Foal's Bread

by Gillian Mears

  Well, thought Noah, I will be good, and found it easy to say no to her aunties’ offer of a game of whist with an evening shandy.

  What weren’t they going to get done? So what that Roley had warned her not to work too hard beyond getting the milking completed each day and pigs fed. She felt plump with anticipation. To be free of the presence of Minna for almost a week was a miracle she didn’t intend to waste.

  Her daughter, picking up on the mood, was also filled with plans. What wouldn’t they surprise their dad with when he came home? Leaving the bails once afternoon milking was over, she took George to sit awhile with her in the corn paddock. What their dad called the blue room, the sky the ceiling. The sound of the afternoon wind off the river blowing through the corn was the sound of all her hopes.

  ‘Only the swallows can go higher than our mum and dad,’ she confided to her brother. ‘Yep. Double as high as that corn when it’s full grown and that’s fair dinkum,’ before lying back like George to watch for a while the darting arrowing birds at play in the sky above the paddock, house and hill of One Tree.

  CHAPTER 12

  When Lainey came in from school the next day it was to find her mother in home paddock getting ready to put shoes on a horse she’d never seen before.

  ‘What are ya, what are ya?’ Noah was saying to an itchy piebald that it turned out belonged to Mr Ackerman. Ralda had been holding the mare for trimming the first hoof, which had only made matters worse. With Lainey home from school they might get along better.

  ‘What are ya?’ Tentatively, Lainey mouthed the words her mother kept saying, and took the lead rope from her aunty. ‘What are ya?’ The horse’s face was black except for a nail-shaped blaze down the middle. Its eyes were a bit weepy from grass seeds. Aw, thought the girl, poor thing, and wiped some of the moisture away with her thumb. Her mother was using the hoof knife, cutting off the craggy bits of frog. Lainey knew how to get a nice clean-looking triangle and felt like whistling. Now time for nippers. Cut off the flare. She bent down to pass the tools as required to her mother so that in no time at all her mother had stood up, easing her back for a bit. Breeze and Landy had wandered up the hill and were having a good gander.

  George was sitting in the shade of the jacaranda on his lead, playing with seed pods. Lainey put her hand to the mare’s face and looked across to her brother. She poked her tongue out at him. He poked his out back. She made hers touch the tip of her nose, which always made him groan with happiness.

  ‘Don’t set him going,’ said her mother, looking over to George. ‘This horse, you know, has got strong feet for a white-socked mare. Eggboat man reckons this is his new stock mare.’ Noah exchanged a knowing grin with her daughter. ‘Says he’s going to have to build new fences if he wants to keep her cos she’s already jumped out twice.’

  It was a well-known fact around Wirri that Mr Ackerman ruined all his horses for shoeing. Hasn’t got a bloomin clue, her mother always said. She said he should’ve kept on carting and cracking eggs by riverboat. He was too afraid a type of man to have anything to do with a horse. Shouldn’t be allowed. He got himself scared and then always ended up bashing the horse with a shoe half on but the nails not clenched down, so that the horse’s hoof was like a weapon. There’d have to have been half a dozen Ackerman horses her mum had had to fix before this piebald that he’d messed up.

  ‘Just get that kero tin, would you, Ral?’ said Noah as Ralda went to go. ‘I’ll use that as my stand. Save my knees.’

  Lainey watched her mother bringing the mare’s foot forward to perch on the tin. Not too good, thought Lainey, handing her the rasp. It was a stinker of an afternoon, even the sky faded to the blue of one of her father’s favourite old shirts.

  It was going alright after all though, her mum so good with the rasp Dad reckoned there was no one faster in the whole of Wirri and west to the ranges. Lainey loved the sound of the rasp at work, tidying toe up after the nippers.

  Although the mare had the Queensland itch so bad it had gone and rubbed half its mane out, the forelock was thick and long enough to give the horse the appearance of a half-shy, half-wild girl, peeping out.

  ‘What happened to your dress?’ Aunty Ralda came back with drinks for Lainey and George and their mother with some biscuits on a tray.

  ‘Well I was ink monitor, wasn’t I? Mixing the powder with the water.’ Lainey gulped down the cordial. ‘Wasn’t looking and next minute all down my front!’

