Mullumbimby (9 page)

Supremely oblivious to the digital divide, Comet stood at the back screen door, his ears pricked as he watched Jo's movements in the house. He nudged the screen door hard with his nose. Because the door was held in place with a gammon arrangement made from an old ocky strap, it clattered loudly back and forth but didn't actually open. Comet was rather impressed with the racket he'd just made. In his world, noise in the vicinity of humans very often meant food. With the normal curiosity of any young animal, he nosed the door again.

Amused by his cheek, Jo stepped over to the sink, and rattled the pots and pans soaking there. The horse whickered in approval. To Comet, this building was simply another stable, possibly one with extra tucker inside for the likes of him, and the pots and pans the magical containers of chaff and pellets.

There was no reply from Ellen. Par for the bloody course.

Jo went to the back door, blowing her breath through the wire insect screen onto Comet's extended muzzle. He blew gently back through soft, black, grimy nostrils. Well, at least
you
talk to me, Jo thought. My beautiful boy. We'll have a little ride when I've done these spuds, we can work on your lateral flexion in the paddock, before the rain hits.

Then it dawned on her that Comet was still wearing his halter from when she let him into the backyard to graze an hour ago. He looked quite calm, despite the greenish storm clouds that were now clustering heavily over the back ridge, threatening hail. Would it be too silly to...

Jo smiled wickedly.

She took a piece of decaying Mooney string from the nearby bathroom cupboard, and tied the screen door back to an unused washing machine outlet. The way into the house was now clear. The horse whickered and took a tentative step up the concrete ramp, bringing his head into the timber-lined passageway which led to the kitchen. He goggled at the whirring fridge, blowing his breath out to let it know of his presence.

‘Ellen,' Jo called again, offering the colt the top crust from her devon and salad sandwich. His mobile lips explored it briefly, and then he seized it between his teeth, flipping his head up and down as he manoeuvred the bread into position in his mouth.

Enjoying the treat, Comet dared to take another wide-eyed step inside, to who-knew-what further goodies. His wide brown hips brushed lightly against the sides of the passageway. Two more steps, Jo thought, and then we're really committed. At least until we get you into the lounge and have room to turn you around.

The Bedouin live with their horses in their tents, don't they?

She quickly grabbed a towel from the bathroom and laid it on the floor, to muffle the sound of his hooves on the old lino. Cos if the mountain won't come to Mohammed. She crammed the remaining devon and lettuce into her mouth, and sacrificed her second slice of bread, to occupy Comet for a few seconds while she swiftly moved kitchen chairs out of the way.

Ellen was just visible from the far side of the kitchen, sitting on the lounge with her dark hair falling around her face. Lost in cyber land, she hadn't heard a thing.

Jo wished she could wrap Comet's hooves in clothing to muffle the sound, but he would probably freak if she tried, and the smallish
interior of a 1950s fibro and timber farmhouse was not the place to teach him. She suddenly envisaged salad bowls flying through the air, and the half-peeled vegies airborne, too, and Comet's muscular neck and head smashing through the glass front of the kitchen cabinet as he tried to escape the clutching monsters that were grabbing at his feet. When you thought about it, Jo gulped, there was quite a difference, really, between a Bedouin tent surrounded by thousands of miles of sandy desert, and an Australian farmhouse with copious amounts of glass and easily-shattered fibro.

But it was literally too late to back out, for all of Comet was now filling the kitchen. And the top of his head was exactly on a level with the bare, hanging light bulb–

A few more cautious steps on hastily rearranged towels. Jo stroked the horse's neck with a sweating hand. ‘Atta boy,' she whispered. ‘Nothing to it. Just another sort of stable. You can do it.'

Comet peered with great interest into the lounge. Is that where the food is, his eyes and ears asked. Shaking with repressed laughter that was half terror of what would happen if the horse panicked, Jo hid herself behind the wall that divided kitchen from lounge.

‘Ellen,' Jo said, in a Here's Another Chore for You monotone, knowing that she would be ignored.

