An hour later he was riding along the rutted track adjacent to the orange trees. A dim light shone in the kitchen window. There was the familiar tang of smoke from the wood-stove and the thick scent of summer dry leaves. In a rush his old life came back and Will twitched the reins and told Pat to move along. Perch was at the stables to greet them. He jumped and whined and barked and spun until Will thought the animal might suffer an attack.
‘G’day, old mate.’ Will ruffled the dog’s head. ‘Have you been behaving yourself?’
Perch nosed him in the back of the leg as Will unsaddled Pat and led her into one of two stalls in the stables. There was water in one of the feed bins, enough until the morning when he’d give her a good rub down and let her out in the cow paddock for a feed. Closing the stable door he walked towards the house, the dog at his heels. It was strange being home again after so many weeks away. He felt different, older somehow, and the fact that he could only stay the one day also gave him a sense of freedom. At the end of the verandah, the outline of a sheep’s carcass came into view. It was half-hanging and half-dragging in the dirt. One of the front legs had been eaten. Perch rushed to the bloody remains as Will swore under his breath and tugged on the rope, securing it when the sheep hung freely out of harm’s way. At the door he kicked off his boots, patted Perch goodnight and went inside.
‘Lose your job, did you?’
His father sat at the kitchen table surrounded by dirty dishes. He was unshaven, his voice slurred. An open bottle of rum sat in front of him.
‘Are you drunk, Dad?’ Will turned up the light until the kerosene lamp glowed brightly. His father was filthy. Will could smell sweat and blood and the stink of the milking pens.
Marcus scowled at the brightness. ‘Do you want some?’
‘I guess.’ Will rinsed a glass in the sink and poured a nip of rum. The bottle was half-empty. ‘Is everything all right?’ He sat at the table. The surface of it was sticky and littered with crumbs.
Marcus yawned, poured more rum and sculled it. ‘No, no I can’t say it is.’
‘Mr Kirkland told me someone broke in.’
‘And you rushed right over to check on your poor parents.’ Marcus licked the rim of the glass.
‘I only found out tonight. I’ve ridden in the dark to get here.’
‘So you weren’t fired.’ His father nodded. ‘Did you bring the money you’ve earned?’
With the commotion before his leaving Will had not even thought about it. ‘I forgot.’
Marcus poured more rum. His hands and fingernails were filthy. ‘I can’t do all the work by myself, not with the way your mother is.’
Will looked towards his parents’ bedroom. ‘What’s the matter with Mum?’ Of course he knew the answer. She’d lost the child.
‘Probably best if you wait till morning, see for yourself. I can’t explain what’s going on with your mother. Heck, the doctor can’t even tell me what’s wrong with her.’ Reaching across the table, Marcus patted his son on the arm. ‘It’s good to have you back, Will, really good.’
Will swivelled in the chair. ‘Dad, I can’t stay.’
‘Milking first thing.’ Marcus walked into his son’s bedroom and closed the door.
Will opened his eyes. For a few brief seconds he had no idea where he was, then his brain cleared. Swinging his legs off the horse-hair couch, he stretched and yawned. Dawn was just breaking as he filled the sink with water and began tidying the messy kitchen. After he’d sat the dishes on a rack to dry, he scrubbed the table down and lit the wood-stove. He needed a cuppa and he figured his father would too. With the kettle filled and heating he walked outside to where Perch greeted him with a series of barks. They sat side by side as Will rolled a smoke and lit it. He stroked Perch’s head absently as his thoughts returned to Abelena. He had to get back to Condamine Station.
‘I slept in.’ Marcus stood in the doorway. ‘You smoking now?’
‘If I was you I’d go take a shower, Dad,’ Will said brusquely. ‘A long one. I’ll make breakfast.’
Half an hour later the two men sat down to fried eggs and strips of salted mutton and tea. There was no bread or butter.
‘She lost the child,’ Marcus told his son between mouthfuls.
‘I gathered as much.’