  ‘Steady,’ Noah warned the horse as it leant back and sent the tin flying. She let the horse put down its foot and smiled to see her daughter’s green cordial moustache. ‘Ready enough anyway for first shoe.’

  ‘Well, I’ll worry about that stain after,’ said Aunty Ral to Lainey. ‘And might just leave you two to it, take George with me. Before he really starts to fret.’

  ‘No, don’t go, Ral,’ said Noah. ‘Going to be needing you, I’ll warrant. And don’t let George off,’ as Ralda went to unclip him. ‘He’s got to learn.’

  Although Roley and Ralda hated George getting tied, sometimes Noah had no choice. Couldn’t have George pelting his pony around. The running rein was long. Plenty of length for him to make himself very comfortable there under the jacaranda on the other side of the fence. If he wanted to suddenly for no reason climb halfway up the fowl ladder in the sun, sobbing because he’d dropped his cordial, then that was his business.

  The shade had moved from Noah and her shoeing gear and, as she recommenced, the sweat was running into her eyes. The horse was also beginning to sweat up.

  With Lainey home, Noah felt happier. She put the tips of six nails in her mouth, holding them there by tightening her lips.

  Lainey’s mood was also good. Oh, the jacaranda flowers off their farm’s tree were beautiful. A lilac carpet of them formed a lovely big circle. Lainey loved that fragile jacaranda-flowery smell even as they squashed and popped beneath the mare’s hooves.

  ‘Hey, George,’ she called out, popping five flowers on one hand and waving. Her mother had already shown her how to tap a nail into the hoof of old Tad. And wasn’t she that good at hammering, her mother swore she must be going to be a little lady blacksmith in the making?

  ‘You must’ve been doing that before you were born!’ That day her mother hadn’t been able to hide her pride. The rare kiss from Mum always having a smell of metal about it, as if even when she hadn’t been shoeing she might’ve had a nail hanging out the side of her mouth, which she sometimes did, using it to pick about in a dead back tooth.

  Lainey shot a look at her aunt. As if Aunty Ralda would be any use to them if this eggboat man’s horse decided to test them. On One Tree, no one more lily-livered than Aunty Ral if a horse mucked up.

  Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap, went her mother’s little shoeing hammer, driving the nails in. Maybe the horse wasn’t going to be a ratbag after all. Next, she neatly twisted and crimped each nail down.

  ‘Okay, Ral, you hold her again and Lainey, I want you to help sneak the hobbles on the hinds. This one’s as cunning as all else and it was offside hoof Mr Ackerman attempted.’

  Nimble, fearless, Lainey got under the horse. She was still under there, struggling to get the buckle drawn on the newly repaired hobbles, when she heard the telltale sounds of her mother beginning to lose patience.

  ‘Hold her up short, Ralda,’ Noah said as the horse began to shift nervously.

  Lainey got the buckle fastened and was out quick smart from under the horse.

  ‘Come here, ya little mongrel,’ her mother yelled when the piebald wouldn’t lift its next leg and began to stir up. ‘Ooh, you’re a poppy-eyed bastard when you choose.’

  ‘Wee up. Wee. Wee,’ Aunty Ralda said.

  ‘I’ll give ya wee, ya flamin spoilt mongrel.’

  And now, when the mare really began to muck up, came some words that Lainey had never heard even Aunty Mil or Mad use.

  ‘Come on, come on.’ Ralda tried stroking the horse’s neck. ‘Easy, Noh.’

  ‘Shut u
p, Ralda. Get a hold of its ear.’

  Lainey watched the mare hopping in the hobbles on three legs. She watched her mother’s temper bust and, like red air, now the anger filled everyone up. It was like breathing particles of fire. She saw the horse preparing for what was to come. The red air rising. Her mother twisted up one of the horse’s ears so tight it was a wonder it didn’t come off in her hand. As if the anger had whooshed itself into Lainey’s own face, a nosebleed came on with a jerk. Only George, snuggled into a fork of the farm’s tree, was safe.

  ‘Hold onto her,’ shouted her mother. ‘You’re useless, you are, Ral.’ Noah took the lead rope and, letting go the ear, began kicking the horse in the guts. For a moment Lainey looked somewhere else. The thumps and thuds landing on the horse sounded so violent, like all the heads in hell banging together when the fires had gone out.

