The day of the Bush Ball, Alice raced home early to shower. She zipped up her new gold dress, slicked on lip gloss and lashings of mascara, and stepped into her new cowboy boots embellished with gold butterflies on the heels. When Dylan walked through the door, her cheeks flushed with excitement. She had a cold beer waiting for him, and had intentionally neglected to wear knickers, something she knew drove him mad.
His step faltered when he saw her. He stood, unmoving.
‘Ready for date night?’ she asked, grinning. Did a little shimmy in her dress.
Dylan slowly emptied his pockets onto the counter and went wordlessly into the kitchen.
The chill of his silence hit her between the ribs. She heard him riffling through the medicine cabinet and popping two pills from their packet.
‘Babe?’ she asked, trying to hide her crushing disappointment. ‘You okay?’
He didn’t answer. She went into the kitchen.
‘Babe?’ she asked again.
He kept his back to her. ‘What are you wearing?’ he asked stonily.
‘What?’ Her stomach plummeted.
‘Why are you dressed like that?’
She looked down at her new dress. The gold was suddenly garish rather than magical.
He turned to face her, his eyes dark. ‘Why would you buy new clothes for tonight?’ His voice shook. ‘Why would you want to get all fucking dolled up? Just so the blokes from work can wank over you?’
Alice went rigid as he walked around her, looking her up and down. It hurt to breathe.
‘Answer me,’ he said quietly.
Tears filled her eyes. She didn’t have an answer. Her voice was a gone thing.
Ruby sat by the fire in her back yard with her pen and notebook open, waiting. She wasn’t interested in the Bush Ball. She’d had a feeling all day a poem was coming, and didn’t want to miss it.
Over the dunes, a movement in Dylan’s driveway distracted her. Alice’s dog scampered to hide behind a gum tree. Inside, Dylan’s silhouette paced back and forth in the dimly lit windows of the house.
Ruby watched him. Inhaled deeply, and pressed her nib shakily to paper.
25. Desert oak
Meaning: Resurrection
Allocasuarina decaisneana | Central Australia
Kurkara (Pit.) have deeply furrowed, cork-like bark, which is fire-retardant. Slow-growing but fast to develop a taproot that can reach subsurface water at depths over ten metres. Mature trees form a large, bushy canopy. Many found in the central desert are likely to be more than one thousand years old.
By the middle of spring, when the mint bushes had stopped flowering and the seasonal rains came, Alice had learned to read Dylan’s moods the same way she’d learned, years ago, to read the tides. As long as she was mindful, alert and responsive, they were blissfully happy.
After a week of nonstop rain, the dirt roads and walking trails around Kililpitjara turned into a sodden glue of red mud. Notices warning against getting bogged appeared on the boards at headquarters. Alice read them thoroughly, but that didn’t help her when she was out on patrol behind Kututu Puli. She drove straight into a bog. Her tyres were compacted and spinning. She tried to dig a little, or idle out, but nothing worked. Eventually she radioed for help.
Thugger was the first to respond, and pulled her ute free with a winch. Back at headquarters, the rangers were having knock-off drinks and nibblies.
‘Come for a bevvy,’ Thugger said as he got out of his ute, covered in red mud. ‘We’ve bloody earned it.’
‘Pinta-Pinta,’ Ruby called across the car park, waving from under the desert oak where everyone was sitting, with an Esky open and a table of finger food. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’
Alice forced herself to smile at Thugger and wave back at Ruby. Dylan wasn’t there. Maybe he was on his way. If he was on his way, she should stay, otherwise he’d be upset if she went home without him. But if he wasn’t … She shook her head free of noisy thoughts, and went to join the group. She wouldn’t stay for more than an hour.
Ruby handed her a beer. ‘So good to see you, Pinta-Pinta.’
It was wonderful to see Ruby too. Alice couldn’t stop herself from grinning when she glanced down at Ruby’s budgerigar trousers.
‘Yeah, mate, we haven’t seen much of you about. You didn’t make it to the Bush Ball?’ Nicko asked.
Thugger elbowed him in the side. Silence settled over the table. Alice’s cheeks flamed.
‘Aaaaaanyway,’ Thugger said. He raised his beer.
Cheers went around the table as everyone clinked bottles. Alice took a long swig. The beer loosened her shoulders, eased the furrow in her brow. A lightness spread through her chest. The uncomplicated warmth of the group’s company was a balm.
After finishing her third beer, it occurred to Alice to check the time. She gasped when she saw she’d been there for two hours.
Hurriedly, she excused herself from the group and drove straight to Dylan’s. When she got to his gate, it was locked. It was never locked. She called out to him but her voice was swallowed by the wind. Where was Pip? Was she with Dylan, wherever he was?
Alice sped around Parksville and pulled up hard and fast in her own driveway. It had been so long since she’d spent a night there it no longer felt like her home. Behind the gate, Pip turned in excited circles to see her. Dylan must have dropped her there. Alice unlocked the front door and stepped into her house.
Inside, the air was foul. Alice hunted through the house until she discovered a rat in the trap under the stove. She cleaned it up, dry retching. Threw open every window and door, washed out her oil burner, and lit sandalwood and rose geranium oil. Her bookshelves were covered in a fine film of red dust. As she wiped them clean, she ran her fingers along the spines of her neglected books. After rummaging through the pantry, Alice warmed a tin of baked beans, which mostly went to Pip; she couldn’t eat. She called Dylan throughout the night, but he didn’t pick up. Shivering on her back patio under her fairy lights, she looked across the dunes at the silhouette of his house backlit by stars.
The pit in her stomach widened. He was punishing her. For not going home to him. For not checking with him first if it was okay that she stayed for a beer. For not doing the right thing by him. She knew it.
Alice went inside and locked up. She took a quick hot shower, trying to loosen the knots in her shoulders, then got into bed. Pip settled beside her, snoring softly.
Just as she was on the edge of sleep, a noise outside her window jolted Alice awake. A snapping of twigs, breaking underfoot. She sprang from her bed to the window and inched the curtain back, her blood pulsing loudly in her ears. Pip barked. As Alice’s eyes adjusted to the starlight she saw her backyard was full of shadows. But none that she recognised as his.
The next morning, she couldn’t get more than a sip of coffee down. She shook on the drive to work. When she pulled up at headquarters he came to greet her, smiling, and held her face in his hands. She fearfully searched his eyes but they were filled with tenderness. He kissed her, stroked her cheek.
‘I got a terrible migraine, took some painkillers and knocked myself out,’ he said. ‘I should have left a message on your machine, or a note. Sorry, sweetheart. Did you have a nice time with everyone at headquarters though?’