Salt Rain by Sarah Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page B

under the coffins always slipped so smoothly through their solid hands. She sat for a long time, looking up at the comforting shapes of the tall trees, imagining their roots slowly spreading through the whole valley again, laying a vast web of underground life. She used to spend hours lying on the forest floor, listening to the birds and the wind in the leaves. Sometimes she would drift to sleep and wake with a start, late for the afternoon milking. That was how Neal had found her. He told her that he watched her sleeping for a couple of hours, the dappled light moving across her face as the sun dropped.
    She looked over to Saul’s place, he’d be getting up soon to milk at his father’s dairy. He had touched her once, when she was thirteen, down at the cattle dip. She had gone to tell him that Mae had left the valley and the instant that she told him, her head began to spin and he had dropped his hammer and knelt beside her. And there in the sun by the dip, he had stroked her, his big hand gently cradling her head and even then she knew that it was Mae he was touching.
    She got back to her farm just as the sun was rising, the bottom of her jeans wet and muddy. Down at the old dairy, she had to clear dirt away to drag open the heavy wooden door and let the first light into the musty shed. A bale of hay had broken apart and was turning to dust on the floor, and along the corner beam, little black bats were settling for their day’s sleep. They shuffled their wings and tried to protect their twisted faces from the daylight. She sat heavily on a dusty wooden bench and thought again of Saul’s touch that day down at the cattle dip and how she had missed her one chance to tell him that Mae had said goodbye.

chapter six
    The day of the funeral was a high blue-sky day like the morning Mae disappeared. A silent jet left a wisp of vapour in the cloudless sky. Allie walked beside Julia up the path to the small wooden church, past the bushes steaming in the sun. She wanted the clouds and rain to descend again and slowly wrap the trees and buildings in mist.
    She sat beside Julia in the front pew, in one of Mae’s old dresses, soft blue cotton with puffed sleeves. Her eyes blinked slowly and her blood moved like syrup in her veins. Sounds sagged through the air, the whispering and shuffling of feet, the walls creaking in the morning sun and the organist’s sheet music fluttering to the polished floor.
    Julia reached out to finger the fabric of Allie’s dress and whispered, ‘That was one of her favourites. I’m surprised she didn’t take it with her.’ She smoothed the cotton onto Allie’s thigh.
    Allie looked down at Julia’s hand, the thick knuckles and red dirt under the fingernails. Julia’s hand and her own leg. Solid, warm flesh, blood moving through their veins. She kept her eyes down, away from the coffin at the front of the church. In the blue of her dress she saw the ocean carrying the little Islander girl far out to sea, cradling her sleeping form.
    She turned to look for him again in the rows of faces. Of course she would recognise him, she had seen the pale outline of his body in the dark and heard his breath easing in and out. When she got home from his house that morning, she had sat up on her bed watching the sunrise, every brighter wash of light bringing the moment of the funeral closer.
    ‘Mae Curran was a daughter of this community and we hold our children dear.’ The minister was fat, sweat shining on his pale moon face. ‘It’s fitting that she should come home to rest in the bosom of her family and community.’
    From the corner of her eye she could see sun reflecting off the white lacquered coffin. Mae would hate the gold handles on the coffin, such shiny gold. Cheap and tacky, she would think. Allie remembered what Mae said about the trail of atoms that people left behind and imagined them leaking from the coffin, spreading up the red-carpeted aisle and through the double wooden doors. Her mouth