Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

and heaped up the sand under one end of the mat for her ankle. Sat in her shelter and chewed slowly through two protein bars. What she needed was a fire but, apart from her stick, there was nothing here to burn. She felt a million stars pressing on her but she didn’t look up. Wasn’t interested in where she was. The salt got into her dry throat and she thought about her stills, waiting for the day’s heat to draw up saltwater out of the lakebed and purify it, drop by drop. Then she eased off the bandage and rubbed in the cream, and put on her balaclava and got into the sleeping bag and zipped it all the way up.

It wasn’t enough. Hour after hour the cold deepened and sharpened, pushing up through the earth and down from the stars to inhabit her fully. It made the throbbing in her ankle worse, then better, then she couldn’t feel it. Started to shiver and couldn’t stop. She rubbed herself, pumped her arms, trying to catch the heat as it left her body. Thirst tormented her. Matti ran away. Matti was always running away. As soon as she could walk, she ran. Out of Li’s arms and down the long stony driveway, onto the road. When Li caught up with her, she screamed. She thrashed and kicked and bit, eyes on the horizon. Ran further next time, into the bush, into town. People brought her back from everywhere. She hates me, Li told Frank, with bruises on her neck. Don’t take it so personally, Frank said. She’s a kid. Kids run away. Li said, She doesn’t run away from you.

Cold. She reached for Frank, for the warmth of him. Cried out. Got up on her knees in the sleeping bag and licked condensation off the plastic. Above her the stars burned and blurred and ran. Stars so thick they made smoke. Lumps of galaxies like slow burning wood. She was standing in the dark, away from the camp, with Val. Val was naming the stars for her, the ones for direction and the ones for stories, the dead stars and the mechanical ones, patched together from kevlar and alloys, wearing out and failing to bounce their signals, drifting off course and malfunctioning.

Frank, she thought, she’s getting too far away. But Frank was gone.

Navid had called the salvage depot and Li’s shift manager had found her and passed on the message that she had to come. When she got to the desal plant, Frank’s shift had finished two hours ago. Navid wasn’t where he’d said he would be and no one would tell her anything. Finally one of the men left what he was doing and led her to a container where the workers slept between shifts. As he turned to leave he put his hand briefly on her shoulder.

Navid was sitting on a bench outside the container, leaning forward with his head resting in his hands. He sat up slowly when she said his name. Then he told her there had been an accident. A sling had snapped.

He was on a camp bed inside. A sheet over him and plastic sheeting under him so the blood wouldn’t ruin the mattress. When she lifted the sheet she couldn’t decipher his face.

It’s him, Navid said. I don’t want you to hope for that.

It hadn’t occurred to her to hope for that. She had known she would lose him when they met, and when they lay down in the paddock, when he asked her to stay and she said yes she would stay, when Matti was born, when they went out dancing after they sold two seasons’ harvest in advance and they couldn’t stop talking about the future, when they were on the road together and the future was still there. She just hadn’t been ready today.

Navid pushed her down gently into a chair and let go, like she burned. She couldn’t take her eyes off his body. This was their last time together, soon he would be gone completely, and she was watching for some essential detail – some proof or sign. She heard gulls outside and something landed heavily on the wharf. There was the static hum from the lightstrip above her. There was the clock and Navid breathing behind her. A smell of skin and iron. There was nothing of Frank here. She knew it was him, she didn’t delude herself, but the crushed body in bloody pants and workboots could have been any man out there.

The shift manager knocked and came in, wiping his boots. He stood behind her and spoke quietly to Navid about human error and risk ownership, the terms of independent contracting. He said it was unfortunate. He asked what they planned to do with the remains and offered more plastic sheeting. He made it clear they would need the bed soon. He wiped his feet again as he left.

School would be over in four hours. She would have to go there and tell Matti what had happened. Matti wouldn’t believe her, she would want to see, and Li would have to decide if that was right, and she would have to decide without Frank. She would have to make every decision about Matti alone now. But first she had to take her eyes off the body on the bed.

She thought about how she’d never wanted a child, had feared it, feared herself, and how Frank had tried to make her believe she was capable. That there was enough room in the world, that Wars wouldn’t last forever. How she had changed her mind, slowly, falteringly. His faith in the essential goodness of people drew it out in others or suspended their disbelief somehow – finally even hers. It was a kind of grace he had and it would be in their child too, she decided. What she knew about parenting she had learned from an alcoholic drifter who had no memory of his own