The Snow Pony

by Alison Lester

  But Ze Count couldn’t pay any more. It hadn’t rained in Banjo for nearly three years now and it was as though the drought had sucked all the money, as well as the moisture, out of the land. The Rileys owed the Christanis so much that they were too embarrassed to go into the shop. Old Mrs Christani had shuffled out one day, wiping her hands on her apron as Rita waited to pick Dusty up from the bus, and taken her by the hand. ‘I know you cannot pay now, but I know you will when you can. You are not the only ones. But please, still come in, to buy for cash. We have no business because everyone is so full of shame.’

  Rita did go in after that, to buy the papers and bread, but the kids never had money for lollies now, so it was better not to look.

  Dusty sat on the seat outside the milk bar, sliding a stone from side to side with her feet. The first week back at Bankstown Secondary hadn’t been as bad as last year, but it still wasn’t any fun. She knew some kids now, to talk to and have lunch with, but there was nobody she felt really close to. That last fun week of the holidays with Sally made the dullness of school seem even worse. Jade, the girl with the hippy mother, had only been at school one day, but Dusty was too embarrassed to go and sit with her anyway.

  Dusty could see their car driving up from the school, her mum behind the wheel and Stewie in the passenger seat. He loved getting in first and pinching that front seat. As she watched them approach she realised something was wrong. Stewie was as stiff as a little soldier and Rita was slumped in her seat, holding the wheel so carelessly it looked as though she could hardly bother to steer.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Dusty asked the question before she was properly in the car. Neither of them answered, and her heart started to pound. ‘Is Dad all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes. He’s fine.’ Rita reassured her but she didn’t turn, just kept staring out the windscreen like a zombie. It was Stewie who twisted in his seat belt until he was facing her, his eyes wide with the terrible knowledge. ‘All the Gelantipy cows are dead.’

  ‘What?’

  The Gelantipy cows had limped down their road last week, like walking bags of bones. It was tragic to see beautiful cows in such a pitiful condition. A farmer from the little mountain town of Gelantipy had ‘gone on the road’ with his twenty-five cows, in a desperate effort to find feed for them. It was a common enough thing in tough times, to walk your cattle slowly along the roads and byways so they could eat the grass on the roadside. Some people trucked their cattle hundreds of kilometres to areas where the rains had been good, and entrusted them to contract drovers. This man had no money for that, so he had just headed south with his cows, but he was too late. Every scrap of dry grass had been eaten months ago.

  Dusty was with Jack when he drove down to the crossing, where the man had set up camp for the night.

  ‘Gidday.’ The men nodded to each other.

  Dusty stared at the man. He was as skinny as his cows.

  ‘I’ll open that gate for you if you like. There’s no feed in there, but the creek’s a bit wider for them to get a drink.’ Jack invited him to share dinner with the family and by the end of the night had offered to buy the cows. ‘I can’t pay you now,’ he offered the man, ‘but if you can wait until this is over, I’ll pay you a fair price for them then. You won’t even cover your cartage if you send them to market.’

  They negotiated an agreement right there on the kitchen table, and both parties were happy with the deal. Jack was pleased to have the beautiful cows to add to his herd – even though they were skin-and-bone – and the poor farmer was glad that his cows would be fed.

  ‘We’ve been baling lucerne all summer,’ Rita said. ‘We’re on to our third cut, and we’ve bought a shed full of hay. That should see them through the winter.’

  Now they were dead. How could twenty-five cows be dead?

  ‘What happened?’

  Stewie looked across at Rita but she didn’t speak, so he answered. ‘They got into the lucerne paddock. Dad left the gate open and they gutsed themselves and died of bloat. He found them this morning. They look awful, all blown up like monsters.’

  Digger slunk out to meet Dusty, when they got home, with his tail tucked between his legs.

  ‘Hi, boy.’ She reached down to pat him. He looked as sad as she felt. All those beautiful old cows! From beyond the flat paddock she could hear the groaning and clanking of a bulldozer at work.

  ‘He’s digging a pit.’ Rita slammed the car door. ‘We can’t burn them because of the fire restrictions, so he’s borrowed Vince’s dozer.’

