Will’s cheeks reddened. ‘I’d never do that.’
‘Mind your manners, look after yourself, say your prayers and stay out of trouble,’ his mother reminded him. ‘That’s all I ask.’
‘Come on, bed then,’ Marcus ordered, finishing the half glass of brandy and taking two quick drags of his smoke. Will said goodnight and closed the door to his room as Flossy began to tidy the table. ‘Leave that, love, and come to bed.’ Marcus stubbed the cigarette out.
Flossy looked up shyly from the dishes. ‘But what about …?’
‘I’ll be gentle, Floss.’
His wife rested a hand on her belly. ‘Maybe everything will be better now, especially with Will getting a bit of work and Mr Stevens paying more for what we send him.’
Marcus held out his hand. ‘Come on.’
Adding two pieces of wood to the stove, Flossy closed the vent on the flue to slow the fire. ‘Do you really think it will be all right?’ She took his hand somewhat reluctantly and he led her to the bedroom, lighting the way with a lamp.
‘Of course.’
‘But we’ve never done it when, you know.’
No, they hadn’t. Marcus always abstained from his husbandly rights as soon as Floss told him she was with child. He sat the kerosene lamp on the hardwood dresser and cupped his wife’s chin. ‘I can’t see what harm it will do.’
The room was sparsely furnished and cold. Goosebumps popped up on Flossy’s skin as, one by one, Marcus removed each layer of clothing. She gave a girlish giggle. ‘Don’t start getting all coy on me now, Floss.’
‘Sorry, love.’
He took off his strides and shirt and lay back on the bed. The brass bedstead knocked the tongue and groove walls behind as Floss stepped out of her knickers. Marcus rested his hands behind his head. There were signs. Her belly bulged just a little and her breasts were fuller.
‘I don’t know, Marcus, I worry that we might hurt the baby.’
Marcus’s thoughts were far beyond that of a baby. ‘If it’s meant to be, Floss, it’ll happen. There’s not much point worrying about it every moment of our lives.’ Her features tightened and Marcus wondered if, for the first time in their married lives, she might refuse him. Strangely, the idea that he may well have to be adamant only increased his ardour. He blamed the brandy he’d consumed and Wes Kirkland, who’d done him out of some extra coin, but a man had to be grateful for the little things and the money Will brought home would amount to more over a year than the paltry sum he’d once brokered with Hocking for river access. ‘Come here, Floss.’
She walked obediently across the bare floor, the light from the lamp outlining her body.
Marcus pulled her towards him. ‘Sit straight down, yeah, that’s my girl.’ He tugged the ribbon from her hair. It floated to the floor. For the moment he would forget about those bloody Americans.
Chapter 37
June, 1935 – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Edmund sat quietly under the redbud tree. In his hand was a picture of Tobias and Wes taken many years ago at a fair in Oklahoma City. It had been an enjoyable afternoon made more poignant now by the memory of that day and the loss of both young men to the great southern land. Tobias had set sail for Australia with Serena’s daughter in tow, and it was with a heavy heart that Edmund finally realised that his son had fallen for the girl, as he had fallen for Serena’s grandmother.
‘Ah my dear,’ he spoke to where Philomena lay, ‘I thought I could save Tobias from heart-ache, I thought I could spare him the angst of the albatross that has burdened my family these many years. I am a stupid old man.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘It’s pathetic really, but I did have a plan of sorts. To firstly obtain medical treatment for Abelena, and then to send her away to an institution for a number of years. Was I wrong? I simply wanted to rid that god-damned Indian blood from your last female descendant, and in the doing give her a chance at a normal life.
‘Tobias disagreed. Abelena is all that is new and mysterious to him. The lad only knows of your story through me, of Serena’s life through the scant memories he has of her from his childhood, and more recently of the woman she had become. So Tobias has left me. Chosen Abelena over me and fled to the land that was my dream for us. It is of small comfort knowing that we have been replaced by the next generation. Knowing that a young man, my only son, has stepped into my shoes in the hope that he can both save and love your great-granddaughter.
