by Karen Wood
She searched the schoolyard for Josh, hoped he would show in English class again, scanned the footy field on Thursday afternoon, even looked in the girls’ toilet, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Was he avoiding her too? She was beginning to feel paranoid.
Finally she asked Mike.
‘He’s doing some special engineering course in Sydney,’ her brother answered. ‘At one of the TAFE colleges.’
For a whole week? And he hadn’t told her or anything? Hadn’t even sent her a text message?
Why would he, she then scolded herself. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend or anything. And by the way Dad had carried on last time she saw him, they were unlikely to ever be either.
You deserve someone who would jump fences to be with you.
Maybe Josh was jumping out of her paddock, not into it . . .
She put him to the back of her mind, with all the other things she had decided to turn her back on, and trudged on, feeling aimless, longing for the weekend so she could just curl up and not have to face anything; just wallow in two whole days of well-earned apathy.
Dad and Mike looked for any hint of cattle-duffing they could take to the stock squad. They rode the boundary fences of the back paddocks and found that no wires had been cut. They looked for tyre tracks in the grass, but after so many weeks and so much rain, there was nothing to see. They rode on quad bikes up into the lease and searched for the cattle but couldn’t find them.
There was no reason to accuse Scotty or his father of duffing their cattle.
‘Are you sure you didn’t see anything?’ her dad asked, desperately searching her face, willing a spark of memory to ignite.
She sighed and shook her head. ‘I didn’t get close enough.’ And anyway, she had been so focused on Scotty and Caity kissing she wouldn’t have noticed.
Dad went to the stock squad anyway and they promised to investigate. He came home feeling fobbed off, all the same, and spent the next few nights on the phone to Mum talking around in circles about money and settlements, and about Zoe. The conversations grew increasingly heated.
‘You walked out on your kids, Gloria,’ her father growled. ‘Don’t even talk to me about what goes on at our home. It’s none of your damn business. And don’t give me all that crap about not being allowed to take the kids. You chose Phil over the kids.’
A short pause.
‘She doesn’t want to live with you, Gloria. Don’t you get it? They both want to live here! On the farm!’
He looked up, saw Zoe’s dismayed face and walked to his room with the phone still clamped to his ear. He closed the door firmly behind him.
Zoe slumped into a chair at the kitchen table.
‘We’ve lost nearly a hundred head of cattle over the past eighteen months,’ said Mike, staring into his dinner without eating it. ‘That would have been nearly a hundred grand if you included the calves some of them were carrying. He could’ve paid her out if he’d sold all the sheep as well.’
‘Why us?’ said Zoe. ‘How come no one else is losing stock?’
Mike gave her a bewildered shrug. ‘None of the neighbours have seen anything. It’s just really weird.’
On Friday night the phone rang again. Dad, Mike and Zoe all stared at it.
‘I’m not answering it,’ said Dad. He got up, walked to his room and closed the door behind him.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Mike, tearing at a lamb chop with his teeth.
Zoe sighed and ripped the handset off the wall. ‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Hi, Zoe.’
Her heart did a bongo solo. ‘Josh.’ There was silence. A smile took over her whole head and she hoped he didn’t hear the breathy laugh that whooshed out of her lungs totally without warning. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
More dorky silence.
‘Is your dad there?’
Her smile fell off and splattered on the floor. ‘Um . . . yes, I’ll get him.’ Thank god he couldn’t see the way her face turned the colour of Mum’s organic cranberries.
She tapped on Dad’s door.
‘Busy,’ he called out.
‘It’s Josh.’
The door opened. She handed him the phone and stood, listening to the first several, hmms, and then a ‘yes . . . ahuh . . . yeah-yeah . . . nah . . . dunno. . .’. Then he closed the door.
Mike swallowed the last of his chop and joined her at the door. Her dad spoke in a series of grunts, monosyllables and swear-words, which didn’t seem to link together into any coherent conversation. Zoe and Mike, with ears against the door, glanced questioningly at each other and periodically shrugged.
They both started and jumped out of the way when Dad wrenched the door open and stalked out with his keys in his hand. He put the phone back on the wall. ‘I’m going out for a bit.’
