It was just a week before Port Lake Show and three days after the full of the moon. She rode Landwind, the six-year-old they still sometimes affectionately called Foalie, up the road to Oakey Flat. He was in the mood for a jump too, she could just tell by the beautiful way he was cantering, his neck bowed. When she turned back to look at One Tree the washing she’d helped Ralda to peg was flying in the breeze like there’d been a celebration, not a funeral, up there against the jacaranda tree just beginning to turn yellow. Though the sky had been clear blue, already it was changing from the west. My dad is dead, Dad is dead dead dead, the rhythm of the shoes seemed to say. She stood up a little in the irons just to feel the strength in her own legs, gathered her reins up and put the horse a little faster along the road. She could hear a shoe was loose on one of his hinds. It made a clatter over the bridge. Her mother was going to shoe him all round again tomorrow in readiness for the show.
