Foal's Bread (4 page)

True to her father's words, no flies on Noah, she was cleaning up. First, to halt the blood, she sat out in the cold deep channel of the creek. I'm like a bloody good heifer as well, she was thinking. A heifer with no complications, not overly fussed about its first calf.

Washing everything clean in the creek. Then stuffing her duds with her torn-up undershirt to catch any clots. Her heart beating hard but steady to have it all done. Biting her nails down about the butter box. Building up that fire and finding comfort enough in its warmth to make some tea.

Under stars made milky and unclear by the moon she got ready to sleep. A real moist ring was forming round the moon. Means rain, darlin, she could hear her Uncle Nip's voice inside her head, always relaying to her the little wisdoms. Number of stars is days ter rain.

And everything was going to be alright, she fell asleep thinking, until in the morning her father woke with a roar because that Brian and Baffy and the butter box had melted off into the night.

‘Never trust pair of friggin Neville brothers again I won't, Noh,' her father's fury broke through the air. ‘Can't say I wasn't warned. Who knows what they've taken off with apart from the fresh butter. Got it last night for our sandwiches. A lovely bit of farm butter and a loaf of bread. Nicked the butter and our box they have.'

Noah looked down.

‘Nuthin to do with you, Noey. Gawn off on some other man's drove cos like the idiot I was, I paid bloody Baffy out last night.'

But she knew it wasn't that. That the bit of black in them Neville brothers must've sensed what had happened. Smelt it somehow, if not the blood, maybe the death coming for the baby in its boat. ‘We'll be right I reckon, Dad. With these quieties. You'll see. Leave off!' she shouted to the pair of unchained dogs that had gone all wild and eager at her the moment she was up.

‘Oh pigs, no worries! But we'd worked out at shanty to take eighty head of horses back over range. And how're we meant to do that minus that pair of unreliable bastards?'

‘We'll find a way, Dad.' And after Port Lake Show, they would too, using a leather punch to put a hole in the ear of each horse in the race before stringing them all together with twine.

‘Those pigs of Nancarrow's are fat as butter, aren't they?'

‘Don't talk about butter,' said her father sorrowfully. ‘Speakin of quieties, you're a bit of a one this morning. Still mournin yer uncle, is that it? He had a good life. Died in his boots, just the way he would've wanted to you know? What happened to your wrist then?' Her own teeth marks were turning black and blue. ‘Don't tell me one of them old boars have a go at you?'

‘Nup.' She tugged her sleeve down. ‘'Nother nightmare.'

‘Glad I wasn't there. Must've bin a scary one.' Her father tousled her hair and peered over. ‘Well here's something to cheer you up 't any rate—I got you a few rides for show.'

‘What, Wirri?'

‘Just missed that. But Port Lake starts Fridee week. Hold on and I'll stop flies getting in that wrist.' He got out some Settling Day and whooshed it over the marks. ‘Yep. Got the rides for ya in the hunts on some of Lance Oldfield's ponies. When I told him there wasn't no horse too tricky that my daughter couldn't git over a jump he said if you're game you can even ride his big bay, Rainbird
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In ladies' high jump. I told him to enter your name in. Can always cancel. So how about that? Once we git to Wirri we'll load pigs on boat. Have a bit of a rest. Wash off smell of pig! I once had a horse not used to smell of pig go berserk on me.'

‘What, threw you?'

‘Oh, rearing up. Carryin on it was, but gee it ended up winning some prize money for Errol Haines.'

As her father waded into high-jump talk, Noah felt a surge of confidence. Butter box's disappearance easy now to blame on that Brian and Baffy pissing off. Nearly a whole week to recover. That Rainbird to ride, maybe.

All around them were pigs beginning to look restless. About a dozen of the little red porkers lined the beach of last night, taking a drink.

Father and daughter sat in silence then, munching up corn meat sandwiches without butter. Having been crucified in the night by that which already she was thinking of as Little Mister made Noah hungry with amazement. She choked on the mustard and smiled over at her father.

‘You're very spruiky,' he said, smiling back.

The autumn morning was fresh and beautiful, the water sparkling all blue and silvery as it rushed away east. Uncle Nipper reckoned a fox was like a woman what had lost her mind, she remembered, seeing a small red shape disappear at the corner of her eye.

‘Bet if Uncle Nip were here he'd have caught at least one yella-belly by now,' offered the girl. ‘See that one glinting?' With a memory arriving of her uncle, of the golden quality of a few of the hairs in amongst the snowy ones on his huge forearms, for a moment her eyes grew watery.

Her father slapped her on the knee. ‘Looks like the weather's going to hold real good for the show.'

‘Get some rides for yourself too, Dad?'

‘Why would I when you're the champ? But yeah, I'll have a go in men's open high jump. Probably on Rainbird too, after you've got him sorted.'

The youngest porkers grunted and sparred under the oaks. Only that old long Large White, its little intelligent eyes as black as the frypan, still watched the girl. ‘Ya ol' backfatter,' said the girl as her father went to hitch up the carthorse. ‘At any rate, ya slabby bitch, youse'll be bacon bones in Homebush in no time.'

Uneasy then in that gaze still coming at her from the end of a body that must've had as many as one hundred and fifty piglets in its life, Noah also made herself busy, packing, getting the horses ready.

Seeing the butter in the crook of a tree where her father must've placed it and forgot, she kept as quiet as anything, but just as her uncle had sometimes let her, slugged down the last little shot left in the bottle fallen over in the sand. Already the breeze was picking up. It blew pure and cold into her new face and onto her bare throat that now felt so warm.

