Walking to the Stars

by Laney Cairo

  Samuel dropped his voice and murmured, “Testing my leg is not an option, unna?"

  Nick chuckled, and said, “I don't think so."

  Talgerit called out, “Heard that. This is good jam."

  When Samuel had dried himself and dressed, Talgerit and Nick were in the kitchen, apparently negotiating what they were taking with them.

  "...then Josh will be unhappy,” Nick said, picking up the bread knife from the pile on the table and putting it back in the sink.

  "And the jam, eh?” Talgerit said hopefully.

  Nick took a pot of jam off the shelf and put it on the table. “Jam."

  "Some of the stuff Samuel uses to make food, eh?” Talgerit said. “So he can cook rabbit that makes our mouths hot?"

  They both looked at Samuel expectantly and Samuel shrugged. “Or roo. It would taste good with roo."

  "Lots of roo,” Talgerit said. “If I can catch it."

  "You're not taking your shotgun?” Nick asked Talgerit.

  "No, Ed said I have to do this the old way or I won't be a Featherman.” Talgerit looked as morose as he could with his exuberant good nature. “Roos are hard to catch."

  "What's a Featherman?” Samuel asked. “No one has ever told me."

  Talgerit spread his hands wide, dropped his gaze, and his body became still, more than still. His expression fell away, and when he looked up at Samuel again, his eyes focused right through Samuel. Samuel would have sworn the room temperature dropped.

  "Stop it, that's creepy,” Nick said. “A Featherman can walk through this world without a trace, act without consequences. Right, Talgerit?"

  Talgerit was back, and the prickling cold left Samuel. “That's right, Dr. Nick. A Featherman is a clever man, and he can seek revenge without anyone knowing."

  Samuel nodded. He was getting used to the oddities of Talgerit's language, and to the idea that clever meant more than intelligent.

  * * * *

  The wooden slats of the shearing shed floor were silver with age and slick with lanolin. Josh was squatting down beside the mothering pen, guiding an orphaned lamb onto its adoptive mother's teat.

  "Evening,” Josh said when Nick squatted down beside him. “Much easier to do this with decent lighting, isn't it?"

  "Seems so,” Nick said, watching the lamb latch on, despite the adoptive mother's attempts to get away.

  "You're really leaving tomorrow morning?” Josh asked. “For sure?"

  "Yes,” Nick said, and he stroked his hand across Josh's shoulder. “I love you. Just seemed important to make sure you knew."

  "Love you, too, Dad,” Josh said, and he let go of the lamb, now securely attached, and wrapped his arms around Nick's neck and hugged him hard.

  * * * *

  "My car,” Talgerit said, and he sounded as immovable as the boulders near the camp.

  "It needs fuel, Talgerit,” Nick said. “We'd have to carry enough oil or fat to run it. My car we can run on charcoal and wood."

  Talgerit crossed his arms and glowered, and the yellow dog he had with him snarled at Harold, who promptly bolted for the verandah.

  Josh sauntered over from the big shed, coil of fencing wire over one shoulder. “You can't take a car over the song line, can you?” he said. “Means you'll have to leave the car wherever that is. Someone might steal your car, Talgerit. It's not like it locks or anything."

  Talgerit looked horrified at the idea, and said, “We take Dr. Nick's van, unna? Doesn't matter if anyone nicks that."

  "I'll look after your car, Talgerit,” Josh said. “If you let me drive it."

  Talgerit slapped Josh solidly on the shoulders, rocking him despite his build. “Brother's son, you can drive my car."

  "What else do we need to take?” Samuel asked, looking at the box of food and the small sack of flour, and nudging the dog out of the box with his foot.

  "My medical bag's in the van already,” Nick said. “I'm leaving most of my supplies here, Josh. Make sure Jo gets them."

  Josh nodded, and said, “Blankets? You should be right for water, at least until you have to leave the van."

  Samuel wasn't quite used to be able to walk around easily, it was still a novelty to have both hands free, and he jumped up the back steps to the verandah, just for the joy of it, and left the others deep in discussion.

  His duffel bag was too big, so he transferred the maps and articles on the clock to a small fabric bag, shoved in a clean pair of underpants, a shirt and his toothbrush on top of them, and grabbed his waterproof jacket from its hook on the way back out again.

