by Karen Wood
He glared down at her. ‘You left your referral at home.’
Somewhere on her body, her phone rang loudly.
Her father reached into her pocket and she nearly died when he pulled out the phone and put it to his ear. ‘Zoe’s busy!’ He snapped it shut, and stuffed into his own back pocket.
Zoe stared at her father, aghast. It had to have been Scotty.
‘She just remembered something,’ said Mike. He flashed his dad a knowing look. ‘Something about Scotty.’
Her dad’s glare softened to a frown. He put an arm around her and led her, still heaving, outside.
He sat on the edge of a garden retainer wall and pulled her into his arms. She sobbed into his lovely strong chest. He held her closer and it made her howl even louder. ‘Bloody hell, Shorty,’ he said quietly. ‘What did you remember?’
‘He was kissing Caity,’ she sobbed, feeling like an idiot. ‘I went back to get the strays and he was kissing Caity under the tree. And then when he saw me he cracked his whip and made Jacky bolt.’ Those short sharp sounds, by the cattle yards, no wonder they made her feel so distressed. Another howl left her lungs. ‘He made the cattle rush at me!’
Zoe felt her father’s arms squeeze even tighter around her, restricting her sobs. ‘I’m going to break that little turd’s neck.’
‘I’ll help you,’ said Mike.
‘Leave him alone,’ Zoe cried, bewildered as to why she was defending him.
Dad loosened his arms and stroked the back of her head. ‘Shhh,’ he soothed. ‘Settle down.’
She swallowed and tried to calm herself, lost in her dad’s big arms. The memory of Blackjack tumbling came to her again, less violently and she looked up suddenly into her father’s face. ‘Is Blackjack okay?’
‘Yes,’ he said quickly. ‘But let’s not talk about it now. We’d better go in to the clinic so we don’t miss your appointment.’ He stood and pulled her to her feet. ‘Come on, pull yourself together.’
Zoe sat in the waiting room in miserable silence next to her father until they were finally ushered into a small room with a desk and a trolley-type bed.
‘So, how can I help you?’ asked the nurse.
Zoe stared down at her lap. ‘I don’t know. You wanted to see me.’
The nurse flipped through a clipboard of papers and began reciting her full medical history, including the accident. ‘You were bucked off a horse,’ she said, skimming over the pages.
‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Zoe.
The nurse puckered her brow. ‘It says here you were bucked off a horse.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘There were witnesses.’
‘And what exactly did those witnesses say?’ Zoe demanded. Witnesses? The only witnesses would have been Scotty and Caitlin. She looked at her father, who strangely avoided her eyes.
‘That you rode off by yourself to look for some missing cattle. The horse started bucking and you came off. On the way down it kicked you in the head.’
Zoe sat there, staggered. They had lied. Scotty and Caitlin had both lied to cover their overly hormonal, cheating behinds. She cleared her throat and fought to stay composed. ‘That’s not what happened.’ She looked up at her dad, who cocked his head questioningly to one side.
‘I’d loosened my girth to give my horse Blackjack a breather. Then when I got back, Scotty, that’s my boyfriend, went ballistic with his stockwhip. He spooked the cattle, a bullock nearly slammed into Blackjack and he got a fright. Then the saddle slipped and I couldn’t pull him up. It wasn’t his fault . . .’ Zoe scrambled to tell the real story.
‘Yes, well, it doesn’t really matter, how it happened,’ said the nurse. ‘The point is, you were kicked in the head by a horse.’
‘No, I wasn’t!’ said Zoe angrily. ‘Blackjack would never do that! He would never buck either!’ She spun around to her father who looked decidedly troubled. ‘Dad, that’s not what happened. Is that what Scotty told you? Is that what he said?’
Her dad’s eyes narrowed. ‘He reckoned you went off looking for the missing cattle.’
‘I did, but I found them.’
‘How it happened is irrelevant,’ said the nurse in a soothing voice. ‘The point is, we need to make sure you recover properly.’ She reached out and put a reassuring hand over Zoe’s.
