Foal's Bread (34 page)

‘Roley . . .' began Lainey.

Noah clipped her hard behind her ear. ‘Dad to you. And don't you bloody begin.'

‘Bloody will.' The slap was no more than a sting, no worse than the cracker of a stockwhip accidentally getting her, but at her mother turning on her, tears sprang into Lainey's eyes.

‘There'll be soap in mouth for you.'

‘Too old for that now.' But Lainey backed a bit away, just in case.

‘C'mon then,' said her mother. ‘Give me that sandwich.'

‘That'll get his appetite back,' said Len appreciatively and headed for the door. ‘That was a very nice sandwich.'

‘And we'll see you, Len, on show day if not before. Lainey, you come with me to help cheer up Dad.'

Except for in the kitchen with the Lighthouse permanently doing its job, the house was freezing cold. Roley's sunroom was warmer but there was cold in there of a different kind.

‘No more, Noh,' he said almost the moment they walked in.

‘If you won't do the decent thing and give me a bullet, I don't want you to come in no more. If I was a horse, a dog, a beast suffering, you'd do the only humane thing.'

‘Don't be silly. Got ya bacon sandwich. We've got to get some weight back on. You're as thin as an ol shoelace, isn't he, Laine?'

Lainey leant into the arm her mother was putting around her and nodded. Her father looked like a little old bat with huge ears seemingly fitted on to either side of his face with extra cartilage.

My Rol, my love, Noah wanted to say, or something like she'd seen once at the pictures. At the sight of his head without a hat, as had never altered, she felt an immense tenderness threatening to put her to her knees. The way his hair was standing out by his ears as soft as a baby's, the scalp shining through. ‘And see?' she offered again. ‘Ral's done the rinds just as you like.'

His eyes had darkened to that of the sea first seen from Port Lake lighthouse but not a ripple of laughter between them now. Gawd, Roley, she thought, but the best she could come up with was an invitation to get him across to see the horses; how they were shaping up; how any poverty lines on that Magpie's rump were well and truly replaced now with muscle from all the hill work with the mare.

‘Why not we take you over to have a look at all three after? That's why Reen hauled this home, isn't it?' She gestured to the invalid's chair on wheels. Like the commode it was a stranger in their midst, embarrassing them all.

Lainey picked up one of the pecans George had been cracking on the floor. Here was a nut missing some shell in the shape of a tiny circle that then framed the puzzle of what lay within like some kind of miniature embroidery too small even for Aunty Ral to finish. Her mother was saying they'd have to bring in the .22 to warn off the butcherbird so endlessly pecking at its reflection that if it wasn't a bullet it'd die at any rate of starvation for all its vainglorious gazing.

What was vainglorious? wondered Lainey and, putting the nut in her mouth, cracked it fully open with her teeth.

The wheelchair was the ugliest thing ever.

I'm not getting in that, blazed her father's blue eyes, but still he said not a word. It was her mother speaking again. ‘Or Lainey could rig the sled up behind Tad and I'll warrant we could get you down for a look on Sunday. In your blue room, Rol? Under that big ceiling the sky, do you the world of good.'

Lainey looked up.

‘No more.' Again he squashed down all hope.

In saying those exact two words he was remembering shooting Gurlie—the exact right shot just above the level of her eyes. How fast she'd sunk down, how right it'd been. Before she got any more wasted away.

‘It's you who should listen no bloody more to your sisters and mother.' His wife was wolfing down his bacon sandwich. ‘Well,' she said defensively, ‘not walking back out with that to get crucified by them in the kitchen.'

Just as they were leaving the sleepout, Noah thought she caught a smell of buried money and for a moment her mind fled in alarm to her stash. But it was just that blacker-by-the-day bedsore on Roley's tailbone; an odour of a grave, like something there at the base of his spine had already long ago died.

When Dr McKay came out from his examination he got straight to the point. ‘Look,' he said, ‘I'm not doubting for a moment your capabilities as a nurse.' He had begun by talking to Aunty Reen. ‘But I'm recommending we move him into the bush hospital in Wirri as soon as possible.'

‘Can't yer give him something at least for his shinbones?' Minna bent to her own. ‘They're paining him something shocking.'

‘Bones don't get pain. It's the veins,' said the doctor. ‘And no leftovers. Chewing on a bit of cold meat will only tire him.'

‘That's part of the problem, Doctor—can't get him to eat. He's become that choosy.'

