by Ella West
The coal goes by rail to Lyttelton because we don’t have a port big enough here on the coast for the ships that carry it – the Westport river port is too small, too shallow. There’s been talk, lots of talk, about building a jetty out into the bay near the mine but no one has enough money to do it, and anyway, the rail tracks are already there and the trains and the train drivers and Lyttelton Port with its coal-handling facilities.
I do think Dad likes driving the coal trains, even though he doesn’t like the hours. He sits in the front one of the two engines and behind him are thirty wagons, each with fifty tonnes of coal in them. That’s one thousand, five hundred tonnes (a normal car weighs about two tonnes) plus the weight of the wagons and the two diesel engines heading south down the coast, then inland following the Buller River steadily climbing to the Southern Alps. He says out of his office window he sees some of the best scenery in the world, when he’s not driving through the dark. Why would he want to do anything else? There’s the coast with its sheer mountains on one side and farmland squeezed between them and sea, and then into the Buller River Gorge where the tracks hug the sides of the rock walls and water drips from every tree and every overhang. After the many bridges in the gorge it’s through to the Junction and then following the Inangahua River through farmland until Reefton, where he leaves the river and passes through Maimai and Mawheraiti and Ikamatua and Ahaura until Stillwater. There the coal train does a left turn and instead of heading into Greymouth rumbles along the Arnold Valley to Lake Brunner and Jacksons and finally to Otira deep in the Southern Alps. From raging seas to snow-capped mountains, Dad says he sees it all, travels through it all and then back again in one shift. He says dawn, wherever it finds him, is always breathtaking.
At Otira, the Canterbury driver takes the train through the almost ten-kilometre long Otira Rail Tunnel built into the rock a hundred years ago. It’s pretty cool. Because of the length of the tunnel they used to have electric trains, because steam trains would get choked up with all the smoke. The tunnel had its own coal-fired power station to make electricity for the tunnel. Now they use extractor fans so the diesels can get through and the driver carries oxygen, just in case. But Dad, he gets into the empty train that the driver has brought up from Lyttelton and brings it back to here to be loaded again.
A million tonnes of Stockton coal goes along that railway line every year. It used to be more, when the mine was doing okay. Maybe one day things will get better and they’ll shift a million and a half or even two million again like they used to.
If they don’t close the mines down altogether.
When I wake up the next morning, only one thing is going around in my head. I stare at my ceiling, the grey light coming through the curtains, and think. The shed door. I shut it twice yesterday when I fed Blue. I got the hay and shut it and then threw the hay over the fence and then I fixed his cover and then climbed back over the fence and had to shut the door again. And Blue was acting up. How could I have been so stupid? How did I not realise?
Dad is home from work and has started banging around the kitchen making himself breakfast. I’ve got the plate of sliced corned beef left over from last night out of the fridge on the bench. Mum has told me to make my school lunch with it. I don’t like cold corned beef. It’s gross. I make a heap of sandwiches with corned beef, mustard, lettuce, and I add a mandarin and an apple and a couple of muesli bars to the pile as well.
‘You sure you’ve got enough sandwiches there?’ Dad asks, looking at them.
‘Just lunch,’ I say, stuffing the whole lot into my lunchbox.
Mum’s calling me from the hallway to hurry up and get in the car.
‘I just want to check on Blue. Won’t take a second,’ I tell her as we leave by the back door, goodbyes to Dad said. I run out of the carport, my schoolbag over my shoulder and head to the shed. Blue whinnies at me.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell him, slipping my lunchbox out of my schoolbag. I open the feed shed door but only a crack, just enough so I can shove the lunchbox in through the gap, and push it along the concrete floor as far as I can without looking. Then I slam the door shut and run back to Mum. She already has the car backed out of the carport.
‘How was Blue?’ Mum asks as I climb into the car.
‘He’s all right. Even after everything yesterday.’
‘He’s a horse. He’ll be fine.’
Mum pulls out of the driveway, looking both ways and then motors it onto the road. On my side the police tape hangs limp in the drizzle around the blackened wreck of what remains of Pete’s house. I wonder how long it will stay like that. Will someone buy the land, build a new house? Will we have new neighbours? But maybe no one can buy it, because Pete can’t be found to sell it. And anyway, property isn’t selling much in Westport because of the mines. The whole town is for sale, but no one is buying.