‘It’s bad this time, Will, real bad. I had to call the doctor to come see her. He hopes for the best but …’ Marcus stabbed at a piece of meat. ‘Anyway it’s probably the doctor that called Condamine Station. He commented on the mess of the place, on how I was coping, suggested you should come home.’
‘I’ve only got today off, Dad. I have to go back.’
‘You can pack up and leave them any time.’
‘Actually I have to give a month’s notice.’ Will’s knife and fork clattered together on the plate as he finished his meal. He was used to eating quickly and getting on with the job.
Marcus mashed the runny egg with his fork. ‘Maybe if I go speak to Crawley.’
Will slammed his mug on the table. ‘I don’t want to leave there, Dad. It’s a good job.’
‘But you’ve got responsibilities here.’ His father pushed the unfinished plate aside. ‘Give us a smoke, will you, I’ve run out.’
Will slid the tobacco tin across the table. ‘We both decided I should get a job.’
‘Yes, we did,’ his father agreed, ‘in order to bring in a bit of money and make your mother’s life a bit more comfortable.’ He rolled the tobacco in a slip of paper, licked the gummy side and pressed the length of it between his fingers. ‘Now she’s crook and I need a hand with the dairy so you have to come home.’ Lighting the smoke, he leant back in the chair.
‘Mum’ll get over it eventually, she always does.’
‘It’s different this time. She’s different. I can’t get through to her.’ Marcus’s attention drifted to the sink and the rum bottle.
‘That won’t help you, Dad.’
‘And you’d know?’
‘I know that you weren’t like this when I left.’
Marcus carefully stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and slipped it into his shirt pocket. ‘I haven’t had much sleep recently.’
‘There’s another thing too, you’ll have to stop knocking off those sheep, Dad. Mr Crawley on to you. He told Mr Kirkland that someone was supplying the store in the village with sheep meat. What’s worse is that there’s thousands of sheep missing from the Wade place so it’s time to stop all that foolery before you get blamed for that.’
‘Well, look who got himself a job and an attitude. Don’t speak to me like that, boy.’
‘You know it’s wrong, Dad.’
Marcus’s eyes were steely. ‘It’s a good business I’ve got going now, son. After you left I re-negotiated with Mr Stevens. With your mother still with child back then, I realised I’d never be able to handle the workload so I chose the best way to make ends meet. I sold five of the cows to a bloke on the other side of the village and got the truck fixed. I’m delivering to Stevens three times a week now. He’s promised me money starting next month.’
‘You did what?’
‘That’s when things will really take off for us, Will. After all the years I’ve battled along trying to make ends meet, come winter next year I figure we’ll be able to buy ourselves a new refrigerated van to cart the milk and the sheep meat. After that I’m going to build us a covered milking pen with a cement floor and then we’ll look at on-farm refrigerated storage. Once we’re up and running we’ll do the house up for Floss. The way it should be. Plastered and with wallpaper in the bedrooms and a generator for electricity and –’
‘Dad, stop. Are you listening to yourself? What on earth has got into you? If you’re caught you’ll go to gaol for sure.’
‘I’m doing most of this for your mother. She deserves better. Besides, you can’t tell me that those high and mighty Wades haven’t lifted stock in their time.’ Marcus tapped the table for emphasis. ‘They didn’t get to where they were by being on t
he straight side of the law. Mr Stevens told me the Wades had slaves in America. Heck, they probably still do for all we know. And did any of them fight in the war? Probably not, but they sure as hell made money from the uniforms they manufactured. One of them Wades even got the electric chair for murdering a kid. Yes, it’s true, Will. Don’t look so shocked. It was written up in the Sydney Morning Herald. One of Stevens’s kin sent him a copy of the paper. The Wades are big news here now they’ve finally shown themselves. I reckon those people have a real bad name in their hometown, that’s why they came here. But we’re on to them now. Yes, sir, we’re on to them.’
Marcus’s hands were shaking by the time he’d finished talking. Will poured tea for his father, added two good lumps of sugar and a dash of rum to the brew. The older man cradled the cup between his hands and sipped at the steaming concoction.
