Knots in the Grain

"You spend decades learning how to read a property from the driveway. Then one morning, a woman with a wine bottle and a spider problem rewrites the whole manual."

The driveway fought me the whole way in. Same as always — potholes deep enough to baptise a cat, loose gravel pinging off the undercarriage like shrapnel. The suspension groaned under the load. Behind me, the wood shifted with each dip, logs clunking against each other in that heavy, bonelike way that had been the background percussion of my mornings since I was a kid riding shotgun in Dad's cab with my feet braced against the dash.

I spotted the car before I spotted her. A sedan, parked near the house, slightly off-centre — pulled in fast or without thought. Not the Owens' vehicle. Not anyone's I knew.

The woman was beside it. Or orbiting it, more accurately. She moved around the thing with the cautious, wired energy of someone who'd lost something important and was trying very hard not to lose her mind along with it. Peering through the windows, pressing her face to the glass, jerking back, pressing forward again.

I pulled the truck to a stop, killed the engine, and watched. Force of habit. Years of pulling into properties teaches you to read people from the way they stand near a vehicle. Whether they're waiting for someone. Whether they're comfortable on the land. Whether they belong.

She didn't look like she belonged. But she didn't look like she was trespassing either. She looked like she was at war with something inside the car, and losing.

I dropped down from the cab. The gravel crunched solid under my boots and the morning air caught me across the face — cold, clean, that Collinsvale sharpness that had teeth in late July. I swung the door shut behind me — harder than I'd meant to, the slam cracking through the quiet like a rifle shot.

She whipped around. Whatever she'd been doing with the car, I'd yanked her out of it. Her eyes were wide and slightly feral, her body braced in that particular stance of someone caught mid-crisis and trying to decide whether the new arrival was a problem or a solution. Up close — or closer, at least — she was younger than I'd initially thought. Mid-thirties, maybe. Dark circles under her eyes that didn't belong to one bad morning. A tension in her jaw that had been there long before I'd pulled up.

"You order the wood?" I asked. Flat. Half a yawn still sitting in my throat from the drive over. It wasn't a question that needed much thought — either she had or she hadn't, and either way I'd be stacking it somewhere.

"Yeah," she said. Quick, clipped, already turning back toward the car like I was an interruption she was tolerating rather than a person she was speaking to.

She jerked her thumb in the vague direction of the shed. "Just dump it over there, somewhere."

"Righto," I said.

I took one more look at her — couldn't help it. She'd already dismissed me, her focus locked back on the car's interior like it contained something that might kill her or escape, possibly both. Whatever she was dealing with, she wasn't interested in company. That suited me fine. I wasn't in the habit of asking questions that weren't my business, and this woman had not your business written across every taut line of her body.

I backed the truck up toward the shed, manoeuvring it into the flat patch of ground beside the lean-to where Chris used to keep his stacked. The hydraulics whined as I raised the bed. The load shifted, held for a second in that suspended way it does before gravity wins, then the whole lot went — a tonne of split wood thundering out in a cascade of bark and dust, slamming into the ground with the kind of noise that sent every bird within a hundred metres airborne. The truck shuddered under the release.

I dropped the bed, killed the hydraulics, and climbed out to check the pile. Not my neatest dump — the ground was uneven and a few logs had rolled wide — but it'd do. Whoever was paying for this could stack it themselves or leave it where it lay. Not my problem.

Between the metallic banging and the crash of the load, I caught her voice drifting over from the car. Couldn't make out the words. She was talking to herself, or to the vehicle. I didn't judge. I'd had full conversations with my chainsaw on slow afternoons. A man who talks to his tools has no business questioning a woman who argues with her car.

When I'd finished checking the pile, I walked back over. She was at the passenger side now, door open, staring into the interior with an expression that belonged on someone identifying a body.

"Everything okay?" I said.

She jumped so hard she cracked her knee on the door. I winced.

"Shit!" Hand to chest, eyes wild.

"No," she snapped. Whatever social veneer she'd been carrying was gone. What was left was raw and fraying. I'd startled her, which I felt mildly bad about — not bad enough to apologise for the crime of standing six feet away.

I let the silence sit. People who say "no" that hard usually have more coming, if you give them room.

She blew out a breath. "There's a bloody huntsman in my car."

Right.

The huntsman spider. One of nature's more efficient designs for breaking people. Harmless, basically. Fast as hell. And blessed with the particular talent of materialising in the worst possible spot at the worst possible second — dashboard, sun visor, the back of your neck while you're doing ninety on the highway. I'd pulled enough of them out of truck cabs and woodpiles to have made my peace with the species years ago, but I understood the response. Karen still wouldn't park in the carport after the incident of 2011, which I was permanently forbidden from finding as funny as I did.

