Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears

able to hatch a nest of eggs between them.
    â€˜Lucky alright,’ added Ralda. ‘Cos later I had to go over in a dead faint. But after, when it got real cold, I was the one that thought to make baby a bed out of a shoebox. Warmed up the bottom of it with rocks left in stove. The look of bliss on its little face.’
    â€˜The cat what got the cream.’ Reenie put one of her fingers into the baby’s hand. ‘Have you seen her thumbs? Like a little doll is this Lainey. And she’s a knockout, Rol. Compared to all the babies I’ve ever seen born.’
    Squashed in the back between Roley and his sisters, briefly Noah remembered other things. Lying up on that big table with the river of pain opening into a flood inside, how could thoughts not have come of the other one she’d already birthed on Flaggy Creek alone?
    Cantering Flat, Tin Kettle Crossing, Oakey, Breakfast and Heron Creek—listing in her mind all the places the butter box baby must’ve floated past. Still alive or sometimes dead. The possibilities shifting around in the glow of pain. But she never, not once, screamed out. Just in case Ral or Reen ever did get a bloke. Just in case she wouldn’t ever be able to stop the scream.
    Lucky alright too, remembered Noah, that none of the sootiness she thought she’d seen in that first set of tiny hands and feet had gotten onto Lainey. Him what she called in secret That Little Mister. Or Mister Littlie. Its arms. All blacky-blue under the moon. What happened to them as in her rush she’d squashed him in. How in her imaginings its arms always lifting up anyway in a useless attempt to flap away the big black crow picking out its little Uncle Nipper eyes.
    With Lainey, once Noah’s love began to rush out like her out-of-control milk, she’d even wished she had a pair of ears that she could’ve pinned back at Reenie and Ral. Tell them to leave off. So that for a moment she could be alone with her girl.
    â€˜Thought we might come back to Wirri tomorrow, Rol,’ said his father, pulling the celebratory mood into another, more serious topic. ‘Bit of news that’s really gunna interest you. Just found out then that Withrows are sellin not only all their workhorses—got emselves a tractor—but also the old Chalcedite mare.’
    â€˜What, not Chalcey Girl?’ asked Roley.
    â€˜That’s the one. Old Gurlie. If you’re still thinkin about gettin our own Nancarrow team happenin, could do a lot worse. Even if only got a few foals left in her.’
    â€˜I hear that in her time she’d fly at anything and usually get over it.’
    â€˜Oh,’ said his father, ‘I remember her at Grafton when she was in her prime. She was a dashing, big bold jumper.’
    â€˜Sure she’s not gunna be too old to breed?’
    â€˜They say it’s only bad luck she’s not in foal now. Took her to a young colt that hadn’t quite worked out what’s what.’
    Roley looked out to Mr Wingfield’s farm and to the old white carthorse which seemed to have been standing right there against the blue sky since he was a boy. He saw the bright green peep of their own barley paddocks coming through up ahead. Now that he was coming home a father, the green looked brighter, luckier than anyone else’s barley. We’re like that, he was thinking. All teeming and green with the golden grain getting ready to come.
    â€˜Also said they might let go of Seabreeze, ’ventually.’
    â€˜More mouths to feed,’ butted in Min. ‘Can see One Tree’s gunna fast turn into one of them dairies with five cows and forty-four horses if we don’t watch out.’
    Now Noah entered the conversation. ‘Your dad’s right, you know.’ In Roley’s absence she had struck up a good friendship with Sept. ‘Chance will never come again.’
    â€˜And, Mum, listen to this,’ said Roley. ‘At that last