Foal's Bread Read Online Free

must soon be on his way. Like its face, even the stars seemed to wrinkle at the parting.
    â€˜Go on then.’ She waded out into the deeper water. Found the current. ‘Be good! Don’t fall out!’
    In the moonlight the butter box went like a crazy toy, pulled quickly into the faster water of the Flaggy by the weight of its miniature boatman. But even as the boat and the baby disappeared around the creek’s bend, his forehead holding all the softness of her farewell, Noah’s face changed shape forever.
    In kissing instead of killing, she had set a mark upon her mouth that men everywhere were going to recognise for the rest of her life. Something about the tenderness underlying the toughness.
    A kind of triumphant relief was sweeping through her that it was done, the baby gone. She couldn’t realise that for the rest of her life she’d be watching Flaggy Creek spinning that baby away from her, the fast waters making it disappear like a little bend-and-flag pony that’s forgotten to take the final turn.

    â€˜Oh yes,’ her father, well away on his early spree, had begun to boast to whoever was left listening in the shanty. ‘Pigs wouldn’t be safer than with Noey. My daughter. She’s like a good dog she is! What she can’t do I wouldn’t know. Only has to watch me do somefin once. Nuthin Noah can’t turn her hand to. Musterin, milkin, cuttin a calf. But then comin into kitchen to prepare a nice bit of vegetable to go with yer chop of a night.
    â€˜She’ll be my right-hand man getting those horses back over range. As good as Baffy and Brian here.’
    â€˜What else, Cecil? What else will that girl of yours with the stupid Bible name be good at?’
    But if he caught the unspoken thoughts, the hunger of at least a dozen drunk men dreaming of his daughter out alone with the pigs on Flaggy Creek, he wasn’t letting on. He could see a ring around the moon outside and, turning the talk to weather, said he hoped that the rain was going to hold off. Just then, a gin, not too old or ugly, came into the shanty to ask would any of them be feeling like a bit.
    â€˜What! You gunna cut it up and hand it round are you?’ shot back Noah’s father, his eyes quivering.
    â€˜Not on your nelly,’ she chiacked, and gave him a look that meant for a swill of rum he could be the first to follow her outside to the bit of a sack humpy where she did her business.

    True to her father’s words, no flies on Noah, she was cleaning up. First, to halt the blood, she sat out in the cold deep channel of the creek. I’m like a bloody good heifer as well, she was thinking. A heifer with no complications, not overly fussed about its first calf.
    Washing everything clean in the creek. Then stuffing her duds with her torn-up undershirt to catch any clots. Her heart beating hard but steady to have it all done. Biting her nails down about the butter box. Building up that fire and finding comfort enough in its warmth to make some tea.
    Under stars made milky and unclear by the moon she got ready to sleep. A real moist ring was forming round the moon. Means rain, darlin, she could hear her Uncle Nip’s voice inside her head, always relaying to her the little wisdoms. Number of stars is days ter rain.
    And everything was going to be alright, she fell asleep thinking, until in the morning her father woke with a roar because that Brian and Baffy and the butter box had melted off into the night.
    â€˜Never trust pair of friggin Neville brothers again I won’t, Noh,’ her father’s fury broke through the air. ‘Can’t say I wasn’t warned. Who knows what they’ve taken off with apart from the fresh butter. Got it last night for our sandwiches. A lovely bit of farm butter and a loaf of bread. Nicked the butter and our box they have.’
    Noah looked down.
    â€˜Nuthin to do with you, Noey. Gawn off on some other man’s drove cos like