4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
Gum Boots and Grace
The fog lifts past Kingston. The Huon Valley opens up—green paddocks, hand-painted signs, a world so far from Glenorchy it feels fictional. Joel finds Nicholls Road, more suggestion than road, and at its end a two-storey farmhouse where goats named Lulu and Mexi greet him with enthusiastic harassment. The woman who appears wears a floral nightie and black gum boots. She adds a smiley face to her signature. Standard country-folk attire.
The drive south took longer than it should have. Not because of the fog—that burned off past Kingston—but because Joel kept zoning out, missing turnoffs, driving kilometres without memory of the road. His hands know the wheel. His mind is still in the kitchen.
The Huon Valley is another world. Properties set back from dirt roads, goats wandering free, the kind of quiet that belongs to people whose biggest concern is whether it'll rain before the washing's in. Joel finds the Woolley place at the end of a track that makes the truck rattle like it's falling apart.
Mrs Woolley greets him in a floral nightie and gum boots, unfazed by the cold, unfazed by the stranger at her door. Her goats—Lulu and Mexi—immediately begin harassing him, nibbling jeans and attempting things that border on inappropriate. She calls them off with easy authority, signs the manifest, and adds a smiley face beside her name.
Standard country-folk attire, she says. Never forget to add it when you get up.
For a moment, standing in the frost-touched grass with the sun finally breaking through, Joel glimpses a life untouched by the kind of truths that have just torn his apart.
Then his phone buzzes. Back to the main road. Back to reality.
