Salt Rain Read Online Free Page B

across. They made three of these flying foxes to bring the bananas over, before the bridge was built. They’d hook a hand of ’nanas on and send it flying down from the shed up the top. But we used it for all sorts of things. The road used to go under all the time and we’d send food across to the Burns and the McAlisters in the big floods. Mum would do up parcels of corned beef and flour and sugar. The Burns were always hopeless at stocking up before the wet. But we haven’t had a really big flood for ages. This is nothing, it’ll be down by this afternoon, I bet. Still,’ she turned to look at Allie, and smiled, ‘you got your flood, sooner than I thought.’
    They turned a corner and there was the churning creek. The road on each side sank down into the wide band of brown water that heaved with branches and dirty foam.
    Allie looked back the way they had come. ‘Is the road to town flooded too? Can I still get to town?’ She pictured the train disappearing down the coast without her.
    Julia turned off the engine and there was just the thundering of the creek. ‘We only brought a person over once before, when the youngest Watson boy broke his leg. He came across, his leg in a splint, howling all the way.’
    She waved to the two people getting out of the car on the other side then reached over to the back seat for her toolbox. Her voice was conversational, ‘I won’t just let you take off, you know. If you go, I’ll follow you. Simple as that.’ She got out and climbed up the bank to the thick wooden post of the flying fox, her toolbox hanging from one arm.
    Allie opened the car door and crossed the muddy gravel to the edge of the forest. She peered into the dense tangled foliage. How easy it would be take a few steps, slip between the trees and disappear into the dimness. She would find her way over the hills and down onto the plain. She glanced over to see if Julia was watching her, just as a Land Rover pulled up and a grey-haired man got out, buttoning up a raincoat. He waved across the creek and stuck his thumb in the air. When he saw Allie he paused for a minute, and then smiled and called across to her as he climbed the embankment to Julia, ‘Hi, I’m Michael. The doctor.’
    ‘Hello,’ Allie could hardly hear her own voice for the sound of the water.
    The pregnant woman over the other side was carrying a striped umbrella as she walked slowly back and forth across the road, her belly jutting before her. Every few minutes she stopped and squatted on the rutted gravel. The man who was walking with her bent down and leaned in close while the umbrella trembled over them.
    Allie went to the edge of the creek where it eddied onto the road and looked upstream, searching for the rock where Mae and the First Love had kissed, but all the boulders were hidden under the seamless rushing water. Mae had told her about the cracking sound the boulders made as they collided underwater, but there was only the tremendous roar of the water being sucked downstream and Julia’s voice as she bellowed across the creek.
    The man on the other side threw a rope across. It fell short and he retrieved it hand over hand from the pull of the water. Julia waded out knee-deep and the water ran up her side, so her clothes stuck to her stomach and heavy breasts. The man inched his car into the creek and stood on the bonnet, bracing his feet to throw the rope again. Julia caught it and they held it in the air, a sagging, dripping line stretching defiantly over the creek.
    While Julia rethreaded the flying fox, her lips white with the effort of twisting the ends of the wire together, the woman walked back and forth on the other side, crying, her face contorted. The man carried the umbrella for her but she kept turning, suddenly changing direction and walking out from under its shelter into the drifting rain.
    Allie wanted to capture it all, like a photo, for Mae. The forest growing right to the edge of the creek, the tendrils of mist