The Windy Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

their gnarled grey branches leaning north. Some had grown completely twisted to the ground. The wind, Paul guessed.
    Beside him with her eyes still on the highway, a spectator enthralled, Ruth gasped.

    We set up camp in flat country near Cobar. Dead arse tingling from the day’s riding. Hard to sleep in the winter desert. The rocky ground like a freezer block. Feeling like a corpse in your swag. Harder to sleep with what lies ahead. It is impossible this. What the President is wanting us to do. Go from coast to coast, east to west. Six thousand kilometres across the country. So many who would shoot us on sight.
    But it feels inevitable too. The President has that way about him. Like there is no stopping what we started.

At sea
    PAUL HAD BEEN IN STARK NO MORE than four hours.
    Ruth had dropped him at the hostel near midnight, the front of the building unlit when he arrived. There were signs of backpackers, the beach towels and t-shirts on the wooden rail of the veranda twisting and thrashing in the gale, but there was no movement from inside. The reception area was closed when he entered and most of the lights were off. There was no one about except for a girl leaning against the bench in the small kitchen, eating cereal and reading. Paul made a sandwich using bread from a loaf on the bench and a crusted jar of honey he found in the pantry. He then went to the dorm, sat down on the bottom bunk that was left free, tried to eat as quietly as he could by the small light above his bed. Listening to the breaths and snores of strangers behind the curtains that hung across each bunk. For the few hours until his alarm went off he lay on topof the stiff sheets, his bum numb from the seven-hour drive, his mind alive with thoughts, kept awake by the frenzied song of the wind and rain against the window.
    Now, standing at the kerb in the predawn, the town was black around him. He barely recognised it. In the dark the place seemed almost shrunken, the inlet smaller, the town flatter. It just wasn’t like he remembered it from when he was younger. A terrible, howling wind blew from the inlet, smelling of rotting seaweed. The rain fell in jagged panes. Paul held his damp backpack to his chest, under his jacket.
    A ute rounded the corner, headlights tunnelling through the sea mist. It pulled a skiff on a trailer. Paul raised his arm in a wave. The vehicle stopped. Paul had started to walk around the bonnet to the passenger door when there was a whistle from inside. He looked through the windscreen into the gloom of the cabin. Jake peered out at him from under the hood of a jumper.
    In the boat, he yelled through the open window. And keep your head down. Don’t need a fucking fine.
    Paul stepped on the hub of the trailer, dropped his bag in first then clambered over the lip of the dinghy. The walls of the boat were low and he tried to lie as flat as he could but there were things in the hull, lumpy objects with hard edges, and he couldn’t make them out. He touched one with his hand and felt its icy damp. He felt around for his backpack and pulled it to him, but found it was soaked, creamy and slick under his fingers. He put his hand to his nose, smelt the stink of fish blood and almost heaved. The ute set off and the boat jolted and bucked on the trailer. Another sheet of rain slapped over him. He leant back into the frozen bed of bait boxes. The sky above was a dense, shapeless dark.
    After a few minutes the ute slowed and then stopped. Theengine idled. There was an accented voice and then the closing of a car door. The trailer lurched and they were off again. He felt jittery, lying there. A sort of edginess he couldn’t put his finger on. Exhaustion, he figured, or the putrid cold on his skin. Whatever it was, he felt weak and empty, and as though each bump in the road was shaking him loose.
    It wasn’t long until the drone of bitumen ended and they were on sand. The trailer squeaked and rocked. The boat swayed. Paul raised his head