Heartstrings | Page 8

air was chill. Winter was coming, and the nights were
always cold, in the desert.
He backed the complaining vehicle out over the ruts, and turned West, where the crows had
gone. West by North, on the highway to Norseman.
Kalgoorlie could wait, he decided, for another time.
He still could find time, if he pressed on, to take the Southern route, to Esperance, Albany,
and drive through the great ancient forests of the Timber country - Pemberton, Manjimup -
just dots on the road map. He could visit the great trees, on his way to Perth, for the wedding.

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The porridge was cooked. He added a spoonful of sweet honey from the tin, and a good
splash of the UHT milk, and squatting on his hunkers, ate it slowly from the pan, watching the
billy set on the fire, and waiting until it boiled.
He made tea, and drank it, and cleaned up his breakfast. The last thing he did was to put his
fire out, scattering the ashes and coals, and shoveling sand on them.
It took a little while to start the diesel, it did not much like the cold, he thought. Then, leaving
the engine on idle, he walked up and over the creek bed.
‘Uh-oh.’ the steep bank was echoed on the other side with an equally steep bank into another
creek-bed, even more rocky and rough than where he had camped. This creek-bed looked as
though water had run down it, but not very recently. Maybe in the last rains.
There was no real alternative but to head on down the gully.
The rain when it came, fell miles inland, and when the flash flood caught him, he was lucky to
be on a sandy flat section. The vehicle slewed around, he gunned to motor, but the wheels
had no purchase on the sand, with a metre of water rushing over it. The engine stopped, the
vehicle stopped, and he was stranded.
To his alarm, the water level still rose. He had little knowledge of the bush, but felt that it
should soon fall, unless more rain was coming down. He did not want to leave the 4-wheel, as
it held all that he owned, but after a few minutes of indecision, he decided that if the water
rose, he could be drowned. He took his wallet from the glove-box, opened the window, and
climbed onto the roof. Standing, he gained little more insight into his predicament.
Fifty metres away was a tree - thick and strong, it looked as though it had outlasted a flash-
flood before. If he left now, he could wade to it.
It took him a long time to reach the safety of the tree, ages, it seemed, battling the force of the
flowing water, a muddy torrent that tried to sweep him away, drag him down, turn him from a
living soul to a body, but he was strong, and determined. Even so, he had to rest, holding the
trunk, before he could climb up the trunk a short way to a safe fork.
Before dark he was joined in his tree by some birds, and sometime in the night, a bedraggled
marsupial, not large, more like a rat than a kangaroo. He could hear it scrabble for safety, and
would have helped it, but it was took dark to risk moving.

Heartstrings

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It was a long night. It rained, heavily. He thought he could still see the 4-wheel where he had
left it, but was not certain. In the first light he was profoundly relieved to see it still there.
All the next day it continued to rain, lightly. The water was nearly up to the window, and he
cursed himself for leaving it open. He cursed the rain, he cursed himself, Bonnie, the sky,
God, and cursed the rain. He was thirsty, but afraid to drink the water, as soggy dead animal
bodies had washed down it, and he knew that there would be other bodies, caught and rotting,
upstream.
The rain would stop soon.
Another night. The birds had flown away, but his furry neighbor remained, shivering, its little
dark eyes dim, almost closed.
Thirst was a torment. He gave in, and sipped from a handful of water cupped from the
passing stream. It tasted of dirt.
Sometime in the night, the flood abated. The light rain had stopped.
By mid morning, the water level had gone down. Aidan dropped from the fork of the tree
onto the wet sand.
He could not stand - he stared blankly at the sight of his