‘Oh,’ said his father, ‘I remember her at Grafton when she was in her prime. She was a dashing, big bold jumper.’
‘Sure she’s not gunna be too old to breed?’
‘They say it’s only bad luck she’s not in foal now. Took her to a young colt that hadn’t quite worked out what’s what.’
Roley looked out to Mr Wingfield’s farm and to the old white carthorse which seemed to have been standing right there against the blue sky since he was a boy. He saw the bright green peep of their own barley paddocks coming through up ahead. Now that he was coming home a father, the green looked brighter, luckier than anyone else’s barley. We’re like that, he was thinking. All teeming and green with the golden grain getting ready to come.
‘Also said they might let go of Seabreeze, ’ventually.’
‘More mouths to feed,’ butted in Min. ‘Can see One Tree’s gunna fast turn into one of them dairies with five cows and forty-four horses if we don’t watch out.’
Now Noah entered the conversation. ‘Your dad’s right, you know.’ In Roley’s absence she had struck up a good friendship with Sept. ‘Chance will never come again.’
‘And, Mum, listen to this,’ said Roley. ‘At that last Cairns Show? A big announcement for this new open high-jump prize. Worth winning. Two hundred pound it is, and another hundred if you set an Australian record. Oh, that brilliant grey pony—what was his name again, Noh? That one from Nimmitabel?’
‘Lucky Luke?’
‘Lucky Luke, that’s him. Well, you know that old pony’s had thirty-four wins already. Seventeen-year-old that one is, Mum.’
Roley’s hand holding Noah’s tightened with the excitement of the news that his father wanted to get Gurlie. Get her in foal. That was good, he was thinking. That was the type of time it was. Another hungry mouth. The more the better. Foals and babies of the future.
At that exact moment the baby gave a little snort and woke up again.
‘This is yer dadda, darling,’ said Ralda, fishing around for a bottle.
‘Only be fully prepared for ugly,’ said Sept, swinging in to One Tree. ‘Always end up with a big Roman nose. But at least they usually born with that big blaze. Be they chestnut, bay or brown.’
‘Like someone’s splashed milk down their noses,’ Noah said.
That gave Roley the surprising thought of his own Nella in milk. It was an incredible thought he didn’t dare pursue. For now he squeezed her hand again.
A line of mist still hung in the hills way above the homes of One Tree. Silently but together they were both imagining the hill paddocks of the future, full of big-boned blazey-faced foals they would train up themselves.
‘Rainbow Chalice, Dance of Delight, There’s a Girl, High Flight,’ listed Septimus. ‘They’re all her foals, you know. Good the lot of them.’
As the car climbed the hill of One Tree it rocked all the Nancarrows together in dreams of high jump. The rhythm in the names went in time with the rhythm of the littlest mouth lying as if on a huge yellow bed there in Ralda’s lap.
His father’s inexperience with the gears was also rocking Roley’s leg closer against Noah’s so that right there came the memories of the jacaranda-tree summer. Of bliss rolling out green as the winter oats, fresher than new hay. NN! Like double whips simultaneously cracking, Roley wanted to shout her initials. And RNN!—the brand they would use to stamp the foals. The initials that he’d carved into trees in at least four showgrounds before he’d raked up courage to ask her to marry him. Having these feelings right in the middle of everyone, not being able to shout, made the thoughts even stronger.
Noah, meanwhile, was secretly hugging the knowledge that their little Lainey had already been over a few jumps with her mum. Even the most unusual jump of them all—putting Tadpole over the grave of John Nancarrow, Roley’s grandfather who’d first settled the block. The railings four foot if they were an inch and the spread almost as wide. Just to keep her eye in, pregnant and all. Just to fulfil her own dare.
Roley was more quietly reviewing in his own mind how, on a daredevil little taffy mare known as Lightning, he’d broken the Toowoomba Show’s record, by a full two feet. Everyone saying afterwards that what! Did he think he was at Cairns? On Lainey’s birthday. Quiet too with the thought of the other children to come, boys and girls, the more the merrier. His hand crept to Noey’s thigh. Felt it through the frock she’d worn to meet the train. Felt the horse-riding muscles. Then looking at her to see how beneath that mauve cardigan the deeper yearning was coming out to meet that same longing in his own heart.
