Alice in the Rain

Alice picked out half a bread roll from a municipal rubbish bin and chuckled. She had got away all right! It had been a toss-up between getting away from it all by swallowing the bottleful of oxycontin tablets she’d squirrelled away after contracting shingles last year or hitting the road. She had hit the road.

Now here she was in the middle of a mid-west town, a thousand miles from home, sun beating down on her brown felt fedora and radiating off the concrete and bitumen vista that stretched out before her leading westwards. Fields of grain waved in chequerboard browns and golds on the perimeter of town and there was a vast, complete emptiness about her which Alice found somehow soothing.

Her thoughts returned automatically to that terrible time. She gritted her teeth remembering the tears of unspeakable pain that had dripped out from underneath her closed eyelids, but she was saving those painkillers if it killed her. Alice smiled at the irony of it. She bit into the cheese and tomato roll she had salvaged. It wasn’t bad; not too old, and she hadn’t eaten for a day. She felt as though it had nearly killed her, the shingles, and she winced as she recalled the agony of the pulsating nerve endings lashing around her face and ear like some hellish crown of thorns last March. Those magical, precious tablets were still with her, lying in wait at the bottom of her bedraggled backpack, and whispered sweet nothings to her in moments of extreme hunger or loneliness. But she’d taken another route. This time.

Back when she’d decided on the road option, Alice had picked up one or two important things she would need on her journey; the faded photographs of her mother, her beloved husband and her two huge spoilt tabbies, all long gone now, one of the science medals she’d won to remind her of her former life’s work as a world-renowned research botanist, and a packet of seeds: the ones she’d been developing which would save the planet from starvation because of their hardiness and resistance to pests. Then she’d closed the door on Ari, her last partner who for decades had slowly and methodically brought her to her knees. Ari had won over Alice’s heart, a time after her husband had died and she was still in the throes of reeling grief. He was funny, quick, hilarious and he reminded Alice how to laugh again. Then slowly the criticisms crept in; mild at first. These inexorably became out and out conflicts. Alice’s heart quickened as she remembered his voice raised in an irrational rage, the mounting attacks on her personhood and finally, an emotional and verbal battering, the likes of which she had no armour for or means of self-protection. The laughter had long since disappeared and an endless cold winter had descended upon her.

One morning she’d taken a bus interstate, then travelled out west, hitching, walking, or taking another Greyhound. Hitching was harder these days than it used to be. Back in the early days, it was a breeze. Everyone would pick up a twenty something girl, but now, people in their sixties didn’t really do this anymore … and people were cautious.

Alice sighed, she was tired and her back ached, her joints ached, and she longed for a bath.

‘Would you like my lunch sandwich?’ a small voice said behind her.

Alice turned to find a set of wide blue eyes directed at her from a small girl wearing a school uniform that was too big for her. She was holding out a fresh whole meal sandwich with lettuce and lunchmeat peeking out from its edges. Alice salivated.

‘Why thank you dear. You are very kind,’ she responded and noticed something sharp prickling behind her eyes. The child would be the age of her little granddaughter on the other side of the world. She took the sandwich gratefully as the girl’s face broke into smiles and she ran away.

These were the good days. But there were other kinds as well.

‘Hey old woman, get your stuff and clear out! You’re bad for business!’

Irate shop owners had embarrassed and offended her in the small towns. Cities seemed more forgiving, or more oblivious, she hadn’t quite decided which one it was. But she preferred the smaller towns and villages. She could see more sky there and trees, and the earth beckoned to her and to her seeds. She was leaving a Hansel and Gretel trail of crumbs in the form of her planet saving seeds. In each place where she stayed, Alice looked for a soft piece of earth that smelt good, that had morning sun and shelter. She rifled through her backpack, finding the brown envelope of seeds and then proceeded to scrape away at the soil. At five centimetres, she deposited a seed, cover it, give it a drink and brush leaves over it, give it her blessing and move on. She wondered what she’d do once she’d planted all the seeds. Perhaps then it would be time to listen to the words that whispered to her from the bottom of her backpack.

Finding shelter had been another challenge.

‘Excuse me,’ she would ask people with dirty feet, or shopping trolleys piled high with plastic bags which accompanied them wherever they went, ‘would you mind directing me to a place of shelter?’

This often drew laughs or raised eyebrows and sometimes nothing at all. Perhaps it was the way she spoke. Alice had learnt to avoid officers of the law and certain people who gave off the wrong signs: a certain look, the way they walked, she couldn’t put her finger on it.

‘Sure love, this way,’ sometimes happened and she would follow in the footsteps of a shambolically benign brother or sister and put her cardboard sheets out at a respectful distance and unearth her sleeping bag for the night.

Weather was another thing, and today, she’d felt it: first in her elbows and toe joints, and then in the mineral smell in the air. She saw the clouds coming over from the west; black, ominous and low, as she hurried to find shelter. She was in a new town and didn’t know the places where homeless people go. The treacherous sky cracked white and seconds later the rifle shot ricocheted across the street and down the dark alleyways and rumbled grumbling along the bitumen until another flare lit the night sky. For a while she searched under the bridges, and behind some abandoned buildings until eventually, Alice gave up her search for shelter.

As the rain began: fat, heavy, frigid blobs that must have originated in the Russian Steppes, she stood as an effigy. Slowly the raindrops came, then faster and harder as Alice pulled her tattered coat around her bony shoulders and turned her back to the wind. It plastered down her thinning hair and ran in rivulets down her clothing. It ran down into her holey boots and then back out onto the street. She was a plant, she thought suddenly, a piece of living matter. A precious piece of vegetation that would take its nutrients from the ground, its water from the heavens and God willing, its strength from the sun, should it ever rise again, from this vast sea of endless water.