  The side door of the van was open, so he tossed his bag in the back, feeling as bouncy as Talgerit.

  Josh and Nick were hugging, and Talgerit had a soppy look on his face, watching them. Samuel knew they'd said goodbye the night before, because Nick had woken him when he'd finally come to bed, frozen and sorrowful, and Samuel had held him in the dark for a long time before Nick had finally gone to sleep.

  They didn't say anything, not that Samuel heard anyway, and Josh let go of Nick and hugged Talgerit, and then Samuel.

  Some things didn't need words.

  When Samuel looked back, leaning out of the passenger side window, Josh and Harold were standing beside the shed, Josh with a coil of fencing wire over one arm again.

  Talgerit leaned forward, over the seats, and said, “Where we going first?"

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Eight

  The first couple of hours were familiar territory to Nick, he traveled these roads constantly; the smooth run out of town, where the bitumen had actually been repaired, then slowing down for the slippery gravel out past the Passell's farm, and then the ford.

  It wasn't a ford for nine months of the year, then it was a dip in the road, but this was one of the other three months, and water roared over the road, at least a meter deep.

  "How do we do this?” Samuel asked, rising up in his seat to peer over the cracked and pitted dash.

  "Talgerit?” Nick asked. “Can you help?"

  Talgerit leaned right forward, over the back of the seats. The dog jumped up behind Samuel, and Samuel had to work hard at not cringing back from its mouth.

  "Might,” Talgerit said.

  The back door of the van slid open, and Talgerit jumped out and walked in front of the van, so the water rushed up to his ankles. He waded out slowly, taking careful steps, and the water crept up his legs.

  "What's he doing?” Samuel asked in a low voice.

  "Some magic is slow, some is quick,” Nick said, turning the motor off. “I'm guessing this is an in-between one."

  Talgerit didn't do anything, not that Nick could see, just stood there with the water up to his ribs. Time passed, the dog hopped in and out of the van a couple of times, wandering around a bit. It had been drizzling rain at first, and that stopped, and the cloud cover broke up a little. The wet mark on Talgerit's jumper grew larger, then the top of his trousers were above the water level.

  The creek dropped slowly, the water slowing, then when it was down as far as Talgerit's ankles, Talgerit splashed his way back to the van and hopped in the back.

  He looked tired, or at least as tired as someone who was manically hyperactive could be. Nick started the van again, and they rolled carefully across the rutted ford, wheels jarring down into potholes.

  In the rear vision mirror, when Nick looked back, he could see the water rising quickly, surging back down the gully.

  "The parting of the Red Sea,” Samuel said.

  Talgerit leaned wetly over the back of the seats. “Someone parted the sea, unna?” he asked. “Very clever man to do that."

  The further north they drove, slow jolting kilometer after kilometer, the larger the paddocks became, the drier the air was, and the worse condition the land was in. This area was badly acidic, desperately in need of liming, and phosphate, too, and the mallee was shorter and thinner.

  This had never been prime sheep and wheat land, up near Lake Grace, and only a fe
w people had hung on there, farming the land and surviving. Lake Grace itself was a collection of almost derelict buildings, with chickens scratching the main road and a pig glaring balefully at them from what used to be a petrol station.

  They stopped the van, and the dog began to yip, ear-splitting in the confines of the van, so Talgerit slid the door open, letting the dog out.

  "Does anyone live here?” Samuel asked. “Why would they?"

  "No chickens without whiteman,” Talgerit pointed out, and he hopped out of the van, too.

  "Tru lives here,” Nick said, opening his door and climbing out. “We need to ask her permission to stay tonight."

  The front of the post office was crumbling, piled with pieces of broken farm machinery, windows and door boarded over, but Nick led Talgerit and Samuel around the side of the building, past piled up worthless electrical equipment and fridges.

  A rotting fence was propped up with junk, and Nick pushed the gate in it open, holding it on its hinges, then closed it after the three of them.

  The yard looked like a jungle, overgrown with vines and weeds, but Nick knew there was a system to the garden, that Tru lived successfully off the tubers and tomatoes and dandelion roots.

