Foal's Bread (43 page)

Tightening the girth on one of the ponies, Noah burped again and, seeing Lainey pull a face, said that her daughter was lucky she only got to smell them. Whereas for herself it was the very taste of the dead calves she'd been having to chop up and pull out already half rotten to save the heifers. ‘In me mouth, mind.'

It wasn't a very noticeable day to begin with; pleasant enough, with the kind of clouds Lainey called little skimmers decorating the blue sky. In fact, at first the day began extra well, with the ponies Noah had broken trotting out beautifully.

They found the elderly cows not far from the yards, but as if knowing this was no friendly morning, they all charged off. Then Roley's dog, turning them, got a hold of one of the old girls' noses and wouldn't let go. So that even as Lainey used a little yard whip to get that most cunning old girl into the yards, and to make the dog let go, the blood was already dripping.

‘Don't let that one out,' Noah instructed Lainey, who was working the gate. ‘Oh, these bloody gins and bitches. Don't know why we bother. Fair dinkum I don't.'

With the sunshine flooding onto her face, even with her mother's bad mood, Lainey loved being able to recognise individual old cows. There was that one who liked to break away. And also small Tess that you always had to humour or she'd as soon kick you as let you put the cups on. Blackie with the walleye what got so fat feeding on reeds in the middle of the creek the year Min had bought Magpie.

I know these cows as well as I know my brother George, thought Lainey fondly.

‘Watch out,' cried her mother, when the brindle that had landed on One Tree in the flood, its brand now overstamped RNN, had a bit of a run at her daughter.

Noah growled at the first cow fidgeting in the race before snagging a rope out over its jutting hipbones. ‘Too blunt,' she said, testing her belt knife against her thumb. ‘What's yours like, Laine?'

‘Sharp.'

‘Well give it here and I'm gunna show you where to make the first cut. See here? To get my hand in. Then you make the shape of a cross into the muscle. Right? And you have the emasculators ready.'

‘What?'

‘That heavy tool in bottom of sack.'

Through the smell of the poo running into the cow's tail, Lainey could smell blood. It was Old Roany with the extra-long eyelashes, bellowing so much now that it sounded like the madwoman screaming down Soapy Lane. Those long eyelashes always getting covered in ice of a winter. And Lainey many a time pressing her face into the cow's warm side to melt the ice on her own lashes.

‘Jeez, Lainey,' said Noah, glancing at her daughter. ‘You're not going to be one of those cry-babies, are you? Hand me spaying scissors. Doesn't really hurt them that much. They have to put on a bit of a performance. But after this you watch how fat they get. It's worth it then. Bit of discomfort. One Tree'll get that much better price for them even your Nin'll want to kiss me.'

Although the last thing in the world Lainey wanted to be was one of those cry-baby girls, as she watched the way her mother worked, the tears were something she didn't have a hold over.

‘I reckon I caught em off George.'

‘Caught what?'

‘Tears.'

‘You come up with some nonsense sometimes.'

But it could be true, thought the girl. From eating her brother's biscuits yesterday. As if crying was like the ringworm she and George had shared last summer.

‘Mind, you might have a point,' her mother surprised her by saying. ‘Cryin and cryin in that silly blue apron Aunty Ral ties around him cos then he knows he gets alloberries soaked in sugar milk and wet bread. Now remember,' said Noah, ‘what you're feeling for is something only about as big as a dog's balls. And gotta get right in and over to get the left ovary. It'll be the smaller one prob'ly. Left one usually is. It'll be lyin on top of her guts.'

In her fingers Noah felt what could be a nut. She knew what she had to do. Holding out her hand for the emasculators she slid them along the arm that was so far into the cavity of the cow she was up to her shoulder.

‘There. Think I've got it, so now I pull it my way a bit, then just one snip. Should generally only take a snip. Yep, that's one. Very good.' She flung it to the waiting dog. ‘I've known blokes who'd bring out lump after lump of fat. My Uncle Nipper, he used to say I was trying to put ol Frank Somers out of a job. Frank was the expert spayer out Dundalla way. Now for t'other side.'

And again, in a few moments Lainey watched the second ovary fly through the air. Grass the colour of an old biscuit, she thought, with jam trickling down.

‘Oh what kind of a stupid bitch am I?' Noah, out of the cow, wiped her eyes with her forearms and tipped the sack upside down.

‘What's not here?'

‘Phew,' said Noah, locating after all the long sack needle.

The cow, jumping at the needle threaded with bag twine going in and out, thought better of it when Noah took her ear and began to twist it up.

‘Not a bad bit of sewin,' she said to Lainey before flinging on a bit of fly powder. ‘Here, here!' she called to the cow. ‘You're nearly done, just hold on. And if you want, Laine, you can give it a go on next one.'

With the first warnings of an afternoon storm brewing came the dual longing to be drenched. The sweat and the heat of the spaying. The heat of the mother and daughter's pain. So that when the storm came closer no wonder the sky itself was such a savage blue. Then the lightning over Christys' like wire through the clouds. And neither of them mentioned Roley and neither of them would've minded being hit.

However, neither anger nor shame attracts lightning. Lightning over those farms west of Wirri has never been known to strike any but the happy, the hopeful or content.

CHAPTER 20

A
nother year, rolled away, Ralda liked to say to anyone stepping foot in her kitchen. Sometimes only the wind replied because everyone had been out and about, doing their bit to vanquish the fires that had come earlier than expected.