  When her mother was angry, Lainey felt life itself on One Tree Farm trying to cease. Leaves stopped moving in the easterly drifting over from Bitter Ground Creek; birds didn’t come near. Even the pair of crows pecking at the bits of dead wallaby for the dogs at the back of the shed flew off.

  Two of the work dogs, the curly back and a bushy tail, both with eyes more than half human, cringed back in their water-tank kennels as if in anticipation of a flogging with their chains. When her mother bellowed at animals, trees or tools, Lainey always became quieter. Secretly she believed that her mother’s anger could even bend shoeing nails, no hammer or anvil required. When she looked over to the jacaranda, it was to see George cowering there in the purple shadows.

  And then somehow, Lainey missed the exact moment, the hobbles snapped and the horse had broken loose of Ralda and was making away. It went at a wild gallop, headed for the old wreck of a fence that had once been part of a bull yard.

  ‘Elaine! Get after him,’ yelled Ralda.

  ‘Lainey! Lainey!’ Noah called.

  Lainey grabbed up her dress, hoping to catch the bleed from her nose. The frightened rump of the horse, its tail out like a flag, was picking up speed. Then up and over the fence the horse was going, taking it at the highest point when there was no need.

  At the recognition of this first firm evidence of the horse’s ability to clear a big fence, her mother’s mood changed from anger to excitement. ‘Lainey, did you see that jump in her? Little demon’s got a leap! Oh, for heaven’s sake, not another nosebleed. Lord!’

  ‘Quick, put her head between her legs,’ said Ralda.

  But Noah already had Lainey’s arm and quickly, gushing the water into the trough, pushed her daughter under the flow. ‘Good cold water from spring’s what’ll fix it,’ Lainey heard. Her mother’s hand was on her head, holding it under. The water wasn’t so cold really but the afternoon was getting later because as she came up out of the trough she heard, from very far away, Lenny Cousins calling in his milking cows, calling ‘Tolley! Tolley!’ like his heart was breaking. That was how he always brought in his cows: calling his old leader girl, that never had a different name even when it died or got sold and replaced.

  ‘Now!’ Noah seized her up and Lainey felt like a piece of fruit in the bucket in the apple race at picnic day.

  ‘Tolley! Toooollllley!’

  ‘Now go and fetch our little villain back. You’ll have to run your friggin fastest to get her.’

  ‘Noh!’ Ralda shook her head, still shocked by her sister-in-law’s mouth even after ten years.

  ‘Did you see, Lainey? The way she picked back feet up? A neat little jumper. That double whirl of hair on her face? I’ve seen that only once before, on a horse called Rin Tin—and what a one he was.’

  So that Lainey was suddenly wild with hope too, and though the horse was pelting down past the bails to the ledge of land above the watermelon paddock, and though the blood was still coming through her nose into the back of her throat, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Not blood spilt or kept in. Nor Beryl McCliver’s fingernail marks turning brown on her face. No, nothing mattered. Rin Tin! she exclaimed inside her head. Radiant Boy, she thought, what jumped seven foot eleven, out of a bog, when her father rode for Sister McIlvaney, before she’d even been a twinkle in her father’s blue eyes.

  When her dad was home, his balance back, what wouldn’t be possible? Once war’s over. And, oh, the days were so long and smelt of beetles and flowers. And if she had to catch that runaway then someone else would have to do hens and poddies. And depending how far the black and white horse went she’d get to miss milking too.

  As the sun of the afternoon slanted out, she felt herself go bright and yellow just like that corner of flowers Ralda had put in behind the cucumbers. Automatically, she tucked the hem of her dress up into her bloomers.

  ‘Lainey!’ And her mother’s voice was like the rope coming down at the picnic races. So she ran. Spitting blood, she tore away. Knowing Aunty Ralda and her mother were watching, she got ready to do a jump herself: heading for the rail where it stood just on three foot nine, knowing the height exactly because she’d measured it, hadn’t she just, after her mother had popped that horse of Albanian timber man over it this time last week.

