Flight to Coorah Creek Page 3

  When people from the city came to the outback, one of their first reactions at night was to notice the silence. Adam knew better. The outback is never silent. To those who listen, the night is filled with sound. He could hear the gentle ticking of the corrugated iron on the homestead roof, contracting as it cooled after the heat of the day. To his left, behind a high post and rail fence, he could hear some animals moving around. Probably the horses the stockmen had been riding that day. A faint breeze was blowing, carrying the metallic clank of the windmill as it continued its never-ending circles – pumping life-giving water from deep below the earth. Occasionally, the breeze brought faint sounds of human voices from the stockmen’s quarters. His nostrils flared as he caught a whiff of smoke. In the distance the restless light of an open fire captured his attention, mesmerising in its slow dance.

  Adam took a long slow breath trying to relieve the tension of the past few hours. The injured boy was safe. He’d made it here in time. Thanks to the new pilot. She’d done a great job. Now he had time to think, he was rather impressed by that difficult landing. And on her first day. He probably should find her and tell her. The other thing he should find was food. He suddenly felt very hungry. He set out in search of the kitchen. Turning the corner of the veranda, he saw a figure standing in the dim light, staring out into the night. Just as he had. Adam knew why he often stood alone staring into the darkness. He wondered why Jess did. Her tall slender body was tense, as if ready to dart away at the slightest threat. She was taking no comfort from the stillness of the night.

  She turned as she heard him approach. ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Adam said. ‘He’s lucky. That was a great landing, by the way.’

  ‘Thanks. Just don’t tell the authorities. I’d like to keep my licence.’

  ‘I guess they’d frown on a landing like that.’

  ‘It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done.’ She seemed almost to be speaking to herself, and her voice was full of regret.

  What other things, Adam wondered, could Jess possibly have done that were more illegal than a late landing on an unlit airstrip? He watched her face as she turned back to the night. She was tall for a woman, but still shorter than him. Her hair shone softly in the light that streamed out of a window. He had always liked long hair on a woman – but he realised he rather liked this short gamine cut. It framed a face that was quite beautiful. He was struck by a desire to see her smile. Their acquaintance so far had been short – and not exactly designed for smiling. He found himself wanting to change that.

  ‘You did well today.’

  ‘Is this where you tell me I saved his life,’ Jess said, her voice a little brittle and defensive.

  ‘No. I saved his life. But you got me here so I could do it.’

  She was silent. He sensed her surprise. Perhaps she found him a bit brusque. Well, he believed words existed to help people communicate – not to hinder them. He didn’t mince his words.

  ‘You’ve had a rough first day,’ he said.

  She nodded. He could feel the tension in her. That was easy to understand. The more he thought about the past few hours, the more he realised just what a tough welcome Jess had received in her new home. Perhaps there was something he could do about that. He certainly wasn’t about to leave her staring out into the night, brooding. He knew from long experience that no good would come from that.

  ‘Have you eaten anything?’

  ‘I … the family offered me dinner. But … well, I guess I didn’t feel much like eating.’

  ‘I know what you mean. The smells coming from the kitchen weren’t very appealing, were they?’

  Jess turned quickly towards him. The corners of her mouth twitched as she almost smiled. That was better.

  ‘But you should eat. We both should. Come with me. I happen to know the best restaurant in town.’

  She looked at him then, her eyebrows raised in question.

  Adam led the way down the wooden steps into the baked red earth and together they strolled towards the distant campfire. As they got closer, the smell of smoke got stronger. Adam ignored the smoke and focused on the cooking smells. His stomach rumbled.

  ‘G’day,’ Adam called, as he approached the fire. ‘Any chance of some tucker for a couple of hungry fliers?’

  ‘Sure, Doc,’ said a voice in the darkness.

