‘What do you grow?’ I asked as I stepped out of the HiLux and peered off into the darkness.
‘Kangaroos and gum trees, mainly. A few apples to pay the bills. Sunflowers and corn, when the wombats don’t squash ’em and the deer don’t eat ’em.’
Nash climbed out and walked to the door. Flinders and I followed suit. The first thing that hit me as we entered the house was its warmth. This was the warmest I’d felt since I left the Territory.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Central heating?’
‘Insulation,’ he said. ‘Lots of insulation. And good stoves.’
Nash hung his jacket on a hook beside the door and his hat – a battered Will and Bear with a long, impressive feather in it – on a stand. He flicked a switch and the room lit up. It had a slow-combustion kitchen stove, a blackwood table, a blue couch and an open fireplace made of cobblestones and slate.
In the light of the room, he turned out to be a clear-cut, dark-haired man in a thick woollen jumper and Hard Yakka work pants, with a dirty face and scabs on the back of his hands. He was slim, broad-shouldered, with an air of the magnetic storm about him.
The dog slipped in behind us and flopped onto a bed near the back door. Nash went into the bathroom, came back a minute later, rubbed, scrubbed and lightly bandaged. He said I was welcome to use the bathroom myself, which I did.
He pulled a pot from the fridge, put it on the stove and revved the fire there. Then he did something similar to a stack of wood in the open fireplace. In seconds, it seemed, the room grew even warmer.
‘My god, I wish I had a house that could do that,’ I said. ‘Mine feels like winter in Antarctica.’
‘It’s all in the design,’ he said.
I stood with my back to the fire looking out over the house. It was a sturdy, no-nonsense dwelling, with soft yellow lights, bare walls and a red oriental rug on the floor.
‘Did you design it yourself?’ I asked.
‘The heating system I did. It’s hydronic, underfloor. Borrowed a few ideas, stole more. Power’s out, but I’ve got solar panels and batteries. I like an open fire, but this one’s really more for staring into than for warming the room.’
He threw on some more wood and gave me what may have been intended as a smile. Maybe I’d misjudged him. He was reserved but loosening up.
‘I haven’t seen you around,’ he said.
‘Only been in the area for a week or so.’
‘Wild welcome. Where have you come from?’
‘I’ve been down in Melbourne, doing a transition course at the Police Academy. Before that I spent seven years with the Northern Territory Police.’
He raised a brow, then noticed the soup was bubbling. He dished up a bowlful, serving it with grainy, buttered toast.
‘This’ll bring you back to life,’ he said.
I took a spoonful.
‘Have to run you over more often.’
Nash sat in a seat opposite the fire and stretched his legs. He seemed to somehow reflect the warmth of the room. As did the soup: it was thick and hot, with red lentils and chunky potatoes, green onions, broccoli. Surprisingly delicious.
When I’d finished I stood up and ran a hand across the mantelpiece, struck by its mass. Ironbark perhaps? It felt as smooth, hard and heavy as a river stone. There was a framed photo on the mantelpiece: a creek tumbling down a ferny gully with a fallen log forming a natural bridge across it.
‘Where’s this?’ I asked.
He glanced at it. ‘North-west of nowhere. Probably just a figment of my imagination.’
Wherever it was, he clearly wanted to keep it to himself. I took a closer look at the photo and noticed a large bird on the far side of the creek, partially camouflaged. It was perched on the centre pole of a rough wire shelter and staring at the camera with an imperious disdain.
‘What’s with the bird?’ I asked.
‘It’s a wedgie. Name’s Pauli.’
‘Pauli?’
‘Called him Poorly when I first met him – that being how he looked. He’d been whacked by a car then attacked by a fox. I was trying to make sure the fox didn’t come back and finish the job.’
Nash’s natural reserve was definitely fading. This was a subject with which he felt at home.
‘Did you succeed?’
‘Shot a couple of foxes nearby. Then I built that shelter over him – just bush posts and chicken wire, but it did the job. The bird had a fractured ulna. Eventually let me treat it. A fortnight later I was able to let him go.’
I was taken aback. ‘You sat there watching him for two weeks?’
‘More or less. I got to like it. Made a little hide nearby, kept an eye on him. After a while the bird trusted me enough to eat the strips of rabbit or rat I left on the post.’
‘When was this?’
‘Year or so ago.’
‘And do you and Pauli keep in touch?’
‘I get up there from time to time and he seems to recognise me. Returns to the feeding post when he sees me coming.’
