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Yep, bit of a shock, that. She and Carly had gone out to collect eggs before lunch on Tuesday and hadn’t even seen the huge, silent thing coiled against the shade cloth at the side of the chook house until they were close enough to touch.
Oh … dear … Lord.
Her heart had felt like it had stopped, but Carly’s scream was more one of surprise than fear. Kerry had come running from her vegetable garden and had quickly been able to tell them it was only a carpet python.
Right.
Only.
Harmless, Kerry had said. Really. Wouldn’t even squeeze you to death, which had been Jac’s second theory, once she’d abandoned the toxic venom idea.
“Take a look at it, Carly,” Kerry had invited, and Carly had looked.
From a little farther away, so had Jac.
They’d seen the markings and Kerry had told Carly her version of an Australian aboriginal myth about a lizard and a snake who had taken turns to paint markings on each other’s backs, which had kept both Carly and Jacinda looking at the python long enough to really see its beauty.
Because it was beautiful. The markings were like the neat stitches in a knitting pattern, with subtle variations of creams and yellows on a background of brownish gray—gorgeous and neat and intricate. Jacinda was discovering so much that was beautiful on Callan’s land, and Callan watched her doing it, knew she was writing about it, and seemed to be happy with that, even though he didn’t say very much.
On Thursday, they drove for three hours with Carly to Leigh Creek in the truck, and picked up fence posts and postcards, among other supplies. The town was modern and neat and pretty, with young, white-trunked eucalyptus trees and drought-tolerant shrubs flowering pink, yellow and red. For lunch they stopped in a tiny and much older railway town called Copley just a few miles to the north of Leigh Creek and ate at Tulloch’s Bush Bakery and Quandong Café—well-known in the area, apparently, as well as a popular tourist stop.
“You have to taste a quandong pie for dessert,” Callan decreed, so the three of them ate the wild peach treats, which tasted deliciously tangy and tart, something like rhubarb, inside a shortcrust pastry with crumbly German-style streusel on top.
Jac sat in the café for a little longer and wrote her postcards, while Callan entertained Carly by taking her for a wander around the quiet little town. The postcards were tough, and there were lots of places where her pen hovered over an uncompleted line while she searched for words. But she managed to fill the space in the end, and included Callan’s e-mail address. “I’d love to hear from you, if you get a chance,” she told both her brothers, hoping they would realize that she meant it, hoping they’d care enough to respond.
On the long journey home, Carly fell asleep in the seat between them, and with her sweet-scented little head on Jac’s shoulder, Jac got sleepy as well. They’d left pretty early this morning, and Callan had even let her drive for part of the journey. In a truck of this size, on outback roads, it had been a challenge but she couldn’t have chickened out. It seemed important, right now, to push herself in new ways, to prove her own strength—to herself, more than to anyone else.
Proving yourself did definitely leave you sleepy, though.
The smooth gravel of the road hummed and hissed beneath the wheels, and even the sight of a group of kangaroos bounding away across the red ground didn’t do more than make her eyes widen again for a few moments.
Callan teased her when she woke up again. “You had a good nap, there, judging by the size of the wet patch on your shirt.”
“Oh! Was I—?”
Drooling? True, Carly sometimes did, in her sleep.
Without speaking, he handed Jac a tissue, but there was no wet patch that she could find. She wadded the tissue up and pelted him with it. “I was not!”
“Snoring, muttering, reciting Shakespeare and your bank account number. Kept me awake, so thanks.”
“I was not! Pass me another tissue!” Even though it wasn’t a very effective weapon.
“Okay, I won’t mention any of the other things you do in your sleep.”
“I snoozed lightly. For about ten minutes.”
“Forty-five, actually.”
“You mean we’re nearly back?” Taking a better look at the surrounding country, she recognized Mount Hindley approaching to the right. She knew its distinctive silhouette, now. “Oh, we are! I really did sleep!”
“Yeah, my conversation was that interesting.”
“You didn’t say a word!”
They grinned at each other over Carly’s head and it just felt good.
On Friday evening, he asked her, “Do you still want to see the animals drinking, down at the water?”
“I’d love to.”
“Because we could do it tomorrow, if you want.”
Apart from Thursday’s trip into town, he’d been working hard since Sunday to get the new mustering yard completed, going out to Springer’s Well with Pete first thing every morning and not returning until late in the afternoon, leaving Lockie behind after that first day because of School of the Air. The mustering yard was almost completed now, Jacinda knew, ready for the next roundup of cattle for trucking to the sales down south.
