Equus

by Rhonda Parrish

  “You like that one?”

  “Yup.” He reminded her of the brumby that she had befriended down near the edge of Wallory Creek. It was a silvery grey with dappled hind legs and had come to her on the first day she had sat alone at the creek and cried about missing her mother. It was his tuft of tail that now sat in her shoe box. She was surprised at how much hair he shed. She wished she could groom him but brumbies are wild and she was sure a brush would have made him skitter off. He was her secret. She fed him carrots and sometimes sugar cubes, even though she knew it wasn’t good for him. A treat was good for the soul, though, her mother used to say. That made a bit of sugar okay.

  The music began and after a quick jolt the carousel started. Wendy was the only one on it, besides Devon who turned the handle in the center of the platform. As she rode, up and down, round and round, the carousel horse started warming between her thighs and soon Wendy felt the pelt of a living, breathing horse beneath her. She opened her eyes. Nope. These horses weren’t real. They were carousel horses. She clung on and closed her eyes and then she was riding, out across an open field with the wind blowing past cheeks whipping her hair out of her eyes.

  The carousel slowed and the music faded to a whisper; Wendy opened her eyes. She was back on the merry-go-round horse and back in the small town of Coorooma.

  “You enjoy that?” Devon smiled and Wendy noticed sweat glistened from her forehead.

  “Yeah. That was cool.” She was confused at the feelings that washed through her. A combination of embarrassment and shame, excitement and adventure.

  “Feel free to come again.”

  “How long you here for?” Wendy hoped she would be here a while. She wanted to ride the carousel again.

  “As long as I need to be.”

  “I wish I was only here for a while.”

  “Everything is temporary, Wendy.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it.” Wendy clung to the horse’s neck. Her eyes started to well. Carooma’s stark landscape of flat yellow lands reflected the loneliness she felt since her mother left. She wiped her right sleeve under each eye and raised her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Her mother had told her that was how one stopped themselves from crying in public. She’d had to do it a lot these days.

  “Maybe see you tomorrow, kiddo.”

  “Maybe.”

  Wendy slid off the horse. The carousel experience left her elated and emotional at the same time. She’d really felt like she was on a real horse but of course that wasn’t true. Just like Lillian Jones wasn’t a real fairy godmother just because she grew pumpkins.

  She walked home and stood out the front. Should she go in? Through the window she saw her father slouched on the couch mesmerized by the television and smoking a cigarette. Good. Lillian wasn’t there. She walked down the side lane past the house to the shed.

  She undid the latch for the shed door and went inside. The bags of carrots were there. Her father had never asked her why she kept so many but then, he gave Wendy a lot of freedom. “Provided you ain’t up to no mischief, won’t hurt you to climb rocks and trees,” was all he said. She slung a bag of carrots over her shoulder and walked across the back paddock. She separated the two lines of wire that made up the fence and slipped through. She walked up the small hill, over the boulders marked with the graffiti of lost loves and through the bushes. Then down towards the sandy soil that led to the pebbles and the creek.

  She whistled and waited.

  She heard the splish splish of horse’s hooves walking through the shallow waters before he appeared. It was the silver brumby. He sauntered towards her, his head down for her to stroke his long neck. He was getting used to her.

  “Hello,” she cooed in his ear.

  The horse muffled a snort and nuzzled his velvet nose into the bend between her neck and shoulder. Wendy giggled at how it tickled her.

  “Okay. You want your treat, right?”

  She opened the bag of carrots and let the horse break the first carrot in two with one bite.

  “Soon there’ll be culling, Dad says.” The horse munched on the carrots and blinked. Wendy noticed for the first time how long his eyelashes were. She didn’t want Silver to be culled. From 6,000 to 600 her father had said when he was telling Clive. Old Clive was all for it. Destroying the soil he’d said and Wendy’s Dad changed the subject. Clive was known for his foul temper when people disagreed with him.