‘I see Tobias’s folly. I see him as I now see myself when I thought you and I would leave this land of The Great Plains and journey south to a new life. He and I did not speak the day of their leaving.’ Edmund paused. ‘After all this family has been through I am still stunned by Tobias’s disloyalty to me, by his inability to accept that no good can come from a life with that girl. I wish I had not saved Abelena now. I wish I had not purchased Condamine Station. I wish I had sent Tobias to join Wes years ago instead of keeping him here for my own selfish reasons. I wish for so many things that my head grows fuzzy at times with thinking.’ Edmund looked across to the stables. The horses were whinnying and nickering. Overhead the clouds swirled and darkened.
Edmund tucked the photograph of Wes and his son into his father’s diary. He’d stopped writing in Aloysius’s book fifteen years ago; the day after Serena and the Indian had come to his home begging for money. Resting the diary on the grass beside him, Edmund looked across the land that was now dotted with houses and small mobs of cattle. He could remember a time when he drove a surrey with a fringe and the prairie moved like the living thing it was, rolling across the curves of the earth towards the river. Now he owned a T-Model Ford and there were strangers living in his street. Everything had changed.
When the wind picked up, Edmund grew mesmerised by the changing sky. Clouds gathered in the distance. They grew purple-blue and billowy in a matter of minutes and then the base of the clouds began to lower until a tell-tale funnel began to emerge between land and sky. The funnel grew in both length and width, darkening as the twister gathered dirt and debris. The swirling column scraped across the ground, a veil of wreckage and dirt obscuring the wrath of the angry torrent moving towards him. Edmund felt compelled to watch the storm unfold, became immersed in the wind and rain that began to drive down upon him. His clothes grew sodden as the noise of the tempest intensified. Like an approaching freight train it grew louder and stronger, a whooshing rush of sound that reverberated across the land.
The twister uprooted trees. It careered through a house, splintering timber and glass and roof tiles. It was so close Edmund could see the remnants of people’s lives being sucked up and then spat out by the moving mass. And still it kept on coming. Edmund lay a hand on Philomena’s grave as his father’s diary was gathered up by the wind.
Sheriff Cadell picked his way through the wreckage of the Wade home. Around him people were emerging dazed from their untouched houses, others screamed for loved ones feared trapped in the rubble of partially collapsed dwellings. The twister had torn across the area, leaving a trail of ruined houses, roads and farmland forty feet wide. It was a narrow band for such a ferocious storm but in its path it had not left anything untouched. Cadell stepped over timber boards and broken window frames and guessed he was standing in the sitting room, for the partial remains of a fireplace still stood. Caught beneath bricks and mortar was the now water-stained and broken portrait of Edmund’s uncle and his dead family. He’d recognise the silver-haired child, Serena, anywhere.
‘Edmund? Edmund?’ he called.
‘We checked the stables, Sheriff,’ a newly appointed deputy told him. ‘Nothing. The horses managed to get out but we haven’t found the stable boy. Is there anyone else?’
Cadell shook his head. ‘The housekeeper has the day off on Sunday so there’d only be Mr Wade.’
‘He’s here, Sheriff,’ another deputy called from a section of the demolished garden. ‘Sorry, Sheriff Cadell, he didn’t make it.’
The sheriff left the decimated home and walked towar
ds what was once the rear of the garden. His men lifted a section of a collapsed wall and dragged Edmund out by his boots.
‘Leave him,’ the sheriff ordered. ‘Go across the road and see if you can give someone else a hand.’
The two younger men dutifully obeyed. Cadell waited until he was alone before dragging Edmund’s body completely free of the ruined wall.
‘I should have guessed that you’d be out here with Philomena.’ Removing a handkerchief, he got down on bended knee and cleaned the dust from his friend’s face. There was a single cut to Edmund’s cheek. The sheriff guessed he’d been crushed. ‘I could strangle that son of yours, Edmund. I could strangle myself for agreeing to track down Abelena.’ Removing his brimmed hat, he dropped it in the dirt. ‘Damn it.’ He stayed motionless for a few minutes, remembering their friendship, remembering his friend. ‘A man could have no better companion on the trail.’ Sitting the hat back on his head, he lifted Edmund in his arms and carried him across the wasted area and out onto a clear section of the road. He lay Edmund down tenderly, draping his battered suit coat across his face.
