Foal's Bread (24 page)

Lainey, her arm covered in McCliver spit and tooth marks, looked out unhappily to where she could see people standing in front of the King Street cottages still watching. Her aunt and Nin looked strange from having had their hair set. They were like paper cutouts against the blue of the afternoon sky, their heads a bit angular as if whoever had made them had been none too careful with the scissors.

‘It wasn't me and George. They come at us.'

‘Trying to scalp her, were you?' said Noah, uncurling her daughter's fingers that were still holding a clump of gingery hair. ‘Or after an ear? Well we won't tell your dad, eh? Only upset him. Stop him sleeping. And he wants to arrive in Sydney with his best foot forward.'

Not that there was any difference between left and right, thought Noah sadly a quarter of an hour later, watching her husband stumbling on the step up into the train carriage, saved from a fall only by his mother and sister either side. They'd purposefully booked tickets on the mail train to save Roley the shame of having to say he belonged to no troop, but even so there were a couple of soldiers sitting inside his carriage.

‘Now then,' he said, turning around to hooroo Lainey and George, who'd stayed on the platform. Two jacaranda trees at the station were also in flower. All that lilac blossom gave Lainey the magical feeling that by the time her father did come home, he'd be as right as rain. As if miracles lay in the colour purple. What about calling a horse Jacaranda Girl? Wouldn't that be a good one?

Noah stood for a moment with her husband in the train door. He was giving suggestions about how best to get Landy to start picking up the correct lead on left-going circles. Their foal was a three-year-old now, broken in.

‘You want to not give him too much rein.'

She could see his trimmed hair underneath his hat; the dimple in his chin clearer, more generous and wide than ever before, after the barber's shave.

His eyes met her own, then he addressed the children again. ‘Only be gone for a few days and hopefully this doctor will be able to get Dad off this stick.'

Then, ‘Darlin,' he said, and under the gruffness she could hear his love. That he was just giving her mouth a peck was only on account of Minna poking her head out. The train whistle blowing and the wheels beginning to move.

Though it was her daughter with the scratches down one side of her face, Noah could feel the peace that comes following the exertion of fighting for your family, in public if necessary.

‘Rol should never have took down so much forest oak in September. Flaming flaked him out it did,' Noah told one of her brothers who was helping out Aunty Mad and Mil with their wood supply. ‘And the bakehouse paying so poorly it was hardly worth his while.'

Lainey looked up at this Uncle Monty who they hardly ever saw. As always she was drawn to stare at the pink inside of his hands.

‘Well do you want me to try and come out of an evening to give you a hand with milking? I could.'

His tongue also, thought Lainey, was very pink. Even more pink than George's.

‘No.' Her mother was refusing and Lainey felt disappointed. Uncle Monty had never come out to One Tree. ‘Minna's brother Owen's going to be coming over for mornings. And Lainey's getting to be almost as fast as me, aren't you, Laine?

‘But you know Rol's even been reduced to selling Ral's tomatoes in at the store? Takes em in by bike cos horses know that something is really up with him. Start putting on a show. Even George's Fly begun to try to put it over Rol.'

‘And what? The store'll buy the tomatoes off Roley?'

‘He's been getting a good few bob for em each fortnight. But it makes him feel dirty, he reckons. Makes him feel like a bloody blackfella.'

‘But the money's white, eh Noh, and that's all that counts. Any rate, be good!' said Montgomery, who, black enough to be refused entry to all but the Wirri Hotel, looked even darker under the late afternoon sky.

Well, thought Noah, I will be good, and found it easy to say no to her aunties' offer of a game of whist with an evening shandy.

What weren't they going to get done? So what that Roley had warned her not to work too hard beyond getting the milking completed each day and pigs fed. She felt plump with anticipation. To be free of the presence of Minna for almost a week was a miracle she didn't intend to waste.

Her daughter, picking up on the mood, was also filled with plans. What wouldn't they surprise their dad with when he came home? Leaving the bails once afternoon milking was over, she took George to sit awhile with her in the corn paddock. What their dad called the blue room, the sky the ceiling. The sound of the afternoon wind off the river blowing through the corn was the sound of all her hopes.

‘Only the swallows can go higher than our mum and dad,' she confided to her brother. ‘Yep. Double as high as that corn when it's full grown and that's fair dinkum,' before lying back like George to watch for a while the darting arrowing birds at play in the sky above the paddock, house and hill of One Tree
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CHAPTER 12

W
hen Lainey came in from school the next day it was to find her mother in home paddock getting ready to put shoes on a horse she'd never seen before.

‘What are ya, what are ya?' Noah was saying to an itchy piebald that it turned out belonged to Mr Ackerman. Ralda had been holding the mare for trimming the first hoof, which had only made matters worse. With Lainey home from school they might get along better.