  The town hall was cold and the floorboards coated in the fine dust of time caked onto them no matter how much they were mopped.

  “It’s always ten degrees colder in here than outdoors,” her father said to her as he put his beanie on her head pulling it down past her eyebrows.

  “Thanks.” She pulled it back up to see. The town hall was crowded. There were folk that weren’t even from Coorooma but from towns around the valley. All had made it their business to attend the meeting. Tension iced the already cold air and Wendy could see it in the way men stomped their feet and the women wedged their hands in their pockets as far as they could for warmth. The Mayor stood behind the lectern and cleared his throat.

  “We’re here tonight to discuss the proposal the Government has planned to cull the current population of Coorooma’s National Park of Brumbies from six thousand to six hundred.”

  Silence. Then murmurs began.

  “The brumbies have been here for a hundred and fifty years!” Lillian Jones shouted out. “They’re part of the landscape!”

  “The brumbies are destroying the natural habitat! They’re destroying the moss! There’s over six thousand!” Wendy recognized Clive’s brittled voice.

  “Six thousand, huh? Where did you get them facts?” Lillian asked. Wendy noticed she stood on tiptoes when she raised her voice. “They’re part of our history! Think of the wartime heritage of these horses!”

  “Why don’t you just keep to your pumpkins?”

  And then there was uproar. Wendy put her hands on her ears. She didn’t want to hear of the culling.

  “Why not take them and break them in? Give them to children as pets? Or for Horse Riders Groups and to muster cattle?” It was Ms. Nguyen, but she was the newest member of Carooma so nobody was listening. Wendy thought of her brumby’s long eyelashes. She poked her father’s arm. Her father ignored her, listening to Clive yelling about do-gooders and that they didn’t belong here. She poked her father’s arm again.

  “Can I go home?”

  “Sorry kiddo, sure. Straight home, okay? Things could get a bit heated up tonight. People might go out and shoot brumbies. You know what I’m saying? Silly folk that take an idea and ride it like a rodeo.”

  She knew he meant Clive. “Can’t I just…”

  “Straight home.”

  Wendy didn’t look her father in the eye. He had always trusted her to do the right thing but the brumby was more important. She had asked him many times if he would help catch a wild brumby and break it in for riding but her father said no. She’d said it without saying there was any special horse. That was still her secret. Like the way she constantly thought about her mother since she’d left.

  “They belong here to roam free,” was all he had said. Like my mother, she’d felt like answering but she didn’t say anything.

  She left the hall and made her way to Werrily Creek. When she passed the high street, Devon was there, just like she said she would be, with the carousel revolving to the sound of slow organ music. Nobody was on it. Wendy looked at the horses. Tonight they weren’t adorned with their candy-colored saddles but were bare back and without reins. They looked like a herd she’d seen once at Werrily Creek.

  Devon waved at her but Wendy pretended she didn’t see her—she wanted to see her brumby. The real thing. Not a wooden horse. When she looked at the carousel again it seemed the horses were real, some, their necks down as if grazing and others shaking their manes and flicking their tails. She slapped the side of her head and kept on walking.

  The horse came without her whistling. She put her fi
ngers through his mane and rubbed her face against his neck. He knew her. She knew him. Friends. They were friends.

  Wendy took out her treats from her pocket: some sugar cubes and half a carrot. He ate from her hand and she felt the velvet texture of his muzzle and scratched him under the groove of his chin. She sat down by the creek and the horse stood next to her, grazing quietly, occasionally flicking his tail. They were like this for some time and Wendy thought she would doze off when suddenly, he lifted his head and perked his ears. He stumbled backwards, then turned and ran through the creek in the direction he’d come from with a soft whinny.

  Wendy turned to see Clive. His eyes narrowed and tobacco and gin smell stronger than she’d remembered. On his head he wore his prized possession, a hat made out of the fur of a feral cat. She stepped backwards.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve seen you, here with that horse.”

  She didn’t answer. He was staring at her, without blinking. His mouth wide open in a grin.

