Storm Season

by Pene Henson

  As if in answer, the rain starts: a deluge that pours over Lien’s hair and soaks her clothes in seconds. The storm’s come.

  The ranger steps away from the creek. “I’ll get you up to my cabin. It’s dry. Come on.”

  Lien should ask the ranger for ID or something. Her parents taught her not to follow a stranger. But it’s raining and dark. Anyway, the woman might have left her ID at home. It’s not as if she’d often need to identify herself to some city kid who’s got herself fucking lost in the bush. Lien takes a breath. This is okay. This woman’s already rescued me once.

  When she puts weight on the bad leg she stumbles a little and half falls, muffling a cry. The ranger comes back down the slope. “Okay.” She reaches out a hand to help Lien clamber to her feet. Her palm’s large; her grip is firm, even in the soaking rain. Her hand is everything you’d expect a ranger’s hand to be. “Lean on me.”

  3

  In vain Claudie wipes rain from her eyes. The storm’s turned into a significant weather event, a bigger one than Claudie expected. It’s heavy. The thunder shakes in her ribs; the rain and the lightning intertwine and slash the sky.

  Claudie counts their steps in her head. She breathes in time as they walk. She avoids thinking about the way the rain pours from her hair. It runs over her forehead and down her face. Left and right and in and out. Left and right and in and out. With the girl beside her and needing her help, every step is difficult.

  The hill face has turned into a fast-moving torrent, all mud and running water between the rocks and ferns and gum trees. The rain is drenching. It seeps in at Claudie’s collar and over her breasts and back. The cabin inches closer.

  Thunder crashes, echoes against the clouds and the far escarpment. The girl startles and loses her footing. Claudie slips. She grabs at a branch as they both almost tumble over in the mud. The branch holds. Claudie’s heart hammers.

  She’s briefly, brightly furious. She steadies herself as the storm rages. She breathes. In. Out. Don't show your nerves.

  They clamber on. Claudie supports the girl’s weight with her arm wrapped around her back. Though the rain and lashing wind drown most sound, it’s clear the girl’s breathing is labored. Her lungs seize when her bad leg takes any weight. She doesn’t complain, though.

  The walk home is only five hundred feet, but it seems much farther. They’re moving uphill, and the rain ruins any visibility and runs in rivers around their feet so it’s hard to avoid the roughest of the ground. Claudie’s boots can handle the water, but the girl’s shoes are a waste of time and slip uselessly on the slopes. Time slows to a soaking wet and frustrating crawl. More than once, the girl’s feet slip, and Claudie plants her boots in the mud to keep them both from going ass over elbow.

  As they move on, the girl stumbles again and grabs onto Claudie. Her feet slide. Her fingers dig into Claudie’s forearm.

  “Are those the only shoes you have?” Claudie asks through her teeth.

  “They’re the only ones I have with me right now,” the girl flashes back. “I didn’t know I’d need my mountain climbing gear and water skis tonight. I didn’t plan on any of this.”

  Claudie doesn’t answer. The girl’s response was fair. Though, really, why anyone would ever bother with impractical shoes is a mystery.

  Lightning streaks across the sky; its silver and white brilliance highlights the girl’s wet face and black braided hair. The girl’s miserable. She’s shivering. She’s under-dressed. She’s clearly inexperienced and out of her depth. She’s also beautiful.

  “Come on,” Claudie says.

  The cabin’s a welcome sight, emerging from the bush with its lights shining golden through the rain. It’s still slow going, but they have a goal: the cabin is a beacon of hope and safety and welcome and a good chance of one day being dry again.

  “Not far now. We’ll need to get up the stairs,” she tells the girl over the rain. She ignores the girl’s suppressed groan. They’ll handle it.

  They take it one step at a time with the girl in front so Claudie can catch her if she falls. The wind swirls around them, and the wet gum trees lash against one another above them. The rain is almost sideways. The girl keeps going. Claudie follows. She laughs in relief as they finally reach the deck.

  Claudie fumbles at the handle and staggers through. Lien follows. Inside, Claudie closes the door behind them. It seals to shut out the storm. They’re safe. They can rest. Claudie’s heart steadies.

