Walking to the Stars (6 page)

Josh crouched down beside the stove in the warmth and peered at Samuel's repairs. “What's that?"

"It's the injector from the generator at the camp,” Samuel said. “It's all coked up, so I'm cleaning it up."

Josh said, “You can't fix injectors, I know that. They're a sealed unit, you can't even get into them."

"Can if you hit them hard enough,” Samuel said, and he held up a chunk of metal. “See?"

Nick left them peering at the generator parts and went back to his study.

The hail woke Nick, deep in the night, and he lay for a while, content to be warm in his bed while the ice crashed against the tin roof until, during a lull, he caught the sound of Samuel's bed squeaking. Samuel probably wasn't quite as complacent about the pounding the house was taking.

He pulled a sweater on over his underwear and went and tapped on Samuel's door, and Samuel called out, “Come in."

Just enough light crept in around the curtains for Nick to make out that Samuel was sitting up in bed, a blanket pulled around his shoulder as the storm picked up strength again, and the pounding on the roof resumed.

Nick knew all about how people smelled, the sting of fear, the sweat of pain, and Samuel was scared, so Nick sat down on the edge of his bed and wrapped his arms around Samuel.

The storm picked up, the wind rattled the window panes, and it was cold until Samuel wrapped the blanket around Nick's shoulders as well as his own.

They embraced, while the storm raged around the house, and Nick couldn't remember the last time he'd held someone, other than Josh, who wasn't a patient. He was lonely, deep in his bones lonely, and his honesty required that he admit to himself that he was there because of his own needs as well as Samuel's fear.

Samuel felt good to hold, his head settling against Nick's shoulder, one hand curling around Nick's arm through his sweater, and when Samuel yawned sleepily, Nick settled them both back on the bed.

Samuel lifted the blankets up and when Nick slid his legs in beside Samuel's it felt blissfully warm. The bulk of Samuel's cast was solid against Nick's hip, and it was no real surprise when Samuel's mouth found his in the dark.

It was tentative, just a simple brush of lips against his own, and Samuel might have sighed but Nick couldn't hear him over the storm.

They stayed like that, then Samuel's hand stroked his cheek, slid around his neck, encouraging him, and Nick kissed him.

He'd never kissed another man before, and Samuel's short beard felt rough against Nick's face, but nothing seemed strange or unfamiliar about it. They were just mammals, and on a cold stormy night, when a cold front charged up from the Antarctic, this was what mammals needed.

When Samuel's tongue pressed against Nick's mouth, looking for admission, strangeness overwhelmed Nick temporarily, but they were both consenting adults, and there was no reason why Nick shouldn't let this happen between them.

He could feel Samuel breathing hard, hand threaded into Nick's hair, holding their mouths together, and he hadn't known Samuel had wanted this, hadn't known anything, not until Samuel's tongue had slid into his mouth.

It was the desire he felt that surprised him the most, the fact that his body wanted this, wanted Samuel, and it must have been happening without him noticing, but now he was aching.

When Nick lifted his mouth, his lips were tingling and buzzing, and he could still taste Samuel, lingering.

Samuel said, “I think you should go."

"Why?” Nick asked, and he wanted to stay, wanted to keep kissing Samuel.

Samuel's hand intertwined with his, long lean fingers around his own. Samuel guided Nick's hand to the front of his underwear, and Nick had never touched another man's erection before.

"Oh,” Nick whispered, jerking his hand back quickly.

If he stayed... He didn't think he could cope with that just yet.

Nick's bed was cold when he slid back into it, and the storm sounded like it was easing, with rain replacing the hail stones, and the wind dropping.

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The world was quiet when Samuel woke, cold and quiet, and his nose hurt when he poked it out from under the huddle of his blankets. It was definitely freezing cold.

He pulled on clothes quickly, putting both of his warmest windbreakers on, and two pairs of socks as well, then propped himself up on his crutches.

After pissing and washing his hands in freezing water, he went into the kitchen. It was warmer there, with a fire roaring in the stove and the kettle on the hub, steaming faintly, but it was the sight out of the kitchen windows that he couldn't quite believe and that made him hobble to the back door as fast as he could.

