Absolution Creek (25 page)

‘Hamilton recommended him,’ Evans volunteered.

Scrubber waited anxiously as the squatter gleaned his life story from his appearance.

‘I don’t take to fighting, womanising or the bottle out here. The men tell you that?’

Everyone nodded, including Scrubber.

‘Good.’ Purcell’s gaze fell on a basket of eggs sitting atop a chaff bin. ‘Bring those eggs to the main homestead, boy.’

There was a chuckle from the recesses of the stable. Purcell narrowed his eyes and then turned and walked away.

Scrubber trudged the two miles to the main homestead, his sight fixed on the shimmering corrugated-iron roof and the blindingly white walls. Purcell’s homestead was set within a paling fence. Large trees bordered the raked dirt path, which led directly to a bull-nosed veranda of polished timber and curving corrugated iron overhead. There were long casement windows, curtained on the inside, a solid front door with a blackened horseshoe-shaped knocker, and chairs scattered the length of the veranda. Books were perched on one of the tables, along with a jug of something that was obviously real drinkable, for flies buzzed around a cloth protecting the contents.

‘You shouldn’t be here.’ A young woman appeared from around the corner of the house, a basket over her arm. She plucked at it with her fingers, swayed slowly from side to side; her bare feet were tanned gold by the sun.

‘I’ve got these.’ Scrubber held out the basket of eggs.

The girl inspected them, pursing her lips. She had a pair of dusty lace-up shoes strung over one shoulder.

‘I mean Purcell – Mr Purcell – said I should bring them.’

She was a plain girl, Scrubber thought, and largish, but her teeth were good.

Extending her free hand she took the basket from him. ‘You’re new.’

Scrubber nodded. ‘Started a month or so back.’

‘What do you think about the place then?’ She swung the egg basket to and fro.

What Scrubber wanted to say probably wouldn’t have any credit with her: that it was a disappointment to discover that even out here, in the back of beyond, he remained a have-not. Worse, he was at the bottom of twenty have-nots all vying for food and coin and a trip to town. ‘Good.’

‘You’re a bad liar.’

Scrubber thought her canny. He liked that. ‘I used to be pretty good.’

‘Veronica, is there a need for you to be conversing with that stockman at the front of the homestead?’

‘Mrs Purcell,’ Veronica hissed before calling out, ‘He dropped off some eggs, Missus.’

Dressed in ankle-length grey, Purcell’s wife appeared. She was a raw-boned, wide-hipped woman with white hair and a thick string of pearls. Scrubber figured she’d blend into the landscape without them; certainly they were the only thing worth remembering about her person – they gleamed white like gull’s eggs. His fingers itched at the sight of them.

‘Well, move on, the both of you. We don’t need loiterers here.’

They parted under the dragon’s stare, although Scrubber made a point of turning to watch the girl walk around the corner of the homestead, scuffing the dirt with her bare feet, her skirt swaying slightly as she moved.

Chapter 19

A
collar of sweat itched her neck. Outside the cottage the call of an owl broke the night’s silence. Squib rubbed her eyelids. Great shafts of moonlight poured through the roughly fitted timber walls, tracing a path over clothes hung on pegs; a table piled with children’s Learners and devotionals; and her brother’s much coveted single bed. The moon highlighted Jesus writhing on a wooden cross, a faded picture of Mary and the toes of her stepsister, a scant inch from her nose. Crawling over her sleeping sisters, Squib’s foot became entangled in bedclothes and she landed with a thud on the tampered dirt floor. Despite the daily watering of the floor and a solid sweeping, the dirt clung to her sweaty legs as she shoved her hands through the armholes of her dress. Once outside on the sloping veranda, Squib brushed the sticky grains with determination. The floorboards were thick with dirt. They usually slept outside in the summer, but a howling dust storm had struck at dusk, forcing them indoors to a night of heat-wrecked sleep and midnight squabbles.

Her father was sitting on the edge of the timbered flooring, a curl of pipe smoke rising toward heaven. ‘That you, Squib?’ His gaze was fixed on the illuminated trees edging their world.

She sat beside him and wove her fingers between his. Matt Hamilton squeezed her thumb, once, twice. She hated her nickname, yet somehow it sounded better when her father used it.

‘Your mother always liked these nights when the moon was fat with light. Me, I can never sleep.’

‘Me neither. Too hot.’ Her mother used to call her father ‘her Matty’. Squib liked it, liked the soft sound of it. It was much better than Mr Hamilton or plain old Matt.

‘Be hotter when daylight comes.’ He took a swig of water from his canvas bag.

Squib could already taste the grit on her lips, could imagine the sun prickling her skin to redness. Accepting the water she took great mouthfuls of the bark-tinged liquid. It ran down her chin to wet her dress and splatter the timber flooring. She gulped, then hiccupped. Her father’s heavy hand ruffled her hair.

‘Everything all right with you young’uns?’

She shrugged. ‘I guess.’ It had been a subject of consternation between them when her widowed father took another wife. It came soon after her mother’s death from a snakebite when Squib was just eight years of age. She recalled the day clearly on account of the fact that her mother had stolen money from a village store, and then admitted the theft to ‘her Matty’. Instead of returning the coin they had run. That night while camped in the bush, Squib’s mother was bitten.

It wasn’t that Squib didn’t like her new mother, it was just that she preferred her old one, the one that birthed her, loved her. The new one came with a lemon-sour daughter older than Squib, and managed to birth a new one named Beth with her father.
We’re stuck with her now
, her brother Ben commented upon noticing his stepmother’s bulging belly for the first time. Ben was the one who explained that things would never be the same. That their stepmother wouldn’t take to them on account of their dead mother.