Tomorrow Edmund Wade would be buried in the family crypt alongside his parents, Annie and Aloysius. Sheriff Cadell briefly wondered if Philomena should be uprooted from her resting place and also condemned to the chilly vault, but he figured that the two lovers would be better off keeping to their own worlds, Indian and white.
Overhead a golden eagle circled once, twice and then flew towards the North Canadian River. The sheriff observed the bird’s graceful flight and then turned back to where Edmund lay on the ground. ‘Guess I’ll write to that son of yours, although I always figured Wes was the pick out of the two of them.’ He would have said a final goodbye if he were able but his eyes were growing glassy and Cadell knew he’d be better off heading home and downing a couple of straight shots.
As he crossed the road to where an ambulance waited to load the walking injured, he turned one last time to look at what remained of the Wade residence. If he concentrated, Cadell could almost imagine Annie and Aloysius on the porch with Edmund. Maybe it was best that Tobias had taken Abelena to Australia. Perhaps now the family could finally rest in peace.
Chapter 38
July, 1935 – the western boundary of Condamine Station,
Southern Queensland
‘So how are you holding up, kid?’
Will added the length of wood to the pile in his arms and said nothing. Evan Crawley was a spindly man with a big head and small feet, as if someone had tried without success to thread him through the eye of a needle and caught him at the neck. He was currently peeing into the dirt not three feet from where he was collecting firewood.
‘That’s what I thought, red-raw from the saddle, eh?’
Will shifted the wood in his arms as laughter drifted across from the campfire. Five men were visible through the timber. They were smoking and telling yarns and taking swigs of rum from a shared bottle. The smell of roasted mutton was thick in the air. His stomach growled.
Evan buttoned his fly. ‘Beaut night.’
‘I guess.’ It was cold and still. The chill hurt his lungs when he breathed and made Will think of home and food and their makeshift shower with its cool water and bits of soap. Stars swirled overhead while through the trees ten thousand ewes were strewn across a swathe of lightly timbered grassland. Shearing was finished. They’d already dropped off two lots of four thousand head since leaving the station, with the remainder to be walked a further ten miles to the western boundary.
‘You haven’t complained,’ Evan continued. ‘I’ll give you that, and you can hold your own on a horse. Are the men giving you a hard time?’
‘Some,’ Will admitted. Every night they made him collect loads of wood for the campfire. Again and again they sent him out into the cold, until the lighter branches were gathered up in each new camping spot and he was forced to drag heavy logs onto the growing pile.
Use it next time we pass through, one of the men, Sprout, told him. Save you the trouble of looking for it then.
Will wanted to tell Sprout to go fetch the timber, but the man was twice as big and twice as old and he bore a busted nose that hooked out to the right of his face. Will knew he’d be able to fight.
‘Hungry?’
Surely the man was trying to rile him. Of course he was hungry. By the time Will set the campfire, fetched the water for the billy, set it to boiling and threaded the joints of meat on the pointy stick that formed a part of the makeshift spit, he was yet to start the endless search for wood. The rest of the men had finished their food by the time he sat down to eat and by then he was so dog-tired he didn’t even mind the meagre burnt leftovers.
‘Sure you’re hungry.’
Will waited for Evan to give him an order. So far that seemed to be the only time anyone spoke to him. He was beginning to wonder if he was cut out to be a stockman. He’d never felt so lonely and four days tailing thousands of freshly shorn sheep’s bums wasn’t exactly the high point of his life.
Evan rolled tobacco between his palms, filled a paper with the moist plant and offered it to him. ‘Smoke?’
‘Yes, yes, thanks.’
‘You can dump the timber.’
