Foal's Bread

by Gillian Mears

  ‘What?’

  ‘That heavy tool in bottom of sack.’

  Through the smell of the poo running into the cow’s tail, Lainey could smell blood. It was Old Roany with the extra-long eyelashes, bellowing so much now that it sounded like the madwoman screaming down Soapy Lane. Those long eyelashes always getting covered in ice of a winter. And Lainey many a time pressing her face into the cow’s warm side to melt the ice on her own lashes.

  ‘Jeez, Lainey,’ said Noah, glancing at her daughter. ‘You’re not going to be one of those cry-babies, are you? Hand me spaying scissors. Doesn’t really hurt them that much. They have to put on a bit of a performance. But after this you watch how fat they get. It’s worth it then. Bit of discomfort. One Tree’ll get that much better price for them even your Nin’ll want to kiss me.’

  Although the last thing in the world Lainey wanted to be was one of those cry-baby girls, as she watched the way her mother worked, the tears were something she didn’t have a hold over.

  ‘I reckon I caught em off George.’

  ‘Caught what?’

  ‘Tears.’

  ‘You come up with some nonsense sometimes.’

  But it could be true, thought the girl. From eating her brother’s biscuits yesterday. As if crying was like the ringworm she and George had shared last summer.

  ‘Mind, you might have a point,’ her mother surprised her by saying. ‘Cryin and cryin in that silly blue apron Aunty Ral ties around him cos then he knows he gets alloberries soaked in sugar milk and wet bread. Now remember,’ said Noah, ‘what you’re feeling for is something only about as big as a dog’s balls. And gotta get right in and over to get the left ovary. It’ll be the smaller one prob’ly. Left one usually is. It’ll be lyin on top of her guts.’

  In her fingers Noah felt what could be a nut. She knew what she had to do. Holding out her hand for the emasculators she slid them along the arm that was so far into the cavity of the cow she was up to her shoulder.

  ‘There. Think I’ve got it, so now I pull it my way a bit, then just one snip. Should generally only take a snip. Yep, that’s one. Very good.’ She flung it to the waiting dog. ‘I’ve known blokes who’d bring out lump after lump of fat. My Uncle Nipper, he used to say I was trying to put ol Frank Somers out of a job. Frank was the expert spayer out Dundalla way. Now for t’other side.’

  And again, in a few moments Lainey watched the second ovary fly through the air. Grass the colour of an old biscuit, she thought, with jam trickling down.

  ‘Oh what kind of a stupid bitch am I?’ Noah, out of the cow, wiped her eyes with her forearms and tipped the sack upside down.

  ‘What’s not here?’

  ‘Phew,’ said Noah, locating after all the long sack needle.

  The cow, jumping at the needle threaded with bag twine going in and out, thought better of it when Noah took her ear and began to twist it up.

  ‘Not a bad bit of sewin,’ she said to Lainey before flinging on a bit of fly powder. ‘Here, here!’ she called to the cow. ‘You’re nearly done, just hold on. And if you want, Laine, you can give it a go on next one.’

  With the first warnings of an afternoon storm brewing came the dual longing to be drenched. The sweat and the heat of the spaying. The heat of the mother and daughter’s pain. So that when the storm came closer no wonder the sky itself was such a savage blue. Then the lightning over Christys’ like wire through the clouds. And neither of them mentioned Roley and neither of them would’ve minded being hit.

  However, neither anger nor shame attracts lightning. Lightning over those farms west of Wirri has never been known to strike any but the happy, the hopeful or content.

  CHAPTER 20

  Another year, rolled away, Ralda liked to say to anyone stepping foot in her kitchen. Sometimes only the wind replied because everyone had been out and about, doing their bit to vanquish the fires that had come earlier than expected.

  On the morning of the day before Christmas, Uncle Owen came up to join in the discussion of who’d done what when and how well. Noah was holding forth about a man new to the district; the joke he’d been as a firefighter. Disregarding the advice of everyone who knew how the fires were likely to travel the ridges, the idiot had almost got himself burnt alive.

  ‘Oh, just like a little black crow wasn’t he, hoppin from foot to foot?’ put in Uncle Owe, making Lainey grin.

