Coming Rain (16 page)

After a moment of them watching, he said excuse me I should not have said that. She
had laughed at his eagerness to explain what they were seeing. Daddy was usually
silent about such matters, leaving it to mother.

An arched clumsy thrusting of his great cock and her simultaneous need and hatred
of him on her. Ears laid back and nostrils flaring as he bit hard, her neck, and
rutted at her. She, for a moment, allowed this dominance and of her need of him inside
her. For her too, it was pressing, to be like this.

I am not a horse.

The shape of her knuckles in the white cotton. I want to hear his thank you Clara.
To place food before him and he nod, not looking at me. His mouth as he said beautiful.
Such large fingers. Her eyes closed and she began to hear her father's gramophone.
He would be drinking brandy again and soon fall asleep. The music would eventually
stop. That scratching sound
would go for a while until the winding mechanism ran
down. Violetta in Verdi's heart. My mother believed these stories were real. She
would ask my forgiveness for getting cancer and dying. Apologising for her death,
my mother, saying sorry darling girl. I am.

Clara dressed, pulling on a white skirt and pale blouse. Sat on the bed, waited while
her heart slowed and she could smell again the hot kerosene of the lamp. The smell
also of her mother's perfume. White gardenias.

Crossed to the mirror and looked at her reflection for a while.

She stood and walked out of her room. Closed the door and tiptoed down the stairs
and along the east passage. A light under the kitchen door and the sound of Jimmy
still working, cleaning the kitchen. The smell of bread baking. Vinegar and sandstone
soap on the floor. Jimmy, yelling in Chinese at an American jazz song coming from
the wireless. Perhaps he was singing.

She closed the back door and felt the cool of the night around her, crossed her arms
and walked, head lowered, towards the shearers quarters. Why am I doing this? I cannot
not do this.

Clara passed the stables and heard the soft, breathing nicker of Pearl. Her lazy
feet across the ground and she crossed to her. Tom was in the next yard and he too
lifted his nose and smelled her. Pawed the ground and walked the rail, the clicking
of his shoes in the stony gravel. She saw him in the light from the moon and it touched
his back moving forever. Beloved horses. The dogs stirred and she heard the suppressed
yowps of King and Sky; chains rattled. Whines and yips of anticipation. Imagined
Dee's silence, her knowing eyes.

‘Is that you Miss Clara?' Jimmy's faraway voice calling from the back veranda of
the house. ‘Down there?' Jimmy was outside, standing holding a hurricane lamp high.

‘It's me Jimmy.' She called back to him. ‘Just checking my little pregnant mare here.
Been a dingo about.'

‘The dogs,' Jimmy said. ‘The dogs will tell us if that dingo comes too near the house
isn't it?'

‘Yes Jimmy.' She knew, he knew.

‘All right then Miss Clara. You okey dokey?

‘Yes thank you Jimmy.'

‘Ah.'

She watched as he raised a hand. Turned, head down, and re-entered the house. Repeated
himself. ‘Ah.'

Wondered if Jimmy was waiting for her to return. Her father was sleeping but Jimmy
missed nothing. She kissed Pearl and breathed her in. The wash of the horse in her
nose. The soft muzzle, velvet top lip fluttering over her face. A sister's kiss and
I have no sister.

Tom was still walking in the yard. White tail swaying.

The shearers quarters were about a quarter of a mile from the house. She would follow
the line of old white gums so as not to be seen. Fence posts ran along behind the
gums. Squat and as thick as a man's body, leaning left and right. Sagging and broken
barbed wire around them.

The night was silent with a storm somewhere. Iron in it. The taste of blood the same,
iron in it. If you have ever bitten your tongue or sucked a cut, it will rain, her
grandmother said. It was the superstitious old north-country beliefs, these things
which informed her. Like not cutting your hair or fingernails on
a Sunday or Friday.
A field of potatoes failed due to having it, the other, while bleeding. When you
put your shirt or blouse on inside out it must stay that way for an hour at least.
It must have wanted to be angry with you, that which you put on your own very self,
who would think such a thing? Onions falling from a string, a stillborn child.

