The Snow Pony

by Alison Lester

  It had taken Dusty ages to walk Spot to the yards, she was so weak and partly paralysed from the prolonged labour. Rita had rung Milo that morning and he had a two-day-old calf they could foster on to the cow. They skinned the dead calf and tied its hide on to the new calf, so Spot would recognise her own smell. She wasn’t fooled, and kicked at the calf every time he went to drink. Her udder was huge and swollen and her teats looked tender.

  Rita shoved the calf back in under the cow and ducked a kick. ‘It’s the only way to make her feel better. Once he starts drinking it’ll ease some of the pressure off her udder. We’ll just have to be patient.’

  Dusty rubbed Spot on the bony top of her head. She loved that. ‘Why is Dad so sick, Mum? Other people don’t look like that the morning after.’

  Rita sighed and leant her head against Spot’s flank. ‘I don’t think he should drink. He doesn’t normally drink at all, as you know, but when he does, he keeps going until he falls over. He just can’t stop himself.’

  11

  Quicksilver

  Dusty felt the Snow Pony rise like a bird and they cleared the first fence in a graceful arc. Air to spare, she thought to herself and looked on to the next jump. Her mother was always nagging her about focus. ‘Look there and you’ll go there.’ She couldn’t explain to Dusty why it worked, but it did. As you went over a jump, you looked on to the next one and the horse followed your eye.

  This was the last show of the season, and the closest one to home, after Bankstown. Jack had driven her and Stewie today, so Rita could stay home and look after Spot and her calf. That’s what she said, but Dusty thought it was just her way of getting Jack to spend some time with her and Stewie, of getting him off the farm. Dusty knew he would be watching, so she really wanted to win this jump-off. He hadn’t seen her compete since the Bankstown Show last year, when the Snow Pony had disgraced herself, so it would be good for him to see how well she was going. The prize money was three hundred dollars for the win, and that would make him happy, too.

  The Snow Pony galloped around the course. Dusty knew she was going too fast, and the Teddy Bears’ Picnic was sounding like a chipmunk song, but sometimes she just had to let her go. She did everything fast. Sometimes Dusty felt as if she were riding greased lightning. Above the thunder of hooves and the mare’s heavy breathing, Dusty could hear the jumps commentator on the loudspeaker system, old Johnny Ray, playing up to the crowd: ‘And here we have Dusty Riley, going like hell, as usual. What’s the hurry, Dusty? Riding her brilliant young mare – caught on the high plains and broken by her father Jack – what he doesn’t know about horses, ladies and gentlemen, wouldn’t take long to write down at all … and Dusty’s mother, Rita Poole that was, has done a beautiful job teaching her how to jump …’

  The Snow Pony flew through the triple – jump stride, jump stride, jump. ‘Good girl.’ Dusty looked on to the next fence.

  ‘So we have Dusty coming up now to the seventh fence, a brick wall, and she’s over it beautifully. My word this mare can jump. And the kid can ride. I reckon this combination could do anything. If they go clear, they’ll win this. No one’s going to beat their time.’

  Only five jumps to go. ‘Come on, girl,’ Dusty breathed. ‘We can do this.’

  They were going so fast, Dusty’s eyes were watering and the commentator was silent at the microphone. Over the picket fence, then over the oxer. The tenth jump was beside the oxer, so Dusty had to do a u-turn to approach it. She pushed the mare towards the edge of the arena, looked back over her shoulder, and the Snow Pony followed her eyes in a scorching turn, leaning so far in that Dusty felt as if she might brush her shoulder against the ground. She heard a gasp from the crowd as they anticipated a fall, but the mare kept her feet.

  Over number eleven – easy – and on to the last jump, a set of blue-and-white rails on the far edge of the arena. The cypress trees hung over the fence, shading the jump, so Dusty concentrated. It was easy to muck up the last jump, but the Snow Pony flew over the blue rails. She landed clear, but suddenly, from the corner of her eye, Dusty saw an ugly yellow dog racing towards her. Snow saw it, too, and shied away in a massive leap that took her over the arena fence. Dusty saw a flash of frightened faces as the crowd parted, then she was fighting for control as the mare moved between her legs like quicksilver. She let her go, once they were through the crowd, and ended up cantering down the road behind the showgrounds. Tall gums grew on both sides of the road and dappled the sandy gravel with shade. The Snow Pony slowed to a walk and Dusty dropped the reins on her neck, pulled off her riding helmet and rubbed her hands through her hair. She couldn’t bear to face her father.

