by Karen Wood
But where was Rusty? In the half-light of the breaking day, the foals were just small dark blobs, curled up next to their mothers.
A small shadow slunk between two trees.
Luke strained his eyes to see, but whatever it was had disappeared. From the corner of his eye, he saw another shadow slide between clumps of grass. He spun his head around. There were three more shadows lurking. Dingos. They were everywhere.
He jumped to his feet. There were at least six dogs prowling around in a pack. The stallion stepped to the edge of the mob and held his nose up to the wind. The little brown mare scrambled to her feet, whinnying. Like dominoes in reverse, the others followed. They stood alert with their ears pricked, sniffing at the air.
The brown mare trotted a few steps beyond the mob. She spun around to put her rump to the dingos and lashed out with a hind leg, warning them to stay away.
The dogs kept circling, snarling, panting, dodging back and forth. The foals skittered about nervously, brushing up close to their mothers. Rusty erupted suddenly from a patch of tall grass, ran into the centre of the mob and gave a frightened whinny.
Luke picked up a handful of stones and threw them at one of the dark shapes. ‘Get out of here!’ he hissed. He didn’t want to make a big commotion and frighten the horses into a gallop. The dogs would only give chase.
As the dogs advanced into the clearing on slinky hindquarters, their lips curled into snarls, the horses crushed together, panicky. They lashed out with their hind legs as the dogs darted in and snapped at their heels. The old red stallion charged one of them and stamped his feet. It snarled viciously and rushed back at him. The stallion spun and lashed out at it with a back foot, sending the dog flying with a yelp.
The noise startled the mares and they fled across the gully, only to be met by more dogs. Confused, they scattered in all directions. Luke saw Rusty get separated from the mob. One dog turned its attention on him and two other dogs followed, sprinting and growling, surrounding him.
Luke ran up to them, throwing rocks. ‘Get out of it! Leave him alone!’ His attempts to help only added to the chaos, scattering the horses further. He watched them gallop into the hills with the dogs on their heels.
Two dogs sprinted after Rusty and another came in from the side, aiming for his head. The young chocolate colt came out of nowhere and snatched one of them in his teeth. He shook it like a rag doll while it howled with pain, and then flung it on a rock with a bone-shattering crunch. Then the colt spun around and hoofed a second dog in the head. It went to the ground like a bag of rocks. The third dog fled, its tail between its legs.
‘Way to go, Chocky!’ yelled Luke. He hurled another handful of stones at the remaining dogs as they scattered and fled. ‘And don’t come back!’
The mares came galloping out of the tree-covered hillside, calling for their foals. They skittered anxiously back to their mothers while the colts circled protectively around them, pushing them back up into a group.
Chocky nickered gently to Rusty and guided him back to the mob. The mares welcomed the little colt back into their circle, and nuzzled and sniffed all over Chocky. He stood with his tail in the air and gave an impressive snort.
‘Chocky! You’re a hero!’ said Luke out loud.
The little brown mare stepped up to Chocky, sniffed him briefly on the nose and then walked away, inviting him to follow. She led him into the centre of the mob and together they resumed grazing.
Luke wandered over to the dog to check it was properly dead. He nudged the black lump with one foot. It was a bitch, with a full udder of milk, and it was very dead.
Her pups are going to be hungry.
The nights by the river were long and empty. Luke tried to fill in the silence by making up bad hip-hop tunes and beat boxing.
I’m sitting on a river (much scratching and snaring)
In the middle of the world (more scratching and snaring)
I wish I had some food (quick K-snare, inward hollow snare, nearly choked)
And my favourite Jessy-girl! (back to scratching and snaring)
He sounded appalling against the serene backdrop, but he was beyond caring. At least it frightened the cane toads away.
Each day, as Luke watched the brumbies, he made some time to kick off his boots and just stand on the land.
Heat from your hands, tingle from your feet, tightness from your belly . . .
He would think of Harry and feed all his sorrow back down into the dirt. Then he would try to pull all that the man had given him – strength, energy, self-belief – up out of the ground.
