair. Her tight body highlighted her breasts and hips, giving her a model-like appearance. Anyone not in the know wouldn’t believe that she’d delivered four children. She gave the impression of being very close to her children, and it was obvious that her love was reciprocated. She was no rocket scientist but seemed to have a lively — if somewhat earthy — sense of humour.
While her outer beauty caught the eye, though, my first impression was that that beauty did not reflect what was going on inside. She struck me as being shallow. Yes, she might have been attractive. But I got the feeling that that beauty was — as the saying goes — ‘only skin deep’.
She’d probably been quite young when they’d married, which put her into the thirty-four or thirty-five age bracket. Jimmy, I knew, was older, being a year or two shy of forty. But he was one of those people who still looked to be in his early twenties. It was probably that boyish look that held him back when he sought advancement. No-one would put him in charge of a gang of men because they didn’t see him having the presence needed to command respect. His size didn’t help. He was barely one-hundred-and-sixty-five centimetres (5′-6″) tall.
Marleen, on the other hand, was fifty centimetres (two inches) taller than her husband and would tower over his slight frame any time she wore heels.
‘Was that the problem?’ I wondered as I thought about it. ‘Did it all come down to size?’
I thought back to the few times I’d seen them together and reviewed their body language. From the picture I had in my head of the two of them sitting side by side, I sensed the love emanating from Jimmy towards his wife. He was leaning towards her and holding her hand. Conversely, Marleen had a neutral posture, She was neither leaning towards nor away from him. Nor was she actively holding his hand. From what I was seeing, the love was moving in only one direction.
‘It looks to me that the poor bastard had been being cuckolded for some time; perhaps even years,’ I thought as I pondered the events of that night.
I’d thought about going after him, but I’d dropped my car off at home and had walked back to the club. The local police constable had had me in his sights. I’d ignored his flashing lights after he’d followed me home one night and I’d turned into my driveway. Having only had one beer on that occasion, I was as sober as he was and had offered to submit to his breathalyser test. For some obscure legal reason, he couldn’t test me in my own driveway, so the officious little dickhead had put me on notice. I knew he was out to get me.
As I sat at my table finishing my drink, I overheard the young blowhard boasting about his achievement. It appeared that — according to him, at least — because his cabin was still occupied, Marleen had spent a couple of hours cleaning and preparing the other three cabins in preparation for the incoming guests. She arrived at his cabin at about nine-forty-five, and he offered her a cup of coffee before she started work on his accommodation. She apparently accepted.
“One thing then led to another,” he said, “and the next thing we were both naked and were going at it like rabbits in my bed. ”
“Was that your first time with Jimmy Brown’s wife?” one member of his audience asked. I looked around me, and it appeared that all the married men — at least all those whose wives had been in attendance — had been hustled out of the club.
I’d finished my beer, so I walked over to the bar and requested a refill. I had intended to leave, but I wanted to know just how much damage this bastard had done to a man I had come to consider a friend.
“Nah,” the young man responded, “Jimmy Brown’s wife and I have been going at it for years. In fact, I’d be surprised if most of his kids weren’t mine.
“Except for the first one,” he said. “you’ve only got to take one look at her to see which father fathered that one.” A snide chuckle came from a few of the older members of his audience.
I found it interesting that they all knew Marleen’s name, but they always referred to her as Jimmy Brown’s wife. That had to be the ultimate put-down. It was clear that none of them had even an ounce of respect for the man. Neither, obviously, did his wife.
“Or they could belong to one of you blokes,” he continued. “Hands up all you bastards who have sent Jimmy Brown’s wife home to him with the taste of your cum in her mouth and a pussy full of your sperm for him to clean out of her.” I had my back to them, but I could see seven hands raised in acknowledgement reflected in the plate glass window through which I was looking. From my reflected view, I could only identify the owner of one of those hands. It belonged to Ian Henry. My boss.
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that you’ll now have another hole to plunder,” the horsebreaking Lothario told them. “I broke her to arse-fucking today, and she loves it. She’s still only new at it, so you’ll have to take it a bit easy the first few times. She was only able to take me twice, but I emptied my balls into her both times. She also took two loads in her mouth and three in her twat.