‘Mmm.'

‘Give us a hand getting the washing in, please.'

‘Mmm.'

‘Now, eh, before it rains.'

‘Mmm. In a minute.'

‘No, now,' as she jabbed Comet in the rump with a forefinger, pushing him forward the last few steps to where Ellen was slaying Dark Knights. The horse lowered his nose to the feedbin that the young human was holding. A high-pitched scream. And simultaneously, a crash. Comet whirled 180 degrees in front of the TV, his tail swishing in alarm. His rear hoof stepped backward and missed the fallen laptop by a centimetre.

Outside, Athena whinnied in concern for her absent child. Comet
neighed loudly, too, prancing with nerves but unclear how to return to his mother and safety. Athena screamed in relief: Here I am, my son, here, here! Come to me!

‘What the
fuck!'
Ellen shouted, her hands flailing and her eyes wide. ‘What's
Comet
doing in the house?'

Jo moved smoothly in and seized Comet by the halter, rocking with laughter.

‘Did he give you a fright?' she asked innocently, before doubling over in mirth. Comet's nostrils flared, and he swung his head around, looking for escape routes. Jo clung to his halter with difficulty. He neighed again to Athena, who was now running frantically up and down the fenceline beyond the mango.

‘You're insane!' Ellen screeched, moving closer to the endangered computer.

Comet raised his glossy black tail and deposited a gleaming green pile of manure onto Ellen's bare feet. Jo lost the ability to speak.

Ellen yelped as she leapt away from the richly scented pile. Jo was staggering now, clutching her guts and gesturing weakly for her daughter to grab the horse. Oh, to have a camera. Oh. Can't breathe. Face leaking. Guts aching ... Oh, oh...

‘Do you know–' gasp ‘–how long it took me to teach him to do that?'

‘I'm adopted,' Ellen announced in a deathly voice, raising and examining – but not touching – one foot and then the other.

‘Yes, yes, my adopted daughter, but
your face!'

‘I can't wait to leave home. Then you can marry your bloody horse, and be happy here, just the two of ya,' Ellen retorted.

‘You know where the door is.' Jo clutched at her stomach as she clung to Comet.

‘You can both live together inside in a big pile of horseshit and rusty old barbed wire and lantana. That'd be your idea of heaven, wouldn't it? That'd be just fricken tickety-boo.'

Tears of silent laughter rolled down Jo's face. She could tell that Ellen was thinking of picking up some steaming horseshit and hurling it at her.

‘I hate you ... Oh, I hate you So Much.' Ellen's lips pursed and her green eyes narrowed to slits.

‘I love you,' Jo wheezed, ‘I'll even pick that manure up.'

Tremendously jollified, still giggling, Jo led the horse safely out of the kitchen and through the back door. At the top of the concrete ramp, she heard Twoboy's Redfern whistle, just as he came loping around the corner, laptop in one hand and his Uni of Melbourne backpack slung over his shoulder.

‘Aaay, Goorie,' Jo greeted him with a wide smile, walking Comet down the ramp. As the decrepit Mooney string gave way and the back door slammed behind them, she led the horse across to the small side paddock.

Rain finally began to fall and – what's that? of course the horse had been inside, he liked to watch that ‘Letters and Numbers' show on SBS in the afternoons, what about it?

‘So tell me something,' Jo said to Twoboy, who was lying beside her, with the roast vegies all consumed and Ellen disappeared into her room. She was using her right index finger to trace an intricate pattern on Twoboy's almost hairless dark chest, and remembering the waitress at the cafe. ‘Tell me how come a
good-looking–'
she lightly kissed his left nipple – ‘and
hejimicated–'
his right nipple – ‘and occasionally even
charming–'
the point on his stomach equidistant from both nipples – ‘blackfella like yerself manages to stay single?' She leaned back onto her left elbow, and waited to see what his response would be.