Each night he thought less and less of the company of the other men, and more and more of his family. His mob. As he rolled into his swag, he took the moonstone out, then fell asleep with it in his hand, listening to the sounds of the river. And when he dreamt, they were beautiful dreams. He was lying in his own river, the Coachwood River. Harry, Annie, Lawson and Ryan, Tom and Jess, Rosie and even Grace were never far away.
16
TWO DAYS BEFORE he was due to meet Bob, Luke woke after sleeping so soundly he barely knew where the night had gone. Darkness was shifting into day and the air was still and cool. He rose from his swag and dived into the river, letting it wash over him and clear his groggy head. He lay face-up with his arms pulling slowly back and forth through the water, watching the day slowly take on more colour.
Above the tree branches, silvery locusts flitted in the early sunlight. Birds came down to the water to quench their thirst, then rose again, darting in and out of the leaves. On the edge of the river, a small freshwater crocodile hid from the sun under the overhanging branches.
As Luke lay there watching it, thinking about ancestors and the land, he held his belly firm and felt the earth breathing all around him.
Then a low thrumming noise crept slowly into his consciousness. He instantly felt a twist in his belly and knew something wasn’t right.
Listen to your belly. It will keep you safe.
He pulled himself out of the water and walked hurriedly over to his boots, pulled them on and headed out into the open field beyond the river.
A small white helicopter skimmed along the paddock. Luke could see two people in the seats, as clear as day. It slowed, hovered momentarily, and then continued whizzing across the ground. It went up and over the hills and disappeared behind them into the rugged limestone country and off the pasture lease.
There were no cattle over those hills. That chopper was going after the brumbies!
Luke broke into a jog and quickly progressed to a sprint. He ran and ran until his breath tore at his lungs, drowning out the sound of the helicopter, which chugged away behind the hills. He grabbed a post at the edge of the paddock, leapt over the fence and began to scrambling up the hill, stumbling and tripping in his haste.
At the summit he saw the chopper again, low over the tree-lined creek. It hovered up and down and zigzagged from side to side.
The brumbies cantered along the edge of the creek, staying under the cover of the trees.
Luke ran along the top of the ridge, trying to keep up.
‘That’s it, stay on the river, Rusty,’ he said out loud as he dodged, bare-legged, in and out of spinifex bushes.
The brumbies reached a bend in the creek, and the little brown mare shot out from the trees and galloped across the flat plains. Two other horses followed and soon the whole mob was racing across the hard, dry savannah, out in the open, vulnerable.
‘No!’ Luke yelled helplessly. ‘Don’t come out or they’ll shoot you!’
He ran down the side of the hill, waving at the chopper, hoping to place himself between it and the mob, but they were drawing further and further away.
He scrambled down the hillside, and began to lose control of his feet as rocks rolled out from under him. He tumbled, faster and faster, until he could barely get one foot in front of another. Low spiky bushes scratched at his legs.
Then a large rock dislodged under his foot and sent him cra
shing forward, trying to brace his fall with his right hand but rolling over and onwards. The thousand torturous needles of spinifex bush brought him to a sudden and mute-rendering halt. His wrist hammered with big, excruciating belts of pain, and his spike-peppered skin screeched in protest with any movement he made.
He gasped for breath, and when he finally filled his lungs he swore as loud and hard as he could. Then he gritted his teeth and with his good left arm, he managed to pull himself out of the spinifex bush, tearing his shirt to shreds and gathering more spikes in the process. He stood clutching his right arm and cursing, over and over.
You still connected, boy?
‘No, I’m bloody not,’ he yelled angrily at the land. In the distance, the horses were still galloping, leaving streams of dust behind them. The helicopter was directly above them. But it wasn’t shooting.
What did those people want? They’d run the brumbies into the ground. Luke held his wrist and began walking after them with Tyson’s voice echoing in his ears.
Don’t walk like a loser anymore.
