by Karen Wood
As though testing her theory, the wallabies suddenly lifted their heads and pricked their ears. Jess peered out along the track and saw Luke approaching on Legsy, the reins in one hand, the pot in the other.
Luke got a fire roaring within minutes, feeding it with big, seasoned logs until the heat of it nearly forced Jess out the door again. He scraped the hot coals into a mound and sat the billy on top. In barely a minute it was bubbling. Luke wrapped his shirt around the handle and poured the boiling water over the tealeaves.
They sat side by side in the doorway, looking out over the grassy flat, sipping on the hot tea.
‘This tastes really bad,’ said Jess.
Luke picked up the package and read the small print on the back of it. ‘It’s probably more than fifty years old.’ He laughed. ‘And it has mouse droppings in it.’
Jess spat hers out but she couldn’t help laughing. When she looked up, the breath was knocked from her lungs. ‘Look!’ she breathed.
A horse, red like ochre, walked onto the grassy flat in the pouring rain. With his scarred, knobbly legs and grey chin, he looked as old and weathered as the granite tors that rose all around him. He let out a long whinny, then walked in circles with his nose high, neighing and calling. Then he stood, silent, with his rump to the wind, and waited.
‘Over there,’ Luke whispered.
From between two boulders a small coloured mare, with rope burns on her neck and patches of hair missing from her tail, walked slowly, painfully, onto the flat. A foal walked quietly beside her.
The rain beat down on the roof of the hut so hard that it blurred all other sound, but Jess imagined the soft nickering and gentle snorts as the two old horses reunited, ran their noses reassuringly over each other’s necks and flanks and pressed their bodies together.
With the small foal gambolling alongside, they walked to the trees and disappeared back into the forest.
Jess ran the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘That was so beautiful.’
Luke looked at her with shining eyes. ‘That was the horse Mum told me about, Stormy-girl. I’m sure of it.’
21
THE RUNNERS WERE TAKEN to Armidale police station, but Jess, Luke, Grace and Mrs Arnold gave their statements in the pool room at the pub, just as Barker had said. Jess dismissed her ride to the secret valley with Rambo as a dream, a brief period of unconsciousness, as it might well have been.
The place, so exquisitely special, must be kept secret.
Barker rang Jess’s parents and the phone was passed around to nearly everyone in the pub before Caroline was swayed from the idea of driving down to retrieve her daughter. Jess could stay one more night, under lock and key with Mrs Arnold, and under the secondary supervision of the local cop.
By late that night they had all made statements and they settled in for a hot meal. Jess tucked in to her roast dinner feeling she could eat half a cow. Beef and roast veg swimming in gravy had never tasted so good.
It turned into an all-night bragging session. Grace launched into a livewire account of galloping over cliff–tops, her stories not unlike an iconic Australian poem, until she noticed Jess’s deep frown.
‘I told you to be careful with Dodger,’ Jess said.
‘Well, I was,’ said Grace, toning it down. ‘I was in perfect control the whole time! Where did you get to, anyway?’
Jess didn’t have to answer as Barker and Luke started talking about the dogs.
‘Should have called that black dog of yours Satan,’ said Barker. ‘Make a good guard dog.’
‘Yes, well, he is a Mount Isa Runner,’ said Grace.
Luke coughed uncomfortably. ‘Err, actually, he’s a Mount Isa Shepherd.’
‘Thought he was a Mount Isa Sniffer,’ said Barker, looking up from his lasagne.
‘All of the above,’ said Luke airily. ‘Different states call ’em by different names. The breed is only just getting established so there’s been some confusion over what to call them. Mostly because they’re such a versatile breed, they can do it all, really.’
‘Right,’ said Barker, sounding very sceptical.
Jess told them about Stormy-girl reuniting with her stallion down on the grassy flat and Grace whined with disappointment at not having been there.
‘It’ll be hard to prosecute those blokes,’ Barker commented when talk returned to the runners.
‘Why?’ asked Jess. ‘It’s totally illegal to chase or harass wild horses.’
