The Lost Child (10 page)

Outside, the world has turned purple and dizzy. The sky is full of dirty grey clouds with a strange yellow light peeping through underneath. The pine trees are bending and swishing their top branches at each other. ‘I'll drop the pegs,' says Grannie, looking over her shoulder, keeping an eye on the weather. ‘You pick 'em up. It's going to rain cows and hogs.'

I run around her feet, scooping pegs into my skirt. The wind is so strong it almost lifts me into the air. There is nothing to hold on to, everything moves, the ground seems to sway, a loose sheet of iron bangs on the chook-house roof, the dogs are barking and running in circles, jangling their chains. I smell salt and seaweed blowing in off the sea. There's a flash and a loud crack that shoots right inside me, into my head and chest and legs. I stop and crouch down to catch my breath and, although the wind is blowing noise all about, I can hear other sounds too, a maggie high in the pines, a calf crying out for its mother, even a frog in the pond. It feels like the wind is singing. And suddenly I want to sing too.

‘Yeeeeeeeeeeee!' I scream and the wind blows Grannie's dress right over her head. I see her stocking tops, her step-ins, even her bloomer legs! My scream turns into giggles and, as I run around picking up pegs, I see she's untangling clothes and throwing pegs, laughing too.

There's another bright flash, then a crack right over our heads. Pine needles fall to the ground in a shower. ‘Run!' yells Grannie as the first heavy drops fall. I follow her onto the side veranda. Grannie puffs and wheezes and takes pins from the back of her head and sticks them in her mouth while she rewinds her hair.

‘If I could paint,' says Grannie, ‘that's what I'd paint.'

I follow her gaze under the pines, down the slope of strawberry clover, all the way to the lake. Although it's still raining, it's not as heavy as before; the sky behind is streaked pink and purple, and a flock of black swans is flying low. If I had my crayons I'd draw it too.

I'm about to tell Grannie this when she says: ‘I'm not sure about the meek inheriting the earth. Meek's not something I'd lay claim to—ask anyone and they'd probably say the same—but for better or worse, I've inherited a good patch of earth.'

‘What's meek?'

‘You're pretty meek. Your mother pretends to be, but isn't. I was meek when I married Black Pat, but had to get over it pretty quick smart.' It sounds as if I should get over it pretty quick smart too. ‘If your father had a bit more meekness in him, he might have held on to his inheritance instead of going off half-cocked.' She looks down at me. ‘Don't let me hear you say that. Understand?'

I nod, but I'm already saying it in my head: half-cocked halfcocked. I wonder if you can be meek and half-cocked at the same time.

We make a run for the back door. ‘There're worse things than meekness,' says Grannie kicking her shoes off on the mat.

Chicken's Uncle Corker is lying half under the tractor. He pushes himself up, dusts off his hands and takes out his ciggies. ‘The cable's off again. No prize for guessing who.'

Uncle Ticker says,
Fucking bastard
, looks over his shoulder at me climbing on a rubble pile and lowers his voice, but still I hear
fucking parrots
and
fucking bee in his bonnet
and
fucking bastard
again. I take a running leap off the pile. ‘Maybe a guard dog's the way to go?' says Uncle Ticker as I climb on the tractor treads. He tells me to be careful around the machinery and that he's got to give Corker a hand winding the cable back onto the winch. He says he'll be a while and can I find something to do that doesn't involve breaking a leg?

I run up the channel. Now it has walls on both sides and a wide river bed where one day water will flow to the lake. The walls are pockmarked with holes from gelignite blasting through the stone: Uncle Ticker told me this last time. He said sandstone was hard to rip but good for steep walls. He showed me where tree roots were fossils in the stone and he stroked those roots because they were thousands, millions, billions of years old. When I find the spot, the roots are now high above my head. At the top of the cutting, there are a few straggly trees like hair on a hill and those trees make me think of that day with Pardie and Dunc and the emu. I press against the channel wall, feeling the warm stone, and wonder if Dunc has run away from school already. Could he be living in the Abo cave in the bush above the cutting? How could I find out?

When Uncle Ticker yells, I run back down the channel. The cable is fixed to the tractor and the ripper is tearing into the earth.

