East of Outback (29 page)

Duncan Colfax nodded. “Where you going? Wagga?”

“Yes, sir. Anything I can get there for you?”

He shook his head. “Ever hear of the Spanish influenza?”

“Yes, sir. I was eleven when the epidemic hit Sydney after the war. Hannah was about seven, I guess. My father and another sister were sick with it. The rest of us escaped.”

“I was down in Cooma. Left Winnie and the kids alone to volunteer for ambulance service. Buried a lot of strong young men. Lots of babies, too. Babies were the hardest.”

“Most of what I remember about it were the restrictions and quarantine. If there was flu in your household they put a yellow flag out front and you couldn’t leave your own house until someone came through and certified that everyone was over it. Flu in your family meant you weren’t allowed to ride the trains.”

Mr. Colfax nodded. “In Cooma, too. The auxiliaries brought food around to the quarantined homes. Shops and businessmen supplied victuals. Did a lot of the cooking in the hotel kitchens. Everybody just sort of worked together. Don’t find that kind of community spirit these days. Now everybody’s listening to that jazz music and dancing. And the women wear them flimsy clothes. Everybody’s thinking about themselves, I reckon.”

“Yes, sir.” Colin really didn’t want to sit talking about the past. He wanted to get his skins to town before any more of them spoiled. “Sure you don’t need anything in Wagga Wagga?”

“Fact is, I need everything.” The man waved a hand gracelessly. “In late ‘19 I took this selection as a Soldier Settler. It looked so good. So promising. Raise your kids out in the country where it’s healthy, and they’ll grow up strong. Be your own man.”

“My father said when the government opened the land to selection by returning servicemen, it made a huge mistake.”

“Wise man, your father. I’m so deep in debt I’ll never see the sun again. And for nothing. If things don’t turn around fast I’ll lose the land as well. Six years of endless work and deprivation for nothing. And no prospects to look forward to.”

Was this an overture for a loan? Was this man about to put the bite on Colin for his rabbit skin money?

Maybe not. Colin drained his cup, waiting further comment. None came. Colin excused himself and left.

Hannah followed him to the truck and climbed in. Half an hour later she had fallen asleep, curled up in the corner with her head thunking against the window.

By late afternoon it started to rain. Only one of the windshield wipers worked, and it wasn’t on the driver’s side. The road fast became a greasy quagmire. Other traffic churned up the mud. If this kept up, they’d get stuck for sure.

They reached town very late in the day and Colin faced a new set of problems. He had never driven in town before. Even a sleepy town like Wagga Wagga made him nervous, partly because flood damage closed down parts of streets. He couldn’t tell when he turned onto a street whether he would be able to drive to the end of it. Colin purchased a room for Hannah at the inn on the corner. To save money, he spent the night in the truck, lulled asleep to the sound of rain drumming on the roof.

______

The broker was late coming in next morning. He finally appeared past ten o’clock. Grumbling, he bought the skins for four pounds two and complained with justification that they were not properly baled. He complained too about having to shovel mud out of his warehouses near the river, and lamented the damage the flooding had caused.

Determined as only a thirteen-year-old girl can be, Hannah bought her trousers, which meant she also had to buy a shirt. Colin added a hat to her purchases to save her poor nose from peeling further. Then she insisted on buying herself a Bible. There went another two bob six right there.

It had begun to rain again—too late now to start back, for the truck’s headlamps didn’t work well, not to mention the wiper. Colin put Hannah in a room again and curled up on the truck seat to wait out the rain.

Next morning they stocked up on food, bought hay for the horse, filled the petrol tank and headed north. The road had not improved, in fact, it was worse. With the terse explanation, “I’ve done this before,” Hannah took over the wheel. She blasted through the miry ruts and drove alongside the track at the worst spots. Colin had to admit that for all the rain and mud, it was a miracle they weren’t bogged yet.

“Colin? Do you know where we’re going next?”

“No, but we still have the strychnine and we can probably buy those apples from Mr. Colfax cheaply. Then find a station that wasn’t affected by that migration madness and use up our poison bait, I suppose. And on to Sydney.”

“So you still want to make some more money before we go home.”

“Combining this check with our other money, we’re down to six quid and some. I think we need one more job.”