He stopped, glanced down at his boots and considered taking them off. Then he looked at the rough country ahead of him. He decided to keep his boots on, but he pushed them as deep into the soil as he could. The immense tableland, covered in grasses, growing out of ancient, cracked brown soil, was lined with fissures that carried the sky and the rivers and the past and the future deep down into the earth, all as one, the rocks and the trees and the canyons and gorges. Luke connected his feet to that earth and felt his body become a part of it.
He brought his fingertips together and sent the long nauseating waves of pain through his wrist down into his feet and emptied it into the land.
And then he felt it: the long, deep energy of the land, his ancestors, looking after him. Feeling strengthened, he walked, keeping to the western side of the hill where the morning sun had not yet hit.
Below him, the chopper seemed to be using the gully and a fenceline to channel the brumbies. Their pace was slowing, and Luke could see the stallion nipping at the old stragglers. A ball of red rolled in a cloud of dust. The stallion barely had time to leap over the top of it.
‘Rusty!’
Luke could see the little colt lying in a twisted heap. He quickened his pace to a painful jog and ran for what seemed like hours.
‘Easy, fella,’ panted Luke, as he reached him.
The colt lifted his head and rolled his eyes in panic.
‘Easy, boy, you’re going to have to trust me.’
The colt thrashed about and tried to get up. Luke crouched down and clutched his wrist, which was making him feel queasy again. He looked away from the colt and tried to let him calm, but Rusty snorted wildly with every breath.
Luke crouched lower and turned his back completely, trying to look unthreatening. He inched backwards towards the colt, but the closer he got the more panicked Rusty became.
‘You and I are gonna be good friends, little man,’ said Luke quietly. ‘No one’s gonna hurt you.’
The colt bawled a long, terrified cry to its mob.
‘You don’t want to go where they’re going, Rusty, you really don’t.’
The colt screamed again.
Luke took a moment to think. Rusty wasn’t a big animal – he could easily pin the colt to the ground and forcibly handle him until he was completely desensitised and submissive, then use the scraps of his shirt as a rope to lead him away. Or he could help Rusty up and allow him the same destiny that awaited the rest of his mob: slaughteryards or rodeos.
Luke clutched his arm to his chest. All that channelling into the ground wasn’t easy when he was in so much pain he could hardly see straight, and trying to gentle a panic-stricken brumby at the same time. He held the back of his good hand out towards the colt. ‘Easy, fella.’
Rusty panicked. He scrambled to his feet and limped away with his nose in the air, calling desperately after the mob.
The helicopter rose up from the horizon and Luke watched helplessly as it came back for the colt, rounding him up with the rest of the mob.
17
THE SUN WAS SETTING by the time Luke found the settlement Bob had spoken of. He stumbled up over the riverbank and saw a row of houses, set side by side behind chain mesh fences.
He headed up the red dirt road, past a collection of old car bodies and some empty green wine casks scattered about among other rubbish.
A big grey horse wandered into the carport of one of the homes and licked at a tap. Two men sat side by side in chairs on a lawn, under the shade of a big tree, looking out onto the street. They stopped talking when Luke walked past. He nodded at them, and they hesitated before nodding back.
Further up the street, two small boys in football jerseys kicked a ball around.
Luke clutched his right arm with his other hand. His wrist was swollen and painful; he was pretty sure it was broken. He walked back towards the two men.
‘My friend Bob told me to come here if I got in any trouble,’ he said.
One of the men stood up and came over. He cast a wary eye over Luke as his mate joined him.
‘Bob who?’
It was only then that Luke realised how he must look. His shirt was torn to shreds, and so was most of his body. He was filthy.
‘Umm. Bob. The stockman.’
‘Oh yeah, yeah.’ Both men nodded enthusiastically. ‘Bob Stockman.’ One offered his hand and such was his relief, Luke smiled and automatically held out his own. The man shook it enthusiastically.
He didn’t catch the man’s name. The pain swam over him, caught the words and distorted them, making them seem close but far away at the same time.