Nash offered me a cup of tea, then served it up with a piece of pleasantly crusty fruitcake. I leaned back against the hearth and took off my jumper, asked more questions about the bird. I’d never met anybody who’d rescued an eagle before. He made me smile when he spoke about the bird’s struggle to regain his independence, Pauli’s anger and frustration at his situation. He made me laugh when he described the way Pauli used to exaggerate his injuries to elicit sympathy, sneak food, angrily attack him and then gently peck an apology. He almost brought a tear to my eye when he described the bird’s eventual return to the skies: clumsy at first, then soaring as he found a thermal.
‘They can see them, you know,’ he said, eyebrows rising.
‘See what?’
‘Thermals. They spot bugs and leaves rising in them from miles away. Their vision stretches into the ultraviolet, so they can detect the UV light in a rabbit’s urine from the sky. I find that difficult to comprehend.’
So did I, but what I could easily comprehend was how much the bird meant to him. And I wondered what had made Nash the man he was. The ring of isolation around him was almost palpable. The eagle, I suspected, was as close as he came to companionship. The house was a solitary man’s abode. There were no family photos, no personal mementoes, no posters or artwork, no sign of a woman or child. Just that photo on the mantelpiece.
Maybe I was imposing upon his solitude? I finished the tea and stood up.
‘I better be on my way,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the meal, Nash.’
As we moved out onto the darkened porch a bolt of mega-lightning flickered in the distance. Pitchforks of pure energy lit up the night. His eyes were like pools of oil with a glimmer of phosphorescence.
He gave me a sideways glance and I felt a connection. More than connection. I almost fell in love. Maybe it was just lust. Maybe it was curiosity. Or madness. Who knew? Whatever it was, it had me by the throat, it flowed between us like an electric current.
What the hell was in that glance? Some metaphysical force? A black hole into which I couldn’t help but tumble.
‘Will I see you again?’ he asked.
‘Sure. In fact . . .’
I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. Carpe diem and all that crap.
Nash raised a brow. ‘That how you do things in the Territory?’
‘Not normally.’
I kissed him again and he pulled my body into his. His chest felt hard, his jaw rough and pleasantly whiskery. His breath was redolent of paperbark and mint bush, his hair and hands of loam. I slipped my tongue into his mouth and took pleasure in what I found there.
I turned my head away and blinked. Hang on, woman, I said to myself. What are you doing? Hitting on a guy you just met. This isn’t you. You barely even know his name. Nash. Was that a first name or a family one? You know nothing about him other than he builds warm houses and likes dogs, that he rescues eagles and would risk his own life to save that of a turtle.
The lightning flashed again. Maybe I absorbed something of its energy and speed, its electrostatic hunger for connection. Bugger it, I thought. Who cares? You haven’t had a man in years. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Nobody will know about it except him and you. If it leads to bigger things, great. If it doesn’t, what have you lost? I held him close, ran my hands down his back, his dirty work pants and the contents therein. He did something similar to me. His hands were like worn saddle leather, hard and smooth, comforting. We dirty-danced each other back into the house and out of our respective clothing.
Somewhere in the ensuing tête-a-tit we ended up on the rug in front of the fire. I straddled him, guiding him into my body then rocking, triggering a wave that grew into a tsunami, a dazzling burst of light.
Time, self, all sense of the separation of body and mind, disintegrated under the wave.
But then the light changed, narrowing into ominous beams that swivelled around the room with a puzzling intensity and a chorus of noises that almost seemed human. Then they were definitely human, the men who owned them yelling in my ear. The dog barked and attacked somebody. The room was full of people.
Christ, I thought, what’s going on? This can’t be happening.
A gloved hand threw itself around my shoulders. I whipped it forward and slammed whoever it belonged to into the floor then jumped to my feet. Was this an ambush? Had I been set up?
Another blackened figure came at us. If it was an ambush, Nash wasn’t in on it. He seized our latest assailant and wrestled him to the ground.
I kicked out at another attacker, connected, followed up with a double punch, likewise. Somebody grabbed me by the waist and dragged me down. How many of them were there?
Then discernible words emerged from the chaos.
‘Armed police!’
I stopped.
Nash didn’t. He jumped at the closest cop, swept him off his feet and threw him into a bundle of his mates.
‘Nash,’ I yelled. ‘Settle down! They’re police.’
He showed no sign of stopping, moving towards another of our assailants, so I tripped him and sent him sprawling.
‘Sorry, Nash, but they’re on our side.’
A cluster of coppers jumped onto him, held him down and wrangled him into a set of cuffs by torchlight.
They were in the process of doing the same to me when the room lit up and a heavy man in a black jacket and Kevlar vest was standing at the door with one hand on a light switch.
He stared at me, bug-eyed. I knew him well enough to know that he had a way with words, but right now most of those words had deserted him.
‘Evening, Neville,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t spare me a blanket, could you?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ he exclaimed.
‘Let her go,’ he said to his crew. ‘She’s one of us – worse luck.’