“I have no idea how many times she came. There was one point at the end there, where she was going on and on. That’s when she passed out.”
I’d had enough. I tipped back my glass and swallowed the last of the beer down. It tasted like bile. I took the empty glass over to the bar and laid it on its side in the universal sign — in Australia, at least — that I’d had enough. I then pulled out my wallet and extracted my bowling club membership card. Holding it out towards the barman, I tore it in half and in half again before dropping it beside my glass.
I then turned to look at the group gathered around the raconteur. There were ten of them, not counting the story-teller, which meant that seventy per-cent of them had already fucked Marleen and the other thirty per-cent wanted to do so. In addition to my boss, there were two elected local politicians in the group; one of whom was the deputy mayor. I knew that he was incapable of doing the deed but was experiencing the thrill of fucking Jimmy Brown’s wife vicariously by listening to the cowboy’s story.
I stared each one of those in the group in the eye and held each of them until they looked away. Even my boss, who considered himself to be a strong negotiator was unable to hold my gaze. The only one who didn’t blink was the cowboy, so I started on him.
“You had better keep your eye on your rear vision mirror, you gutless little prick,” I said to him, keeping my eyes locked onto his. “You destroyed a man tonight. Up until ten o’clock, he thought he had something to live for. Even though he knew his wife didn’t love him, he loved her. But now, you’ve taken even that away from him.
“He’s a great deal stronger than any of you know, however. And, while you’ve taken away the one thing he lived for, you’ve given him something in return. Hatred. He won’t rest until he’s destroyed each and every one of you.
“And you, little, big man,” I said, still holding the fucker’s gaze, “he’ll come after you first. Before he’s finished with you, you’ll tell him who else was here tonight and who put their hands up in acknowledgement of having fucked his wife. And once he’s finished with you — and if I know him as well as I think I do, you’ll be begging for him to put you down by then — he’ll come after the seven of you who raised your hands tonight.
“From each of the seven, he will extract the names of those others who have cuckolded him and on it will go until he has cleaned the slate. But you, my friend, you will be first. Your end won’t be quick, and it won’t be without pain, but you’ll welcome it when it comes. The thing is, though, you won’t know when it will come. It could be tomorrow. It could be next week. It could be next year. Or the year after, Or the year after that. He’s like a Chinaman and has a long memory.
“However long it takes, when something happens to any of you, the others will always wonder if Jimmy Brown had a hand in it. If one of you dies, the others will question whether it was really due to natural causes or an accident, or did Jimmy Brown make it happen? What each of you has done to Jimmy Brown will remain with you for the rest of your miserable lives; or what’s left of them.”
I’d seen the colour draining from Scottie McFadden’s face as I’d been talking and he finally dropped his eyes. As soon as he’d done that, I turned to my boss.
“You’ll have my resignation on your desk first thing on Monday morning, you hypocritical, pretentious, high and mighty piece of shit. And I guess it would be safe to assume that Jimmy Brown won’t be returning to work on Monday. I wouldn’t attempt to try to cheat him out of his entitlements by claiming that he didn’t provide sufficient notice. Using your penchant for pedanticism to justify such an action would, I believe, prove to be counterproductive.
“And you two,” I said, aiming my glare at the pair of councillors in the group, “would be ill-advised to run for office at the next election.”
Having said my piece, I turned and walked out of the Uranus Lawn Bowls Club, never to return.
—oooBJSooo—
My wife was astonished by the news of Marleen’s long-term infidelity and the destruction of her and Jimmy’s marriage when I told her over breakfast the next morning. She’d been asleep when I arrived home.
“I had a feeling that there was something off about their relationship,” she said. “And I didn’t see any resemblance to Jimmy in any of their kids; not even the oldest one.
“Should I go around to their place to see if here’s something we can do to help?”