  She was eliminated, twice: once for leaving the arena and once for not passing the finish flags. There was no three hundred dollars.

  Dusty sat in the shade of the truck, leaning against a back wheel, and watched the line of cars, floats and trucks stringing out of the showgrounds. The Snow Pony and Tarzan stood dozing quietly, washed and ready to load. Stew’s day hadn’t been much better than Dusty’s. Second place in the bending race wasn’t enough prize money to cover his entry fees. The loudspeaker was finally silent and scraps of litter danced through the dust in the low afternoon light as the carnival people dismantled their sideshows and rides. The drama of the day was over and the showgrounds were turning back to an oval of sunburnt grass surrounded by sad old cypress trees.

  ‘Is he coming?’ Stew called from the cab of the truck. He was lying on the seat, pretending to catnap, but Dusty knew his mind was racing as fast as hers, worrying and wrangling about how they were going to manage Dad when he got back to the truck, roaring drunk. He had to be drunk – he’d been over at the bar for four hours now.

  The bar looked like one of those ads for beer they showed on TV, thought Dusty. It was a rectangular structure with no walls, just the roof and the bar. The men leaning against it were golden from the evening sun shining through the ghost gums. In their stockman’s hats, moleskin trousers and riding boots, they were the romantic image of true blue Aussies. Dusty wondered if all their kids were as miserable as she felt.

  When she and Stew had gone over to see when they’d be going home, they’d ended up not even asking their dad, he looked like such a stranger. He was drinking with blokes from the town whom he wouldn’t normally give the time of day. Drinking, bragging, big mouths – ‘cowboys’ he’d scornfully described them once to Dusty – always skiting about the horses they’d ridden and the brumbies they’d driven. As they roared and raised their unsteady glasses to his story, Jack’s swimming vision focused for a moment on his children standing on the edge of the crowd, but he looked straight through them and turned away.

  It was nearly dark now, and there were only a few staggering figures left at the bar. The barman had packed up his kegs long ago and Dusty could see the men passing a bottle between them. The headlights of a car swung into the showgrounds and flashed past the bar before pulling in beside the truck. It was Mum.

  ‘Get those horses on to the truck.’ She looked wild, her mouth set in a tight little line and her red hair sticking out as though she’d poked her finger in the toaster. ‘Come on, lead them up the ramp.’ She ruffled Stewie’s hair as he led his pony past her and gave Dusty a thin smile.

  Dusty wound up the ramp and peered across at the bar. Jack was standing with his back to them. ‘How’s Dad going to get home? You can’t leave the car for him. He’ll crash.’

  Rita took the keys out of the car’s ignition, slammed the door, and locked it. ‘I’m leaving him nothing. The dog can get his mates to look after him.’ Her voice was cracked and angry, but she didn’t cry. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’ As the truck rumbled past the bar she looked straight ahead, didn’t even glance sideways. Jack kept his back to them, too, and Dusty felt as though she and Stewie were falling into a great chasm of loneliness between their fighting parents.

  ‘Does this mean you and Dad are going to get divorced?’ asked Stew in a tiny voice.

 
Then Rita did cry and Dusty cried too, and they drove down the long black road towards home.

  12

  The morning after

  A horrible sound woke Dusty. Someone was vomiting in the bathroom. Her heart sank as she remembered last night: the sound of a car outside, a door slamming, her father bursting into the lounge room, swaying in the doorway, glaring like a lunatic and then launching into an insane tirade of bitterness against her and Mum and Stewie. Rita hadn’t even tried to argue with him; she’d just turned on the television and taken herself and Stew and Dusty off to bed. They listened to him rampaging around the house until he finally fell into his favourite chair and began to snore, as the TV’s numbing spell put him to sleep.

  Now the morning had come and he was over his drunken rage, Rita got stuck into him. Dusty and Stew stayed in bed, out of the way. They could hear her voice, calm and level, as she stood in the doorway of the bathroom.

