Coming Rain (15 page)

‘She feeding?'

‘I have an old long-neck beer bottle we use for the lambs. A rubber teat.' She frowned.
‘She has the scours though. I don't think Velvet's milk agrees with her.'

‘Some bread soaked in the milk, a little condensed milk?' Lew was breathless looking
at her.

‘My mother had a recipe for orphaned kangaroos. A level tablespoon of Sunshine milk
powder; two teaspoons of cornflour, an egg yolk and a pinch of salt. Ten drops of
Lane's emulsion and about a pint of hot water.'

He wanted to keep laughing in her presence. This joy was the strangest thing. ‘Lane's
emulsion?'

‘Should work. Jimmy is so funny,' she said. ‘He pretends to hate Gwen, saying we
will eat you, hah haha, but then I caught him trying to feed her some butter on his
fingers and cooing to her. We hang her up near the stove where it's warm. In the
kitchen.'

‘I like Jimmy,' Lew said and smiled. ‘I do. Painter does not.'

‘Jimmy's a darling. Such a tough old bloke in his own way.'

She remembered Jimmy, speaking Malay, patting and stroking little Gwen.
Pagi bayi
yang baik
: good morning baby. Holding her ear. So funny your ears,
telinga
. This
way and that. Miss Clara this one better not do a
kencing dan tahi
piss and shit
on my floor.

She stopped and looked directly at Lew. ‘It was Jimmy who found Mum. She had got
herself into the water tank with handfuls of horseshoes.' She paused. ‘He told me
she was waiting for me in a better place. That it was a blessing. And such things
are just the shadows of angels; that my freckles are the kisses of those same
malaikat
angels, he said that to me. I know they are lies, but it was comforting somehow.'

They looked at each other and he seemed helpless with such words. After a while,
she came to his rescue. ‘She was desperately ill and in the end it was a blessing.
I think Jimmy may have even helped her. He was so very kind. Are you all right Lewis?'

‘Yep. I'm good.' For some reason his eyes had filled with tears. He had not wept
since he was a small boy and had witnessed his own mother's grief. ‘What did you
make the pouch out of?' he asked, again nodding at Gwen.

‘You can use anything really,' she said. ‘This is an old chaff sack.'

He was nodding, silent, as Clara continued speaking. ‘She seems to love it. Must
be like being in her mum I suppose, the feeling of running muscles. The warm body
moving. The blood surrounding her. Safe as you can get.' Clara looked away towards
the shearing shed. ‘Today's Thursday. When do you leave?'

‘Next Monday.'

They heard Jimmy calling from beyond the trees that screened the homestead. ‘Miss
Clara? You there Miss Clara? Dinner time. I fill your bath. Dinner Miss Clara.' He
lengthened her name so that Clara became Claraaah. Bath too; it became baaaath.

‘I better go,' she said.

Lew nodded. ‘Me too. I told Painter I was going for a walk.'

‘I'll see you later
Lewis. Hold out your hand.' Stepped forward, gripped his hand and kissed his cheek.

He held his breath as she took Pearl and stepped onto the rail and then slid onto
her back. ‘Fat girl,' she whispered. ‘And as for you,' she looked at the black filly
in the yards. ‘We'll have a wongi tomorrow sweetheart my little bit.' The filly had
come to the rail to watch them. Her nose between the rails.

Clara pulled Pearl's head around. ‘Got to go.' Gwen's straw hat nodded.

Lew watched her as she walked Pearl through the trees
surrounding the homestead.
At the last moment she looked back and waved.

He began to walk towards the shearers quarters, where he knew Painter would be already
in the shower. He did not feel his feet touching the ground.

CHAPTER 36

The young dog woke her when the half moon was directly above them. The night was
black and he had stood and walked out and returned to wake her.

He was correct, they needed to move away from where they were now, to begin to cross
the country again.

She rose from the warmth of her hollow and stretched. Pushed her paws out and lowered
her hips, lifted her chest and neck. Her spine came alive, hissed life into her as
if a snake, as if bungurra. Shook her body and panted once then stopped as the night
was cool. Licked at the young dog; if she was not in pup she would have mated with
him the next time she came into heat. That time, it made her there for any dog. The
strongest or quickest usually won. Her nose rose off the youngster, taking the smells
of the night.