Zoe ripped hers away. ‘Irrelevant?’ She jumped out of the chair and began shouting. ‘I nearly got kicked out of home because of that stupid story. That is hardly irrelevant to me!’ she turned desperately to her father. ‘I had all the cattle in, Dad. I counted them, they were behind good fences. I mustered them properly. The job was done.’
He stood there without answering.
‘You didn’t even ask me what happened!’
‘I did and you couldn’t remember, remember?’
‘I had amnesia.’
‘You sure did, Zoe – you were totally out of it!’
‘So you just took their word for it?’
‘They are your friends. I didn’t think they would have any reason to lie.’
Zoe burst out laughing at the irony. ‘Oh, I don’t believe it!’ She scrunched her fingers through her hair and stared desperately around the room. ‘Where is Blackjack, Dad?’
Her father’s brow furrowed.
‘I haven’t seen him since I’ve been home,’ she said.
‘Well, you were only home for a couple of hours.’
‘Where is he, Dad?’
‘Okay, well, why don’t we check all your stats and talk about this in a minute,’ said the nurse, clearly uncomfortable.
‘Let’s get this appointment finished before we talk about it any more,’ agreed her dad, sounding stiff.
‘Did you shoot him?’
‘No!’
Zoe felt a hand on her arm. The nurse led her to the trolley-bed and sat her down. She sat, fighting back a torrent of emotions while the nurse shone a little white torch into her eyeballs and watched her pupils dilate through puddles of salty water. After removing the bandages from her arm the nurse made Zoe wriggle her fingers and twist her wrist. It hurt.
A girl who seemed not much older than Zoe came in and introduced herself as a trainee counsellor and a long conversation ensued about the high incidence of depression in rural areas and stress-induced amnesia. Her father stood with his back to the wall with a hard face, refusing to be drawn into it and Zoe sat stubbornly with her arms folded, too angry to speak. Finally, after she’d been issued with a stack of brochures, flyers and emergency contact numbers, a doctor suggested she take a couple of weeks off school, which she readily agreed to.
‘I want you to come home with me,’ said her dad.
Zoe snorted. ‘I’m going to Jen’s.’
‘No you’re not,’ he answered. ‘I’ve rung her and told her you’re not to go there. You’re to come home.’ He stood and jangled his carkeys in his pockets. ‘You can’t just run off to Jen every time you get upset about something.’
Zoe laughed mockingly. ‘Maybe I should just get drunk and lock myself in my room the way you do.’
A look of thunder crossed his face and Zoe realised she had pushed it too far.
‘You’re coming home with me,’ said her father in a resolute tone.
Zoe refused to stand up.
‘You can spend that time helping out around the place.’ He pulled his keys from his pocket, opened the door and held it open for her, an expectant look on his face. ‘Out on the farm.’
So she was released from kitchen duties? Was that his pathetic attempt at an apology?
‘NOW!’ her father bellowed, making everyone in the room jump.
Zoe shot to her feet. ‘Okay, okay!’
She stomped out the door with her jaw set hard and then walked briskly towards the carpark, knowing it would be two weeks of hell, rather than the prescribed time of rest.
As they drove around the bend and Hillanaroo came into view, she turned to her father. ‘You sold him, didn’t you?’
&
nbsp; Her father nodded and looked genuinely remorseful. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said quietly.
‘Who to?’
‘I put him through the sales. I was so upset at what had happened to you.’
She nodded and stared out the window, too numb to cry.
Two weeks passed without a flashback and Zoe felt relieved to be finally sane again, if not overly happy.
A kind of quiet came over the house. Outside she could hear weekday farm sounds on the breeze: the last of the sheep bleating in the yards as they waited to be trucked to the sales, the neighbour’s fertiliser being delivered by truck, a helicopter seeding some distant hill paddocks.
Zoe spent the days on a snigging chain, dragging whole trees out of the river, which was still clogged after the floods. She helped Mike get the chain around the branches and hooked to the back of the tractor driven by their dad. They didn’t talk much, silenced by the roar of the big Massey Ferguson. They tried as much as possible to resurrect old fences; push the posts back up and ram the dirt around them; and ran out new lines over the ones that were beyond fixing.
