Middle Of Nowhere

Kane watched his son scream into the sky and his stomach twisted. Maybe the boy just needs his swimming hole back.
Then that same fear took hold, that Ben was smart enough to see things falling apart.
His chest was still tight from what felt like barking. ‘I don’t need any help,’ he’d said. ‘Go play’. When really a hand would have had him finished in half as long. Ben could work these sheep. It wasn’t his job though, Kane thought. It’s my job. He should be enjoying his summer. Playing games. Not shepherding sorry animals.
Closing the pen behind the last of their livelihood, he followed the eyes of his son skyward and pleaded.
Christina arrived at the flyscreen door and watched her family through it, criss-crossed and distorted and looking at the heavens. The signal returned to her phone and she rested her forehead against the mesh, feeling it strain as her brother-in-law continued his barrage.
‘What, sorry you cut out. But anyway it doesn’t matter. Say it to him,’ she said.
Damian exhaled down the line. ‘Even if he wanted it he wouldn’t hear it from me,’ he said.
‘At least he’ll have a conversation with you’.
‘They’re not conversations. It’s me asking about you and how’s the farm and going on about mum and dad and the football club and Kane just grunting until I leave him alone’.
‘You’ll be at the races Sunday, does Jason go? Bring him, we’ll be there with Ben’.
‘Yeah, he’ll go. You know what, I’m gonna have him email the details and see if Kane will even look at it’.
‘I don’t think he knows he has an email account. Sorry Ben’s coming in I better go’.
She put her phone in her jeans pocket and opened the door out for her son, who slid through sideways. He turned into the kitchen and started filling a glass at the sink.
‘How’s your dad?’ Christina asked.
‘Fine’.
‘Is he coming in soon?’
‘I dunno’.
Ben sipped the water and left the room, passing her leaning against the door frame. She watched him disappear down the hall and into his bedroom.
Waiting there in the doorway for a minute she felt briefly angry at the boy, dismissed it as unfair and began to think about dinner.
Seeing the butternut squash on the table, she settled on soup, pulled up a wooden chopping board and set it under the window. Slicing in half and then quarters, she looked up and out the window, seeing her husband resting on the gatepost. The gate was shut and the sheep seemed to be all away, and she fixed on the back of his head as he slumped against the metal. He seemed to be looking somewhere between the animals and the sky now, unmoving.
Looking back down, she focused on her work, chopping smaller and smaller pieces. Piling the orange cubes to one side of the board, she scooped up the peel and seeds with cupped hands and spun to the opposite wall, wiping the waste into an ice cream container-turned compost bin.
She paused and stared without a point of focus at the calendar on the wall above, breathing. Returning to the chopping board, she stopped herself looking out again until she’d unstacked the bottom cupboard, pulled the food processor from the back and placed her pans and tupperware neatly away again. When she gave in he was in the same place, arms stretched out along the top wire.
She plugged the machine into a socket and scraped in the food with the back edge of the knife. Holding the lid closed, she looked up and through the glass again as she slapped at the switch with her free hand.
With her eyes still unadjusted, a sharp flash of blue filled her vision and was gone. She snapped her hand back as the sound of the spark surrounded her, stared stunned at the motionless blades and strained to stop from crying.
Sucking her top lip, she flailed with her forearm, knocking the processor on its side. The butternut spilled out and up the wall, scattering across the bench. She put her hands to her face as she looked up to see Kane, still leaning, looking, hands in pockets now. She grabbed at the mess without lowering her gaze and clenched a fistful and charged at the back door.
Shoving the flyscreen flying with her empty hand, she took the three stairs down from the porch in one step and made for her husband. The couple of hundred metres to the first paddock reeled in beneath her, sliding like tape measure back in its case. With fifty metres left Kane felt her and looked over his shoulder, then turned completely to watch Christina bear down.
The fury that had propelled her across their yard had a momentum of its own which carried her the final distance, but without it his face would have stopped her short. Slowing as she arrived at the gate, she pulled up, paused, and threw the pieces of their dinner limply at his shirtfront.
Kane didn’t move. He watched her over the gatepost, his features caved in and scrubbed of fight.
Christina wiped the food on her jeans, holding his gaze, then folded her arms across her stomach and waited for him.
Seconds passed as Kane stared past her at their house, then upward to blink back tears. Looking again at his wife, he leaned forward with both hands on the wire. ‘Hey’.
Christina swallowed. ‘This isn’t going to work,’ she said. ‘Damian has a job, he can get it for you. It’s a good job and this isn’t going to work and you have to take it’.
Kane tilted his head back a second time, feeling the late sun wick the water from his eyes. He sucked in the air, then dragged himself back, shamed and grateful to find her there, fierce and open and feet from him, and said ‘OK’.