When she reached the signpost: Woolshed and Shearers Quarters, she turned to her
right and followed the curving gravel track towards the long bulk of the shearing
shed. The quarters were just on from that. Enormous ghost gums spread against the
stars. Her eyes had almost become adjusted to the night.

CHAPTER 39

The dingo came to the young dog sitting below the crest of the valley of his memory.
He was sitting and trying to be who he had been, howling for the absence of his pack.
His nose told him of their dead and rotting bodies. The clan, splayed and wired onto
roadside fences. There was no mistake, the shooting. They had been gutted, their
intestines spilled out in rotting heaps. Their bodies chained together and pulled
behind the blue car. Laying a wide scent of destruction and havoc. The hunting clan
of the valley wiped out. Soon even what remained of them would be gone. He lifted
his face to the early morning sky and cough-howled. Sat as if thinking and then lay
down. Put his front paws out and placed his chin on his paws.

She sat behind him and waited. When he had finished whining he came and lay next
to her. Something of the pup had gone and he was a more serious dog.

She, without expression, stood and turned from him. Began to trot towards a dry creek
to the north.

After a while he followed.

A young ewe in the rocks at the southern edge of the clan's old hunting grounds.
She was having trouble giving birth and the front feet and face of the lamb were
hanging from her fly-encrusted vulva. She had instinctively sought solitude to give
birth in this late and difficult time and had left the rest of the flock in the main
valley. The dingoes discovered her and immediately attacked.

The dingo bitch bit onto the face of the premature foetus and tore it from the young
ewe. The young red dog had simply collided with the sheep and tumbled her onto her
side. She was struggling to get up, legs in the air. The dingos circled and snarled
as the blue-faced lamb lay in a slimy mess and they continued to squabble.

Crows had appeared and were already approaching the scattered kill.

CHAPTER 40

Lew heard a light tapping on his window. He sat up and listened. Lit a bedside candle.

Painter was snoring loudly in the room across the breezeway. The tapping came again.
It was the sound of a small stone being rapped against the windowpane in his room.

Clara was standing there, her hand at the glass. He pushed the curtain to one side
and raised the window easily on its pulley. Stopped midway and he heard the gentle
bump of the iron weights in the sash.

‘Lewis,' she said and turned her head to one side to look through the half-opened
window.

He lifted the double panes to their full height. A slight squealing noise and again,
the low soft gong as weight and counterweight touched. The night wind blew in. It
was cool and smelled of a storm. Still cloudless, the moon was waning towards the
half. He could see her face, the shadows and short hair.

‘Can I come in?'

She took his hand and he heard her place her foot against
the iron cladding of the
building. Felt the strength of her arm as she lifted herself up on his outstretched
hand. One foot over the edge of the sill and in a moment she was inside. She was
wearing a pale skirt and it had ridden up as she climbed into the room. Just for
a second, he saw the full lengths of her muscular horsewoman's legs, white underwear
between. She stood, and jumped slightly as she pushed her skirt down. Standing there
close together, they had again touched. ‘Clara. What are you doing here?'

‘Lewis, I…' She stopped. ‘God, you have bad breath. Have you been drinking?'

His mouth was open and he stepped back. Closed his mouth. Laughed at her honesty.

‘Oh. Sorry,' she said.

‘No.' He shook his head. ‘I'll go and rinse my mouth. Brush my teeth.' He had lowered
his head so as to not speak directly at her.

She sat demurely on the bed, smoothing her skirt beneath her bottom.

Lew was searching through his canvas bag on the floor. Found his toothbrush and a
tin of Alligator tooth powder. Painter was still snoring as he padded down the boards
to the washhouse. He brushed his teeth and returned to the bedroom as quickly as
he could.

Clara was sitting straight backed on his bed. ‘Painter is very loud isn't he?'

He nodded. ‘The grog. Been a while since he had a drink. Your dad gave us a bottle
of brandy. Y'know, to celebrate the cut out.'

He lit another candle, took the light and placed it on the floor in front of her.
Unrolled a kapok mattress and sat on the bed opposite. The flame between them moved
as he moved. He bent forward and interlaced his fingers, cleared his throat.

Clara was looking at him in the candlelight. She squared her shoulders, hands held
in her lap. For a moment, they didn't know what to say to each other.

