Chapter 19
CRAMPS
Ronnie’s drive home from footy practice in Edmonton felt longer than usual.
She leaned out the window of the Ford to let the air cool her face.
Up on the Tablelands, night air was chilly and humid.
Judging by the mottled patterns on the road and the occasional sparkle of headlights on the pavement, it had sprinkled while she was at footy practice.
Rain brought a familiar smell up from the clay.
In the middle of April, autumn, the night sky over Tinaroo’s hills left a pale blue glow above the mountains. On the western horizon a dark line of clouds hung low, forming a shredded purple terrace that could have been a flock of cranes.
Cyclone season was officially over, and Nev had returned from Kigali—two more reasons to celebrate.
Her sports bag rode in the passenger’s seat. She liked dog-sitting Gaia and Blair, and liked sleeping in Stone House, but looked forward to camping in her tent tonight so she could wake up to birdsong.
When Nev was gone the house didn’t feel empty; the fridge still held the same half-full condiments and glass pitcher of iced tea, the bedsheets still smelled like cigar smoke and vermouth.
Physical therapy that morning in Atherton had gone well. The left wrist couldn’t extend or flex as far as the right one but the range of motion was improving.
She reached the turnoff for Boar Pocket Road and turned right.
She passed Nev’s drive on the right. A few minutes later she slowed down, signaling left, and turned left down toward the creek.
Car tracks led downhill. She hugged the road back in the direction she had come.
For a few minutes she drove towards Nev’s house.
Then she peeled away from the road and downhill to the right toward the trees and the creek. Gum trees. Dark forest.
A clearing appeared, then her campsite. She was fond of it, even proud of it.
A blue tent sat under a grey tarp that she had strung on paracord between four trees.
She parked her truck beside a barbeque and a circle of stones.
The dogs jumped down, sprinted into the dark, chasing the scent of brush turkey, nosing among dead eucalyptus leaves for fresh pademelon scat.
An iron tripod stood over the ashes of her fire pit. Hanging from the tripod was a shiny tin can billy. The heart of the home was the kitchen, and the heart of the kitchen was the kettle.
The American turtle research intern she jokingly called her “karaoke boyfriend” because she sometimes hooked up with him behind the pub on Wednesdays had disappeared, unexpectedly flying home to the US without saying goodbye. She didn’t miss him exactly, but she hoped he was all right.
She picked a newspaper from the pile, crumpled a page at a time, then tossed the balls into the center of the firepit.
The headlines were about the banana blight.
She arranged a circle of sticks in a cone shape around the newspaper, then lit the paper with a lighter.
She added progressively larger sticks until the fire was big enough that she could add logs.
The fire cracked and popped. She fetched two spicy snags from the esky in the bed of her truck, speared them with sharp sticks and roasted them. Being alone did not bother her. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, or the outdoors. Nothing bad had ever happened to her when she was camping.
Five months until the custody hearing.
Five months until try-outs for the Brisbane Lions.
The next morning, she was still on her period and cramping worse than usual as she helped Nev replace the roof of the screen house down by the creek.
She volunteered to go up on the roof. She always volunteered for the dangerous jobs, because she liked them.
A cramp forced her to stop nailing plywood to rafters with the nail gun to wait for it to pass.
It didn’t, so she drank water. On one of the ladders, Nev paused with a hammer poised in mid-air.
“Dain’y? If you’re feeling unwell, get down. ”
“Cramps.” Ronnie climbed down the other ladder and took an ibuprofen, then climbed back up the ladder, continued nailing plywood to rafters with the nail gun. Her boss, who excelled at detail work, carefully nailed a thin strip of metal flashing around the bottom edge of the roof.
After lunch her boss left to go pinch some lambs.
“Down, Dain’y.”
“I will in a minute.”
She used a measuring tape to check the size of a piece of plywood she had cut, then carried the plywood sheet up the ladder. If the ibuprofen didn’t kick in soon, she would have to take a break and go find a hot water bottle.
Inwardly, she swore. Her period wasn’t usually like this. Not since she was eleven or twelve.
She screwed the sheet of plywood in place. The nail gun felt heavier than usual, which was strange.
She climbed down the ladder.
A rubbery whirling noise in the bush grew louder before a tight clump of orange-footed scrub fowl materialized out of the underbrush and ran across the clearing. They ran in a line, in unison, heads up, necks extended, before disappearing back into the rainforest.
She found what she was looking for, the roll of weather-proof plastic paper, then carried it up the ladder. On top of the roof, she unrolled it and laid it out flat. She cut it with a Stanley knife from her toolbelt.
She carried the rest of the heavy roll under her arm down the ladder.
Lightheaded, she found the staple gun and plugged it into the same generator as the nail gun with a matching extension cord. The generator hummed.
She climbed up the ladder again, slowly this time, favoring her middle, then ignored the pain while she leaned on the roof with her left hand, stapling weatherproof paper in place with the staple gun in her right.
These period cramps were truly miserable. A bad one gripped her and twisted. The ladder wobbled, or maybe she did. She leaned closer to the roof.
A flash of pain doubled her over, pushing her chest into the waterproof paper. For a moment she thought she had stapled herself. Her right hand still clutched the staple gun. The other gripped the ladder.
She tried a deep breath. The pain pressed back.
Don’t move.
She groped in her back pocket for her phone, almost dropping it. She stared down at her shaking hand. That was a bad sign. She didn’t usually shake like that.
She weighed her options and decided to drop the staple gun, which hit the ground with a bang.
One bar of reception.
Lightheaded, she called Reg.
No phone service.
Below, the generator roared. She brushed the phone along her thigh, but couldn’t find a pocket. Shivering, she started down the ladder.
She came to on the ground, looking up at the sky through tree branches.
The sky was one of those tricky colors between indigo and white.
Something bit into the middle of her back, behind her belly button, like a sharp stick.
She explored with her left hand. No stick there.
Nothing poked into her back. She must have pulled a muscle when she fell.
She flexed both hands and both feet, relieved that she still could.
Not paralyzed, then.
The pain in her back and stomach grew.
Panic wouldn’t solve this problem. She scanned the clearing, had to get to her truck.
Pain vacillated. When she moved it moved. It had a velocity, a direction. She groaned.
Waves of hot and cold, like food poisoning. She cradled her stomach and pressed her other hand to the ground. There was no way she could crawl to the truck.
Trees around the clearing danced. She waited for her eyes to focus, for her vision to clear. She turned her head. The truck was uphill. Dropping her phone had been a mistake.
Maybe her appendix had burst.
She lay on her side, knees bent.
Nearby in the clearing a radio played. The generator still roared.
“Help?”
Her hands and feet tingled. She would pass out soon.
Pressing her chest, she felt her heart drumming beneath her palm. Oxygen-starved lungs sucked air in and out.
Why can’t anything be easy?
Then it was dark and Nev was repeating that word like a mantra.
The generator had burned through its fuel and died. Sleep was close, a magnolia at night. She recognized it by the smell. It smelled like lanolin, the oil sheep secreted under their fleece.
She had the shakes, like after giving birth to Rainbow.
When she exhaled she bled sound, white noise. It felt good to vocalize, to push back against the darkness.