Free Dirt Music by Tim Winton

He goes inside and scrubs at the sink then goes ahead and showers anyway. The water is tepid; he can’t get it cold enough.
    Back in the kitchen he makes a meal yet can’t bring himself to sit down and eat it. He walks into the library but the air feels gritty and oppressive and somewhere in the room a moth struggles against a smooth surface, frailing, hidden from view.
    He goes out onto the verandah and lights a couple of mosquito coils. The dog comes around the stumps of the house and mounts the steps. The paddocks thrum with cicadas, crickets, birdwings.
    Up from the creek comes the chirr of frogs. He sits and lowers his head to the battered 87 table, queasy as a man with a hangover. Yes, that’s the feeling, a diffusion of anxiety, disgust and regret.
    Jim Buckridge, he thinks. Could it be any worse? Could I be any more stupid? A whole year without even a close call and now this.
    He thinks of the way she lay there looking at him, studying him while he shucked off his jeans, how she pulled him to her by the cock like a rider leading her horse. Had she been doing nothing else from the moment he pulled over on the highway this morning?
    Leading him into something? Was it Fox paranoia or was this some kind of set-up? He’d as good as admitted to poaching. But Buckridge and his lackeys wouldn’t bother with a confession.
    They’d be filling their jerrycans before asking any questions or having someone ask for them. Boats scuppered at their moorings, sheds alight, he’s seen it all.
    Had he run today or did she turn him out? It bothers him.
    That and the fact that he liked her. Smart. In your face. In control yet strung-out somehow.
    Fox feels the air chafing at him. He knows what it is, knows the feeling and why. You put up a tent to make a space you can deal with. You know the whole night’s still out there—the land, the sky and every creeping thing—and you understand how thin the fabric is, what a pissy pretence you hold to, but with your tent blown open you feel more exposed than if you’d lain down on your mat beneath the stars. You can’t see what’s coming.

    Fox wakes to the sound of someone in the kitchen. It’s late morning by the feel of it and the dog hasn’t made a sound. He scrambles out of bed and grabs a pair of shorts, all the time looking for something to defend himself with.
    Morning, the woman says, suddenly in the doorway.
    Shit!
    Only me.
    Fox covers himself with the shorts he hasn’t had time to pull on.
    She’s barefoot in a short black skirt and a sleeveless blouse.
    She gives him a washed-out grin.
    Got any coffee?
    You look awful.
    Don’t be familiar with me, young man. I require coffee and aspirin.
    Again.
    Yes. Again.
    How… how’d you get here?
    Hired a car. Something small and red. As one does.
    You know where the kitchen is.
    I could only find instant.
    You strike me as the instant type.
    Oh, cheap. Let me look at you.
    No, he says, holding the shorts to his lap.
    I’m still a bit pissed. A real citizen wouldn’t have driven.
    So, Fox murmurs. Why did you?
    See if I imagined you. Mind if I lie down?
    She flops onto the narrow bed. Confusing, isn’t it?
    Yeah. That’d cover it.
    She rolls over and buries her face in his pillow. Sit down, she says.
    Fox hesitates, sits on the edge of the bed, his shorts in one hand.
    Didn’t sleep, she says, muffled by the pillow. And now it’s so hot.
    Fox looks at her. The skirt rides up on her thighs.
    There’s an old vaccination scar high on her arm. A smear 89 of vermilion lipstick brightens the pillowslip.
    You left your dinner out, Lu. Waste of linguini.
    The dog’ll get it.
    When I’m better will you cook something for me?
    When will you be better?
    When you’ve touched me.
    I’ll make some coffee, he says.
    After.
    Sleep, he says, watching her lift her head with a smile sliding off her face.
    Oh, be a sport.
    Geez, how much did you drink?
    See, you sound all concerned. Actually I drank everything. It’s less than you’d