  ‘I’m not going to put up with this. This marriage is over unless you swear to me now that you will never treat me and the kids like that again. There may be some women around here who’ll wait while their husbands drink themselves rotten, but I’m not one of them.’

  Jack mumbled something Dusty couldn’t understand, but it sent Rita into a rage.

  ‘I don’t care! Other people have hard times without turning into losers! You’ve got so much, you’ve always had so much – education, opportunity, a good family. Some people make their lives from nothing!’

  More strangled retching sounds filtered through the wall.

  ‘You disgust me.’

  Dusty heard her father moan. ‘Please, Rita. Not now. Leave me alone.’ His footsteps crossed the bathroom and then came the sound of the door shutting and the key turning in the lock.

  ‘We should leave you alone for good, you dog,’ Rita muttered as she walked away.

  Dusty listened for noises from the bathroom; clues of what he was up to. She could hear him going through the shelves in the bathroom cupboard, looking through the pills. The terrible words of that other fight suddenly came into her head. ‘You’d be happy if I blew my brains out.’ Maybe he was going to take an overdose. Muffled sobs came from under Stewie’s doona, and Dusty knew he was thinking the same thing.

  She jumped out of bed, raced to the bathroom and pounded on the door. ‘Are you all right, Dad? Come out! Dad! Answer me!’ There was no answer. Dusty turned the doorknob and pushed against the door with all her might, but it didn’t budge. She raced down the passage to the kitchen, skidding on the lino in her socks. ‘Mum! What if he kills himself?’

  Rita was chopping up a pumpkin with the big butcher’s knife, banging the blade through the orange flesh with both hands. It was hard work and she was breathing heavily. She looked up at Dusty and the air around her crackled with anger. ‘He won’t.’ She thudded the knife into the flesh again. ‘He’s too gutless!’ She kept chopping maniacally, shaving off the hard shell and tossing orange chunks into the big enamel soup saucepan. After a little while she looked up and saw Dusty’s eyes swimming with tears and her face softened.

  ‘Sweetie.’ She held her arms out so Dusty could walk into them. ‘He’ll be all right. He’s an adult. He just has to work it out.’ Rita kissed her daughter’s hair, still in yesterday’s ponytail. ‘I’m not going to bash down the bathroom door to get to him.’ She turned and started to attack the pumpkin again.

  ‘Then I’ll go and watch him from outside,’ said Dusty. ‘You can see right into the bathroom from the tulip tree.’ She gently untangled herself from her mother and pushed the back door open.

  ‘You don’t have to look after him, you know,’ Rita called as she crossed the dewy lawn in her socks. ‘You’re a kid. He’s the adult. He’s supposed to be looking after you.’

  Stewie came and joined her in their tree. One day last year, when they were in the tree, the Avon lady had come into the bathroom and settled on the toilet like an old chook. They had squirmed and wriggled so much then, trying not to laugh out loud, that they had nearly fallen, but today they sat as still as sentinels, watching over their shamed father as he sat with his head in his hands.

  They sat around the kitchen table like polite strangers, talking only to offer salt and pepper, or tomato sauce. Dusty felt as though she’d been rubbed all over with sandpaper, her emotions were so raw.

  Rita rose to clear the dinner plates away but Jack motioned her to sit. ‘I’ll do it.’

  That’s a start, thought Dusty. Normally he’d make her or Stewie do it. He carried the plates over to the sink and rinsed them, then walked past the table where his family was sitting, waiting. He stood at the window looking out at nothing, and his hand came up to the back of his head, the way it always did when he was about to make a speech.

  ‘First, I’ve got to apologise. I’ve been a fair mongrel to all of you lately and I’ve nearly lost you.’ He turned to them and his eyes were the same pale blue as the evening sky behind him. ‘I’ll never get your respect back altogether, but I promise I’m not going to drink again. I know a promise is nothing if you don’t keep it, but I’m going to. I’ve been so hung up about keeping this place, I’ve lost sight of everything else. But it’d mean nothing if I didn’t have you three.’

  His eyes dropped to the floor and no one spoke, though Dusty knew Stewie was thinking the same thing as she was. Finally she blurted it out. ‘We just want you to stop being a pig.’

  Rita snorted in surprise.

