The Salt Madonna

by Catherine Noske

  ‘That’ll do, Sam,’ Hannah says to the bell ringer. The kid draws the bell in seriously, protectively, and marks his name next to the duty sheet.

  Hannah stares around at the morning chaos. The three year nine boys are the only ones in their seats, silent. Thomas is leaning back in his chair, scowling. ‘Settle down,’ she calls above the noise and starts the rollcall.

  The day is routine. Hannah plods through her lesson plan without ever feeling as though she is really there. The barking and coughing of the wind reminds her uncomfortably of the noises from her mother’s bedroom.

  Mrs Culliver appears in the doorway of her classroom as Hannah lets the kids out for recess. ‘There’s been a letter,’ she says without preamble. ‘The Department.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You better come see.’

  Hannah accompanies her to the office, and the headmistress hands her a sheet of paper, embossed with the Department of Education logo. The bureaucratic language is awkward, forced, as if conscious that it is failing to cope with the strangeness of the situation.

  ‘What are you going to tell them?’ Hannah asks.

  ‘You’re her teacher. I thought you might respond.’

  ‘Even though they’ve addressed it to you?’

  Mrs Culliver says nothing, and Hannah forces herself to swallow down the snide remark that wants to follow.

  ‘They could support us if you asked them to investigate.’

  This time she answers, her face ugly. ‘What do you mean, investigate? Surely this is overkill? You already reported it. And there’s no crime in taking your child out of school.’

  ‘There is, she’s not sixteen!’

  ‘They’re looking after her! I don’t know what you expect me to say!’

  ‘What did her mother tell you?’

  ‘They’re homeschooling her. That she’ll come back when she’s able.’

  ‘You’ll just have to tell the Department that.’ Hannah hands the letter back. ‘You can add my name, if you like.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Mrs Culliver says, and it only vaguely sounds like a threat. Again, Hannah resists her retort, facing the woman down. She notices, for the first time, the threads of grey in the roots of the headmistress’s hair, the home dye job growing out. Without trusting herself to say more, she leaves. Behind her, Mrs Culliver tosses the letter aside.

  The wind continues to blow all afternoon. Hannah has to wrap her coat around her as she patrols at lunchtime. Most of the children have gone to ground, sheltering behind the tin shed or amid the trees along the back fence. A determined group of four are still hanging from the monkey bars, shouting against the force of the weather. In the afternoon session, their voices are hoarse, worn out. And then, suddenly, the day is over. Hannah sits at her desk and lets her head drop into her hands. The light slowly dwindles. A shrub in the feeble garden is swept up in the gale and bashes itself against the classroom window, making her jump. She sighs and forces herself to gather her things, head over to the office.

  Mrs Culliver is not there. Her computer is shut down, the letter has gone. In its place, an icon of the Virgin Mary has appeared on her desk, a cheap plaster version painted in bright colours, vaguely familiar, as all icons are.

  From the doorway, Hannah can see the road and children still waiting. There are only a handful still there. Mostly huddled together in by the hedge. The boy Sam and his younger brother are running about in the wind. Nugget’s kids, she remembers. They are yelling, but the wind blows their words away. She leans against the doorframe, the wood grey and weathered beneath her. The branches of the gum trees bend and thrash, their leaves twisting in impossible contortions, pausing and then dancing again. She watches as they flick and flirt with one another, leaves flying off and out into the sky. The wind turns in a great gust, and her hair flies out in imitation of the leaves. She scrapes it back and ties it, lets the wind hit her face, hoping it might wake her from her lethargy. A single gull wheels up from the beach, hangs above momentarily, and then dips a wing sideways to disappear.

  Hannah wakes parched in the middle of the night, leaves her bed to find water. The wind has come up again and the kitchen is full of tiny draughts and flurries. She remembers the kids playing in the car park. Three-day blow, she thinks. There will be storms coming in this. A tree groans somewhere outside and she wonders how many will fall. She stares through the window. It is dark out, there is very little moon. She can only just make out the tree line and there is no sign of the horses. She listens. High above the sound of the trees in the wind comes the plaintive voice of the rail bridge, moaning as the wind vibrates through its loose sleepers and planks. She stiffens. It sings desperately and endlessly, high-pitched and inescapable, its voice reaching right across the village and up the hill.