Pete had had enough of the twice-daily drive between Arakeela Downs and Nepabunna by Monday afternoon, on top of the even rougher trip out to Springer’s Well, so he’d stayed at the homestead overnight on Monday and Tuesday nights to give them longer working days.
He had slept on the front veranda, wrapped in a sleeping bag laid on top of the ancient canvas of an army camp stretcher. He’d been an easy guest. Didn’t talk too much. Didn’t make a mess. Ate whatever was put in front of him.
And he’d told Carly stories about the mythical Akurra serpent, whose activities explained the existence of the water holes and gorges all over this region, as well as the existence of Lake Frome. “Big rocks in the creek, Akurra’s eggs. Belly rumbles ’cos he drank too much saltwater, and you can feel it under your feet. You feel one day, Carly, if the earth ever shakes a bit, that’s Akurra.”
Mythical serpents, real carpet pythons, yabby sandwiches … Carly took it all in stride. But her little legs probably weren’t yet equal to a dawn climb up Mount Hindley, so Callan suggested that this time they leave all the kids and Kerry behind. He packed breakfast and hiking supplies that evening, and suggested that Jac bring a day pack, too.
“For water and sunscreen, your towel, your camera, and somewhere to put your sweatshirt once the sun gets higher.”
Packing these items, Jac thought about the second schoolwork notebook that Callan had given her today—“In case you’re in danger of filling up the first one,” he’d said, and she dropped that in, also, along with a pen. She thought she was probably just giving herself unnecessary extra weight.
If he hadn’t made that rash promise about a dawn hike to Jacinda down at the water hole last Saturday night, he wouldn’t be doing this, Callan knew. He set the alarm for five-thirty because they wanted to get to the top of Mount Hindley to see the sun’s first rays, but he didn’t need its jangling sound to rouse him. He’d already been lying awake since four forty-five, locked in a whole slew of illogical feelings.
The thought of several glorious early morning hours alone with Jac made him heat up way too much.
He just liked her.
A lot.
Her company. Her outlook. Her smile.
And he was a man, so liking channeled itself into predictable pathways.
Physical ones.
He knew that his mood changed when he walked into the house and she was there. His spirits lifted, floating his energy levels up along with them the way empty fuel cans used to float the scrappy wooden rafts he and Nicky had hammered together to ferry around the water hole as kids.
Who noticed?
Someone had to.
Mum wasn’t blind, and her hearing was pretty sharp, too. Could she hear the way his voice changed? He got more talkative, louder. He laughed more. He threw Carly up in the air, wrestled with Josh, told bad jokes to Lockie, got all three kids overexcited before bedtime just because he was too keyed up himself and couldn’t keep it dammed back.
And Jacinda reacted the same way.
He could see it and hear it and feel it because all of it echoed exactly what was happening inside him.
Their eyes met too often. They found too many reasons to share a smile. The smallest scraps of conversation took on a richer meaning. Shared coffee in the mornings was cozier. Jokes were funnier. It took him longer to wind down enough to sleep at night.
Sometimes he felt so exhilarated by it, as if he were suddenly equipped to rule the world. Or his corner of it, anyhow—those six hundred thousand acres that impressed her so much.
The new mustering yard was great, structured to minimize stress and injury to the cattle. His yield and his prices were definitely going to improve. The long-range weather forecast held the hope of rain, and he’d put in some new dams just last year—Jacinda called them ponds—to conserve as much of the runoff as he could.
He’d talked to her about all this and she’d listened and nodded and told him, “I had no idea so much research and thought had to go into running cattle in this kind of country.” And he’d thought, yes, he had skills and knowledge and strength that he took for granted, things that could impress a woman that he’d never seen in that light before.
Not even with Liz, because Liz had grown up with cattlemen and had taken it all for granted, too, just the way he did.
What did Mum see?
What did Pete see?
Pete had irritated the heck out of him, earlier in the week, with the ancient-tribal-wisdom routine that he liked to pull on unsuspecting victims from time to time.
No, it wasn’t really a con, because Pete was pretty wise in a lot of ways, but Callan had felt conned, all the same. He’d felt naked and exposed.
What did Pete see?
What was all that biblical-style stuff about seasons turning and everything having its place and its time? He liked Pete’s conversation better when it was about fence posts and calving. On Wednesday afternoon, they’d had a big, pointless argument about wildflowers.
