Mullumbimby (15 page)

Jo saw what remained of the horse, his mound of perfect muscle and skin and hair lying there lifeless, as her mind slowly and unavoidably caught up with her eyes. Then with a cry she spun away, revolted.

She fell to her hands and knees in the mud, vomiting as though she could expel the terrible truth with physical effort. The idea had suddenly lodged in her that if she just tried hard enough – retched violently enough and worked strenuously enough with the screaming muscles of her throat and gut and neck – then Comet would not be lying here in a tangle of wrongfence and wrongwire that had no place on her farm. That her beautiful colt would instead be standing as usual beneath the mango tree, insisting on hurrying his breakfast along with his interested ears and exploring lips on the bucket as she tipped it. Still heaving, Jo pressed her palms down hard into the mud until it oozed up between her fingers, reddening them. She spewed all of herself out onto the earth. Here, take it, take it. Take all of me. She spat vomit, bile, breath, tears. Anything I have, I'll offer. I'll empty myself completely. Just give him back.

She sobbed and retched until she couldn't pretend that there was anything left inside her but air. Air, and the tiny droplets of rain that she was breathing in through an anguished open mouth.

When she was finally too exhausted to even cry, she collapsed, and lay still. Then she used her shirt to wipe her face of bile and snot and got unsteadily to her feet, muddy and sodden.

She turned back around to face the creek and a whimper escaped her.

Weak and nauseated, Jo looked down again at Comet's body, at his lovely head swaying just beneath the surface of the current. An enormous rage rose in her that his head was still submerged.
The fucking arseholes.
It seemed to her to be the worst insult of all: to be drowned and then to have your head left there all night, bobbing underwater, as if nodding in placid acquiescence to your fate.
Fucking
doghole murderers.
Ignoring the danger – the creek flowing high and fast, the bank a glassy wall of mud, and nobody in earshot – Jo went to his muddied corpse, and tugged hard on Comet's hocks.

Her efforts were futile.

No matter how much she bent her knees or strained her shoulders and back, no matter how many times she slipped against the mud and got up again and again and again, using her fingers as rigid hooks in the bank, it was impossible to shift him. Jo weighed seventy kilos, and Comet closer to five hundred, plus the weight of the water that was now lodged in his lungs for eternity.

Jo stepped back, breathing raggedly, and sweating beneath her plastic raincoat. She noticed with fresh horror that the creek was continuing to creep higher. The deep prints her gumboots had made on the low bank minutes earlier were already being lapped by swirling water.

In the wattle tree on the other side of the creek a trio of rank wet crows was looking on. She snatched a handful of sticky red mud and hurled it at the birds.
Fuck off! Fuck off!
She threw more dirt, threw sticks and looked for rocks, pebbles, pine cones to hurl and hurt the insolent creatures, sitting there with their beady black eyes wanting to feast on her Comet. Wanting to observe her misfortune without taking any part in it, other than stripping the remains.
‘Fucking parasites,'
she screamed at them. When a particularly well-aimed rock made their branch shudder, the crows finally flapped away with harsh
carks. ‘Fucking mongrel arseholes,'
Jo yelled at their tails as they disappeared, then drew her arm across her face again for the tears and snot.

She saw again her boot prints disappearing beneath the rising water. This galvanised her; she had to move Comet before it was too late. And to move him, she had to get the wire off him, because it was the wire fence – wherever the
fuck
it had come from, anyway – which was holding him underwater, that was drowning him.
Get the wire off,
Jo thought wildly, standing there with her smeared, dirt-reddened
hands, and things will be able to return to normal. It's the wire that is standing in the way of things being the way they should be. But not if the creek rises too far, floats him away! Then it will be too late! She hastily threw off her boots and raincoat, knowing that if she slipped into the creek the boots might fill and drag her to her death.

Jo's blue t-shirt soaked through in seconds as she crouched down, tearing at the metal strands which shone silver in the downpour. She struggled, managing to loosen the wire that had cut into Comet's jugular vein, at the base of his neck. She pulled it away from his swollen wound with its protruding blood vessels, slicing her hand open in the process, not caring, not caring – I don't care, so what – and then moved on to the other strand of wire, the one that had caught his front legs together in a horrible parody of a hobble. This one had bitten deeper into horseflesh though, flesh that had been in the water for at least half the night, and was, in any case, wrapped several times around his finely formed pasterns and fetlocks. As Jo twisted and worked frantically at the bone-tight wire, and as her fingers slipped and jerked time and again onto the metal barbs with no result – other than her own blood streaming out and decorating Comet's body – she gradually realised she was moaning. She knew she was failing, and she collapsed once again in exhaustion, this time on top of Comet's cold, wet body.