It would have been about four months later, almost the last day of spring, when Roley came up from checking on the old mare they had indeed ended up buying from the Withrows to say that she was on, and that he was going to lead her across to Kennedy’s.
‘Ooh, for sure she’s one of those quick-witted babies,’ exclaimed Noah as Lainey put out her arms. ‘Knows her dadda. Reckon she’d be going right along with you if she could. Think old Gurlie will jack up at bridge?’
‘We’ll be right.’ Then Roley took his daughter into both hands and whooshed her this way and that. When a bit of milk came up, he grabbed up an apron and handed her back.
‘Just like a man,’ said Noah. ‘Make a mess and leave the room.’
Roley grinned. ‘If I’m not back by four, Noey, you might have to tack a few shoes on for the Kellys. Bert might be bringing a couple of ponies over. Just wants the fronts done. I should be back in time.’
Noah just nodded. Normally she would’ve been unfazed, for as her father used to say it was as if she was born on an anvil; there wasn’t any hoof too tricky for her to get a shoe on. Today, though, was different. Maybe she was wrong, but she didn’t think so. Not going on the watery feeling of wanting to sick up her guts every time Ral or Min fried an egg after milking. Number two was on the way. Still, at least with any Kelly horse you could be sure of placid. Maybe she’d just have to hammer and puke, hammer and puke, and pretend to the boy holding them that she’d et something bad for breakfast.
At about five, as the pigs came squealing and galloping up to the bails early for their slops, Noah heard the first sound of thunder. Ooh those clouds coming up over the back hill looked mean alright, she thought, bonking the boar on the nose with a bit of paling because she hadn’t finished emptying the buckets into the trough. Well, at least Kellys wouldn’t be coming over. Her legs ached and still a million other little jobs to get finished.
By the time she’d got from the bails back up the hill, the storm felt much closer. Ralda, bringing Lainey across from Main House, said she didn’t much like the sound of it. The storm was far off though, Noah said. Those first forks of lightning were so distant they must be like pony dapples coming through the baby’s eyelids. For a moment she paused to look at the spectacular light and colour on the hills and ridges to the west. She felt that she could see the earth deep beneath the trees and felt it as part of her gladness.
Roley was about halfway home, leading the contented old mare, when he heard the thunder. In his mind’s eye he’d been jumping every gate and fence he passed. Now, in a fanciful way, and partly to tame his fear, he lined up the storm front; estimated the distance of run-up required and the nature of a horse that would have a go at a thunderhead. The sound of a rainbird came preternaturally loud.
In almost no time at all the deep purple cloud had grown to resemble a steep black cliff amassing in the north-west. A light sprinkle of rain was followed by a wind so cold and clean it was stronger than a team of six horses.
Because he’d been struck by lightning twice as a child he had two responses. One was cocky, as if no lightning would ever touch him again. The other feeling was terror. ‘Gee back, Ol Gurl,’ he said to the horse. ‘This is not lookin that good, tell you the truth, no it ain’t. Nothin we want to jump in that, and it better have the same thought about us. I’m a father now.’ He thought about praying. No time to stop though. They were nearly at the suspension bridge.
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Say a child had had to have a go at drawing lightning, that’s what this bridge had the look of. On the way over to Kennedy’s the bridge, as always, had totally tickled his sense of humour. The fancy of it. It had been built too narrow in his grandfather’s time and curved over the water like nothing so much as a bit of spider web. Barely wide enough for a little sulky, let alone a lorry.
Now as he looked ahead all he saw was that most of it was made of metal. The zigzags of iron holding up the ironbark decking on chains drooped between the two metal and timber towers either side of the river. Should he risk being on that if the storm came any closer? That was the question and he thought he knew the answer.
However, just as he was trying to reassure himself that this storm was too far off to really worry about, the next minute, because of all the ironstone on that bare stretch of road before the bridge, big blue circles began to leap and play around him and the mare.
