by Karen Wood
She took the hat from her head and passed it back to him. ‘Thank you.’
‘Keep it. It suits you.’
Holly didn’t know whether to be grateful or insulted.
6
Kaydon walked away from the truck with the image of the strange girl in his mind. Didn’t she own a hat, or a pair of shoes? No self-respecting farmer would let his daughter run around in bare feet in the middle of black-snake season. So where did she come from? She wasn’t like the girls around here. She looked about fifteen or sixteen. Her toenails were painted all the colours of the rainbow, and she wore hippie-style friendship bands around her ankles. Oh well, no use wondering. Girls like that lived with their heads in the clouds. They probably didn’t even know that milk came from a cow.
Kaydon took a polocrosse racquet from the tackroom, brought Pilot out of the stable and led him outside. The horse felt sleek and fit as he rode out towards the field. He put the grey into a canter, flung the ball ahead with an underarm shot and galloped after it. It felt good to attack that little white ball, smashing it to kingdom come and thundering after it.
After ten minutes he found playing on his own boring, and briefly wondered if the girl could ride a horse. He glanced back and saw her sitting in the front of the truck with her feet resting on the dashboard. Even if she could ride, she wasn’t dressed right.
Kaydon ditched his racquet and rode a rocky track up the hillside, enjoying the head-clearing scent of the eucalypts and the rustling of their leaves in the breeze. So, Dad was taking on a partner. They’d had contractors at Rockleigh before, even leased out the creek flats for cropping, but a partner? – did that mean Dad had sold part of it? Who was this Hugh Parker guy? What was he like?
Pilot’s hooves clacked over the rocks as Kaydon guided him along the ridgetop and then down onto the flats. He crossed the river; it was wide and nearly empty with a narrow snake of water slithering in and out of the dry sandflows. The steer paddocks on the other side were almost bare of pasture, with parched soil exposed. If the paddocks hadn’t been dry for so long, Kaydon wondered, would his dad even be considering this?
Young cattle came out of the trees to watch him ride by. They’d grown out since last spring, he noticed, despite the lack of rain, with a fair covering over their backs and rumps. Dad would probably muster them up soon and put them through the sales before they started losing weight again.
His mind flicked back to the Easter Ball and he wondered if his mum had invited Mr Parker. Then he inwardly groaned as he wondered which girl his mum would partner him up with. Dan’s little sister Chloe maybe. She was okay. A bit foul-mouthed, but funny. Their big sister Livvy had taken pity on him and teamed up with him once, because she wanted to win the dance prize and she knew Kaydon was the best prospect. There was Angel, who was allergic to animal hair. Or any daughter of any other friend Mum could find. He would be stuck with the girls while Aaron got to go and sit with the men and talk farming.
As he rode back to the homestead, the hippie truck was still parked in the driveway, but now the girl was on the polocrosse field, holding his racquet. She put the ball in the net, and then with both hands she did an awkward sideways fling and hurled it behind herself straight at him. He ducked.
The girl whirled around and froze when she saw him.
Kaydon dismounted and picked up the ball.
‘Sorry. I have to wait for my father and it’s taking a long time,’ the girl said. Her eyes were hidden under the hat, but her neck flushed pink. ‘I saw your racquet and . . .’
He held out his hand for the racquet. ‘You throw it like this,’ he said, tossing the ball in the air. He caught it in the net, flicked his wrist and sent it across the field.
She looked at him with her mouth open like a goldfish.
‘Can you ride?’ he asked.
He was surprised when she nodded.
‘Got a horse?’
She shook her head and a strange look came over her face. Was it pain? Her eyes were all red. What was this girl’s story? The snooty pout that had been there an hour ago was gone and suddenly she seemed fragile. He noticed her breath pulling.
Oh heck, was she going to cry? Why? He felt panicked. ‘Umm, you okay?’
She nodded again and swallowed. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Wanna have a hit?’ If he diverted her attention she might not cry. ‘I could get you another horse to ride.’
She looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘No thanks.’ She took off the hat and held it out to him. ‘I have to go.’
So. She couldn’t ride at all.
