The Tree In Changing Light (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
The way he grabbed a spade from my hand, and raced up the hillside knocking thistles from the ground and levering up phalaris tussocks, it was coming then; it was coming in the jumble of gear in the back of the station wagon; in the way he wouldn’t stop planting trees, even in the dark, especially if it was raining; it was coming in the worn teeth of the pruning saw; in the rattle of the chain saw; in the dribbling herbicide spray; in the dynamite demonstrations from way back; in the not quite out of control paddock of burning tussocks (in the joy of the flames). It was coming in the next beer and the next red wine and the next beefsteak at the campfire; in the sixteen-room bunkhouse he tendered for, ludicrously low, and won, and the expense it was going to be to have it transported away (at least thirty thousand dollars); it was coming in the expandable ninety percent (or was it one hundred percent?) special mortgage he’d got onto, and the beauty of it was, apart from being able to draw on it at any time, if you used up all your credit, you could go and have your land re-valued, and the mortgage limit would increase proportionately; it was coming in the way he always registered his vehicles in another state (if they were registered at all); it was coming in the accelerated growth of the Super Tree, that promised to blow itself out of the ground, a tribute to con-trolled nutrition; it was coming at the end of phase one of the effluent irrigation project, in the moment of self-sustaining growth when the canopy closed over, meaning that nutrients would have to be pumped somewhere else, because the plantation would have a life of its own then, and there would be no way out of the cycle except to move on to other trees.
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