‘Only in national parks. Technically, they were on private land,’ said Barker. ‘In the eyes of the law, brumbies are pests, like feral pigs or feral goats.’
‘But they’re not hurting anyone!’ said Jess.
‘They run over the boundaries into the national parks. There are no fences up there to keep them out. The parks have every right to be concerned about them. They spend a lot of money and resources trying to control brumby numbers. It makes it a lot harder for them when more keep arriving from neighbouring land.’
‘So, who does own all that land up there?’ Jess asked.
‘According to the records, the Mathews family,’ said Barker. ‘They were the original settlers of this area. But when the cattle leases ran out, their station wasn’t big enough to be viable. There’s still an old hut up there but no one looks after it.’ He shrugged. ‘The land is about to be seized by the state, and the sooner the better if you ask me. It’s become a lawless frontier. Someone needs to manage it properly.’
‘But if we could find a descendant, an owner, the brumbies could stay?’
Barker looked at her with a sympathetic face. ‘Even if you did find the owner, what are the chances that they’d want to deal with a load of feral horses? They might want to get rid of them too.’
Jess slept restlessly in the bunkhouse that night. When her back could no longer handle the sagging bed, she dragged the mattress onto the floor and lay quietly with her thoughts. The secret place Luke’s mother had spoken about – was it the place that Rambo had taken her to?
Matheson. The name was so similar to Mathews. Could it be possible that they were related? But surely the whole town would know if Luke’s family traced back to the original settlers. Was the name Matty’s Creek a tribute to Luke’s mother, or just a shortened version of Mathews’ Creek, like the Matty’s Flat Hotel? All these M names – it got to be confusing. These thoughts kept her awake until the morning sunlight began peeking through the slit in the bunkhouse curtains. Jess slipped into her clothes and slunk out the door.
There was a strangeness about this time of day. Some of it was to do with the light, which could barely filter through the thick fog. The carpark was empty, all was quiet and the lights were out in the pub, except for a small bulb over the doorway. Jess sank her hands into the warmth of her pockets and walked towards the road.
The timber bridge, under the cover of the camphor-laurel trees, was still wet with mist and rain. Frogs gurgled and croaked in the river bed like a cart rolling back and forth over rough timber. The water was much deeper than the Coachwood River and the rocks were sharp and blocky.
As Jess crossed the bridge, she thought about how fate had so radically changed Luke’s life. A car with a drunk driver, a young mother in the front and her small child in the back. It was such a short drive from the pub. Heck, she and Gracie had done it themselves just a couple of nights ago.
It seemed that the stream could not carry away the sadness that flowed in its waters, that it was picked up by the sound of the wind and carried into the mountains. Was Luke comforted by this place, Jess wondered? Would his coming home calm the troubled spirits of his parents, soothe them and release them?
A small signpost pointed to the cemetery. Jess walked along the bitumen road with mist billowing from her nostrils, nose burning with cold. In the paddocks nearby, horses grazed, silvery shadows in the misty half-light.
The cemetery was a small, square patch cut into a forest of ribbon gums, with long strips of bark hanging in their crowns. The fence
rails were thick with soft, fluffy moss and brilliant orange fungi.
Jess slipped through the gate and walked across the neatly kept grass. Early-morning blades of sun cut through the mist, making the marble gravestones twinkle, eerie and surreal. Among them were timber crosses and old lumps of stone, too weathered to carry names any more.
She read the plaques and stones, searching for the name Mathews. Some were quite recent, others were old. Some had shifted with the sinking soil beneath, and stood crooked and wonky.
And then she saw it: a plain marble stone with MATHESON etched across the top. Below that were Luke’s parents’ names. So they were buried together, just as Kitty had said. That was nice, given the long, sad time they had spent apart. On the ground was a small clump of grasses and flowers, roots and soil clinging to the ends, still fresh. From Luke, Jess imagined.
There were no other Mathesons that she could find. She wandered through small clusters of stones, looking for any Mathewses.
