The Road to Winter

by Mark Smith

  Kas kneels down next to the bed and puts her forehead on Rose’s arm. I slip away from her grip and sit on a chair on the other side of the bed.

  We stay here like this for ages. I can see Rose more clearly now from the bit of light coming through the partly opened door. She looks so small, like she’s shrunk. But I can see the bulge the baby makes under the bedsheets.

  Eventually Rose stirs and opens her eyes. With her right hand she reaches out and touches Kas’s face. Then she turns to me and sits her other, injured, hand gently in mine.

  ‘You found her,’ she says. ‘You found her.’

  Her voice is so weak I can hardly hear her. Kas is crying, wiping the tears away with her sleeve.

  ‘I think she found me,’ I say.

  Rose turns to Kas, pulls her in close and kisses her on the cheek. Then she takes her sister’s hand and places it on her belly.

  ‘Feel,’ she says.

  Kas leans in and a smile creases her lips. ‘It’s moving,’ she says.

  ‘We’re going to be okay, aren’t we, Finn?’ Rose says.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Before you know it, you’ll be better. You’ll have the baby and we’ll all move back to my place. We’ll swim every day and hunt and fish and…’

  ‘Rowdy,’ Rose says suddenly. ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘He’s here. He was waiting for us at home. He was hungry, but he’s okay now.’

  ‘He saved me,’ she says. ‘He caught me—the Wilder that stayed behind after you left—but Rowdy saved me. He attacked him.’

  I want to ask about the Wilder I found dead in the paddock, the one with the arrow in his leg and the knife in his chest, but Rose’s eyes are closing again and she’s drifting off. She still hangs onto us, but eventually her grip loosens and we slide her hands under the sheet. Kas leans over and kisses her on the forehead. Then she kisses her belly.

  Back in the kitchen, Willow has fallen asleep at the table. Kas picks her up and Ray takes them to the old couch in the lounge room.

  I know we are still in danger, but everything always feels more solid, more secure, when Ray’s around. It’s like I can offload some of the responsibility, just for a few hours.

  Ray’s standing in the doorway, looking at me.

  ‘Tough day?’ he asks.

  ‘You won’t believe what’s been happening.’

  ‘Maybe in the morning, eh?’ he says. ‘I’m buggered, son. Not as young as I used to be. I’m going to get some shut-eye. You should too. I reckon we’re all going to need our strength soon. Rose’s baby is closer to coming than we thought.’

  ‘She’s not strong enough, Ray.’

  ‘She’s strong enough all right. You don’t know her like I do.’

  It’s Kas. She’s standing behind Ray in the dark.

  ‘She’s the toughest person I know.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Ray says.

  He touches her arm as he walks past her and disappears into his room. He comes back with some blankets.

  ‘You’ll have to kip out on the floor, you two,’ he says. ‘Sorry, but all the beds are taken.’

  ‘Thanks, Ray,’ I say, as he dissolves into the dark once more.

  The lamplight is fading in the kitchen. Kas is just a shadow against the wall.

  ‘I’m too wired to sleep,’ I say.

  ‘Me too. Let’s sit outside for a bit.’

  When she takes my hand I feel like electricity is zinging through me. I don’t know how a girl can do this—make me feel so strong and helpless at the same time.

  She sits on the second step of the porch and I sit behind her. She snuggles back into me and I put my arms around her. Her hands rest on mine, our fingers lacing together. We sit like this for so long I start to wonder if she has fallen asleep.

  ‘Tell me about the sea, Finn,’ she murmurs.

  ‘What’d you mean?’

  ‘This morning, at the rock pools. I saw the way you were with it.’

  ‘When I wasn’t perving at you, you mean?’

  ‘Ha.’ She nudges me and falls quiet again.

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ I say, searching for the words. ‘I grew up with it. Dad taught me to surf when I was about eight. It probably sounds strange, but for me it’s always been about being in that great big ocean, feeling it move under me, understanding how powerful it is, how I’m just a cork bobbing in the hugeness of it.’