She seemed to read his thoughts, because she stiffened. ‘Take your hat.’
‘It’s going to rain later,’ he said, refusing to take it.
‘I don’t want the stupid thing,’ she suddenly flashed. Her eyes startled him; they were green like an incoming summer storm, a hailstone sky, both translucent and opaque at once. She flung the hat at him, whirling it like a Frisbee. It flew past him and hit Pilot’s nose.
The young horse snorted and jumped backwards.
‘Hey!’
Kaydon made a grab for the reins but the horse bolted away with a fart and a skip of his hind legs, stirrups flapping against his sides. Kaydon shot her an incensed look.
‘Good one!’
‘Not my fault you can’t hold a horse properly,’ the girl muttered.
Was she smirking? he wondered. ‘That horse cost twenty grand at the stockhorse sales. If he gets injured . . .’
She stood square-shouldered, and hissed angrily at him. ‘Well, you better go catch him before you lose your job.’
Kaydon saw with relief that Pilot was galloping straight back to the stable block. But what was she talking about? ‘My job?’
‘Yeah, you know, what you do when you have to get off your backside and work for a living?’
‘Work for a living?’
‘Yeah, staffer.’ She put her hands on her hips, looking pleased with herself.
She thinks I’m Jerry! Kaydon tried and failed to suppress a laugh, which seemed to rile her even further. He wondered whether to break the bad news to her now, or string her along for a while longer. ‘You don’t strike me as the type to ride horses.’
‘Don’t I now? And what type do I strike you as?’ she challenged.
Probably best he didn’t answer that. ‘What’s your name?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I told you mine.’
She stared defiantly at him.
‘Where are you from, Miss Harvey?’ Ha! Triumph. His Dad had told him her surname on the way home in the car. He searched for crushing defeat in her face. Instead, her eyes dropped and the fierceness drained from her. Suddenly she looked vulnerable, like an injured kitten. Was she just acting? Or was she angry? Man, this girl was hard to read.
A fork of lightning suddenly hit the ground on the other side of the field and the sprinklers burst to life. A loud crack of thunder exploded directly above them. The girl screamed and jumped half a metre off the ground.
She took off and Kaydon bolted after her, through the spurting and hiccuping jets of water. On the way he stooped to pick up the racquet, the ball and the hat.
By the time he caught up she was back in the hippie truck and the engine was running. A smallish man who hadn’t shaved for at least a week was at the wheel. So that was Ken Harvey, her dad.
Kaydon slipped through the fence and intercepted the truck as it headed out the driveway. ‘You forgot your hat,’ he said, as the girl wound down the widow.
She looked out the window, past him and past the jerky sprinklers, at the tinder-dry hills and the roiling sky above.
Kaydon dropped the hat through the window, onto her lap, before she could protest. ‘It will rain.’
She stared at him with those eyes that were like the sky, tumultuous but kind of empty and drained. ‘No it won’t.’
Then the truck puttered through the front paddocks and onto the road. The drums of water sloshed
about on the back. As he watched the battered truck roll away, he read the bumper stickers on the back tailgate.
SAVE BLUE GUM RIVER
NO COAL SEAM GAS . . . FRACK OFF CSG.
Well, at least they’d got that right. Coal-seam-gas drilling had been disastrous for a lot of farmers in the Gunnedah Basin. It polluted the rivers and destroyed underground water structures.
Then he saw more stickers.
THINK BEFORE YOU BUY
STICK UP FOR ANIMALS
BAN LIVE EXPORTS
Kaydon shook his head and snorted. Bloody hippies. Lucky they weren’t staying long.
7
‘Where am I supposed to have a shower?’ Holly asked her dad as the dust billowed around the truck.
‘You’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Pat wasn’t expecting us for another couple of weeks. Nothing’s been set up for us yet.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ She stared down at her mud-caked legs. No shower?
‘We’ll hook up the tank tomorrow and the boss will have to buy a load of water in. They haven’t even taken ownership yet. He had to ring the agent and get permission for us to move onto the place early. Anyway, what were you thinking, getting so filthy?’