The rum hit her blood. Flushed her cheeks as pretty as wild creek pomegranates, curled her hair; made her want to sing. The knowledge of the river of blood that had so recently flowed could be left behind, she thought, slapping her pony down the shoulder with the reins.

Only as they set off down the road did she wonder how far the butter box boat would've reached. What if somehow her father should sight it? What if somehow the bubba was still alive, its eyes all full of red dots from the biting flies? What if, just as they reached the bridge over the river at Wirri, it was gliding along underneath, screaming?

By the time her father noticed dabs of blood coming through on his daughter's saddle they were almost at Wirri. Mistaking it for the ending of her girlhood, unable to stop himself, as fathers since the beginning of time have been unable to stop themselves, he glanced to confirm what he had already known: that she was no longer his flat-chested right-hand man.

The noise he made was a mixture of satisfaction and resignation. If it had to come, then Noey couldn't have timed it more perfect, because her aunties ran the boarding house just by the Wirri Hotel.

Which is how it was that as her father fed one hundred and fifty-eight pigs the last of the corn in husk to keep them quiet for loading, Noah Childs heard from her mother's sisters, Aunty Milda and Aunty Madolin, the sketchy facts of life.

They'd already had a tot or two she could tell. Aunty Mil's chin looked hairier, like the plonk was blood and bone for bristles alone. The main thing seemed to not be one of them bad girls and never was she to talk to boys about it.

‘Every month now,' repeated Aunty Mad with evil certainty. ‘Blood in bloomers. Pain in yer guts. Just gotta get used to it.'

But Noah was barely paying attention to the old belt and pins they were ferreting out. Her thoughts were with the baby. Sometimes he tipped over and was gobbled by catfish. Maybe an owl or eagle the next day, or maybe not? Maybe an eggboat man or eel trapper, seeing that baby floating by, had grabbed him up and, even as Aunty Mil and Aunty Mad got back to their euchre, was feeding it flour and sugar mixed up with pony mare's milk? On and on, under night and under day until in her imagination it even reached the ocean at Port Lake where she had been once.

Where the Flagstaff River's mouth met the sea, the baby's bluey-black eyes, not pecked out after all by the crows, stared up ever in search of her. Then the lighthouse beam, failing to detect anything that small making its way out to sea over the bar, arced off in totally the other direction and left the tiny box to face the waves alone.

CHAPTER 2

I
t was a fine April afternoon, the middle day of Port Lake Show, when Rowley Nancarrow, universally known as Roley, first saw the girl having her second try at putting Rainbird over six foot. Who could that be? he wondered. Didn't seem familiar to him at all, but gee she was handling a difficult horse with courage. That Rainbird. Renowned for its rubbish behaviour.

The young man draped his lean body over the railings, enjoying the sun on his back. Enjoying her determination. What's that they were calling her? It sounded like Nella. Nella Childs. Though she was a bit rough with her hands, whoever had taught her had done it good. Even as the horse plunged and spun, how quietly she sat. Nella Childs? He scanned his memory. Never heard of her.

Even though Roley had ridden for the Sanderson brothers at all the Royals, he sometimes thought that the Port Lake showground would have to be his favourite. The sky today was the blue of the breast of one of those champion budgies over under the caged birds' roof. Just a few drifting fairy floss clouds up in the sky, that looked washed as clean and bright as the white socks of that shiny hack cantering past.

There was a glittery, crisp quality to the air. And what a picture the ring looked. Not too churned. The main effect was still of a large green circle full of the smaller circles formed by all the hooves of the ring events travelling the same track, as the judges narrowed their eyes and tried to be impartial.

Built small she was, he saw. Just like himself she was a high jumper who, without a great long pair of legs to wrap around the horse, relied entirely on a sense of balance. Roley's was legendary. There wasn't a bareback hunt in the last ten years that he hadn't won at the Easter Show in Sydney and once, just for the hell of it, egged on by George Welburn hopping a horse bareback over five foot, Roley had taken the bridle and saddle off his own and done the same over six.

The high jump was set up as usual right in front of the grandstand that already was fairly packed with people. Either side of the stand the canvas roofs of this or that attraction moved in the breeze. Even though he was meant to be somewhere else, Roley kept standing with his back in the sun, watching her get ready for her next go over the jump which had been put up half a foot. The guts of her was adding to his enjoyment of the day.

Noah felt a pride and thrill as big as the jump itself as she manoeuvred the big bay gelding beneath her into the best position for the run-up. At the sight of her father, who'd stationed himself strategically enough for the horse to remember the stockwhip of a few days before, the horse plunged forward. Floated sideways. ‘Don't you bloomin well rear on me,' and made her hand into a fist, ready to clock him one between the ears if he did.

In her eagerness to work this Rainbird out, Noah forgot all about pain and blood. She forgot the baby, the little look it had shot her in the dark.

It seemed it was just she and the horse, finding the way to best reach that jump. The white lather of sweat he'd worked up was making it hard to keep a hold of the reins. He took another leap forward and for a moment she lost her grip.

The horse boiled beneath her. ‘Come on.' She touched his shoulder with her hand. ‘Not going to get out of it so might as well cooperate now. Stormy might've been a better name for you. Or Sneaky,' as now she had a firm hold again on the reins he tried to reef her out of the saddle.