  Hannah reaches for the light switch and flicks it on, blinks in the sudden glare. The world outside disappears, the window a black screen. She pictures the horses tucked away safe into the shelter of the hill, and pours herself a glass of water from the sink. The curtains at the window seem to breathe. The clock on the mantle chimes three. She listens to it with a vague apathy. There is a creak from her mother’s bedroom. Is she rolling over? Hannah wonders how much she has been sleeping. She sighs and empties what is left of her glass into the sink, turns out the light and tiptoes back to her own bedroom as quietly as possible. She forces herself to close her eyes and try to sleep.

  Darcy appears the next morning, a chainsaw in hand and his red kelpie following, after fallen branches for firewood. She walks down the paddock with him, gumboots over her workday linen slacks. There is a branch about halfway down, torn free from an ancient gum tree, trains of sap spilling like blood from the wound. Darcy unclips the cover and pulls the chain free from its guard. The kelpie noses at her hand, and she fondles his ears.

  ‘Darce, do you remember Nugget?’ she asks as he oils it.

  Darcy snorts and looks sideways at her.

  ‘What?’ she asks, half laughing.

  ‘You used to moon over him as a kid, didn’t you? Had your mother real worried with that one.’ His grin is evil. ‘He’s alright. Still here. Your uncle Mulvey’s had him on as a farmhand. Not sure what he’ll do when that ends. See him at the pub every now and again.’

  ‘I think his kids are at the school.’

  ‘Yep.’ Darcy frowns. ‘You thought any more about your mother?’

  Hannah winces, says nothing.

  He tugs at the starter cord on the chainsaw and hefts it up as it splutters into life. ‘Get yourself off to work, then,’ he calls over its roar. ‘I’ll be right.’

  She nods. ‘Hoo roo,’ she shouts back, surprising herself. The phrase feels foreign, out of place on her lips. I’m regressing, she thinks. She turns and starts walking up the paddock.

  When she heads by to check on the horses, they are not where she left them but one paddock over. The fence is broken. Ghost is lying down, one leg twisted up at a strange angle, caught in loose wire. The black horse is there beside him, just standing there. Shit, she thinks. Shit. She turns and runs for Darcy, yelling and waving until she sees him look up, kill the chainsaw and start walking up towards her. When she gets back to the horses, Ghost is trying to stand, his leg still caught. It is broken, she realises. A sick feeling rises from her gut. The wire buries its way deeper into his pastern in his struggles. He is bleeding. She can imagine it happening: the night, the wire looping and tightening around the limb, the wind adding to his fear. He would have tried to gallop away, she thinks, back towards the shelter of the trees. The wire would have caught him like a leash and thrown him. She crouches by his head, tries to soothe him. He groans, and she feels the tears start down her face.

  ‘Easy, baby,’ she says. ‘Easy, easy.’

  Darcy comes up beside her and sighs. ‘Shit,’ he says.

  The horse tosses his head and paddles desperately with his free leg, struggles again to stand up. The ground around him is torn and rutted, marked by blood. The dog jum
ps and barks around him.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ Hannah croons, covering his eyes with her hands, trying to hold him down. She is crying freely now. ‘Hey, pretty boy. Easy.’

  ‘I’ll get the rifle,’ Darcy says, his voice low. ‘Bob, come here.’

  The dog barks once more but obeys him.

  Darcy leaves and Hannah stays crouched there, running her hands down the horse’s face again and again. It seems to calm him. He stops struggling. She holds him until Darcy returns. They cut him free, first. He feels the pressure ease and struggles to stand once more, but he is exhausted, he can’t shift himself.

  ‘Steady, baby,’ Hannah says. ‘Steady, easy.’

  ‘Stand clear,’ Darcy says, ‘but keep talking to him.’

  He levels the gun at the horse’s head and Hannah steps back. There is a crack and Ghost is still, before she can say anything at all. The black horse shies away, eyes wide. They stand there a moment. Darcy puts a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Not your fault,’ he says. ‘You better go. I’ll get Mulvey to send someone up with the bobcat to bury him.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Hannah whispers.