School is the usual. A few kids ask me about the explosion, a few of the teachers too. I shrug it off as no big deal. I catch up on what I missed yesterday. Buy a filled roll from the canteen for lunch. Check what’s going on in the world on my phone. Hear from everyone how badly we lost the school interchange. As if I really need to know. As if I really want to know.
I do have friends, but high school is not the same as primary school. My best friends are now at boarding school either in Nelson or Christchurch. It’s partly because they’re Catholic and there is no Catholic high school in Westport, but really it’s because their parents think big schools in big cities are better than a small country high school in a coal town where it rains a lot. They’re probably right. Dad says the only ones left at the high school besides me are the crims, the dopeheads and the girls who are three months pregnant. But that’s just Dad being Dad. It’s not really like that. It’s just his joke.
Mum and Dad gave me the option of going to boarding school – they could afford it, just – but I didn’t want to leave and they didn’t want me to leave either. Home is home, even though my primary school friends are now gone for most of the year. It’s just the way it is.
Mum picks me up after school, takes me home and I change out of my school uniform.
‘I’m going to see Blue,’ I call out to Mum. I grab my riding coat from the carport and head out to him. Blue is at the back of his paddock, but as soon as he sees me he races the length of it, his cover flapping, mud flying.
‘So, Blue, how’s things?’ I ask him, rubbing his head over the fence. The feed shed door is shut behind me.
He snorts.
He’s a happy horse today, no ears back, no eyes wild like yesterday. He stands and shudders, water flying everywhere, and swishes his tail. He just wants his hay and maybe to go for a ride. Can we go for a ride, please, Annie, can we go for a ride? he’s asking me.
I turn my back on him and face the shed door, cautiously push it open, listen, look in. No one is in there. But my school lunchbox is empty, sitting on Blue’s bale of hay. The mandarin peel is on the top. I do a double take. It’s been shaped into letters – TY.
My heart is beating so fast it takes me another minute before I get it. Thank you. He’s saying thank you for the sandwiches. So I was right. Pete was hiding here yesterday afternoon, last night, this morning.
But where has he gone?
I grab a rope from the shed, open the gate and run over to Blue, clip the rope to the halter’s metal circle under his chin and lead him out of the paddock to the tree by the fence. He lets me, his ears up. He knows what it means. I quickly tie the rope to the tree branch as always and start unbuckling his cover. He stamps one foot as I haul the cover off and throw it on the fence, then rush back into the shed for his saddle blanket, saddle and bridle. The saddle is a Wintec, so it’s reasonably light. I should brush him first but there’s no time, so it’s saddle blanket on, then the Wintec. I knee him in the guts and quickly do up the girth strap tight, my head holding up the saddle flap, before he can puff out his stomach again, then yank down the stirrups on their straps.
I give h
im a hasty rub between the eyes before slipping on his bridle, the bit flat in my palm until he accepts it between his teeth. I unclip the halter rope, lead Blue away from the tree and jump on. I did pony club for a year (at Mum and Dad’s insistence) but gave it up as soon as I could. Pony club would not have approved of my mounting style this afternoon.
Blue starts walking as soon as I’m on and I pull him around so we’re heading for the gap in the scrub at the back of our property. It leads to the beach. I’ve given up on the hood of my raincoat and my hair is now slick from the drizzle, but it doesn’t matter – I’ve caught sight of what I’ve been looking for.
It’s a footprint in the mud, and it shouldn’t be there. I lean over Blue’s side searching for more. He flicks his tail but doesn’t complain further about his unbalanced load. Most of this track is hard, but there is the odd patch of mud – and sure enough, there is another footprint, a boot print. They’re heading towards the beach. I steer Blue carefully, making sure his hoofprints are covering them, backing him up where I need to.
The scrub is mostly manuka and fern, some gorse, and matted long grass on the side of the sandy track. Then there’s a steep slope that Blue plunges down without a pause, with me leaning back, and we’re onto the beach where Deadmans Creek meets the surf. The footprints are easier to follow now in the deep sand.