‘Where to?’
‘What was that about?’
Zoe and Mike shadowed him all the way to the back door.
‘Don’t wait up,’ was all he said.
Zoe and Mike watched him get in his car and take off down the driveway.
‘Ring Josh and find out,’ said Zoe, grabbing for the phone and thrusting it at Mike.
Mike pushed the number in and waited. ‘Engaged,’ he said.
‘Try again.’
Mike and Zoe dialled and dialled for over half an hour.
‘He’s left the phone off the hook,’ said Mike.
‘I’ll try his mobile,’ said Zoe.
It went straight to voicemail.
Zoe paced the lounge room. What could Josh possibly have told Dad that would get him into his car at this time of night? She waited until after eleven o’clock, gave up and went to bed.
When dawn seeped beneath her curtains the next morning it was unwelcome. Zoe heard a soft rap on her bedroom door. Her brother’s hoarse whisper came through a slit, bringing overly cheerful sunlight with it. ‘You awake?’
‘I am now,’ she grumbled. She opened one eye and stared around the dim room. ‘What time is it?’
‘Six o’clock.’
‘What’s up?’
‘We’re going to the bush festival at Murrurundi.’
Murrurundi? That was hours away.
‘Why?’
‘Dad wants to take Race and Toby in the dog high jump.’
Zoe hauled herself up into a sitting position. This was very odd. A bush festival. In Murrurundi. Her father. Dog high jump. It made no sense. Clearly she was just having some bizarre sort of dream. She lay back down again and snuggled into her pillow.
‘Psst! Zoe!’
She groaned, wishing the dream didn’t have such a penetratingly hissing voice. Her mind began to gather the remains of last night. Dad had driven off in a hurry after a call from Josh. Josh. She smiled and spent a while languishing in the memory of his breathy voice over the phone.
‘Wake up!’ Something nudged her and she sprang up and glanced around to get her bearings.
‘Mike? What do you want?’ she grizzled.
‘We’re taking the dogs to the bush festival. You coming?’
The King of the Ranges festival at Murrurundi. It was huge. Too huge. And it was three whole hours away. She really didn’t feel like going. Scotty would be there for the whip-crack event . . . Caitlin would probably be riding her horse in the barrel-racing. Dog-jumping?
‘Who’s going?’ she asked.
‘Everyone,’ said Mike.
‘As in . . . everyone?’
As in Josh?
‘Yes, as in everyone.’
Zoe pushed her covers off. ‘How are we getting there?’ she asked, opening her blind and wincing at the brightness. Outside, fiery streaks of daylight defined the new day.
‘Dad’s driving us.’
‘What is with that?’ she questioned. ‘Dad hates bush festivals. He hates leaving the farm.’
‘Who knows, but I’m not complaining.’ Mike’s face disappeared from the doorway and she heard him clomp back down the hall.
Zoe decided not to argue, grabbed her duffle bag and headed for the wardrobe. Short skirt. No. Heck, she was in crisis.
‘What are you doing?’ Mike hissed through the doorway.
‘Deciding what to wear,’ she groaned. ‘I don’t know what Josh likes.’
‘He likes you. Just grab anything.’
‘Yeah but why does he like me?’ she wrung her hands together. ‘Why does life have to be so complicated?’
‘For Pete’s sake, Zoe!’ said Mike, exasperated.
‘What?’
Mike sighed. ‘You look good in jeans.’ He thought about it some more. ‘And fitted shirts, like girly kinda ones. You look good in them too. Ones that, you know . . . show off your shape and all that.’ He sounded embarrassed.
‘Reckon?’ Zoe smiled.
‘Yeah, you’re a hotty,’ said Mike quickly. ‘Now hurry up!’
‘Really?’
‘Hurry up!’ he growled.
‘Coming. I’m coming.’
What was the hurry? The dog high-jump was always on late afternoon. The last one she’d gone to, it was nearly dark by the time the event finished.