  Kas turns her head to look at me, resting her chin on my arm.

  ‘It’s stupid,’ I say, ‘but I used to dream I’d grown gills and I could stay underwater for as long I wanted.’

  ‘It’s not stupid at all. But I want to know—what’s it like to ride a wave.’

  ‘I guess it’s what it must be like to ride a horse at full gallop,’ I say. ‘You’re just moving with the energy of something so much bigger and stronger than you, something that could crush you if it wanted to, but for those few seconds you’re sharing the energy.’

  Kas nods. ‘I know that feeling. I used to have a horse no one else could ride. Stan called him Brutus, but I had my own name for him. River. We just connected somehow, he knew I was never going to hurt him and I believed he’d never hurt me either.’

  Ray’s back porch looks down the valley to the woodshed and the bush beyond it. The wind has dropped right away and the moon has long since set. The clouds have cleared too and the night sky is speckled with stars.

  Kas leans back into me, lifts my hand and brushes my fingers against her face. I know she’s tracing her birthmark with my fingertips.

  ‘You know, back there in the logging coup? Yesterday?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You said I was—’

  ‘—beautiful.’

  ‘No one’s ever told me that. No one. Not even Stan and Beth. They always said it was such a shame that I was born this way. But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘It’s the way I am. It’s me.’

  She’s holding the palm of my hand against her face now, over her birthmark.

  ‘I meant it,’ I say. ‘You’re beautiful. I’ve never known a girl like you.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s not that many girls to choose from anymore.’

  ‘It’s not just that. You’re fierce and strong and you fight when you have to. And you’re a bit scary. I saw what you did to Tusker!’

  ‘So,’ she says, turning around and facing me, ‘do you want to fight me or…?’

  Her lips are against mine again and she’s pressing her whole body into me. Her arms are looped around my neck and her tongue is pushing into my mouth. I take her face in my hands and hold her there, thinking I never want her to stop doing just what she’s doing right now. She pulls her head back and looks straight at me, then she brushes her lips against mine again and again. Even in the dark, I see her smile.

  ‘You’re a good kisser,’ she says softly. ‘I bet you had plenty of girlfriends.’

  ‘I’ve only ever kissed two girls. And I wouldn’t call them girlfriends. I was only thirteen. What about you?’

  Her silence tells me I shouldn’t have brought it up.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ She sighs. ‘The thing is, I wasn’t allowed off the farm unless I was with Stan or Beth, and most of the time I wouldn’t go into town even if they asked me. There was a boy from the next property, Charlie Gunn, who used to come over to help Stan with the crutching, but he was much more interested in Rose than me. I was just the kid sister who hung around. But one afternoon he came over when Rose was in town with Stan. Charlie and I were sorting fleeces in the woolshed and he kissed me. He told me I would be as pretty as Rose if I didn’t have my birthmark.’

  Kas gets to her feet and pulls me up by the hand.

  ‘Let’s get the blankets,’ she says. ‘We can sleep out here on the porch.’

  We tiptoe around the kitchen. It still smells of the kero lamp. Kas looks in on Rose. I pick up the blankets and we both head back out onto the porch.

/>   ‘She’s still sleeping,’ Kas says.

  We spread two blankets one on top of the other to lie on, and pull the third over us. It’s not exactly warm, but Kas snuggles in next to me. Her hair has a musky smell and I can feel her breath on my skin. She turns her head up and kisses me, not on the lips but on the side of my face.

  ‘I feel safe with you,’ she says.

  She pushes in closer and her body moulds to mine. Her breathing gets slower and deeper. I relax and try to sleep too, but the events of the day keep flashing through my head. I keep coming back to being here with Kas, her body so close and warm, Rose asleep inside, Ray and Willow and Rowdy, all of us together now, like a family. And that feeling somehow keeps the thought of danger at bay.

  ‘Finn!’

  I wake in the half-light to find Ray leaning over and shaking me. Kas stirs too and we both look up at him, trying to make sense of what’s going on.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he says. ‘It’s Rose.’

