The black kid said nothing but he opened his mouth, McWhirty noticed, when the doctor poured the medicine into the spoon.
McWhirty found the branches while the doctor sat with the black kid, and then whittled them smooth with his pocketknife. He held the black kid down too, while Doctor Miller straightened the broken leg, fitted the branches on either side, and tied bandages dipped in water and plaster of Paris around them to keep them firm. Then he set the arm too.
The kid was pale and sweating at the end but he hadn’t cried out again. McWhirty reckoned the medicine hadn’t done much good, as there was blood on the kid’s lips where he’d bitten them, but at least the kid fell asleep soon after, from shock and pain perhaps, as much as the medicine.
‘What do I owe you?’ asked McWhirty finally.
‘The Colonel will pay me,’ said the doctor easily.
‘If he doesn’t, I will,’ said McWhirty. ‘Will you look in on him again tomorrow before you leave?’
‘I’ll do that. Fond of the boy, are you?’
‘Me? Of course not. I’ve got a boy of my own back home …’ McWhirty hesitated. Michael would no longer be a child …
‘Well, you look after the lad,’ said the doctor. ‘Keep him warm. He might run a fever in the next few days; make sure he gets enough to drink and keep the blanket on. Try to keep him as quiet as possible, so he doesn’t move around. The medicine will help. I’ll leave you the bottle. A spoonful whenever he gets restless, but not more than six spoonfuls a day. And keep his bowels open too.’
‘How in Hades do I do that?’ demanded McWhirty.
‘Prune juice,’ said Doctor Miller, taking out another bottle — a clear glass one this time, with a black liquid inside. ‘One dose in the morning. Have you got a bedpan?’
‘A what?’
‘A bedpan. He won’t be able to go outside. I’ll see one gets sent down to you from the main house. He’d better have his food sent down too.’
McWhirty gazed at the sleeping kid as the doctor left. ‘Bedpans,’ he muttered.
The black kid woke up twice in the night, muttering with pain. Or perhaps he wasn’t quite awake, thought McWhirty. Maybe the medicine was finally doing its job.
‘Easy boy, easy,’ said McWhirty. The boy looked at him with unseeing eyes as he drank the water McWhirty held to his lips and spoke to him in a language that McWhirty didn’t understand.
It was the first time since the boy had been captured that he had heard him talk, apart from a word or two. ‘Well, that makes something clear,’ he muttered. ‘At least you’ve not been struck dumb.’
McWhirty slept wrapped in a blanket on the floor that night, when he slept at all. It was harder than the bed, but McWhirty was used to it. It was the way he’d slept every night for the two years he’d spent droving, before the Colonel hired him.
He gave the boy more medicine in the morning and his prune juice too. It obviously hurt the kid too much to sit, so McWhirty soaked bread in tea and fed that to him with the spoon instead.
It was a long day after that.
McWhirty sat and watched the sleeping boy and thought. It had been a long time since he’d had a whole day of doing nothing, just him and his thoughts. Finally after lunch, when he reckoned the kid would keep sleeping, he went out to the stables to oversee the chores.
The boy was still asleep when he came back. He slept until sunset. He was still asleep when the mopokes began to call from the trees, and the moon was beginning to sink in the sky.
McWhirty was worried by now. Perhaps the medicine was too strong for a boy his age, or he’d given him too much.
The boy opened his eyes.
‘Well, you’re awake then,’ said McWhirty.
The fire was out, and he couldn’t make more tea, so he spread the bread with jam — it was fresh and soft enough — and fed it to the kid in tiny bites. Then he held the bedpan under him. The boy seemed to get the hang of the bedpan faster than McWhirty.
The kid was still awake when he came back from emptying it among the trees.
‘Well,’ said McWhirty again, sitting on the hut’s single chair.
The boy said nothing.
‘I made you something,’ said McWhirty. ‘It’s nothing much. Don’t suppose you’ll like it.’
The boy looked at him solemnly. McWhirty reached under his chair then held the object out.