They pulled kilometres of barbed wire out of the riverbed where it lurked dangerously under the flood debris and new sand flows, waiting to snag any animal that walked over it.
Queenie was too sore to join them, preferring to lie in her drum and sleep all day. Zoe ran her hand over the dog’s lovely greyed old face and along the bony spine. ‘You need to eat some more, old girl,’ she said softly, noticing the biscuit bowl still half full. She unclipped the chain and watched as the old dog hobbled off for a pee, lapped a bit of water from her bowl and slunk back into her drum.
She wondered what would happen to the dogs if her dad had to sell the place. Queenie and Frankie could stay with the family maybe, but the others would most likely be sold. The thought was so depressing.
Zoe left Queenie unchained as her father hopped on to the quad bike. The old dog closed her eyes and huddled into a smaller ball. In the last few days, she had reached a whole new stage of oldness. Zoe stuck her head in the drum and gave Queenie a long kiss and inhaled her doggy old scent.
At the end of the week, Queenie disappeared. Zoe went out to the shed on Friday morning and she was gone. No amount of calling and searching brought her back.
‘Guess she wanted to find her own place to rest,’ said Mike, as he and Zoe stood in the shed, staring at her empty drum. Zoe picked a bunch of yellow flowers from Blackjack’s empty paddock and laid them in the old dog’s kennel.
That afternoon, she dutifully rang her mum and listened to her talk about the latest show she’d been to.
‘How’s everything going on the farm?’ Mum finally asked.
Totally crap.
‘Pretty good. We got most of the river cleaned up. Just gotta repair all the fences. The feed is coming up, though. Dad should have a really good year this year. That’s if you don’t sell the farm out from under him.’
There was a chilly silence. ‘That’s really between me and your father,’ she finally answered. ‘He shouldn’t be discussing this with you. You shouldn’t be worrying about it.’
‘Shouldn’t be worrying about it?’ Zoe said. ‘It’s my home!’
Her mum suddenly erupted. ‘Lucky you, you have a home,’ she flashed. ‘I don’t, but I’d like one. Is that so wrong?’
‘You chose to leave us.’
‘You know that I would have taken you with me if I could have.’
Zoe had heard this before. ‘Parents can’t take their children out of the matrimonial home. I had no option.’ But she could pull their home out from under them. Suddenly Zoe wished she hadn’t rung.
‘It’s been five years since we separated. I need to move on. I’d like to be able to offer you a home too, a place where you can come and see me. A place where Phil and I can . . .’
She broke off, the way she always did when mentioning Phil. ‘Where Phil and I can raise a child of our own.’
‘A what of your own?’ Zoe almost shrieked.
‘I’m pregnant, Zoe.’ She said it in a voice that begged her daughter to be happy for her. ‘You’ll have another little brother or sister.’
Whoa.
‘Um, wow.’ It was all she could think of to say. Mum had a whole life that she wasn’t a part of.
‘I want you to be a part of this baby’s life.’
Zoe didn’t know what she felt. Was it jealousy? That this child would get all the mothering and nurturing that she never got? This child would grow up with a dad and a mum.
‘I don’t want you to lose your home, darling. But I’ve held off for as long as I can, waiting for your dad to have a good season. It’s not going to happen, Zoe.’
Zoe couldn’t answer. She was too close to tears.
‘You could always come and live with me. You know I would love you to.’
‘I’m really happy for you, Mum,’ said Zoe.
‘Are you?’ She sounded as if she was going to cry too.
‘Yeah, I am.’
Zoe made up an excuse to get off the phone. It felt like a last goodbye.
For two days she lay curled up on her bed staring at the wall. Her laptop sat closed on her desktop. Her phone ran out of charge and lay dead in the pocket of some dirty jeans. Dad, strangely, left her alone to wallow. Mike stuck his head in every now and then but her dad continued with the fencing. They both already knew about the baby, it seemed.
And Dad was tidying up the farm so it could be sold.
God, how had life come to be like this?
Scotty, Caitlin, the farm, Blackjack, Queenie. Her life was one big rug that was being pulled out from under her, bit by bit.