For as far as he could see, everything was blanketed in white. It wasn't snow, at least not when he looked down at the ground below the verandah. A thick layer of hail stones ranging in size from tiny to fist-sized, lay at least ten centimeters deep on the ground, and covered everything, including tree branches.

It was freezing cold outside, even compared to his bedroom, and he shivered inside his layers of clothes. Across the top paddocks he could make out figures moving around and hear the faint shouts and whistles of commands to Harold.

Sheep milled around, and the tractor chugged into sight, pulling a flat bed trailer. When the tractor stopped, a figure clambered off the trailer and began to lift sheep onto it.

The rain spat still, almost ice rain, and the wind had dropped. Samuel's face stung from the cold, but it was so eerily beautiful that he couldn't make himself go back inside.

He felt unsettled, maybe even uneasy, about what had happened during the night. It had been unexpected, maybe impossible, and he'd been so hungry... The memory made him close his eyes briefly, sense echoes stirred in him, the feel of Nick's hands, so strong and certain, the way they'd kissed.

It was such a simple thing, and if Samuel hadn't suspected that Nick was floundering, he would have taken it further, found some release and comfort, maybe even begun a set of interdependency exchanges that would build up the kind of mutual responsibility that would lead Nick to offer to come with him to Perth, but that would have been wrong, dishonest even.

The tractor struggled up the nearest paddock, wheels spinning a little in the icy mud, and Samuel could make out Josh on the back, holding onto sheep, and he could hear the bleating now, too.

Harold came barreling up to the house, through the wire fence around the garden, and shivered up the steps to collapse down on his blankets. Samuel found a chair on the verandah, cracked seat and uncertain legs, but still good enough for Samuel to pull over beside Harold the Dog and sit on.

He pulled one of Harold's blankets over him, and Harold was pathetically grateful when Samuel wrapped one of his hands around Harold's nose to warm it up.

Footsteps crunched on the hail, and when Samuel looked up, Nick banged his boots against the bottom step to dislodge the ice.

"I didn't want to take him inside,” Samuel said. “Since you'd said not to."

"Too right,” Nick said, starting to unwind the scarf that partly covered his face, revealing skin blotchy from the cold. “He's not even remotely housebroken. I've come to get coals for the stove in the shearing shed, and he can go down there and warm up."

Nick left his waterproof coat hanging on the verandah, yanked his boots off and padded indoors, reappearing a moment later with the ash bucket full of coals and cinders from the kitchen stove. He stepped back into his boots, looked at Samuel briefly, as if he wanted to say something, then trudged off across the garden and through the gate to the sheds, pausing only to whistle for Harold.

On a cold day, with hail thick on the ground, Samuel would have thought they'd be inside for the day, but apparently that wasn't the plan.

"Football,” Josh said, when he appeared wearing shorts and a striped sweater, as though that explained everything.

"It's Saturday,” Nick added.

Samuel had lost track of the days of the week somewhere along the line. Days of the week hadn't mattered on the freighter, or in hospital, and he'd thought they wouldn't matter on the farm either, but apparently they did.

"I'm a ruck,” Josh said, as he began to cut slabs of meat off the cold roast. “And hail never stopped the country league before. Is there any other bread, Dad?"

Nick shook his head. “We'll get some from the bakery, just cut the meat to go in it."

Samuel watched the two of them bustle around the kitchen, putting meat and plates and a knife into a box, along with cups from the cupboard.

An unlabeled bottle went in the box, too, and when Samuel took the top off and sniffed, it smelled like the pure alcohol he'd been using to clean the diesel injectors with, only rougher. He put the bottle back in the box. If he was going to run around a paddock in the ice, he'd want some alcohol, too.

They jostled and bounced painfully slowly into town on the icy track, and Samuel would have been freezing if it wasn't for the layers of borrowed clothes he had on: heavy trousers, far too large, held up with string; a sweater that reeked of wool fat, obviously handmade, that came down to his knees and over his hands; and a waterproof coat, with scarf and knitted woolen hat over the top. At least it had stopped drizzling rain.

A line of cars, trucks and tractors was parked down one side of the school, and horses huddled for shelter under one of the school verandahs. All of the horses and some of the vehicles had blankets over them.