  It is a strange day, after that. The wind drops a little, but high up the clouds still scud across the sky. She moves around the classroom as though she is underwater. The children’s voices come to her muffled, echo strangely. When she looks outside, she cannot help but be swept by the sensation of vertigo. She watches at lunchtime as the children band together to play chase, the aggressors roaming as a pack. They are animalistic in their physicality, wilful. She watches as a group of boys trap a girl against a fence and close in. They enjoy her panic. Every child has the power to make the kill, she thinks. Even from the distance, she can feel them flexing it like a muscle, seeing how far it will carry them. The girl screams and surrenders, giggling, the boys laugh and drag her off with them. Hannah just watches.

  At the end of the day, she doesn’t want to go home. The thought of facing her mother, telling Sophie, facing the black horse bereft in the paddock, it all fills her with a hot kind of pain, a tightness which stops her from breathing.

  Mrs Culliver is avoiding her. The office is empty, bar the icon still there on her desk, arms open in supplication. She can hear the cacophony of children and parents at the gate, and has to resist the temptation to stand and look for Nugget among them. When she does give in and step out onto the veranda, the school is quiet, still. The children have all gone.

  *

  There is a face in the tree, watching Sam. An old man staring crookedly down at him, scraggly in the stand of gums, his hair of leaves flying tangled around him. He looks down at the man lying at his feet in the dirt. The paddock stretches out empty around them.

  ‘See it, Nugs?’ The boy swallows. ‘A face.’

  Nugget doesn’t reply. His lips stay resolutely pinned over the pain, tight and grey. The boy shuffles, shifts sideways so that his shadow falls more squarely in the man’s line of sight. Below, dark blood seeps from beneath the fist the man has thrust into the hole in his stomach. But the boy doesn’t look at that. He looks at the face.

  Marnie will be cross. They shouldn’t be out there, but Nugget had promised them a ride. It was their last chance, too, before everything finished, and Mr Mulvey sent them away. And it wasn’t his fault. It was the tractor that did it, bald tyres slipping sideways in the slick ground at the bottom of the big hill. He was laughing when it first tipped. They all were, him and Jade and Pet. They spilt to the ground like coins from a bag, they bounced. Pet jumped, even. But Nugget didn’t. When everything stopped he was still in under there, pinned, the sharp end of the gearstick holding him stuck. And when they tugged and pulled and shifted it, even then he didn’t move, not at first. Then the blood came welling up like a stain from his stomach and he moved like a broken man and curled himself sideways and wailed in a voice that stopped suddenly like it was cut off. Then Jade took Pet and ran for help.

  He’s awake, Sam knows. He is shivering. He groans occasionally. There is a sheen across his face and the boy swats at the flies that have come from nowhere to settle there. The day has closed in cold and grey. A crow caws bleakly. Nugget groans.

  ‘You okay?’ the boy asks, but Nugget is silent.

  The boy looks back at the gum trees. The man is still there. A minute ticks past. He has a muddy graze on his elbow and he contemplates it.

  The clouds grind their way across the sky. The boy drinks water from a jerry can in tiny gulps, lets its dribble down his throat, occasionally offers it to Nugget. Suddenly the jerry is empty. Mustn’t waste water, he hears Marnie say, and immediately feels guilty that he has drunk it. He waves at the flies, watches for Jade. He wakes suddenly to find himself propped against the tractor and discovers that he has fallen asleep. He looks down at Nugget. He isn’t moving, isn’t groaning. He looks like he is dead. There is a rustle above. The man in the gum tree has been joined by a pair of crows.

  ‘Heeaaaarrrtt,’ the first calls, and the boy can see the second eyeing them. ‘Heaaaarrtt,’ the first crow says again. The boy grits his teeth. They do battle against the crows, him and Nugget. Crows take the eyes out of the lambs and then slowly pick at them until the poor buggers die of shock and pain and exhaustion. The ewes do nothing, Nugget says, ‘cos Merinos are bitch mothers and they’d be better with part-breds. He doesn’t get to choose, though, because it isn’t their farm, it’s Mr Mulvey’s, and not his for much longer now neither.

  The boy rolls stray balls of sheep crap between his fingers. It is everywhere, the sheep must camp there. A third crow appears in a rattle of black feathers. They are drawn by the smell of the blood, he realises. He can smell it himself, and something sharper he doesn’t know how to name. Nugget’s forehead has gone papery dry.

