Bella's Run (2 page)

Shopping, that’s what.

All in all, life on Ainsley sucked for Bella. The question was, what to do about it. Maybe it was time to ditch this job and head down south, back home to the blue-grey mountains of Victoria. Or find another joint like Johanna Downs. A station on which she could ride a horse, muster cattle – be a jillaroo again. A place where she
didn’t have to cook.

Cursing, Bella stomped into the cool room to hunt up some more ingredients. A door on the far insulated wall was suddenly reefed open and a voice bellowed from the butchering space beyond. ‘Come out, you little brats. I know you’re hiding in there somewhere!’ Knackers Anderson, Ainsley Station’s head stockman, shoved aside a hanging beef carcass and walked into the cool room, coming face to face with Bella.

‘Only me here, Knackers.’ Bella blushed, her gaze straying to his groin. She wished the man wouldn’t wear his beige cowboy jeans so tight. They gave a whole new meaning to a snug fit. Bella forced her eyes back up to his florid face. He was breathing hard and fast, and she could hear the air whistling through the holes in his teeth.

‘Those kids of mine have disappeared. Supposed to be loading the sausage skins but they’ve pissed off.’

A rumble on the roof caused both Knackers and Bella to look skywards. The rumble turned into skittering, the sounds of sliding bums and scrabbling feet on burning corrugated iron, raucous laughter then a thud and a yell came from outside the butcher-room door.

The boys had landed.

‘There they are, the little bastards.’ Knackers smacked the beef carcass aside and stormed out. A steer’s tail swung haphazardly catching Bella across the nose and mouth. She spluttered and snorted. The coarse hairs tasted vile. The stink of cow shit was rank.

Bloody Knackers. The man caused mayhem wherever he went. The stumpy, barrel-chested head stockman was outgoing and loud. His wife Wendy, a big woman who worked in the office at the feedlot, was quiet. Limp. Like the marrow had been sucked from her bones, her muscles sapped by the harsh outback surroundings in which she lived.

The Andersons’ marriage was a mystery to Bella. There were no obvious signs of love between the couple. Not a peck on the cheek, a cuddle or a caring hand. Last week Wendy had told an incredulous Bella that in all their fifteen years of marriage, Knackers had never taken her and their sons home to see her family in New South Wales.

‘But why don’t
you
just go?’ Bella had asked. ‘Pack up the kids and head down to Parkes on your own.’ Biting her tongue, she stopped. Two days in the car with those four little ferals would be enough to get anyone committed to an asylum. ‘On second thoughts, leave the kids with Knackers and go by yourself.’

‘I haven’t been past Rockhampton since we married. Don’t think I could manage going to Parkes on my own. I’ve lost me confidence, you know, with the kids and all.’

Bella was dumbfounded. Kids did that to you? How could you lose your confidence
that
much? Rockhampton was only a few hours away, and a woman had to have a life. After all, that’s what she and Patty were doing – they’d loaded Patty’s ute and set off on this adventure up north for a year, just for something to do! Two thousand kilometres and eight months later, here they were.

‘Hells Bells! Where are you?’ called a light-hearted female voice.

Bella turned and walked back into the kitchen.

Patricia O’Hara swung from the sink grinning, a glass of water in hand. Her toffee- coloured eyes peered at Bella through multiple layers of dirt. ‘I’m bloody starving. Is there anything to eat, chef?’

‘I’ll give you bloody starving. Siobhan can stick her kitchen right where it fits. Look at that glorious day out there. You can cook next time.
I’m
going mustering!’ Bella stopped and studied her mate. ‘What on earth happened to your hair?’ Dried mud hung in clumps from Patty’s head like badly made Christmas decorations.

Patty tried to run her fingers through her short hair and failed. ‘Came off my horse. Bloody thing bucked me into the river when a weaner went straight under its belly. Boys thought it was a hell of a joke. Me wallowing in mud, the weaner sticking its head out from under the horse’s tail looking for a hairy escape.’ Patty grinned and deep-set dimples, one on either side of her mouth, winked. She went to jump up onto the kitchen bench, and Bella caught her grimace of pain.

