by Erina Reddan
No more waiting for the Grey any more, though, just because Dad wasn’t right enough in himself. I got up close, but I couldn’t see her. I slid under the fence and charged up to the far end and then slowed right down. There was a shadow on the dirt, up in the corner, butted up against the rail. The brumby was lying still and flat, not a twitch. From where I was I could see flies buzzing around her face. All the gloss had gone from her coat.
I came to a complete stop. Hands taking their time getting up to my waist, head shaking one side to the other. Dad’d be sorry now. When I’d done my fair share of lip biting and head shaking, I slipped back through the rails and got to the chook shed and sure enough Philly was on her haunches there, teaching school, her pupils pecking around her paying her no mind. I sent her to find Dad and get him to come to the top paddock quick smart.
‘Why?’
‘Just get him, and get those eggs in to Tessa or she’ll send Aunty Peggy after you.’
Philly snapped up tall; Aunty Peggy fear flew across her face. She ran off.
I bit my lips some more, put my hand down to touch the warm of one of Philly’s girls, but she saw me coming and went for a peck. I snatched my hand back and took off back to the top paddock. I leaned on the rail a moment with my head tucked in and hands dark over my eyes, but then I gave myself a good talking to and made myself get back through the fence.
I squatted down next to the Grey. I put my hand on her long neck. Felt the stiff and cold coming back at me. Squeezed my hand down into it to see if I could make a difference. But it all held and there was no difference that could be made. I snickled in close and laid my cheek against her neck, closed my eyes and went deep into the dark with her.
I heard Dad’s boots coming through the boxthorns. I held my breath and when he was close enough to see, his suck of air was a knife in my belly.
‘Come away from there, JJ.’
‘She’s gone, Dad.’
‘I’ve got eyes.’
‘She was fine this morning.’
Dad saw I wasn’t going anywhere so he swung in under the fence and got over to me. He hunkered down beside the brumby on the other side. Hand on her flank.
‘I named her all ready for when she was broken in.’
He nodded.
‘Silver.’
He nodded again.
‘But she went too soon.’
‘Reckon we can make an exception. Be a help to give her a name. To know she’s still here, a part of you.’
Dad’s hand was moving over Silver’s flank, back and forth, as if he was feeling what was under her skin.
‘Are you going to drag Silver down to the gully?’
He shook his head. ‘Knackers this time.’
One of them crows landed on top of the closest straining post. Head to the side, one fat gleaming eye all narrow and fixed on Silver. I stood up. Hands on hips, staring down the barrel straight back at it.
‘She’d had a gut full,’ said Dad. He was looking at Silver and nowhere else. ‘She was left too long between the home where she came from and the lucerne paddock here where she was ending up. She got too filled up with sad.’
‘And whose fault was that?’ I asked, suddenly all dirty and thinking about all those dead bones down in the gully and how Silver and Mum were going to end up just like them.
His head jerked up. I scrubbed at my eyes with my forearm. Sawing like blazers as if I could rub the red right away.
‘What are you on about?’
‘You didn’t look after her like you said you needed to.’
He stared hard right through me.
Out of nowhere I took off towards that crow, arms out, aeroplane ready and screaming. Red swirl rising and me just ahead of it. I swerved around and headed back in his direction. He was on his feet, legs planted wide.
‘You killed her,’ I screamed.
Dad raised his hand as if to stop my words dead. I pulled up short. The breath in me tearing at my lungs, heaving my chest up and down, real quick.
‘There was no killing here.’ His voice low, quiet. ‘It was her choice. Just her time.’
‘You left her in limbo, then, where nobody loved her and nobody could say her name.’
‘You’re talking rot, girl.’ But there was still no heat in him. He stabbed the heel of his boot into the mud, forehead low, keeping a close eye on what he was doing.
I backed away from all the holes in him. But still I couldn’t stop myself.
‘God sees everything,’ I said. I reeled off and under the fence and was away, running fast from all that seeing.