“I think the best thing we can do is to stay the hell out of it,” I answered. “If I’m any judge of character, Jimmy will be long gone. Whatever love he had for her ended last night. My guess is that she never loved him. Recognising his love for her, however, she sucked him into a relationship when she discovered she was pregnant to someone — either some married man or the parish priest — and told him the baby was his.”
“Why do you say the priest might have been involved?” my wife asked. Neither of us was religious in any way. But we’d heard about how well the previous parish priest had known some of the girls (in the biblical sense) at the church’s local boarding school and was known to have fathered at least two children. We also knew that Marleen had been brought up in ‘the faith’ and had attended that same school.
“It was just something that was said last night,” I answered.
“I’d say she has continued along her wayward path during the whole of their marriage. She’s let Jimmy believe they were his kids, when in fact, their real fathers were either unaware or didn’t care that someone else was raising their bastards.
“If we were anywhere else in the country, I’d put my money on the former situation. But, since we’re talking about Uranus, I’d say they simply couldn’t give a rat’s rectum.
“That might have to change if Jimmy has done what I believe he’s done and she no longer has his financial support. She might have to go searching for her children’s real fathers. Either that, or she’ll have to start charging for her favours. Maybe — assuming she has more brains than I believe she has — she’ll do both.”
My wife was disappointed that I wouldn’t let her offer our help to Marleen — she’s a mother hen, and that’s what mother hen’s do — but she was pleased to learn that we would soon be leaving this most inhospitable of places.
It certainly was — and probably still is — the arsehole of the world.
—oooBJSooo—
I was correct in my assessment of Jimmy Brown’s intentions. He apparently drove from the bowls club over to the caravan park. Wrapping her dried-cum-stained body in a cum-soaked sheet, he loaded the still unconscious woman — he no longer thought of her as his wife — into his Toyota and drove her home.
Throwing her onto what had been ‘their’ marriage bed, he rifled through his draws and closet and packed a few changes of work clothes — he was wearing his only set of going out clothes — and his toiletries into his duffle bag. He then headed out through the kitchen, throwing his work boots and riding boots into his duffle as he passed through the mudroom. He then hoisted the fully-loaded bag into the rear passenger compartment of the dual-cab truck.
He then backed the Toyota over to his shed and fitted his camping canopy over the load tray. He then loaded his camping gear and whatever tools he didn’t already have in the truck into the back. The last items to go in were his chainsaw and his swag (bedroll).
After closing and locking the load tray, Jimmy Brown then threw his two stock saddles and another duffle bag containing his bridles, blankets and other horse-related gear into the rear passenger compartment.
Scottie McFadden wasn’t the only accomplished horseman in Uranus. In addition to his carpentry and handyman skills, Jimmy Brown had an excellent reputation for his gentle handling of horses he was given to break, train or educate.
With everything loaded, he rolled his boat — a fourteen-foot Corroboree fitted with a forty-horsepower Johnson outboard motor — out of the shed and hooked it onto the towbar. He’d bought the second-hand, motorless aluminium hull and galvanised steel trailer using money he’s scrimped and saved from his many fill-in jobs. After stripping the hull down to bare metal, he’d then spent the next two years painting it and setting it up the way he wanted it. The engine had less than ten hours on the clock. He knew he owned a good Murray Cod and Trout-fishing platform. He was now going to find out whether his luck with the southern species would hold when he went in search of Queensland’s notorious Barramundi.
By midnight, he was on his way north. This was a trip he’d been planning to take with his wife and children, so he knew where he’d find free overnight camping along the way. Stopping only for food, fuel and rest, he crossed the New South Wales-Queensland border early on Sunday afternoon. He decided to spend the night camped on the shores of an expansive lake about an hour’s drive north of the border.
He called his immediate supervisor first thing on Monday morning to let him know that he’d have to find another Shire Carpenter — which was his official designation. His supervisor — another of those who had fucked Jimmy Brown’s wife — advised him to send a formal letter of resignation through to the department head, which he did. His resignation letter — which was sent as a text — read, “Dear Sir, I quit. Effective immediately. Signed: Jimmy Brown”.