Back at the shack, Holly looked at her three siblings, huddled around a tiny table. Marley lay snoozing underneath.
‘Welcome to our three-course dinner,’ said Brandon.
‘We’re having sandwiches,’ said Mum. ‘That’s more than the children in Third World countries get to eat, so stop complaining.’
‘Yeah, because no food, water, gas or electricity are such First World problems,’ said Brandon in a cutting tone.
‘Don’t start, Brandon.’ Mum sounded exhausted. She waved to the doorway. ‘Go and get yourself a wash, Holly.’
‘What are we supposed to do all night?’ said Eva. ‘It’s nearly dark already.’
Holly went to the tiny shower cubicle at the back of the hut. An old potato masher hung upside down from a hook on the wall, with a sliver of cracked soap and a bottle of shampoo on it.
‘Mum, what am I supposed to do for a wash?’
‘I thought that’s why you went to the homestead, to get some water.’
Holly sighed. The drums were on the back of the truck. No way would they do six showers either. She snatched the soap and shampoo off the potato masher and went outside to lever the water drum onto an old table in the backyard. Stripped to her shorts and singlet, she stuck her head under the tap. By the time she’d shampooed her hair and sloshed water over her body, she felt nearly human again.
With her pyjamas clinging to her damp skin, she crawled into the camping bunk bed her mum had set up, trying to ignore the arguing that was going on around the table.
She checked her phone. No network. Great. No phone, no Facebook, no tweets, no nuthin.
Outside, her father held a small torch over the generator. Nothing ever stopped him from working. She had watched him work through a hailstorm once.
Mum handed her a plate of sandwiches. ‘Cheese and pickle. It’s all I have,’ she said.
Holly stared. Had Mum forgotten she hated pickles? ‘Thanks,’ she said, choosing not to make a fuss. Where would it get her anyway?
‘I hope your father gets that generator running soon or we’ll be in the dark.’
Holly ate the sandwiches and rolled onto her tummy with a book and a head torch. Her eyes wandered over the page but her mind wouldn’t soak up the words.
Her thoughts returned to the stable boy. You forgot your hat. Someone with such a grating, superior air didn’t deserve to look so good. Or maybe that’s why he had such a superior tone in the first place, because he knew he looked good.
Where are you from, Miss Harvey?
As if she would ever tell him.
Marley slunk past and she patted the edge of the bed. ‘Come here, Marley.’ She could use a doggy cuddle.
Marley ignored her and continued out the front door. Holly rolled onto her back and slung her arm over her eyes, blocking out the nightmare that was her family life right now. As soon as this contract was up, she was going to beg her father to move them back to civilisation.
She thought of everything she had left behind: Blue Gum Flats, with majestic gums and turpentine trees. The speckled chooks out the back, the wildlife enclosures, and the bedroom she shared with Eva, with all her favourite books stashed under the bed. She pictured the art deco mirror her aunt had given her as a gift, etched with quirky ballerinas. The one Dad had sold in the garage sale.
Holly watched her mother wiping the benches in the tiny kitchen. Over the last twelve months, she’d watched her become a tired and rigid woman, who had reduced her horizons to a few mild desires and pretended everything was just fine.
Holly wondered if that was all life had in store for her, raising children and doing domestic chores. If she was forced to live out here for the rest of her life, it probably would be.
8
As Kaydon let himself in through the laundry the smell of Indonesian cooking made his stomach growl. He stripped out of his soggy clothes and snuck stealthily to his room with only a towel around his waist, hoping Mum’s visitors wouldn’t see.
He checked out his reflection in the mirror and took a moment to flex his biceps, willing them to catch up with Aaron’s. He crunched his six-pack. Not bad. He whistled as he took a long, hot shower.
The kitchen was filled with people Kaydon had never met. Aaron, freshly shaved and wearing long sleeves for a change, stood at the bench with his arm around a short, stocky girl wearing tight jeans and a white sleeveless top. Her curly hair was pulled into a ponytail.
Aaron grinned when he saw Kaydon. ‘Hey, Squirt. This is Stacey.’