  Jack didn’t come back to the house that night until Rita bumped over the paddocks in the ute and insisted that he stop working. Stewie was in bed, but Dusty had lingered over her homework so she had an excuse to be up. She heard him kicking his boots off on the back porch and got up to hug him as he came into the kitchen. He looked like a survivor from a desert war, and his singlet smelt of sweat and dust and diesel.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

  He patted her lightly on the back and stepped out of her arms, then stood like a zombie, bloodshot eyes blinking in the harsh fluorescent light. He started to speak but choked on the words. A trail of tears cut through the dust on his face. It frightened Dusty more than any of his rages ever had.

  When she got up in the morning he was gone, and the sound of the bulldozer working drifted intermittently into the house. School, and the bus before and after, went by in a blur; all she could think about was those bloated cows and her family unravelling. When they got home she fed the horses and her cow and went straight inside to do homework. She didn’t want to be on the farm, so she lost herself in To Kill a Mockingbird, which her class was reading for English. It was good to share someone else’s troubles.

  Jack didn’t speak during dinner except to ask for salt. He was scrubbed clean. The dirt under his nails and in-grained in his hands were the only remainder of the filth that had covered him last night. The dozer was back at Vince’s and the lucerne was springing back from where it had been crushed. It was as though the Gelantipy cows had never existed.

  A car turned off the road, the bridge rattled, and headlights swung past the kitchen window. Rita walked out to turn the back light on. Dusty looked at her father. He was rubbing his face in his hands, looking as if he didn’t want to see anyone.

  ‘Barney!’ Rita’s voice carried back to the kitchen. ‘How are you, mate?’

  Barney’s reply sounded more like a growl than words. He looked like a bear and he sounded like a bear. Jack rose to shake hands as the big man entered the kitchen, and met his eyes for a brief second.

  ‘Bad luck about the cows.’ He tossed a parcel on to the table. ‘I bought some flathead tails for you.’

  It was typical that Barney would be the one person who called in to cheer up her dad, thought Dusty. He had been their friend ever since he bought the block next door to them ten years ago. Originally from the city, he loved the valley, and the Rileys were the closest thing he had to a family. Jack had been scornful of his ignorance when he first arrived, but Barney’s sheer goodwill made it impossible not to like him. Over the years he had experimented with all sorts of bizarre farming enterprises – growing aloe vera, raising emus, and lately alpacas – but he also ran a small herd of cows which Jack managed for him. He had always insisted on paying Jack, and the money had been a godsend. Barney had plenty of money. He worked offshore on the oil rig; two weeks on and two weeks off. He always called in when he came ashore, always with a slab of beer, a crayfish, a pile of magazines. Lately, Jack had been as morose and bitter with him as he was with everyone, but Barney wasn’t put off.

  ‘Put the kettle on, Stew,’ said Rita. ‘And tell us what you’ve been up to, Barney. We need distracting.’ Rita loved Barney’s stories.

  ‘Well, I have got a story, but it’s a terrible thing. Perhaps you should go to bed, Stewie.’

  Stewie let out an I-hope-you’re-joking laugh, and Rita backed him up. ‘He’ll be okay, Barney. He’s a big boy now.’

 
‘All right then.’ Barney cleared his throat. ‘Well, I was in my hole, my room, last Thursday out on the rig, and I heard this shocking noise. I raced out and Serg, one of the riggers, was hanging in the stairwell. He’d hung himself with an extension cord. He was twisting and thrashing like a shark and his face was as purple as those plums.’

  Dusty looked at the bowl of plums in the middle of the table. A face that colour would look like something from hell.

  ‘I grabbed my knife. Always carry my knife.’

  Dusty thought about how, in the old days, Jack used to laugh about Barney and his knife; ready for anything, like a boy scout. This time he was.

  ‘I cut him down, but his colour didn’t change, he still couldn’t breathe. The rubber on the cable had jammed the knot. Wouldn’t release. And his neck had swelled up around it. I had to cut right into the back of his neck to cut the cable.’

  ‘Gee!’ Stew’s eyes were huge. ‘Was there blood everywhere?’

