Bridge of Clay

Together, we walked to the muck—the paint-flaked public grandstand—with its punters and grinners, winners and losers, and most of them fat and fashionless. They were beer and clouds and five-dollar notes, and mouthfuls of meat and smoke.

In between, of course, was the mounting yard, where horses were led by grooms, doing slow, deliberate laps. Jockeys stood with trainers. Trainers stood with owners. There was color and chestnut. Saddles and black. Stirrups. Instructions. Much nodding.

* * *

—

At one point, Clay saw Carey’s father (known for a time as Trackwork Ted), and he was tall for an ex-jockey, short for a man, as Carey once had told him. He was wearing a suit, he leaned on the fence, with the heft of his infamous hands.

After a minute or so, his wife appeared too, in a pale green dress, and ginger-blond hair that flowed but was cut with control: the formidable Catherine Novac. She bounced a matching purse at her side, uneasy, part angry and quiet. At one point she put the purse in her mouth, and it was something a bit like a sandwich bite. You could tell she hated race days.

* * *

—

We walked up and sat at the back of the grandstand, on broken seats with water stains. The sky was dark, but no rain. We pooled our money, Rory put it on, and we watched her in the mounting yard. She was standing with old McAndrew, who said nothing at first, just staring. A broomstick of a man, his arms and legs were like clock hands. When he turned away, and Clay caught his eyes, and they were crisp and clean, blue-grey.

He recalled something McAndrew had said once, not only in Clay’s earshot, but by his face. Something about time and work and cutting out the dead wood. He’d somehow come to like it.

Of course, Clay smiled when he saw her.

McAndrew called her closer.

When he gave her the orders, it was seven or eight short syllables, no less than that, and no more.

Carey Novac nodded.

In one movement she strode at the horse and climbed aboard.

She trotted him out the gate.

In the past, we couldn’t know.

An oncoming world was coming.

While I began the task of taking on Jimmy Hartnell, our mother would soon start dying.

For Penelope, it was so innocuous.

We traced it back to this:

I was twelve, and in training, and Rory was ten, Henry nine, Clay was eight, and Tommy five, and our mother’s time had shown itself.

It was Sunday morning, late September.

Michael Dunbar woke to the sound of TV. Clay was watching cartoons: Rocky Reuben—Space Dog. It was just past six-fifteen.

“Clay?”

Nothing. His eyes were wide with screen.

This time he whispered more harshly—“Clay!”—and now the boy looked over. “Could you turn that thing down a bit?”

“Oh—sorry. Okay.”

By the time he’d adjusted it, Michael had woken up an extra notch, so he went there and sat with him, and when Clay asked for a story, he spoke of Moon and snake and Featherton, and didn’t even contemplate skipping bits. Clay always knew if he missed something, and fixing it would only take longer.

When he was done they sat and watched, his arm slung round Clay’s shoulders. Clay stared at the bright-blond dog; Michael dozed but soon awoke.