  The men sprawled around the campfire were almost uniformly dressed in blue jeans and well-worn cotton shirts. The sun had long since vanished, but each still wore a battered Akubra hat, as if he had been born wearing it. To a man, their brown skin and dark curly hair declared their Aboriginal heritage. Some sat on the dry earth. Others on logs that had been set around the fire.

  ‘This is Jessica. She’s our new pilot. She hasn’t had any dinner.’ Adam guessed Jessica hadn’t managed much in the way of lunch either.

  ‘Sure thing. Pull up a log, Missus.’ Another stockman waved Jess to an empty place. Adam sat down next to her. The man nearest the fire, obviously the cook, reached for metal plates, and ladled some steaming stew out of a big black pot that sat amid the coals.

  ‘Thank you,’ Jessica said, as she took the offered plate.

  ‘It’s the best food for a hundred kilometres,’ Adam said, as he accepted his meal. ‘Better that anything you’ll get at the homestead – which is the only other food for a hundred kilometres.’

  ‘Too right,’ the cook said.

  ‘Is everyone okay at the camp?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Grandpa had a fall today hunting kangaroo.’

  Adam saw Jessica start and glance down into her bowl. Her mouth stilled and he saw a touch of panic in her eyes.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said softly, leaning towards her. ‘Dave’s grandpa hasn’t actually caught a roo for ten years or more. You’re eating good outback beef.’

  A chuckle around the campfire suggested he wasn’t the only one who had noticed her sudden lack of enthusiasm for the food.

  ‘It’s gotta be more like twenty years,’ Dave offered cheerfully. ‘But Grandpa don’t give up easy.’

  ‘Do you want me to take a look at him?’ Adam asked.

  ‘It’s all right, Doc,’ Dave said. ‘Sister Luke came down and sorted him out. She says he’ll be hunting again in a few days.’

  ‘Sister Luke?’ Jess asked.

  ‘Her order works with the Aboriginal people,’ Adam explained. ‘That’s why she’s here.’

  ‘Oh, I thought she worked for you.’

  ‘No. I’m just her charity case.’

  She almost smiled at that. Adam wondered if she would smile if she knew just how close that was to the truth.

  ‘By the way,’ he turned his attention back to the stockmen. ‘Where’s Blue?’

  ‘Gone walkabout,’ was the reply.

  ‘Walkabout?’ Jess said.

  ‘It’s something they do,’ Adam started to explain. ‘The Aborigines have always been nomadic. Sometimes they just walk into the wilderness – particularly the young men. It’s like a rite of passage for them.’

  ‘I know what it is,’ Jess said. ‘I just didn’t think in this day and age …’

  ‘We still do it, Missus,’ the cook said. ‘To talk to the spirits of the Dreamtime.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jess looked very serious.

  ‘It’s better than a sickie to get off work,’ Dave explained, his teeth flashing white in the dim light as he grinned. ‘I like to go fishing. Pete over there is too lazy to go into the desert proper. He just likes to get away from his wife and kids.’

  The men around the camp laughed loudly.

  For a brief moment, Jess looked uncertain. Then it came. A slow smile that spread across her face like the light of the sun peeping over the edge of the desert at daybreak. Adam watched her in the gentle glow of the fire. Again
he wondered what had brought Jess Pearson to this remote place on the edge of nowhere. Whatever it was, at this moment, he was glad she was there.

  The flickering of the fire dragged his eyes away from Jess. Flames curled around the dead tree branches. Sinuous. Seductive. Dangerous. Adam rubbed his shoulder, feeling remembered pain. Beside him, one of the stockmen leaned forward to drop more wood on the fire. Glowing red and orange sparks flew high into the night sky to mingle with the brilliant stars. The harsh crackling of the flames drowned out the ongoing conversation around him. Adam could feel himself being drawn into the flames. Losing himself as the flames reached for him. Then a sound pulled him back. A soft gentle sound. The sound of Jess laughing.

  Chapter Three

  Jess was trying to fight her way through a wall of noise and flashing light. Leering, lusting faces in front of her.

