Coming Rain

by Stephen Daisley

  Look back at me, Clara. I would die for you.

  And she did, he saw her teeth, her lifted hand. Twisting in the saddle, she called something back at him. Her flat hand now on the rump of the running horse.

  ‘I can, Lewis.’

  He breathed out, wanted to kneel on the ground but instead smiled as big as he could and waved at her. ‘Thank you,’ he called. ‘Thank you, I would like that. I would.’

  He turned to the woolshed and saw that Painter and John Drysdale had come out to stand on the landing and were looking at him and then to where Clara was riding.

  ‘You right son?’ Painter called to him.

  Drysdale stared at him and the damaged red eye seemed to be glowing in the white ointment of his face.

  CHAPTER 34

  The bungurra had brought strength to her legs and heart and lungs.

  After an hour of lying near the pup, the bitch stood and trotted back the way they had come. She was cautious, stopping every few hundred yards to listen. Cut back across their tracks to be upwind of any followers. The helpless and staggered spoor they had left was obvious; easy prey to any. She studied their tracks and sat. Waited and began to tremble. Stood as the shooter seemed to call out to her…No, just the wind. She turned suddenly to bite at something that wasn’t there and began to settle into the running: alongside old bitch dingos coming to the hunt, gone in the teeth yet always obedient to the pack.

  She was alone now.

  Casting about for scent she became almost certain the shooter was not coming. It was too easy. Now using the old looping pattern of travel, she traced their tracks back almost to the dry creek bed where the old man had shot at them. Through the bushes she could see the car, still stranded on the lip of the creek. She raised her nose, there was no sense of the man, he had gone. Listened intently. The car seemed still and dust had settled on it. Oil and petrol fumes surrounding it. Something was pulling her to go to it and examine it more closely but she resisted this. The spirit of her mother seemed to whisper walk back. Come away child-pup from this thing. Leave it.

  She walked backwards silently and turned. Began to trot to where she had come from. Night was falling and the western star come up. The moon’s consort and suddenly a shower of falling stars. The great cloudless sky turning flare white for a moment and then back, almost black. Second moon rising.

  She was running across the flat land in the moonlight. Her face, her open mouth was as she was, unthinking. Of remembered wild dogs running free nearby, in the shadows. The land moving beneath her. The ground came first. After that her feet and eyes and mouth.

  When she reached him, she saw the young red pup had scratched a hollow for himself and lay, nose to tail. The bitch ran to him and sniffed. Circled and tested the perimeter of where they were sleeping that night. She pissed and defecated and returned to her markings to smell them as if to reassure herself of their presence and the boundary of their being there.

  It was high moon dark as she came back to the sleeping body of the adolescent. She pawed the sand to create also a hollow. Again circled, sniffed and then lay down. Her back to his back. She felt his warmth and the movement of his lungs as he breathed. The sinewy strength of his dog youth came into her. The beating of his heart.

  CHAPTER 35

  The black filly was light on her feet. Her coat shining and it was obvious she had the thoroughbred in her. Nervous and quick to move, eyes showing as big as you like, she looked at you beneath a black forelock, pricked ears and already long mane. Thick black tail held high and strong behind. One white foot.

  Lew leaned on the wooden rail of the circular dressage yard and watched Clara as she gently laid the rope over the filly’s back. All the time she cooed to her, hushed her and praised her. Sssh now the good baby girl, just a little bit yes you are, I am not here to hurt you. We are going to be good friends you and I oh yes we are ssssh now hush darling. I know I know, little bit. Come come to me to me. Look here to me. Steady darling now.

  Allowed the filly her natural curiosity. Tentative at first and quick to start, she approached Clara, stretched out a long neck and smelled her. Began to trust. Clara watched as the filly gently touched her chest with her nose, stepped closer and became more curious with the unfamiliar smell and rub. Her ears moving back and forth, she began to nibble at the shirt pockets. Clara laughed and the filly quickly raised her head. The rope fell away into the dirt as she threw off to her near side and spun, turning her rump.

  ‘Would you kick me darlin’?’

  The filly laid her ears back and cocked her near hip as if to kick.

  ‘Now now…Go on if you have to, just a little bit, go on.’

  And she did, kicked out first with her near then off leg then hopped and kicked out with both back legs.

  ‘Both barrels. A fighter,’ Clara said. ‘All the better for it. You a killer horse?’ She whistled for a while and waited. Whistled again and watched as the young horse seemed to think about the whistle. Her ears moving back and forth. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Clara turned away from the yards to allow the filly time to settle. To show her as a mother would that sometimes she should be ignored.

  ‘She loves you,’ Lew said and smiled. ‘Just like your dogs, she cannot stop wondering about you now.’

  ‘We will see,’ Clara said.

  The joey Gwen was in a sack around Pearl’s neck. Holes had been cut to let her back legs stick out. A straw hat on her head with more holes cut in it to allow for her ears.

  ‘She feeding?’