Dad was asking for our things so we could put them in with Mum tonight at the rosary. He didn’t look at me and I didn’t care. I wasn’t giving him mine because if he knew it was Mum’s brooch he wouldn’t let me put it in. Only trouble was they all thought I hadn’t got something. So I raced back to my room and shot about trying to think of a good enough idea to keep them off the scent.
I wasn’t coming up with anything, and Tessa was yelling to hurry up. I stood at the end of my bed, shaking out my hands and thinking I’d better come up with something quick smart. Then I realised I had to sacrifice Ted. I snatched him off my pillow. It wasn’t like I ever played with him any more—well before Mum died, anyway. And I wasn’t playing with him now, just holding tight to him when the light went off. And now Ted had to do this thing for me. Had to go into the dark and be with Mum, who made him in the first place.
I raced out of my room. I was happy about this Ted business because Mum would have something of me after all. I slid through the lounge in my socks and it was only when I was just about into the kitchen that I saw Dad poking at the fireplace. There were a few bits of white paper with gold edges on top of the logs, curling and blackening with the heat. The end of Dad’s poker burying a square of black deep in the hot orange. I was in mid slide, so I couldn’t stop, even though I put my hand to the wall.
Dad came hurtling into the kitchen after me. ‘In the car. You’re keeping us all late.’
I thrust Ted at him so he’d see there was a good reason. ‘Ted’s going in with Mum.’
‘Where have your brains got to, JJ?’ he said, ignoring Ted. ‘Should have sorted that out well before.’
I tucked Ted back under my arm, got into my shoes and followed him out the door. It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it. I missed his half grins and winks behind Mum’s back, but I guess he’d just about had enough of me. I dragged down the side of my mouth. I’d had enough of me. That was for sure. Couldn’t keep my mouth shut for quids despite all my hand-on-heart promises to Mum. I held Ted tight to my stomach all the way, even though Tessa offered to put him in the bag with the other things.
‘He’s right with me till we get there,’ I said. She didn’t argue. It was Philly who leaned over and said what I saw in Tessa’s face. ‘Are you sure you want to give Ted to Mum?’
I was sure, but I didn’t trust myself to do anything more than nod and stare out the window.
I couldn’t see out the front window because Aunty Peg’s big hat in the front seat took up the whole view. She’d taken some of the lilac from the vase Tessa put in her room and tucked it into the headband. Mum said she and Aunty Peg had had lots of fun times, like hiding Great Aunty Dot’s teeth from her. Mum and Aunty Peg sounded good and naughty when they were kids. I wondered if I’d grow up good like Mum or mad like Aunty Peg.
Father McGinty had never said a word to me, but I could see he had ideas of changing that tonight. Dad and Father McGinty said a few low things together, and then Aunty Peg stepped forwards, sending Philly and me into giggles with her curtsey. Father McGinty nodded as if a curtsey was to be expected, then he turned to Tessa and shook her hand with both of his and then Tim’s. It was my turn next, but I kept my hands around Ted. He ended up ruffling my head and just patting Philly on her shoulder. He said things to all of us, but I didn’t know what they were.
Aunty Peg greeted Mrs Tyler and Mrs Nolan and the oth
ers like friends she saw every day. Mrs Tyler put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in for a quiet word.
Tessa pulled Philly after her, and Tim and I followed up the aisle. We got to go in first and have a private moment with Mum before everyone else. It wasn’t really ‘with’ Mum because the coffin was all shut up tight on account of us kids—Mrs Nolan said it wasn’t right for children to see dead people. Dad agreed, said he wanted us to remember Mum how she was, not stone cold in a coffin. Aunty Peg had snorted and asked him what he had to hide. Dad swore.
I swore too because with the coffin all locked up how would I get Mum’s brooch in to her? But then I heard Aunty Peg saying they’d have to leave the coffin open at the funeral because there’d be a bigger crowd, so we would just have to put up with seeing our mother stone-cold dead, then. I winced; she’d be in that plain old navy dress Tessa had picked out in the first place. Dad wouldn’t hear of Mum wearing the pink snowdrop dress because it wasn’t a party she was going to.
