White Dog

22

‘Funny business,’ said Harry Strang. ‘Travellin well, good Lord’s givin all the other bastards the rough end. Smack. Holy boot up ya own bum.’

Beyond Camperdown in the mist, three of us in the big BMW, Harry at the wheel. I was in the back, reading the Age. Cam was doing something on his laptop.

‘Ireland,’ said Harry. ‘Never should’ve bin there. Two meetins to go, championship in my pocket. Get a call from this trainer, done me a couple of good ones when I first come out. So I go up on the Wednesday, get on this nice little grey for him.’

He took a large hand off the wheel to reach for the winegum ashtray while overtaking a milk tanker. A truck was coming at us. Its airhorn brayed. I groaned with fear. Cam looked up, went back to his screen.

We escaped annihilation by a short half-boot.

‘Panicky, your average truckie,’ said Harry. ‘No bloody judgment. Where was I? Yes, the finger. There I am, a perfect sit, we’re goin to street the cattle. Come round the bend, straighten up, the pony in front throws a shoe, I never see it, hits my bloke between the eyes, I’m airborne, crossin the rail at altitude.’

Harry looked back at me, sharp brown eyes, a look longer than I liked. He snapped fingers. ‘Broken leg,’ he said. Another snap. ‘Bloody collarbone too.’

‘Unfortunate,’ I said.

‘The championship it cost me,’ he said. ‘Plus a swag of bickies, needless to say. Didn’t need the bickies that much, would’ve liked the championship, my word.’

‘And the moral of the story?’ I said, looking at the land, dark-green, waterlogged, like Ireland with added extinct volcanoes.

‘Avoid Ireland,’ said Cam. ‘And don’t return favours.’

Harry shook his head, pained. ‘Don’t ya listen?’ he said. ‘Life, I’m talkin about life.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Cam.

‘Any life in mind?’ I said. ‘Any particular wimpy, self-pitying existence in mind?’

Harry waved his left hand in dismissal. ‘Gettin up and goin,’ he said, ‘that’s the important thing. Not so, Cam?’

‘The goin part,’ said Cam, not looking up. ‘I’m the goin expert. Left with the best of them.’

Harry sighed, sought comfort in winegums. ‘Near here. Getting close, as I remember.’

‘Over the hill and about two ks,’ said Cam. ‘There’s a shed fallin down. Just after.’

Harry looked at his watch. ‘Give her a ring. Did it quicker last time as I recall,’ he said, putting his foot down.

I breathed again when we left the main road, turned inland. We travelled through a bumpy landscape, winter creeks running, sheep in clumps and strung up slopes like woolly beads. I got out for the gate at Middle Hill, Breeding and Training, W. amp; L. Halsey. It was a good gate, well hung, over a grid too, no easy escape from Middle Hill. The mist was gone now, sky full of fast-running cloud, blue holes coming and going.

‘You only bring me for the gates,’ I said when I was back in the warmth, rubbing my hands.

Black Angus cattle on both sides ignored us as we went up the gentle rise, over the crest.

‘Nice things, cattle,’ said Cam. ‘Shame to eat them.’

At the homestead, we parked on dry gravel in front of a big steel shed. The earth beneath us had been ripped and veined with drainage pipes, there was no other way to provide such a surface.

A door in a door opened and a woman stepped out. She was wearing what had been closest to hand in the icy dawn: a jumper at the point of fibre collapse, a short Drizabone, a tracksuit bottom possibly from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, elastic-sided Blundstones. As she came, she had a hand on the knitted headgear, the beanie.

We got out. I thought it was the sight of Cam putting on his dark-grey Italian overcoat that decided her against the beanie. She ripped it off, stuffed it in a pocket, pulled up her saggy pants.

‘Mr Strang, Cam,’ she said. ‘Freeze your bum off today. Yesterday, like Bali.’

‘Bracin,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t think you’ve met Jack. Jack Irish, Lorna Halsey. Jack’s my legal fella.’

We shook hands.

‘How’s he doin?’ said Harry.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Like a dog with Chink, never seen a horse so rapt. Can’t believe he’s supposed to be a killer. My girl’s ridin him.’

‘Chink settle him?’ said Cam. He wasn’t looking at her, gazing around like an inspector. ‘Stay over?’

‘Three days,’ she said. ‘Slept in the barn, in his swag. Couldn’t get him no further than the kitchen. Not house-trained, he reckons.’

‘Tells the truth,’ said Cam.

Lorna was looking at Cam, a look you recognised after you were eighteen.

