Finding Kerra Read online

  ‘How can you be so mean to her? She’s just a kid. Who do you think you are?’ I was shaking and even the red flush moving up Blake’s neck didn’t stop me.

  ‘Who do I think I am? Listen to you. This is my sister we’re talking about, one that I have a certain responsibility for.’

  ‘There’s always a different way to handle things—talking to her if she makes unwise choices. Having some trust in her.’ You’re unfeeling, I wanted to say. ‘Can’t you imagine what she’s going through? She has no mother...’ I hesitated. My anger was wavering. I never could keep it up for long. Perhaps he could tell for he explained as if I couldn’t hear properly.

  ‘That’s exactly why she needs training. You don’t understand what drought means out here. No water means no cheque at the end of the financial year, no money for living expenses.’

  He had to be exaggerating. ‘What’d she do, drain the dam?’ My sarcasm was no match for his steady reply.

  ‘She left the hose on, while she was watering the vegies. All morning. She’s been told to hold it at all times.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have done it on purpose.’ Just as I said that I remembered her walking into the dam.

  ‘She’s a scatterbrain. A person like that could ruin our whole life up here.’ He turned to go.

  ‘Blake, Kerra is ten years old. She’s only a child. There’s got to be more behind all this than a tap left on. I can’t believe a guy your age can be so strict with her and think you’re doing your best—’

  Blake swung around to face me. ‘You can mind your own bloody business. It’s the way things are done here. You’ll up and go in a few weeks and everything will be left the same as it always was, so get off my case.’

  We stood there, glaring at each other. I couldn’t believe I was having this argument with him at all. The thought strangely calmed me, and I heard myself saying, ‘All right, but I hope it doesn’t have to happen again.’ I flounced off to find Kerra.

  It took a while, as calling her name never brought her, but in the end I found her under my bed. ‘Come out now.’ This time she looked as if she’d been crying, but I sensed she didn’t want me to ask.

  ‘How does the shouting make you feel?’ I said instead, hoping she wouldn’t freeze me out.

  She sat on the edge of my bed. ‘Blake always hurts my feelings, but I never tell him.’ I bit my lip at the puny defiance, imagining the pain that must have been strangling her inside.

  ‘Have you told your father how he picks on you, Kerra?’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Why not? He’d stop it.’

  ‘He’s not here all the time. Blake might hit me.’ I was shocked that she’d think that. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘I’m bad. Dad might get cross with me too.’ She thought for a moment, and I saw the fear, then the anger chase across her features. ‘If I had a knife I’d cut Blake’s nose off, then no one would like him anymore.’

  I hugged her close to me; it was the only thing I could think of doing. Her raw feelings and words scared the daylights out of me. They hurt me too because I cared for Blake. How could he be one person to her and another to me? And how could such a little girl think herself so bad? Elly never did, only if she disobeyed Mum or Dad, but it didn’t last long. Most of the time she was happily singing, eating or playing with Basil our cat. Kerra didn’t even seem excited by special food. I’d tried so many ways of cooking lamb; even chocolate desserts. I only ever got a cool ‘thank you’ with none of Elly’s exuberant passion. So far it was only the stories that Kerra showed any enthusiasm for.

  As if she was following my thoughts, Kerra pulled away from me, scrambled under my bed for a few moments, then emerged to settle herself on my pillows with a furry bundle under one arm.

  ‘Tell me another story.’

  She sounded controlling but I was in a mood to be gracious. After all, I wouldn’t like to be shouted at by a six-foot brother who, to Kerra, must seem much bigger.

  ‘Kerra, why did you leave the hose on?’

  She didn’t look at me. ‘I had to find Sasha. She’s going to have her kittens soon. If she has them where I don’t know, Blake’ll drown ’em. We have enough farm cats.’

  My eyes closed. I chose not to comment on drowning kittens. ‘Why didn’t you turn the hose off?’

  ‘I thought it’d only take a minute.’ Then she looked up at me, a plea in her eyes. ‘A story. Please, Jaime.’ I stared into her eyes; saw the earnestness there, or was it fear? And then I understood. She wanted to escape.

