Fred wiped his glasses with the front of his shirt. ‘The rain washed out a lot of burrows,’ he said as Jen rode alongside him. ‘We caught quite a few.’
Beside him, Josh wore a trucker’s cap and a faded flannelette shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Several dead and bloodied rabbits dangled from his hands.
Oh, that is gross. Zoe turned away.
But that white dog. There was something about it. She felt a tiny something flutter in an empty nook of her mind, as though she had something on the tip of her tongue but couldn’t quite turn it into words.
‘New pup working well?’ Jen was asking.
‘Yeah, he’s quick,’ said Josh.
Jen and Fred never let any guns on the property. They’d always used dogs to catch rabbits. Yuck. This would be a gory conversation that she didn’t want to listen to.
Then out of the blue, attention switched to her. ‘How you going, Zoe?’ Josh asked. ‘They finally let you out of the asylum?’ His voice was soft and teasing.
‘Good,’ she replied. Standard answer.
‘Why don’t you come too, see our new calves?’ Fred said to Josh. ‘Put those rabbits up behind Zoe. Old Turtle won’t mind.’
Oh, gross. No! Zoe looked at Fred in horror. There were flies all over the rabbits already. Euwww!
Fred chuckled at the look on her face. ‘Toughen up, kid.’
Josh strode towards her and draped the floppy rabbit carcasses over the back of the horse, deftly tying the rope to the dee at the back of her saddle.
‘Hey!’ squealed Zoe, ‘Get these things off! Oh, seriously disgusting. They probably have lice!’
They kept walking and she could have sworn she saw their shoulders jumping just a little with laughter. She trotted up behind them and her stomach twisted as the carcasses flapped against the sides of the horse. ‘I mean it, Josh. Carry your own stinking rabbits!’
He looked up at her calmly. ‘It’s okay. Lice are species-specific. Rabbit lice need rabbit blood to survive. Then again, species of lice that live on humans are not able to live on rabbits. No risk of cross-species infestations.’
Zoe stared at him with a screwed-up face.
‘More over there,’ said Fred.‘More over there,’ said Fred, pointing to three bunnies hippety-hopping near some bushes.
‘Oh, don’t,’ begged Zoe, but Josh was already whistling his dogs onto them. Zoe watched them wheel away and sprint across the open flat. Each dog brought a rabbit down with one snap of its jaws. It was mind-blowingly quick.
Josh walked across with relaxed, purposeful strides and took a moment to praise the white dog and then the brindle as he took their catch.
He curled a finger at Zoe, gesturing her to come and get the rabbits.
‘No,’ she mouthed.
‘Would you prefer us to use myxomatosis, Zoe? Or calicivirus?’ said Jen from behind her.
Zoe had seen rabbits take days to die with myxie, their eyes burning out of their sockets. ‘No, I guess not,’ she conceded. ‘Did you ask him to come and hunt rabbits?’
‘We pay him a bounty,’ said Jen. ‘He’s great, but he’s costing us a fortune!’
They rode towards the paddock where the cows and calves were. When Josh got the gate and held it open for them, she realised he planned on hanging out with them for the afternoon, along with his dead rabbits and their species-specific lice.
They spent the rest of the day checking fences for storm damage, moving cows across the river and searching for two missing calves. Josh’s whippets raced about his legs the whole time, seeming never to run out of energy.
The calves had been hidden by their mothers in the long grass in one of the gullies. They were beautiful, all velvety-black with wet, silvery noses and waggly tails.
‘Their mums will call them back during the night,’ said Jen. ‘We’d better make sure we leave the gate open.’
Surprisingly, Zoe found Josh easy to talk to. When he spoke about his dogs, his voice was kind of rough but sweet. Later in the day, he went off with Fred to look for more rabbits and Jen steered Zoe back out to another paddock on the other side of the swollen creek to bring some more pregnant cows across. Among them was a stout black mare, beautifully put together, with a pretty face and soft eyes. At her feet a brown foal lay on its side, sleeping.
‘Another colt,’ said Jen. ‘He’s a full brother to Blackjack.’
Of course. Jen had bred Blackjack out of her mare and given him to Zoe as a gift. How could she have forgotten that? But she seemed to have forgotten an awful lot . . .
‘I haven’t seen Blackjack since I got home. Dad must have put him out in the back paddocks while I was in hospital.’
‘He never did like horses much,’ Jen said after a moment’s silence, and reined her young colt away.
It was true. Her dad only ever mustered on bikes. Her mum had ridden, doing dressage rather than stock work, and when she left he had made her sell all the horses, saying he couldn’t afford to feed a bunch of dressage ponies. Zoe felt a weird mixture of agreeing with Jen and wanting to be loyal to her dad. He wasn’t a bad person. He was just . . . all injured inside.
The phone rang just as they got back to the homestead. Jen ran to answer it while Zoe put the horses away. She had barely walked in the back door when her aunt thrust the phone into her hand. ‘It’s your father,’ she said, sounding unimpressed.
Zoe finished kicking off her boot before putting the phone to her ear. ‘Dad?’
‘Where have you been all day?’ His voice was loud and slurred. Oh, God, he had been drinking. A lot.
‘Out mustering,’ she said defiantly. ‘With Jen.’
‘So you just racked off to Jen’s place?’
‘She finds me useful,’ she retorted. ‘For something other than washing dishes.’