  Tru was sitting on the back veranda, a shrivelled old woman with a pipe in her mouth, mangy cat at her feet and the inevitable mountain of books beside her sagging chair.

  She looked up, pushed her spectacles up her nose, and called out, “Come on through,” to them.

  "Good to see you, Nicholas,” Tru said. “Who're your friends?"

  "Good to see you too, Tru. This is Samuel and Talgerit.” He climbed up the wooden steps to the veranda, carefully stepping over the one that had rotted out completely, and took Tru's hand and kissed it.

  "We're passing through Lake Grace,” Nick said, sitting down on a clear place on the veranda amongst the books. “Mind if we camp?"

  Tru lived utterly alone, keeping no chairs for visitors, so Samuel and Talgerit sat down where they could, Samuel trailing his fingers over the spines of the books beside him.

  The late afternoon sun shone fitfully through the clouds, and the pollen in the air was briefly silver, the same colour as the weathered wooden boards of the veranda.

  Tru peered at Samuel, who had extracted a hard cover book from a teetering pile and opened it reverently.

  "Where did you go to university?” Tru asked. “Only an educated person would know Aristotle's On the Heavens, even in translation."

  Samuel looked up, and smiled briefly. “Guyana,” he said. “University of Guyana, Faculty of Natural Sciences. Where did you get this from?"

  "University of Western Australia,” Nick said. “Tru stole a truck and backed it up to the library and packed it full of books, when it became obvious the city was under attack."

  "I didn't steal the truck,” Tru said. “I just failed to book it out through Transport. And there didn't seem much point in returning it to Transport after the bombing started."

  Talgerit picked up a book, too, and opened it up, turned it around the other way, then back again. “This is beautiful,” he said, stroking fingertips over the glossy surface. “What is it?"

  "Kandinsky,” Nick, Samuel and Tru all said simultaneously.

  "What does it mean?” Talgerit asked, looking up briefly, then turning the page and touching the next color plate.

  "Not sure it means anything,” Tru said. “Except what you want it to. You folk might want to look around the buildings, find some space to sleep before it gets dark. Did you bring some food with you?"

  * * * *

  Samuel found a system to the books, once he began peering at the spines by candlelight, working his way around the rooms of the old post office. First room was philosophy, religion, politics and law, Dewey numbers 000 to 330; next one was languages, science and medicine, up to 620; the big front room was the arts and literature, and the hallway was floor to ceiling with biographies.

  Cats wandered in and out of the building, but the chickens seemed to be shut outside. Nick came to find Samuel, when he was crouching down in the front room, touching the spine of Goethe, sending dust tumbling down the shelving.

  Nick squatted down beside him and stroked his neck. “Ready to eat?” he asked. “Talgerit has made damper, and Tru killed and plucked a chicken and roasted it."

  "These books are amazing,” Samuel said, filled with awe. “Why are they here? Why didn't Tru take them somewhere like Albany, so people could read them?"

  "Tru doesn't think Albany is safe enough,” Nick said, standing up. “She thinks it'll be occupied eventually, but no occupying force will get this far inland, not with the Feathermen in between the books and the invaders. Here, where it's dry, the books will last for decades, until its safe for them to be taken to a university."

  "Or off-planet,” Samuel said, and he stood up slowly, the muscles in the leg he broke complaining bitterly.

  Nick's hand wrapped around his elbow, steadying him. “We're sleeping in the petrol station,” he said quietly. “Talgerit wants to stay outside, watch the stars."

  In the candlelight, Nick's face was sunshine orange and opaque shadow, but Samuel could smell him clearly enough to read the lurch of desire there. “No squeaking bed?” Samuel whispered.

  "No,” Nick said, and his mouth was urgent against Samuel's.

  When they went into the kitchen, Tru and Talgerit had started eating without them, and Talgerit looked up from chewing the meat off a chicken bone. “No food left,” he said. “You two aren't hungry enough."

  There was a still only partly-dismembered chicken carcass on a chipped plate, and a big hunk of damper, and Talgerit laughed, obviously amused by his own joke.

