Foal's Bread (46 page)

‘You could've sold that stand of hoop to Albanian timber man.'

‘Stan says he saw youse at the Oakey Flat pub that day. Putting mare over the gate there. Made up his mind there and then that he wanted to make an offer. Spoke to Reenie first.'

‘Reen?'

‘Yeah, apparently he got appendicitis and it was Reenie attending to his wound. They got talking. He'd known Roley and all.'

‘She had no right.'

‘She's Roley's sister. Then Stan came and seen me. And I'll give you a portion.' Minna mentioned a paltry sum.

‘That wouldn't buy her tail!'

‘No point giving you too much because we know there'll be only one thing you'll be doing with it. Buying ourselves out of trouble, Noh. You know, only a matter of time before she begin to jump out of that slaughterhouse paddock. Into people's corn and who knows what else.'

‘But Wirri,' said Noah. ‘You know I was gunna ride her in high jump.'

‘Just like last time? My word, think you'll find it's Lainey Stan'll be giving ride to. If he stays in the area. Reckons might go to Northern Queensland. Use Mag as a stock mare in between shows, you know. We've got the two good greys. More solid in their ways.'

‘What's Hanley want with a horse like Magpie?'

‘Reckons he might sell her on to Hoskins Circus if they assemble a team again. Or that he might even have a go jumping her himself.'

‘Stan Hanley,' burst out Noah, ‘couldn't jump the backside of a flea.'

‘Well he's coming with cash Mondee.'

‘Day after Christmas?'

‘Exactly. Picking up from slaughterhouse, so you'd better have her back there by then.'

Noah, looking with livid eyes at her mother-in-law, spun away. She went back outside to the horse that was looped at the railing under the jacaranda tree. She put her hand up under the horse's mane. No point now borrowing clippers from Cousins to hog it all tidy for the start of the New Year.

When she glanced up along the tree's main trunk she saw what looked to be white writing, a word of maybe just three, maybe four letters scribbled in the bark.
Cat
, was that what it was? Or could it be
God
?

If we only knew what that jacaranda word was, thought Noah, maybe all the terrible parts of the day would disappear, Min and her brother would die in the night, everything would be good for always and she'd never need touch a drop again.

Instead the day before Christmas proceeded much the same as any other. In the late afternoon, for a time, a wind picked up that had the sound of a crazy old man's whistling. The place would begin to teem tomorrow with relatives. Uncle Owe would play carols on his fiddle and what had happened today would be meant to melt away in the heat like ice in the kitchen chest.

At this terrible realisation Noah looked down at her hands. Each nail was a different shape, resembling a different kind of face. While nine nails were bitten down to nothing, the one she'd been restraining herself from was long enough for the sunlight to shine through.

She thought of the bones inside her fingers and of how once you're dead and buried, or gone and pulled apart in the fast-flowing sections of the river, the finger bones would be what the worms or the fish would first nibble clean.

She only took up the plank that hid her secret stash, that she'd stored for an emergency by the hut's pot-belly, when at last, after milking, the long summer day began to darken. The sound of the new separator came to a stop and George and Lainey, secret with happiness, were watching one of the cats have kittens in the hidden place up in the shed roof.

Noah could hear Ralda calling her over for tea but she wasn't going. With both hands on the hut's west-facing windowsill, Noah looked out to the piebald still tied under the tree. Tears began to fill her eyes. She blinked them back fiercely but even so they began to fall on top of her work-ruined hands. The hymn of hate for Minna and her brother, so long dampened down, exploded like a black song in Noah's heart.

Two real magpies sitting on the roof of Main House gave a last exultant chorus and then she was riding the piebald back down the hill carrying carefully in a sugar bag the almost-full flagon and a half-built plan growing stronger in her mind.

CHAPTER 21

T
he old man, mistaking the mother's changed appearance, this apparition of apparent friendliness, spotted the shape of the flagon almost immediately. He gave a sly smile of triumph and invited her in. Crick-crick went her joints like she was an arthritic old mare. Still, in the soft light of the tilly lantern he thought she wasn't that bad.

‘Just a bit jealous, weren't ya?' he asked when half the grog was gone. ‘Well, Uncle Owe understands. Want me to make you a couple of sandwiches then? With a bit of vegetable and corn meat, Noey? Noey and Owey, hey. No one else need never know.' And overwhelmed by the scope of his own generosity he dug around in his sack of dog biscuits for his own almost-full bottle.

Noah, drinking only a cap to each of his teacups-full, had the feeling of life speeding up but also of it all about to change irrevocably. In the vertical lining boards of this old hut she thought that she could still smell the mud from the flood of '47. She could hear an uncle of a very long time ago's whiskery old voice, lovely with a rough kindliness she'd never previously known.

In the old kitchen at Dundalla he'd make tomato jam at the end of each summer. Learning her his secrets. How to cook chokoes. Gramma pie too. Learning this. Learning that.

Good ol Uncle Nip. Never without his hat and then
that
day his hat off. Sitting up with him at the little square table when her father was off on that turkey drove. Then layin on his bed not hers cos it was time, he said, for her to know other things.

When he began to show what he meant she remembered that his eyes had gone pale Manchester-china blue. Like a horse poisoned itself on gutsing into the creek paddymelons. Learning off Uncle Nipper how it might hurt her the first few times when he put his teapot in. But that she was to be brave for him and so she always had been. Learnt how it was something you didn't mention to no one. Learnt to know what it meant when his eyes went like it was melon blindness.