  “That your horse?”

  “What horse?”

  He laughed. “The silver you were with.”

  “There’s six thousand, remember? Could be one of many.”

  “Liar.”

  Wendy shrugged.

  “Scared, aren’t you?”

  She felt him staring at her bare legs and was compelled to run. She did. A large stone hit her hard on her right shoulder and then she heard laughter. Wendy kept running. She didn’t turn around.

  “Next time it’ll be a bullet in your back. Stay away from the brumbies, or they’ll shoot you, too,” Clive yelled.

  Wendy ran up the hill. Her ankle gave way over a loose rock but still she didn’t stop.

  When she came past the carousel the lights were switched off and Devon was unrolling the canvas awnings.

  “Rain coming in this evening,” she called to Wendy but Wendy couldn’t answer. She was short of breath and her chest was heaving.

  “Who you running from?”

  Wendy kept panting and rubbed at her sore ankle. She wouldn’t tell her father let alone a stranger.

  “You can talk to me, if you like.”

  Wendy thudded to the floor. Her ankle ached and she needed to catch her breath. She looked up and noticed the last canvas awning had been rolled down. A pang of disappointment stabbed at her.

  “You moving on?” she asked.

  “Not just yet, but soon. Smells like a storm is coming, don’t want my horses to get wet,” she said and tossed her neck forward and back so that her long plait flew over her shoulder and rested on her back. “You’d best go home but I’ll see you tomorrow. I promise.”

  Devon smiled at her so that the wrinkles on her face seemed to stretch behind her ears. Wendy smiled back. She liked Devon. A lot. And she knew that Devon liked her, too.

  “Good night,” Wendy said. And hobbled home, even though she was out of breath. There was something unusual about the scent of the night air and she wanted to get home before her father did.

  The light was on. Her father was already home. She stood nervously at the front door before pulling the screen open as quietly as she could.

  “I’m in the kitchen, Wendy,” her father called out.

  It was now or never. She was going to get into trouble and there was no avoiding it. She pushed the kitchen door open and there sat her father, sharing a woodbine with Lillian, a tureen of pumpkin soup in front of her on the table.

  “Where did you go?”

  Wendy bit her lip. The more people knew her secret—besides Clive—the greater the chance of her silver being killed. Then she remembered Devon, rolling down the canvases.

  She sat on the wooden chair nearest the table, where her mother used to sit. She had never sat in it since she’d left, that would be two years now.

  Everything she loved ran away.

  She rubbed her sore ankle. Then she was crying and telling her father and Lillian what had happened at Werrily Creek.

  The gunshots came at 1 AM. Wendy woke and sat upright in bed. She put her jeans over her pajama bottoms and her big black jumper and headed to the kitchen. The light was on. Her father was already up. He was sitting on her mother’s chair in the kitchen leaning forward to lace his boots.

  “You’re staying here,” he said firmly. “There are guns out there.”

  Wendy stared at her father. She thought of the brumbies and Clive and Devon and Lillian and her pumpkin soup.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “You can’t.”

  He got up and locked the door behind him. “I’ve locked you in,” he called out. “It’s for your own good, Wendy. Things are dangerous here tonight.”

  Wendy bit her lip and swore under her breath at her father. Her cheeks grew hot and she felt a bit of vertigo. She had to get out. She went to the bathroom and found the bandages. She wrapped her ankle, securing it tight and put her socks and sneakers on. Then went back to the kitchen.

  The window. She would get out of the window. She climbed up onto the sink and stood on her knees as she pushed the stiff window open. There was enough of an opening for her to squeeze out of even though she knew that she would have bruised ribs next day. She landed on her side in the bushes, jumped up to stand and brushed herself off. Wendy hobbled down the dirt road toward the center of the town.

  The carousel was covered from the awnings to the floor in hanging canvas pegged down as if a tent. It seemed lifeless but light cracked through the curtains of Devon’s caravan windows. Wendy decided not to knock.