  ‘More some kind of bloomin orang-utan I would’ve thought,’ said Nin. ‘Never seen anything quite like it.’

  Mr Cousins, who’d carted some hay over for the cows, held up his hand. ‘To be fair, he wasn’t that bad once we’d shown him a few things. Let me say in his defence that he did a beautiful job building the fire lines. If he never learns anything else I’ll remember the tracks he made. Wended them around rocks and that. Like garden paths.’

  ‘So true,’ agreed Uncle Owen. ‘That damned neat I wanted to go on a picnic. Used bloody billy goat with cart to lump the rocks!’

  The howling westerlies were rumoured to have even seen fire cross the Flagstaff before Port Lake. ‘Them old honeysuckle trees,’ said Mr Cousins. ‘You know, not a one left. Burnt to the ground!’

  Ral, attending her Christmas cake, pouring another eggcupful of rum into its cracks, barely paying attention to anything except this important task, only half heard Uncle Owe say that speaking of picnics, how about he take Lainey and George fishing; to keep them out of the kitchen where the Lighthouse was working double time to cope with Ral’s Christmas ambition.

  Noah felt as if she’d been seized up in the throat by, if not the fires, then the summer itself. Though she’d thought of shouting down Reenie and Min for allowing George’s tonsils to be ripped out with no more than the promise of a bit of blue jelly by the doctor, in the end she’d let it happen. To shush his pain Ral had beaten him up some egg with honey while Noah had lashed one of Roley’s old ties round his neck and said he could keep it on so long as he didn’t bawl.

  She thought that the shout had left her when she’d failed so entirely to defeat Minna’s decision to shift Magpie off One Tree. To ease the shortage of feed, the mare had been put in one of the paddocks by Wirri slaughterhouse.

  If there wasn’t good rain soon, Landwind and Breezy were to go to the Everlasting Swamp. No use saying to Min that even that rich land was as poor as piss in a season such as this; couldn’t so much as fatten a flea. But at any rate, with the children out of the way for the day Noah thought she might snatch the chance to get a lift down with Len to check that her black and white horse hadn’t jumped out of the paddock. Even go for a bit of a ride on the renegade.

  Down at the river was the coolest place to be, thought Lainey contentedly. ‘George. George,’ she whispered. ‘Spit on the worms. You spit on em.’

  George, his throat still wrapped in his father’s old tie, did as his sister said.

  ‘Now we’ll get bigger fish for sure. Spit on bait and you always do, says Uncle Owe. Bet he’ll get that old eel again, fishing that spot, but would he be told?’ Lainey threaded George’s worm on the hook. ‘I’ll throw line out. No!’ she scolded. ‘Don’t wind it straight in. Gotta wait till we get a bite.’

  Being with her brother on the creek, with no work to be done because it was Christmas Eve, was the happiest feeling. The river sounded as if it was busily digesting a big breakfast. Oh, the happy gurgle of its belly! Lainey laughed when their own bellies made a similar kind of noise. In little islands midstream the rocks grew tall grasses in the shape of crowns, making her imagine that the round heads of the king of hearts and queen of spades lay underneath the water.

  The hills on the Brothers’ land over the other side of river were still burning from the fire everyone believed it was old Ernie Jollimont had lit—to get back at Mr Highton, who he reckoned had stolen three of his cows. Every now and then an almighty crash signalled that another tree had fallen somewhere.

  ‘Boom,’ said Lainey each time it happened.

  ‘Boom,’ went George, gua
ranteed to be her faithful echo always.

  White ash had carried from the fire and was falling steadily. Occasionally Lainey wet a finger and dabbed a bit of it into her mouth. ‘Tastes quite nice, hey? And if you look you’ll see a little heart, George, not far away.’ This was the game they always played. Spotting heart shapes here, there and everywhere. This one was formed out of half-dried moss and twigs. She bit and nibbled on her thumb, not wanting to give the heart’s location away too easily.

  ‘Can you see that one?’

  ‘Heart,’ said George, dropping his line and going to pick up the little bundle.

  Lainey grinned. No matter that George had wrecked it and was now searching sorrowfully amongst the twigs in his hand. The best thing was that George could always see the hearts; in misty spider webs or wet marks made by insects moving across his sleepout louvres. He was an ace at spotting them. Why, once he’d even found that ants had built a nest in their favourite shape. Whereas Ninna and the aunties, humouring her, often only pretended that they saw.

