THE NEXT MORNING, Biyanga paced back and forth in his stable, fretting for his pig. Grunter seemed to have gone into hiding after the hogtying incident.
Jess emptied a bucket of feed into his bin. ‘Lose your buddy, mate?’
The stallion’s body shuddered as he gave another long, sad whinny, and he snuffled his nose into Jess’s tummy. Jess scratched his cheeks. ‘I know just how you feel, fella,’ she said.
‘He gets so het up without Grunter around,’ said Harry from behind her.
She spun around. ‘Do you think he’ll come back?’
Harry opened the stable door and came in to console his horse. ‘Yeah, I know he’s around somewhere, because half of Annie’s garden is missing,’ he said. ‘I just hope that I find him before she does, or he’ll end up as a Sunday roast.’
‘You wouldn’t let that happen, would you, Harry?’
Harry shrugged. ‘Not my call, kiddo. It’s Annie’s pig.’ He ran a hand over Biyanga’s shoulder. ‘And she does love a bite of fresh pork – roasts it in the Kanga Cooker, all dripping with juice and crackling; pretty tasty.’ He gave Biyanga a scratch around the ears and chuckled. ‘They gotta catch him first, though, don’t they, boy?’
‘Is Ryan your son?’ Jess asked, remembering the conversation between Harry and Lawson, but not sure if a kid was supposed to ask an adult that sort of stuff.
Harry didn’t seem to mind. ‘Ryan is Annie’s boy. He grew up with Lawson. But there’s been a rift between them for a while.’ A look of disappointment crossed his face. ‘And now Lawson’s got his nose out of joint because I let Ryan ride Biyanga in a few campdrafts.’
‘I wouldn’t let someone on my horse either if they were mean like Lawson,’ said Jess without thinking. Then she looked up at Harry in alarm. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Didn’t know you had a horse, Jess,’ said Harry, ignoring her comment.
Jess picked up the empty feed bucket and turned away from Harry. ‘So Ryan’s not Lawson’s brother at all, they’re just stepbrothers?’ she asked, trying to steer the conversation back to Lawson. Anything would be better than talking about her own tragic horselessness.
‘You got a horse, have you?’ Harry repeated.
‘My horse . . .’ Jess took a deep breath, ‘ . . . is dead.’ She made her way to the stable door and let herself out, thinking that would surely end the conversation.
But Harry followed her out into the stable aisle. ‘How’d it die?’ he asked, as he coiled Biyanga’s halter and rope and hung them on a hook on the wall.
‘She got stuck in a cattle grid,’ said Jess, tossing her grooming tools into their bag. She saw the realisation wash over his face and instantly knew that he had heard about it. Everyone heard about everything in this town, especially in horsey circles.
‘Oh geez, John Duggin told me about that,’ said Harry, his voice softening. ‘He said it was awful. You poor bloody kid.’ Harry grabbed a bucket, turned it over and sat down on it, then reached out for a second bucket, flipped it over and motioned for Jess to join him. He fumbled in his pocket, found a small container of toothpicks and rattled them about, coaxing one out while he waited for her to be seated.
Jess dropped her bag, wandered over and made herself comfortable on the bucket. Maybe he knew what had happened and he was going to tell her about it.
‘I had a horse called Bunyip for thirty-two years.’ Harry leaned forward on the bucket and began excavating a tooth. ‘He was my first horse, and by geez he was a good one. Honest as the day he was born. I used to put all the local kids on him. But I had to go down the Snowies for six months to do some contract mustering and I knew he wouldn’t be around when I got back.’
He paused and flicked the toothpick across the aisle. His watery old eyes looked into the distance. ‘I didn’t want him to suffer, so I got up real early one morning and gave him a good shampooing. I oiled his tail and brushed his mane, then I polished his best show bridle and put it on him.’ Harry smiled with pride. ‘He always lived like a gentleman and I wanted him to die like a gentleman.’
He paused, ran his tongue over his teeth and reached into his jacket again. ‘Took him down the paddock and shot him, I did. Hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. He’s buried under that big mulberry tree down the paddock. He used to like eating the berries off it.’
‘I buried Diamond next to our coachwood tree. She used to stand under it for hours and rub her neck on it,’ said Jess quietly.
The two of them sat in the stable aisle, Harry chewing on a new toothpick, Jess twiddling her hair and looking at the old toothpick that had speared itself into a poo a few metres away. After a while she asked him about something that had been bothering her. ‘Do you believe in reincarnation, Harry?’
Harry looked mildly surprised. ‘That’s a funny question,’ he said. ‘Dunno, I never really thought about it.’ He drew a neat circle in a patch of dust with his toe as he pondered the question. ‘But I always thought the Aboriginal culture of belonging to your country made a lot of sense.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Jess.