‘Well, Mrs Nancarrow,' but was he addressing Nin or her mum? Lainey, listening gape-mouthed, couldn't tell. ‘Short of forcing food into him, there's not a lot to be done. I'd suggest an eggcup full of rum in his drinking water might help. Not only to take the taste out of the water but it just might be the key to kickstart his appetite.'

Lainey wished she could've told the doctor that her mother had already tried putting food into her father. After Mr and Mrs Agate had visited and left a pie. It'd been worse than drenching the naughtiest horse. When her mother had levered her father's lips open, his teeth were clamped shut but not his eyes, which had become as bright as bits of castor oil bottles smashed up in the creek.

‘You get ready, Laine, with a spoon of pie when I get his jaw unlocked.'

As it was happening, Lainey could see that her mother wanted to use some device, a twitch maybe, a rasping bridle, anything to increase her chances. Oh, the terrible glassy quality to the air in the sleepout then. In the end her mother had used her fingers as a lever. Then some of her father's teeth had fallen out, they were that rotten. There'd been guilt in the girl then, because wasn't it meant to be her job, keeping her dad's teeth clean? And look what sort of a job she'd done.

‘You flaming well get any worse, Roley,' her mother had hissed, ‘and what's gunna happen to me and Lainey and George? We don't have anything. No land. Nuthin. We'll be at the total mercy of Min. What about our team then, hey?

‘Oh well, go ahead,' she said in disgust when the crust they'd got onto his tongue slid back out. ‘Die on us then.'

And ten and a half days later, two days before their little Wirri Show and ten days before Port Lake, he had.

Reenie, half awake in her chair in the corner, was woken by the wireless. Although its batteries had not worked at all for a good three days, something in the way her brother's spirit was leaving made it crackle unexpectedly into life so that just for a second or two a replay of a football match joined in with his last breaths.

Lainey, snuggling in her bed, clenched against getting up into the cold morning for milking, heard the crying beginning. ‘Roley,' she heard her aunties call out. ‘Roley.' Next there was a noise that might've been her mother, or her Nin, and then the work dogs tipped their throats up in their overturned-tank kennels and began to howl.

Lainey hopped out through her bedroom window to stand under the sky that was so still and huge. She had thought of her father as a starved horse, down and dying, but right up until this moment had been waiting for the miracle which had failed to arrive. And now it was too late, too late, too late and what were they going to tell George?

She went to hold the trunk of the jacaranda tree; thought briefly of climbing up the guinea hens' ladder and roosting. Then she saw the shape of her Ninna stepping out the back door. ‘Leave off! Leave off!' Nin was shouting at the dogs. But they wouldn't. They kept up their unearthly noise. Next Lainey saw her father's favourite, old Blue, leap up into the air. The chains rattled and spun on the corrugated arm. The dog was jumping as if to greet Roley. Again. Again.

‘Git down, you mad bitch,' shouted Minna, looking into the sky at the same time as Lainey. So that there, there, there, Lainey and her Nin, as if their gaze was for a moment joined, saw what could only be described as a ring of light in the sky, like a huge halo as big as a showground over One Tree. Although there was the feeling that her father was galloping away from the mess of his emaciated body lying in the sleepout of One Tree, it was also as if the starry horse which carried him was streaming down along the dark blue air of morning towards the thick mist along the creek. Lainey felt the very ground beneath her feet seeming to curve up into the shape of a bold horse jumping. She saw a starry mane flying east before it disappeared.

Their lead cow Molly began to moo and there was Uncle Owe coming up. Something in him somehow knowing too. Lainey heard the mutter of her Ninna telling him the news. She pressed herself closer to the tree. Her dad was gone. She felt an emptiness that no breakfast would ever fill. To think that she would never again be able to sit up by his pillow listening to stories as his hands repaired the world in the air. No more ever trying to learn how to roll him the perfect smoke.

As if in some recognition of that grief first being felt, Uncle Owen, spotting her under the tree, came and, bending down, gave her his own kind of rough hug. ‘Hey, little Lainey.' She could smell his jumper and his old man's hat. ‘Come and let's get the milkin done. That mist's not going to clear from bails till after lunch by the looks of it. Get yourself dressed. And for crikey's sake get off the freezing ground and get your boots on.'

Reen, realising no way on earth to straighten these perished legs, didn't see Noah moving as if already hobbled out the door. ‘He's gawn. He's gawn.' Noah stood back in her own hut, seeking the shape of her daughter.

‘Tolley! Tolley!' Through the early morning air the voice of Len Cousins cried like a bell. ‘Tolley! Tolley!'