Foal's Bread (11 page)

Say a child had had to have a go at drawing lightning, that's what this bridge had the look of. On the way over to Kennedy's the bridge, as always, had totally tickled his sense of humour. The fancy of it. It had been built too narrow in his grandfather's time and curved over the water like nothing so much as a bit of spider web. Barely wide enough for a little sulky, let alone a lorry.

Now as he looked ahead all he saw was that most of it was made of metal. The zigzags of iron holding up the ironbark decking on chains drooped between the two metal and timber towers either side of the river. Should he risk being on that if the storm came any closer? That was the question and he thought he knew the answer.

However, just as he was trying to reassure himself that this storm was too far off to really worry about, the next minute, because of all the ironstone on that bare stretch of road before the bridge, big blue circles began to leap and play around him and the mare.

Further away but closer by the moment, there was lightning of a different kind. Meaner, too, like giant silver forks, prongs the size of trees all branchy and knotted behind the hills. Leaping around out of an almighty mob of blue-black thunderheads. But still and all, he thought, they'd be right, no time to dally was all and with no choice he had to lead the mare onto the bridge.

He didn't even think. Halfway over, aware of the increasing peril, he was on automatic. Knew it'd be best to let old Gurlie find her own way home. As he undid the buckle on the throat-latch she chucked her head, banging her teeth on the bit, and was almost in a gallop by the time she reached the other side.

The muffled sound of her unshod hooves on the planking added to his sense of urgency. Next the storm wind began to move the bridge itself. Hell, he thought, if the angle of that wind shifts another inch this old bridge is gunna be ripped in two.

Although he thought he would be right, safer without the horse, it would only have been moments after that a bolt, maybe attracted to the bridle's bit, entered his neck. He felt the energy taking off down his body.

When they went out to look for him, after the mare had come galloping in alone, it was his mother who spotted him first. He was lying so close to the edge of the bridge that one leg was dangling over.

Minna, moving across to him, was thinking of Duncan, who all those years ago had joined up only to be dead not eight months after. Her Dunc, her eldest boy, who'd never made it home. Thinking, not possible, God. Couldn't be so greedy that you want to take my only living son left? And within the flash of her anger came the miracle.

One minute, kneeling next to him, he was already turned a bit blue and wasn't breathing. Next thing, as if her anger had grabbed him by the feet and whirled him like Dr Oldfield had to with the twins, like he was a baby fresh born, Rol was taking a big breath. He was breathing, even though one of his boots had been blasted fair off his foot and he'd come within an inch of falling into the river and being drowned.

When his voice came back it was like a lost bird in a stone gully. This echoey quality. This feeling like with a new set of teeth that don't fit as good as the last, that something has been irretrievably altered.

‘Darl,' he said, because at first only Noah, stoking up the Lighthouse, was in the kitchen of Main House where they'd had him lying. ‘Who could ever of credited that, hey?'

‘That lightning has a liking for you.' She came in close to where he lay on the stretcher bed, unable to voice what deep inside she believed. That it was her fault. Her punishment come, but in this way. Not a direct hit. But the Lord God, slyly, cunningly, having His revenge on her, through hurting her husband.

‘Barely a drop of rain, Noey. Like it made its visit solely to have a go at me.'

She grabbed up Lainey, carried her across. ‘You're a father now, don't forget. Thought you of all people would know that anything metal will attract death lightning in a dry storm. What in heaven's name had you standing in the middle of a bridge made of metal?' That no doubt the butter box with its little cargo had floated under. Not lucky enough to be sighted by any farmer who could've whisked him out of the water and into Wirri. ‘Do you feel alright?'

He nodded. ‘'Cept for this headache. And a bit of a tingle, I suppose, around my eyes, like those mongrel shingles Dad got.' He could hear the greedy guzzling of the baby at her comfort bottle. As if his ears were also affected by coming so close to death, there came an echoey quality to that sound too. ‘I mean whoever could've thought that bloomin lightning could go after me for a third time! Like a pair of bloody long silver fingers runnin me down.'

‘And guess where it run out of you?' Noah grabbed up one of his boots.

‘Are you fair dinkum?'

She was holding up the remains. ‘That was ten feet away.'

‘Nice pair of bloody boots they was too. Bloody thing.'

‘You're a father now, remember,' she repeated. ‘And gunna be a second time too you might as well know.' She hadn't meant to tell him yet but in her relief it just slipped out.

‘You think you're expecting again?' Pride flooded him until it almost hurt his head more than the lightning headache. He looked down at her belly but it wasn't showing.

‘No thinking. I know it.'

