Brumby's Run

by Jennifer Scoullar

  Only a million, but Sam shook her head. The details didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was Charlie getting well. The universe had narrowed its focus to that one pinpoint of light, that one desire. Professor Sung gave Sam an appointment card. ‘You’re booked in at the Apheresis Unit at eleven-thirty for your first G-CSF injection today. Will your mother be coming here?’

  ‘I asked you not to call Mary that,’ said Sam.

  ‘I don’t mean Mary. I mean your adoptive mother.’

  For a moment the term made no sense. ‘I don’t need her permission,’ said Sam. ‘I’m over eighteen.’

  Professor Sung smiled. ‘Only just, Samantha.’ Of course. He knew how old Charlie was, so he knew her age too. How strange. ‘The injections have some side effects, and I want somebody with you, to make sure you get home in one piece.’

  ‘I’ll be fine …’ she began.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, holding up his hand. ‘I’m the doctor, and I say you need a support person. Either I ring your mother, or Mary can look after you. Take your pick.’

  Mary. She was a complete stranger. What use could she be? But things between Faith and Sam had gone from bad to worse lately. It was high time she stood on her own two feet. ‘Fine,’ she said, with a little eye roll that masked her apprehension. ‘Mary then. Can I see Charlie now?’

  Professor Sung nodded. ‘Just remember, the chemotherapy will take it out of her. Don’t stay too long.’

  Colleen ushered Sam into the room, then closed the door. Charlie was connected again to the ubiquitous battery of machines. A murky-looking fluid flowed through the central line, like poison aimed straight at her heart. Charlie lay very still, eyes closed, listening to an iPod with headphones, flicking at it with her fingers. Sam watched her sister unawares, like a spy – curious and guilty all at once. Charlie looked older, smaller, shrunken. Sam could blow her away with one breath. She needed weighing down. A black headscarf patterned with scarlet salamanders and snakes coiled about her head.

  Sam moved to the foot of the bed, into her sister’s field of vision, and touched her leg. ‘Hello, Charlie.’ Charlie took out the earphones and grinned. The transforming effect of her smile was remarkable, like she’d switched on her life force. It shone brightly from her hollow eyes. Sam answered Charlie’s smile with her own. ‘We’re a goer,’ she said, and gave her sister the thumbs up.

  Charlie nodded, her face flushed palest pink with pleasure, and shifted position in the bed. It cost her a noticeable effort.

  Sam experienced a stab of sadness, mingled with frustration. It was so unfair. She wanted to take off her mask, go for a walk with her sister, run with her, ride with her. They deserved at least that. Her parents had stolen their past, their right to a shared childhood, and now this cancer threatened to steal their hope for a common future. Aggravation must have shown on her face.

  Charlie’s smile fell flat, and she looked away. ‘It’s okay if you don’t want to do the transplant. You can change your mind.’ Her sister’s voice was alarmingly weak, but Sam recognised the spiny prickle in the tone. It was too often in her own.

  Sam pulled up a chair close to Charlie. ‘Just try to stop me.’

  Her sister’s smile returned and she reached out her hand, bony and pale. An angry rash, like rope burn, extended from wrist to forearm. It disappeared beneath the sleeve of her unflattering flannel nightgown. Her sister deserved better. How far up did the ugly rash go? Did it cover Charlie’s thin chest, her breasts? Did it hurt? Sam tried to think of something to say, a message of tenderness, but before she could find the words, Charlie gave her hand the faintest squeeze. The back of Sam’s neck tingled.

  ‘Thank the Goddess, you’re a match.’ It was Mary’s voice. She rushed to embrace Sam, clearly reaching for some sort of connection with her long-lost daughter. She wouldn’t find one. Sam felt nothing for this woman, this woman who’d given her life, then given her away. Mary turned her attention to Charlie and moved over to the bed without a word. She caressed Charlie’s cheek, unwound the serpent headscarf, and pulled out a new one from a plastic bag in the bedside drawer. Sam flinched at the sight of Charlie’s naked scalp. With ritual concentration and loving precision, Mary twisted the fresh scarf to shield her daughter’s skull. It had a paisley tadpole design, rich teal in colour – almost aquamarine – with long ties and elastic at the nape. It was gorgeous, and a perfect fit.