Whenever her dad was out for the count after a spree, she learnt how her uncle liked it best if she didn't get into her milking gear straight away but stayed in her school dress.

‘Just slip off yer duds, darlin. And put yer leg over like you're hoppin on board your horse. There's a good girl, Noh.'

He'd give a kind of signal with the glitter in his eyes and then she learnt to ride him home like only she knew how. The great big old nosebag of skin under his throat taking off with a momentum separate from the rest of his face the faster she went. Then the old darling harder than the spout of the fountain endlessly on the simmer on stove.

Their secret. Sometimes accompanied by the sound of her father chucking his guts up in the basin under his bed in the room next door.

She could remember the splinters from the rakes and the smell of oats from when Uncle Nipper had got work, helping on McPhersons' with hay. The grain was getting left in stooks and her uncle said it was going to be real nice hay too.

Then she'd felt those fingers that had held so many reins checking her as if she were potatoes just before harvest or a heifer getting milked for the first time. How little and hard hers were at first.

Until that night of his mouth. Right over each one. Could that really be true? First one. Then t'other. Like they was a pair of fairy cakes. Or like he was a hungry calf and she was too. The noises. And things becoming more fluid and soft, dough on the rise, and maybe anyway by then she was already pregnant. Uncle Nipper, a name still with the power to sometimes hold back all the old shade her heart holds.

‘You're not on the rag yet are ya?' And not having a clue what he meant and half liking by then the game Uncle Nipper liked to play she said, Nah, course not. Which made him laugh. Which made him pull out of his pocket a surprise he'd got her for Christmas, from the Dundalla store. A ha'penny's worth of Milk Kisses.

‘Only five of me own teeth left,' he'd said, with what she used to think of as the laughter light in his eyes. ‘And all of em sweet.' Popping a white chocolate whirl into her mouth and then one into his own.

The scene buckled and cockled up in her memory, as if water was running over precious photos and ruining them forever.

Talk with this other uncle eased round to the late litter of pigs. Owen was saying how he thought they should be sold as slips. ‘If bloody Minna can be persuaded.'

‘Well she's in a selling mood,' said Noah.

‘Otherwise we'll just have all these greedy little pigs who suck the tits dry.' And now his eyes latched onto that part of her own body. She leant forward to fill his cup again, letting him get a look.

Blow me down, he thought, mistaking the bruise beginning from where she'd fallen by the creek earlier in the day. One white. One black. Like the bloody hide of a Hereford or spotted beast. Never use that hide for a whip because where it changed colour it thickened or thinnened. Made for all sorts of problems. Something dairy much better.

One as if dipped in tar, t'other white as cream. So! It was true enough then. All them rumours. For the left breast had been bruised in such a way that it was nearly as black as a mulberry ready to pick.

Noah, glancing down herself, saw that the bruise was like a storm front. She could see its frilly edges.

Uncle Owen couldn't keep his eyes away. One of the wild gins! ‘Used to be called the Taipan you know,' was the last thing he told her before, in the early hours of Christmas morning, he took a last gulp of drink. ‘Wouldn't never know who I'd strike next when I was at mill.' And passed out.

‘Oh dearie me, Owe. You as full as a goog. Well then,' said Noah, finding her belt knife. ‘Well, Owe. I was gunna learn ya this. Learn ya that. But this is easiest I reckon.'

Uncle Nipper had never lost his hairline but now she saw that without his hat this uncle had a face like a fingernail. A circular line of dirt marking where his hat usually sat rimmed his all-but-bald skull. She lit a lamp and her shadow crossed onto the ceiling and wall like a pair of large wings.

Efficiently, sober in her deftness, as if castrating a young bull what had somehow been missed as a calf, she flicked open his nuts. Taking out the first, she flung it with a growl out the window. Finding the second one harder to get, again just as if she was working on a beast, she bent down, about to sever it with her teeth. Then she stopped. ‘Reckon you can just be a bleeder, Uncle Owe. Then you'll be striking no one ever again, let alone Lainey. Lucky I don't take off your old pizzle too.' She held it up as if to raise Cain then let it drop. ‘That long it's a wonder you don't tread on it. Not that it's likely you'll ever be tryin it on again.' And working on automatic she cleaned the knife as if it were all part of her routine work of the day. Just a good-for-nothing mongrel.

Now let's see how you stand up in the morning, she thought. Up on the hill, though it must've been a good few hours to go before daylight, the rooster crowed.

Only when she saw the blood pouring out from between his legs did she speak again. ‘Need to rip you some rags I reckon, Uncle Owe,' and laughed, wounded herself, in memory of the shame of the hundreds of times Ral had had to carefully go to cunning lengths to hide the rags of the women of One Tree between other, bigger bits of washing.

She thought of those Indians Len Cousins had help him with last year's corn harvest. How they'd make curry of an evening with chopped-up chooks. Killed the fowls by wrapping the wings and legs in their turbans and sawing through their throats with a knife. Funny then that those turbans always looked so white.

Were they going to get a storm? There was a sense now of clouds pressing her down. She heard the waterbirds' crying honk and then, at last, lightning. Shutting the door of Uncle Owen's as far as she could pull it she went out to lead Magpie into the shelter of the skillion.