‘They used to give us rum before we hopped the bags. You always knew when we were on a big push, the rum would appear. I guess the Brass thought it would give us a bit of Dutch courage. It made no difference to me, I was always scared shitless.’
‘Dad.’ Will pulled a chair close to his father. ‘You can’t keep stealing.’
Marcus gave a wry smile. ‘The thing is, I like the feel of it, Will, the uncertainty of it all. It’s like being back at the war.’
‘But you hated the war.’
‘Sure, sure I did and I still do, but when I’m out there in the night sneaking around trying to find a woolly to nick, I get this rush of blood in my veins and I feel alive.’
Will placed a firm hand on his father’s arm. ‘You have to stop. It’s wrong and you’ll get caught eventually.’
‘We might need the money for your mother, to have her cared for.’
‘If that ever happens, Dad, we’ll work something out,’ Will assured his father, ‘but in the meantime you have to stop. Do you want me to ride into the village and tell Mr Stevens?’
Marcus’s eyes grew so round they nearly popped from his skull. ‘You can’t do that.’ He looked towards the bedroom door and then lowered his voice. ‘I told you, I sold the cows. I can’t afford not to steal now.’
It couldn’t have been more than seven-thirty in the morning but Will could have used a drink as well. They were in a heck of a bind. ‘You could sell the rest of the cows and try to get a job.’
‘And what about my plans for the dairy, not to mention your mother? No, it’s better if you come home and work with me.’
Will raised his hands in the air. ‘I can’t do it. I’m not stealing. You’ll have to work out a way of getting yourself out of this mess, Dad.’
Marcus slapped his fist on the table. ‘You will come home and that’s an end to it.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Will cleared the table and began rinsing the plates in the sink.
‘You can’t desert your mother, son.’
Will dropped a plate on the drying rack. The dish broke in half with a sharp crack. ‘Mum’s crook because you can’t keep your hands off her, she’s always with child. If you left her alone she might have half a chance at a decent life.’
Marcus stood abruptly, the chair toppling backwards, and crossed the floor to the sink. Will had never had a hand raised against him, although Flossy had been partial to the wooden spoon when he was young. He quickly side-stepped out of his father’s reach.
‘Will, you’re home, how lovely.’ Flossy was barefoot in a nightgown, an olive shawl wrapped about her shoulders. She gave no sign of being aware of the recent disagreement and as Marcus backed away she kissed Will on the cheek and poured a cup of tea. ‘Get the brandy for me, will you, love, it’s in the top drawer.’
Will did as he was told, watching as his mother poured a good measure of the liquid into the tea. He thought she looked extremely well. There was a glow to her skin and, although she erred on the skinny side, happiness radiated from within her.
‘Marcus dear, can you get home a little earlier tonight, you’re always so late?’ Gathering her loose hair between her fingers, Floss twisted it over one shoulder. When she pulled her hand away, strands of it fell to the floor.
‘I’ll do my best, Floss.’
‘I slept a little better last night, but it’s so hard getting used to waking up during the night to feed her.’ Tea in hand, Floss wandered back to the bedroom and closed the door.
Will, screwing the top on the brandy bottle, stopped immediately. ‘What was that about?’
‘She lost the baby the night we were broken into,’ his father explained. ‘I found her the next morning down by the river. She hasn’t been the same since.’
‘The next morning?’ Will queried. ‘Where were you?’
‘It was the night I got lost and met up with you and the others on Condamine Station. Don’t look at me like that. I had to get the sheep into the village and to the store before daylight.’
Will walked to the bedroom door and listened. He placed his hand on the doorknob.
‘Don’t go in there, Will,’ his father pleaded, ‘it’ll do you no good to see it.’
‘See what?’
Marcus hung his head. There were fresh streaks of grey peppering the crown.
