I load up the Vauxhall, put my bags into the boot. It’s early. Stripe-winged chuffs line the branches, magpies squawk from somewhere else. There’s a mist above the ground, a beauty in the starkness you only notice when you’re leaving.
My father drives me into Maude to catch the bus. We bump down the lane in silence. I try to remember the views, the shapes of the trees and the angular cattle, the smell of clothes dried hard in the sun.
The bus comes through from Broken Hill on Thursdays, sometime between seven and eight in the morning. We need to be there in case it’s early. It’ll be nighttime when I get into Melbourne, tomorrow I’ll be on a plane. On Saturday I’ll see Callie.
He waits with me on the post office bench. The morning breaks around us, the same time of day as when I rode out on the pony, when I left the first time.
“Dickie was good with horses and cattle,” I say, almost as though it’s a question.
“He made your mother laugh and stay up late,” he says. “She used to laugh with me in Europe.”
“And then?”
“She arrived with you,” he says. “Never trust a man whose eyebrows meet, or a New Zealander.”
“He wasn’t from New Zealand.”
“You don’t have to be both of them to count,” he says.
I listen for the rumble of the bus. It’s almost seven o’clock. Darwin seems preoccupied, puts his hand against his cheek, as if remembering the make of his face before the eye, how he might have now looked windswept and interesting.
The bus grinds in and off the sealed road, dust engulfs us. He raises a hand to shield his eye. For a moment I can hardly see him, even though he’s right beside me. I never patched the knees of his pants or got the garden going.
“Good luck,” he says, “with the girl.” He turns his head to look right at me, focusing. “It’s a treacherous business.”