  An unexpected jolt of jealousy left Sam breathless. Was she jealous of Mary, for her unspoken bond with Charlie, born of a life-time’s familiarity? A painful stab of insight suggested it might be the other way around. That she might be jealous of Charlie, for having had her real mother for her whole life. No, that was absurd. Faith was Sam’s real mother; despite all her flaws, she loved Sam, and Sam loved her. Sam mumbled goodbye and hurried from the room. Charlie’s swift, disappointed glance stayed with her for a long, long time.

  Chapter Five

  Drew cantered towards the mob of horses and raised his rifle. A shot punched the frosty air, then another. The herd turned tail and galloped for the ridge line. He glimpsed a flash of hides through the branches: buckskin, grey and the usual bays and browns, perfectly camouflaged, blending with the trees. He’d been right. There was a mob of brumbies roaming Maroong Mountain.

  Drew urged Clancy across the creek. Man and horse trotted alongside the rusted barbed wire that marked the boundary between Kilmarnock Station and Balleroo National Park. He spotted the big blue gum on its side, toppled in last week’s storm. It had lain low ten metres of fence line, and hoof marks churned up the ground on both sides of the breach. Too late to do much tonight. Best come back on a bike in the morning.

  Drew toyed with the idea of telling his father about the mob, but it would just stir up trouble. He and Bill were at odds when it came to the brumbies. To his father they were nothing but pests, eating good grass that should be saved for fattening cattle. Things would be different if Gramps was still alive. He’d called the wild horses the spirits of the high country – beautiful, independent, uncivilised. Gramps scoffed at Bill for his hostility, said he had no heart, no feeling for the land. Drew had always marvelled at his grandfather’s courage. Nobody else had ever dared stand up to his father.

  Drew peered through the darkening bush, but the horses were long gone, back up the mountain. Feed was scarce on the higher slopes in summer. They’d be back. But there’d be no more brumby running for Drew, no matter what Bill said. He’d joined his dad on a run last summer. Never again. For years he’d longed to go along, but had stayed away out of deference to his mother’s wishes. It was only after she left that he’d joined Bill and the boys on a weekend trip up the mountain.

  Mum had always called it cruel, and she was right. Drew hadn’t understood, had thought her too sentimental. It wasn’t as if they were shooting horses from helicopters, like they did in some parts. His father and the other brumby runners were financial members of the Alpine Feral Horse Management Association. They had permits to remove brumbies from the park. It was all above board, but for them, it was just a sport – a true test of horsemanship, and from all accounts, exciting as all hell to boot.

  Drew didn’t like to think back on the experience. The first unsettling thing had been the dogs. Two of Dad’s loudmouthed kelpies came along, as he’d expected. But the other blokes, four contract brumby runners he’d never met before, had brought monsters. Bull Arab hunting dogs, at fifty kilos each, with heavy heads and muscled bodies, trained to hold hundred-kilo boars for the bullet. Permits called for the dogs to be muzzled, but who was to see, that high up on the range?

  The six of them had headed out from Kilmarnock Station, setting an easy pace up to base camp. They climbed spurs, framed by stringybarks and peppermint gums, stairways to alpine flats where cattle and horses had grazed for generations. The herds of red and white Herefords and black and white baldies were gone now – driven off the mountain by reluctant cattlemen when concerns were raised about high-country damage from hard-
hoofed animals. A few mobs of scrubbers evaded the musterers and lived on in this wild place. And so, of course, did the brumbies.

  They’d risen at dawn to a cold fire and skins of ice on the water in the billies. Drew watched the men fit heavy-duty motorbike knee-pads beneath their jeans. His dad had thrown him some gear, and he’d copied the others. Leather chaps strapped from crotch to ankle and synthetic rubber gloves completed the outfits. He could barely clamber onto Clancy, stiff-legged and weighed down by his modern brumby runner’s armour. Perversely, they wore no protection at all on their heads – just their customary akubras. With ropes slung over shoulders, and spurs gleaming, the riders were ready.