There seemed to be hundreds of people there, crowding around the school grounds, chatting and shouting, and more vehicles arrived every moment, including a convoy of decrepit sedans that Samuel recognized from the camp the day before.

Josh parked the van outside the clinic, and Nick slid the back door of the van open. He appeared at Samuel's door and helped him out of the van safely.

Josh grinned and slammed the driver's door shut, then bolted off toward the school grounds, his boots with spikes digging successfully into the slippery, partly-frozen mud.

Samuel was far more careful, and with Nick beside him, holding the box of food with his medical bag balanced on top, Samuel hobbled slowly on his crutches toward the crowd.

People called out greetings to Nick as they progressed, and Samuel was acutely aware that they were staring at him, too. He guessed that strangers weren't a common sight.

A sudden crowd of Noongar children appeared around them, shouting and squealing, trying to climb into Nick's arms, hurtling around, all wearing the same kind of strange assortment of clothes that Samuel was, only most of the bigger kids seemed to have skin cloaks over the top of their hand-me-down sweaters.

Nick said, “Up there, Samuel, where you can sit down properly.” Nick scooped up a child, and Samuel made his way through the press of people, all gossiping and chatting and gazing, Nick right behind him.

He was getting good at going up steps on crutches, but it was still a relief to sit down on the clear space of bench, beside the hugely pregnant woman from the camp.

One of the littler kids, face shiny with a runny nose, scrambled up into Samuel's lap, and Ed walked up to Samuel slowly and took his hand. “You're a good man,” Ed said, pumping Samuel's hand. “The water is clean. A clever man, like Dr. Nick."

"It won't run unless the sun shines,” Samuel said, and he was relieved when the pregnant woman leaned across and wiped the nose of the child he was holding.

Nick put the box of food down beside Samuel's feet and handed the child that was in his other arm to one of the women, then removed another child from his back.

"Good day, Dr. Nick,” Ed said, shaking Nick's hand once it was free. “Your friend Samuel is clever."

Nick smiled at Samuel, and Samuel's belly flipped a little. “He was scared of the storm last night,” Nick said. “Don't think South America has such big storms."

"We thought, ‘Oh, now Girdagan will have her baby, the storm will make it come,’ but it didn't,” Ed said. “Maybe tonight, eh, Girdagan?"

"Maybe, Ed,” Girdagan said, rubbing her belly through her layers of clothing. “Maybe tonight Dr. Nick will come to the camp for the baby."

Samuel listened to more talk, most of which made no real sense. Nick seemed to be running an informal clinic, checking people's seeding injuries, looking at their teeth and ears, listening with his stethoscope to children's chests, until a bell rang, and men in striped sweaters ran onto the school grounds, jumping on the mostly-melted hail, shouting and waving.

A woman in a white coat ran onto the grounds carrying a ball, and bounced it hard in the middle of the grassed area, and Samuel almost fell off the bench in appalled surprise when play began.

The oval ball had surprised him, but he guessed they played with whatever ball they could find, but this was not football as he knew it! The players threw themselves at each other, scrambling up each other's backs to catch the ball, tossing each other out of the way. He saw no delicate footwork, no considered tactics, no long dribbles and graceful kicks; this was war with a ball in the middle of it.

The crowd erupted, shouting and cheering, when a Noongar man in the same color sweater as Josh scrambled over a pack of people to catch the ball. The umpire blew her whistle and pointed, all the players backed off, and the player kicked the ball hard at the posts at one end of the ground.

The ball soared an impossible height off the ground, tumbling through the air, and it seemed everyone except himself and Girdagan leapt to their feet shouting.

The ball flew between the posts, the umpire blew her whistle again, and a kid waved two flags elegantly in the air between the posts.

"That's Talgerit,” Girdagan said, leaning close to Samuel so he could hear her. “He's my brother. He's a good man. Have you got a sister?"

The umpire caught the ball when the kid with the flags kicked it to her, and trotted out into the middle of the grounds again, and Samuel said, “No sister, sorry."

Samuel watched a flurry of hugging amongst the players, which seemed to be independent of the color of sweater they wore, and the umpire blew her whistle and bounced the ball again.