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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 2

The Prodigal Son

The Prodigal Son

The Elder Brother of Scripture and the Prodigal were fencing a steep bit of scrub ground at the back of their Father’s farm. The Prodigal had not been long home; but already he had filled out on his mother’s rich cooking. He looked much fitter, thought the Elder Brother, fitter than he had a right to page 688 look. And worse, he sat at ease on a log, rolling a smoke while the Elder Brother heaved on a wire strainer.

‘Here, pull your finger out,’ he said. ‘Take a turn at this. My blasted ulcer is giving me gyp again. Nothing but work, work, work, and what have we got to show for it? If you’d only pull your weight, we’d be at the top of the hill now.’

The Prodigal took over the strainer. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘You ought to see a doctor about that stomach of yours. My word, it’s good to be back on the old place again. I’d nearly forgotten what the manuka smells like.’ He had stripped to the waist, and his arms, brown nearly to the shoulders, made the rest of his body seem even whiter than it was.

‘Well, you can count yourself mighty lucky,’ said the Elder Brother, as he hunched himself dourly on the log. ‘You might as well know that Father and I had a long talk about you when we knew that you were coming home. I thought we ought to wait to make sure that you’d really turned over a new leaf. But Father kept quoting the Bible at me. He’s an old man now, and I think he’s going a bit soft in the head. Otherwise you’d have been shown the gate smartly. I suppose you know that Mother had a heart attack after you put that girl in the family way and cleared out of the district – she married a publican, poor thing, and went the Catholic way. Mother was sick in bed for weeks. I had to work the farm on my own then, and that’s the reason I’ve got an ulcer now. Overstrain and worry. Father’s hardly able to lift the bar of a gate on his own. Mind you, I’m a Christian, and I try to follow the Master. But when I think of you carrying on all that time in town, boozing and chasing women and going to the races, it makes my blood boil. You can say this for our family, we’re poor but we’ve always been decent.’

‘What do you mean by decent?’ said the prodigal as he tested the wire. ‘Going to Church on Sunday morning, and listening to that old Jeremiah in his stiff collar damning every honest thing, telling the grass to stop growing and the fillies to stop horsing. Sitting round the table, with Mother’s varicose legs, the Old Man talking about the stock market, and the china duck on the mantelpiece. Lying awake in bed, wondering if anything would ever happen to you, wishing a flood would come and wash the whole damned house away. Mrs Palmer and her five daughters . . .’.

‘There’s no need to be filthy as well as ungrateful,’ said the Elder Brother. ‘I knew when you came back that it was only for what you could get; but Father wouldn’t believe me. And yet you’ve got the nerve to say you’ve repented!’

‘Don’t excite yourself,’ said the Prodigal. ‘I shouldn’t have started talking; but you caught me on the hop, and I might as well have my say now. Repented? Yes, I suppose so, if repentance can mean the same thing to two different people. I’d say rather that the world looks pretty good to me now when before it looked like a pig’s ear set round with parsley. It’s not the things I did in town that troubled me most; it’s the way I felt here before I cleared page 689 out. I used to hate the place, every animal, ditch and tree, Mother with her continual chipping, Father with his theories about stock breeding, and you most of all, with your sour-grapes attitude, your talk about following the Master, and your dislike of anything or anyone free or alive. Of course, I had to get out –’ (‘Yes, we know that,’ said the Elder Brother) ‘– or I might slowly have become like you. Booze made me forget you sometimes, but it never really washed the hate away. I learnt something in the boozer all the same. I learnt about my own stupidity and pride. And I learnt something from women. I learnt that the people who are most at home in the world are the ones who don’t accept formulas about life. I learnt finally that you weren’t a saint or an unusual kind of hypocrite, just another man with faults like my own, except that yours were the cold sort and mine were the hot. Then when I was down-and-out I knew that my present situation had become a prison with myself as convict, judge and executioner; and unless I forgave you I could not forgive myself. So I prayed to learn how to forgive, and the prayer was answered. Then I camehome again.’

‘If you think that this rigmarole means anything to me, you’re mistaken,’ said the Elder Brother. ‘You can’t shift the blame on to me. There’s only two ways of living – the right way and the wrong way. And you’re still leaking in the Devil’s pocket. You haven’t changed your tune.’

‘Why should I?’ said the Prodigal. ‘You will never become me and I will never become you. There’s room for us both in the world.’

1968? (561)