Bushman In The Horrors: A Short Story

Bushman in the Horrors
Along a dreary, hopeless track, there is a little one-roomed house built of timber, stringy bark and floored with split wooden slabs. At the end of the house is a small bark shed, which has nothing but a few boxes of dirty crockery and a cheap oilcloth full of holes draped across a dishevelled straw mattress.
Surrounding the house is ‘bush all round – bush with no horizon.’ There is no undergrowth, save for the brownish clumps of dead grass, studded alongside the dusty track. A couple of sheoaks sway beside a waterless creek. They are blown side by side by the hot breaths of suffocating dry air.
The bush stretches on and on. A stranger might travel for miles without seeming to find a change in the landscape, for there is no difference in the bleak monotonous

Could yer give me a drink of water! I jist need a sip and I’ll be on me way,’ he says.
The woman responds by telling the man that she will give him some water and adds that her husband and many sons are at work in the shed. She then presses the door shut and returns moments later, handing the man the cup. He takes it with his brown dusty fingers and grips it shakily between his palms before having a large sip, finishing it in one big quaff.
With the cup bare of any water, the man brings it up to have another drink before soon realising that there is nothing left. He shakes the poor cup up and down, pressing his ear close to hear the non-existent sounds of water. The woman watches in astonishment. How could she not have known? Here is a man wandering ‘about the bush in the horrors of drink.’ She needs to get someone to ride for the police, but the nearest shanty is ten miles away. On foot, she cannot make it.
Many seconds later, the man returns the old rusted cup to the bushwoman. ‘Thank yer, Annie,’ he says. ‘G’day to yer.’
She watches as he walks unsteadily down the dreary, hopeless track, knowing that this will be the last time she sees the man alive.
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1 Month