‘This way,’ she said.

We crossed the shed towards an open door, across the concrete floor of a tidy room for farm equipment, horse tack, feed, entered a big gravelled courtyard with horse boxes on each side. Two long heads stabled next to each other looked at us. The fourth side of the yard was an open-sided shed.

Crossing the yard, Lorna said, ‘Chink’s something, makes you feel like a beginner. Got a mongrel here, supposed to be broken, won’t let anyone on him. It took about fifteen minutes, Chink’s riding him like he’s the clerk of the course’s pony.’

‘Keepin this beast outside?’ said Harry.

‘Chink’s advice. In the near paddock.’

It was even colder on the other side of the buildings, the wind up the slope bringing tears. A teenage girl in rain-gear was riding a horse in a paddock with a good surface, not too wet. She saw us. Lorna made a signal, a circle with an index finger.

The rider took the horse around on an oval course, canter, brief gallop, canter, came to us, reined in near the gate and sat patting her mount.

Lorna opened the gate and went in a few steps. The rider brought the horse up to her. She rubbed its nose and its neck, talked to it, led it over.

‘Sure that’s the animal?’ said Harry.

The horse was not recognisable as the one we’d seen in the paddock in Gippsland. This Lost Legion’s coat had sheen, its head was up, you could see the alertness in its eyes.

‘Good, not so?’ said Lorna, stroking the animal. ‘This is my girl, Terry.’

We said hello to Terry. She was around fourteen, had red hair, bits sticking out under her riding hat, a few big ginger freckles.

Harry went into the paddock, put a slow hand on Lost Legion’s nose. He found something in a side pocket of his corduroy jacket, fed it to the horse, its big mouth in his hand.

‘Got a bit of condition,’ said Cam.

‘Chink reckons he wouldn’t eat for days at the start,’ Lorna said. ‘Then he comes around, pigs in, puts on the kilos like a new bride.’

Cam went in, walked around the horse, not close, approached it from the front, showed it his hand, rubbed at the base of a relaxed ear.

‘Looking good,’ he said. ‘Sounds like you heard more from Chink in three days than I heard in two years. Fed him what?’

‘Tea,’ Lorna said. ‘Drinks whisky in tea.’

‘Used to be the reverse,’ said Cam.

‘How long before we’ll know somethin?’ said Harry.

‘He’s keen enough,’ Lorna said. ‘You want to be careful, though, he’s been out so long. And the legs, who knows? I’d like to take him over a lot of ground.’

‘No hurry,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll do it right.’ He looked up at the girl on the horse. ‘Like the way you ride,’ he said. ‘Your mum probably had you up when you were little.’

Terry blushed, looked away. ‘That’s right,’ she said.

We walked back, turned right into the house, sat in a big room and had tea and biscuits. They talked bloodlines and distances and times, Harry gave the horse diet lecture. I looked out of a big window, watched the clouds scud, saw a hawk drop from the sky like the angel of death.

In the car, on the main road, Cam driving, I said, ‘I’m not suggesting that you’d need a reason to take your high-powered legal representative into the frozen wastes with you.’

Harry’s profile appeared around the headrest for an instant. ‘Get a bit of country air in the lungs, Jack,’ he said. ‘Livin in Fitzroy, thereabouts, all that factory smoke, tannin the hides, not healthy.’

‘Getting worse all the time,’ I said. ‘Now it’s also pollution from Cohibas and the PNG Gold. Plus the crack smoke, that can be really bad in the early evening.’

‘Lunch,’ said Cam. ‘There’s a place up the track here does a good steak roll. Local beef.’

‘Get there,’ said Harry. ‘Step on it.’

‘Shame to eat them,’ I said. ‘They’re so nice.’

‘Jack, listen,’ said Harry, ‘this horse, I want to set up a little arrangement, five shares, that’s us three, the lovely wife, Mrs A. Arrange that, can you?’

‘I can arrange that,’ I said, ‘but why?’

‘Bit of fun. Nothin down, nothin to pay. Win anythin, we take off expenses incurred, split the balance five ways. Cam’ll cook the books.’

‘What exactly do you have in mind for this horse?’ I said.

‘Early days. Get him up and runnin, that’s the first thing. Do the arrangement thing then?’

‘What happens if he doesn’t win anything?’

A hand came up, wagged. ‘That’s a little punt I’m havin,’ Harry said. ‘No burden on the rest of you. Where’s this food place? Gettin the weak feelin.’

‘Hang on,’ said Cam. ‘Want to keep you goin till you make us rich.’