  The two of them stand awkwardly close to one another; Claudie still supports the girl. Water drips from their clothes and pools on the wooden floor.

  Claudie lets the girl get her balance, then steps away to shake off the intimacy. There’s something intense in providing help, in holding another human upright and hearing their breathing. It brings a sense of camaraderie. But it’s not real. It's built on a tiny shard of knowledge of one another that comes with battling a shared enemy, even if that enemy is heavy rain and a knee injury meeting a five-hundred-foot slope.

  Claudie opens the wardrobe space to find dry towels and tosses one to the girl. The girl catches it. She stands near the edge of the room with most of her weight on one foot. After drying her face, she squeezes out her braids into the towel. She dries her dripping legs and pats at her clothes. She must be exhausted—her eyes are shadows—but she has excellent balance. Her legs are muscular. The girl manages to make being dripping wet, scruffy haired, and wrapped in a towel almost like an art work, as if this were how she intended to look. Claudie can’t tell if this confidence is conscious or if it’s built into the way this girl moves. She moves as though she knows her skin and knows that people will watch her. She moves as though people will like what they see. That’s a safe assumption.

  Claudie turns away. “You don’t need to stand there all night,” she says over her shoulder. “There are chairs.” It’s ungracious, but she’s suddenly awkward. After all, she rescued the girl. She doesn't need to be nice to her too.

  “Thank you.” The girl glances around the main room, past the two mismatched lounge chairs in the corner between the big windows, the small sofa on the side wall, and the upholstered dining chairs at the dining table toward the back wall. “I don’t want to get everything wet.”

  Claudie pushes a kitchen stool out from under the bench.

  “Thanks.” The girl perches on it and stretches out her bad leg. She gives a hopeful twist of a smile. “Hey, so, I’m genuinely sorry about this. I really am.” Even spent and in pain, she’s polite and sweet with her earnest brown eyes and sodden black hair. She takes a barely-there breath. Her hands move as she speaks. “I should tell you my name. Lien. Lien Hong. And god, thank you so much for rescuing me. Honestly. We’re up from Sydney, for the music festival you know. Or maybe you don’t—well.” She shakes it off. “That’s not important. But thank you. I’m not great in the dark by myself.” She blinks. “God. Sorry, I don’t even know your name. I don’t usually run on like this.”

  “It’s the adrenaline,” says Claudie. “Don’t worry about it.” Talking like this, the girl’s less art and more just lost.

  “Oh. Yes. I guess—um. Sorry.”

  “How bad’s the injury?”

  Lien frowns at her knee as though it’s annoying her. “It’ll be better tomorrow. I don’t need to tell you the whole story. My knee—it’s not a new problem, but I can live with it. It’s just impractical right now, which is—ugh. So I appreciate your help. Really.” She talks fast and soft as though someone’s pressed a switch, and she can’t help saying everything that pops up in her head. It’s hard to get a read on Lien. Her voice has a smile in it, her hands are mobile, but her eyes flicker to Claudie and about the room, tired and cautious.

  “Claudia,” Claudie offers when Lien leaves a gap between words.

  Lien blinks at her, puzzled. “Oh. Your name. Sorry, I should have let you get a word in.”

 
“No problem.” Claudie can’t help but smile. “Hi.”

  Lien swallows visibly. Claudie’s throat is tight. She’s not accustomed to having her solitude invaded.

  Both of them speak at once.

  “So you live in a ranger cabin. I never thought—”

  “You’re lucky I saw you out there.”

  Claudie’s not usually up so late, but her boss and friend Shelley at the ranger headquarters warned her about this storm. And, with the wind circling the cabin and battering the windows, Claudie had been on edge, hovering in the main room with an eye on the shifting dark of the sky and the landscape. The light of Lien’s phone moving through the bush caught her eye. She watched, wondering what kind of idiot was walking around the bush so late at night with a storm threatening. Then she saw the phone’s light sputter as it bounced down the slope and blinked out to black.

  Lien nods. “So lucky. Thank you so much.”