Further away but closer by the moment, there was lightning of a different kind. Meaner, too, like giant silver forks, prongs the size of trees all branchy and knotted behind the hills. Leaping around out of an almighty mob of blue-black thunderheads. But still and all, he thought, they’d be right, no time to dally was all and with no choice he had to lead the mare onto the bridge.
He didn’t even think. Halfway over, aware of the increasing peril, he was on automatic. Knew it’d be best to let old Gurlie find her own way home. As he undid the buckle on the throat-latch she chucked her head, banging her teeth on the bit, and was almost in a gallop by the time she reached the other side.
The muffled sound of her unshod hooves on the planking added to his sense of urgency. Next the storm wind began to move the bridge itself. Hell, he thought, if the angle of that wind shifts another inch this old bridge is gunna be ripped in two.
Although he thought he would be right, safer without the horse, it would only have been moments after that a bolt, maybe attracted to the bridle’s bit, entered his neck. He felt the energy taking off down his body.
When they went out to look for him, after the mare had come galloping in alone, it was his mother who spotted him first. He was lying so close to the edge of the bridge that one leg was dangling over.
Minna, moving across to him, was thinking of Duncan, who all those years ago had joined up only to be dead not eight months after. Her Dunc, her eldest boy, who’d never made it home. Thinking, not possible, God. Couldn’t be so greedy that you want to take my only living son left? And within the flash of her anger came the miracle.
One minute, kneeling next to him, he was already turned a bit blue and wasn’t breathing. Next thing, as if her anger had grabbed him by the feet and whirled him like Dr Oldfield had to with the twins, like he was a baby fresh born, Rol was taking a big breath. He was breathing, even though one of his boots had been blasted fair off his foot and he’d come within an inch of falling into the river and being drowned.
When his voice came back it was like a lost bird in a stone gully. This echoey quality. This feeling like with a new set of teeth that don’t fit as good as the last, that something has been irretrievably altered.
‘Darl,’ he said, because at first only Noah, stoking up the Lighthouse, was in the kitchen of Main House where they’d had him lying. ‘Who could ever of credited that, hey?’
‘That lightning has a liking for you.’ She came in close to where he lay on the stretcher bed, unable to voice what deep inside she believed. That it was her fault. Her punishment come, but in this way. Not a direct hit. But the Lord God, slyly, cunningly, having His revenge on her, through hurting her husband.
‘Barely a drop of rain, Noey. Like it made its visit solely to have a go at me.’
She grabbed up Lainey, carried her across. ‘You’re a father now, don’t forget. Thought you of all people would know that anything metal will attract death lightning in a dry storm. What in heaven’s name had you standing in the middle of a bridge made of metal?’ That no doubt the butter box with its little cargo had floated under. Not lucky enough to be sighted by any farmer who could’ve whisked him out of the water and into Wirri. ‘Do you feel alright?’
He nodded. ‘’Cept for this headache. And a bit of a tingle, I suppose, around my eyes, like those mongrel shingles Dad got.’ He could hear the greedy guzzling of the baby at her comfort bottle. As if his ears were also affected by coming so close to death, there came an echoey quality to that sound too. ‘I mean whoever could’ve thought that bloomin lightning could go after me for a third time! Like a pair of bloody long silver fingers runnin me down.’
‘And guess where it run out of you?’ Noah grabbed up one of his boots.
‘Are you fair dinkum?’
She was holding up the remains. ‘That was ten feet away.’
‘Nice pair of bloody boots they was too. Bloody thing.’
‘You’re a father now, remember,’ she repeated. ‘And gunna be a second time too you might as well know.’ She hadn’t meant to tell him yet but in her relief it just slipped out.
‘You think you’re expecting again?’ Pride flooded him until it almost hurt his head more than the lightning headache. He looked down at her belly but it wasn’t showing.
‘No thinking. I know it.’
So that Minna, hovering, as she herself would say, like a creeping Jesus in the hall, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry; to burst in or tiptoe away.
‘’Nother little high jumper for us, hey Noey?’ And in the gaze flashing between his blue eyes and her hazel ones leapt the power of their dream.
