He remembered how at just past three a.m. they left, and at home, Clay lay awake, then headed for Central Station.
Back to the bridge and Silver.
Carey, of course, went to trackwork, where in the dawn, the old stager, War of the Roses, returned from the inside training track—but returned without his rider.
She’d fallen on the back straight.
The sun was cold and pallid.
The sky of the city was quiet.
The girl lay face turned sideways, and everyone started running.
* * *
—
At the Amahnu, in Silver, when I told him, Clay broke wildly away. He ran raggedly up the river.
God, the light here was so long, and I watched him clear to the tree line, till he vanished into the stones.
My father looked at me numbly; so sad but also lovingly.
When he attempted to follow, I touched him.
I touched and I held his arm.
“No,” I said, “we should trust him.”
The Murderer became the Murdered. “What if—”
“No.”
I didn’t know all I needed to know, but with Clay I was sure of his choices; right now he would choose to suffer.
We agreed we should wait an hour.
* * *
—
In the trees up high in the riverbed, he kneeled against its steepness—his lungs two treasure chests of death.
He wept there, uncontrollably.
That thing he heard outside himself, at last, he could tell, was his voice.
The trees, those stones, the insects: Everything slowed, then stopped.
He thought of McAndrew, and Catherine. Trackwork Ted. He knew he would have to tell them. He’d confess it was all his fault—because girls just didn’t disappear like this, they didn’t fail without someone making them. Carey Novacs didn’t just die, it was boys like him who made them.
He thought of the fifteen freckles.
The shapes and glimpse of sea glass.
A sixteenth one on her neck.
She’d talked to him; she knew him. She’d linked her arm through his. And sometimes she’d called him an idiot…and he remembered that slight smell of sweat, and the itch of her hair on his throat—her taste was still in his mouth. He knew that if he searched himself, down near the bone of his hip, her imprint was bitten, and visible; it remained as a hidden reminder, of someone, and something, outlived.
The clear-eyed Carey was dead.
* * *
—
As the air grew cool, and Clay felt cold, he prayed for rain and violence.
The drowning of the steep Amahnu.
But the dry and its quietness held him, and he kneeled like just more debris; like a boy washed up, upstream.
You had to give it to the young Carey Novac.
She had a healthy sense of resolve.
Despite her mum and dad resigning themselves to the fact that their sons would be jockeys, they denied the ambition in her. When she talked about it, they only said, “No.” In no uncertain terms.
In spite of this, when she was eleven years old, she started writing letters to a particular horse trainer, in the city, at least two or three times a month. At first she was asking for information, on how best to become a jockey, even if she already knew. How could she start training up early? How could she better prepare? She signed the letters as Kelly from the Country, and waited patiently for answers, using the house of a friend in Carradale (a neighboring town) as the sender.
Soon enough, the phone rang, at Harvey Street, in Calamia.
About halfway through the call, Ted stopped and simply said, “What?” A moment later, he went on. “Yeah, it’s the next town over.” Then, “Really? Kelly from the Country? You’ve gotta be joking. Oh, it’s bloody her all right, I’m sure of it….”
Shit, thought the girl in the lounge room, listening in.
She was halfway down the hall, making her escape, when the voice came calling through her.
“Oi, Kelly,” he said, “not so fast.”
But she could tell her dad was smiling.
That meant she had a chance.
* * *
—
In the meantime, weeks became months and years.
She was a kid who knew what she wanted.
She was hopeful and perennial.
She ate work up at Gallery Road—a skinny-armed talented shit-shoveler—but she also looked good in the saddle.
“Good as any kid I’ve ever seen,” admitted Ted.
Catherine wasn’t overly impressed.
Neither was Ennis McAndrew.
* * *
—
Yes, Ennis.
Mr. McAndrew.
Ennis McAndrew had rules.
First, he made apprentices wait; you never rode your first year, ever, and that was if he took you in the first place. He naturally cared about riding ability, but he also read your school reports, and especially all the comments. If easily distracted was written just once, you could forget it. Even when he accepted your application, he’d have you come to the stables early morning, three out of six days a week. You could shovel, and lead rope. You could watch. But never, under any circumstance, could you talk. You could write your questions down, or remember them and ask on Sundays. On Saturdays you could come to race meetings. Again, no talking. He knew you were there if he wanted to know you were there. Very factually, it was stated you should stay with your family, go with your friends—because from second year on you’d hardly see them.
On the alternate days of the week, you could sleep in—that was, you could report to the Tri-Colors Boxing Gym at five-thirty, to run roadwork with all the boxers. If you missed one, the old man would know—he’d know.
But still.
He’d never been set upon like this.
At fourteen she started up the letters again, this time from Carey Novac. Kelly from the Country was gone. She apologized for the error of judgment, and hoped it hadn’t blighted thoughts on her character. She was aware of everything—his laws of an apprenticeship—and she would do whatever it took; she’d muck the stables out nonstop if she had to.
Finally, a letter came back.
In Ennis McAndrew’s tight-scrawled hand was the inevitable, identical phrasing: Permission from your mother.
Permission from your father.
And that was her biggest problem.
Her parents were resolved as well:
The answer was still firmly no.
She would never become a jockey.
* * *
—
As far as Carey was concerned, it was a disgrace.
Sure, fine, it was perfectly acceptable for her miscreant brothers to be jockeys—and average, lazy ones at that—but not for her. Once she even pulled a framed photo of The Spaniard off the lounge room wall, and threw herself into her argument: “McAndrew’s even got a horse from the bloodline of this one.”
“What?”
“Don’t you read the paper?”
And then:
“How could you have had this yourself and not let me? Look at him!” Her freckles were blazing. Her hair, tangled. “Don’t you remember what it was like? Hitting the turn? Taking the straight?”
Rather than hang it on the wall again, she slammed it to the coffee table, and the impact cracked the glass.
“You can pay for that,” he said, and it was lucky the frame was a cheap one.
But never as lucky (or unlucky, as some would argue) as this— As they both kneeled down and cleaned up the glass, he spoke absently into the floorboards.
“Of course I read the paper—the horse’s name is Matador.”
* * *
—
Eventually, Catherine slapped her.
It’s funny what a slap can do:
Her water-color eyes were that little bit brighter—unmanaged, alive with anger. Her hair was lifted, just a few strands, and Ted was alone in the doorway.
“You really shouldn’t have done that.”
He was talking and pointing at Carey.
But then the fact of something else.
Catherine only slapped you when you’d won.
* * *
—
This is what Carey had done:
One of the best old childhood chestnuts.
School holidays.