Marissa entered the pub and endured the stares of its five male customers. They had paused in their dart game and were looking at her as if she were an apparition. The pub owner came over and asked if he could help her.
“I’d like a room for two nights,” Marissa said.
“Do you have a reservation?” the man asked.
Marissa studied the man’s broad face. She thought he had to be joking, but he didn’t crack a smile. She admitted that she didn’t have a reservation.
“There’s a boxing troupe in town tonight,” the man said.
“We’re pretty busy, but let me check.”
He went over to his cash register and checked a notebook.
Marissa glanced around the room. All the men were still staring at her. None of them moved or said a word. They didn’t touch their bottles of beer.
The man came back.
“I’ll give you number four,” he said.
“It was reserved, but they were supposed to check in by six.”
Marissa paid for a night’s lodging, took the key, and asked about food.
“We’ll fix you up something here in the pub,” the man said.
“As soon as you freshen up, come on back.”
“One other question,” Marissa asked.
“Is the Wilmington Station close to town?”
”
“Tis,” the man said.
“Quite close. Less than three hours’ drive due west.”
Marissa wondered how many hours it would take to get to a distant station if it took three to get to a close one. Before she went to her room, Marissa used a public phone to ring the car rental agent to say that she had made it.
She was pleased to discover that her room was reasonably clean. She was surprised to see mosquito netting draped over the bed. Only later would she learn how important it was.
The rest of the evening passed quickly. She wasn’t very hungry and barely touched her food. She did enjoy the ice cold beer.
Eventually she found herself in friendly conversation with the men in the bar.
She was even persuaded to join them at the boxing show, which turned out to be an opportunity for the locals to box with professionals. The ranchers would win twenty dollars if they were able to last three one-minute rounds, but none of them ever did.
Marissa left before it was over, appalled by the violence the drunken men subjected themselves to.
The night was terrible. Marissa was again bothered by horrid dreams of sharks and Wendy being eaten. On top of that, she was tormented by drunken shouts and fights outside her door. She also had to do battle with all manner of insects that somehow managed to penetrate the netting around her bed.
By morning, Marissa was even more tired than she’d been the day before. But after a shower and some strong coffee, she thought she could face the day. Armed with directions from the hotel owner, she drove out of Windorah and headed to the Wilmington Station on a dusty dirt road.
The cattle ranch looked just as she imagined it would, consisting of a series of low-slung wooden sheds, white clapboard houses with sheet-metal roofs, and lots of fencing. Many dogs, horses, and cowboys were in evidence. Over the scene hung the unpleasant but not unbearable ripe, musty odor of cow dung.
In contrast to the staring disbelief her arrival caused in the pub in Windorah, Marissa was shown every possible hospitality at the cattle station. The cowboys, referred to as stock men literally fell over each other trying to help her, getting her a beer and offering to take her to the makeshift airstrip for the doctor’s scheduled noon arrival. One of the stock men explained their behavior by telling her that an attractive unaccompanied female showed up at a cattle station about once every hundred years.
By eleven-thirty Marissa was out at the airstrip, sitting in her Ford Falcon under a lone gum tree. Out in the sunlight closer to the strip was the Wilmington Station Land-Rover. Just before twelve, she got out of the car and left the tree’s shade. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she searched the pale blue sky for a plane.