‘We’re just lucky you’re here. Lucky Lainey.’ She jiggled the baby, who was wide awake now. ‘My brothers knew a man who was killed like that. Lightning set the Everlasting Swamp on fire and then not a drop of rain to put it out. But Mr Pope lying flat on his back. Already dead before the flames reached him.’
‘This time,’ said Roley, ‘it was just like being clocked by a bush bullock angry to be in a yard.’ He struck a fisted hand into the palm of the other. Although not free of the headache that he’d have for another week, there was this kind of chirpiness about him. ‘Not as bad a strike as when I was twelve. Then I really was flying through the air, but not on no horse!’
‘Got his voice back has he, I hear,’ said his father, coming in behind Minna as pleased as if it was his own self back from a spree. ‘We saw it comin, Rol, and I said—didn’t I, Mum?—that it’s been fifty year or more since I’ve seen one coming from the nor’-west.’
Whenever anyone was struck by lightning, no matter what decade or century, no matter on which farm west of Wirri, out ran the stories with an almost electrical impulse of their own.
‘Look, speaking of deadly bolts . . .’ Septimus was unable to contain his excitement. ‘One day—oh, way before you was even born, Rol—there was another shocker of a storm on that exact same stretch of the road. This is fair dinkum. Lightning flashin and sizzlin all about the place. Then this one fork come down and split a gum fair in half it did. Like this.’ He mimed half his body gone missing. ‘Chopped it off in the middle. I was in a paddock full of old giants. Rung-barked em. Doin the job for that man of Hutchins. Top half of tree was lifted up and dropped down.
‘Oh, these great ten-foot splinters goin everywhere. Had to duck and dodge. But me pony of that time wasn’t so lucky. Put a spar into the heart of that poor little mare. And she was a good un, too.’
‘At Dad’s old place,’ said Minna, not to be outdone, ‘before I married your father, I saw lightning hit a plough. Melted bits. Sparks flying. Just like it were a big cracker going off.’
‘But jeez,’ said Roley, ‘I hope this head’s gunna go away soon.’
‘Sound like you want to be chopped up like a chook,’ joked his father. ‘Serve you right for thinking it was safe to make your last Queensland ride be on a horse of that name.’
‘Still,’ Roley continued, suddenly wistful and fierce both at once, ‘we cleared eight feet that day. Pony felt like it could’ve gone higher i
f there’d been anyone else left in jump-off. Come down off his fences at such a steep angle that’s how come it got called Lightning.’
‘Gotta be patient,’ said Noey, ‘as my aunties would say.’
‘Gunna get a pew for the church,’ said Minna, squeezing Lainey so hard the baby burped. ‘In thanks that this time, at any rate, He spared my boy.’
‘Aw, Mum,’ said Roley half-jokingly. ‘Should know by now that lightning just likes playing with me. Church don’t need any more pews.’
‘I don’t care what you say. I’ve got some of that money left from Uncle Frank in England. Been wondering what to do with that.’
‘A pew, Mum?’ said Septimus, who’d hoped to persuade her to put the money towards the tractor. ‘Gunna have to start calling you Sister Minna if you go any more religious on me.’
‘Well, much better I copped it than Gurlie,’ said Roley, as much to deflect his mother’s intensity as anything else. ‘I was just about to tell Noey but I reckon Gurlie might well not need to see that colt again. She was like a young filly and that’s no lie. Reckon we might get a foal next spring.’
No one ever mentioned the burn the size of a shilling on one side of Roley’s groin. Was it where another strand of lightning had somehow entered or left? he wondered, first catching sight of it himself in his turn in the bath in front of the stove. Did Noah ever even see it? Reen? Reen’s attention was all on putting a dressing on the fern-shaped burn of the main hit.
What began to dawn on his wife was that his eyes were that little bit different. Like they had even turned the colour of the storm, being now a deeper blue in their middle. Bluer than ever before, but this strange paler ring around the outside. Or maybe that was no more than his eyes giving colour to the gradual worry that had begun to build in him that some things in him had just not got better as fast as they all presumed.
The pair of workhorses noticed it first—that the feeling had begun to leave his feet. They put their ears back at his unusual clumsiness behind the plough and in small, cunning ways that only he could detect stopped working as hard for him.
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