‘Everything in nature is connected. All the animals and birds and lizards and plants, even the wind and the rain. We’re all related and we all need each other. It’s true of time as well – the past, the present and the future.’ He shrugged. ‘You just gotta stop and listen and feel; then you know it’s true. Sometimes when I’m out bush, mustering, sitting on a horse, I really feel it: the trees and rocks and dust all whispering to me, all soaking into me. Makes me feel alive.’
Jess thought about how she felt when she was alone with the horses in the paddocks: the sounds of the wind and the birds; the movement of the grass and the sun on her skin. What Harry was saying made a lot of sense, but it didn’t answer her question.
‘So, what happens when something dies?’ she asked. ‘Do you reckon it gets reincarnated?’
‘Some mobs think so, others don’t.’ Harry crinkled his forehead. ‘The fellas I talked to told me that in the creation time, great ancestral spirits walked the earth and rose up to create all the different parts of the natural world, such as rocks and snakes and lizards. They told me that when a woman conceives a baby, a spirit from one of these natural things enters the woman. There are special places, sacred sites, where these spirits come from. And the spirit that enters you, like possum or turtle or whatever, becomes your totem.’
Jess had heard some of the girls at school talking about totems. ‘A totem is like a spirit guide, isn’t it?’
‘No, no,’ said Harry. ‘It’s not like that at all. Your totem gives you duties to carry, obligations to your mob and country. It creates a special kinship with other people of the same totem.’
‘So, what happens when you die?’
‘The way I understand it, your soul splits into three parts. Your ancestral-soul goes to sky camp, your ego-soul dies and your totem-soul is returned to the spirits of nature.’
Jess let her mind process this information for a while. ‘Reckon a really big old coachwood tree could be a totem?’ she asked.
‘I guess so.’
Jess rubbed her chin. She couldn’t help thinking about Diamond and Walkabout and their uncanny connection. It wasn’t that they really looked the same. It was just . . . some weird sort of sameness.
Maybe that was it. That was the link. Walkabout was born on the same day that Diamond died . . .
‘Do horses have totems, Harry?’
Harry chuckled. ‘Everyone seems to believe in something a bit different and something a bit similar.’ He smiled at her. ‘Even all the mobs have slightly different beliefs.’ He put his hand on his heart and leaned towards her. He spoke softly. ‘I reckon you should just pay attention to what your own heart is trying to tell you, kiddo. Listen to Mother Nature and hear what she’s saying. She’ll give you all the answers.’
Jess sat there engrossed in Harry’s words. She imagined Walkabout being born, down by the river, down among the coachwood trees. That’s where Diamond was buried, right next to a big old coachwood tree. Maybe they had the same spirit or something.
Jess thought of the big old tree in her garden. It was so old and wise, it had to be sacred.
Harry changed the subject abruptly. ‘So who gave you that black eye?’
‘It was my cousin’s horse, Dodger.’
‘So, what happened?’ asked Harry.
‘I tried taking him for a ride and he just kept tossing his head. He wouldn’t stop snatching the reins.’ Jess decided not to tell Harry that it was his psycho son who caused it. ‘Then he went crazy and reared up. He smashed me in the face with his head.’
‘Sure gave you a good shiner,’ said Harry, spitting his toothpick out and stamping on it.
‘It hurt heaps,’ said Jess, running her hand over her face. It still felt sore when she touched it.
‘How come he tosses his head so much?’
‘I don’t know. He’s just a really stupid horse.’
‘No such thing as a stupid horse, mate,’ said Harry. ‘The difficult ones are usually the smartest.’
‘Well, he must be a genius or something, because there was no way I could make him stop it.’
‘Why don’t you bring him over here one day, and I’ll have a look at him for you?’
Jess screwed up her nose.
‘I didn’t fall off him, so I don’t have to get back on him,’ she said. ‘And anyway, he’s not my horse.’
‘Fair enough,’ shrugged Harry. ‘Just thought I’d offer.’
At that moment, Annie sang out for breakfast.
Harry gave Jess a wink. ‘Saved by the bell.’ He put a hand on her shoulder to haul himself up off the bucket. ‘Let’s go and eat. I’m starving.’
‘I brought some fresh asparagus from our garden,’ said Jess, glad to have the subject changed.
‘Those mushy green spear things?’ asked Harry, pulling a face.
‘It’s not tinned stuff. I picked it fresh this morning. Mum reckons you’ll live forever if you eat asparagus – it’s so full of vitamin C! It even cures cancer!’
Oh my God – was that a health lecture that just came out of my mouth? My mother has brainwashed me!
Harry smiled. ‘You’re a good kid, Jess. You’ll always be welcome around here.’