The Healing Season

by Catherine Evans

  ‘We’re getting some good people coming into town now,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘Why do people do it? Move here?’ Evelyn frowned and it looked like she was going to clam up, so Alicia hurried on. ‘I’m not after specifics. I’m thinking about how I can dovetail into people’s plans or hopes.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Something Lachlan said the other day made me think about it. He came here because a job at the Ag Store offered him a chance to start over. So, what else can I do to help others start over?’ She waved her hands as she spoke hoping to show that she wasn’t after fixed information, just dreaming up ideas. ‘The shop has street frontage. Should I be putting displays in the window to help new people find things they might need? Should I organise leaflets with basic agricultural information? Do we have artists moving in and I can showcase their work? Should I run courses to teach people about farming or farm safety? I feel like I could be doing more but not knowing why these people are here or what they might need makes it difficult to know what I can do.’

  It was probably the longest speech Alicia had voluntarily given since Paul’s death. More ideas had spilled out than she’d consciously thought of but she was pleased with the ideas. They must have been brewing in her mind subconsciously.

  ‘Well.’ Evelyn sat back in her chair, the creases in her face deepened the more she thought.

  Alicia remained quiet. She’d thrown a lot out there and they needed time to process what she’d said. Although, Evelyn might have already been through this with the committee. Maybe they’d been waiting for her to come and say something about being ready to help instead of being locked in her misery.

  ‘Well.’ Evelyn’s voice dragged her back to the kitchen. ‘Alicia Pearce, I didn’t think anyone would think ahead of me but you have. We should be utilising you and your shop more. Let me think about it.’

  Evelyn curled her hand around Alicia’s. ‘I’m glad you came to talk to me. We might never have thought of it.’

  ‘I only did because of what Lachlan said. It made me wonder why people would move here, which made me think of what I could do to help. I wanted to understand why people would take a chance on Dulili.’

  ‘Because we’re open to newcomers. Because we’re looking for a new start for the town, and they might be after a new start too. For some, it’s just the cheap living that draws them in. For some I’ve spoken to, it’s the dream of rural life—before they find out what the reality is. Sometimes they’re running. Some people are dreamers. Some want to hide. Some want a fresh start. Some want to belong. Some want to find contentment, a garden to grow in, and a rural town has that nurturing environment especially when you have a committee of people to welcome you and help you settle in. People are endlessly fascinating. You should join the committee, Alicia, we could use your young thoughts.’

  She shook her head quickly. ‘No. Thanks. I’m not ready for committees just yet.’

  Evelyn laughed, loudly. ‘We’re not all old fuddy duddies having cups of tea and gossiping.’

  Alicia’s hand flew across her mouth. ‘Oh, no. I wasn’t meaning that. I meant I’m not strong enough. I’ve not got myself together yet. Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.’

  Evelyn grinned. ‘You’re a good girl. When you’re ready, you let me know. Everyone misses Paul, you know.’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. No one talks about him. It’s like he only existed in my head.’ She stared at the painting on the kitchen wall. Not because it was any great work of art but because it allowed her to tune out other thoughts and gather her emotions.

  ‘You don’t talk to the right people. No one will mention him while you’re working. You need to get out again, not vanish as soon as it’s dark.’ Alicia shrugged even as Evelyn’s words soaked into her brain. Evelyn responded to the shrug by saying, ‘In your time, honey. In your time.’

  Alicia’s nod was like a vibration in her head. She couldn’t stop the short rocking nods, over and over. It was meditative. Evelyn’s gentle patience was a balm for her soul. It’s what she didn’t get from her parents, had never got from them. They always wanted control, to tell her what she should do, regardless of what she wanted. They wouldn’t give her the time to grieve and work herself out after Paul’s death. They wanted to fix her problems, sort out her life, their way.

  She needed time to re-calibrate. Time to work out who she was without Paul, without their dreams.