  The dogs ranged ahead of the horses. ‘Your horse is everything in this game,’ his father had told him. ‘It needs to stay level-headed, and be able to look after itself as well as its rider. It needs disc brakes, power steering. And it needs to jump like a kangaroo.’ The other men rode rangy thoroughbred types with hogged manes – fit and lean and just a bit mad. Their saddles were specially designed with extra-large knee pads, grooved at the base. To hold a plunging wild horse, the rider had to loop the rope around this groove to stop it slipping.

  Drew had played with his catching rope while they searched for the brumbies. The aim was to unsling it from shoulder to hand in about two seconds. It needed to be strong enough to snub a wild stallion to a tree; stiff enough to hold the noose in shape; fine as a lady’s finger. Bill had indicated a white and brindle dog, nose to the ground, leading the pack. ‘That’s Bess,’ he’d said. ‘She’s our finder.’ Even the other dogs seemed to be watching her. If she took off, so would the riders.

  Without warning, Bess flushed a small mob of brumbies, and the riders went after them at full gallop, tearing over logs and through trees. Hoofs flung out stones as the horses scattered into the tangled forest. The dogs soon caught up with a small, fat mare – obviously lame, obviously pregnant. She stumbled. A black dog latched onto her head and brought her down. A man leapt from the saddle and snatched a homemade headstall from the bundle on his pommel. The plaited hay band was cheap and hard to break. But it was also thin, like wire, and cut into the mare’s skin when she struggled. The man kicked the dog and made it let go of the mare.

  She struggled to her feet. Her left ear was bleeding, almost torn in two. She turned to flee, but was pulled up short, snubbed by the halter to the ghost-white trunk of a twisted candle bark. Fear and pain transformed her into a writhing, rearing, raving thing. The man mounted and waved for Drew to ride on, leaving the horrified mare to fight her invisible demons alone.

  Clancy trembled beneath him. Drew hadn’t signed up for this. He bit his lip, soothed his horse with uncertain words, and cantered after the others. Similar scenes repeated themselves, all that dreadful day, up and down the mountain. The contract runners were suicidal in their determined pursuit of their sport, chasing at breakneck speed through bogs, over rocks, between trees. Never had the old saying A rider’s grave is ever open made more sense, but adrenaline had got the better of them all. Drew smashed his knees against trees, and didn’t even feel it. Only later at home, looking at his purple, swollen legs, had he appreciated the true value of those knee pads.

  Drew had finally roped a swift bay colt, elated at first by the capture. The hard nylon catching rope locked onto a large leather eye to prevent the horse from choking, but still the colt laboured to breathe, and struck out with wild, panicked forefeet. It reared over backwards and lay still. One of the other men jumped down, haltered the prone youngster and secured him to a tree. ‘He’ll be on his feet by the time we get back,’ he told Drew. Drew wasn’t so sure.

  By dusk, six brumbies stood tied to trees. Bill shot dead a young foal, injured by the dogs as it returned again and again to its captured mother. His father also shot dead the mob stallion. The big black had turned on Bess and snapped her front leg in a rage as it tried to protect a roped mare. Drew leapt from the saddle and knelt to comfort the whimpering dog. For all he knew, they’d shoot her too. Normal bush rules about fair treatment of animals had for some reason been suspended on this gloomy mountainside.

  ‘I’ll take Bess back, if you like,’ Drew had offered. ‘If you don’t need me,’ he’d added, trying not to sound too keen. There’d been a brief discussion between the men. Finally his father had nodded assent, and helped haul the bitch astride Clancy’s saddle. She’d whined and wagged her whip of a tail in thanks. Drew had stroked her head, grateful to the dog for giving him an excuse to escape. On the way down the mountain he passed the bay colt he’d caught. It was standing now, sweating and shivering, forefeet splayed and hanging back on the taut tie rope. Not a bad sort. Maybe Bill would give him a go at breaking it in. Further on, Drew passed the pregnant mare with the ripped ear. She lay dead, head at an impossible angle, neck broken in her furious attempts to free herself.