  ‘I have an old long-neck beer bottle we use for the lambs. A rubber teat.’ She frowned. ‘She has the scours though. I don’t think Velvet’s milk agrees with her.’

  ‘Some bread soaked in the milk, a little condensed milk?’ Lew was breathless looking at her.

  ‘My mother had a recipe for orphaned kangaroos. A level tablespoon of Sunshine milk powder; two teaspoons of cornflour, an egg yolk and a pinch of salt. Ten drops of Lane’s emulsion and about a pint of hot water.’

  He wanted to keep laughing in her presence. This joy was the strangest thing. ‘Lane’s emulsion?’

  ‘Should work. Jimmy is so funny,’ she said. ‘He pretends to hate Gwen, saying we will eat you, hah haha, but then I caught him trying to feed her some butter on his fingers and cooing to her. We hang her up near the stove where it’s warm. In the kitchen.’

  ‘I like Jimmy,’ Lew said and smiled. ‘I do. Painter does not.’

  ‘Jimmy’s a darling. Such a tough old bloke in his own way.’

  She remembered Jimmy, speaking Malay, patting and stroking little Gwen. Pagi bayi yang baik: good morning baby. Holding her ear. So funny your ears, telinga. This way and that. Miss Clara this one better not do a kencing dan tahi piss and shit on my floor.

  She stopped and looked directly at Lew. ‘It was Jimmy who found Mum. She had got herself into the water tank with handfuls of horseshoes.’ She paused. ‘He told me she was waiting for me in a better place. That it was a blessing. And such things are just the shadows of angels; that my freckles are the kisses of those same malaikat angels, he said that to me. I know they are lies, but it was comforting somehow.’

  They looked at each other and he seemed helpless with such words. After a while, she came to his rescue. ‘She was desperately ill and in the end it was a blessing. I thin
k Jimmy may have even helped her. He was so very kind. Are you all right Lewis?’

  ‘Yep. I’m good.’ For some reason his eyes had filled with tears. He had not wept since he was a small boy and had witnessed his own mother’s grief. ‘What did you make the pouch out of?’ he asked, again nodding at Gwen.

  ‘You can use anything really,’ she said. ‘This is an old chaff sack.’

  He was nodding, silent, as Clara continued speaking. ‘She seems to love it. Must be like being in her mum I suppose, the feeling of running muscles. The warm body moving. The blood surrounding her. Safe as you can get.’ Clara looked away towards the shearing shed. ‘Today’s Thursday. When do you leave?’

  ‘Next Monday.’

  They heard Jimmy calling from beyond the trees that screened the homestead. ‘Miss Clara? You there Miss Clara? Dinner time. I fill your bath. Dinner Miss Clara.’ He lengthened her name so that Clara became Claraaah. Bath too; it became baaaath.

  ‘I better go,’ she said.

  Lew nodded. ‘Me too. I told Painter I was going for a walk.’

  ‘I’ll see you later Lewis. Hold out your hand.’ Stepped forward, gripped his hand and kissed his cheek.

  He held his breath as she took Pearl and stepped onto the rail and then slid onto her back. ‘Fat girl,’ she whispered. ‘And as for you,’ she looked at the black filly in the yards. ‘We’ll have a wongi tomorrow sweetheart my little bit.’ The filly had come to the rail to watch them. Her nose between the rails.

  Clara pulled Pearl’s head around. ‘Got to go.’ Gwen’s straw hat nodded.

  Lew watched her as she walked Pearl through the trees surrounding the homestead. At the last moment she looked back and waved.

  He began to walk towards the shearers quarters, where he knew Painter would be already in the shower. He did not feel his feet touching the ground.

  CHAPTER 36

  The young dog woke her when the half moon was directly above them. The night was black and he had stood and walked out and returned to wake her.

  He was correct, they needed to move away from where they were now, to begin to cross the country again.

  She rose from the warmth of her hollow and stretched. Pushed her paws out and lowered her hips, lifted her chest and neck. Her spine came alive, hissed life into her as if a snake, as if bungurra. Shook her body and panted once then stopped as the night was cool. Licked at the young dog; if she was not in pup she would have mated with him the next time she came into heat. That time, it made her there for any dog. The strongest or quickest usually won. Her nose rose off the youngster, taking the smells of the night.

  He ran a few feet away. Stopped and ran back to her, licked at her face. She was being entreated to follow. She waited; this was the country he had come out of and it was no longer his country. Her reluctance allowed him to lead and he ran ahead, knowing he was circling to a long, tree-fringed valley, his nose in the air, ears forward for any sound. Something must be terribly wrong there.

  They ran through the remainder of the night, only stopping twice before the sun rose, and they lay on the lip of an enormous salt pan. On the other side was the beginning of the yate trees.

  The red pup whined and licked at her face. Turned to run across the expanse of the salt.

  CHAPTER 37

  Lew and Painter walked up a ridge behind the quarters until they came to a plateau. The immensity of land the downs covered stretched out below them. Clouds were building and dry lightning flickered through the darkness to the north. The distant clouds occasionally backlit by flashes, the reflected colours of sulphur and bright, white light through them; minutes later, far-off thunder.