Will opened the door slowly. It creaked on its hinges. The room was dim. It took time to adjust to the light for a blanket was hitched across the window and a kerosene lamp spluttered weakly on the dressing table. There was a length of ribbon sitting on the dresser and a pair of scissors. He remembered the day they’d brought the ribbon home from the store. Will pushed the door a little wider. His mother sat on the edge of the bed. She appeared to be sewing small squares of material together and was immersed in the task. Her fingers worked nimbly and she hummed as she sewed. At her feet were scraps of material and items of clothes, tiny singlets and tops, boys’ short pants and shirts. Will guessed the baby clothes were his. Flossy kept singing and sewing. Occasionally she would turn to her left and mumble something as if there were a person sitting on the bed next to her, but apart from the musty smell and disarray in the room, nothing else seemed out of the ordinary.
It was only when Flossy moved to fetch the scissors that Will saw what sat next to her on the bed. It was a pickle jar, an ordinary pickle jar with a screw top lid, but there was something in it. He took a step into the room as his mother continued cutting up squares of material. He peered at the bottle. There was something floating in liquid inside the glass. It was pale and resembled … Will gave a horrified gasp. It was a baby with arms and legs. Flossy turned towards him and smiled beatifically.
‘Peanut’s sleeping,’ she whispered, holding a finger to her lips.
For a moment Will was too stunned to move.
‘Come back another time,’ his mother advised, gently closing the door in his face.
‘I told you,’ his father said wearily.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Will put a hand to his mouth. ‘You have to get rid of it, throw it away, bury it, it doesn’t matter, just get rid of the damn thing. It will send her mad.’
Marcus gave Will a look that suggested the boy was an idiot. ‘And you don’t think she’s that way already?’
‘I don’t know.’ Will walked the length of the room. ‘Maybe, maybe it’s just a stage of grief, the make-believe thing. It doesn’t matter, you still have to get that thing away from her, Dad.’
‘And what if I do?’ Marcus countered. ‘What if I throw out the baby and break the jar and your mother thinks I’ve killed it? What happens then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Will admitted.
‘Exactly, the doctor said to get rid of it as well but even he doesn’t know what effect it will have on your mother.’ Marcus took his hat from the peg near the door. ‘At least like this I have Floss near me and there’s the chance she could wake up one morning and everything will be fine. Kill the baby and I could make your mother worse.’
‘Kill the baby?’ Will repeated. ‘It’s already dead.’
Marcus put his hat on and opened the door. ‘I have to milk the cows. I’l
l expect you in the stalls.’
Will followed his father outside and watched as he whistled up Perch and headed for the cow paddock. The dog followed obediently, stopping to sniff at the swinging carcass where blowflies feasted noisily, before running after his master. Will knew he should help his father. He’d been given the day off after all. His boots scuffed the verandah boards as he walked backwards and forwards. From inside the house came the sound of his mother’s voice. Her singing competed with the buzzing blowflies. Will couldn’t believe the mess his father had got them into, he couldn’t believe any of it. It was like a bad dream.
At the stables, he saddled Pat. The cows were mooing, Perch barking, his father calling and coaxing softly as if nothing had changed. Will bit his bottom lip. He had his own responsibilities now, a good job, stockmen as mates and the opportunity to make some money. When his father sobered up, Will was positive he’d end the bargain made with Mr Stevens and go back to making an honest living. He had to. Will didn’t want a thief for a father or a mad woman for a mother and he sure as heck didn’t want to lose his job. As he nudged the mare in the flanks and trotted down the road, Will convinced himself that it was up to his father to make things right again. Hadn’t Evan told him that it wasn’t right to expect children to care for their parents, especially when they were capable of looking after themselves, and what was the point of giving his father the hard-earned money in the jam tin under his bed? He’d only drink it at the moment. No, it was best that he go back to the station, to his job, to his new life, and let his father sort out the mess that he’d made. It was best that he forget the stealing and the dead baby and the stink of rum on his father’s breath and think about other things; like work and the Aboriginals who’d suddenly disobeyed Mr Kirkland and gone walkabout, and the black-haired girl who’d run away.
The Great Plains Page 39
