Chapter Four - Horses and Ink


It was near on four years that Joe roamed from job to job, sometimes working on Aaron’s selection other times herding cattle or horses that may or may not have belonged to him. He did not go home to visit his Ma often, never saying much about it to me, just muttered words about not being able to please her. I knew that Mrs Bryne was struggling, we was in the same sorry place, and it was often that I saw her on the road to Beechworth both families trudging into town to sell butter or eggs. It was now just me and me sisters and me Mam, though she was not truly there at all anymore, a babe that was an old women and we would spoon broth into her mouth of an evening while she drooled and muttered. Me sisters were both seeing lads, one from up Chilton way and the other from Benalla and they were talking dresses and lace and hymns I knew that it was just a matter of time before they too would be gone.

Sometimes when Joe would call by we would talk about what I should do, or what I could do, Joe saying that I could be doing anything and I knowing that it was likely that I would be finding employment in Beechworth, in one of the boarding houses, they was always looking for chamber maids. It was not something that I wanted but I knew that me sisters would not be wanting me and me Ma. At least they had said that between them they would take care of her, that they would not be leaving her at the farm. And somewhere in me heart I wanted to stay in that place, for me Da, for all his dreams. But dreams did not feed yer well, least not in the Woolshed.

It was one of those days that I was trudging along that muddy road into town boots, slung over me shoulder, so as to keep em nice, that Joe came riding over the hill. Fine mare beneath him another skittering behind on a lead rope. He stopped and swung down when he saw me, a brush of his hand over me cheek in greeting and then he fell into step beside me. Looking at me feet, sighing when he asked how his family was, how his Ma was making out, his eyes creasing when I told him, neither making it better nor worse than it was, just being truthful without hurtful to him. I never could stand to see Joe hurt. And then he asked why I was walking in me bare feet when I could be riding a fine horse.
“I don’t be having no horse Joe Byrne” I was just a trifle tart with him I admit but he just grinned at me and tilted his head at the high stepping mare.
“I be reckoning you do now Mai”
Jesus but I could have kissed him on the spot and the way he laughed and smiled when I hugged him and then scrambled up onto her bareback was something that still makes me heart both sing and ache.
“And what would yer neighbours be saying you riding astride like that young lady?” there was laughter in his voice as he too swung up into the saddle.
“Bugger the neighbours” I nudged the mare forward with me heels yelling over me shoulder as she burst into a canter “if yer beat me to Beechworth I’ll buy yer a drink…”

I reckon that even when I’m old and grey I’ll still be able to close me eyes and feel the wind in me hair on that ride. I knew that horse was likely stolen but I did not care. We galloped the whole way and there was neither a winner nor a loser as we burst into town neck and neck, clattering through the streets to the Commercial where I delivered me butter and got a few pennies for me trouble. Joe insisting that we sit a while and have a drink and something hot to eat before going home. Asking more about his Ma while I ate like I had not seen a hot meal in weeks. Hunger and happiness making me perhaps less cautious, more honest, more direct when answering his questions. But I did not think too much about it at the time. It was only later that I felt perhaps that I was to blame in some way.

I know for sure that Joe felt badly, I also know that he felt inadequate as if no matter what he did it would never be enough so he just avoided what bruised his heart. But he did care. For it was after this meeting that him and Aaron bought home that cow. The story has been told over and over but the ending was the coppers coming and Joe and Aaron being sent up to Beechworth Goal, six months hard labour. I was in the back of the courtroom when the judge made his decision known and I choked back hot salty tears as I watched Joe’s face. One brief glimpse of despair and then a mask. Though his eyes as he looked at his Mam were filled with something like grief, her words to the judge that “she could not say” when he asked her if her son treated her right seeming to me to have been the absolute condemnation.

And so those bastard coppers took him away.

If you judged things on miles well then Joe was just there, almost there, but thick stone walls and sharp sharp wire meant that he was not, not in the way that I needed him and wanted him. Me best friend was so far away he may have been at the moon, and I missed him something fierce. The Beechworth Goal was just outside of Beechworth and I would ride past those high cold walls, talking to him in me head.. Six months seemed like forever. He wrote me while he was in there. Short notes on scraps of paper that came out anyway that he could find. Bits of poetry in those first weeks, and I figured out soon enough that if he talked about some place that I was to go there. The guards may have thought he was writing love letters but in those soft words were messages. Them horses would have starved to death before him and Aaron had got out and though I may not have done as good as what Joe would have at least he did not have to worry none.

But the best and in the same breath I would say they were the worst, were the ones that he just wrote as he talked. “Mai it’s cold in here, and at night you can hear the young lads weeping for their mothers, quiet like though so that no one can know that they are not men.” Christ, Joe was not yet a man, least not in my mind, but there were boys in there that were younger. Lads who had stole a sheep to help their families stay alive. Seemed like Beechworth Goal was filled with the poor and the miserable, the Irish. Jesus but those coppers hated us, for what I never really could understand. Was like them people was born hating us. “Mai do you think you could look in on me sisters. Tell me if they are well.” And I would go and look in and write him back. “Mai how is your Mother, is she any better?” he had a good hand did Joe, and though he had written in that same Victoria’s English I could hear his soft Irish lilt in me head as I read his words. Those questions about me Ma, about meself, those ones, I had no answer that would be easing Joe’s mind so I just did not be answering them.

Some of his words bought tears when I read them. He spoke with his heart when he wrote and I would roll those pieces of paper beneath me fingers repeating his words under me breath. “Do you remember that day before that big storm Mai, I was thinking about it the other night how the light changed….wrote some words….” And I would read those words over and over, remembering those better days. Hoping for more of them.