Texas (24 page)

‘I'm going to tell the boss,' he said, turning towards her, and she caught a glimpse of the hollowed-out look in his eye and then as quickly it was gone and he left the vehicle.

Texas She wanted to go after him, to hold him, but she knew he wasn't seeing her. Undressing for a shower, she heard a car engine and saw, through the small window in the bedroom, lights finding a path through the dark. She switched on the globe in the bathroom. The water was warmed by the heat of the day and she scrubbed the smell from her skin and hair. The longer she stood there, the more the memory of the day became like something she might have seen in a movie. She knocked at the kitchen door and when Susannah told her to come in, Laura went to the dishes on the sink, knowing that that was what Susannah wanted when she was at the table feeding the children.

‘What happened out there?' asked Susannah. ‘Stop that,' she said to one of the boys as he emptied a spoonful of food on the table.

‘There were some cattle without water.'

Susannah looked up and Laura thought she saw something in Susannah's face like disgust but then it was gone.

‘Right. Bedtime,' she said and ushered the boys out the door.

Laura said goodnight but they didn't answer.

Even though she didn't feel like eating, she helped herself to some stew from the pot on the stove and sat on the veranda and listened to the amplified sound of the cicadas as she moved the meat around on the plate. She thought she heard the pop of a gunshot but she couldn't be sure. Susannah returned and paused by the door for a moment, and Laura thought she might be about to say something but she didn't. The vehicle returned. She heard the men's footsteps before they appeared. John stepped up onto the veranda and he threw her a look of such extreme dislike that it made her sink back in her chair. The flywire door closed behind him. Texas came towards her and he shook his head slowly.

‘Do you want something to eat?' she asked quietly.

‘No,' he said.

Noticing the brown dirt on his arms and his jeans, like dried blood.

‘What is it?'

‘All finished with that fella.'

She was standing, looking through the louvres into the kitchen at the shape of the station couple on either side of the table and the dull light that surrounded them.

‘But what are we going to do? Where will we go?'

‘I got a good place now,' he said, managing a tired smile.

He placed his hand on her shoulder and they walked across to their quarters.

III

Susannah felt the bed move as her husband got up, his figure faintly outlined in the shadows. Neither of them had slept and it was his restless movements that had kept her awake. The light from the bathroom, which was further down the hall, reflected on the wall outside their bedroom door. Even though it was dark behind the curtains, she could hear the twitterings of little

Texas birds preparing for dawn. When she heard his footsteps leave the house, she climbed out of bed and slipped on the shirt and shorts she'd been wearing yesterday. Standing by the stove in the kitchen, hearing the metal of the kettle creak as it began to heat up, and noticing that behind the louvres, the sky was lightening she became aware of other people's voices. John was at the shed filling up with fuel. She moved out onto the veranda and on the other side of the lawn she could see the dark shape of Texas as he carried his swag and placed it beside the gate, where John would bring the vehicle. Texas looked back towards the tree in front of the quarters and Susannah realised he was responding to something Laura had said for she emerged from behind it and handed him her backpack. He took it with one hand and with the other he pulled her close and they stood together, his head angled towards hers, she, at the height of his shoulder, looking up at him, and behind them the light was soft, a hazy gold that made everything seem possible. If she could, Susannah would tell her mother that it was beautiful here in the mornings. But that it never lasted.

She heard the vehicle start up and returned to the kitchen where she made herself a cup of tea. Listening to the activity around her, feeling like she always did, as though she was on the other side of it. Doors slammed; there were footsteps on the veranda. Her husband was in the doorway. Their eyes met.

‘Do you want a cup of tea?' she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I'll pick up the stores. Is there anything else?'

‘No,' she said.

The door closed behind him. And a little while later the vehicle started again. She knew it was them leaving, it was the sound she'd been waiting for, the sound that would mark the moment when she was alone, just her and the children.

And because she'd known it was going to happen, she didn't feel any different. Her head was thick from not enough sleep and perhaps full of words that needed to be spoken, but other than that it was just like any other day. But then the thought of another day to fill seemed to open wide, so wide she felt that the idea itself might engulf her. She wouldn't let it, though, she was stronger than that.

Last night after dinner she'd written out the final cheques for Laura and Texas. She could have given them to John but instead she decided to take them over herself. She didn't want to think about why they were leaving or what had happened but she needed to show them that she wasn't like her husband.

The couple weren't in the quarters and so she called out and then in the paddock on the other side of the fence she could make out the orange glow of their cigarettes. She realised as she stood at the fence that they were sitting on a swag a couple of metres away. Laura stood up and came over.

‘I've got your cheques here,' Susannah said.

‘Thanks,' said Laura.

She stepped through the wire and Susannah followed her into the quarters.

‘It must be nice out there,' said Susannah awkwardly. ‘I guess you can see the stars.'

Laura was standing in the sleep-out under the globe. She turned back and faced Susannah in the doorway. Laura's hair hung around her face and she smelt of tobacco. Smiling slightly, she said, ‘Yeah, there's a bit of lightning around too but Texas said it'll be a while before it rains.' She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it back from her forehead, glancing at the cheques and then at Susannah. ‘It'll be good to move on,' she said.

Susannah wondered whether she'd ever looked like Laura. There were no hard edges to a woman in love. Her mother would've been able to tell her, if she hadn't been too busy to notice, or perhaps distracted by the cancer that was going to kill her. These days her mother seemed to be forever in her mind. Susannah was allowing her thoughts to go to her instead of closing them off like she'd done in the early days of her grief. The intensity of her sadness was dispersing and separating itself from the other parts of her life.

‘Do you know what time John's leaving tomorrow?' asked Laura.