  ‘Jessica, how does it feel to send your lover to jail?’

  ‘Jessica, shouldn’t you be charged, too?’

  She raised her hands to fend off the microphones waving just inches from her face. She ducked her head so her long dark hair fell forward, covering her face as the cameras flashed. Hunching her shoulders, she started to push her way through the crowd, but she made no headway. Then a man appeared in front of her, using his body to shield her.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ she gasped.

  But his brow furrowed. ‘You ignored the signs? Why Jess? Why?’

  There was a boy. So young. His face so pale. His body painfully thin. Then Jessica heard a scream.

  ‘It’s your fault. You killed my son!’

  A grey-haired woman. Her lined face streaked with tears.

  ‘This was my son!’ The woman held a photograph in her hand. She thrust it at Jessica. ‘You killed him with that poison you brought here. It’s your fault my son is dead.’

  ‘No,’ Jessica’s voice came out as a croak. ‘I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know the drugs were on the plane.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ the woman said, in a cold harsh voice. ‘You were the pilot. How could you not know?’

  Jess woke suddenly, her breath coming in shallow gasps as she tried to shake herself free of the nightmare. Her pulse raced and she felt the tears pricking the back of her eyes. The boy had been just sixteen years old. Dead of a drug overdose. There was no way of knowing if the drugs that killed him had ever been on her plane. But for a grieving mother, that was irrelevant. She sat in the courtroom every day, her haunted eyes following every moment of the high profile trial. And when it was over, facing a life without her child, the woman had struck out at the only target within reach. Jess. The prosecutor told her not to take it personally. But how else was she to take it? What was more personal than a dead boy?

  She pounded her fist into the bedclothes in a mixture of anger and pain. Would the ghosts of the past never leave her?

  As her heartbeat slowed, Jess became aware of her surroundings. She lay in an unfamiliar bed, staring up at a fan circling slowly to stir the warm air against her sweat soaked body. Still struggling to regain her grip on the daylight world, she heard a baby cry. It took a second cry for her to realise it wasn’t a child at all. Somewhere not far away, a crow was crying … a long mournful sound that in her mind was somehow associated with loss … and death.

  Not the young drug addict. Another boy. The injured jackaroo.

  Suddenly fully awake, Jess slipped out of bed. She pulled on her jeans and T-shirt as the events of the day before came flooding back with a little too much clarity. She had to find out how the injured boy fared. She had to know that the mad dash from Coorah Creek to this remote outpost hadn’t been in vain. She had to know that this time, she had helped. That this boy would live.

  She walked to the bedroom door and opened it. Almost opposite her, the door to another room stood half open. Through it she could see the foot of a bed and a figure draped in a white sheet. Silently on her bare feet, she entered the other room. The jackaroo was stretched on the bed, a drip attached to one arm. His eyes were closed, but she could hear his slow deep breathing. In a chair beside the bed, his back to her, sat Adam. His head was bowed forward and he was rubbing his neck. She couldn’t see his face, but his weariness surrounded him like a cloak.

  ‘How is he doing?’ Jess whispered, as she approached the bed.

  Adam looked up at her. His brown eyes were shadowed with exhaustion. Jess realised he must have been sitting with his patient all night.

  ‘He’s stabilised,’ Adam spoke in a whisper, too. ‘We’ll take him back to Mount Isa today. They can do more for him there.’

  Jess looked down at the boy on the bed. ‘But he will …?’ Jess couldn’t put the thought into words.

  ‘Yes. He will.’

  Jess felt a profound sense of relief. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘I’m sure Sister Luke already has.’ The slow smile on his tired face softened the words.

  Silence fell between them as they watched the sleeping boy, and brought with it a strange sense of intimacy. Together they had saved a life. In this moment, Jess felt closer to Adam than she had to any human being for such a very long time.

