Only Killers and Thieves(26)
They leaped from their beds and were still hugging and jumping around the floor when Mother called from the other room. Through the curtain they stumbled, jostling and chattering, to where she stood by the open front door. She ran to embrace them, touching them fleetingly as if to prove to herself this wasn’t some dream, then together they bundled out into the downpour and found Father standing half-naked in the yard. He was wearing only his white long johns and with his pale body and sunburned arms looked spectral in the rain-washed darkness. He wasn’t moving. The water had flattened his hair and his trousers and he was gazing off toward the paddocks in the north.
The others ran down the front steps. They tilted back their heads, opened their mouths, stuck out their tongues; Mother raised her nightgown and danced a little jig. Already the ground was churning under their feet and squelching between their toes, the rain fat and thick, proper wet rain, the kind of droplets that promised a million more. Tommy could feel them bursting on his skin. He fell still and closed his eyes and stretched out his hands and tried to count them as they hit. It was impossible. Like counting seeds. Around him the others were still laughing and shouting and jumping like fools, but when Tommy opened his eyes he saw that Father wasn’t with them anymore. He was walking slowly across the yard, as if drawn to something far away in the scrubs. The rain nearly swallowed him. It enveloped him until only the white of his long johns could be seen. Then they too were gone, as on the edge of the clearing, Father fell to the ground on his knees.
*
It rained for three full days, then in the sunshine of the fourth the earth steamed like it burned. Blankets of smoke rising and drifting across the ground, the air moist and close and fresh. The buildings creaked and ticked. The bush crackled as it dried and teemed with life, insects and animals awakening to a new world and curious to discover what had changed.
Even Father seemed restored. The rain had energized him. He was still drinking—in celebration now, he claimed—but he spent his days jotting numbers in his pocket book, drawing sketches, making plans. He talked about digging a series of irrigation ditches, running them off the creek, and about the crops they could try if the rains kept up, once the soil was fertile and damp. They would take up dairying again, he thought; he would clean the old separator, get it working, make their prospects less reliant on beef. Easily done, so long as they all pitched in, though it was clear Mother and Mary would get the bulk of that work. Tommy teased Mary about her elevation to milkmaid; she countered that if she was a milkmaid, what did that make him? Milkman? Milk boy? Milk master, maybe? And just like that, they were all laughing and hoping together again.
Before the rum ran out and Father got his plans straight and put them properly to work, Tommy and Billy set off for Wallabys one day before noon. The waterhole wouldn’t be full, but there was a chance it might be deep enough for paddling, which was no bad thing since neither of them could really swim. Mother and Father were little better, so it had fallen to Arthur to give them the scant instruction they’d received. Tommy still remembered the first time he saw him swimming. As the two boys floundered, Arthur had slid through the water as smooth and graceful as an eel.
It was a two-hour ride, southwest through a country reborn by the rain. Gone was the sepia dust haze, replaced by a rich palette of green and gold and brown. The cicadas were out, screaming with joy; cockatoos chorused in the trees. Across the plains they spied emus standing motionless in the scrub, their fat feathered bodies blending with the fat tussock grass, noticeable only by the rubbery contortion of their necks, dipping up and down. Roos loped along, pausing to forage, or reclined in little mobs in the shade. The boys didn’t try hunting them—they were too far away, the meat would only spoil—and instead rode happily together side by side in the sunshine, talking and joking and arguing over the best route to take.
Wallabys was a waterhole you had to know about, invisible from the flat: at a gallop you’d be airborne before you realized you’d left the ground. A deep horseshoe crater, sheer-walled, like a sinkhole in the earth, the walls layered in orange and ochre and red, chalky-white stains lining the rock face like scars. Birds nested in the crevices and shat onto the ledges below; trees grew improbably from the escarpment, twisting and reaching into the void. Water dribbled from an opening in the northern wall, falling weakly into a pool sparkling in the sunlight and nestled in a basin of rocks and trees and resurgent regrowth.
They rode around the crater’s edge, peering over the drop, then followed the slope down to where a copse of trees hid a short canyon passable only on foot. They tied the horses and went through, clambering over boulders until they emerged onto a smooth, wide slab, where they stood looking out over the glittering pool, the waterfall drumming softly, the sun painting a rainbow in its spray.
“Well?” Billy said. “What d’you reckon?”
“Well nothing. Let’s go.”
They set down their bags and rifles, stripped, and waded into the water, cool at first but good once they were in. At its deepest it reached only to their chests; they ducked beneath the surface and came up gasping, splashed and spat arcs into the air, took turns beneath the waterfall, which even at a dribble pummeled their heads and shoulders sore. Afterward they pulled on their trousers and lay baking on the rocks, each to his own slab, then sat together on a ledge, their feet dangling, sharing the tucker-bag Mother had made.
“Should bring Mary next time,” Tommy said, chewing.