Inside the hut, Beth began to whimper. Her father glanced at the fat moon dropping towards the horizon as Beth let out a dog’s howl of complaint. ‘Come on, Squib.’

They walked the half-mile guided by moonlight, reaching Mr Purcell’s stable as a breeze rustled the leaves in the surrounding trees. With her father’s horse smartly saddled, they mounted up and were soon trotting off into the scrub, Squib wedged between him and the bobbing horse’s neck. They rode for some time in silence. Pre-dawn teased them with a moment of coolness as a breeze picked up before gradually dropping away to the hills in the distance. Hair stuck to Squib’s forehead as she accepted the reins from her father and eased the horse into a walk. The scent of dust was thick, tinged with smoke from a bush fire far to the north.

Being the Sabbath, her father was free from work. As Church was a day’s ride away they were left to endure scripture readings from Abigail instead of the free time once given with a motherly kiss. It had become something of a rigmarole this Christian thing, Squib decided. Saturday night was now bath time, and the tub was dragged into the kitchen and filled with murky dam water, the surface greasy with homemade soap and water that bathed four children. This procedure was followed by de-lousing with a sharp comb, oil and lice powder and a dose of Epsom salts. At the thought of it Squib grimaced. Abigail was convinced she and Ben were the bearers of the lice infecting the household on a regular basis, and they had both been subjected to a severe hair cutting. Squib didn’t bother arguing that sharing towels and beds probably didn’t help. The only good thing about it being Sunday tomorrow was that Tuesday was Christmas. Their father always made them something each. Last year Ben and she had both got catapults.

They were heading back towards their cottage, which in comparison to the Purcells’ low-slung homestead looked like a shack. Squib was glad her father was now the overseer – it meant a new house. They were just waiting for the dead overseer’s wife and kids to leave. Her father thought they’d have to be thrown off the place.

‘Abigail doesn’t really like Ben and me, you know, Father.’ The horse slowed its rhythmic gait and stretched its hind legs out lazily. Her father took control of the reins.

‘Sure she does.’ He twitched the leather and clicked his tongue in encouragement. ‘It’s just a bit different for her. She’s used to better things.’

‘What things?’ Squib looked over her shoulder at her father’s creased face as the glow of dawn shadowed their progress. Things could have been worse: it might have been her father who’d died from snakebite; his body laid out on an old door while the coffin was hammered together.

‘Anyway, with Mrs Purcell taking her on two afternoons a week, things will change.’

‘Why can’t Mrs Purcell read? Why does Abigail have to read to her?’

‘It’s a squatter thing, I guess. They’ve got more money than they know what to do with and Mrs Purcell wants the company.’

Being a squatter was something Ben aspired to. Rich people had sheep and land and paid others to work it for them. Squib waved away an insect and curled her fingers through the horse’s mane. All that reading to Mrs Purcell meant she now had twice as many chores to do. Her stepsister could never be found when it came time to take the washing off the line or being nursemaid to Beth or carting in wood for the fire or drinking water. Even supper had fallen to her to prepare on the two afternoons Abigail was away. Squib didn’t mind that much, except she would have liked to have known what her stepmother was doing with the money she earned.

He rubbed her shoulder, his touch light. ‘Don’t you get yourself all mussed up before the Bible reading. You know how she likes you all to keep clean.’

‘No, Father.’ Light was beginning to stream through the hills to the east of them when they arrived back at the stables. Squib gave the horse a good brush with the currycomb while her father greased his saddle, and then begged him for a piggyback.

‘You’re thirteen, Squib.’

She grinned all the way as she bobbed across the paddock. The cottage stood on a low rise and was flanked by a row of crooked trees on the western side and an expanse of nothingness on the east and north.

‘Your older sister will be leaving at the end of the week, Squib. I’ve not told her but she’s at the age for work. Mrs Purcell has applied to the Gordon family of Wangallon Station on her behalf and they’re expecting her.’

Squib’s eyes widened. ‘Jane won’t like that.’

Her father nodded. ‘Neither will her mother. You’d best clear out when I tell them.’

Squib reckoned she would. Jane had done her best to keep an eye on both Squib and her brother, Ben, since her father remarried. If she couldn’t accuse them of some minor crime on a daily basis, she’d make something up.

Half a mile away they could hear the four-year-old Beth screaming, the sound carrying towards them like a wounded animal. At the cottage her father faltered, dropped her, straightened his back with an exaggerated sigh and walked inside.

‘Psst.’ It was Ben, crouched at the corner of the house, a wedge of damper in his hand. ‘She’s blaming you for waking Beth,’ he whispered as Squib trailed him out past the vegetable patch. ‘Here.’ He handed her a bare mouthful of bread before stuffing his with the greater portion. Squib chewed the dough hungrily, pinching her nostrils as they passed the dunny.

‘Rank,’ Ben commented. ‘Come on.’

They quietly circumnavigated the cottage and raced each other towards the stable where Mr Purcell’s young colts were already yarded for a mustering job the next day.

‘Beth’s been crying since you left.’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ Squib scrambled through the wooden railings.

Ben gave a snort. ‘You never sleep.’

In the yard, Ben separated one horse from the others, directing the animal into a large yard with a single thickset hitching post in the centre. ‘Best of three,’ he called, climbing on top of the post. Squib chased the colt directly past the post. Ben leapt for the animal’s back and landed heavily in the dirt.