After lunch Hannah turned the wheel back over to Colin. She settled down as comfortably as possible in the passenger’s seat and pulled out her new Bible. She opened it carefully in the middle, then worked the spine as she had learned in school, opening it to the right of the middle, to the left, a few more pages to the right, a few more to the left. She took great pride in her newest purchase.

Then she closed the book on her lap, running her hand over the soft cover. Opening it at random, she began to read aloud from the book of Haggai. Colin had never even heard of Haggai. He suggested she read silently. In less than an hour she fell asleep again, and her Bible slid off her lap.

They arrived back at the Colfaxes’ at half past five. Colin felt very weary. His eyes burned and his head hurt. He parked the truck by the barn and slid out of the seat. “You gunner fix supper, Hannah?”

“If you’ll build the fire. Why is it so quiet around here?”

“I was wondering that. Let’s unload the mare’s hay so Mr. Colfax can use his truck when he needs to.” Colin could not have felt less like unloading hay. He tackled the job alone, while Hannah took some things out for their supper, then wandered over to the paddock to check on the animals.

Before he finished, she was at his side, tugging on his shirt. “Colin, you’ve got to come look at the sheep.”

He frowned. “Now what?” He followed her to the barn paddock and climbed the fence to study the shorn creatures.

Hannah hopped up beside him. “They look like they haven’t eaten in days. Their flanks are all caved in. And their water trough’s dry again. I filled it before we left for town ‘cause it was empty. Nobody’s done anything for these sheep the whole time we’ve been here.”

“They aren’t our responsibility.”

“They’re suffering! They’re hungry and thirsty, and there’s no protection from the sun and rain in this paddock.”

“They aren’t ours, Hannah.” He jumped down off the fence and walked to the house, crossing the wide yard. Hannah’s blind insistence sometimes rankled him.

No one answered Colin’s knock. He heard coughing in the lean-to out back; Edgar must not be over the influenza yet. He waited and tried again. A few feet beyond the screen, four-year-old Ruth appeared. She stood staring at him, bleary-eyed.

“Is your mum or pop here, Ruth? Or Uncle Edgar?”

She shook her head
no
and stood there.

The back of his neck prickled. He knocked again.

A chair clattered in the kitchen. With shuffling steps Mr. Colfax finally appeared. He just looked at Colin a moment. “You’re back. Truck okay? Come on in.”

Colin stepped inside. “Your truck ran fine, sir, and we filled the tank before we left town.”

“You filled the tank? Shouldn’ta done that. Come on back.” He turned and walked unsteadily to the kitchen. He flopped down into a chair at the table, ignoring the chair he had tipped over.

Colin picked up the toppled chair and sat in it.

Mr. Colfax’s eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks flushed behind a three-day stubble. He had not changed his clothes since Colin left. He still coughed painfully.

“You don’t look well, sir.”

“We need—we need your help, boy.” The man seemed to look steadily into Colin’s eyes for the first time. “Take the truck over to Griffith. Look up Dr. Newsome. Got that? There’s a couple of sisters and midwives there, but find Newsome. Tell him to come down here to our place. Tell him it’s the flu. He might want something on account. Tell him I’ll pay him when he gets here.”

Colin heard a timid knock out front. The door creaked.

A chorus of coughing erupted somewhere at the back of the house.

“If he won’t drive his car down, bring him in the truck.”

“Yes, sir.” As Colin stood up Hannah appeared in the kitchen doorway, her shirt covered with wisps of hay.

“You say you filled the tank.” Mr. Colfax frowned. “There’s a hole in it. Past half full, the petrol leaks away. The gauge’ll be near empty. We keep the petrol in a drum in back. Take that along and refill the truck tank from that if you need to.”

“Yes, sir. Where do you keep the drum?”

“I said. Back of the truck.”

‘There isn’t any drum in back of the truck.”

“Edgar said he brought three drums.”

“No, sir. Sheep, the mare, Hannah and me. That’s all that was in the back.”

Mr. Colfax stared at him. “He couldn’t have forgot them. He must’ve forgot them.” The man gazed glassy-eyed at nothing in particular. ‘They’re still in Wagga then. Don’t matter no more. It’s all over anyway. I’ve given it away. It’s all over.”

“Mr. Colfax, is your wife sick, too?”

He nodded. “And all the babies ‘cept Ruth.”

“And Edgar isn’t any better?”