‘You had your chance to be a useful part of this farm, Zoe, instead of just going off and leaving your jobs without doing them,’ her dad argued.
‘Like when?’
‘Like the bloody chookpen and the sheepyard that you were supposed to clean out. Instead I come back and find you’ve taken off to the waterhole with your mates and that idiot boyfriend – if he was any sort of a man he’d have come over and given you a hand.’
Had she done that? When? Zoe squinted, trying to remember what he was talking about.
‘You’re to get your tail back here, now,’ said her dad.
She paced back out onto the verandah in her socks, agitated. ‘I’m not coming home,’ she said, trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice. He was so ugly when he was like this. He didn’t drink often, but when he did all the bitterness just came rushing out of him. ‘And I’m not going to Mum’s either. I’m moving in with Jen.’ She hadn’t asked Jen, but Jen wouldn’t say no, surely?
He didn’t answer, but she could almost hear him seething on the other end.
She held her ground and didn’t answer either.
‘I want you to come home.’ His voice was suddenly low and choked up.
‘Only if I can work around the farm.’
‘We can sort that out when you get back.’
Zoe didn’t believe him. She knew, as surely as a chook lays eggs, that her mum’s little silver sports car would be parked in the driveway when she got there and all her worldly goods would be bundled up in the boot.
After another long silence between them, the phone went dead.
Zoe felt frayed. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. He was right, she was always doing stupid things, always making him steaming mad, giving him reason to worry and be angry.
It was late afternoon. Zoe put down her rake to check her beeping mobile. She read a new message from Caitlin.
We’re going to the waterhole for a swim.
Damn. She’d love to go for a swim. But she had a whole day’s worth of jobs to do. The yards hadn’t been raked out for a week and nor had the chookpen. Today was going to be one big poo fest. She messaged back.
Who’s going?
Me, Scotty, a few others.
It had turned into a crap weekend. Scotty had spent the whole day Saturday helping his dad in the cattleyards and Caitlin had been busy with her riding mates.
Zoe looked across to the flats where the tractor dragged the seeder back and forth across a field. Would her dad even notice that she was gone?
He would sure as hell notice if the yards weren’t cleaned out. She sighed and hit the reply button.
I gotta help Dad. You guys have fun.
Scotty would be disappointed. He’d probably text her and tell her to do her jobs later. She grabbed the rake and began working again. Maybe if she got it done extra quick she would still make it for a swim.
She got the yards done in less than an hour, but there were no further messages. Grabbing a bale of straw from the shed, she scattered it about over the top of all the chook poo and left it at that. Dad would never notice.
Then she unchained Queenie and swung a leg over the quad bike. ‘Up, old girl.’
There was a grassy strip by the edge of the road all the way to the Simpsons’ property. Behind one of their front gates was a track well worn by locals, running along a steep gully and ending at the top of Rushing Falls, a fifteen-metre waterfall. Zoe parked the quad there and walked to one of the rock ledges. Against the roaring backdrop of the water she could hear echoing voices and laughter. She peered over the edge and instantly recognised Caitlin and Scotty, fanning their arms back and forth and treading water. Two more people sat on towels on the rocks nearby.
She turned to Queenie, who sat next to the quad bike, guarding it. The old dog still took the job seriously, despite her complete lack of teeth. ‘Stay, Queenie.’
In the deep pool at the foot of the falls, Zoe could see the logs and rocks that lurked beneath the water. She stripped to her cossie as she waited for Caity and Scotty to swim out of the way. There was only one spot where she could jump in, and they were swimming right in it. She curled her toes around the edge of the rock shelf and stood waiting, grinning as she imagined their surprised faces. This would be hilarious.
It seemed ages before Caitlin finally turned and began swimming towards the edge of the pool. Zoe took her chance, hollered loudly and hooted as she leaped off the edge and clutched her knees to her chest. She aimed to land right between them.
Sound and water exploded all around her as she crashed into the pool. She heard Scotty swear just before the water swallowed her. She pushed off the bottom and shot back up to the surface, laughing. ‘Surprise!’ she spluttered.
‘Bloody hell, Zoe,’ said Scotty, over his shoulder. ‘You nearly landed on top of me!’
Zoe threw her arms around his neck. ‘But I didn’t,’ she laughed, still half breathless. She planted a big kiss on the back of his neck then looked around. ‘Hi, Caitlin!’
Caitlin shook her head. ‘That was so stupid.’ She stepped up onto the rocks and reached for her towel.
Zoe pushed herself away from Scotty, arced her body and rolled back into the water in a backwards somersault. When she came up, Scotty was halfway to the rock ledge. She stroked over and joined them.
‘Err, Caity.’
‘What?’ Caitlin huffed.
‘You got a bikini malfunction going on there, matey.’
Caitlin looked down and snatched at her bikini top. ‘Oops. Sorry!’
‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ Scotty joked. Then he changed the subject. ‘Hey, Simpson’s old man hung a new rope off the tree, look.’
‘Cool,’ said Zoe. An ancient angophora tree clung to the side of the cliff by its roots. It was a huge tree with one long, perfectly horizontal limb growing straight out over the waterhole. A thick marine rope hung from the end of the limb with several knots tied near the bottom.
‘Dare you to take it all the way to the second ledge and swing off,’ said Zoe, knowing full well neither of them would.
‘Not me – that’s crazy,’ said Caitlin.
‘Dare you,’ said Scotty.
Zoe immediately stood up. ‘Watch this.’