  Chapter 3

  Lachlan was restocking a stand of hats in the shop. It was still hot and hats had been selling well. Over the past couple of weeks, he had grown almost as comfortable inside the shop as out the back, and that astonished him. The shop was relaxed, friendly, and he hadn’t come across anyone yet who hadn’t come in for a chat along with purchase. No one in Dulili rushed and that suited him fine because he still had trouble finding things. Alicia might think the pub was the focal point of Dulili but it wasn’t, the shop was. People were in all day, buying this, or asking about that. He reckoned he’d met everyone in town, and sold stuff to most of them.

  ‘You move a lot of stock,’ he said to Alicia when she got up from her computer. She was often doing some job on there for someone—writing them a report with some sort of farming advice about weeds or what to sow or how much money they might make if the year turned out this way or that. That needed concentration, so he kept quiet unless she took a break.

  ‘We are.’ Alicia emphasised the ‘we’ and that made him smile. She always made him feel like they worked as a team. He’d not had a boss like that before, although she kept saying Mike, the shop’s owner, was the boss and she was just a worker like him. ‘It’s kind of fun.’

  ‘What? Restocking?’

  She laughed. ‘No. Working with you, and success. You’re fitting in well.’

  Her words had his insides warming, like drinking a hot chocolate. ‘Thanks. I like it here.’

  He enjoyed her company; she was easy-going, smart but never treated him like a fool. She explained things simply, most of the time, and every question he asked she treated with respect. They smiled at each other, quickly, as if it was too soon to be congratulating themselves. It probably was. She didn’t know much about him yet. So far he’d hidden his secret easily. There was so much stuff in the shop and outside that he kept having to ask where everything was. That wouldn’t last and when she knew his problem, she wouldn’t be so patient. Then he’d be looking for another job.

  He turned back to the hats. He had to think positively, and that meant taking one day at a time and being thankful for the small things. He wondered if Alicia celebrated at all. She seemed to work hard, too hard by the looks of her. ‘Are you going to celebrate the successful start?’

  Before she could answer, the Pratchetts, an older farming couple, came in. They came in almost every week. They always asked how he was settling in, how he was finding the dollar scheme, and how he liked Dulili. It took some effort but he answered them as if they were the only people to have asked those questions. He wished everyone had something else to ask him but since he wasn’t telling them his life story, he supposed that was all they could ask.

  The Pratchetts were after new gardening gloves and a watering can. He found the items relatively easily for a change and after they’d paid for the goods and chatted with Alicia too, they left the shop.

  Alicia took up their conversation again, as if they hadn’t been interrupted. He liked that she never let an interruption stop a conversation. It gave him a sense that his thoughts and opinions were important to her. ‘What about painting the store front?’

  His mouth opened but words were beyond him. He frowned, swallowed and opened his mouth again. ‘You want to paint the shop? As a celebration?’ He knew she worked hard but this was kind of ridiculous. Didn’t she know what a celebration was?

  ‘Yeah, the outside. Inside’s okay. I painted that before we opened. But if we spruce up the outside, it might be more attractive.’

  He shook his head as he star
ed at her. She had no idea.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Her face crunched up as she tipped her head and looked at him.

  ‘I was expecting that for a celebration you might get a bottle of champagne or go out to dinner, have a drink at the pub … but not you. You want to paint the building.’ When he grinned, she chuckled. Prior to his grin, he wasn’t sure she knew how to take his comment.

  ‘I wasn’t meaning just us. I was thinking of the whole street.’ She said it as if he had misunderstood. Maybe celebrating success was just something he did.

  ‘Of course. The whole street. I’m still thinking too small.’ He smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead.

  She grinned before tapping her finger against her front tooth. He wondered what she was thinking about.

  ‘Are cream, green and brown too boring?’ She’d been thinking of using the same colours that Dulili was already painted in, even if that paint was peeling and faded. He would never be able to work out her thought patterns.