His next call was to one of the few people he considered a true friend and who, he was sure, hadn’t either fucked his wife or tried to fuck her. Jimmy Brown knew he could trust him because he was one of the few people in Uranus who knew that his friend was gay; a secret he would never divulge to anyone. He asked him to keep an eye on things for him.
His friend understood what Jimmy Brown meant and agreed to do so. He also told him of my contribution to Friday night’s performance.
His third call was to me. He thanked me for speaking on his behalf and for defending him in a way that he would never have been able to do himself. He also thanked me for putting the wind up them. He said he’d been wracking his brain trying to work out how to exact revenge on those who had been cuckolding him for what he now realised had been many years.
“I wasn’t planning on ever returning to Uranus,” he said. “But now, it might be worth my while to pop my head up from time to time, just to keep them on their toes. I’ve asked a trusted friend to keep an eye on things down there. He’ll let me know when one of them either dies or is injured. That will be a good time for me to either send a card or show my face. Thank you.”
Before we finished talking, he asked my advice on a few financial matters. Never having gone through a divorce, myself, I gave him a few tips based on what I considered to be common sense. I suggested that he take half of what was in any joint accounts they might have and that he do the same with any money he might have in a savings account. I also suggested that he cancelled any credit cards he might have that Marleen could access.
My third recommendation was that he set up a new account — in another bank — to have his final pay deposited into. I also referred him to a lawyer friend in the nearby city of Warwick, who could help him with any information relating to a divorce.
Finally, I gave him the phone number of a friend who lived close to where he was presently located who might be able to put him onto a bit of work to tide him over until things settled down. I told him that my friend also had a property on the shores of the lake and would probably be happy to have someone trustworthy living on the place to look after it.
I told him to call me if I could help him with anything else. Apart from receiving a text that same afternoon, providing the details of his new bank account to be passed on to the council’s payroll officer, I never heard from him again.
Most of the information I’ve recounted — apart from those things that were discussed during our direct contact — I didn’t learn until much later.
—oooBJSooo—
As I’d promised my prick of a boss on Friday night, I dropped my resignation letter on his desk as soon as I arrived at work on Monday morning. Just to be on the safe side, I had a second signed copy ready to deliver to my employer’s Human Resouces Manager. As the council’s General Manager of Business and Financial Services, human resources fell under my control.
I didn’t pull any punches in the letter, setting out that I could no longer work for a public authority that was led and controlled by people who were so morally bankrupt that they would destroy the life and marriage of one of their loyal employees by entering onto adulterous sexual relationships with the man’s wife.
I was called into a meeting with the CEO and Mayor just before lunch. I requested, and was granted, permission to have someone else in attendance to balance the numbers. There was no way I was going to allow myself to be railroaded. I invited the General Manager of Infrastructure and Technical Services to join us. I explained to him that I wanted him there as an observer and a possible witness. Knowing the CEO, he readily agreed.
It took a couple of hours, but we finally hammered out a win-lose outcome I won, and Uranus Shire Council came home in second place.
My wife and I packed our furniture and our gear and moved back to Queensland. We settled in a large town filled with friendly, hospitable people, a historical atmosphere and many historic buildings. It was in direct contrast to the town we’d left behind.
From there, I operated a business management consultancy until I retired, just a couple of years ago. My work took me all over the country, which is how Jimmy Brown and I crossed paths, once again.
It was about ten years after the Uranus Lawn Bowls Club incident.
I’d stopped in at the Cardwell Hotel — which was one of my regular stops when travelling in that part of the country — and there he was. I recognised him immediately. Apart from having bulked up a bit, the face I saw was the same one I’d last seen in the bowls club that night. It took him a bit longer to recognise me. I had changed.
It was only when I spoke that I saw his face light up in recognition. We ended up spending an enjoyable afternoon and evening together.
Over dinner, he told me that, as soon as he’d heard Scottie’s boast, he knew he’d been living a lie for years. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it. He said there was no point making a scene, so he disappeared out the back door and went in search of his soon to be ex-wife.