This woman had been at it a while. Flushed face. Damp palms. The locked tension in her shoulders of someone who'd been running on maximum alert far too long. Her jaw was clenched hard. Her hands hung at her sides like she didn't trust them near anything.

The grin hit my face before I could stop it.

"Well, you must've got him pretty good if he's all bloodied," I said.

Not my finest. But the timing was right — the pause after her frustration, the delivery deadpan — and the laugh that came out of me was proper. Low, unhurried, the kind that Karen said made me sound like a pub at closing.

"Oh, fuck off," she muttered, lips pressed thin.

Fair enough. I shook my head and turned to go. Some battles you leave to the combatants. Except I still needed paying, so I came back around.

"I need to get paid for the delivery first."

She closed her eyes — just a beat, the kind of breath that says I am renegotiating my relationship with this entire morning — then reached into the car. Her fingers trembled as she gathered scattered notes from the seat. Whatever the spider had done to her, it'd been thorough.

She backed away from the vehicle like it was contaminated. Clutching the envelope. Holding herself together with it.

"How much was it again?"

"Cash?" I asked. Habit. Most clients transferred these days.

"Obviously," she said. Sharper than she'd meant. I let it go. I'd been on the receiving end of enough frayed nerves to know the snap was never really about me.

"One-twenty will do."

She counted it out with the focus of someone pouring every scrap of concentration into a single task. Her lips moved. Her thumb worked through the notes — methodical, deliberate. I watched her hands. They shook, though she was fighting it. When she held the money out, I reached.

Our fingers touched.

She flinched like she'd been shocked. The notes went everywhere — skyward, spinning, catching the light before they settled on the gravel and the grass. Some of them were already scuffed. Crumpled. Not their first flight of the morning, then.

I crouched and picked them up. Took my time. No rush. The chuckle that came out of me wasn't at her — it was at the whole bloody pantomime of it, firewood deliveries and spider standoffs and money blowing around a quiet property at ten in the morning.

"Sorry," she whispered. Her voice had dropped to almost nothing.

Something about that sat wrong. Not in a way that irritated me — in the way a sound sits wrong when you've been listening to the bush long enough. A note that doesn't belong. A quiet where there shouldn't be one.

"It's fine," I said. Glanced up. She wasn't looking at me. She was somewhere else — behind her own eyes, in some other morning that had nothing to do with firewood.

I stood. Held out my hand. "I'm Jim, by the way." Not James. Never James to strangers. James was what Karen used when she was cross, what Mum put on Christmas cards, what the insurance paperwork said. Jim was the working version. The one who showed up and left without lingering.

She hesitated. Her eyes dropped to my hand and I could see her weighing it — the ghost of the accidental touch still there. Then she took it.

Brief. Uncertain. Like she wasn't sure she was entitled to the contact. I kept my grip where I always kept it — firm, steady, the same handshake for everyone. She pulled away fast and shifted her weight, arms not quite knowing where to go.

"Do you need a hand finding your spider?" I tilted my head at the car.

"It's fine." Too quick. Arms crossed tight. "It's just a spider."

It wasn't just a spider. But that was none of my concern.

"I'm sure if I leave the doors open for a while, it'll find its own way back out," she added, with the conviction of someone reciting something they absolutely did not believe.

"Or just invite another one in," I said. The grin tugged again. Heat crept up my neck. Karen always said I went red when I was pleased with my own jokes, and according to her, that was far too often.

She forced a smile. It got as far as her lips and stopped.

I should have walked. The job was done. Money in my pocket. Two more deliveries before lunch. But I stood there a beat too long and I knew it, and I felt the knowing of it somewhere low in my chest — not a decision, just an absence of one. A failure to leave. She carried herself like someone holding too many things, and every time she got a grip on one, another slipped. I knew that posture. I'd seen it in blokes after the fires. In my own face, the years after Dad died, when the business felt like it weighed nothing and everything at the same time. You don't recognise damage because you're perceptive. You recognise it because you've worn it.

I drew in a breath. The kind that ends something. "Well, I better get going then." The words came out flatter than I'd wanted.

She nodded. Slowly. Reluctantly. And that caught me, the reluctance — because ten minutes ago she'd told me to fuck off, and now she was standing there looking like she didn't want me to leave, and the gap between those two things was where the trouble lived.

"It was nice meeting you..." I let it trail. Realised I'd never asked.

"Gladys," she said.

Softly. With the corner of something real pulling at her mouth. The first unguarded expression I'd seen from her all morning.

"Gladys," I repeated. Like a bloody idiot. The colour was in my face again and I could feel it, hot and stupid. Forty-five years old. Married twenty-three of them. Two kids, a mortgage, a shed full of firewood and a wife who knew exactly who I was, and here I stood in a stranger's driveway going pink. Christ.

I turned. That should have been the end of it.