  He wasn’t so fussed on her colour choice. They were the colours every second town was painted in but maybe there was safety and comfort in sameness. ‘They’re agricultural.’ He winked when she glared as if he’d offended her.

  ‘Are you saying that’s dull?’

  Yes, pretty much. She had him worked out. But instead of admitting that, he said, ‘Not dull but fitting.’

  She nodded. ‘It’s kind of heritage too.’ She had a satisfied look, as if she’d solved the issue.

  He wanted something more for Dulili. ‘Every town is painted cream and brown and green.’

  ‘Oh.’ She kept tapping her tooth as if that was helping her imagine colours. She stared out the front windows, tapping away. Then she turned. ‘Sky blue?’

  He shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen that before.’ But it could look good, better than cream and green.

  ‘Maybe pale blue with it.’ She didn’t seem to have much of a colour wheel going on.

  ‘What about yellow?’ he suggested.

  She scrunched up her nose. ‘That’d be too bright, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Nothing bright. I was thinking kind of like yellow sand.’

  She stared at him, then shut her eyes. ‘Oh, that could work.’ She opened her eyes and grinned. ‘We could have shop fronts in pale blue or sand, with trims the blue of a summer’s sky.’

  ‘We’re painting all the shop fronts?’ He pointed to himself and then at her.

  She chuckled. ‘No way. I was thinking of a town working bee, where a bunch of people spend one Sunday painting the shop fronts.’

  He shook his head but his grin remained. The head shake wasn’t an ‘it’s never going to happen’ shake but an ‘oh, boy, it’s happening’ one. She picked up the phone and called Evelyn Mitchell. Apparently Evelyn was the one to ring when you wanted a town working bee.

  ***

  On working bee Sunday, High Street was filled with volunteer painters and sanders of all ages. Lachlan couldn’t believe that people got together like this. He’d never seen such community spirit. These people were here, giving up their day, to make the town look better even if it wouldn’t directly benefit them. He’d never seen anything like it. People were in high spirits, as if they were at the markets or a fair or some entertainment, when they were going to work. Work hard.

  It had taken two weeks for Evelyn and the committee to organise the working bee. He couldn’t believe you could organise anything like this that quickly. Alicia assured him that the residents were familiar with working bees as they often pitched in to help with sporting events and with the primary school.

  The weather was perfect, sunny but not hot, with the hint of a breeze. There’d been a few weeks without rain so Alicia reckoned all the farmers would be in today too because they’d have caught up on all their jobs in the dry spell. She’d talked about opening the shop if anyone needed anything, to save them an extra trip in to town but he’d pointed out how much painting they had to do and she had eventually agreed not to open. If someone asked her for something, though, he knew she’d open up and get it. That’s the type of person she was. He wondered if the townsfolk knew how hard she worked, how much she did.

  Lachlan had been working with her on the outside of Ag Store from dawn. They were sanding and patching before the working bee officially started because Alicia had volunteered them to cook lunch since the shop owned a barbeque. Cooking would take time. Lachlan didn’t mind at all. He wanted to see how this sort of community event worked.

  Groups of people were assigned to each shop front. They began just as he and Alicia were packing up. A couple of the dollar people, Daniel and Zara, were allocated the empty shop next to the Ag Store. Lachlan waved to them as he left. ‘Don’t redo all my hard work.’ They laughed.

  Out at the back of the shop, he began cooking enough sausages to feed everyone, which was a heck of a lot of sausages. Alicia was inside slicing onions. He’d been lucky to win that coin toss.

  The working bee idea had met with no opposition at all. The shop owners readily donated paint, townsfolk readily agreed to turn up, and the Country Women’s Association organised lunch. Working the barbeque seemed like a small task in a very large production. He cooked trays of sausages, and Mrs Pratchett came out at regular intervals for a chat and to grab each full tray and take it inside to keep the sausages warm in the oven in the hall. It was like a well-rehearsed show.