The next thing Luke knew, he was on his back looking up at a dozen or so black faces, all talking at once. The man who had shaken his hand stared down at him. ‘You plenty busted up, little fulla,’ he said in a deep voice.
Luke just nodded.
The hand-shaker turned to one of the kids. ‘Better get the grey nurse.’
‘Yeah, Sister Suzie fix you up,’ a boy said.
‘Yeah, Sister Suzie, Sister Suzie,’ the kids all began chanting. ‘Go and get Sister Suzie!’
Two boys sprinted off up the road.
Luke tried to sit up but a wave of nausea sent him straight back down again. ‘Whoa,’ he muttered, closing his eyes and clutching his arm.
Minutes later, a four-wheel drive pulled up and a middle-aged white woman jumped out and slammed the door. Her clothes were not a nurse’s uniform and her hair was not grey. She took one look at Luke and began issuing orders. ‘Which one of you boys is going to run to the store and get some ice?’ Without waiting for an answer, she knelt beside Luke and took his arm. ‘Get my bag out of the truck for me,’ she said to another kid. ‘What happened?’ she asked the men.
They both looked at her blankly and shrugged their shoulders. ‘He just appeared out of nowhere,’ the hand-shaker said. ‘He was busted up like this when we found him. Says he knows Bob Stockman.’
‘Oh,’ said the woman. She looked at Luke. ‘Are you an artist too?’
‘An artist?’
A gaggle of children came running back down the road with a plastic tray of ice. They proudly handed it to Sister Suzie.
‘No, no, that won’t do. I meant a big bag.’ She held her hands out to match the size and shape of a pillow. ‘Big! Go, go quickly. This man is in pain.’ She turned to him. ‘Your name?’
‘Luke Matheson. I’m not an art—’
‘I’ll just give you an IM for the pain.’ She reached into her bag and began loading a needle and syringe. ‘So, what brings you to the Gulf?’
‘Umm . . .’
‘No need to talk,’ she said. ‘You’re exhausted. Do you have any allergies?’
Luke glanced dazedly around him. He knew at some stage he had fainted, but he wasn’t quite sure if he had woken up yet. He jumped as Sister Suzie jabbed him in the upper arm with the needle. Yep! Wide awake!
‘Sonny, run up to
the hospital. Tell them I’m bringing in a fractured arm. Tell the RNs we need an X-ray. Better tell ED we might need RFDS. Tell them OT will need to be notified and P and P might need to be done.’
Sister Suzie watched the kids run up the dirt road towards the hospital. Then she cast a disapproving eye over Luke. ‘How old are you?’
‘Fifteen, nearly six—’
‘And what on earth have you been up to?’
‘Umm . . .’
‘No, actually, don’t tell me,’ she said, holding her hands up and cutting him off. ‘I don’t want to know. You can fill out a form at the hospital. Where are those kids with that ice?’ She huffed with impatience. ‘Never mind. Get in the car, we’ll find some at the hospital. Lucky for you we have a new TMU.’
She lectured him all the way. ‘Teenagers lurking about with no purpose in life, getting into trouble . . .’
Luke sat miserably in the front seat, groaning and clutching his arm every time she barrelled through a large pothole without slowing. He was thankful that the hospital was only three streets away.
Hours later, Luke sat in a tall vinyl chair in the waiting room. His arm was set in plaster and resting snugly in a sling. The fracture wasn’t complicated, so he didn’t have to bother with any of the alphabet Sister Suzie had threatened him with.
TMU stood for tele-medicine unit, he had discovered. It was all done over the internet with a webcam and a big screen. The doctors in Brisbane had looked at his arm and his X-rays and then told the staff that it just needed plaster.
A man with skinny legs and big boots sat opposite Luke. His skin was dark but he also looked slightly Asian. He had dirt and horse hair on his jeans and he held a filthy black hat on his lap. His leg jiggled nervously and his eyes darted about the room.
‘Don’t know if there’s a campdraft on around here, do you?’ Luke asked him.