She carefully selected her favourite shirts, folded them and put them in her bag with some jeans. She heaved her swag out from under the bed and rushed to the bathroom for her make-up bag and toothbrush. She dragged everything up the hall and stopped by the front door, kicked away her cowboy boots and pulled on her Blundstones.
Outside, her dad’s car engine rumbled. Race, Toby, Frankie and Bert all panted in the back.
‘We’re taking all of them?’
‘Apparently,’ said Mike, opening the front door and climbing in.
Zoe pushed her swag onto the back seat and climbed in after it. ‘I think you can only enter two dogs per handler, Dad.’
‘Oh,’ he said, and then shrugged. ‘They can come anyway.’
She looked across at the lamb shed and noticed the lambs had all been tossed out into the small grassy paddock.
‘Neighbour’s gonna check on them,’ said her dad. ‘Lock them up at night.’
‘Can’t he feed the dogs while he’s at it?’
‘They get aggro when I’m not here.’
Zoe stared at her dad in the front seat. He loved the dogs. ‘You big sook.’
‘You want to go or what?’
Zoe slammed the door shut. ‘Let’s go!’
The dogs whined and farted all the way and Zoe hung her head out the window gasping for fresh air. ‘Argh. It’s genetic. Shouldn’t you have bred that trait out of them?’ she complained to her father.
‘It’s not that bad,’ he said, with his window wound all the way down and the fresh air rushing over his face.
‘You’re not stuck in the back with all four of them,’ she moaned. ‘They’re slobbering down my neck!’
Her dad broke into a whistle and turned up an old 1980s classic on the radio.
‘Do you have any Keith Urban?’ She and Caitlin always listened to Keith on the road. This eighties stuff was all wrong.
‘Nup,’ her father and brother chorused together.
Bleh – maybe she needed a new anthem anyway. She checked out their clothes.
Her dad wore an old red-check flanny with sleeves rolled up past the elbows and one hairy bear arm hanging out the window. Mike, in the front passenger seat, wore a blue one with a rip on the sleeve. ‘Don’t either of you have a decent shirt to wear? Mike, you must have slept in that.’
Dad shrugged. ‘Never go anywhere usually.’
‘I got a school shirt,’ said Mike indifferently.
Zoe resolved to buy both of them a nice country shirt for Christmas. They looked like a pair of hillbillies. ‘I don’t know what Tahnee sees in you,’ she mumbled and sat back resignedly with her arm around Frankie.
‘Who’s Tahnee?’ asked her dad.
‘Mike’s girlfriend,’ Zoe tattled.
In the front seats, Dad and Mike’s heads turned to each other. Dad’s eyebrows were raised. The corner of Mike’s mouth pulled. Then they both stared ahead without saying anything. Zoe couldn’t help wondering if Dad approved.
‘What do you think of coffee-shop owners, Dad? Do they rank with diesel mechanics?’
‘Close second,’ he answered. ‘Your brother would be well fed.’
‘You should see how she makes a spider,’ said Mike. He closed his eyes, put his head back and groaned dramatically.
Zoe laughed. This weekend was going to be weird, but she didn’t care. Dad and Mike seemed happy, and she’d be seeing Josh.
By mid-morning they drove through a tiny town of historical old shopfronts and into the gates of the showgrounds, which were bustling with trucks and floats and people riding around with back numbers tied over their shirts. Cattle trucks lined up outside the drafting yards, and men worked to set up rodeo chutes behind a large steel arena fence. An adjacent yard held a herd of feral goats.
Smoke wafted everywhere. Part of the King of the Ranges challenge was to light a campfire in record time. People always practised at their campsites.
‘Can you put in the entry forms, Zoe?’ asked Dad.
‘Sure,’ she said, holding out her hand for his wallet.
Her dad pulled it from his back pocket and surrendered it. Then he stepped out of the car and walked straight to the cattle yards. ‘Boys.’
Zoe cringed. Scotty’s dad worked in the yards a lot of the time too, although she couldn’t see him in there now. She prayed he wouldn’t be here.