‘Are you okay? Did you hurt anything?’

‘Nah, just my pride. And a few bruises.’ Patty smiled as she stretched out sideways to drag a cake tin along the bench, but to Bella, her mate’s usual rude aura of earthy vitality seemed slightly dented.

Patty tugged impatiently at the stubborn lid of the cake tin. ‘At least you can cook. I’d be crap ’cause I’d burn everything. Is there anything to eat in here, cookie?’

Patty was still winding her up, so things couldn’t be too crook. But then again Bella knew her best mate couldn’t help herself. Being a relentless tease was one of the reasons why Patty was so much fun to hang out with. Many times over the years Bella had wished she could be like Patty, the life of every party, reeling in the boys with all the dexterity of a fly fisherman. Bella gave a rueful smile. Wishes were for dreamers. And Bella really didn’t do too badly with the boys, just by being herself.

Having finally prised the stubborn lid off the cake tin, Patty pulled out a chocolate lamington and set about demolishing it. Her dirty face relaxed into soft lines and she let out a gentle sigh of contentment as she chewed.

Finishing her last mouthful, Patty reached back into the tin to grab the remaining cake. ‘Maybe Siobhan hates you for talking those feedlot boys into moving your mulch with the front-end loader the other week.’

‘I had to get the job done!’ Bella was indignant. So what if she’d wiggled her arse, undone a few press studs on her well-stacked shirt and sweet-talked the boys into helping her? ‘The loader got the job done a hell of a lot quicker than the damned shovel Siobhan wanted me to use.’

Unfortunately, she’d mistimed her little plan. The feedlot manager, Jack McLaverty, decided to do a snap site inspection and found the two blokes and a loader missing; a loader that was supposed to be pushing up piles of grain for the feedlot. Twenty tonnes of machinery wasn’t hard to find. The tongue-lashing Bella got from Siobhan later in the afternoon hadn’t been pleasant. Siobhan took great delight in ticking her off and Bella had walked right into her manipulative hands.

‘No. Taking off with the loader just added to it. She hated me before that. I just don’t know why.’

She leaned forward and snatched the lamington from Patty’s hand, leaving her friend blinking in dismay. Bella sank her teeth into the cake, allowing her tastebuds to savour the comforting chocolate. She sighed with pleasure. Siobhan’s doughy, spiteful face disappeared and visions of her family farm at Narree flitted into her mind – the delicious aromas of her mother’s kitchen, her father’s tawny port, the smell of the mountains heavy with rain.

Bella looked sideways at Patty, who was staring hard at her, considering. ‘What?’ she asked smiling, thinking she was about to get a razz for snatching the lamington.

Patty didn’t say anything, just dragged over a fruit basket and grabbed an apple. Looking at it in disgust, she took a bite before moving her eyes back to her friend. ‘Bella,’ she said with her mouth full, ‘you really should take a look in the mirror. I reckon it’s not what you’ve
done
to Ms Davidson that’s the problem.’

Bella blushed. Patty turned her attention back to eating her apple, while sneaking out a hand to crank up the Mixmaster to maximum speed. She grinned wickedly at Bella as blobs of egg white were flung from the mixing bowl, sailing up to hang off the ceiling. Bella swore at her friend as she lunged to turn down the beaters. Now she’d have to clean that mess up too, damn it.

Swinging around, Patty aimed her apple at the garbage bin, ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Hells Bells.’ The core hit the back of the bin like a basketball on a backboard before dropping down. Patty grunted in satisfaction. ‘After all, the worst thing she can do is sack us.’

She sounded almost cheerful about it, which surprised Bella. She’d thought her mate was happy here on Ainsley, but the look on Patty’s freckled face suggested otherwise. The toffee-brown O’Hara eyes seemed to lose focus for a minute, seeing something far removed from this austere kitchen in the remote Queensland outback, which led Bella to wonder if maybe she wasn’t the only one filled with a quiet longing for home.