Tessa got our things out of the bag and handed them to Tim and Philly. She nodded at us to put them in the basket at the foot of Mum’s coffin. Tim went first, looking as if he didn’t know what to do. In the end, he placed the Donald Duck comic in the basket with his two hands and did a kind of bow. That seemed good to me so I did the same thing with Ted.
Dad put in an envelope and Aunty Peg swept off a set of bracelets from one arm and then more from the other, and let them drop into the basket with a hell of a racket. I sat in the front pew beside Dad, who was all kneeled over. I wished I’d said goodbye to Ted. Properly. With words, not just all that squeezing. I knew he wasn’t real or anything. But he was something.
Then the others came tiptoeing in and we began. Tessa’s eyes were crinkled up as she gave the Hail Marys in her loud voice, as if they could bring Mum back. Tim’s eyes were closed, too. Philly was mumbling along like it was a song, Dad was running the words over his tongue like water over stones in the creek, and Aunty Peg was mumbling, rocking forwards and backwards.
I couldn’t catch on to the rhythm; I was always a beat behind, and out of nowhere I dropped my beads. Tessa glared at me as the clatter of the rosary beads exploded against the floorboards. Dad didn’t even open his eyes, but I saw by the big sigh in his next ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’ that I was a long way from being full of grace myself.
I scooped to pick them up, making another racket, but then I didn’t know where we were up to. I looked over at Dad’s beads and tried to X-ray through his hand, but he had them beads all bunched up inside his fist.
It was the same story everywhere I looked. I felt a rise of panic like vomit in my tummy. My eyes zoomed back in on Dad’s beads beside me. There was a smudge of ash on his left hand. I reached over to rub it away. Then I stopped like I’d been burned.
I squeezed my eyes tight and counted backwards from ten like Mum taught me. I got to zero and started again. Dad had a frown waiting for me when I opened my eyes. So I started into Holy Mary, Mother of God, just saying anything to put him off the scent. He closed his eyes and bowed his head.
I squeezed my knees together, but the storm was building. Mum would want me to stay real still. Real, breathing slow, steady. But those bits of gold-edged paper curling on the top of those logs in the fireplace were big in me. Then too big. I tugged on Dad’s sleeve. He opened one eye, but whatever he saw on my face made him close it quick smart. I tugged again. He shook his head to warn me. I put my rosary in my pocket and took Dad’s wrist and squeezed. Tessa leaned right over Dad and smacked my hand away. I felt my eyes get smaller, so I tried to open them wide, wide. But it was no use.
‘Dad,’ I whispered.
He just made his ‘Blessed is the fruit of thy womb’ louder. That made the red get louder in me. I’d seen those gold edges before, every week, right in God’s house. I got off my knees and stood up to whisper in his ear. ‘Dad, why were you burning Mum’s Mass book in the fireplace?’
His eyes sprung open. He turned his head and stared. I was looking straight into those big staring brown eyes of the bunny caught in the spotlight before we found out Mum was dead. All the red whooshed away in me with a puff. I got back to my knees quick smart and got those beads out and sorted. Eyes closed and like I planned never to open them again. Not if I had to see that look in my dad’s eyes.
We got to the end of the rosary and everybody shifted so eventually I had to open them. There was nothing of that left in Dad’s eyes, and maybe I’d imagined it.
Dad thanked people for coming and shook their hands. He talked to this one and that one. He didn’t talk to me and he didn’t look at me.
MRS TYLER’S SUSPICION
Aunty Peg’s voice was all through the house singing ‘Amazing Grace’, only putting ‘Sarah’ for ‘Grace’. She couldn’t make it quite fit, but she said that wasn’t going to stop her singing it at the funeral.
Dad said, ‘Over my dead body,’ and Aunty Peg said, ‘If needs must.’
Us kids took bets on who would win. Tim and I were going for Aunty Peg. We reckoned mad beat angry every time.
By the afternoon, Tim didn’t like the look of one of his ferrets. He yelled for me to come take a look. He was on the ground with his face just about in the cage. Longtail did look a bit yellower than normal. Tim twanged the bars of the cage. The other ferrets all rushed to the other side. Tim pulled his hand away. Longtail stayed right where he was in the corner.