Uncle Ticker beckons me to the Blitz. ‘While we're here,' he says, ‘we'll check the cattle in the top paddock.' He bumps the truck up the slope. ‘I need you to spot any calves wandering around by themselves. Think you can do that?' Closer to the herd, he bangs on the door of the truck with one hand and beeps the horn with the other. ‘Come aahn, get a move on.' He drives slowly to avoid tussock bumps, and counts as we go. ‘Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Did we count that one? Come aahn, you silly old cow, out of the way or you'll have the Blitz up your bum.'

Mostly the calves are close to their mothers, the black and whites with their Angus mothers, the red and whites with the Herefords. Here the gum trees have thick trunks with peeling bark splashed pink and grey. Under one of the trees, I see a black bundle curled in the shadows.

‘There! There's one by itself.'

Uncle Ticker lifts the calf onto its legs. It has a white flash on its head and wild, frightened eyes; it wobbles about and sits down again. Uncle Ticker takes off his hat and studies the cows all about. Because we've stopped, they've stopped too and they wait and watch as we watch them.

I can see right down the slope to Bindilla's red roof. I can see the shearing shed, the shearers' quarters and the machinery shed, the lake beyond, the sandhills on the other side, the lighthouse on Seal Island—although I can't see the jetty, or Lizzie. Or Mum or Dad. Because she's still in Parkside. And he is
worse than useless
.

At school, Lizzie said Mum didn't have all her cups in the cupboard. When I asked Grannie about the cups, she said: ‘I wouldn't listen to anything Lizzie Campbell says. She's got spuds in her ears and her hair could do with a good wash.'

It is true about Lizzie's hair.

I didn't tell Grannie about Colleen and Shirley, how when they see me at school, they hop like kangaroos, calling out about roos loose in the top paddock. I know roos and cups are the same.

Uncle Ticker says: ‘All right, Sylv, I reckon it's a twin. Now we've got to find a mother with a calf the same size, same length of cord. See this'—he lifts the calf and shows me a bit of shrivelled skin hanging off its belly—‘if we can match this up, it'll tell us when it was born. Reckon you can spot one like that?'

For a long time we drive through the cows, beeping the horn and banging the door. ‘If we don't find its mother, it'll die,' says Uncle Ticker. ‘And there goes five quid. No point trying to handfeed them this early, they need the colostrum in their mother's milk.'

‘What's colostrum?'

‘The good stuff in the mother's milk just after the young'un's born.' He slows near a mother with a black calf. ‘Whaddya reckon? Same white flash on the head? Same size cord. Could be the one?'

He swings the Blitz at the cow. She bellows at us with mad eyes and trundles off, calf following. ‘Go aahn!' Uncle Ticker yells after her. ‘Get back to your other calf, you apology for a mother, you've got two and you darn well know it. Go aahn, get back there and feed it.'

The cow bellows some more and Uncle Ticker bellows back. When we reach the calf under the tree, it stands on wobbly legs and stumbles forward.

‘That's its mother, all right,' says Uncle Ticker. ‘Now feed it, you stupid thing.' But as soon as the calf gets close, the cow backs off. ‘Feed it!' yells Uncle Ticker.

The cow stares at us with surly eyes. Again the wobbly calf sidles up. But as it noses under its mother, she kicks out hard and knocks it right off its feet.

‘You effing…cow!' yells Uncle Ticker.

I want to kick that cow hard in her big balloon belly. I want to break her legs and leave her there with nobody to look after her, and I don't want the calf to keep pushing in where it's not wanted. But the calf is so hungry that every time it gets kicked, it picks itself up and tries again.

‘I'll show you,' says Uncle Ticker, driving the Blitz forward, forcing the cow and her calves to run down the slope, the wobbly calf stumbling and crying behind. Soon they are separated from the herd and heading for the stockyards near the bottom fence. ‘I'll box them in the corner,' says Uncle Ticker. ‘Think you can open the gate and hold it, while I drive 'em through?'

When the cow and her calves are squashed near the fence, I run for the gate. I have to climb onto the bottom rung to reach the wire loop and, as I drag the gate open, Uncle Ticker skirts behind the cow.

‘Stay there. Don't let them pass.'

The cow comes at the gate with a crazy look in her eyes and I'm afraid she's going to trample right over the gate, over me holding it open, but I yell and scream like Uncle Ticker and at the last moment she turns and lumbers into the yards with the calves following.

‘Good work,' says Uncle Ticker, closing the gate. ‘Now you sit up there on the fence while I show her who's boss around here.'