We wade through Deadmans, me hitching my feet up against the saddle so I don’t get wet, and find the footprints again on the other side. It means Pete must have made it through at low tide, mid-morning, or it would have been too deep for him to get across. We take even greater care now concealing his footprints, Blue obligingly scuffing his hooves in the rain-soaked sand and doing the job perfectly. I look back, one hand on his rump, checking.
Blue whinnies and I turn around. Another horse is on the beach. It’s jet black, and it’s galloping full tilt at an old tree that’s been washed up on the beach from a flood. The tree is standing almost upright, its huge root ball sitting on the sand, a broken trunk above it. The branches are long gone. Blue stops and watches, and I let him. The rider has the reins loose, using his body to urge the horse on. When they get to the tree the horse skirts around it like it’s done it a million times before, almost turning on the spot before galloping back to where it started, sand flying under its hooves. There they stop, the rider rubbing the horse’s neck and collecting the reins, his horse’s sides heaving under the western saddle.
Blue whinnies again (thanks for that, Blue) and they both look our way. Blue starts walking towards them and I push him into a trot, rising perfectly as pony club taught me. I’m still following the footprints in the sand, scuffing them out, but I can see they stop where the black horse has been working. Pete must have walked past the driftwood tree this morning.
‘An old racehorse,’ the rider says when we get close enough.
I stop Blue and push his wet mane over to hide his racing brand, white against his chestnut-brown neck, before I think about what I’m doing.
‘He’s not old,’ I reply.
‘He looks nice. Is he fast?’
‘He can be.’
‘Want to race?’
I look at him. Blue shifts under me, his ears forward, as if he knows exactly what the rider has suggested. The boy is older than me, maybe by a year, two. His riding jacket is done up tightly around him; he has black riding pants and boots. He’s not wearing a helmet, but nor am I. I usually do but I forgot it today. The rain has darkened his hair. His face is tanned, so he’s not from here. No one gets a suntan in this weather. And he’s smiling at me, or it’s really more of a grin. White teeth. And then he turns his horse, facing it away down the Fairdown Beach, and suddenly they’re off.
Blue moves beneath me, a cautious step, then another, waiting for my decision. I sigh, shake my head and give him the smallest nudge with my feet, and he lurches forward with both front legs into a full gallop. I stand up, out of the saddle, shortening the reins, my hands hard up either side of his neck, my face not far above them, raincoat flying. I should have done the zip up.
Although Blue was a pacer, I’ve always thought he should have been a galloper. He’s a thoroughbred in disguise. With his longer stride we soon catch the black horse, which is probably already exhausted from racing around the tree, and the boy looks at me sideways, curious, then urges his black horse on. We’re neck and neck, side by side, maybe a metre apart, galloping down the beach on the hard sand just in front of the waves. If anyone describes galloping to you as the same as flying, don’t let them fool you. Okay, I’ve never flown, of course, not like a bird, but I imagine it’s not like this. For starters you’re connected to this animal that seems like nothing but fluid, moving muscle beneath you. And you’re connected by only a small section of the soles of your riding boots balancing on the stirrups, the insides of your legs clamped against the moving sides of the horse and your hands gripping the reins. Nothing else. Yet you move as one – horse and rider. Forward. Fast. So fast you can hardly breathe in the air as it rushes past you, so fast the sand beneath you is a blur. And I’m crouching, but it feels as if I’m balancing on a tightrope. One move from me could send us both crashing down. The same with Blue – a sidestep, a stumble on some soft sand, and I’d be off, cartwheeling down the beach. Galloping is trust and honesty between horse and rider and pure, amazing energy.
I could stand up, let go of the reins, put my arms out like wings, my raincoat already flapping behind me, and then maybe it would be like flying. I’ve seen people do that, on YouTube, stand on their horses bareback, do handstands, tricks. But I’ve never tried it. Not yet.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see the boy watching me, but I keep looking between Blue’s ears, looking for anything on the sand that might trip us up, that Blue or the other horse might startle at. But there’s nothing and we keep going, just endless beach in front of us, waves to our left, grey late-afternoon sky somewhere above and the horizon muddled in the misty rain. It’s a day made for galloping.