‘I came to ask you something,' she said.

Lew nodded.

‘Today what you said.' She plucked at the cotton of her dress on her knees. Smiled,
opened her mouth, looked at him. ‘If you meant it and if you would stay on after
the shearing. For the wheat?'

‘Stay on for the wheat?'

‘Yes, you said I was beautiful. And didn't know what to say after that. It was,'
she frowned, searching for the right word, ‘tender.' Yes. ‘And how you felt, trusting
even. It was brave.' She reached out and took his hand. Her hand holding his, this
bold movement. ‘Shearer's hands,' she said. Their fingers slid together, intermeshing.
It seemed the most natural of things to do when holding hands.

‘There is wool growing between my fingers,' he said. ‘Like an animal.'

‘Where?' She laughed and turned his hand over in hers and pulled the fingers apart.
Peering at them. ‘Where?'

‘No,' he said, laughing. ‘I am teasing you.'

She pushed his hand away. ‘Stop it.'

‘I will stay on for the wheat,' he said. ‘And I meant what I said.'

‘Good,' she said. ‘I'm pleased. Thank you.' She frowned, still holding his hand,
began to examine his palm, touching the callused dome at the base of each finger.
Squeezed his fingers and shook her head at him. Her fingers closed around his middle
finger. ‘But first,' she said, ‘you have to go and see Dad. Ask his permission to
see me. Take me out.' Folded shut his hand.

‘At the homestead?' Lew asked.

‘Of course. It is the right thing to do. His blessing, Lewis. It's important. And
I can take you to Daybreak Springs for a picnic and a swim. Dad will appreciate it
I am sure.' She leaned across and kissed him on the mouth. Again her boldness. The
dash of a good horsewoman. A good woman with dogs. That intuition that cannot be
taught. And then she was rising up while still kissing him.

She broke off and stood. ‘I promise. Now, I have to go.'

In a moment she had turned away from him, climbed out the window and disappeared.

The window was still open and he stepped forward to close it. Could not close it,
and then he did.

Lew heard rain on the corrugated-iron roof. He looked to where Clara would have gone.
Walked outside and stood in front of the quarters. The smell of a thunderstorm coming
in from the night. Occasional wet drops began blowing in, spattering on the veranda
boards and across his bare feet. The rain clouds lifting and rolling across the face
of the moon. Slate to black, scudding clouds building upon themselves and the night
down towards the ground in the rising wind. The first real rain came next. Fine and
then thickening to something steady.

He walked out into the yard, his bare feet in the wet dust. Reached out and cupped
his hand to allow the rain to fall into it. This is something, and he thought again
of Maureen O'Reilly, how when he came inside her it was like a thousand wild birds
flew out of his arsehole and she arched her back, said something he hadn't heard
before. His semen on the black oil floor. Her hand cupped above her knee. Saying,
young men have so much. It's all over me, in me.

Sudden lightning flashes and the smashing crack soon after. There was no time to
count, he turned and hurried back towards the shelter of the quarters. The wind came
in flurries and the rain became heavy as he made his way along the breezeway. Painter's
door opened and Lew saw a lamp burning.

‘Raining son? A storm coming.' Painter stood at the door.

‘Yeah mate.'

‘Did I hear voices before? Someone here?'

‘No mate you dreaming,' Lew said.

‘I could have sworn,' Painter looked towards the sound of the thunder. ‘Must have
been the bloody brandy. You smell that?'

The rain. Lew laughed. ‘Smells good.'

‘Good as gold son.'

‘Night mate,' Lew said and stepped back to his room.

‘Night.'

‘Tomorrow's Sunday.'

‘Day off. Sleep in,' Painter said from behind his closed door. ‘My head feels like
a football at the end of a grand final.'

CHAPTER 41

Threads of the rainstorm hung in the air the next morning and a double rainbow formed
to the west. The brilliant arcs began to widen and fade and after a few minutes both
of them had gone.

Lew had risen early, showered and dressed. He watched the rainbows from the kitchen
window and drank tea. Ate toast and Jimmy's cumquat jam for breakfast and looked
at his watch three times before he left.