The men looked up and their faces couldn’t have been more surprised. They slapped hands jovially with her dad and gave him hearty welcoming smiles. ‘Archie, you old buzzard,’ one croaked. ‘I thought you was dead!’
Zoe was stunned to hear her father launch into a lively conversation with them. Then she saw Fred breaking bales of hay and tossing them into a yard of curly-horned goats. His glasses were fogged as always, under the brim of his hat. ‘Fred’s here too?’
‘He donated some feral goats for the billycart race,’ said Mike.
The mood in the yards took a sudden dive and Zoe noticed the men all stop talking and suddenly look busy. Another man entered the yards. Scotty’s dad; in a pair of shorts and chunky workboots. His belly was round and his hat weathered and shapeless. His face was set into his usual semi-snarl as he let a mob of cattle into a pen – Murray greys mostly. They were a fine-looking herd. She wondered if he owned them. He didn’t breed cattle, but bought and sold anything.
Zoe noticed the way her dad stopped and eyed him over, with a long calculating glare. Scotty’s dad noticed it too. He gave Dad a brief questioning look, turned and walked back towards a waiting truck.
‘Hey, Zoe.’ Mike had let the dogs out of the back of the station wagon and was struggling to hold them all. ‘Help me chain this lot up.’
Zoe tore her eyes away and helped Mike chain the dogs under a large shady tree at the back of the cattle yards, then went to fill some water buckets.
She checked her hair in the reflection of the car window. It hung just right, curling in waves over her shoulders and down her back from under a soft pink Stetson, and so she headed for the main arena, whistling Frankie to follow.
The sulky race was on. Five horses trotted around pulling sulkies while their drivers and runners jumped down and performed various tasks, like milking a cow, chopping wood and driving around an obstacle course. People on the sidelines cheered them on.
Zoe draped her forearms over the top rail of the arena and let out a big sigh as she soaked it all in. She thought of all the bush festivals she’d been to with Caitlin and Scotty. They’d had so much fun.
‘Wonder what the dog high-jump is worth around here,’ she said, looking down at Frankie. He was a bit chubbier than usual. He mustn’t have been let off much while she was in hospital. Dad hadn’t mustered for weeks.
She remembered she hadn’t eaten breakfast when the smell of bacon and egg rolls began tugging at her taste buds and making her mouth water. She head
ed to the food vans via the rodeo arena, walking up over a grassy hill that curved around the steel rails, creating an amphitheatre. Families sat on picnic rugs watching dogs work small flocks of geese. Handlers walked out wide with a grass rake, guiding them. Frankie’s ears twitched and he crouched on his haunches as he watched the other dogs work.
‘Stay behind,’ she mumbled to him.
And then she saw him.
Everything stopped. Her feet, her thoughts, her heart. He stood with two drinks in his hands, talking to Samantha and Tracey, not more than two metres away. He wore his beloved hat and his hair curled softly around his ears. His shirt was tucked in under a rodeo belt buckle and he wore a weathered pair of low-heeled boots. The sight of him, here, in this setting was painful, even though she had psyched herself up for this on the drive out here. She had known she would almost certainly run into him, but not so soon.
The girls turned and walked abruptly away, leaving a clear line of sight leading directly to her. His eyes snapped onto her. Out of the blue, they stood facing each other, so close that she could hear the cans scrunch slightly in his fists.
‘Hi . . . Scott.’ Wasn’t that was he was called these days?
‘Zoe.’ He ran his eyes up and down in a scrutinising way. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Good.’ She went to walk away.
‘Wait!’
She turned around and folded her arms defensively across her chest. It was hard to look him in the eye.
‘I didn’t think you’d be here,’ he said.
She gave a saccharine smile. ‘Well, here I am.’ She turned away. ‘And here I go . . .’
‘Zoe, hang on.’ She heard him marching after her.
‘What?’ She kept walking.
‘We never got to talk.’
‘What’s there to talk about?’
‘You and me.’
‘There is no you and me.’ There is you and Caitlin.
‘But there used to be, Zoe, and it was amazing.’
‘For you, maybe.’ She dropped her eyes to the cans in his hands. ‘Who’s the other drink for?’
