Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears Page B

her arms. ‘Knows her dadda. Reckon she’d be going right along with you if she could. Think old Gurlie will jack up at bridge?’
    â€˜We’ll be right.’ Then Roley took his daughter into both hands and whooshed her this way and that. When a bit of milk came up, he grabbed up an apron and handed her back.
    â€˜Just like a man,’ said Noah. ‘Make a mess and leave the room.’
    Roley grinned. ‘If I’m not back by four, Noey, you might have to tack a few shoes on for the Kellys. Bert might be bringing a couple of ponies over. Just wants the fronts done. I should be back in time.’
    Noah just nodded. Normally she would’ve been unfazed, for as her father used to say it was as if she was born on an anvil; there wasn’t any hoof too tricky for her to get a shoe on. Today, though, was different. Maybe she was wrong, but she didn’t think so. Not going on the watery feeling of wanting to sick up her guts every time Ral or Min fried an egg after milking. Number two was on the way. Still, at least with any Kelly horse you could be sure of placid. Maybe she’d just have to hammer and puke, hammer and puke, and pretend to the boy holding them that she’d et something bad for breakfast.
    At about five, as the pigs came squealing and galloping up to the bails early for their slops, Noah heard the first sound of thunder. Ooh those clouds coming up over the back hill looked mean alright, she thought, bonking the boar on the nose with a bit of paling because she hadn’t finished emptying the buckets into the trough. Well, at least Kellys wouldn’t be coming over. Her legs ached and still a million other little jobs to get finished.
    By the time she’d got from the bails back up the hill, the storm felt much closer. Ralda, bringing Lainey across from Main House, said she didn’t much like the sound of it. The storm was far off though, Noah said. Those first forks of lightning were so distant they must be like pony dapples coming through the baby’s eyelids. For a moment she paused to look at the spectacular light and colour on the hills and ridges to the west. She felt that she could see the earth deep beneath the trees and felt it as part of her gladness.

    Roley was about halfway home, leading the contented old mare, when he heard the thunder. In his mind’s eye he’d been jumping every gate and fence he passed. Now, in a fanciful way, and partly to tame his fear, he lined up the storm front; estimated the distance of run-up required and the nature of a horse that would have a go at a thunderhead. The sound of a rainbird came preternaturally loud.
    In almost no time at all the deep purple cloud had grown to resemble a steep black cliff amassing in the north-west. A light sprinkle of rain was followed by a wind so cold and clean it was stronger than a team of six horses.
    Because he’d been struck by lightning twice as a child he had two responses. One was cocky, as if no lightning would ever touch him again. The other feeling was terror. ‘Gee back, Ol Gurl,’ he said to the horse. ‘This is not lookin that good, tell you the truth, no it ain’t. Nothin we want to jump in that, and it better have the same thought about us. I’m a father now.’ He thought about praying. No time to stop though. They were nearly at the suspension bridge.
    Say a child had had to have a go at drawing lightning, that’s what this bridge had the look of. On the way over to Kennedy’s the bridge, as always, had totally tickled his sense of humour. The fancy of it. It had been built too narrow in his grandfather’s time and curved over the water like nothing so much as a bit of spider web. Barely wide enough for a little sulky, let alone a lorry.
    Now as he looked ahead all he saw was that most of it was made of metal. The zigzags of iron holding up the ironbark decking on chains drooped between the two metal and timber towers either