Chapter Three - Smoke and Promises


I suppose I should tell you me name. I was christened Maireagh, after me Da’s mother but I was never called that. Me Da called me Poppet and so did the rest of me family, me brothers and sisters shortening that to Poppy when they was being nice, other names that I will not be writing here when they resented having to watch out for their baby sister. I don’t think that many outside of me parents actually knew what me real name was, not until I went to school and they called me by me full name each morning. But Joe did even before school, he asked me, said that Poppy was an odd sort of name for an Irish girl. So I told him and sometimes he would call me by it but most times he just called me Mai.

By the time I was almost twelve me and Joe had talked about pretty much everything. I knew him almost as good as I did meself. We had our chores to finish each day and we would race through feeding chickens and whatnot so that we could escape over Reedy Creek, to climb to one of our many places where we could sit, sometimes we did not even talk. We did not have to do that anymore, we could just be and that was easy and right. We was at that age when we were starting to notice boys and girls and that was summat that we talked about now and again, a promise made one hot and hazy day that if we got old, past twenty five, and no one wanted to marry us that we would just have to marry each other. Lord but I laughed about that, marrying Joe would have been like marrying me brother. I was pretty darn sure that Joe would have no trouble finding someone to marry, it seemed that the trouble would be in avoiding it happening afore he was twenty. I was often asked if I was his girl, relieved sighs coming when I shook me head in a no, all the girls thought Joe Bryne was summat special. He was good looking for sure, but to me he was Joe, and to him I was Mai and it felt more solid and real than anything else in my life. As if, like he had said so many years before that we had known the other forever.

Sometimes we even dreamed the same dreams. I suppose I should say dream. It was always the same one. Smoke and guns and screams, others and me own screams, I always woke scared and feeling so very lost. Joe said that most times he would just wake and it would take him several breaths to realize that he was alive and that he was just dreaming. I hated that dream.

It was that year that life changed for Joe's family and it was not for the good. I remember the day that Joe’s Da died as clear as it was yesterday. It was hazy, hot and each breath felt like it was choking yer as you took it into yer lungs. His Dad had been sickly for some years but it had got worse and that summer they had put him up in the hospital at Beechworth. Joe had stopped going to school. For the first time ever he was not waiting for me each morning and I had talked to him in me head as I had walked that dusty pitted road. Talked to Joe and talked to God, asking him to make it be alright, to cure Joe's Da. But God must have been busy somewhere else. It was not many days afore Mister Byrne he passed on, he died in the afternoon and it was right on dark that I heard Joe’s voice calling me name. I was shutting the chooks in for the night and could only just see his pale face looking over the fence. I knew that summat was really wrong, he did not sound like Joe but a Joe that had lost some part of his self.

“Mai me Da’s gone” his empty cold words and then his voice just crumpled and God forgive me the first thing I felt was relief that it was not me own Dad. Him who had also been poorly for so long, relief that it was not him that God had taken. And then I felt the most awful sick feeling that I could be so wicked and I held on to Joe and he cried in great choking sobs. I could not hold him up, all I could do was make sure that he did not fall, that somehow we sat so that I could brush his curls back from his face and cry with him. When those first gasping sobs eased and he finally looked at me I brushed his tears from under his eyes with me fingertips, me own eyes overflowing as I saw the change in Joe’s face. Like he had somehow grown up and away from me in those few minutes.

They put Joe’s Da in the ground in Beechworth cemetery, and I stood watching him square his shoulders back, to glance at his Mam who seemed to have a rod of steel running through her back she stood so upright and stiff. Mrs Bryne was heavy with what would be another little sister and I knew that those days of running free would never return. Joe had to be the man of the house there was no one else.

I know that he tried real hard, he worried about his Mam and that baby and kept her company at night after the younger ones had gone off to sleep, reading to her or writing little verses but he could not be his father and as soon as little Elly was delivered he started to drift away. He worked all over the place, driving wagons and in shearing gangs and anything with horses. He loved horses and they loved him. I swear sometimes me heart was in me mouth watching him come down the Woolshed hills gravel sliding beneath him but as calm as you please. Smiling as he jumped off asking me if I wanted to try her out that she was fast and I would like her. He would boost me up and I would gallop as hard as I could away from my own life for just a bit.

For it was only two days short of a year from Joe’s Da's passing that me own Dad just dropped dead, out in the paddock putting in fence posts. One moment there the next gone and with him he had taken me Ma. Not that she died, she just did not care to live anymore. A shadow wrapped in shawls in the corner she became, some days not even knowing who I was. It was up to me older sisters and brothers to run the farm, to wrest out some sort of living. I know me brothers both loved and resented me. They were old enough to go out into the world but felt that they could not leave me alone with just me sisters, not just yet. So the small house was filled with disappointment, resentment and a knowing that as soon as I was fourteen then they would be off. I think they thought that me sisters would then be happy to take care of me and Mam, but both of them was being courted and I tried real hard not to think of what the future might be.

I loved those days when Joe would arrive, on some borrowed pretty mare or quick stepping stallion then I could be free again even if just for a few hours, we would ride out into the hills, me clinging on behind him, arms wrapped around his waist and he would find some place to sit. And then we would talk. Of all that he had seen and done and he would read bits of verse from scraps of paper in his pocket and I would close me eyes to listen.

It was one of those afternoons when we was sitting up in the hills that I first tried the sticky black resin that Joe had come to like so much.
“Just try a bit Mai, it won’t hurt you, gives you wonderful dreams”
And I trusted him and believed him so I breathed in the thick black smoke and he was right I did have magic dreams, colourful visions that made me weep they was so beautiful, even though me belly was cramping after for days I wanted to go back into them whenever I could. But it was not often that I did, Joe being worried when I would be puking me guts out and deciding that perhaps the stuff did not agree with me.

And all that time I worried about Joe, about what he was doing for money, rumours circulated about horses and cattle and he kept brushing me off when I asked him. Smiling and winking and promising me that he was fine, that him and Aaron knew what they was doing.

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