She eventually found two small headstones under an old, old blackbutt tree, unremarkable but for their plainness, one rectangular, one rounded, so close that they were touching.
Jess crouched and ran her hand over the scratchy green-blue lichen, feeling for any grooves, carvings, names, but she was unable to make out any letters. She stood back and, from a metre or so away, could make out some letters on each stone. GM on one and LMM on the other. Her eyes caught another stone, too perfectly rounded to be incidental, poking out of the ground. The gravestone of an infant, maybe.
‘Who were you?’ she whispered to the stones.
The mist seemed to thicken suddenly and the air turned to drizzle. Jess loved the way it felt on her face – so soft and gentle. But soon it began to soak into her clothes. She walked back to the road and continued towards Matty’s Creek.
The drizzle stopped as quickly as it had come, and sunlight slipped through the clouds in little streams of gold. Jess enjoyed the soft sun on her face and the crispness of the breeze that pushed the clouds from the sky and freshened and dried the valley around her. As her circulation improved, she took off her jacket and tied it around her waist, letting the early winter sun warm her arms.
At the property, Filth limped towards her, tail wagging feebly. Both his front legs had squares shaved off them, and most of his neck had been shaved too, revealing a big, colourful swelling.
‘Filthy.’ Jess sank to her knees and wrapped her arms gently around the big dog’s body. He whined and wiggled in appreciation. ‘You’re okay.’ He smelled better than usual, too. ‘Did somebody wash you?’ She gave him a scratch behind the ears. ‘Where’s your master, hey?’
She went to look for Luke, and found him floating in the river behind the dilapidated house, wearing a pair of old work shorts. His torso was white against his singlet-tanned shoulders and arms, which fanned slowly back and forth in the icy water.
‘Aren’t you frozen?’
He lifted his head, seeming unsurprised. ‘Come in, it’s really nice.’
‘No way.’ She pointed up to the mountain behind them. ‘It snowed up there yesterday!’
‘It hasn’t melted yet. The river’s still warm from summer.’ Luke pushed a wave of water at her and she squealed and jumped back. ‘You know I’ll drag you in,’ he warned.
He would, she knew he would. He always did, chasing her across the river flats till he caught her and dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the Coachwood River, usually fully clothed.
Seeing as she was wearing the only clothes she had to wear home, Jess conceded. Luke watched her strip off to her undies and tank top and wade in, gasping as the cold rushed up her legs and took her breath away. He took her by the hand and unceremoniously yanked her into the water with him, making her scream.
She threw her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his hips, trying to pull herself up out of the icy water. ‘It’s f-f-f-freezing!’
He tightened his arms around her waist and pulled her downwards, submerging her completely. She came up gasping again with her hair washed back over her head, her face icy and cleansed and stinging with blood and life. Her shoulders prickled with goosebumps and she reached down and pressed her lips to his, kissing warmth into her soul.
He kissed around her ears, down her neck and across her cheek. Then his lips were on hers and he was pulling her close. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and the whole time, the terrifying thought that it might be her last ever kiss with him made her hold him even harder.
‘What’s wrong?’ he whispered, pulling away and searching her face.
‘You’re going to stay here, aren’t you? You’re not coming home.’ She searched his face, but there was no smile on his face, no laughter in his eyes. The silence was sharp, as though sky and earth had stopped to watch them.
Jess tried to smile but she could feel it come out all twisted. She drew a long, steadying breath.
Luke held her face in both hands and wiped the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs. He kissed around her eyes. ‘Oh God, please don’t cry,’ he whispered.
‘I can’t help it,’ she whispered back.
He kissed her and the love and sadness held in his kisses only made her heart rip more. For the first time since she had known him, she felt as though she was losing him, to the one thing that might hold more power over him, something she knew he yearned for deeply, and that was family, blood relatives and a sense of belonging.
‘Shhhh,’ Luke whispered softly in her ear.
‘Sorry,’ she sniffed back.
‘No. Shhhh,’ he whispered again.