She lay there, breathing harshly, breathing hard enough for the two of them, yet it was only her whose body moved, only her lungs which heaved for air, pulling it in and expelling it, that lifelong dance which tied her to the cosmos. As she lay wetly defeated, sheltering Comet's young body from the horror of the world with hers, feeling the chill and stillness of his flank, the chill and stillness of death where she had only ever before known a hotly breathing, living yarraman, a yarraman that walked and cantered and neighed and shied and bucked, a yarraman who daily knew the world through all his myriad senses, Jo fell still and silent. She finally surrendered; her face crumpled like a child's.

With an anguished groan, she knew that wherever Comet's head
was lying, underwater or on the land, and whether the creek rose, or whether it fell, and whether she got the murdering wire off his legs, or whether it stayed there, forever rusting in the grave with him, she understood: it didn't matter. This horror in the red earth, on her own baugal jagan – this was the trouble of Ellen's dream made manifest. And it didn't matter one bit what she now did or failed to do. Comet could never be alright again, because Comet was no longer here.

Jo stumbled into the kitchen and sagged against the sink, smearing the edge of the laminex benchtop with her muddied shirt. She ran the cold tap, rinsing clean the wounds on her hands and arms and letting the red water swirl away down the plughole. She needed some sort of antiseptic and serious bandaging. A tetanus shot, probably.

The clock on the wall had stopped at 7:49. Jo gazed at it dully. She registered that the hands were no longer moving, and that the mechanism had failed. But her brain didn't manage to make the further step, to knowing that the time on display was therefore wrong.
Still enough time to get to work by 8:30.
On autopilot, Jo boiled the kettle, made herself a cup of tea, ladled in four sugars, and drank it as she changed out of her sodden gear into dry clothes. Bloodless ones which lacked any recent history.

Outside, the rain had eased at last. Athena was wandering the Big Paddock now in distress, whinnying over and over again for her missing youngster. Jo tried to block the sound out as she got into the ute, but the awful keening followed her most of the way to Mullum. She drove over the range in silence. Spearhead couldn't fix what was wrong with today.

She left the tunnel road and was about to drive across the river next to St John's when, noticing blood still trickling down her forearms, it suddenly occurred to Jo: it might be a good idea to ring someone. Chris. No. Chris was depressed in bed, was no good to her today, no good even to herself. Therese's mobile was out of range, because half of South Golden was a mobile black hole, and Jo wasn't about to drag
her out of the classroom anyway, shame. Twoboy then, in Brisbane. Still parked beside the river, Jo hit speed-dial and a moment later his warm voice was with her, a balm to her misery. His concern turned quickly to outrage.

‘A barbed wire fence – on your place!' he exclaimed in disbelief.

‘And Comet was all wrapped up in it, all tangled up, and he's drowned in the creek,' Jo wailed, bursting into hot angry tears again.

‘Oh, I'm sorry, darling. Christ, I wish I was there with ya. Hey, hey, pull over, pull over, you can't be driving like this,' Twoboy ordered in alarm. Jo was shaking with emotion now that someone was right there on the phone, and it was finally safe to feel helpless. She told him that Kym was well away to Coffs with the boys, and Chris was down sick. Twoboy grimaced. Jo's parents were dead; vulnerability wasn't particularly high on any blackfella list of survival traits, and Jo's list of safe people to call was even shorter than his own.

‘God, I wish I was there with you, darlin,' he told Jo. ‘But I've gotta be in court till at least four-thirty – I can come down after that–'

‘No,' Jo told him, wiping her eyes and realising that her fresh shirt was now bloodied, too. ‘It's okay. It's not like it'll bring him back. If you miss court. Stay there, and come down tomorrow.'