  ‘Sorry, Mum, but you know what I mean. He’s not just horrible when he’s drunk. He’s mean to us all the time.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Stewie plucked up courage and had his say as well. ‘And grumpy.’

  ‘They’re right, Jack, and you’re right, too. Talk is cheap. You have to make that phone call we’ve talked about. You have to ring up and ask for help, admit that you’re not perfect.’ Rita reached over the back of her chair, grabbed the bottom of his jumper and pulled him from his lonely place on the lino into their circle at the table. ‘Times are tough, but we live in a beautiful place, and we’re all well. Be happy.’

  Her words were bold and optimistic, and they all knew it wasn’t that easy.

  ‘What we need to talk about,’ she said, ‘is the muster – bringing our cattle down from the high plains.’

  Dusty reached into the linen cupboard for a clean towel and froze as she heard the phone dialling out. Ring ring, ring ring. Somebody picked up at the other end, and her father cleared his throat. ‘Is that the Drug and Alcohol Help Line? My name is Jack Riley. I’m after some help.’

  Good on you, thought Dusty, come right out and say it.

  ‘No, it’s not for someone else. It’s me with the problem.’

  Dusty listened, staring into the dark shelves of towels, sheets and tablecloths, as Jack wrote down meeting times and addresses, and she found her eyes filling with tears. When he stepped into the passage she grabbed him in a fierce bear hug, and whispered against his chest, ‘Good on you, Dad.’

  He hugged her back. ‘Well it’s a start. Like your mother says, you have to admit you have a problem before you can fix it.’

  Dusty shut the cupboard and they walked down the passage together to join Rita and Stewie in front of the fire.

  13

  The shooting party

  Jade peered out of the dirty windscreen as the overloaded Toyota roared towards the mountains, and wondered if they would ever slow down enough to see anything.

  ‘We’ll never see a deer going this fast,’ she thought aloud, and that sent Horse into gales of wheezy laughter. His breath was so vile it made her stomach heave.

  ‘Chicks! You don’t know nothin’, do yah? Travis, this sister of yours knows nothin’. The deer aren’t here, ya little bird brain, they’re up the top, up on the high plains, up in man’s country.’ He growled out the last two words, banged his fat paw of a hand down on Jade’s skinny thigh and gave it a squeeze. ‘Man’s country! A little sheila like you could get into all sorts of trouble up there.�
� He sniggered more foul air into the cabin.

  Jade looked down at the fingers resting on her leg like hairy sausages about to burst on the barbie, and shoved them aside. ‘Nick off, Horse!’ she growled, hoping her voice wouldn’t betray her fear, because that’s what she suddenly felt.

  She felt sick that a slob like Horse would come on to her. She was only a kid, only fifteen, and he was nearly thirty. He’d always given her the creeps, ever since Travis started doing his apprenticeship with him. Their dad had left the year before, and Horse saw himself as the man about the house they had to have.

  ‘He’s been very good to us, Jade,’ Jeannie ticked her off when she complained about him hanging around like a bad smell. ‘He can’t help the way he looks.’

  Jade knew that her mum and Trav put up with Horse because he was useful to them. He chopped all the firewood for Mum and put the rubbish bins out, and he did give Trav a lot of things he’d have missed out on otherwise: took him to footy, taught him to shoot. Horse looked up to Jeannie – he worshipped the ground she walked on – but now that they were away from home and Jeannie wasn’t there to see, Jade felt as if he had her in his sights, like a frightened rabbit.

  She banged her thigh against Trav’s and stared at the side of his head, wanting to catch his eye so that she could signal to him: ‘Do something. Tell him to pull his head in. Tell him to knock it off. Say something.’ But Travis wouldn’t meet her gaze. He stared hard out the window, not turning even when she elbowed him. His pinched mouth gave him away. He’s just as scared as I am, thought Jade. Scared of Horse and probably scared of Neville, as well. In the truck, with a beer between his legs and the back full of guns and dogs, Horse wasn’t such a joke any more.

  Jade hadn’t met Neville before yesterday, and she didn’t think her brother had either. He was just a bit older than Horse, Jade thought, but she wasn’t sure because Neville had hardly spoken all day, just packed his guns into the racks behind the front seats, loaded up his dogs, given her a hard look – up and down with his icy blue eyes – then crawled on to the back seat and gone to sleep.