Chapter 2

The two-way radio, sitting on a shelf near the dining-room door, crackled to life.

‘Anyone on Ainsley Station? Ainsley Station! Are you there? This is Red Eye. Over.’

‘Red Eye?’ said Bella, looking at Patty.

‘He’s one of the grain-truck drivers, supplying the feedlot. You know the dude with the red glass eye and the bung leg?’

Bella looked puzzled.

‘The one with the fake leg from the station party last Friday night?’ prompted Patty.

Bella vaguely recalled a nuggety bloke doing a boozy rendition of ‘Jake the Peg’ as he swung his fake leg from his crotch; a glass eye sloshing around in a pannikin of rum and coke.

The call on the radio came again, this time more urgent.

‘Anyone on Ainsley Station? Come in, damn you, this is Red Eye! Over.’

There was a pause then ‘For cripe’s sake . . . SOMEONE COME IN!’

The radio was a party-line, with all the houses, vehicles and most buildings on the station having a UHF. No-one else was answering today.

Bella leaped towards the Mixmaster to shut it off, as Patty strode across the kitchen and reached for the handset. ‘Yeah, Red Eye, this is Patty at the stockmen’s quarters. What’s up? Over.’

‘Thank Christ!’ Red Eye responded. ‘Call a bloody ambulance. I’ve run two kids on a four-wheel motorbike off the road. They’re in a big empty irrigation channel and I can’t see anyone moving.’ The voice quavered among the transmission crackle. ‘I didn’t see the little sods coming round the corner! Oh, hang on!’ The radio went silent for a minute. ‘One’s climbing out now. No-one else’s coming up the bank and there were two kids on the bike. Bloody hell! Call the ambo!’

Bella already had hold of the phone. She dialled 000, filled them in on the details and agreed that if they could move the child they’d meet the ambulance halfway to town.

Meanwhile, Knackers appeared at the cool-room door. ‘Did Red Eye just say kids?’

‘Yeah,’ said Patty as she swung to turn off the stove.

‘Oh fuck!’ Knackers’ florid face drained to white. ‘They’re probably mine. A couple of them took off on the motorbike.’

Two remaining little dark heads appeared from the side of his blood-stained arms. ‘We didn’t do it, Dad! Whatever it was, we didn’t do it!’ But Knackers was already following Bella and Patty as they ran outside, Patty snatching a small first-aid kit as she went. Rodney followed from the dining room, leaving the two little boys staring at each other in confusion.

Bella flung herself into the driver’s seat of a spare LandCruiser ute sitting idle outside the ring-lock fence surrounding the quarters. As she gunned the diesel engine, Knackers jumped into the passenger seat. Patty, Rodney and the first-aid kit went up onto the tray in the back.

Bella grabbed the UHF mike as she spun the vehicle out and away from the tight cluster of weatherboard buildings. ‘Red Eye, this is Bella. We’ve called the ambo, and are now on our way to you. Where on the station are you? Over.’ With Ainsley covering over forty thousand hectares, Bella needed some idea where the child was and she was approaching a T-intersection up ahead on the gravel track.

Knackers roared from the passenger seat. ‘Go right, RIGHT!’

Bella swung the steering wheel, careering around the corner on two wheels, the back of the ute fishtailing on the stones.

‘They’ll be somewhere in the cropping area. That’s where the irrigation channels are,’ yelled Knackers, clutching the Jesus bar – a grab rail – on the dash in front of him. ‘He’ll be tangled up in some of those fuckin’ siphon hoses, I’ll bet. Bloody farmers, should know better than putting fuckin’ channels in the way of me kids’ motorbike.’

Bella held her tongue. She’d come to understand that up here in northern Australia farmers worked the dirt and stockmen worked the cattle, with plenty of rivalry between the two. At the moment, however, the siphon hoses and farmers were the least of their worries.