On the morning of the day before Christmas, Uncle Owen came up to join in the discussion of who'd done what when and how well. Noah was holding forth about a man new to the district; the joke he'd been as a firefighter. Disregarding the advice of everyone who knew how the fires were likely to travel the ridges, the idiot had almost got himself burnt alive.

‘Oh, just like a little black crow wasn't he, hoppin from foot to foot?' put in Uncle Owe, making Lainey grin.

‘More some kind of bloomin orang-utan I would've thought,' said Nin. ‘Never seen anything quite like it.'

Mr Cousins, who'd carted some hay over for the cows, held up his hand. ‘To be fair, he wasn't that bad once we'd shown him a few things. Let me say in his defence that he did a beautiful job building the fire lines. If he never learns anything else I'll remember the tracks he made. Wended them around rocks and that. Like garden paths.'

‘So true,' agreed Uncle Owen. ‘That damned neat I wanted to go on a picnic. Used bloody billy goat with cart to lump the rocks!'

The howling westerlies were rumoured to have even seen fire cross the Flagstaff before Port Lake. ‘Them old honeysuckle trees,' said Mr Cousins. ‘You know, not a one left. Burnt to the ground!'

Ral, attending her Christmas cake, pouring another eggcupful of rum into its cracks, barely paying attention to anything except this important task, only half heard Uncle Owe say that speaking of picnics, how about he take Lainey and George fishing; to keep them out of the kitchen where the Lighthouse was working double time to cope with Ral's Christmas ambition.

Noah felt as if she'd been seized up in the throat by, if not the fires, then the summer itself. Though she'd thought of shouting down Reenie and Min for allowing George's tonsils to be ripped out with no more than the promise of a bit of blue jelly by the doctor, in the end she'd let it happen. To shush his pain Ral had beaten him up some egg with honey while Noah had lashed one of Roley's old ties round his neck and said he could keep it on so long as he didn't bawl.

She thought that the shout had left her when she'd failed so entirely to defeat Minna's decision to shift Magpie off One Tree. To ease the shortage of feed, the mare had been put in one of the paddocks by Wirri slaughterhouse.

If there wasn't good rain soon, Landwind and Breezy were to go to the Everlasting Swamp. No use saying to Min that even that rich land was as poor as piss in a season such as this; couldn't so much as fatten a flea. But at any rate, with the children out of the way for the day Noah thought she might snatch the chance to get a lift down with Len to check that her black and white horse hadn't jumped out of the paddock. Even go for a bit of a ride on the renegade.

Down at the river was the coolest place to be, thought Lainey contentedly. ‘George. George,' she whispered. ‘Spit on the worms. You spit on em.'

George, his throat still wrapped in his father's old tie, did as his sister said.

‘Now we'll get bigger fish for sure. Spit on bait and you always do, says Uncle Owe. Bet he'll get that old eel again, fishing that spot, but would he be told?' Lainey threaded George's worm on the hook. ‘I'll throw line out. No!' she scolded. ‘Don't wind it straight in. Gotta wait till we get a bite.'

Being with her brother on the creek, with no work to be done because it was Christmas Eve, was the happiest feeling. The river sounded as if it was busily digesting a big breakfast. Oh, the happy gurgle of its belly! Lainey laughed when their own bellies made a similar kind of noise. In little islands midstream the rocks grew tall grasses in the shape of crowns, making her imagine that the round heads of the king of hearts and queen of spades lay underneath the water.

The hills on the Brothers' land over the other side of river were still burning from the fire everyone believed it was old Ernie Jollimont had lit—to get back at Mr Highton, who he reckoned had stolen three of his cows. Every now and then an almighty crash signalled that another tree had fallen somewhere.

‘Boom,' said Lainey each time it happened.

‘Boom,' went George, guaranteed to be her faithful echo always.

White ash had carried from the fire and was falling steadily. Occasionally Lainey wet a finger and dabbed a bit of it into her mouth. ‘Tastes quite nice, hey? And if you look you'll see a little heart, George, not far away.' This was the game they always played. Spotting heart shapes here, there and everywhere. This one was formed out of half-dried moss and twigs. She bit and nibbled on her thumb, not wanting to give the heart's location away too easily.

‘Can you see that one?'

‘Heart,' said George, dropping his line and going to pick up the little bundle.

Lainey grinned. No matter that George had wrecked it and was now searching sorrowfully amongst the twigs in his hand. The best thing was that George could always see the hearts; in misty spider webs or wet marks made by insects moving across his sleepout louvres. He was an ace at spotting them. Why, once he'd even found that ants had built a nest in their favourite shape. Whereas Ninna and the aunties, humouring her, often only pretended that they saw.

‘Look,' she said, pointing at a little river oak, ‘that tree's laughin. Laughin at us. Let's call it The Laughing Tree. Will we?'

‘No! It's the tree what tried to talk,' he retorted, pulling from his pocket one of the special long handkerchiefs Aunty Ral had sewn for him. ‘Now blow yer nose.'

‘Beg your pardon. Blow your own.' Tiny curls of black ash began to fall as Uncle Owen came back into view.

‘George,' he began. His girlish eyelashes set above his sun-ruined face blinked like a lighthouse gone wrong. ‘We want you to stay here because your sister and me, we're gunna try and catch you that big eel.'

‘Aw, not that eel?' Lainey looked up, uncertain.

‘But this time won't let him go. I'll skin him for you, Laine. Make a cracker for your whip that'll make people think there's a gun going off.'