  Instead she hobbled, walked, and jogged down to Werrily Creek. The wind whipped her cheeks. The storm that Devon had predicted hadn’t quite come…but it threatened to. She pushed her way through the bracken before the sandy beds at the creek.

  Clive stood, his right hand cuffed around Wendy’s dad’s collar. In his left hand, he held a rifle. “Dad!” Wendy screamed.

  At the sound of Wendy’s voice, Clive let go of her dad and stepped back. For a few moments, they stood in a suspended silence except for the gentle rippling of the creek water against rock. Then Clive took a step towards Wendy, his face blotched.

  “You shouldn’t be here, girl,” he said.

  “Yes I should.” She stood straighter, angry not scared.

  “I told you to stay home!” Her father yelled. “Go!”

  “I won’t. Until he does!” She pointed at Clive brandishing the gun as if it was a sword, his finger on the trigger.

  “I shot your horse!” Clive called out laughing.

  Wendy ran towards him; her hands went numb. She grabbed his hair on either side of his head and pulled.

  “You little cow!”

  “Wendy!”

  Then her father was running towards her.

  A shot fired. Wendy threw herself onto the ground, skidding on her stomach across the edge of the creek. Had Clive shot her father? She clenched her teeth, too scared to open her eyes.

  Then there was another shot from behind them all. It surprised Wendy into action—she scrambled to her feet and looked for a bush to hide behind. Who had fired the second shot? Wendy saw the purple gum boots first, then trousers and the bottom of a long silver plait.

  “Devon?” Wendy asked, incredulous.

  “Put your gun down or I’ll shoot you square in the balls. I have excellent aim.”

  Clive dropped the gun and put his hands up in the air.

  “Get outta of here.”

  As Clive scrambled away she walked through the edges of the creek and put her hand on Wendy’s back.

  “You okay, kid?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who are you?” Wendy’s dad asked.

  “Devon. Carousel owner. Horse tamer of sorts.”

  “The carousel in town is yours then,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  She offered Wendy a hand and she took it. Wendy’s stomach and thighs were drenched from the creek, her ankle ached, and she was shivering from the cold. She p
ut her arms around Devon’s waist and then she was hugging her tight. In that hug there was the smell of wet grass and horse hay, and the warm soft textures of Devon’s jumper.

  Wendy took her hand and let her walk her home.

  The next morning was unusual for its silence. No birds sang and the sound of cars rambling down the town’s one road was absent.

  Wendy sat up from her bed and looked out her bedroom window. She couldn’t believe that people would want to harm horses that had done nothing but been alive. The brumbies had been part of the landscape for over one hundred and fifty years. They had even been used as war horses during both world wars.

  When she got out of bed and went to the kitchen, she found Lillian at the stove frying pumpkins with cinnamon for breakfast. Had she stayed the night? She had never done that before. But here she was with her father’s dressing gown on. A place had been set for Wendy, complete with a sliced bread and small knob of butter on a white plate.

  “Good morning, Wendy. Fancy a pumpkin fry up?”

  Wendy didn’t want to answer.

  “You slept here last night with Dad?”

  “Yes.” She handed Wendy a slice of thickly buttered bread like a peace offering.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Lillian put the toast onto the plate she had set for Wendy and turned back to the stove, flipping the slices of sizzling pumpkin. “Clive was arrested last night and your father’s called an early meeting to suggest methods to keep the population down that don’t involve killing.”

  Wendy played with her bread on the plate. “Were many brumbies shot last night?”

  “Clive killed a few, yes.” Lillian didn’t look at Wendy as she put the hot pieces of pumpkin into a serving dish.

  Wendy poked at the butter on the toast with her index finger. She didn’t look up.

  “Are you going to be sleeping here from now on?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I want to visit Devon.”

  “The carousel lady? Sure, but eat your toast. I’ll take care of this and then I’ll be off. Your father asked me to be here when you got up on account of last night and all.”