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing at a little river oak, ‘that tree’s laughin. Laughin at us. Let’s call it The Laughing Tree. Will we?’

  ‘No! It’s the tree what tried to talk,’ he retorted, pulling from his pocket one of the special long handkerchiefs Aunty Ral had sewn for him. ‘Now blow yer nose.’

  ‘Beg your pardon. Blow your own.’ Tiny curls of black ash began to fall as Uncle Owen came back into view.

  ‘George,’ he began. His girlish eyelashes set above his sun-ruined face blinked like a lighthouse gone wrong. ‘We want you to stay here because your sister and me, we’re gunna try and catch you that big eel.’

  ‘Aw, not that eel?’ Lainey looked up, uncertain.

  ‘But this time won’t let him go. I’ll skin him for you, Laine. Make a cracker for your whip that’ll make people think there’s a gun going off.’

  ‘With eel?’ She felt a thrill of disbelief.

  ‘Dry out a bit of eel skin and twist that up. Oh, you’ll have never heard anything quite like it. Better than the silkiest mane or tail.’

  Lainey checked to see if he was joking. No, must be for real; she ducked her head down, just so pleased by the friendly feel of the morning that it was a pity when he then said that they’d best put George on the lead.

  ‘Can’t George come and help us catch him?’

  ‘You know George. What a noise he’ll make. Anyhow, George is gunna stay here and catch us a perch for Christmas, aren’t ya, George?’ And he snapped the clip onto George’s harness. ‘Give you a nice bit of length to roam. And he can keep all the jar of crickets. And this’ll keep the flies out his eyes.’ And drew the blade of his belt knife over one of George’s ankles to make a scratch. ‘Never fails.’

  Lainey put out her ankle too.

  ‘No, we’ll do us when we get to eel pool,’ he said. And happily she followed him along the little slope up the creek in four-beat dance step, clicking her fingers to the imaginary fiddle moving in old Uncle Owen’s fingers.

  Everywhere Magpie walked the grass was bright green. So green it nearly makes you sick, thought Noah. Without fail, whenever the mare saw her approaching, she let out a great nicker and came at a gallop. Noah tipped the little sack of stolen feed into the cut-off kero tin in one corner of the meatworks paddock. So comforting to listen to a horse chewing. She’d filled the tin with round river rocks to make Magpie less able to bolt the feed down.

  Up until now Noah Nancarrow had never brushed a horse. No time. No point. But the brush she’d found chucked in under the paddock’s water trough she now kept by the kero feed tin. Just an old round brush, its varnish chipped off, but even with half its bristles missing Magpie seemed to like it a lot. When she brushed, the horse’s ears went all long and slow.

  But yes, the grass was sickening, just like the colour of the new icing on Ralda’s latest teacake, what people marvelled over and always ate too much of. The grass was fed on blood that came straight to the paddock in a pipe from the slaughterhouse.

  In the air was always the smell of blood. The anxiety running inside her also felt of an over-bright hue. Minna ordering the horse to here. Noah didn’t like it one little bit; didn’t trust what might be coming next. Surely she wasn’t planning on getting Magpie knackered. ‘Over my dead body,’ Noah told the horse.

  As she saddled up, a pair of butcherbirds began to call, their up and down notes as smooth as the blue sky itself with its clouds drifting. Everywhere in the bright green paddock was the intense feeling of life being turned over. ‘Might ride you over to One Tree,’ she said conversationally. ‘Or get the good pair of clippers off Cousins and give this mane a haircut for Christmas. Pity the bloody itch is coming back so strong.’ She cast a regretful eye at the messy state of the horse’s mane and tail. ‘Mozzies must be something else.’

  Three large grey kangaroos leapt the fence for the green pick. That the kangaroos cared nothing about the meatworks was kind of shocking. It didn’t seem natural, she thought, that even if a meatworker, Angus Reilly or Bob McMurty with blood all over their clothes, went close to where the kangaroos were eating, they only just paused for a minute in their chewing. It was as if they knew that here in this holding paddock of death, they had protection. She saw it in the face of the lead roo that it knew though dogs and guns could get them elsewhere, near the slaughterhouse they were outside of what went on in the building.