‘We’d better change the water, clean out the cage, give im some extra meat. See if he perks up.’
‘I’m busy,’ I said.
He got to his feet, dusted off his hands. ‘It’s Mum’s funeral tomorrow,’ he said, as if that should make me think again. When it didn’t, he added, ‘And you know she’d want you to help me.’ But there was something angled up about him. He got the straw from the hay bale in the corner. He was no way looking at me, but I was looking at him real good.
‘Not doing it,’ I said.
He ignored me.
‘Get Philly to help you.’
‘Gut ache.’
I knew what she was really doing. She was writing a poem for Mum’s funeral. Said she was going to ask Mrs Tyler to read it.
I folded my arms.
‘Mum’s watching,’ he said. ‘Sees everything,’
I looked up to the sky. Screwed my face up as if considering the matter, then dashed to the bench to get the big rubber ferret gloves before him, but he got there first, not fooled for a second. He didn’t grin like he normally did when he got the better of me. I folded my arms again. He pointed to the sky.
That wasn’t what made up my mind, though. I saw what I’d been looking at in him. He wasn’t going to let another thing die. Not the day before we put Mum in the ground. I had one big sigh and I let it out as I picked up the bucket and lid from the bench. ‘Give me just one of your gloves, then,’ I said.
‘I need both in case they get away. Bite your toes off.’
I shoved at him, but squatted down to ready the bucket on the ground. He caught the first ferret in the cage and dropped it into the bucket. I smashed the lid on top fast before it could jump out. Black Claws rammed his head against it. Tim got Sulky ready. We counted: one, two, three. I pulled back the lid and in she went. Once they were all in, he put the ferret brick on top.
Tim looked at the empty cage, his hands at his waist. He was all still. Then he itched the back of his neck. He scratched the side of his face. He got down onto his knees and examined the bottom of the ferret’s cage.
‘Hurry up.’
‘Fleas,’ he said.
‘They’ll run out of air if we don’t let them out.’
I hated ferrets and their sharp, sharp teeth, but I didn’t want them to suffocate while Tim was looking for imaginary fleas. He didn’t seem to care that more things were dying now.
‘Why did you ask Dad about Mum’s missal?’ he asked, eyes still stuck on the bottom of the cage, his back to me.
‘Didn’t,’ I said.
Tim pulled at his collar. ‘I heard you, JJ, at the rosary.’
‘It was nothing. I got mixed up.’
‘Why was the old man so upset if it was nothing?’
‘Don’t know why it has to be such a big secret,’ I blurted out despite my good intentions to keep my mouth shut.
‘He burned it, didn’t he, JJ? He burned Mum’s Mass book?’
I sucked my finger. ‘Dad’s allowed to burn what he likes.’
‘It wasn’t the book he was burning, but,’ Tim said.
‘It was so,’ I said, the red starting to get its claws in me again. ‘I saw it.’
‘It’s what was inside the prayer book,’ he said.
I frowned, trying to get ahead of him. ‘Yeah, like Dad wanted to burn all the prayers,’ I said scornfully.
He didn’t react, his face all muscle still and serious. ‘Remember the police gave the old man an envelope?’ I nodded. ‘I went in to see him about the tractor pump that night. He wasn’t there so I waited. The envelope was on the bed with all the police stuff inside, but her missal was more out than in. She must have taken it with her when she died. She never let us touch it, right? Just between her and God, right?’
I was still too.
‘This time I touched it, just to feel something of hers. I found out why she never let us near it, but. She wrote something in it. On the inside cover. I saw it.’
I fell back on my bum with the surprise of Mum dirtying up her Mass book like that. It made not one lick of sense. I kicked out, sending him sprawling for lying to me, then jumped quick to my feet, my fists ready for him, but he just took it, getting himself up as if nothing happened.
‘She wrote an address,’ he went on, as calm as calm, ignoring me.
I let go of my breath. ‘That’s why she didn’t take her Mass scarf with her.’