He ran a few feet away. Stopped and ran back to her, licked at her face. She was
being entreated to follow. She waited; this was the country he had come out of and
it was no longer his country. Her reluctance allowed him to lead and he ran ahead,
knowing he was circling to a long, tree-fringed valley, his nose in the air, ears
forward for any sound. Something must be terribly wrong there.

They ran through the remainder of the night, only stopping twice before the sun rose,
and they lay on the lip of an enormous salt pan. On the other side was the beginning
of the yate trees.

The red pup whined and licked at her face. Turned to run across the expanse of the
salt.

CHAPTER 37

Lew and Painter walked up a ridge behind the quarters until they came to a plateau.
The immensity of land the downs covered stretched out below them. Clouds were building
and dry lightning flickered through the darkness to the north. The distant clouds
occasionally backlit by flashes, the reflected colours of sulphur and bright, white
light through them; minutes later, far-off thunder.

Lew knelt and built a fire in the sandy red gravel from dried grass and dead twigs.
He used Painter's matches to light it and once it was going he rose and circled where
they were and came back with larger branches. Fed these onto the fire and sat down.
Northeasterly winds blew the bright flames sideways away from the storm clouds. Sparks
flying away in the wind.

They sat on large rocks and looked to the north. Lew held the quart bottle of Saint
Agnes brandy Drysdale had given to them to celebrate the completion of the shearing.
Painter was looking at it.

‘You should not,' Lew said.

‘I know that son.'

‘You might end up in Kalgoorlie like the last time. Naked on Hay Street with that
whore's underpants on your head. You were fightin' outside the lockup for fuck's
sake. They were white and green. Shiny.'

‘As her cunt and Ireland. She was Irish, I remember that.' Painter was silent.

‘Ireland?

Painter reached out his arm with the blue ship and the naked lady. ‘Give me that
bottle son.'

They sat and watched the cloud formations to the north. A slew of dark birds across
their front.

‘The drinking when it's heavy drives you mad,' Painter said. ‘I broke both my hands
once just cause some cunt asked me to fill out a form.'

A sudden wind took and lifted sand. ‘Those forms they give you. Can you read and
write? The cunts.'

‘What forms?'

‘I don't know. I smashed all my knuckles punching a cell door. Both hands, that's
the drinking when it's heavy. Electric ants over my back. I would see cats and dogs.
Not the real ones, just shapes like cats and dogs and they talkin' too. Once I thought
I was the Man on the hill, come back. The second coming mate, the Mr Jesus himself.'

‘What happened?'

‘Someone asked me to do a miracle.'

‘And?'

‘I couldn't.'

Lew laughed.

‘No fuckin' miracles,' Painter said and drank. Shuddered as he swallowed. ‘Sometimes
I would shit myself and in the end just blood. Wouldn't wash for a week. Sometimes
two or three.'

‘I remember,' Lew said.

Painter put the bottle between his feet and began to roll a cigarette. ‘Almost out
of tobacco son. I might go to town with old man Drysdale. You want anything?'

‘No, it can wait.' Lew was shredding a piece of wood in his fingers. ‘How much smoke
you got left? I got the Dr Pat's in the Gladstone if you want.'

Painter didn't look up and waved a hand as to indicate it did not matter. He grimaced,
put the cigarette in his mouth and cupped his hands against the wind as he lit it.
The blue smoke came out his nose and he stifled a cough.

‘The other day, son, you asked me about love, remember? If I ever been in love?'

He raised the bottle again and drank.

Lew stared at him. Thought of Clara's mouth and smile when she saw him.

‘Yeah I did.'

‘Is it young Clara Drysdale? You shook on her?'

‘It is, mate; yeah, I am.'

Painter smoked. ‘You cannot go there.'

Lew made a noise of disbelief and wanted for some strange reason to say you're all
right but didn't and thought instead of Maureen O'Reilly at Cottesloe. How she, undressing,
said Peter and you, who is not you. How wet she was with his fingers in her. His
thumb on her navel and her neck tasting of salt. Then, her heels on his hips and
her cunt like a clinging oyster. She was
thirty-seven and smelled almost entirely
of sea water. That 1941 Shell Oil wall calendar. A Wilson McCoy painting above the
months and day numbers. Girl with Clown Doll.