‘What are ya?' Tentatively, Lainey mouthed the words her mother kept saying, and took the lead rope from her aunty. ‘What are ya?' The horse's face was black except for a nail-shaped blaze down the middle. Its eyes were a bit weepy from grass seeds. Aw, thought the girl, poor thing, and wiped some of the moisture away with her thumb. Her mother was using the hoof knife, cutting off the craggy bits of frog. Lainey knew how to get a nice clean-looking triangle and felt like whistling. Now time for nippers. Cut off the flare. She bent down to pass the tools as required to her mother so that in no time at all her mother had stood up, easing her back for a bit. Breeze and Landy had wandered up the hill and were having a good gander.

George was sitting in the shade of the jacaranda on his lead, playing with seed pods. Lainey put her hand to the mare's face and looked across to her brother. She poked her tongue out at him. He poked his out back. She made hers touch the tip of her nose, which always made him groan with happiness.

‘Don't set him going,' said her mother, looking over to George. ‘This horse, you know, has got strong feet for a white-socked mare. Eggboat man reckons this is his new stock mare.' Noah exchanged a knowing grin with her daughter. ‘Says he's going to have to build new fences if he wants to keep her cos she's already jumped out twice.'

It was a well-known fact around Wirri that Mr Ackerman ruined all his horses for shoeing. Hasn't got a bloomin clue, her mother always said. She said he should've kept on carting and cracking eggs by riverboat. He was too afraid a type of man to have anything to do with a horse. Shouldn't be allowed. He got himself scared and then always ended up bashing the horse with a shoe half on but the nails not clenched down, so that the horse's hoof was like a weapon. There'd have to have been half a dozen Ackerman horses her mum had had to fix before this piebald that he'd messed up.

‘Just get that kero tin, would you, Ral?' said Noah as Ralda went to go. ‘I'll use that as my stand. Save my knees.'

Lainey watched her mother bringing the mare's foot forward to perch on the tin. Not too good, thought Lainey, handing her the rasp. It was a stinker of an afternoon, even the sky faded to the blue of one of her father's favourite old shirts.

It was going alright after all though, her mum so good with the rasp Dad reckoned there was no one faster in the whole of Wirri and west to the ranges. Lainey loved the sound of the rasp at work, tidying toe up after the nippers.

Although the mare had the Queensland itch so bad it had gone and rubbed half its mane out, the forelock was thick and long enough to give the horse the appearance of a half-shy, half-wild girl, peeping out.

‘What happened to your dress?' Aunty Ralda came back with drinks for Lainey and George and their mother with some biscuits on a tray.

‘Well I was ink monitor, wasn't I? Mixing the powder with the water.' Lainey gulped down the cordial. ‘Wasn't looking and next minute all down my front!'

‘Steady,' Noah warned the horse as it leant back and sent the tin flying. She let the horse put down its foot and smiled to see her daughter's green cordial moustache. ‘Ready enough anyway for first shoe.'

‘Well, I'll worry about that stain after,' said Aunty Ral to Lainey. ‘And might just leave you two to it, take George with me. Before he really starts to fret.'

‘No, don't go, Ral,' said Noah. ‘Going to be needing you, I'll warrant. And don't let George off,' as Ralda went to unclip him. ‘He's got to learn.'

Although Roley and Ralda hated George getting tied, sometimes Noah had no choice. Couldn't have George pelting his pony around. The running rein was long. Plenty of length for him to make himself very comfortable there under the jacaranda on the other side of the fence. If he wanted to suddenly for no reason climb halfway up the fowl ladder in the sun, sobbing because he'd dropped his cordial, then that was his business.

The shade had moved from Noah and her shoeing gear and, as she recommenced, the sweat was running into her eyes. The horse was also beginning to sweat up.

With Lainey home, Noah felt happier. She put the tips of six nails in her mouth, holding them there by tightening her lips.

Lainey's mood was also good. Oh, the jacaranda flowers off their farm's tree were beautiful. A lilac carpet of them formed a lovely big circle. Lainey loved that fragile jacaranda-flowery smell even as they squashed and popped beneath the mare's hooves.

‘Hey, George,' she called out, popping five flowers on one hand and waving. Her mother had already shown her how to tap a nail into the hoof of old Tad. And wasn't she that good at hammering, her mother swore she must be going to be a little lady blacksmith in the making?

‘You must've been doing that before you were born!' That day her mother hadn't been able to hide her pride. The rare kiss from Mum always having a smell of metal about it, as if even when she hadn't been shoeing she might've had a nail hanging out the side of her mouth, which she sometimes did, using it to pick about in a dead back tooth.

Lainey shot a look at her aunt. As if Aunty Ralda would be any use to them if this eggboat man's horse decided to test them. On One Tree, no one more lily-livered than Aunty Ral if a horse mucked up.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap
, went her mother's little shoeing hammer, driving the nails in. Maybe the horse wasn't going to be a ratbag after all. Next, she neatly twisted and crimped each nail down.