  ‘She’s a horse herself! She’s a hurdler!’ said Noah as Lainey, aware of her dress narrowly missing snarling up her big toe, heard the cheers growing fainter behind her. The blood in her nose was exactly like that bleeder at last year’s Oakey Flat sports day. Blood and all, it had streaked home. Enough winnings for her father to buy them all a pie each on the way back to One Tree.

  Running on this day, Lainey knew nothing of either the avulsion coming or her father going. She was just running now; running with her strong brown knees and odd-shaped feet. There was air in her ears and blood all over the place and just for a laugh she jumped a water trough too and then a thistle, its purple flower nearly red in the summer light. Wild, legs-all-over-the-place jumping, and the helter-skelter paddock like a show ring where just for a moment all the rules had flown out through that big blue window called the sky.

  Watching her daughter disappearing, Noah felt herself filling with the strange love that sometimes seemed set to tear her apart. Lainey could run! She could jump! Oh, she had a turn of speed. She was as strong as a small horse, and when Noah had carried her, had kicked inside like one too.

  ‘Come on then, George. Time to let you off too, hey?’ she said, unclipping the lead. Even the bantam hens looked pretty, pecking up the trail of Lainey’s nosebleed in the dust underneath the fallen jacaranda blossoms.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Ralda. ‘Lainey’ll get that little varmint back in no time.’

  ‘You don’t help, Ralda,’ Noah said. ‘You shouldn’t smooch up to a horse like that. Only confuses them more. We’ll get other front on tomorrow with Lainey, and the hinds. You and George can stay well away.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ralda, ‘if there’s one thing I remember is that Rol never lost his temper with a horse. Dad and Dunc, they were a different kettle of fish. But even when he was smaller than George, Gentle might’ve been Rol’s middle name. Exact opposite of you. You’re worse even than Dad was and that’s saying something.’

  They could both feel the drumming of runaway hooves coming up through their legs.

  ‘I’m not gunna fight with you, Ral,’ Noah said, her temper over. She was bending to pick up the shoeing gear. Taking off the leather apron and collecting up spilt nails. ‘Too much to be done. Send George over to bails and I’ll see how he’s shaping up for milking, since Uncle Owe doesn’t look like he’s going to show.’

  With the sun going down behind the ridge top, Lainey was riding eggboat man’s piebald home. The air was like syrup, so warm, and she could smell something, yes, sausages, surely sausages. Good old Aunty Ral must’ve cooked up the last of those Hertzel’s ones for tea.

  ‘Smell that?’ she said to the horse. Oh, the smell of meat and mashed potatoes in the beetley air. Cicadas were going crazy in the last light left and then suddenly stopped all their noise.

  As soon as she’d caught the horse, w
ay over near the boundary to Cousinses’ farm, she’d hopped on and, bareback and all, knew it was going to be well behaved for her. The horse had lowered its head and sort of sighed, then just picked its own wise way home.

  ‘My father,’ she told the horse, ‘held the high-jump record once for the whole of the country. Balance like no one could believe.’ The horse’s ears flicked back and forth then straight ahead as Lainey headed it through a short cut involving crackle-pod weeds up to her hanging feet. ‘And once, my mum and dad jumped a pair of hunters clean over a long-backed Shetland pony what belonged to Hirrips, and as he was landing, Dad snatched the hat fair off Mr Hirrip’s head. Yep. That’s fair dinkum true.’

  Here was a horse she could really talk to about anything, she thought, even that f-word her mother had shouted. ‘That fucken lightning but.’ The word was terrible and wonderful and made her tingle like her own little shock was running off her tongue.

  Still, it was only a matter of days before her father would come home cured. For so long the talk in Main House had been of the specialist, how could he fail for her father? No chance.

  The hopes she revealed to the horse grew wilder and wilder. It was as if promises were coming up into her through the contact her bare legs were making with the short summer coat. ‘You’re a special one, you are.’ She leant forward to stroke the horse down the neck. ‘Even if you have got the Queensland itch something shocking.’

  She guided the horse along past the watermelon paddock fenced all wobbly. She could smell the bone dust coming up through the young vines. Over the little paddock hung a nearly new moon and three evening stars. Flaggy Creek whirled around rocks in a way that made the water sound deeper in the darkness falling.

  When she reached the top of the hill the lamps were on in Main House but their own little hut had become invisible in the darkness.