  ‘Adam …’ It was the first time she had called him by name. Without really thinking, she reached out to lay a hand gently on his shoulder. Afterwards she wasn’t sure why she had done it. The need to touch him, to make human contact was just so strong.

  Her fingers were like burning embers on his skin. Adam flinched away from her. He felt her snatch her hand back, and that was even more painful than her touch. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault. That the problem was his. But he couldn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see her face. Instead, he reached for the drip line attached to the boy’s arm. As if it needed checking.

  ‘I want to get him to the Isa as quickly as possible,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘I imagine there are things you need to do to the plane.’

  ‘Yes. There are.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘If you’re looking for breakfast …’

  ‘I can find the kitchen. I’ll send word when we are ready to leave.’

  Adam didn’t so much hear her go as feel her absence. He dropped the drip line, and tentatively rubbed his shoulder, feeling the roughness of the skin beneath his shirt. There was no new wound there. No burn. Why then did it hurt?

  Because it always did. When people got too close they hurt. They laughed, or they left or they just hurt. The only way to avoid the hurt was to keep people away. He was very good at that. Oh, people liked him. He was friendly. He cared about his patients. There were times he knew he touched their lives. But that was different. No one touched his life. No one touched him.

  Adam took a deep breath and regained his equilibrium as the only person who had never deliberately hurt him walked into the room.

  ‘I’ll look after him if you want to get some breakfast,’ Sister Luke said.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll go in a minute. I just want to check the wound.’ Adam busied himself with his patient for a few minutes. Sister Luke was, as always, the perfect nurse – assisting him without being told what he needed.

  ‘It’s probably safe to go into the kitchen now,’ Sister Luke said, as they finished.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean?’ Adam fiddled with the drip in his patient’s arm again rather than look into the nun’s too-knowing grey eyes.

  ‘I heard Jess asking for someone to drive her to the airstrip. My guess is she’s finished her breakfast and gone.’

  ‘That’s good. We need to get this kid to hospital,’ Adam said, firmly ignoring Sister Luke’s tone. ‘Can you stay with him while I get something to eat? I don’t want to disturb him any more than we have to, so I won’t shift him until Jess sends word that the plane is ready.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Sister Luke was smiling in that a
nnoyingly satisfied way she had. Adam almost snorted as he left the room.

  Sure enough, there was no sign of Jess in the homestead’s big kitchen. The station owner and his wife were effusive in their thanks as they served him a huge breakfast of steak and eggs, with more coffee on the side than he would drink in a week.

  Just as he was finishing, the loud clump of boots on the wooden veranda heralded the return of one of the stockmen. Removing his hat, the man put his head inside the door.

  ‘Doc, the plane is ready to go,’ he said.

  ‘Great.’ Adam got to his feet.

  ‘Jess said you’d probably need the stretcher from the plane,’ the stockman continued. ‘It’s in the ute.’

  The stretcher. How had he not thought of that? That was unlike him. He put it down to tiredness.

  With the assistance of another stockman, they carefully carried the jackaroo out of the house, and laid him in the back of the ute. Adam rode with his patient, wincing every time the slow-moving vehicle hit a pothole in the red dirt track. There were far more than Adam would have liked, but thanks to the drugs, the injured boy was oblivious to the harsh bumps.

  At the airstrip, the plane was waiting, the steps lowered. As the driver pulled the ute up close to the aircraft doors, Adam could see Jess in the pilot’s seat making her pre-flight checks.

  ‘Gently now,’ Adam cautioned, as together the driver and the stockman lifted the stretcher from the back of the vehicle. They carried it to the plane and manoeuvred it through the door. Adam followed them on board to make sure his patient was safely strapped in for the flight. The straps secured across his chest and legs would keep him safe through any turbulence they encountered. Making sure the saline drip was still in place; Adam knew they were ready to go.

  Sister Luke was already on board. He stepped to the doorway.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ he called to the stockman below, as he pulled the stairs up and latched the door.