I can feel Blue ease into his stride. He’s content now to match the other horse. His competitiveness, the desire to win bred into him, is being dampened by his curiosity. And he’s probably getting tired. He’s not used to this. He hasn’t been out of his paddock for days, plus we don’t regularly gallop down the beach. I’m not a thrillseeker and neither is Blue. If anything, he’s a bit of a wimp.
I let my grip on the reins loosen, relax my shoulders. Enjoy it. Blue is managing to keep pace with the black horse, even though it is fitter-looking. It’s not a race anymore, just two horses and their riders going for a gallop in the misty rain. Up ahead, somewhere, is the mouth of the Whareatea River, going out to sea. It’s too deep for the horses to gallop through, even to swim across, when it’s been raining like this. We will have to stop there, but until then it’s just beach and the rhythm of the horses’ hooves on the sand.
But the other horse is suddenly on a collision course with us, the boy’s legs banging hard into mine, his hand reaching out and grabbing at Blue’s reins. Blue almost rears up but I react quickly enough to push him down, my weight forward and down into the saddle. My head snaps back, whiplashed by the abrupt stop.
‘What did you do that for?’ I yell at the boy, trying to calm Blue, trying to calm myself, trying to stay on and not fall off, the two horses still jostling each other in the drizzle.
‘Look,’ he says, and I do what he says and hear it for the first time over the surf: a helicopter, low, heading straight towards us down the beach.
‘It would have made the horses bolt. Sorry, I just wanted to slow you down. I didn’t think your horse would react that way.’
I watch the helicopter, half listening to him, still trying to settle Blue. It’s a big helicopter, not as big as the logging ones, but bigger than a two-seater. It’s like the one that was flying over our house after the explosion yesterday. I have the reins back now but Blue is far from still. It’s the same with the other horse. They’re both jumpy with a helico
pter so close. But there’s only one thought in my mind. What I came to the beach for. What I should have been doing instead of galloping with this boy.
I whirl Blue around and head back the way we came.
‘Hey, where are you going?’ the boy calls out but I ignore him, already in a canter. I’m sitting down in the saddle, safe, just in case the helicopter does startle Blue. I don’t want to come off. The helicopter is behind us, moving slowly, and maybe that’s all it’s going to do, if it doesn’t leave altogether. The uprooted driftwood tree is still a way off.
Blue stretches into the canter and it’s just the two of us. I don’t look back to see what has happened to the boy and his horse. Or to see the helicopter.
I’m looking for more footsteps in the sand, but so far there are only the horses’ tracks from when we galloped the other way. Hopefully it will stay that way. Hopefully Pete is long gone and not sitting somewhere in the scrub at the edge of the beach, or snoozing next to a piece of driftwood in plain sight from the air.
The drizzle is turning into rain, pitting the sand, the horses’ hoofprints, the tide mark, but I keep searching, angry with myself for forgetting what I came here for. The noise from the helicopter is steadily getting louder. And then it’s suddenly on top of us, the downwash from its rotors filling the air with water. Blue’s ears are flattened in fear. I pull him up and slide off him quickly, hauling his nose, as much of his head as I can, into my open raincoat. He wants to run, to get away from the noise, but I hold him tight and he stands there, shuddering, his head pressed hard against my chest. I glare upwards, water in my eyes, but no one is there to see me, no one hanging out the helicopter doors looking down.
‘It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay,’ I say into Blue’s ears. And we just stay there, Blue cowering in my arms. Then at last the helicopter moves away, flies off over the sea, cutting the corner of the bay to Westport. I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s gone. Blue’s shudders slowly subside. He’s wet, cold; we both are. I need to get him home, get him dry, the sweat off him, before he gets crook. Get some feed into him. Do something. I jump back on and we start for home. Blue sets the pace – a fast walk is all he can manage. We skirt the driftwood tree. There are no footprints to be seen on this side of it, just the other horse’s hoofprints from where it was circling, the whole area of sand churned up. Pete must have walked to the tree, then up into the scrub. Lucky. Lucky that the boy and his horse covered his tracks. I stand up in the stirrups and scan the land above the beach as best I can, but there’s nothing. And I’m not going looking, not with Blue like this.