He knew Kaydon hated that nickname. If all these people weren’t there Kaydon would have knuckle-punched him in the arm and started a rumble. ‘Hey,’ he said instead.
Stacey smiled enthusiastically. ‘Kaydon, good to meet you. Aaron talks about you all the time.’
‘It’s probably all lies.’
‘It was only good stuff,’ she said, giving Aaron an adoring look. Ugh, so they were like that.
Aaron lifted his beer to his mouth, then set it down to grab a handful of peanuts out of a bowl on the bench. He tossed one in the air and caught it in his mouth. At no time, Kaydon noticed, did his arm leave Stacey’s shoulder. Not a good sign.
‘Kaydon, come and meet Chrissy,’ said his mum, as she walked from the lounge into the kitchen. She had her match-making voice on. ‘Chrissy is Hugh’s daughter.’
Kaydon went blank. Who was Hugh?
‘Hugh Parker. Your father’s new partner,’ Mum said out of the corner of her mouth.
‘Hi, Kaydon.’ A tall brunette waltzed into the kitchen. Her hair was swept up and she wore a full face of makeup, with dark mascara that made her blue eyes look huge. A cloud of perfume accompanied her, making his eyes want to water. ‘You’re my date next weekend.’
‘Err, hi. Am I?’ He hadn’t even said hello to this . . . Amazon . . . and was tied to her already.
She gave him a knowing smile. ‘Your mum works fast.’
He laughed. ‘Yeah, she does. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. We’ll have fun. How tall are you?’
‘Pardon?’
‘There will be media there. We have to look perfect.’ She walked over to Kaydon, rested her hand on his forearm to steady herself, and slipped off her high-heeled shoes. ‘Stand back to back with me,’ she said, taking him by the elbows and turning him about.
‘I’m one eighty-three,’ Kaydon said. ‘They measured me in gym class.’
‘I’m one eighty-five and a half,’ she said. ‘I’m trying out for a modelling agency next week. It would be great to get my photo in the paper.’ She began pulling her shoes back on. ‘You’re shorter than me, but that’s okay, you will make me look taller.’
‘Great,’ said Kaydon. I think. He smiled.
Chrissy put her hand on his arm again. �
�Sorry, I’ve probably made you feel like you’re in a job interview. This has just come at a really great time for me.’
‘That’s okay.’ Her hand was soft and she was running it up and down his arm. It was making his thoughts scatter.
‘Modelling is the only career I’ve ever wanted,’ Chrissy explained. ‘It can take you all over the world. But Mum and Dad won’t let me pursue it until I turn eighteen.’
‘Yeah, well, good luck with it.’ She was certainly pretty enough. And she had the body. Her string-strap dress showed every one of her curves.
‘It’s my birthday in a couple of weeks.’ She spun on her toes. Her blue, full-skirted dress twirled around her hips and floated back down as she came back to face him. ‘As soon as I’m officially an adult, I can sign up with an agency.’
‘Gunnedah is famous for its supermodels, Chrissy. Stick around, there could be something in the water,’ said Bron. ‘Come and meet our neighbours.’
Chrissy sashayed off like someone on a catwalk. Bron stared over her shoulder and shot Kaydon an Isn’t she something? look.
Stacey stared after her, agog. Aaron raised his eyebrows questioningly at Kaydon.
‘What?’
Aaron sashayed over to Kaydon and began running his hand up and down his arm. ‘Hey, cuz,’ he said, in a breathy voice that was clearly meant to mock Chrissy. ‘Check out my new . . . 308!’ He pulled an iPhone out of his pocket and began scrolling through some photos of a large gun.
Kaydon pushed him off. ‘Get out of it, idiot.’
Aaron chuckled and showed a picture of himself kneeling over a bloodied pig with a gun resting across his knee. He was looking into the camera with the smile of choirboy.
‘That is one good-looking fella,’ said Stacey, peering over his shoulder.
He shoved the phone into his back pocket again and flicked his hair off his shoulder. ‘I do what I can, babe. Juggling my modelling career and shooting; it can be tricky, but I manage.’ He planted a huge kiss on her that sent her arching backwards. She squealed and giggled.