It was a horse, carved from a piece of casuarina from down the river. The Colonel had made his men cut one down and split it into shingles for the house, and McWhirty had kept a couple of branches for carving. The wood was softer than gum tree wood, and didn’t split so much when it dried.
It was a pretty good horse, the front legs bent as though it galloped across the hills.
The boy looked at it.
‘Sorry it’s not black,’ said McWhirty. ‘I rubbed some oil into it to darken it a piece, but that’s the best I can do with it.’
The boy reached out and took the horse with his good arm. His fingers traced the back, the neck, the legs. He looked back up at McWhirty and, for the first time ever, McWhirty saw him smile.
‘Doc Miller wanted to know your name,’ said McWhirty. ‘I had to say I didn’t know.’
The kid was silent, still stroking his horse.
‘What is your name then?’ asked McWhirty.
For a moment he thought the boy wasn’t going to answer. Then he said softly something that sounded like ‘Wallaamaala.’
‘Don’t think I quite got that,’ said McWhirty. ‘Wal something or other. If that IS your name, and you’re not just asking for another drink of water.’ He held the mug up to the boy’s lips. He drank and closed his eyes.
McWhirty touched him lightly on the shoulder, and the boy opened his eyes again. ‘One thing I have to tell you,’ said McWhirty. ‘And it’s sorry I am to have to do it. Those people of yours — the camp down by the river. They’ve gone.’
The kid’s eyes opened wider. ‘Dhaguu?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t know where they’ve gone either,’ said McWhirty. ‘It was the Colonel’s doing, you can be sure of that. But if you’re thinking of escaping, dragging that broken leg of yours about, well, you won’t be finding your people, and you’ll cripple yourself into the bargain. Understood?’
No answer. The dark eyes shut again. When McWhirty looked again there were tears on the kid’s cheeks, but that might just have been pain. There was no way to tell if he had understood or not.
The black kid recovered slowly.
The cicadas sizzled in the trees. The only smoke now rose from the kitchen chimney, where Mrs Connolly sweated at the wood stove and tried to have the bread cooked before the worst heat of the day.
McWhirty took to leaving the kid in the hut while he was working most of the day, looking in on him every hour or two in case he needed a drink or the bedpan that both of them had come to hate. McWhirty reckoned there was little danger of the kid running off now. For a start he couldn’t run and even if he hobbled, where could he hobble to?
Doctor Miller called out every week or so. He said the child was healing well and to feed him up a bit and keep his bowels open.
McWhirty looked guilty at that. The prune juice sat almost unused next to the fly safe. McWhirty hadn’t bothered with it after the first two days.
McWhirty took to flattering Mrs Connolly after that, so she’d give him some of the delicacies she made for the Colonel — slices of cold apple pudding left over from dinner the night before, and egg and bacon pie.
The boy seemed to enjoy the new foods. He ate them all anyway and sometimes he even smiled when McWhirty came in after work.
It was good, McWhirty found, to have someone smile at you when you came in from work.
The boy was out of doors for the first time the day the letter came. It was a Sunday, a quiet day at the Colonel’s. There was no church nearer than town for the men to go to, and Mrs Connolly took the buggy into town most Sundays, and sometimes Young Mike joined her.
&nb
sp; McWhirty had fixed a chair for the black kid in the shade of the verandah. He begged a cushion from Mrs Connolly and fixed up a footstool from a block of wood for the kid to rest his leg on. The kid could see the mares and foals in the house paddock from there. It’d be more interesting for him, McWhirty reckoned, than just lying on the bed indoors. He found another hunk of wood for himself to sit on too, beside the boy.
It was while they were sitting there that Young Mike brought the letter. Young Mike’s boots were freshly oiled and shining black and his spurs were polished too, and he wore his good red shirt and his cummerbund and the green handkerchief at his neck as well, like a blooming parrot, thought McWhirty, but he said nothing as the young man walked up.
‘A letter,’ he said, holding it out. ‘It was waiting at the Post Office for you.’
McWhirty nodded. He tried to keep his face calm and his hands from trembling. There was only one reason anybody would be writing to him.
‘How’s the boy?’ asked Young Mike, with a grin towards the black kid. The black kid smiled back.