She pulled away and saw Luke’s finger pressed to his lips. His gaze was directed over her shoulder. He slowly moved around and held her where she could look down the river, and she froze with wonder.
At a small glade, three horses drank together from the edge of the river, sucking the cool water through their teeth and letting it lap over their nostrils. Jess barely dared to breathe as two more, a dull chestnut and a dark bay, approached from behind and joined them.
A gust of wind rustled over the trees and all at once the horses became nervous, lifting their heads and sniffing, testing the scents that travelled on the breeze. In a sudden explosion of movement, tumbling rocks and snapping branches, they crashed through the forest, hooves cracking on the rocks, thundering back up the hillside until they disappeared.
Jess smiled at Luke. He belonged to this river and these mountains. Just as the brumbies ran through the trees and the river cut through the valley, the horses and the land cut through his heart. They wove in and out of him like threads of gold through beautiful white river quartz. ‘Will you come and visit us?’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
She ran her finger over the moonstone hanging in the hollow of his throat, and when he reached to untie it she put her hand over his and stopped him. ‘You keep it. I don’t want a stone. I want you.’
‘I just need a bit more time down here,’ he said.
‘How much time?’
‘Just a few weeks, until the next holidays. Then I’ll come home.’
‘What about Sapphire’s mares?’
He looked at her with soft brown eyes.
‘You want me to look after them?’ she asked.
‘Just until the holidays. If it’s a hassle, I’m sure Corey would . . .’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind. I’ll enjoy it.’ She kissed him again. ‘Just a few weeks. Promise?’
‘Moonstone promise.’
22
LATE ON TUESDAY NIGHT, Jess sat cross-legged on her bed at home and let the cool southerly breeze drift in through the window. Outside, she could see the Southern Cross dangling against a clear black sky. Dodger looked up from under the giant tree in the front paddock, snorted, and got back to grazing.
‘How are the brumbies?’ Jess’s dad had asked when Mrs Arnold dropped her home, without looking up from the telly.
‘Great, we managed to resc
ue some,’ she said, lugging her duffle bag off her shoulder and plonking it outside the laundry with a thud. She told him about the creamy filly with blue eyes. ‘We called her Min Min.’
‘How’s Luke?’ Craig asked.
‘I think we re-homed him, too.’ After that, Jess had gone straight to her room and flopped on her bed.
She lay back now, looking up at the timber ceiling, painted in a creamy white. The soft green walls around her were almost entirely covered with ribbons and sashes and photos of horses. There were school awards, too. Plenty of them. Shara was right. She didn’t want to dunce out and not finish school.
She would live her life and let Luke sort out his own. It would take more than a mountain to come between her and Luke. Surely he’d meant it when he said he would come back to Coachwood Crossing.
Jess closed her eyes and surrendered to the exhaustion she felt. She gave only a mumbled ‘goodnight’ when her mum came in, and was grateful to feel her boots being pulled from her feet. She barely noticed the doona being tossed over her and tucked in around her chin, or the light on her bedside table being snapped off. She slept.
And in the middle of the night, when her phone buzzed in the depths of her duffle bag full of damp clothes, she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or not.
The next day it seemed nearly impossible for Jess to drag herself out of bed and haul on her school uniform.
‘Working with Luke this arvo?’ asked her dad as he sat down to a bowl of cereal.
‘He’s still down south,’ said Jess. She gave him a quick update on Luke’s new life.
Caroline joined Craig at the kitchen bench. ‘What’s he going to do with all his brumbies?’
‘Lawson’s have all been sold to a trainer. He found someone who wanted horses for riding clinics. I’ll still help Luke train and re-home his.’
‘And now he’s taken off again?’ Caroline looked livid.
‘Knew he would,’ said Craig.
Had he taken off? Jess didn’t know if he had or not. She hadn’t had time to process it yet. But she knew that a heavy ache, a numbness, was building in her chest and she was doing her best to ignore it. Luke had gone away before, but he had always come back. This time, she wasn’t so sure he would.