“I found her in his cabin. She was covered in his cum from head to toe. Her breath smelt of stale ejaculate and it was dripping from both her pussy and her arse. That was when I learned that he’d broken her to anal sex.
“I knew that if he’d used the same rough methods to introduce her to that form of sex as he used when working with horses, she would probably be torn up inside. It wasn’t until I got her home that I checked her out. Sure enough, he’d torn her anus. With the amount of cum leaking out of her, he must have done her more than once. How she’d managed to take him the second time, I have no idea.
“There’s always been bad blood between Scottie and me. I don’t know whether you know it, but we’re cousins.”
“I didn’t know,” I said, “but it doesn’t surprise me. I just assumed that everybody living in the shire was related in one way or another; some more closely than others.”
He chuckled at that.
“The other thing about Scottie McFadden was that he and I were the same age. And, like me, he had been blessed — or cursed — with the gene that gave us a youthful appearance. What many people saw as a brash young blowhard who could be forgiven his indiscretions because of his youth, was actually a mouthy, would-be Cassanova who — like me, at the time — was quickly approaching his forties. He still had that same youthful appearance when they buried him.
‘Unlike most feuds….”
“Hang on!” I interrupted. “Are you telling me that Scottie is dead?”
“Yeah, poor fella,” Jimmy Brown said. “And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bloke. He apparently climbed aboard a horse he was breaking without first checking his gear. It appears there was a goat’s head burr caught up in his saddle cloth. As soon as he climbed aboard and tucked himself down into the saddle, the burr buried itself into the horse’s back, and it went ape-shit. From all reports, Scottie stuck with him for about fifteen minutes.
“Whether it had something to do with what you’d said to him that night or something else had happened, I don’t know. But he’d started drinking a fair bit more than he had in the past. He’d also become a bit more nervy than he’d ever been. Whatever the reason, he no longer had the confidence or the stamina he’d once had. There was a time that he would have ridden that horse all day and all night if need be; burr or no burr.
“Those who were there say it was his best-ever ride. But Blind Freddy knew that he couldn’t keep it up. Exhaustion finally beat him, and he was thrown. While his ride might have been notable, his dismounting was apparently less so. I was told that his flight through the air looked more like a half-filled sack of potatoes than the graceful dismount of an expert horseman.
“His landing was even less graceful. Sadly — at least for a number of the ladies of the district — he ended up breaking his neck.
“They held an open casket funeral service at the Catholic church; a service that was attended by quite a large crowd. The ladies of the parish were inconsolable — none more so than my ex-wife, with whom Scottie had taken up residence following my departure. The gentlemen of the area — the husbands of the ladies of the parish — were there, I believe, to confirm that Scottie McFadden was actually being laid to rest and would no longer pose a treat to their marriages.
“It appears that, no matter how much they tried, The morticians were unable to get the kink out of Scottie’s neck. He went to his grave with his head permanently cocked to one side as if asking, “Really? Is this all there is?”.
“I was working up in the Gulf at the time and flew down for the funeral, just as you’d told them I would do; he was my cousin, after all. I stood beside my ex-wife at the casket and sat beside her in the church. She even held my hand for a while — she actually reached out and gripped it tightly. That was a first; at least for many years.
“The wake was held at the bowls club. It was there I learned that Marleen wasn’t really my ex-wife as neither she nor I had instituted divorce proceedings. She even suggested that I should move back to Uranus and resume my husbandly position in the scheme of things.
“I explained to her that I was quite happy with everything the way it was and that my chances of ever returning to her or the arsehole of a town she lived in were on the none side of slim. The one thing I did promise to both her and to me, though, was that I’d remedy the divorce situation as soon as I returned to Queensland.
“While attending the wake, I looked closely at the faces of all those who were there that night — those who were still around, that is — they remembered your words. Each of them turned an unusual shade of pale before making their apologies and doing a disappearing act.
“I had no intention of spending even one night in that grubby little town, so I’d planned on driving back to the nearby city that afternoon; my return flight was scheduled to depart early the following morning. Before leaving, however, I made the announcement that, while I didn’t know how Scottie had gone about pimping out my wife during my absence, it appeared that she was back on the market.