"Hey, Jim," she called.

I stopped. Turned back.

"Can I get a load of your wood?"

The words landed in the space between us like something dropped from a height. I watched the realisation hit her — watched the flush climb her throat like a grass fire, watched her face cycle through shock and horror and a mortification so total it was almost beautiful.

I should have laughed it off. Should have said yeah, I'll bring another load Tuesday and walked away. That was the correct response from a married man standing on someone else's property on a Monday morning. The decent response. The one Karen would never need to know about because there'd be nothing to know.

But something had already shifted and I could feel it moving under my feet like ground that wasn't solid anymore. The strangeness of the morning. The empty property. This woman — wound tight, falling apart, holding herself together through what looked like sheer bloody-mindedness — and the particular way she'd said my name, like it mattered, like she'd hold it somewhere.

I walked toward her. Each step slow and deliberate. The gravel crunching beneath my boots sounded too loud. I didn't know what I was doing, which was the problem, because I always knew what I was doing. That was the whole architecture of my life — the knowing. The certainty. The same hands, the same tools, the same road every morning. And now I was walking toward a woman I'd met twenty minutes ago with no plan and no excuse and nothing between us but cold air and bad judgement.

When I stopped I was close enough to see the tremor in her jaw. The damp at her hairline. She had to crane up to meet my eyes and her expression was — not invitation. Not refusal. Something rawer than either. Something unfinished that she hadn't meant to show me.

I lifted my hand. Let it rest against her cheek. Her skin was cool. My palm was rough and dry and had no business being where I'd put it and I left it there anyway.

"That all depends on what type of wood you're after," I said. Low. Barely above the wind. The grin was trying to surface and I held it at the corner of my mouth because the line was idiotic and I knew it and she knew it and none of that seemed to matter.

"The uh… you know…" Her tongue had given up on her entirely.

"Yeah," I murmured. Leaned in. Close enough to feel her breath — warm, unsteady, catching in the narrow space between us.

"The uh… your firewood," she got out, and the word broke the moment open like a branch snapping.

"Yeah, my wood's on fire," I whispered, and the stupidity of it was complete and total and I didn't care because my mouth was already on hers.

Soft. Hesitant. Her lips were cooler than I'd expected and she tasted faintly of wine and something metallic — adrenaline, maybe, or the morning itself. It lasted three seconds. Maybe four. Long enough to know the whole shape of the mistake. Long enough to feel her there and then feel her leave.

She stepped back. A small withdrawal. Quiet. Final. Not a rejection — something closer to a correction. A return to a line she'd crossed without meaning to.

I didn't follow. I stood where I was and felt the cold air fill the space she'd left and I let it.

My throat cleared itself — loud, rough, a sound that belonged in a paddock, not in whatever this had been. I turned aside and spat into the weeds. Reflex. The gesture of a man who'd grown up in timber country and never evolved past it. Karen had been trying to cure me of the habit for two decades. The success rate was zero.

Whatever had passed between us crumpled.

"So, uh, how much do you want?" I asked, turning back. Ordinary words. Ordinary voice. The version of me that made sense.

Her expression twisted — involuntary, visceral. The spitting. Yeah. I'd felt her flinch at it even with my back turned. Twenty-three years Karen had told me it was revolting and I'd laughed it off and now, standing in front of a woman whose mouth had been on mine five seconds ago, I understood what Karen meant with a clarity that arrived about two decades too late.

"None, thanks," Gladys said. Clipped. Done.

"I meant firewood," I said, and the grin broke through properly this time — sheepish, self-aware, the grin of a man who knew exactly what he'd torpedoed and how. The flirtation fell away like a tool put down. I was Jim again. The bloke who delivered wood and went home.

The crunch of tyres on gravel pulled us both around. A dark ute rolling down the driveway. I knew the vehicle before I placed the driver. Adrian Pafistis. I'd seen it outside job sites from Battery Point to Sandy Bay — the bloke was a proper builder, the kind whose work you noticed because nothing about it asked you to.

The change in Gladys was instant. Everything that had been soft — flustered, warm, human — was gone. Her body drew tight. Her eyes sharpened. Her hand went into her coat and came out with a second envelope, which she pressed hard against my chest.

"Just bring however much this will buy," she said. The voice was different now. Edges I hadn't heard. Urgency that had nothing to do with me.

I caught the envelope. Felt the weight of it. More than a standard load. Considerably more. My eyebrow lifted but she wasn't looking at me anymore. She was watching Adrian's ute roll to a stop beside my truck with the expression of someone doing maths at speed.

I didn't ask. I'd been in enough situations to know the difference between helpful questions and unwelcome ones. Bushfire prep. Neighbour disputes. The time old Bill Marchetti's cattle hit the highway. You learn when to shut up and do the job.