Will did as he was told. The wood landed with a thud. Evan flicked him a box of matches and he lit the cigarette carefully and gave a choked cough. It wasn’t his first time smoking, he’d snuck the odd bit of tobacco from his dad in the past. Will figured Evan to be fifty or sixty. His hair was a dirty blue-grey with a scraggly beard to match and there were dark patches of skin on his face and hands. Crawley had been with them since the beginning of the drive but he’d kept well clear of the mob and the men, staying out on the northern wing for most of the journey to date. He came in for a feed twice a day, like an old bull following the herd, and camped alone at night. Will overheard one of the men saying he slept sitting up. Anything was possible out here. There was too much land and sky and space.
‘So what are you doing with us when you’ve got your own place?’ Evan rolled another smoke.
Will took a drag on the cigarette. ‘Things are tough. We could do with the extra money.’
‘Couldn’t everyone. So, are you going to give it all to your folks?’
‘I’d like to buy some more land,’ Will revealed, ‘but my dad says it will take thirty years to save enough coin.’
‘Be damned thirty years. Your father was at the war, wasn’t he?’
‘Sure he was, at Gallipoli. He was wounded and everything.’
‘Figures.’ Evan sniffed and spat in the dirt. ‘I ain’t met a war boy yet who doesn’t want the quiet life. Now don’t get me wrong, kid, those fellas, well, they did a good job but most of them are so beat up by what they’ve seen and what they’ve done that they just want to live out their lives the best that they can. Young fellas with high-faluting ideas don’t carry much weight in the scheme of things.’ The end of Evan’s cigarette glowed red as he took another puff. ‘I guess you could say that I’m a bit more open to a boy your age having a bit of a go. That’s what my own father expected.’
‘What did he do, Mr Crawley?’
The older man cleared his throat. ‘He was a good-for-nothing … That’s another story. Anyway, as for the men, well, they’re not a bad lot of bastards.’ He picked a shred of tobacco from his tongue and exhaled a thick stream of smoke from his nostrils. ‘The thing is, they’ve all got to learn to work together as a team and that can be a bit difficult when you’ve got whiteys and darkies, but this lot, they got respect for the other. The whiteys know sheep and the blacks know the land.’
There were three blokes from New South Wales, Bob and Nicholson and the one nicknamed Sprout, and two blackfellas from out west, father and son.
‘You’re a bit different to the usual, boy, you coming off a place and all, even if you are a busted-arse cowlicker. These men,’ he thumbed towards the campfire, ‘well, they ain’t got nothing or no-one except each other. That’s the worst of
you being a landed cow-herder, sheep men just can’t relate. Take a load off.’ Evan slid down a tree and stretched his legs out.
Will hadn’t been party to so much conversation since leaving home, but he sure didn’t like being called a ‘busted-arse cowlicker’. His dad worked damn hard to keep the dairy going and, while Will didn’t agree with stealing sheep on a regular basis, he was his own man and a good father. ‘But there’s money in cattle too,’ he said carefully. He sure didn’t want to peeve his boss.
The older man cocked an eyebrow. ‘Not for you,’ he replied matter-of-factly, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Take a seat. I never talk to a man who’s looking down at me.’
Will did as he was told. ‘If my dad had a bigger herd, we’d do better, even beef cattle bring a good price.’
Evan scratched a stubbly chin. ‘Sure, them animals have their moments, except when the clouds don’t come, and the grass shrivels up and the land shuts down around you. Then all you’ve got for your troubles are starving cattle that go belly up. Never been a fan myself. The blighters just need too much feed. But sheep, well they’re canny little buggers. They’ll ferret around clomping the tucker down to the dirt. Hell, in a tough time the blighters will even dig down a bit, scratch at withered roots with those pointy little hoofs of theirs.’ Evan slapped his thigh. ‘Survivors, that’s what they are and, of course, there are other benefits.’
‘Like what?’
Evan rolled his eyes. ‘Well, what do we usually eat for tucker?’ He took a drag of the cigarette. ‘Course we don’t breathe a word about the odd killer when it comes to the meat ration. Wes Kirkland’s a big one for long days in the saddle, which suits the men and me just fine, but poor rations? Salted meat and potatoes? I don’t think so. Out here the men do what I say. Kirkland’s a bit thick in that regard, he hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that this motley mob of bastards work for me.’
The Great Plains Page 31