  They fall quiet. Lien’s eyes are bright through her straight wet lashes. She’s very lovely, quick-eyed and fine-boned with a wide mouth. Lien’s gaze swings away. She pulls the towel close around her ridiculous outfit. She’s unnaturally pale with pain or cold.

  “You need some clothes,” Claudie says. “Dry ones.” She doesn’t add her thoughts about wearing pale yellow and tiny little shorts, nothing even faintly practical, while camping. What the fuck was the kid thinking?

  Claudie goes to grab some clean clothes from the bedroom.

  “Oh, no,” she hears. When she turns, Lien has a hand up to cover her mouth. “Oh, god! Um. Shit. I need to let Beau know I’m okay. He’s back at the campground. I told him I’d only be a few minutes getting a photo for Snapchat. With the rain and—He’ll be worried sick. You don’t have a phone do you? I dropped mine when I fell.” Her brow is furrowed.

  Claudie’s not sure how this city girl thinks she communicates with the rest of the world. By pigeon? Smoke signal? Tapping out messages on an ancient telegraph machine and hoping someone out there answers? “I have a phone.” She grabs it from the kitchen bench and hands it to Lien.

  Lien exhales on a laugh. “Of course you do. I didn’t want to presume. Thank you.” She bites her lip as she punches in a number.

  Lien’s face and shoulders sag when someone picks up. “Beau, it’s me,” she starts. “No, no stop. I’m okay. I’m okay.” There are tears in her eyes when she hears this guy Beau’s voice.

  She’s a little dramatic, this Lien. It’s not as though she’s been gone for days. Claudie roughly towel dries her own hair and tries not to listen in as Lien talks.

  “I am such an idiot,” Lien says. “I’m so sorry.”

  The rain hasn’t relented; it’s coming in angled sheets of water, like waves, lashing rhythmically against the roof and the western window and whipping at the tree tops.

  “Okay, babe. I love you too,” Lien finishes. She hands back Claudie’s phone. “Thank you.” Her hair is drying so Claudie can see the pale bird’s-egg-blue streaks in its straight, black shininess.

  “Your boyfriend?” Claudie asks.

  “Oh! Gosh! No. My housemate. My best friend. He must have been so fucking scared.” Lien runs a hand over her face. “I wish I’d called him sooner.”

  “You were getting out of danger. I wouldn’t have let you make a phone call while we were in the storm.”

  Lien tries to stand and winces.

  “I have ice,” Claudie says. “I’ll get that and something for the pain.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But first these.” Claudie hands over a T-shirt and some yoga pants. They’ll be too big, but Lien’s clothes are unwearable as they are, soaked with mud and rain.

  “Thank you.” Lien nods. “I’ll just I’ll uh—change.”

  Claudie blushes. “Go ahead. Or you can go into the bedroom.” The world smells like rain, wet earth and wet wood, and that electric scent of lightning.

  “Oh. No, I’m fine,” Lien stammers. Claudie turns away and walks to the freezer for ice.

  Lien moves about behind her, sucks in a sharp breath. “Okay,” she says. “I’m done.”

  Claudie turns around. In Claudie’s over-large clothing Lien seems even younger than before. Her dark brown eyes are smudgy and worried in her pale face.

  Claudie offers her a hand into one of the comfortable chairs in the corner. The chairs seem to clash even more than usual, one wooden-legged with flame orange upholstery, the other low-profiled and gray-blue. Lien frowns as she settles down in the flame orange one. She fusses over her knee and wraps the ice in a cloth. With a murmured thanks, she accepts the striped blanket Claudie offers.

  “How about some tea?” Claudie says.

  “Oh. Thank you. I’ll, um, can I help?”

  Claudie quirks an eyebrow at her. “It’s just tea, kiddo. I can handle it.” Claudie steps past the wood-topped bench that divides the main room from the kitchen area. The kitchen and the main room are side by side. They look out to the deck and over the valley.

  The kettle takes its time to boil. Claudie faces away from Lien. Steam rises to condense on the windows, pale against the black of the storm outside. Lien’s presence fills the room. Claudie’s so ill accustomed to having people in her space that she’s aware of every breath Lien takes.

  Tea ready, Claudie hands Lien a mug and lowers herself into the gray-blue chair facing her. The springs of the chair squeak and sink.