Outside the bedroom window, the storm had arrived in earnest. Rain cascaded over the top of the drooping gutter and formed a room-length silver curtain between the lovers and the rest of the world. An enormous green tree frog, resident in the downpipe closest to the bed, was making a helluva racket reporting on the weather, while Jo and Twoboy lay enclosed by water and sound. At that moment, neither of them cared one iota about what lay outside.

‘Hard to believe, I know,' Twoboy responded cheerfully to the bedroom ceiling, both hands folded behind his head and his skinny black ankles crossed. Just yesterday, the Tribunal had accepted the Jacksons' application to be counterclaimants over a substantial northern slab of the greater Brunswick valley. Like Mum Jackson, Laz, Rhonda, and Uncles Cheezel and Rory, Twoboy was in an exceptionally buoyant mood.

‘And yet?' Jo slapped him lightly on his delightfully S-shaped upper arm.

‘Well, truth be told, you snagged me in the five-second gap between supermodels.'

Jo groaned and rolled her eyes, though the uncomfortable truth was that, in public, a female commotion followed, apparently permanently, in his wake. And it wasn't like he was unaware of it, either, she warned herself.
Good-looking men. Trouble. You do the math, Jo.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what happened to the last supermodel?'

‘The last one ... well, the last one that meant anything is my kids' mum, in Melbourne,' he said. ‘Sam.'

‘That was years ago, wasn't it?' Jo was suspicious of this lengthy gap.

‘Four years. Justice was six and Yabra had just turned five, the poor little darlin.' He'd shown Jo the photos of his kids on his phone and in his wallet. Cuties, the both of them, curly-haired and cocoa-coloured; their mother Sam was a Wurundjeri woman burdened and blessed with skin as milky-pale as any whitefella.

‘Four years is a helluva long time between drinks,' Jo probed.

‘Oh, there've been
women.'
Twoboy laughed a little awkwardly. ‘I'm not a monk. But I went a bit beserk as a young bloke, as Laz and Mum will no doubt delight in telling you. Christ knows why I haven't got twenty kids instead of two. So when we split, I made a decision to slow down. I hooked up with a Tamil activist for a bit down in Melbourne. And when I moved back up here there was a proppa womba one in Ipswich, but she was a fucken nightmare, and so here I am, girlfriend. Ripe for the picking.' He spread his arms wide, inviting Jo to get the goodies on offer.

‘Ah, you got tickets on yaself or what?' Jo scoffed, noting carefully at the same time that Twoboy expected her to be talking with his mother. And there was also that phrase that had popped out: ‘you snagged me'. What did
that
mean?

‘I could ask you the same question, anyways,' he said, rolling onto his own elbow so that their eyes and mouths were level and yet not quite touching. Twoboy took Jo's tracing index finger and bit it gently, nibbling down her forearm until the hair on the back of her neck stiffened and she goosepimpled down both arms. Twoboy laughed and warned her that he just might be a cannibal like his father's ancestors in the north.

‘Whether I got tickets on myself?' Jo asked, noticing absently that her legs were toned right up from all the extra farm work and riding she'd done lately. Her quads and hamstrings were clearly defined hillocks of muscle beneath golden skin. Pity about the farm-fixing marks and bruises that dotted every limb. On her upper right arm the horizontal scar from the broken vase was barely healed, the stitches not yet out.

‘No, how come you're single, doofus? Gorgeous thing like you...' Now he was kissing her neck, working his way down to her left breast, bringing his spare hand to her hip, and–

‘Who sez I'm single?' Jo joked, as desire flared. ‘My man gets back next Wednesday.'

‘I knew it was too good to be true,' Twoboy murmured.

‘Gammon. We split two years ago. I'm only just recovering. Ah. Ooh.'

‘Want some help with that recovery process?' Twoboy asked, smoothly rolling over so that Jo was beneath him. She could feel her nipples hardening, the weight of the man pressing onto her hips and thighs. He wore the sun in his eyes, the surging strength of the ocean in his body. Jo caught hold of a handful of dreads and brought Twoboy's face down to hers, let her lips and tongue answer him in that old, old language that has no need of words.