“It appears,” I said to a surprised crowd, “that the whore known as Jimmy Brown’s wife will be looking for a new live-in pimp and is looking to expand her business. I’m sure she’d be happy to include any of you ladies that Scottie has been servicing over the past few years in her stable of girls, should any of you be interested.
“I left before the fights started.”
Knowing the town and the area, I imagined that Jimmy Brown wasn’t going to be the only one commencing divorce proceedings after his cousin’s funeral. In fact, I could envisage a few quite large sheep stations being put on the market to satisfy the asset split requirements of the current divorce laws. Money is a great leveller, however, and with the economy being as tight as it was at that time, I imagine that quite a few indiscretions were forgiven.
In the end, it didn’t really matter to me how — or even why — the feud between Jimmy and Scottie had started. It was how it ended that really mattered.
The man I talked with in Cardwell that day was a completely different person to the one I’d known ten years earlier. That man had been shy and retiring. This man radiated the confidence in himself that only those who have tested themselves to the limits and who have won a few fights can ever display. He was still only five-foot-six, but he was no longer skinny. He had bulked out, and he looked to be as strong as a Mallee bull.
I knew that he must now be approaching fifty, but he still had a young man’s facial features. Any woman looking at him these days would see him as being a man in his early thirties who was filled with confidence in his own abilities.
Before we each went our separate ways that night, I learned that he owned and operated his own game fishing charter boat and had clients flying in from all over the world to take advantage of his expert knowledge of his trade. I even met his partner in ‘guts and glory’ — his words — his wife, Michelle. She was a petite lady who was shorter than Jimmy — about five-foot-two (160 cm), who appeared to be in her mid-thirties. She was dressed very modestly but, from what I could see, she had an hour-glass figure. I could tell by the way they looked and touched each other that each of them loved the other more than life itself.
Knowing the new Jimmy Brown, I don’t think there would be a man alive who would walk into a bowls club and announce, “I’ve just fucked Jimmy Brown’s wife”.
Not unless he had a death wish.
—oooBJSooo—
Epilogue
Jimmy Brown might have lived a life of quiet anonymity during his first thirty-seven years in Uranus. But no-one could have possibly imagined the size of the hole he would leave in the fabric of the community when he departed.
In addition to the council having to find another tradesman carpenter, the local farmers and graziers found that they had to bring tradesmen in from further afield to do many of the jobs that Jimmy Brown had done for them. Not only did that create problems for them in terms of having things like wool presses repaired and meeting new sheering shed construction deadlines, it meant that they had to pay through the nose to have tradesmen travel more than one-hundred kilometres to undertake relatively small jobs.
One of the tasks that Jimmy Brown used to undertake was fencing jobs such as repairs to sheep and cattle yards and small, paddock sub-division projects; jobs that most fencing contractors found uneconomical to tackle. Jobs that property owner now found were costing them more than double — sometimes triple — the prices he used to charge.
Jimmy Brown might have been almost invisible, but it was only after his total disappearance that people began to understand just how much he contributed to the local community.
The incident at the Uranus Lawn Bowls Club occurred on a Friday in early April. Jimmy Brown had been gone almost a month when the first cold snap arrived, and the people of Uranus started picking up their phones to call him to arrange for the delivery of their first load of firewood. A typical winter would usually require three $70 trailer-loads. This winter turned out to be a particularly long and particularly cold one, requiring at least one extra load.
The wood-burning residents of Uranus ended up having to pay twice the normal rate for their firewood.
Once the reason for Jimmy Brown’s disappearance became known, neither Scottie McFadden nor any of the ten other men who had sat listening to how he had fucked Jimmy Brown’s wife that night were very popular.
The CEO’s contract came up for review in September. It wasn’t renewed.
The local government elections were held in the early part of the new year. Despite the warning I had given them, the councillors who were in attendance in the club that night threw their hats into the ring. Both of them were soundly defeated.