  7

  There wasn’t time to tell a story that afternoon as Blake’s dad knocked, asking if I could go with them to help set up the shearing quarters at Bulcanna. Kerra didn’t want to come so I left her in the lounge at her desk doing her school sets. I walked down to the Townsend’s old house that had been used as shearing quarters the year before.

  Blake was loading wooden beds and firm new mattresses onto the ute. The ute looked a bit like Matt’s with a huge bull bar, aerials that would be seen above sand dunes, extra lights and even a winch.

  I was uncomfortable with Blake at first, wondering if he’d speak to me after the way I’d had a go at him about Kerra, but he seemed relaxed. ‘We do the shearing at Bulcanna. This old place is a bit run down for quarters now,’ he explained, dumping more beds in the tray. I was given a rag to wipe the dust off.

  ‘Shearers are pretty fussy blokes,’ was Mr Townsend’s observation. ‘They have a union.’ I had the impression he’d rather be checking the water run or the Dog Fence than carting beds around.

  We managed to all squeeze into the cab of the ute, me in the middle, knocking my head on a handle screwed into the roof. ‘That’s for turning the spotlight around.’ I glanced up and Blake smiled at me. Amazing how he seemed to have forgotten our argument. It was still on my mind, forming a fog I had to grope through to reach him.

  He gestured upwards. ‘It’s on the roof outside. For when we shoot roos.’

  ‘You shoot roos?’

  ‘Sure. The government has a quota, so we do some of it for them. Fifty a night sometimes. Gives us some pocket money.’

  There were so many things to get used to. Blake even offered to take me roo shooting, indicating the rifle mounted on the ute wall behind my head. I doubted I’d go. I had seen enough guns during my life in Pakistan and especially when I was taken to Afghanistan last holidays. At the oddest moments a vision of Liana floated through my mind, the way she looked just before she was shot. We were running, hand in hand, to the safety of the fort gate—escaping. It was too easy to die.

  The shearing quarters at the next station were basic but apparently passed certain regulations that those at Mulga Spring didn’t. I stood at the doorway of the kitchen, took in the screened-in meat hanging space, the three stoves, freezer and fridge.

  ‘Who does the cooking?’

  Visions of me—or the horror, Richelle and me doing it together—crowded my mind.

  ‘Chill.’ Blake was undoing ropes on the ute. ‘They bring a cook.’

  I watched him and his dad replace the old spring beds in the dormitories with the wooden ones.

  ‘Come with me.’ Blake motioned towards him and put his arm around me as he guided me to the shearing shed. ‘I can just tell you’re full of questions.’

  ‘I was just wondering about the beds.’ And that wasn’t all I wanted to know—like how to broach the subject of Kerra?

  We walked up the ramp of the huge shed and the smell hit me like a physical blow. Smells, more than any other sense, make me remember things, and that woolly, greasy stink—which must have been ingrained in the walls, the slats and bales—conjured up an Afghan carpet shop. I touched one of the rails as I saw a flash of the Peshawar carpet shop I’d been locked in earlier this year.

  ‘See these, Jaime?’

  I started, staring at the six shearing poles, all in
a row, ready for a race to begin. The attachments and combs were on a shelf behind.

  ‘The men bend all day, six guys will do a thousand sheep a day between them.’

  My eyebrows went up. That many?

  ‘They don’t stop for much, get really agro if their quota of sheep isn’t kept up. Their backs take a lot of strain. Hence the good beds.’

  The sun hung low, shining weak rays between the rails, and I moved to the back of the shed, past the wool press. There was that lavender colour again, as though the sun had wiped paint-stained fingers over its weary eyes. Blake was right behind me. There were some things I could feel before I saw them; Blake’s presence was like that for me. Just then I needed to have everything right.

  ‘I’m sorry about before.’ I was sorry about making a rift between us. I wasn’t sorry for sticking up for Kerra.

  ‘It’s okay.’ I wondered if that was his way of saying ‘sorry’ too. It didn’t feel like it and I almost reminded him that Kerra wouldn’t have left a hose running on purpose. I turned slightly to see his face and I left it alone. I didn’t want another fight just then.