So that Minna, hovering, as she herself would say, like a creeping Jesus in the hall, didn't know whether to laugh or cry; to burst in or tiptoe away.

‘'Nother little high jumper for us, hey Noey?' And in the gaze flashing between his blue eyes and her hazel ones leapt the power of their dream.

‘We're just lucky you're here. Lucky Lainey.' She jiggled the baby, who was wide awake now. ‘My brothers knew a man who was killed like that. Lightning set the Everlasting Swamp on fire and then not a drop of rain to put it out. But Mr Pope lying flat on his back. Already dead before the flames reached him.'

‘This time,' said Roley, ‘it was just like being clocked by a bush bullock angry to be in a yard.' He struck a fisted hand into the palm of the other. Although not free of the headache that he'd have for another week, there was this kind of chirpiness about him. ‘Not as bad a strike as when I was twelve. Then I really was flying through the air, but not on no horse!'

‘Got his voice back has he, I hear,' said his father, coming in behind Minna as pleased as if it was his own self back from a spree. ‘We saw it comin, Rol, and I said—didn't I, Mum?—that it's been fifty year or more since I've seen one coming from the nor'-west.'

Whenever anyone was struck by lightning, no matter what decade or century, no matter on which farm west of Wirri, out ran the stories with an almost electrical impulse of their own.

‘Look, speaking of deadly bolts . . .' Septimus was unable to contain his excitement. ‘One day—oh, way before you was even born, Rol—there was another shocker of a storm on that exact same stretch of the road. This is fair dinkum. Lightning flashin and sizzlin all about the place. Then this one fork come down and split a gum fair in half it did. Like this.' He mimed half his body gone missing. ‘Chopped it off in the middle. I was in a paddock full of old giants. Rung-barked em. Doin the job for that man of Hutchins. Top half of tree was lifted up and dropped down.

‘Oh, these great ten-foot splinters goin everywhere. Had to duck and dodge. But me pony of that time wasn't so lucky. Put a spar into the heart of that poor little mare. And she was a good un, too.'

‘At Dad's old place,' said Minna, not to be outdone, ‘before I married your father, I saw lightning hit a plough. Melted bits. Sparks flying. Just like it were a big cracker going off.'

‘But jeez,' said Roley, ‘I hope this head's gunna go away soon.'

‘Sound like you want to be chopped up like a chook,' joked his father. ‘Serve you right for thinking it was safe to make your last Queensland ride be on a horse of that name.'

‘Still,' Roley continued, suddenly wistful and fierce both at once, ‘we cleared eight feet that day. Pony felt like it could've gone higher if there'd been anyone else left in jump-off. Come down off his fences at such a steep angle that's how come it got called Lightning.'

‘Gotta be patient,' said Noey, ‘as my aunties would say.'

‘Gunna get a pew for the church,' said Minna, squeezing Lainey so hard the baby burped. ‘In thanks that this time, at any rate, He spared my boy.'

‘Aw, Mum,' said Roley half-jokingly. ‘Should know by now that lightning just likes playing with me. Church don't need any more pews.'

‘I don't care what you say. I've got some of that money left from Uncle Frank in England. Been wondering what to do with that.'

‘A pew, Mum?' said Septimus, who'd hoped to persuade her to put the money towards the tractor. ‘Gunna have to start calling you Sister Minna if you go any more religious on me.'

‘Well, much better I copped it than Gurlie,' said Roley, as much to deflect his mother's intensity as anything else. ‘I was just about to tell Noey but I reckon Gurlie might well not need to see that colt again. She was like a young filly and that's no lie. Reckon we might get a foal next spring.'

No one ever mentioned the burn the size of a shilling on one side of Roley's groin. Was it where another strand of lightning had somehow entered or left? he wondered, first catching sight of it himself in his turn in the bath in front of the stove. Did Noah ever even see it? Reen? Reen's attention was all on putting a dressing on the fern-shaped burn of the main hit.

What began to dawn on his wife was that his eyes were that little bit different. Like they had even turned the colour of the storm, being now a deeper blue in their middle. Bluer than ever before, but this strange paler ring around the outside. Or maybe that was no more than his eyes giving colour to the gradual worry that had begun to build in him that some things in him had just not got better as fast as they all presumed.

The pair of workhorses noticed it first—that the feeling had begun to leave his feet. They put their ears back at his unusual clumsiness behind the plough and in small, cunning ways that only he could detect stopped working as hard for him.

The jesting humour of another baby being due mostly kept his spirits high. The healing from the lightning was just taking a bit more time. He was certain that any day now, just as with his last busted collarbone, he would wake up to find his body was once again his good and reliable old friend.