  We scramble up and straightaway the cold morning air hits me. I can still feel Kas’s warmth where she’s been lying against my back.

  She keeps hold of my hand as we walk through into the kitchen. The sun isn’t up yet, but there’s enough morning light in the house for us to see. Ray’s got the lamp in Rose’s bedroom, filling it with a dull light.

  She’s lying back on her elbows with her head up and a look of disbelief on her face. The sheets are wet. Not just perspiration wet, they’re saturated.

  ‘Her waters have broken,’ Ray says.

  I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I figure it can’t be good.

  ‘The baby’s coming,’ he explains.

  Kas kneels down next to Rose and tucks her sister’s wet hair back behind her ears.

  ‘You okay?’ she asks.

  Rose is more alert than she was last night, but I can tell she’s scared.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ she says. ‘It’s too soon.’

  ‘We don’t know that, Rose.’ Ray’s voice is solid, careful. ‘It could be perfectly normal for all we know. You could be due.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Rose says and her head drops back into the pillows.

  ‘All right, you two,’ Ray says to Kas and me. ‘We’ve gotta be as prepared as we can. We’ll need clean water and you’ll find some towels in the cupboard in the hallway.’

  I’m not sure if he actually knows what he’s doing or if he’s remembering some old movie he saw years ago. Either way, I’m just happy to have someone else making the decisions.

  Kas and I are getting everything organised in the kitchen when we hear a low growl that progresses to a long aaah sound.

  ‘It’s a contraction,’ Kas says. ‘Get used to the noise, there’s going to be a lot more of it.’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ I ask.

  ‘The feedstore. There was a girl that had a baby. She was younger than Rose. I helped.’

  ‘You need to tell Ray,’ I say.

  She heads back into the bedroom and I hear their short conversation. Ray goes through to the lounge room and returns with a thick book under his arm. He puts it down on the table.

  ‘Remember I told you about this?’ he says. ‘It’s an old textbook of Harriet’s. There’s a section on births.’

  He bustles out to the porch and returns with another kero lamp, which he lights and places on the table.

  ‘I’m gonna help Kas,’ he says. ‘Find the right page and start reading, son. We’ll need all the information we can get.’

  I hold the book up. Human Anatomy and Physiology. I flick to the index and find Chapter 17, ‘The Stages of Labour’, and start reading.

  ‘Ray,’ I say. He sticks his head around the door. ‘We need to time the contractions.’

  ‘You’d better start counting,’ he says.

  Kas comes back out and sits down next to me. She loops her arm through mine and starts to read too.

  ‘Rose says she’s been having little contractions all night. That was the first big one, though.’

  ‘How is she?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s hard to tell. She’s not making a lot of sense—and that’s a worry. When the contractions get really heavy she’ll have to concentrate on her breathing and try to keep it together. It could take hours or it could happen quickly. Everyone’s different.’

  ‘What about the girl at the feedstore?’

  ‘Danka was another Siley. She was my best friend in there. We were the same age, but she was really pretty. I think she was happy when she got pregnant—meant she didn’t have to work as much. It took about twelve hours for her baby to come.’

  I turn the page and there are diagrams of a baby being born. It all looks so clean and neat in the pictures.

  ‘Rose is tough,’ Kas says, ‘but she’s sick. I’ve never seen her this thin.’

  Willow wanders into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She climbs onto Kas’s lap.

  ‘Is Rose going to have a baby?’ Willow asks.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ I say.

  Rose moans loudly. Kas pushes Willow off, jumps up, and goes into the bedroom.

  The moans become louder, broken by short periods of silence. I can hear Rose’s loud intakes of air before more low groans. Willow buries her face in my jumper and covers her ears.

  Ray comes and sits opposite us. He looks so much older, his face more grizzled.

  I ask Willow to go and give Rowdy some food out on the porch. Ray follows her with a plate of bones.

  When we’re alone again, with just the sound of Rose’s contractions in the next room, I ask Ray if Rose told him anything about the dead man I found in the paddock on Parker Street.