He remembered thinking that isn't you either, Maureen O'Reilly.

‘Well,' Painter said lifting the bottle. ‘Happy days.'

Lew watched him drink. ‘Who is Mary?' he said. ‘On your arm. I have seen her name
for ten years.'

‘What?' Painter's eyes were glazed and he was staring at the ground about three feet
in front of him. It was a long time since he had taken a drink. ‘Mary?' Held the
bottle towards Lew, who shook his head.

‘Yeah. Mary.'

‘My wife.'

‘What?'

‘She could play the piano like nobody's business.'

‘What are you talking about mate?

‘My wife.'

‘Your wife?'

‘Yeah.'

A dark curtain of rain swept towards the remaining distant light. It would not reach
them for a while. Another flicker of dry lightning through the clouds.

Painter drank. Shook his head and drank again.

‘But I could never trust her see. She was a woman and she laughed all the time. Like
the housewives on Loftus Street. Full of fucking lust they are. Never trust a woman
son they'll break your heart. Went back to some steady cunt and took my breath away.
My heart in her black hand.'

Lew walked to the edge of the flat ground. Looked out at the darkening land.

‘No, no.' He would not look back. ‘Cut it out. It was our father who left us. Took
off. My mother become mad as a cut snake after that. He belted her up a few times
too. Knocked out her front teeth. Made her deaf in one ear.'

Painter hadn't heard him. He was drinking.

Lew turned around, he indicated the storm to the north. ‘We should have gone to Broome
or something. Drilling for oil. Crocodile hunting. Done something different.'

‘Well we didn't. Did we?'

‘No.'

‘No.'

Another far-off lightning strike, a bright upside-down tree, white roots in paradise
and branches coming into the earth.

‘Come on, we better get back,' Lew said. He kicked sand and gravel over the fire
and held his hand towards Painter, who was holding the bottle to his mouth. One hand
back on the ground, bracing himself, gulping the last of the spirit.

Lew pulled him up and helped him to stand and when he let go he staggered and dropped
the empty bottle, stepped back on it and almost fell. It didn't break. Lew heard
the squealing sound of glass on sand.

‘Don't leave the bottle,' Painter said.

‘What?' Lew picked up the empty brandy bottle and followed Painter who was weaving
ahead of him. Plaiting his legs as he walked. He began to sing I Am the Bread of
Life. ‘And I will raise you up this day.' His words had become so slurred that Lew
could barely understand him.

‘Jesus old man,' Lew said and put an arm around his shoulder to stop him from falling.
‘What are you singing?'

‘Don't say Jesus like that,' Painter slurred. He stumbled forward and raised his
arms as he fell.

CHAPTER 38

Clara rose naked from the bath and reached for a towel. She stood still and thought,
I will not think of him. The steam rising as she dried herself. I will not. He has
to go and I wish he would. I will be fine. I wish he would because that would solve
everything really.

All sounds somehow louder in the white-tiled and still bathroom of the old homestead.
The kerosene lamp burning on a mirror stand. Dark wood and brass latches. She could
see the lamp and the reflection of the lamp and the circle of light on the wall of
the bathroom.

Clara stepped out of the bath, wrapped a towel around her waist and walked into the
adjoining bedroom. Wet footprints on the wooden floor. Immediately his bare feet
and hands came back to her…I keep thinking about him, the smiling shearer… Lewis.

She began to dress. White underwear. And she sat on the bed to put white socks and
tennis shoes on her feet. Pulling the laces tight. How would I know to kiss him anyway?

She pressed her mouth into the hollow of her elbow and tasted the bathwater. Skin
and fine white hair under her tongue. To feel his mouth on my mouth, what is it to
kiss like this? Shook her head. Finished lacing the tennis shoes. Feet on the floor
with a bump.

Remembered the mare Pearl being covered. The power of that surrender. I will be someone
else again after that. You are just a shearer on my land, I am better than you. That
stallion Blue Boy mounting Pearl. His great mottled prick and his crazed desire.
The violence of their need for each other. Pearl had been ready for two days, running
with her tail high and flexing wet labia. They call it horsing, her father said.
Pearl, the girl, is horsing, look at her winking at us. She is ready to be covered.