  Lien holds the mug in two hands and takes a sip. Her shoulders relax. “So. What’s a park ranger’s job entail?” she asks. “Aside from rescuing idiot campers.” She crinkles up her nose. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s all floods and fires and picking up trash people leave behind.”

  “All in one day?”

  Claudie shrugs. “Sometimes.”

  Lien fixes her with a sincere look. “I’m not messing with you. I’m interested to hear more.”

  It’s late. Claudie’s accustomed to outback hours, and, even though she’s sure Lien’s not, the girl is injured and has had a long night.

  “We can talk tomorrow,” Claudie says. “We’ll have plenty of time for it then.” She blinks. Her eyes are heavy.

  “Oh, no.” Lien winces. “Sorry. I’m keeping you up.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine.”

  “It’s fine.”

  The cabin has one bedroom opening from the main room, and one bed. Claudie didn’t ask for a visitor but she’s not about to let an injured girl sleep in the chair. Lien’s eyes look bruised with exhaustion.

  “There’s a bed in the other room,” says Claudie. “You take it. I’ll sleep out here.”

  “No way,” Lien says. “No. Hey, you rescued me. I am not taking your bed, too.”

  “Yep. You are.” Claudie’s not about to be argued with. “It’s my house and my choice. The better you sleep, the sooner you’ll be better.”

  “And the sooner I’ll leave you alone. But surely there’s something else.” Lien scans the room. “There must be somewhere for you—”

  Claudie tips her head. “What—Are you hoping to spot a secret bed? An extra room?”

  Lien blushes. “Hush.”

  “Because I've lived here three years. I think I know my own place.”

  Claudie helps Lien to her feet. Lien’s hand is cool on her arm. They shuffle through the narrow doorway from the living room. Lien uses the bathroom while Claudie checks that everything’s set up in the tiny bedroom.

  Claudie’s bedroom is small. The bed and a bedside table are squeezed between the walls. It’s draped in mosquito netting that Claudie bought in town and hung from the ceiling that first furiously hot and miserable summer. Claudie turns on the little lamp. She’s protected here in a swathe of fabric and the circle of clear lamplight—safe, at least from the few mosquitoes and moths that find their way inside despite
Claudie’s best efforts to seal the house, attracted by the one lone light out in the bush.

  Claudie draws back the netting as Lien joins her. Lien sits. She gingerly turns her body to move farther up on the bed.

  “It’s a double bed,” says Lien from the far side. “We can both fit.”

  Lien lifts her weight on her arms to slide her butt back and angles herself to slip between the sheets. It’s been a long time since Claudie shared a house, let alone a bed. Her stomach twists.

  “I don’t think so,” Claudie says.

  Lien doesn’t argue; she nods. “Thank you.”

  Claudie forgot to collect her pajamas. She could take off her bra and jeans and sleep in her T-shirt but with someone here in the next room, she’s wary. She sighs and stretches out as much as she can in the gray-blue chair. From here she has a view of the bush and the rain. She finds the dark vastness reassuring. She doesn’t bother to pull the curtains closed; she wants to keep an eye on the storm. She also wants to be up early to check on the roof. She keeps watch as the wind and rain batter the walls.

  This cabin’s her place now. It’s been in the National Parks and Wildlife Service for decades. It’s on the hilltop with unimpeded views into the valley. It’s made of wood and fibro cement sheets old enough that they’ve discolored. The cabin’s edges have roughened to match the hillside. The place has grown into the landscape around it.

  The main room’s windows are large, taking up the whole of two sides of the cabin. They’re designed for keeping a lookout for bush fires or other trouble.

  Claudie’s become pretty good at the upkeep for this place. She fixes slamming doors and dripping taps. The second summer, she climbed into the roof space to put insulation into the cavity, then crawled under the floors and insulated them too. She spent her down hours for a couple of weeks overhauling the rainwater tank that’s nestled beside the cabin. It’s a big enough tank, but she doesn’t use much water. They’re predicting more rain and it’s already been a hot, wet spring, but she grew up through years of Australian drought. Even when she traveled overseas, when she lived in the US for a year, she was economical with water.