Susannah realised with a start that she might have been staring. God knows what Laura thought of her.

‘Um, probably around five,' she said, turning away. But then she paused in the doorway. ‘I hope everything works out.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Where would you like us to forward your mail?'

Laura's eyes flicked to the side of the door. She suddenly looked uncertain.

‘Oh, I guess just to the GPO in town.'

‘All right then. Bye.'

‘Bye.'

Sitting now with her cup of tea, the air in the kitchen beginning to heat up as the sun rose higher in the sky, she wondered what it would be like to be Laura. Is that what she wanted? To be leaving? Was she envious? She'd like to have been in her skin, to be able to feel what she was feeling, but she wouldn't like the uncertainty. Perhaps it was why she married John. So she didn't have to think about the future, about what was to come next. Marriage saved her from that and so did the children. She just hadn't realised there wouldn't be much room to breathe. Her mother would say she was thinking too much again. It was time to get the children up.

She drained her cup and rinsed it underneath the tap.

Ollie was awake. He had pulled the sheet from his bed and draped it across to the chest of drawers. He was sitting underneath it as though in a small tent.

‘What are you doing, Ollie?'

‘Shush,' he said in an exaggerated whisper.

‘It's okay, it's time to get up.'

Ollie looked disappointed as he watched his brother stir. He probably liked those moments to himself.

‘Come on, breakfast,' she said and helped them into their clothes.

Back in the kitchen she was trying not to think about the two who had left. Laura and Texas had made life bearable because even when she wasn't watching them, she knew they were there. They were like a story she could dip in and out of

Texas and now she wondered how it would end. She missed Irish too but she had no idea who he was. And she wasn't the only one. When she saw the police vehicle parked at the gate, she almost took off to the hills herself. But they just wanted to look through his belongings to establish his identity for the coroner. They didn't find very much. Some old Christmas cards from people without return addresses and photos without captions. There were mostly
Post
magazines from the 1960s but amongst them they found a note from the Commissioner of Native Affairs dated sometime in the 1940s. The ink had faded too much for it to be read clearly. It was headed
Notice of Objection
to Application for Certificate of Citizenship
and the person it referred to was a woman called Charlotte but the surname was impossible to decipher.

‘Why would he have something like this?' she asked.

The policeman who found it didn't know but the other one said, ‘They probably wanted to get married.'

‘So why would he need that?'

‘Well presumably he was Australian and with her being Aboriginal she'd have to be a citizen for them to be legally married.'

‘Really,' said Susannah, puzzled. ‘Surely she was more Australian than anybody?'

‘You'd think so.'

‘Why would it have been refused?'

The policeman shrugged and looked closely at the document. ‘They've got the reasons written here. You just can't read them. I've seen it before among some old records. Probably for associating with her family, other Aboriginal people. The idea was to get them to behave more like the whites.'

‘It's sort of crazy when you think about it,' said the other policeman. ‘There were some pretty undesirable white blokes around in those days.'

She remembered Irish's stories of men who held head-butting competitions and played Russian roulette for fun at Christmas; men who drank themselves to death before anything worse could happen. They were the frontier men who followed the cattle into this country.

When John found out that Irish had died, he shouted at her. ‘Don't you realise it is illegal not to report a death. You can't leave him to rot on the hill. It's not allowed.'

‘I don't see why not,' she said.

‘Well if everyone did that, the whole country would be filled with dead bodies.' He spoke as though he was talking to a child.

‘Probably already is,' she said. ‘Who would know?'

He looked at her strangely.

But the policemen had been very nice and waived the fine she'd incurred for not reporting his death immediately. One of them said there had to be some compensation for living so far from anywhere.

Her gaze returned to her children. She sighed loudly. Ned looked up from his bowl of cereal.

‘Mummy, can we take the duck swimming?'

‘Can we, can we?' squealed Ollie, wriggling off his chair.

‘When you finish your breakfast,' she said.

Texas But they were already out of their chairs and she didn't have the energy to make them come back. It was too hot. The fan was on full speed but all it did was make the air more noticeable. She really should put on a load of washing but instead she followed them out into the garden to where the plastic wading pool was resting against a tree. She pulled it down and placed it in the shade. She gave the boys the hose and turned on the tap and then went inside to get some towels. As she settled on a towel under the tree, she thought briefly of snakes and decided that with the amount of noise they were making, they'd scare them away. They sprayed her with the hose but she didn't object until it looked like the water might ruin the book she was reading. It was called
By Sundown
and she could tell from the cover that there would be a big shoot-out and the men would get their women. She'd only just started it. There was something about the books that compelled her to read on until the end. Perhaps it was the words ‘The End' that appealed; you knew everything would be put right by the time you finished reading the last page.

One of the women was called Laura and Susannah was nearly distracted from the story into thinking about the other Laura.

Laura was the pretty girl in the blue bonnet that was promised
to the deputy sheriff in Jonesburg, Kansas. Then there was Brooke
who dressed rather too colourfully for a respectable woman. She
had a superb figure with a tiny waist, rounded hips, long silken-clad
legs and full breasts and had just arrived in town on the
stage coach.

Every story was the same. There were two women, one of whom was desired by all the men and the other who was the good little wife. It could be her and Laura, except the other way round, but Susannah didn't feel like the good wife either.

The deputy, called Clint Messenger, was the sixth man to wear
the badge within the space of a year. The others had either been
shot or ran out of town by the Texas cowboys. And the news was
the cowboys were returning to Jonesburg—lean, lithe-hipped men
with tied-down guns, some of them as wild and unpredictable as
the longhorns they hazed up over the Texas Panhandle.