‘Him? Oh, he’s alright,’ said McWhirty.
He waited till Young Mike had left before he ripped the letter open.
He read it once and then a second time, and then a third. Then he let the sheet of paper settle in his lap while he looked out at the horse paddock, and the blue green trees beyond.
‘Minyang?’ asked the boy softly.
‘It’s a letter from home,’ said McWhirty quietly, not looking at the boy. ‘It’s from Father Feehan. He’d heard from the Bishop that I’d petitioned to have Mary and Michael sent out to join me. He thought I should know … that I should know …’ McWhirty took a deep breath as though the next words were hard to say. ‘They died three years ago,’ said McWhirty. ‘And I never knew. It was the typhoid, Father Feehan said it was bad that year. And I never knew.’
McWhirty folded the letter carefully and placed it in his pocket. ‘I’ll be back by dinner time,’ he said. ‘Do you want to go back inside, or stay out here?’
The boy glanced back at the hut and shook his head. McWhirty nodded.
The boy watched him stride across the yard. A few minutes later he was back with Barney, the horse he usually used to check the fences or the mares when they were foaling in the paddock. He mounted the horse, cantered across the yard and was gone.
As soon as the kid was able to use his arm again, McWhirty made him rough crutches out of wattle branches and showed him how to use them. He tried to tell the kid that he wouldn’t have to use the crutches forever; that one day his leg would heal, but there was no way to tell if he understood or not.
The boy worked out how to use the crutches almost at once, swinging himself between the crutches round and round the hut.
‘You be careful now,’ warned McWhirty. ‘No tiring yourself out mind and no going outside either! There’s no call for you to be falling and hurting your leg further. I’ll be checking the fences in the top paddock all day, so I’ll bring some food over for you before I go, and I’ll be back tonight. You understand?’
The boy nodded, still balanced on his crutches.
It was hot that day. The bush was quiet, even the birds sheltered in the shade till the cool of dusk brought them out to feed again. The storm hit almost without warning, the black and purple clouds spreading thick and ominous from the horizon.
It was too far back to the main house. McWhirty led Barney into the trees, where the lightning had a good choice if it decided to strike, and tethered him to a sturdy branch. ‘Sorry, old boy,’ said McWhirty. ‘If I could find shelter for the both of us I’d take it. But you’re hairier than I am and bigger into the bargain.’
Barney whinnied softly as McWhirty hauled off his saddle, then made himself comfortable in the relative dryness underneath the horse’s wide body, stroking the horse’s underside soothingly each time the thunder yelled above them. It was a trick he’d learnt years ago, mostly to show off to men who’d exclaim, ‘That McWhirty! Got that horse so well trained he can shelter under it when it rains!’ But sometimes it was useful too.
It was late afternoon when the rain eased, a soft fluff of mist drifting over the distant hills. McWhirty saddled up Barney again, and rode back to the house. He brushed Barney down and gave him extra corn for warmth before heading to his hut.
The black kid was gone.
McWhirty ran from the hut. He didn’t even think what the Colonel might say when he found the boy had left. He was worried that the kid might fall, might hurt himself again, might starve even, unable to hunt with his broken leg.
He was wondering frantically whether to saddle up Barney again and search himself or call the others out to hunt as well, when he looked down towards the horse yards.
The kid was down at the horse yard, his crutches leaning against the rails, watching the stallion.
It was the first time the boy and horse had met since his accident.
There were no apples left now, in mid-summer, but the boy had saved some bread from dinner and he held it out now to the horse.
The horse stepped over quietly. He bent his great neck and nuzzled the boy’s cheek almost, thought McWhirty, as though he were apologising for having hurt the boy.
The boy murmured something. The horse bent his head further and took the bread, then stayed there as the boy stroked his neck.
McWhirty waited till his heart had stopped pounding in his chest, then walked over to the horse yards. A faint burst of thunder growled up in the hills. The boy turned to him. ‘Muurruubarraay!’ he said.
‘What’s that? That’s what you called Trumpeter, isn’t it?’