“Edgar died yesterday.”

Hannah clapped her hands over her mouth.

The man crumpled forward in another vicious spate of coughing. His nose and mouth dripped blood.

What could Colin do? What could he say?

Hannah still stood in the doorway, staring at the man. Colin stepped in front of her to break her gaze and piloted her out into the dark front room.

“Colin—” She wrapped her arms around him, and buried her head into his shoulder. Ruth was tugging at her skirt, and Hannah looked to Colin for direction. They followed where the child led them, silently through the gloomy house.

Colin gasped when they passed a dark side room. Edgar still lay in the dank stillness, his skin blue, his mouth relaxed and open. Colin quietly dropped a curtain over the doorway.

Gerald, Bryan and Mitzy were all crowded in one bed in a corner room. They just lay there, listless. Ruth led them to another room where Mrs. Colfax lay on her side curled around her baby. Ruth climbed into the bed with her. She pushed her away. “No, dear. You go with these people until I’m better. They can take care of you.” Her vacant eyes turned to Colin. “Thank God you’re here.”

Thank God? All this death and misery, and you thank God?
Everything in Colin’s being rebelled against such a thought. Here was a very sick family facing financial failure, and God didn’t seem to be anywhere around. Thank God, indeed.

Hannah lifted Ruth from her mother’s bed, in spite of the child’s wailing. At least it was a healthy cry. “Come,” said Hannah, “I’ll bet you’re hungry. So am I. Let’s make dinner for your mum and family. You can help me.”

Colin hurried back out to the front room. He turned to Hannah. “I’ll go for help. Think you can feed them and keep things going here?”

She nodded. “I suppose you’re upset with me, Colin, but I had to do it.”

“Yair, I know. You threw the mare’s hay to those sheep.” He snorted, more in admiration than in disgust. “I’ll get some more in Griffith.”

“While you’re gone I’ll go out and make sure the bait’s all taken up out of that northeast paddock. We can turn the sheep out there when you get back, all right?”

“All right. But I’m taking the mare with me. If the truck bogs or runs out of petrol, I don’t want to have to walk.”

She nodded and stepped back, taking charge of her responsibilities like a woman. As Colin walked out into the damp and lonely evening, he heard Hannah’s soft, soothing words to poor, frightened little Ruth.

He ran the mare up into the back of the truck, and tossed the saddle into the cab beside him to keep it out of the rain. As an afterthought he grabbed the tin candle lantern out of the barn and four apples. He was hungry, howling hungry. He’d eat in Griffith, even if it meant begging at someone’s door.

The track north was rough, hardly a path. Darkness fell and Colin could barely make out the way. Rain pelted the windshield. The surviving wiper disappeared with a snap. Its broken arm swung back and forth, etching a great arc in the windshield before Colin could find the switch to turn it off. He tried driving with his head out the window. Fumes boiled up from behind the cab aggravating his headache. He had to pull his head in.

The truck coughed and sputtered, drifting to a silent halt. In the dark and the rain Colin could not begin to guess how far he had come or how far he had to go. Disgusted, he ran the mare off the back and saddled her. In the nick of time he remembered to bring the tin candle lantern.

She was stiff and sluggish getting off tonight. He had to work to keep her on the track; she kept wanting to turn back. It took her a good two miles to settle to the trail, stretch her neck out and shift into a ground-eating walk.

Colin was soaked through to his skin and freezing cold. This late in the spring, as hot as it had been last week, it was hard to believe it could be this dreadfully cold. He started shivering uncontrollably. His headache refused to fade, and the constant motion in the saddle seemed to make it worse.

When, an hour later, he was still riding in total blackness, Colin halted the mare to rest her. He loosened the saddle enough to pull out one of two saddle blankets. He left the thinner of the two beneath her saddle to protect her from chafing, and wrapped the larger one across his shoulders to fend off the chilling rain.

After a short time of rest, he lighted the candle lantern and opened its windbreaker door. With some glimpse of the track now, he urged the mare to a jog. When she started to overheat he pulled her back to a walk. Sometime later he dozed off, and awoke with a start when he realized the blanket had slid off his back. The candle lantern had also gone out. Striking a match, he discovered the candle had burned to the socket. Without it, there was no hope of finding the blanket; it wasn’t worth going back. The mare was extremely warm again. Was she working too hard?