From the top rung, I watch him being the boss. He lets himself into the yard with the cow, a small yard, gated off from the others. Over his arm, he carries a collar and chain. First he grabs the wobbly calf and drags it into another yard, closes the gate and leaves it there. Now he makes clucking noises at the cow. He gets up close and rubs her rump. She snorts and fidgets and blinks her long lashes at him and, when she's rubbing her head against the fence and really enjoying herself, he grabs her calf and drags it into the yard with the other calf. The mother bundles over to the gate and bellows at Uncle Ticker. She swings her head in angry arcs, her cries are terrible; they are the cries of maggies protecting their nests, the cries of foxes in the night. They make me want to hide in the lily patch behind the fishpond, where I go when I miss Mum too much.

Uncle Ticker opens the gate and the calves run out. And now I see he's collared them together with a short chain so that wherever one goes the other must follow. The strong calf pulls the wobbly one under the mother and straightaway it's sucking for all its worth. The mother gives it a kick but she hits the wrong one and somehow seems to know, so doesn't kick again. She gives Uncle Ticker a maggoty look. He just laughs. ‘You'll learn,' he says as he climbs up next to me. ‘You've got plenty of milk to feed both.'

The wobbly calf sucks noisily. There are cauliflower clouds in the sky and the day shines like clean window glass. Uncle Ticker's hand on the rail is as red-brown as a Hereford cow. ‘You know what? I reckon we'll give that calf a name. Whaddya say?'

I try to think of cow names. After a while, Uncle Ticker jumps off the fence, holds out his arms and lifts me down with a wide swing before settling me on the ground. As we drive back, he says: ‘How about Sylvie? It's a good name. And it means I won't forget you found her. Whaddya say?'

I don't say anything because the window-glass day has thickened with tears and I have to blink them away.

PART TWO

9

Mum has come home with short hair and no words. There is silence everywhere like static on the wireless. She keeps the blinds pulled down and the curtains closed. ‘Who's that?' she says when we hear footsteps on the path. She creeps to the window and peers out. ‘What's she want?'

Mrs Winkie wants to stomp through our house, as she did the day before, and the day before that. ‘Come on, duck,' she calls as she pulls up the blinds, ‘you'll turn into a mole.' She fills the kettle and stirs the stew she's bought for our tea as if she's in her own kitchen. Mum watches with fidgety eyes. Mrs Winkie tells Lizzie and me to lift a hand to help.

‘What's wrong with your mother?' asks Lizzie at the wood pile. I tell her Mum's eyes hurt and she has to stay out of the sun. Lizzie says that's not what her mother says. ‘She's cracked. Just cracked.'

Lizzie's hair is tied with blue ribbons in bunches above her ears. I think of heifers in the Muswell Show, the way their prize ribbons dangle over their foreheads and they gaze at you with fat happy faces, the same way Lizzie looks at me because Mum has cracked.

‘You're a stupid cow,' I tell her.

In the kitchen, Mum lights a ciggie. ‘I ache all over,' she says.

‘We're stronger than we think,' says Mrs Winkie between licks of her stirring spoon. ‘You'd better believe it, Nella.'

Lizzie and I play on my bed where I keep my dolls: she doesn't know I sleep with Mum and I don't tell her. In the kitchen Mrs Winkie says: ‘You've got to get out more, Nella. It's not healthy hiding away, working yourself into the ground.' Mum says she knows what they're saying about her. Mrs Winkie says, ‘Half of them would leave their husbands tomorrow if they had your guts.'

‘He's told everyone I'm crazy,' says Mum, ‘I know he has.' A chair scrapes. It must be Mrs Winkie because Mum takes care never to scratch the lino. ‘You know what he did the other night? And the night before? Waits till it gets dark and comes sneaking around, tossing gravel on the roof, trying to scare me, trying to send me crazy. That's what he wants: he wants me to go mad.'

Mum's voice is high and crazy-sounding and I look at Lizzie to see if she's listening but she's undressing Marilyn and doesn't seem to have the same ears as me. Mrs Winkie is quiet for a long time then she says: ‘Are you sure, Nella?' I hear the doubt in her voice as if Mum really is mad and I think: Why didn't I hear the gravel on the roof? Wouldn't I wake up? Mrs Winkie says: ‘Be careful saying things like that, Nella, you never know what others might make of it.'