  ‘He had an arrow in the back of his leg,’ I explain, ‘and a knife sticking out of his chest. It was one of our kitchen knives.’

  ‘She said there’d been a fight, but she didn’t tell me about killing anyone.’ He scratches the bristles on his chin. ‘She’s as fierce as they come. I can only guess what they did to her up there at Longley, but whatever it was she’ll do anything not to go back.’

  ‘She was protecting us too. She knew the Wilder had found my place. He had to be kept silent.’

  ‘Well, he can’t get any more silent than that.’

  There’s a louder, longer groan from the bedroom and I hear Kas telling Rose to breathe. The contractions are getting closer together. We’ve got everything ready: basins for warm water, plenty of towels and a couple of big cushions for Rose if she needs to get into a more comfortable position. Ray has lit a fire in the combustion stove.

  ‘We’re all going to have to help in there, Finn,’ he says. ‘You as well.’

  ‘But I don’t know what to do, Ray.’

  ‘She’s gonna scream the house down most likely. Harriet used to say childbirth was like trying to push a basketball through a garden hose. I went with her once, over to Brigid Watson’s place. They had the next farm over. It was when there were no doctors left on the coast. Her husband had died and her kids were just young’uns, so they weren’t much help. Strongest woman I ever seen. She ran that farm on her own, even while she was pregnant. Harriet said she had child-bearing hips.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘A big arse, I reckon. Anyway, the baby slipped out like toothpaste from a tube. Cute little bugger, too. Girl. Didn’t live past her first birthday, though. But I watched what Harriet did, getting Brigid comfortable, talking to her the whole time. Reassuring her. Brigid delivered the baby on all fours.’

  I’m starting to feel a bit sick with this detail, but at least I know more of what to expect.

  ‘Rose doesn’t have child-bearing hips,’ I say.

  ‘No, she doesn’t, son. But she’s got youth on her side.’

  Kas, Ray and I spend the day and most of the night taking it in turns to sit with Rose, trying to reassure her. The contractions gradually grow more intense, longer and closer together.

  It must be well after midnight when Ray lights the lamp and bring
s it back into the bedroom. The brightness seems to startle Rose, who hasn’t said much, apart from swearing, for a while. But with the light she becomes more lucid.

  Between the contractions I wipe the sweat off her face and rub her back. She surprises me when she leans into my shoulder and puts her arm around my neck.

  ‘Hey, dog boy,’ she whispers.

  ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘Like shit. Feels like a pony kicking around inside me.’

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ I say, trying to convince myself as much as her. ‘You’ll both be okay.’

  ‘If…’

  ‘If what?’

  ‘Promise me you and Kas will…’

  ‘We’ll all look after the baby together,’ I say. ‘You and me and Kas and Ray and Willow. All of us. We’re a family now.’

  ‘A family?’ Her face softens. ‘It’s a long time since I had a family.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got one now.’

  She looks at me. Her eyes are still red and her face is flushed. ‘Thanks for finding Kas,’ she says. ‘She told me a bit about what happened.’

  ‘She’s as tough as you, your sister.’

  ‘Tougher, I reckon.’

  Exhausted again, she falls back onto the pillow.

  ‘Keep talking, Finn,’ she whispers. ‘I like to hear your voice.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Anything. Like you talked to me in the kitchen that first day.’

  ‘Growly, you mean?’

  ‘Ha. No, not so growly.’

  ‘I like Kas,’ I say. ‘She’s fierce, but she’s got a soft side, too.’

  It doesn’t take long before the next contraction swells and takes over her whole body. It’s like she’s losing the strength to deal with each new one.

  She rolls onto her side, then slowly lifts herself up onto her hands and knees. Her mouth is pulled tight and her knees are shaking. She lets out a scream.

  ‘Get Kas,’ she gasps. ‘And Ray.’

  I don’t need to call them; they’ve both heard the scream. Rose buries her head in the pillow and her hips sway from side to side. The contractions are so close together now; she hardly has time to recover from one when the next one hits. Sweat drips from her face to her chest.

  Rose stands behind her sister and, at the next contraction, gasps.