In the Dark Alone by D M Macdonald

Author:D M Macdonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: D M Macdonald

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He was fourteen when he met Stuie. They were both fossicking around in a wrecker's yard in Collingwood. David, looking for things he could use to build his computer and Stuie, for things for his house. They started talking and discovered they were kindred souls. Considered eccentric by everyone, they’d both withdrawn into inner worlds where anything was possible.

They made a strange pair. The lonely boy, a brilliant original thinker from a wealthy, socially prominent family; a student at one of the most elite boy’s schools in the country and the itinerant old man. Stuie’d had enough of society and was building himself a shack deep in the bush, far from civilisation’s interference.

David smiled as he remembered how angry the teachers were when he went to stay with Stuie on weekends without telling them. How Stuie refused to let on that he was glad to see him. He never acknowledged David. No hello, no goodbye. David got used to it and eventually enjoyed the ritual they had.

He walked slowly around the clearing. This was his first home after his father had thrown him out at sixteen. At first Stuie had been cranky about having him stay. For about half a day he wouldn’t look at him. He did his thing, collecting wood, or skinning rabbits. Then he made a comment, not to David but one that allowed him to reply. After that they’d sit on the step, talking about anything and everything.

Stuie had been everywhere, done everything. That’s why he wanted to spend his last days deep in the Australian bush. He wanted to die, he said, with the smell of eucalyptus in his nose and the sound of bellbirds in his ears.

David had stayed for several weeks and Stuie had helped him map out a sort of future. He organised a passport, booked David’s passage on an old cargo vessel and sent him on his way. Stuie always knew where he was, and spied on little brother Robin, letting him know that Rob was okay. It was Stuie who had sent the letter telling him of his father’s and mother’s deaths. In all that time he’d never asked for anything in return, not even affection.

`Mush. Crap,’ the old man said. `Ruins your life.’ David always thought there was a story in there, but he never asked.

Stuie was dead now, and David arrived too late to say goodbye to the old man who’d been a far better father to him than his own. He came to the hut as soon as he was off the plane and found the old man dead in his bed. He sat down beside the body and wept, and talked, telling the corpse of his love for him. Then he’d dried his eyes, straightened his shoulders and buried the old man in his clearing, leaving no mark of his grave. That was the way Stuie wanted it.

`You old bugger,’ he’d grinned through the tears. `You made sure I never got the chance to say how much I loved you when you were alive, but you can’t stop me now you’re dead.

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