  ‘You bet. We were slipping over in it. He’ll live, the doc says, just have a big scar on his neck, courtesy of me. But I don’t think he’ll thank me. The poor beggar had just heard his wife and kid had been killed in Sarejevo.’

  Barney had driven off an hour ago and Dusty was nearly asleep when the rise and fall of angry voices snapped her back to full alert. She hated that sound, the sound of her parents fighting, but she couldn’t help straining her ears to hear what they were saying. The conversation came muffled through the bedroom wall, her mother’s voice low and terse and only responding to her father’s more urgent talk. He and Barney had been drinking port, and this was always how he ended up: waving goodbye to his mate as though he didn’t have a worry in the world, then turning on Rita. Dusty held her breath to hear better. He was accusing Mum of flirting with Barney. Rita was staying calm, not biting back, but finally, as Dusty knew he eventually would, Jack went too far and the conversation rose to a screaming boil-over, and then she wished she couldn’t hear.

  Stew hopped into bed with her, sobbing, and she held him and sang right into his ear to drown out the yelling. Among the accusations, one set of words echoed through the house like a curse: ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it, Rita?’ His voice was so strained and crazy it sounded as if it were being ripped out of him. ‘You’d be happy if I blew my brains out.’

  The shouting and door-slamming finally petered out to a tense silence. Stewie had gone back to sleep when Dusty heard Rita shifting junk off the bed in the spare room, and the creak of the old bed as she settled into it. Tabby meowed at the window, and Dusty got up to let her in. The creek gleamed silver in the moonlight and the outside world looked peaceful and uncomplicated.

  ‘I don’t know why you’d want to come inside,’ she said to the old cat as she lifted her off the windowsill. ‘Everyone’s crazy in here.’

  She left Stewie in her bed and climbed into his. Her brother’s cardboard space creatures hanging off the curved cast iron bedhead spun slowly above her. She couldn’t sleep. Every time she shut her eyes her father’s words rang out: ‘You’d be happy if I blew my brains out.’ He could kill himself any time, Dusty thought – hanging, gassing, crashing, shooting. She could never protect him, he had too many opportunities. The terror of it made her suddenly sweat, as though she had a fever. She’d heard of suicides in Banjo, in whispered conversations that stopped suddenly when she entered a room, and harsh words in the schoolyard – topped himself, necked himself – as well as unexplained farm accidents and single car fatalities. She’d always thought that the person’s family had let them down, that they should have been able to save them. But now she realised how impossible the task was, to save someone who didn’t want to be saved. She lay like a corpse, holding the warm cat to her chest, until sleep finally flooded her racing mind.

  Another day went by and Dusty couldn’t have told you a single thing anyone said to her on the bus or at school. Her mind was completely occupied with thoughts of her father. He had always been so successful, so right, and so hard on no-hopers, people who made stupid mistakes – like leaving the wrong gate open, as he had done. As Rita drove them home from Banjo, Stewie in the front seat beside her, Dusty stared at the back of her mother’s head, wanting to voice her fears, but it felt like a betrayal – as though she was wishing him dead. Instead, she asked casually how Jack was.

  Rita was blunt. ‘He needs to have a good hard look at himself, if you ask me. He’s always put himself above other people, even us, without meaning to. He was born with a lot of talent, and born into a comfortable life. Now he’s finding out what it’s like for the rest of the world.’

  Jack’s ute was gone when they got home, so Dusty caught the Snow Pony and rode out to where he had been working, in case he was still there. From a distance the grave looked like a dam bank, and a fleeting tag of hope that it was all a mistake flashed through her mind, until she looked again and knew it wasn’t. She had expected the grave to be flat, for some reason, but there was a huge area of raised earth. Of course. It made sense that if you dug a hole and put twenty-five cows in it, especially bloated ones, the dirt wouldn’t all fit back in the hole.

  The Snow Pony snorted and shied away from the fresh earth. As she turned, Dusty dropped the reins on her neck and let her go. They cantered up the rise that looked over the house and yards, and Dusty stretched out her arms like wings, and it felt as if she were flying. The horse was so light under her, so fluid, that it didn’t feel as if her hooves were touching the ground at all. The heavy evening air swirled around her, so thick you could almost see directional arrows on it, like when they learnt about vectors in science at school.