  Lew knelt and built a fire in the sandy red gravel from dried grass and dead twigs. He used Painter’s matches to light it and once it was going he rose and circled where they were and came back with larger branches. Fed these onto the fire and sat down. Northeasterly winds blew the bright flames sideways away from the storm clouds. Sparks flying away in the wind.

  They sat on large rocks and looked to the north. Lew held the quart bottle of Saint Agnes brandy Drysdale had given to them to celebrate the completion of the shearing. Painter was looking at it.

  ‘You should not,’ Lew said.

  ‘I know that son.’

  ‘You might end up in Kalgoorlie like the last time. Naked on Hay Street with that whore’s underpants on your head. You were fightin’ outside the lockup for fuck’s sake. They were white and green. Shiny.’

  ‘As her cunt and Ireland. She was Irish, I remember that.’ Painter was silent.

  ‘Ireland?

  Painter reached out his arm with the blue ship and the naked lady. ‘Give me that bottle son.’

  They sat and watched the cloud formations to the north. A slew of dark birds across their front.

  ‘The drinking when it’s heavy drives you mad,’ Painter said. ‘I broke both my hands once just cause some cunt asked me to fill out a form.’

  A sudden wind took and lifted sand. ‘Those forms they give you. Can you read and write? The cunts.’

  ‘What forms?’

  ‘I don’t know. I smashed all my knuckles punching a cell door. Both hands, that’s the drinking when it’s heavy. Electric ants over my back. I would see cats and dogs. Not the real ones, just shapes like cats and dogs and they talkin’ too. Once I thought I was the Man on the hill, come back. The second coming mate, the Mr Jesus himself.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Someone asked me to do a miracle.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  Lew laughed.

  ‘No fuckin’ miracles,’ Painter said and drank. Shuddered as he swallowed. ‘Sometimes I would shit myself and in the end just blood. Wouldn’t wash for a week. Sometimes two or three.’

  ‘I remember,’ Lew said.

  Painter put the bottle between his feet and began to roll a cigarette. ‘Almost out of tobacco son. I might go to town with old man Drysdale. You want anything?’

  ‘No, it can wait.’ Lew was shredding a piece of wood in his fingers. ‘How much smoke you got left? I got the Dr Pat’s in the Gladstone if you want.’

  Painter didn’t look up and waved a hand as to indicate it did not matter. He grimaced, put the cigarette in his mouth and cupped his hands against the wind as he lit it. The blue smoke came out his nose and he stifled a cough.

  ‘The other day, son, you asked me about love, remember? If I ever been in love?’

  He raised the bottle again and drank.

  Lew stared at him. Thought of Clara’s mouth and smile when she saw him.

  ‘Yeah I did.’

  ‘Is it young Clara Drysdale? You shook on her?’

  ‘It is, mate; yeah, I am.’

  Painter smoked. ‘You cannot go there.’

  Lew made a noise of disbelief and wanted for some strange reason to say you’re all right but didn’t and thought instead of Maureen O’Reilly at Cottesloe. How she, undressing, said Peter and you, who is not you. How wet she was with his fingers in her. His thumb on her navel and her neck tasting of salt. Then, her heels on his hips and her cunt like a clinging oyster. She was thirty-seven and smelled almost entirely of sea water. That 1941 Shell Oil wall calendar. A Wilson McCoy painting above the months and day numbers. Girl with Clown D
oll.

  He remembered thinking that isn’t you either, Maureen O’Reilly.

  ‘Well,’ Painter said lifting the bottle. ‘Happy days.’

  Lew watched him drink. ‘Who is Mary?’ he said. ‘On your arm. I have seen her name for ten years.’

  ‘What?’ Painter’s eyes were glazed and he was staring at the ground about three feet in front of him. It was a long time since he had taken a drink. ‘Mary?’ Held the bottle towards Lew, who shook his head.

  ‘Yeah. Mary.’

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She could play the piano like nobody’s business.’

  ‘What are you talking about mate?

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  A dark curtain of rain swept towards the remaining distant light. It would not reach them for a while. Another flicker of dry lightning through the clouds.

  Painter drank. Shook his head and drank again.

  ‘But I could never trust her see. She was a woman and she laughed all the time. Like the housewives on Loftus Street. Full of fucking lust they are. Never trust a woman son they’ll break your heart. Went back to some steady cunt and took my breath away. My heart in her black hand.’

  Lew walked to the edge of the flat ground. Looked out at the darkening land.

  ‘No, no.’ He would not look back. ‘Cut it out. It was our father who left us. Took off. My mother become mad as a cut snake after that. He belted her up a few times too. Knocked out her front teeth. Made her deaf in one ear.’

  Painter hadn’t heard him. He was drinking.

  Lew turned around, he indicated the storm to the north. ‘We should have gone to Broome or something. Drilling for oil. Crocodile hunting. Done something different.’