"Might take a few days to deliver this much. You okay with that?"

"Sure." Barely registering. "If I'm not here you can just dump it wherever it fits."

I hesitated. Looked at her — properly, the way you look at something when you're trying to commit it to memory without knowing why. She was standing very still in the middle of something she couldn't tell me about, and the stillness was more alarming than the panic had been.

"Not a problem," I said.

I walked to the truck. Adrian had stepped out of the ute by the time I reached it — steel-capped boots, work jacket, the bearing of a man who turned up to every site like he owned it, not out of arrogance but out of habit. He was built more compact than me, shorter by a few inches, but he carried himself with the squared-off certainty of someone who measured everything twice and cut once. Good tradesman. I'd always thought so. I'd seen his work on a couple of places up the road — clean lines, no shortcuts, the kind of finish that told you the bloke gave a shit about what he left behind.

The smell hit me before the greeting did. Sweet, herbal, unmistakable. Adrian was leaning against his door with a joint pinched between his thumb and forefinger, drawing on it with the unhurried ease of a man who'd started his morning at his own pace and had no plans to adjust.

"Morning Jim," he said, smoke curling out on the words.

"Hey, Adrian." I slowed, resting a hand on the side of the truck. "You doing some work out here?"

"Maybe." He glanced past me toward the property — toward Gladys, though I didn't turn to check what she was doing. "Got a call from a bloke. Luke someone. Wants to talk about renovation work on the place."

"Luke?" I didn't know anyone by that name connected to the Owens. Chris and Karen had lived here for years, and in a community as small as Collinsvale you generally knew who people's people were. "Since when are the Owens renovating?"

Adrian shrugged. Took another drag, held it, let the smoke out slow through his nose. "Dunno. Might be a mate of theirs. He said to meet him here." He looked at the cottage. "They around?"

"Haven't seen them." I kept it neutral. No point spreading Meredith Clarke's observations around like gospel. People went away. People came back. "They weren't here when I pulled in. Just the woman."

"What woman?"

"Client. She ordered the delivery." I left it there. What I had beyond that — the nerves, the cash, the way she'd flinched at my hand — wasn't the kind of detail you volunteered to another bloke in a driveway.

Adrian nodded, absorbing it the way tradesmen absorb anything that doesn't immediately affect the job — filed, reassessed later if needed. He pulled out his phone, glanced at the screen. "He said ten. He’s late." Then he held the joint out toward me, casual, the gesture of someone offering a biscuit with a cup of tea.

I shouldn't have. I had two more deliveries. Karen would smell it on me if I wasn't careful. And I'd spent the last twenty minutes doing things I shouldn't have, which you'd think would have been enough poor decision-making for one morning.

I took it anyway. Brought it to my lips and drew — shallow, just enough to feel the warmth spread through my chest and settle behind my eyes. The smoke was smooth. Better quality than the stuff Darren Whitsitt used to bring to the shed on Friday afternoons back in the day. I held it for a beat, then let it go in a slow stream that disappeared into the cold air.

"Could be worse places to wait," I said, handing it back and tilting my chin at the hills. The morning had cleared into something close to beautiful — winter light catching the ridgeline, the kind of view you stopped noticing until something made you look again.

Adrian pocketed his phone and took the joint back. "How's business?"

"Busy enough. Cold snap's helping."

"Yeah, keeps both of us in work." A brief grin. The kind that sat easily on a face that was used to keeping most of its thinking behind the eyes. I'd noticed that about Adrian over the years — he watched more than he talked, read a room before he entered it. Reminded me of the old card players Dad used to sit with at the pub, the ones who said nothing and won everything. "Karen well?"

"She is. Kids are keeping her honest."

He nodded. The exchange had the easy rhythm of men who crossed paths regularly enough to be friendly without being friends. We occupied the same patch of southern Tasmania, and that was enough to keep the conversation warm without requiring depth.

Adrian pinched off the lit end of the joint, snuffed it between his fingers — practised, automatic — and held out the remaining half. "Here. For the road."

I looked at it. Thought about the two deliveries. Thought about Karen's shift. Thought about the morning I'd already had and what one more small, stupid indulgence would cost against the larger stupid indulgence I'd already committed to pretending hadn't happened.

"Cheers," I said, and tucked it into my shirt pocket.

"Take it easy, Jim."

"Yeah. You too."

I climbed into the cab. Turned the key. The engine coughed and caught and the truck began to roll. In the mirror, Adrian was prepping himself a fresh joint, and Gladys was still standing where I'd left her, arms folded tight across her chest. She looked smaller from this distance. More contained. Like a person shrinking back into a shape that would fit inside whatever story she was living.

The driveway gave way to the road. The road gave way to the ridge. The eucalypts along the top caught the strengthening light on their upper branches and held it there.