  When the boy looks up next, there is a ute coming across the paddock. He jumps up and runs, waving his arms. Slowly it trundles over towards him. He can see them through the windscreen, Jade and the men, and he feels himself sinking slowly down until his rump lands on the ground.

  He sits in the front when they leave. The men say that he has done enough, done good, and he climbs into the greasy cab without arguing. Jade stays with Nugget in the tray. If he swivels around, he can see her perched on her heels beside him, eyes huge. She looks wrong, through the glass. Her face is twisted and a strange colour, almost blue-green. Like the little Buddha, he thinks, the one on the side table in Mrs Mulvey’s good lounge.

  ‘Easy goes,’ someone calls from the back.

  Harry climbs in the front beside him and starts the ute. He swings it around under the gum trees. Sam looks up as they go. The face is still there. It peers down at him, brown through the dry grey of the leaves. Harry presses his foot down, and bumping gently they gather speed.

  The ambos let them all come across to the mainland – him, Jade, Pet and Marnie all sitting side by side in the plastic cabin of the ferry. Marnie stretches her feet out and rubs both hands at her back and rounded belly. Jade curls up sideways, her knees to her chest. Pet sits beside her and watches the horizon move through the window.

  ‘When are you due?’ the ferryman asks Marnie.

  ‘A bit yet.’ She smiles tiredly. ‘End of October.’ All of them are pretending that Nugget isn’t in the ambulance behind them, stripped and bandaged and wrapped up. They put plastic tubes in his arm and a mask on his face, silver blankets tucked in around him. Pet has fallen asleep and his head nods against his mother’s arm in time with the rise and fall of the waves. Outside, the sky is growing dark. A spattering of spray or rain rattles on the windows. The waves are choppy and the ferry waddles up and down. They can hear Mr Mulvey outside, under the shelter of the wheelhouse, talking to the deckhand. He has one hand to the rail, holding himself steady. The ambulance beside him looks almost sheepish. Its red and white bulk takes up almost the whole car space. Mr Mulvey gestures and talks, and it sits there and waits quietly for him to finish.

  ‘Stupid bugger flipped it,’ Mr Mulvey says, and Marn
ie flinches. ‘He had his sodding kids on the back. The girl dragged the five-year-old all the way back to our place to get help. You wouldn’t know, hey?’

  They hit a swell and the ferry rocks.

  ‘Five minutes,’ the ferryman calls. Marnie sighs and pulls Pet up onto her lap, arranges him around the bulk of her belly. Pet yawns and rubs at his eyes. Mr Mulvey opens the cabin door.

  ‘Did you say five minutes?’ he asks.

  ‘We’re just coming in now,’ the ferryman says.

  ‘Righto,’ Mr Mulvey says. Marnie looks away, lips pursed. He sits down, as far from them all as possible. The ferryman shuffles in his seat and turns back to look at them.

  ‘Not long, kids,’ he says. ‘Almost there.’

  Soon they are slowing down. The churning sound of the water grows louder, and they can hear the motor whine. Out the window, the black of the water is lit with silver streaks of foam and the pale yellow lights from the pier. Outside, the paramedics begin to bustle around the ambulance. When they feel the nudge and bump of the boat against the tyres, they close the doors at the back.

  ‘Can we go with Nugget?’ Jade asks.

  Marnie doesn’t answer but picks up one of the bags.

  ‘Jadey, Sam, grab those two, would you?’ she asks, and heaves Pet onto her hip.

  Mr Mulvey pushes past her out into the cold air. There is an awkward pause and the ferryman turns to them.

  ‘Alright, love?’ he asks. Sam can’t tell if he is talking to Jade or Marnie. He smiles weakly and picks up one of the bags. ‘He’ll be okay,’ the ferryman says. ‘They’ll fix him up at the hospital.’

  Marnie stares at him a moment and sits down again, her face buried in Pet’s chest.

  ‘Umma,’ Pet whispers, patting her hair. ‘S’okay.’

  ‘What’d I do?’ she moans, her voice muffled. ‘What’d we do to deserve this?’

  The ferryman’s face crinkles gently. ‘Go take those bags out,’ he says to Sam and Jade. ‘Your mum’ll be out in a tick.’