  Jack’s ute was still missing when Dusty cantered into the house paddock, so she fed hay to the horses and her cow. Spot would calve any day now, her udder was swollen and her bum had that wobbly look that cows get when their time is near.

  Rita was setting the table when Dusty came in. There was only three of everything. ‘It’s all right, love.’ Rita answered Dusty’s raised eyebrow. ‘He’s okay. He’s at the pub. I think he had to face everybody straight away. He couldn’t bear to feel like he was hiding away while people talked about him. I rang there a while ago and Norm said he’s pretty far gone and that he’ll put him to bed in the back room.’

  After dinner, the three of them flopped together on the couch in front of the television. They didn’t really watch it, just let the light and sound wash over them. Stewie got up and made one of his special hot chocolates for everyone, and they were like three little mice snuggled together safely in their peaceful house.

  10

  Poor Spot

  At first Dusty thought the calf was all right; that the birth was progressing as it should. The cow was lying on the side of the hill, and from the fence Dusty saw her legs rise up in a straining spasm and then flop down again. As she walked closer she could see the forelegs and head protruding from the back of the cow, presented in the correct position.

  Dusty had peeled an orange when she left the house, and was sucking the second half of it as she approached the cow. She felt excited about watching the calf being born. Then she caught a glimpse of red in the calf’s mouth and her hopes died. A calf shouldn’t have a bloody mouth. Something was wrong. Suddenly it felt awful to be eating an orange – like scoffing chips at an execution. She flung the orange segments away and hurried to the back of the cow.

  The calf was dead. It was enormous, and the end of its tongue had been eaten away by foxes.

  ‘Oh, Spot!’ Dusty sobbed and rushed to the cow’s head.

  The heifer didn’t rise. Her eye was dull with pain. Dusty remembered her own bed last night, warm and toasty, and couldn’t believe that she’d had no inkling – not a thought – that her lovely cow had been in such a terrible way. She went behind the cow again and gripped the calf’s legs to pull, but the mucus covering them made her hands slip. She found a handkerchief in her pocket, wrapped it around the cold wet shanks, pushed her foot against Spot’s rump and heaved. The c
alf slid out a bit, but stopped at the hips. Spot moaned and Dusty pulled again, but now when she held the calf’s forelegs she couldn’t reach to put her foot against the cow. She’d lost her purchase. She heaved again, nothing. Again, no movement at all. She crawled forward and ran her fingers around the cow’s vulva. It was loose; there was plenty of room. The calf’s hips must be jammed deep inside her.

  Dad, why aren’t you here? she thought. I can’t do this by myself. She gripped the bony legs again through the sodden hankie and heaved, but nothing budged. She was just about to race back to the house to get Rita when she saw a figure walking across the paddock, and a car parked on the road beyond. At first she thought it was Bill from up the road, who ran the newsagency in town and always went to work early. She cursed him for stopping, the busybody. He’d spend the rest of the week telling the town how badly the Rileys managed their farm. ‘Oh yes, and if I hadn’t turned up when I did, blah, blah, blah …’ But she suddenly realised that it was Barney – Barney with a rope.

  He knelt beside her and without a word – with just a pat on the shoulder – he fastened the rope around the calf’s legs and they pulled steadily together until it came away from the cow in a slippery rush of mucus and afterbirth. Then the words came tumbling out of Dusty in a torrent of recrimination and guilt.

  ‘I knew I should have checked her again before I went to bed. I saw her after tea, but then I went to sleep.’ She looked closer at the calf and started to cry. ‘It was a male, a beautiful big boy.’

  Barney helped her to her feet and patted her shoulder again. ‘Well, Dusty, you can blame yourself as much as you like, but you know what? Shit happens.’

  When Jack came home he looked like a ghost and didn’t even seem to hear when Dusty told him about Spot’s calf.

  ‘Why is he so useless?’ Dusty asked Rita. ‘He’s not helping at all.’