  ‘It’s hard to tell with her, Jaime. She can do some damn weird things.’ He sighed then as though shaking his thoughts aside. ‘Anyway, what about you? What do you think about living up here?’ I turned to face him fully, willing to talk about anything safe right then.

  ‘It’s great, like a different country with its own rules. I mean, you wave at everyone you see, especially on the roads, and talk to people even if they’re guys or else they’ll think you’re a snob. It’s almost desert but it’s beautiful, the weather’s different and the land feels friendly.’ I glanced at him wondering if he’d understand. ‘I could walk anywhere by myself and I’d be safe. I’ve never felt like that—’ I stopped, surprising myself.

  ‘Yeah.’ Blake’s voice was low. He sounded proud and leaned in closer. ‘You’re so used to living in different places, you could fit in anywhere.’ I looked up. His eyes were shining and my lips parted as I smiled. Just then we heard a shrill cooee from Mr Townsend.

  Blake didn’t move straight away. His face was centimetres from mine and I held my breath. ‘Time to go,’ he whispered.

  That night I didn’t get to think too much about what was happening in my head about Blake—like how I should reconcile my feelings for him and his treatment of his sister—because Kerra was hungry for the story she missed out on. It was becoming a bedtime ritual; the poor kid probably didn’t get told many stories. I settled myself on the pillows and Kerra sat beside me under the quilt while I thought of one. Would she relate to living in a primitive mountain village in the foot hills of the Hindu Kush Ranges?

  ‘This is a story from the Kingdom of Chitral where we had that family holiday.’

  ‘Where you got snowed in.’

  ‘Yes.’ So she did listen, and she remembered. I’d told her that story the day after I’d arrived. ‘Do you know what a polo game is?’

  She nodded. ‘Like hockey except on horseback. Matt and Blake play it sometimes.’

  ‘In Afghanistan, where I was in January, they often use a goat instead of a ball.’

  She frowned at me but didn’t decry cruelty to goats like Elly would have.

  ‘In this story they use a ball.’ I decided to change the original story to suit her, making the main character Begal’s sister rather than his mother. ‘Long ago in a little mountain village in Chitral’—I heard Kerra’s sigh as she got comfortable, not so close that I could put an arm around her, but closer than usual, a ringed-finger touching my bangle—‘there lived the captain of the polo team, Begal. He was as strong and steadfast as the snowy mountains of Chitral. His horse was the fastest in the land and was named Bumburush, which means thunder.’

  Kerra didn’t snort like Elly when I told her the name of the horse.

  I continued, ‘Begal’s team always won and his fame reached the ears of the king. The king challenged Begal to a game. Now Begal’s sister, Gul—which means flower—was not only very brave, but wise. “The king is mean-spirited and cruel,” she cautioned. “He will not be happy if you win.” But Begal dreamed of winning as he prepared the black outfit he wore in polo games.

  ‘The next day the horsemen faced each other across the field, their polo sticks pointed at the sky. The king struck the ball first but Begal blocked him from scoring a goal. After hours of galloping over the field with the clanging of sticks, Begal hit the ball through the goal post. The villagers cheered, but the king scowled and ordered a rematch for the following day. Gul was concerned but Begal was sure the king would finally see his worth.’

  ‘The king’s jealous,’ Kerra explained.

  ‘Late that night Begal had not returned home, so Gul went into the moonlight to search for him. She found him under a tree. At first she thought he’d fallen asleep, then she noticed the gash in his shirt over his heart. She wept over him. Then she pulled him over her back like a load of wood and took him home.’

  Kerra’s thumb popped out. ‘She’s very strong.’ I stared at her. When I told this story to Elly, her eyes had teared up. ‘Oh no!’ Elly had cried. ‘Her poor brother.’

  ‘Gul is used to working hard,’ I said, ‘but she’s very sad.’ I watched Kerra for a response but she said nothing.

  I continued, trying not to show how rattled I was. ‘The next morning the whole village assembled on the polo field. The king’s men trotted out first. When the village players arrived, Begal led them, riding Bumburush. He was dressed in black as usual, but a scarf hid his face.’