“Desert pea? It’s too soon, Pete. We had those freak thunderstorms a month or two ago, I know, but the flowers won’t be out for a few weeks yet, I’d say. Maybe not until spring.”
“Yeah, but happens that way, sometimes. So busy saying it’s too soon, and that’s right when you see ’em, red flowers dripping on the ground like blood, right where the rainwater soaked into the ground.”
“I still say it’s too soon.”
“You want your friend to see ’em before she goes,” Pete had said. It was a statement, not a question. “You’re not happy, because you think she won’t.”
And he was right.
Callan liked Jacinda so much, he wanted to show her dawn from Mount Hindley, and Pete’s ancestors’ rock carvings farther up in the gorge, and the bloodred, black-eyed Sturt’s desert pea flowers blooming on his land.
“Got your camera?” he asked her, as they walked out to the four-wheel-drive parked in its usual crooked spot in front of the house.
They moved and spoke quietly because the kids were still asleep. Mum’s light was on. She’d have made her early morning cup of tea and would be drinking it in bed, in her quilted dressing gown. She’d be dressed and over at the main house before Carly and the boys had finished wiping the sleep from their eyes.
“Yep,” Jacinda answered, holding up her day pack. “Remembered it this time.” She shivered a little.
“Cold?” he asked. It wasn’t an award-winning question. Of course she was cold. So was he. They’d need to get moving before they would warm up.
“A bit, but I’m fine.”
He liked that about her, too. She didn’t complain. Being cold or hungry or scared or wet … or confronted by a carpet python … or teased about drooling … was never enough on its own to spoil her mood. She took things in stride, just like her daughter did.
Yeah, but there were limits.
Monday morning, five days ago, on the veranda.
Sheesh, what had he said?
You think you’re the only one it’s ever happened to?
Callan, idiot, you can’t say things like that in a naked moment and then drop it and refuse to talk.
It was still sitting there, the conversational elephant that they both pretended they didn’t see. Jac didn’t know what he’d meant, and he wasn’t going to tell her, so they would both just have to ride it out until the memory of Monday morning wasn’t so fresh and didn’t matter anymore.
Maybe papering it over with fresh memories of things like going into Leigh Creek with Carly, eating quandong pies, climbing Mount Hindley at dawn and watching yellow-footed rock wallabies come down to drink would help.
He warmed the engine and took his usual semicircular route around and out of the yard. They parked beside the dry creek bed under the same tree as last Saturday night, which was a mistake because it reminded him of … all sorts of things. But if he’d parked somewhere different, it might have looked as if he was avoiding that spot, which would just be crazy.
The sky had begun to soften in the east, but the air was still cold and the dew heavy.
“I love being awake and out of the house this early,” Jac said, but she shivered again as she spoke.
Which made him want to put his arms around her to keep her warm.
He hiked faster, instead, moving his feet over the rocks the way he’d been doing all his life, forgetting that her stride wouldn’t be as sure-footed or as wide. She didn’t ask him to slow down until they were almost at the top of the mountain, and then her request came just a few seconds too late.
“Callan, could you—? Yikes! Ouch!”
She’d stepped onto an unsteady rock and it had tipped. She stumbled several steps and grazed her calf on another rock before almost falling to her knees.
“I’m sorry.” Oh, damn! She’d already hurt herself once this week, on that strand of barbed-wire fence while he’d feared she was lost. She’d only removed the Band-Aids Thursday morning. “I was going too fast. Wanted to warm us up.”
He doubled back to her, not reaching her as fast as he wanted to. He definitely shouldn’t have let himself get so far ahead. She bent down and started picking dirt from the graze, wincing and frowning.
“Let me,” he said.
“It’s nothing. The skin is barely broken.”
“What about this?” He took her arm and turned it over so she could see. She had a graze there, too, which she hadn’t even noticed yet, a scrape between her elbow and wrist where blood was beginning to well up.
She made a sound of frustration and impatience. “I shouldn’t have tried to go so fast.”
“It was my fault. You were only trying to keep up, and I have better boots than you.”
She smiled, tucking in the corner of her mouth. “That’s right. Blame it on the boots, not the hopeless city-bred American.”
“Don’t. It really was my fault.”
Together, they washed the grazes, dried them with the towel and put a couple of Band-Aids on the deepest scrapes, both of them finding too many reasons to apologize. Any awkwardness wasn’t in their first-aid techniques, it was in their emotions. He felt as if he shouldn’t be touching her, but that would have been impractical.
Oh, crikey!