  As he finished the sausages, Alicia came towards him carrying a tub of onions and plonked them on the side table near the barbeque. He looked over with a grin. When he saw her eyes, he grimaced and reached out to brush her shoulder. ‘You okay?’

  She nodded and waved at the onions. The tiniest pang of guilt touched him briefly but the coin toss had been fair, so he smiled wickedly as he said, ‘Sorry.’ He wasn’t sorry at all.

  Her tongue slid between her lips and poked right at him. Her nose scrunched up and she gave him a look. She knew he wasn’t sorry.

  He enjoyed Alicia’s sense of humour, if that was what this was called.

  ‘I can’t believe I know most of the people here,’ he said to her as he tipped onions onto the hotplate. They sizzled in the heat and the remnants of sausage fat.

  She breathed in, nose wiggling. ‘Slicing all those onions was worth it. I love that smell.’

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’

  She nodded, then went back to his original comment. ‘You’re almost part of the furniture now, Lachlan.’ She lightly dug him in the ribs with her elbow. Then she stepped back hurriedly as if she’d been burned.

  He glanced at the barbeque. It was far enough away that she shouldn’t have been burned. He looked up at her to see that she was okay but before he could say anything their gazes caught and locked.

  Something happened. His body was filled with heat, and not from the gas bottle. The air seemed to crackle between them. He hadn’t felt that before, not with her, and it threw him. He noticed a flicker of something in her eyes, then she blinked and turned quickly away. She waved a hand as she murmured, ‘Happy cooking,’ and scurried off.

  Up until just that moment he hadn’t thought of Alicia as anything but his work mate. Now, he wasn’t sure what he felt. Energy passed between them. Interest sparkled in her eyes. He wasn’t looking for that. Not yet. He wanted to find a place to grow roots and settle before anything else. He wasn’t sure Dulili was a growing place and he didn’t want to try to live in a dying town.

  Alicia had grown up in Dulili and was never leaving. She’d told him that in words but also with so many actions, like this working bee.

  Why was he thinking about this?

  He wasn’t interested in her except as a colleague. He just didn’t understand her attachment to the place. That sorted, he turned his attention back to the onions. He had a lot to cook to feed the hungry crowd.

  Mr Pratchett came up and surveyed the cooking. ‘How’s it going, Lachlan?’

  ‘Fine, thank you. How about yourself?’

  He he
ld out his hand. ‘I’ve a few nicks and scrapes but the walls are ready for painting. Pop out and have a look. I’ll look after this for a minute.’

  Lachlan walked out to the street and stopped still. Every shop front in the main street had been primed ready for painting by the hordes of volunteers. It looked fantastic even without any paint. Spruced up and clean. And the enthusiasm was overwhelming. He walked along the street in a daze and people yelled out what a great idea he and Alicia had had to change the town’s image.

  His whole body felt like it was glowing. He’d never had people thank him before, not like this. Accepted and appreciated. He had to slow his breathing down. He had to get back inside.

  Back at the barbeque, he grinned at Mr Pratchett. ‘Thank you. That’s amazing.’

  ‘That’s only half the job. Wait until this arvo.’ Mr Pratchett chuckled, clapped Lachlan on the shoulder and went off to see what he could do to help in the hall.

  Even the elderly worked hard in Dulili. Not just Mr and Mrs Pratchett but the Country Women’s Association ladies had spent the morning setting up lunch in their hall next door to the Ag Store. None of them were young.

  When Lachlan finished cooking, he took the onions and placed them in their position on the tables just as lines of hungry people formed. The ladies brought out the sausages that had been kept warm in the oven. A couple of trestle tables were set up with serviettes, buttered bread, the sausages and onions, and then bottles of sauce. It looked like a quick and simple way to feed many.

  Lunch was an orderly chaos as people loaded up plates. It became louder as people milled in the hall eating and chatting. Some folk had brought eskies full of ice and cold drinks. Others had big chilled water bottles. For the new folk, like him, who hadn’t known what to bring, there was plenty to share.