The boy shook his head. He pointed to the hills as the thunder muttered even more faintly. ‘Muurruubarraay!’
‘Thunder? Is that what you’re saying? Ah, now I’m understanding you — is that what you call the horse then? Thunder? How do you say it? Mowbray was it then?’
‘Muurruubarraay,’ agreed the boy, stroking the horse’s neck.
‘A good name for him,’ agreed McWhirty. ‘Better than Trumpeter. Black like thunder clouds and his hooves sound like thunder too. But it’s time you had a rest, then.’ He helped the boy gently onto his crutches again. ‘Come on, back to the house, and I’ll see what Mrs Connolly has got to feed us.’
So the days continued. The boy grew stronger. There was no need for the crutches now. He still limped, but his arm was as good as ever. He fed the stallion (McWhirty found he thought of the horse as Thunder now as well) and watered him, just as he’d done before.
He still refused to speak English, though McWhirty reckoned he must have picked up a fair bit by now. Kids are quick at picking up languages. He obeyed if he was spoken to, but otherwise he spoke only to the horse.
He was always whispering to the stallion, softly, secretly as though afraid the men might hear, afraid they’d understand him if they heard. But of course none of them spoke any language except English and if Alf McWhirty was finally learning another language than his own, he didn’t say.
Sometimes, when his work was done, McWhirty took Barney over to the hut and led him round and round and through the trees while the black kid perched up on his back. The boy rode like he had ridden all his life. Had a knack with horses, as the Colonel said.
But people are good with horses in different ways, thought McWhirty, as he listened to the clop of Barney’s hooves behind him, the crack of leaves and twigs and the soft breathing of the boy. The Colonel loved horses because he could control them, like the men he had once commanded in the army. And McWhirty — well for him, the horse was his partner, someone who worked with him, who he could trust and who didn’t demand too much.
But the boy — well, that was something different. For the boy the black horse was just an animal of beauty, more beautiful and powerful than any animal he’d known before. What would it be like, thought McWhirty, to live your life with animals like ’roos and wombats, and then see your first horse? And that a horse like Thunder, or Mowbra
y (as McWhirty pronounced the boy’s name for the horse).
Ah, McWhirty understood the beauty of a horse, the way it flowed with the wind, its muscles bunching, its head held high, the fine legs and the arch of the neck, the lift of the proud feet and the angle of its eyes. But he knew he’d never felt for any horse what the boy felt towards the stallion.
The boy enjoyed the rides and patted Barney afterwards. But he saved his love for the black stallion.
‘Time to get him up on Trumpeter again,’ said the Colonel thoughtfully one day, after watching the black kid ride Barney across the yard. It was autumn and the shadows were blue under the trees. The English trees the Colonel’s wife had planted had turned red and gold, but their colours were still diminished by the gum trees up on the hills.
‘Not yet, sir,’ said McWhirty. ‘Let him get a bit more strength up first.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the Colonel. ‘Boy looks strong as an ox. Give him one more go up on the horse, eh? And if that doesn’t work,’ the Colonel shrugged, ‘we’ll just put him out in the paddock with the mares. At least he’ll earn his keep that way. Time that boy was doing a bit more work around the place anyway, with the other horses. He been behaving himself?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said McWhirty. ‘He’s been behaving himself.’
McWhirty walked over to the horse yards with the Colonel. The boy looked up from his seat in the dust in the corner of the horse yards. He stood up awkwardly, steadying himself against the rails. He rarely used the crutches any more.
‘Try putting the bridle on him again,’ ordered the Colonel.
The boy looked at McWhirty. McWhirty hesitated. ‘Look, sir, how about we try it without the bridle? It’s the reins that seem to scare him. See if the boy can stay on his back without them.’
The Colonel considered. ‘Might work,’ he admitted. ‘Get the horse used to the weight on his back, eh, before we try any more? It might work at that. Go ahead and try it.’
McWhirty gestured ‘up’ to the black kid, though he had a feeling the boy had understood everything they’d said. McWhirty’s face was tight with worry.
The Book of Horses and Unicorns Page 12