Red Dirt Heart Imago by N.R. Walker

Author:N.R. Walker [Walker, N.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-19T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Lawson

The ride out to where the butterflies were was as long and bumpy as it was beautiful. Charlie had explained that we were to follow them. Our convoy of two vehicles would head east toward the neighbour’s property. He explained they normally flew the helicopter over, but with this many people, it couldn’t happen. Strangely enough, I didn’t mind the drive.

I’d always thought myself to be more of a mountains guy or even partial to the ocean. I’d never even considered the desert to be anything but heat, dust, and flies, but there was a beauty here that I couldn’t find words for.

I doubted I’d survive a summer here, though, and I was grateful for the cool morning. After an age, we came to a fence line. It ran like a rickety spine up the scorched red back of this land. Land that baffled me as to how anything survived out here. How Charlie and Travis ever farmed this dirt was a mystery to me.

We followed the fence north for a while, until a four-wheel drive came into view on the other side of the fence. I saw, then, a man who stood by his vehicle, next to an open gate. Charlie drove through, we followed, and we both came to a stop.

“This must be Greg,” Jack mused, shutting down the engine. He was mid-forties, maybe, with blond-grey hair. Charlie and Travis were already out and shaking hands with him, their friendship evident by their smiles. Jack and I got out of the Defender. The autumn heat here was as hot as a summer day back home.

Greg greeted us with a warm handshake and the kind of smile I was starting to think was an Outback thing. “Welcome to Queensland,” Greg said, “where the good folk live. Not like them Territorians.” He gave a pointed nod to Travis and Charlie with a good-natured grin. “Thank you both so much for coming.”

“It’s no problem at all,” I reassured him. “I’m excited to see these butterflies. I hope they are what I think they are.”

Greg gave me a hard nod. “Me too. Charlie tell ya ’bout the pipeline they wanna run through here?”

“He did, yes.” I understood why I was here, without any doubt. They’d been very honest about it from the start. Their interest was not in the butterfly like mine was. Their interest in the butterfly was in hope it might stop the government staking a claim on Greg’s land. I cared not for motive. I had my eyes set on the finish line, and that was to find a butterfly in a country it shouldn’t be found in. I smiled at Greg and clapped my hands together. “So, if we’d not like to waste anymore time, let’s go find them.”

Greg grinned at me. “I like you already, son.”

We each took our respective vehicles in a convoy further northeast into Greg’s property. There was still red dirt as far as the eye could see, but there were more patches of greenery, thickets of khaki against the red under the bluest sky I think I might have ever seen.

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