out of the car, unhooked the waterbag from the front bumper and handed it in to him. He took a long drink.
‘Thanks, love.’
He looked at his watch.
‘Any sign of the train?’
‘No.’
‘Flamin’ thing is later than usual. Should’ve come past hours ago.’
‘Maybe it’s been derailed. Hit a cow or something.’
‘Yep. Maybe it has.’ Pop smiled and leant towards the dashboard. With a trickle of juice from the battery the radio cranked out a bit of music, then a horse race.
‘Who have we picked in this one?’ Pop reached for the paper, creased open at the form guide, and his glasses, positioning them on the end of his long nose.
‘I picked him. Twenty to one. Regular Rocket. But it’s the next race.’
‘Regular Rocket. We’ll see,’ he said, smiling wearily at his daughter. ‘Let’s find some shade. It’s more than regulation hot in here.’
‘We were in the shade before you fell asleep. The shade went that way,’ she said, pointing.
‘Didn’t mean to fall asleep. Must be more tired than I thought.’
Grace looked at him. He’d been out until well past dark for the last week, rising before the sun. She wasn’t surprised he was tired. They climbed from the car and sat where it was throwing a little shade onto the grass verge. They looked out across the river flats towards town, their backs against the warm steel bodywork. The storm over a week ago had done little to break the dry spell they were having. There hadn’t been any good rain in months and the usually green paddocks were looking tired and very thirsty. The cattlemen were complaining, the dairymen as well. Everyone else was doing their best to stay cool. There was nothing for it but to wait. The good rain would come – they were too close to the coast for it not to. At least one thing was certain, Pop thought: it would come, whether the boys were found, or whether they never were.
He was tired. He was bone tired. Waiting for the train, listening to the races, were welcome chances to empty his mind of all the worries, all the impossibilities, all the disappointments of the past few days. There in the stillness, with his eyes closed and the sun against them, was also the place where things sometimes began to make sense, where he often heard the first word of something new. Today, though, there was nothing.
The police radio crackled and there was an echoing squeal and then silence. Pop thought of the noise as a phantom copper, forever on rounds, radio in ghostly hand, maybe whistling softly to himself. In the last week the radio had been constantly alive with voices from dawn to dusk. He’d heard them change from energetic and keen to resigned and anguished. They’d tramped in long ragged lines through dense bush and bivouacked where they’d stood when the daylight failed. He’d had them comb the roads again, on foot and on horseback, and drag the river with hooks, but still nothing had been found. Henry Gunn, the poor bastard, unable to sleep, had lost his voice completely from calling the boys’ names. He’d never seen a man grimmer, a jaw as hard set. He was in some kind of twilight world, along with Ellie, where hope slipped away like time. There was nothing he or anyone else could say to them that was much help. Yesterday he’d had to send most of the searchers home – it had made him sick to do it – and now there was just a man or two with a team of dogs, some of the bushfire brigade lads, and himself – and the occasional crackle and sigh from the radio.
‘Wish you were some help, old son,’ Pop said out loud.
He sighed and closed his eyes again. Where were those boys? Where the hell were they? To think they’d landed more men on the moon, yet two little boys could not be found. They’d stared at the map, tried to get inside their heads, but they really seemed to have vanished without a trace. Henry had been adamant they’d gone fishing, told him how much Tom liked it. Pop thought it was doubtful, but the river still had to be searched, and thoroughly this time, not just by a few blokes in a boat with some hooks. Even though nearly every child in the district could swim, water had still claimed too many, particularly the little ones. Little Flynn could have fallen in somewhere, and Tom might have had to jump in after him. After that, with clothes on, even a grown man could get tired quickly and start to go under. It was either look in the river again, or sit quietly up the back of the church and pray.
He opened his eyes. The girl was over in the old siding now, the heat haze from the tracks making her limbs tremble and flicker. Just half a year ago she had been skinny and shapeless – a little girl. He thought of the boys lost out in the bush and was seized by the sudden realisation of how much he loved her, the precise size and shape of it revealed to him without alteration as if he had always been loath to believe it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d told her as much, or the last time he’d really held her the way he had when she’d been younger. He watched her a little longer until he realised his mouth was dry again. He heaved himself up and went to the front of the car and unhooked the waterbag from the bumper and took another good long drink from it.
Grace followed the rusting rails through the long grass. In front of the old sawmill there were sidings and steel-edged humps for the loading and unloading of trains that had not stopped there for years. The old stationmaster’s office stood empty at one end of the main platform. She tried the door of the little wooden hut and it creaked open on rusted hinges. Inside she found a bank of seized levers, coated in dust and cobwebs, and a clock on the wall stopped at seven minutes past three – an eternal afternoon. She closed the door and sat outside by the rails and waited with her hand on the hot steel and then, almost as though she’d wished it, the rails began to quiver under her fingertips. She thought of Darcy racing the train and she put her ear down to the rail and fancied she could hear its faint song. Presently she heard the train’s horn sound off in the distance. She stood and climbed the siding to wait, looking over to her father.
Pop heard the blast of the horn as well but the race they had an interest in had also just begun. It was raining down there and the track was heavy. He pictured the horses, well fed and fairly sparkling with condition, not like the working hacks up here, some with their ribs showing, scratching their flanks against ironbark posts and flicking flies away with a judder of muscle. The racecourse would be like a path to horse heaven for those nellies.
The caller began his call. He sounded like he was selling cattle, auctioning first place off to the highest bidder, and then, fluttering across the country, came news of the winner, the placegetters, the dividends on the last race, odds on the next – always a next race like waves against a shore. He wondered what the odds were now of finding the boys alive. If he could find God’s bookie he would certainly ask him. What were the odds?
He stood and slapped his overalls and squinted out from under the brim of his hat in the direction of the arriving train. Grace stood on the siding with her hand up to shade her eyes. She waved to the train as it appeared round the bend, her arm smudged near the shoulder with pale dust, her long dark hair halfway down her back just like her mother had worn hers years ago.
‘Gracie!’ he called, not able to help himself. ‘Be careful now!’
She turned and flashed her eyes at him. He strode up to the siding and raised his hand as well as the train slowed. The driver showed them his pale palm. Pop put his hand down on Grace’s shoulder.
‘Our horse came second.’
‘Damn.’
‘Hey now. Enough of that.’
The