  Nick laughed, too, rumbling good humour that Samuel suspected had more to do with the way they'd kissed than Talgerit's joke, and Samuel added his candle to the two on the table and sat down on one of the empty crates at the battered table.

  The chicken was tough, almost too tough to chew, and the damper wasn't easy to break up either, but Samuel was glad to eat anyway.

  When they'd finished, apart from Talgerit who was industriously biting each bone open and sucking the marrow out, Samuel picked the plates up and stacked them in the sink and Tru put the kettle over the fire in the stove.

  Whatever it was Tru spooned into the mugs, it wasn't something Samuel had ever tasted before, and he found it made him sleepy and peaceful, listening to Nick and Tru talk about their old lives while Tru puffed on her pipe, until Nick touched his hand and said, “Wake up, Samuel, and come brush your teeth, then I'll put you to bed."

  A strong wind blew, rattling the trees, blowing bits of junk around the street, and Talgerit's dog came snuffling up to them and followed them across the dirt road before wandering off again.

  Enough moonlight shone, with the same wind blowing the clouds apart, and Samuel was cold underneath his sweater. “That's an easterly,” Nick said. “Beginning of jilba, turn of the seasons. Josh was right, there won't be much more rain."

  The wind felt gritty on Samuel's face, dry and cold, and he asked, “What is there east of here?"

  Nick stopped, halfway across the road, and looked in the direction the wind was blowing from. “Nothing,” he said. “Next mountain range is the Blue Mountains, on the east coast. This is the edge of the desert, there's four thousand kilometers of nothing."

  "It's called Lake Grace. Does that mean there's a lake here?” Samuel asked, and Nick started walking again, heading towards what looked like a shop with a huge awning in front of it.

  "Salt lake,” Nick said. “There'll be water in it at the moment, but not for much longer. Tru relies on an old well, hand lifts her water from twenty meters underground."

  The ground underneath the awning was cracked and pitted cement, and Samuel identified it as a gas station by the bowser lying on its side on the cement.

  The door to the shop pushed open easily, and it was remarkably uncluttered, unlike Tru's house, with some shattered pieces of
furniture in a corner and nothing else. The emptiness explained where Tru had found the shelving for her books; she must have cannibalised the entire township for it all.

  "I put some old cardboard on the floor,” Nick said. “This'll probably be the last comfortable place we sleep."

  It was dark, dark enough that Samuel had to rely on his sense of touch to find the buttons on Nick's shirt. “Don't care,” he said.

  The cardboard crackled and crunched underneath them, and the blanket was rough against Samuel's skin, but it was worth it when he kissed his way down Nick's chest and belly.

  They hadn't done this before; there'd been Samuel's wounds. That and the sure knowledge that every creak of Nick's bed was audible through the house, coupled with Josh's tenuous acceptance of Samuel, had held them back.

  Not this time. Nick moaned, deep in his chest, and his hands pushed against Samuel's cropped hair, pushing him lower.

  The easterly wind picked up outside, rattling at the loose boards of the gas station, chasing dust across the concrete floor. Samuel's hands were shaking as he undid the buttons on Nick's trousers, sliding under layers of material until he found Nick's cock.

  Nick said, “Please,” and Samuel dragged his teeth across Nick's belly, until his cheek rubbed against Nick's cock. Then he turned his head and breathed out, lips against skin.

  The concrete was hard under Samuel's knees through the cardboard, but he didn't care. He didn't care that Nick's fingernails caught at the back of his neck. Nothing mattered, as long as Nick kept gasping and rocking his cock into Samuel's mouth, hot and perfect.

  Nick came, long and slow, a rising gasp against the wind pulling at the building, with Samuel's hands holding his hips down.

  When Samuel crawled back up Nick's body to fall down beside him, Nick took a deep breath in. “You..."

  Samuel yanked the buttons of his trousers undone and reached for Nick's hand.

  With Nick's hand wrapped around his cock and his face buried against Nick's neck, coming was sweet.

  They left early the next morning, taking charcoal from Tru's stove to reload the van, leaving her part of the sack of flour. Nick drove the van off the main road, down a track, past abandoned houses and fallen fences, and a building that used to be a school, playground equipment swinging emptily in the easterly wind that was still blowing.