June Woke Up

by Ann Davie

Approx. 960 words

June woke up.  The weak light barely penetrated the heavy curtains, but it was enough to rouse her from her fitful sleep.  She patted the quilt next to her, hoping it wasn't really true, that he really wasn't gone.

She swung her legs down and shuffled into her slippers.  Her hip was aching again. 

"Why am I falling apart?  Why is everything falling apart?"

She padded down the cold hallway to the even colder kitchen.  Out the window she could see the masses of rhododendrons in blossom.  Reds, palest pinks, yellows.  All seemed gray in the overcast early hours.  The garden was a mess.  Weeds everywhere.  Plants overgrown and in desperate need of a good pruning.  She put the kettle on, grabbed two cups before putting one back.

She took her cup of tea into the sitting room and sat in his chair and looked out his window to his mountain.  The craggy peaks were sharp and cold this morning.  No warmth in the light to bring out the rusty reds and mossy greens.  "I'll go for a walk.  I can now."

Rugged up in an old jumper, feet clad in her stiff walking shoes and clutching her walking stick, June set off for Silver Falls.  It had been years since she'd been this way, even longer since the two of them had taken the trail together.

Her hip creaked, the muscles around it throbbing as the track rose higher.  She stopped to catch her breath and listen to the silence around her that wasn't really silent.  The thin trickle of water working towards the falls.  Birds calling, baleful and haunting.  Snaps and rustling of branches giving way to the wind whipping from the south side of the mountain.  And her own short, sharp breathing.

The path grew steeper and was thick with leaves and twigs, hiding stones that jutted out.  June was certain they were meant to trip her.  Trees had been cut decades ago to make the path.  Still others had fallen, great chunks taken out of their middles to fit the path.  Their ends, once smooth from the slice of a chain saw, were now jagged.  Eaten away by decay and weather.  Blooms of sulfur-coloured fungi hastened their demise.  Velvet mosses cloaked rocks and trees.  Fern sprigs uncoiled from every nook. 

"Everything is coming and going."

June came to the hill's rise.  A giant of a tree lay across the path.  Next to it, another tree of almost equal size had fallen over, its roots still gripping fast to rocks and stones.  This was new.  These hadn't been there before.  It looked as if there was no way around them. 

"My hip won't let me climb over these, I'm sure."

As she approached, it was clear that slices had been taken out of them to allow passage.  She slipped through, stopped and leaned over, lying on top of one of the trunk.  Spreading her arms as far as she could, she couldn't even reach a quarter of the way around the tree's girth.  She thought about her big bear of a husband.

When they were both younger, June would reach under his arms and nestle like a child.  Her arms could never fit all the way around him.  Then she thought of him as he was only last week.  She had slipped her own wiry arms under his, held his frail frame and lifted him from his chair.  She held on to the tree trunk and imagined his big barrel chest beating beneath her cheek.  Crying didn't help.  But she did it anyway.

She released the trunk, looked ahead to the track leading to Silver Falls.  It was rockier and sloped down sharply. 

"Going up is hard, down is even harder."

Taking one measured step at a time, June wedged her walking stick between rocks to steady her.  The rush of water was now louder. 

"Wouldn't it be something if it just stopped?  It never does though, never even slows to a trickle.  I wonder where all that water comes from." 

The cold dampness in the air washed over her, as if she'd passed through a curtain into another room.

And then the falls appeared.  Tree ferns towered over the water; fiddlehead ferns sprouted between rocks and endured the constant shower.  Tufts of moss, some as thick as a cushion others bristly and coarse, clung to every rock.  The sound was deafening and all consuming.  Water fell fast and furious, rushing over the cliffs before being channelled through the well-worn stream that ran down the mountain.

June gripped the railing, standing in the rickety platform made for tourists and trekkers to view the falls.  In the past, she'd always toyed with the idea of jumping.  Playing "what if"; wondering what it would be like to be lost in the torrent of water cascading down into the town below.  This time she fought the thoughts, not daring them to surface.  She turned away and walked down the wider tourist track that led to the main road. 

The path was even; the gravel fine.  The lushness of tree ferns, towering eucalypts and thick undergrowth soon gave way to airy bushland.  Around the bend would be the tavern and the general store.  People.  Cars.  Their own lives and busy-ness. 

She slowed down, holding on to the last few moments when she was all alone.  The small cluster of buildings came in to view, nestled snugly into the hills.  Further across the horizon, she could see the river, calm and shining.  Not at all the same water that rushed by so violently a few minutes ago.  Past that, the sea.  The sun was burning off the morning mist, casting gold to the islands curled along the coast.

"Better get home and think about what to do next."