She was haunted by the vision of Scotty and Caity, under the tree, their legs all tangled and hands going everywhere. How could she have wanted Scotty back after he did that? But then, how could she have kissed Josh?
Josh. Her thoughts led to him and stayed there. Scotty had never kissed her like that. She had never kissed Scotty like that! She lay there, reliving it, over and over. It was the only thing that brought her any comfort. His soft, unruly hair and crooked tie, his shirt hanging out, his big, loping stride. The way he looked out for her at school that day. The way he tucked her hair behind her ear and looked down at her, all kind of wanting and tortured . . .
You deserve someone who would jump fences to be with you.
Did he really mean that? He seemed so genuine, but was that just something she had created in her mind to fulfil some need of her own? She couldn’t shake the thought of the cattle, behind good fences, going missing. And he just happened to be lurking around? Too big a coincidence.
But that kiss . . .
The thought of it was like one tiny glimmer of shining light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Her head spun with thoughts of him, until some crazy sort of centrifugal force catapulted her out of her misery and out of her room.
12
The bus arrived in town half an hour after the school rush and Zoe stayed on all the way to the plaza. She stared at the timetables and wondered which one would take her to Josh’s place. She could barely remember where he lived. It was out towards Jen and Fred’s place but up a different road. Which one? In the end, she decided to ask the bus driver. ‘Do you know where Josh Miller lives?’
‘Up Stanton Road, about two Ks,’ said the bus driver. ‘His old man services my bus. I’ll drop you on the corner if you like.’
At the corner, Zoe stood watching the bus pull away and continue up the winding, hilly road. She ran her hands up and down her arms, wishing she’d brought a jumper.
As she began walking, she warmed up and it felt good to stretch her legs and be alone with all that space around her. Whipbirds called and kookaburras carolled in the late afternoon. In a paddock next to the Millers’ house, about twenty diesel tractors, in various stages of decay, lay scattered about. There was a large, open-sided tin shed with many more engines inside.
Zoe stood at the end of the driveway, feeling suddenly
stupid and awkward, waiting for someone to come out of the house. She couldn’t help wondering if she would be welcomed. She heard excited yapping and saw Josh’s two whippets, leaping about on the ends of their chains. The white one, Wispy, was noticeably fatter than the brindle. Zoe felt a sharp pang as she remembered how Queenie looked when she was heavily in pup. She used to spend ages running her hands gently over the old dog’s tummy and waiting to feel the pups move. There’d been thirteen once, and Queenie never lost one of them.
After a while, the dogs stopped yapping and lost interest. Zoe could see clothes flapping about on a Hills Hoist beside the house and about fifty pairs of boots by the front door. Near the big shed, three horses, a bay, a chestnut and a black stood with their backs to the afternoon sun, eating hay from a large steel feeder.
Zoe wandered over and leaned on the fence. The horses ignored her, lazily swishing their tails and contentedly munching at the hay.
Absent-mindedly, she made a kissing sound, the way she used to do to Blackjack at feed time, and was startled when the black horse turned to her.
For a moment, their eyes met and something cut through Zoe’s heart like a scorching knife.
‘Jacky?’ she whispered. It couldn’t be . . .
What the hell was he doing here?
She smooch-kissed again and Blackjack walked closer.
She slipped through the rails and walked to him as though in a trance. He tossed his head. His mane was thick and shaggy and a forelock fell either side of his eyes and down his nose.
She touched his cheek. Then she ran her hand up and behind his ears while he dropped his whole head into her tummy.
‘I was going to tell you.’
Zoe looked up. ‘Josh.’
He stood with the tips of his fingers in the back of his jeans pockets, still dressed in a school shirt, but without the tie. He shifted about awkwardly.
She looked down at the horse in her arms, then back at him, bewildered. ‘You were going to tell me what?’
‘That I bought him,’ he said.
Zoe felt the world spinning around her. Whoa, she just couldn’t take any more surprises. ‘When were you going to tell me, Josh? What is he doing here?’ She could hear her voice rising. ‘Do you want to tell me about my dad’s cattle as well?’