Of the remaining seven men, three ended up losing their jobs and relocating to warmer, hopefully, more friendly climes, and the remaining four — all of them businessmen — found that the people of the town and the surrounding area took their business elsewhere.
Even Scottie McFadden couldn’t avoid the repercussions of that night. He found that he wasn’t getting anywhere near as much horse-breaking, cattle and farm work as he had in the past. Mind you, the breaking work had been falling off, anyway, after Jimmy Brown had told everyone that he would no longer try to fix horses that Scottie had broken.
Jimmy Brown’s actual words had been, “I won’t touch anything that Scottie McFadden has fucked.” It was one of the few occasions that anyone had heard him swear. His words, as it turned out, were ironically prophetic.
—oooBJSooo—
Postscript
It should come as no surprise that Scottie McFadden was expelled from the Uranus Lawn Bowls Club.
The reason for his expulsion might be surprising, however. It had nothing whatsoever to do with his having fucked Jimmy Brown’s wife. That wasn’t even considered. After all, How could they expel him for that when half the male members and a number of the female members had also fucked her?
They did consider hitting him with a charge of bringing disrepute on the club. But, once again, how could they do that when seven other members publicly admitted to having done the same thing.
No. The reason for his eventual expulsion was a great deal more serious than that.
You see, there is a relatively narrow access road between the caravan park and the bowls club. And the local council had painted a pedestrian strip across it to give priority right-of-way to people walking between the two facilities.
The problem is that nobody from the council consulted anyone from the bowls club before installing the pedestrian strip. So, rather than relocating the caravan park’s pedestrian gateway so it lined up with the main pedestrian access to the bowls club, they painted the crossing right in front of the caravan park gate. The result of that was that people walking between the park and the club entered the club grounds at a point midway along the main competition bowling green.
Most people realised that once gaining access to the bowling club’s playing area, they would turn right and follow the grass verge around until they reached the formal pathway, which they would then follow to the clubhouse entrance. But that was most people.
Most people — and certainly all active bowls club members — would also know that the only two forms of footwear allowed on the greens are flat, rubber-soled bowling shoes or bare feet. But, once again, that was most people.
As Scottie McFadden would have told you, himself, however, he should not be confused with ‘most people’. In his haste to share the news of having achieved a new personal best in the fucking stakes, Mr McFadden ignored all the rules. He even ignored the sign that had been placed at the crossing that instructed visitors to the club to follow the grassed verge to the path; just as most people would do without having to be told. Instead of following the instructions, he ducked around the sign and raced across the green.
It wasn’t until the next day when an inter-club competition was scheduled to take place between Uranus and nearby club that anyone noticed the damage to the green which, up until ten o’clock the previous night had been competition-ready.
The divots taken out of the playing area and the spacings between them were measured. It was deduced by one of the members who had once done a bit of tracking, that they matched the prints of a man of the hight and weight of Scottie McFadden running across the green wearing high-heeled riding boots of the type seen to be worn by the club’s self-proclaimed fucking champion.
At the hearing held by the committee to decide Scottie’s fate, one of his defenders made the comment: “At least he’d had the decency to remove his spurs”.
As we’ve seen time and time again in politics, sport and many other facets of life, moral integrity has nothing whatsoever to do with who is allowed to play the game or how the game is played. But even those who would normally get away with sidestepping the rules are sometimes required to obey them.
Such was the case with Scottie McFadden. Nobody gave a damn about whether or not he’d fucked Jimmy Brown’s wife into unconsciousness. But the committee members of the Uranus Lawn Bowls Club did give a damn about one of their members having the gall, the hide and the downright temerity to run across the club’s greens wearing high-heeled cowboy boots in contravention of the club’s rules.
Scottie McFadden had his membership suspended for life. As he is unlikely to ever receive an invitation to join the tennis club, he now drinks and socialises down at the Royal Hotel.
This should be a lesson for us all. Even places that everyone sees as being the arsehole of the world have standards.
That’s something it would be wise to remember if you ever find yourself passing through the little Riverina town of Uranus while on your way to another nowhere, somewhere else.
—END—