  The Garroty sisters, come out of the hills for Christmas Eve duties at the church, went past next, still in the little spring cart with the black Galloway mare. When Noah waved, one sister raised a gloved hand whereas the other made the sign of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost and spat on the road as if to warn off bad luck. Old Garty, their father, his eyes straight ahead, flicked the pony on with the whip as if Noah Nancarrow down there in the meatworks paddock didn’t even exist.

  Well, she’d show them, she thought, and giving the horse just a few circles, oblivious for a moment that she’d be reminding the mare of her bad old fence-jumping habit, hopped her nicely over the five-bar gate.

  Once on the road she kept cantering in the direction of One Tree. She could’ve just as easily gone the other way, into Wirri to see Thel, only that she’d sighted a pair of Abo kids hauling a heap of offcuts home to Blacks Lane in flour bags. When they heard a horse, thinking they were being pursued, they took off into the trees along the Flagstaff, their bare backs running with blood and fat. For a moment she thought of giving her whip a crack to really send them but they reminded her too much of her own brothers to do such a thing. She felt so inexplicably happy that one hand even stole down to Magpie’s wither to give it the lightest bit of a pat.

  Noah had put her back in a plain old ring snaffle and the mare moved it in her mouth will all due contentment. The mare, feeling the rider’s good mood, moved less choppy than usual as the rich nourishing aroma of blood and bone boiling down floated west with them in the light morning breeze.

  What a rare feeling, a day off almost, thought Noah, hopping the horse over a log. The piebald’s coat had never been so beautiful, glowing from the inside out. As if all that blood and bone wasn’t just good for roses but high jumpers too. As if that, not all the pots and potions and evil-smelling yellow creams Noah had mixed, had seen the end of the Queensland itch on all but the mare’s mane and tail.

  ‘What are ya?’ said Lainey, tapping her knee with the handle of the fishing knife to watch the reflex jerk. She hit her knee again and this time the reflex really made her lower leg jump out.

  ‘What are you up to, Laine?’ said her uncle. If I were to touch that hair, reckon I’d get a spark, he was thinking. If she was a cat she’d be the kind that you had to watch out for. Purring one minute, scratchin your eyes out the next. Screaming for the nearest tom too, and pushed that last thought down, because wasn’t she just a kid? Yet even so, his eyes flickered to the line of her neatly growing bust. Away again. Then back. Because Ralda hadn’t got around to lowering the hem on the dre
ss he couldn’t keep his eyes off the length of her legs.

  ‘What’re ya thinking about?’ Uncle Owen asked her. The girl, he swore under his breath to see, was all leg and its dress just the same pink as Gem’s Tooth Powder. But young enough to not care less about the dried mud all over her knees.

  ‘Well we always want to know what made them teeth marks in your braces.’

  ‘Oh, something wild enough.’

  But if she grasped the innuendo she wasn’t letting on. Really she’d been thinking of how she didn’t believe in her mother anymore. Thinking how if she could sweep up all her mother’s broken words then they could build an almighty big jump that none of the horses, not even Magpie, would be mad enough to try.

  When Lainey remembered the last time her eyes had properly met her mother’s, a flood of if onlys always overcame her: If only I’d had a fall at Wirri. If only Mum had stayed off the plonk. If only Landy had knocked down top rail. If only we’d crashed. If only we’d died.

  Tree shadows on the water were mesmerising her. A cracker made of old eel, that’d be a first, and taking the empty shell of a .22 out of her pocket she began to whistle a tune over its rim.

  She perched on the ground some feet away from her uncle, looking at the hand calluses gone so weak the way they did every summer. So that they wouldn’t be a bit of use when it came time again to help Cousinses with their corn pick.

  She thought of Mr Cousins always knowing when she’d looked up to see how much left of a row. ‘Doesn’t make it any easier,’ he invariably called out. ‘Might make it slower.’

  ‘Seen how good me punkins are goin?’ Uncle Owen asked.

  Lainey nodded. ‘Oh, they’re growin good.’

  ‘And the melons.’

  ‘Mr Cousins thought you took a risk. Says he can remember when he was a boy punkins being killed by frost at his place in November.’