  Kerra looked up at me. ‘So he wasn’t dead after all? He got better?’ Did I detect relief in her tone? Or not? I smiled nervously. Perhaps this story wasn’t a good one for her, either.

  ‘The king watched Begal in shock, then the game began. Begal played with his usual skill during the afternoon and amid the shouts of the onlookers, he finally scored the winning goal. Everyone thought the king would acknowledge Begal’s victory and honour him. But he just stared as Begal reined in Bumburush. The whole field fell quiet as Begal unwound his scarf. There was a sudden uproar. It wasn’t Begal—it was his sister!’

  Kerra shifted in closer, so I put an arm around her with as little movement as possible. I was surprised because she usually squirmed away from a hug. Then I realised she was more absorbed than I thought. Maybe she was handling the story after all.

  ‘“Why did you murder my brother?” Gul’s voice rang out clear and steady. “He was happy and good. Today an untrained girl has defeated you, so it was not Begal, who was too skilful, but you who was too weak. Begal would have helped you become a better player than he himself.”

  ‘Bumburush breathed out in the cold air as Gul spoke again. “You may be a king but you are a very small man.”

  ‘Then Gul went home to bury her brother. The king blushed in shame. He sent an embroidered coat for Begal’s burial and he never went to that village again, nor did he collect taxes from them. They say that a sister can be brave and have more honour than a king.’

  I checked to see how Kerra was doing. Elly had cried at the burying bit. But Kerra seemed unmoved. Then I remembered. She wouldn’t see the point of getting upset over a brother dying; she didn’t even love hers. The thumb slipped out at my silence and she looked like Elly would during a long spell between courses at teatime. I wondered if I’d be able to keep this up: satisfying Kerra’s appetite for whatever it was she found in the stories. What if they didn’t measure up?

  8

  It was the morning of the muster. I was scared witless. What if I didn’t make the grade? I touched my half-ring and thought of the adventures Liana and I had had in Afghanistan. Surely after escaping from a village on horseback in the middle of the night I could ride in a muster. Kerra was nowhere around when I woke, even though she’d slept in my room the night before. I knew Blake wouldn’t approve of my babying her like that, b
ut she’d dropped off after incessantly asking for more stories. I was too tired to comply but realised I’d have to be firmer with her or my life would be overrun with her demands. Though the rough time she’d had did make me sympathetic.

  I’d just pulled on my jeans and Mrs Townsend’s boots when her photo caught my eye. The warm smile was the same but I wondered what was behind the eyes. What would she think of the way Blake and Kerra treated each other? There was a certain strength in her features that made me suspect she wouldn’t have stood it for long. It was like she was communing with me. Standing there, staring at her photo sure made me feel liable, as if I needed to make a difference. But how?

  I was still thinking about it as I walked to the kitchen, wondering how Blake and Kerra would let their relationship affect their lives when they were older. An image of a twenty-year-old Kerra still sucking her thumb fled before the reality of them both in the kitchen. Blake was making coffee, oblivious to his sister as if she didn’t exist. Kerra was calmly eating cereal, dressed for the muster. I hadn’t realised she was coming too.

  ‘I can ride with you then,’ I said to her, just to make conversation. This wasn’t an easy task unless Kerra was in the right mood. Nor was she the type to run up and give you a hug like Elly. Blake answered me, not Kerra. ‘She could outride you, I’m afraid, Jaime.’

  I stared at him—this was the first positive thing he’d said about Kerra since I’d been there.

  He glanced at Kerra. ‘But don’t worry, she’ll stick with you.’ It was a statement of authority, not Oh Kerra, do you mind?—and I could tell by the pout on Kerra’s face that if it hadn’t have been me, she would have refused on principle.

  In the stables I did what Blake had taught me: rubbing down Rainmaker, putting on the saddle, doing up the buckles. Everyone was doing the same, even Richelle and Matt, while the horses shifted their feet and mouthed on the bits like mounts in a Banjo Patterson poem. It was as though they knew what was coming and couldn’t wait. No one spoke. It was eerie, like a ritual, and it was early; the sun hadn’t even painted pink on the horizon.