  Drew hadn’t stopped when he reached the camp, as his father expected him to. He’d kept right on down the mountain. How naive he’d been, how foolish. It wasn’t like Bill to pull any punches, and he hadn’t. Drew just didn’t think brumby running would have turned out to be so brutal a process. He had a better idea of how the rest of the trip would go now, the idealised scenes wiped from his imagination. Bill and the other men would pick up the haltered brumbies and chase them ahead on ropes back to the camp site. The wild horses would think they were running away. At base camp they’d be tied to trees, while the men went and caught more brumbies over the next few days. Bill had said the brumbies were offered food and water, but Drew couldn’t imagine those traumatised animals eating or drinking anything. At the end of the weekend, the men would retrieve their Toyotas, fitted with stock crates. They’d use a boat winch to drag the frightened horses onto the trucks, and take them to the stockyards at the showgrounds in town.

  When Drew finally caught up with Bill after the weekend, the news was worse than he’d imagined. It turned out that the whole group of brumbies had gone to the doggers, even the swift bay colt Drew had his eye on. No, he wouldn’t tell his father about the brumbies on Maroong Mountain. Good luck to them. He whistled up Bess and they headed for home, south across Snake Creek. The dog trotted on ahead of Clancy, nose to the ground. Her lame leg made her useless as a hunting dog, so the contractors had let Drew keep her. Bess was loyal, with a surprisingly gentle nature, and she made a nice change from Dad’s hyperactive kelpies and heelers.

  Drew passed a sagging bush gate, the back track into Charlie’s place. For a moment he contemplated making the trip down to the house, to see if she was home.

  He missed Charlie. She was a headstrong, faithless pain in the arse, but she was also a lot of fun. He missed their bush races, Charlie always cheating, cutting corners to win. He missed her dropping by to demand help with a fence or a calving cow. Missed how she always somehow turned everything into Bill’s fault. She wasn’t far wrong there. Truth was, Drew was still half in love with Charlie. They’d gone out for a while last year until he’d discovered the hard way that Charlie preferred rodeo cowboys.

  Her mother, Mary, ran a motley, inbred herd of crossbred Angus breeders on Brumby’s Run, but her heart had never been in it. And now Charlie and Mary had been gone for weeks. Mysterious, how they’d just taken off like that, without a word. Max, one of Mary’s dodgy mates, had apparently been looking after the place for a while. Max owned the second-hand dealer’s yard at Tallangala, and Drew had seen his wreck of a truck coming and going a few times. But not lately.

  Come to think of it, Charlie had been avoiding Drew even before she left, keeping to herself. Maybe Mary was in some sort of trouble with the law? She’d struggled more than once to stay on the right side of it. Bill called her trash. There’d been convictions for drunk driving, some petty fraud, a drug charge. Charlie might come to Drew for help around the farm, but she would never have come to him if her mum was in some kind of a mess. She was too damned proud. If he didn’t hear something soon, he’d ride on over to the house. Take a look, keep an
eye on things for Charlie till she got back. After all, wasn’t that what neighbours were for?

  Chapter Six

  The daily injections Sam received in the week prior to the transplant had left her ill and in pain, with a throbbing deep in her bones, like her core was cracking. Her head ached, her stomach ached, and she vomited up her food. Mary made sure Sam was safely in a cab home after each day. Sam often fell asleep in the back seat, overcome with fatigue.

  Faith was there to meet the cab outside the house every afternoon, fussing around Sam and insisting she rest. Sam knew she meant well, but the double dose of mothering from Mary and Faith just added to her exhaustion.

  Fearing she had the flu, Sam presented to Professor Sung. ‘It’s the shots, not a virus,’ he told her. ‘The side effects will dissipate within a few days of the last dose. You’re not infectious, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re no threat to Charlie.’

  A swift flush of shame had burned Sam’s cheeks. Charlie. What were a few side effects compared to what her sister was going through? She silently put up with the dizziness, the nausea, the cramping in her limbs in the days that followed. At night, she lay awake and concentrated on mobilising stem cells from the centre of her bones – like a general, rallying her troops. She galvanised them, made them multiply, burgeon, pile up and up on themselves until they spilled through the bone-marrow barrier and crowded into her bloodstream.