‘Okay, I'll call you the minute it's over okay,' he told her, then risked ending with, ‘love ya, babe'. Click. Jo had hung up and Twoboy was left standing at court, all styled up in a charcoal grey suit, not knowing if she'd heard his last three words or not.

Jo found herself still sitting at the steering wheel. She steadied herself and dried her swollen face for the umpteenth time that morning, then noticed with horror that the car clock said 9.13. What?
Shit.
Basho was going to be ropable. She checked her phone. Sure enough, the time was correct and she'd missed three calls from him in the deadzone between home and Mullum. Jo was supposed to meet her boss at the Co-op at 8.45, to organise an order for the next six months' supplies of trees, mulch, and fertiliser.

Now she clashed the gears ferociously and pulled out and onto the bridge.

‘Ah, look what the cat's dragged in. Good afternoon, madam.' Basho greeted her airily, one elbow on the counter yarning to Fat Tony. He was in a good mood by the look of it, thank Christ. ‘Get flooded in, did ya?'

‘Sorry boss. Nope, I had a dead colt in my paddock this morning,' Jo explained, gulping back tears and hoping she actually looked as shitty and grief-struck as she felt. The bloody lacerations on her arms would have to help with that. Fat Tony's eyes widened at Jo's words but Basho didn't understand the import of them at all, and ploughed on regardless.

‘Did you try and ride it here – is that why you're late?' he joked, before he saw Jo's eyes well up and her lip quiver. He instantly turned his attention to the order for the cemetery, and together with Fat Tony started picking trees out of the seedling trays. Basho had the dugai allergy to any female emotion, and Fat Tony wasn't much better, although he at least had the mitigating factor of his mother's recent death. Jo stayed outside and, filled with shame at not being able to harden the fuck up in public, in front of
blokes,
in front of her
boss,
she leant her forehead against the green colorbond wall of the Co-op, and cried.

It wasn't long before Cheery Dan wandered around the corner in his Billabong cap and flannie.

‘You right there, are ya, matey?' he asked, with a kind, boyish smile, redeeming an entire generation of male Mullumbimbos.

‘Oh ... I will be,' Jo replied through streaming tears. ‘My colt died this morning. Drowned in the creek.'

‘Jesus!' He frowned. ‘That sucks. Severely.' He stood beside Jo, chewing on a stalk of lucerne. Jo told him the story of the mystery wire fence, then rubbed her face hard and extracted a leafy stalk of her own to chew, from the shedded bales stacked just inside the
roller door. Dan grabbed a large fistful of the tasty legume and held it out to her like a bouquet. Jo snorted a damp snort, and took it from him gratefully.

‘You wanna cuppa tea, mate? Or an ... an icecream or something?' Dan asked, throwing a hand uselessly towards the ice-cream freezer that brought the high school kids swarming over the road at lunchtime. Jo smiled a watery smile. Bloody hell, she thought. With young blokes like you I think we might be alright. For all that the planet's killing us back these days, and there are wars everywhere you look. Not to mention some fucking arsehole erecting barbed wire fences on my land. Jo gazed at Dan and wondered if she wanted to kiss him on his nineteen-year-old mouth. Nah. But geez, the relief of having a human being notice that you were dying inside, and actually bothering to care. She dried her eyes on her sleeve and privately decided to declare Cheery Dan an honorary Bundjalung.

‘I'll be right, Dan. But thanks. And thanks for–' and here Jo lifted and waggled the lucerne bouquet.

‘No worries. You know what they say – if you've got live ones, you'll have dead ones.' He touched her arm in sympathy.

Jo put her hand on top of his for a moment, and noticed the glint of his stainless-steel eyebrow ring as the sun slipped briefly out from the clouds. If it stays clear I can go for a ride on Comet after work, she thought automatically – before realising that no, she couldn't.

‘Wanna marry me, Dan?' Jo asked through red-lidded eyes. ‘Get us a bunch of shitty-arsed kids and a huge mortgage?'

‘Fuck, yeah. Tomorrow?'

‘Deal.' Jo managed a wan smile. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed Basho and Fat Tony in the shed, turning away in relief.

‘Well ... I hope ya get to the bottom of that fence business, hey,' Dan said, pulling his cap down tight over his forehead, and climbing into the forklift. ‘Actually–' and here he paused in middle of the forklift's whining reversal, wondering whether or not to speak.