Sunshine

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of Sunshine. The skies there always beamed bright blue through the day and starry black and white through the night. The leaves gleamed with a fluorescence you see in those old movies from the sixties or the seventies, the ones where the contrast level gets turned all the way up. Mostly, I think about the glow. The feeling that I felt when I was there, like everything good was eternal and everything foul had ceased to exist. This story is about how I found that small town amid a sprawling mountain range. This is the story of Sunshine.

The year was twenty-twenty-three and I was twenty-two. I was journeying across a scorching Australia, hitchhiking and walking along roads so hot that my shoes had started to melt. I was headed east towards Melbourne, a city that happened to be a state and a half away.

Most guys who’d pick me up would drop me at the nearest town to the east. I didn’t really care for the logistics of it all, telling the truck drivers (and other weirdos that picked up hitchhikers), ‘East, my man. And as far east as you can take me.’ And east is where they took me, so far east that before I knew it, I was in some dinky old town called Ararat.

After a couple of boozy nights there, I set my sights back East. One of the locals gave me a lift to the service station out of town, and that’s where I met the first person I ever knew from Sunshine: Gary Roberts.

When I first met him, he was munching on a re-heated pie, drenching it with sauce in between every bite. Gary struck me as the fortunate kinda guy who could eat whatever he pleased, whenever he pleased, never gaining a gram of weight as he did so. He was a small, skinny man with a kind and handsome face. He owned a great big pair of spectacles that always rested on his nose, making him seem dorky and unthreatening, though there was always an aura of eeriness around him whenever he spoke.

We got talking and with great reluctance, he agreed to let me ride along with him to a small town forty-kilometers East of the truck stop.

‘Look kid,’ Gary said to me, his kind yet beady eyes squinting through those jumbo glasses. ‘I’ll take you to Beaufort, though I’d sooner take you back to Ararat. It’s bushfire season, and there’s whispers of smoke coming from the east.’

 I didn’t care much for Gary’s warnings. After all, I was a twenty-two-year-old kid, hitchhiking across two states in the middle of an Australian Summer.

 So, with that reluctant sparkle still twinkling in his eyes, Gary Roberts took me in his truck to the East. And that my friends, is where this story truly begins.

They say that fire embers can travel up to forty kilometers away from a bush fire. What they say in this instance, is true. Gary and I had only made it thirty kilometers before we knew we had made a terrible mistake. 

The day had gone from bright blue and sunny to a black, foggy hell in a matter of minutes. The bushfire that raged to the east had suddenly turned west, and we were right in the center of it. 

Throughout it all, I never got the impression that Gary was frightened. Something was stressing him, and I suppose it would be natural to assume it was the raging bushfire we happened to be in the middle of. But that wasn’t it. He was deciding, hosting a debate in his mind so intense it put creases on his forehead.

‘God damn it,’ He muttered.

 The road ahead of us was surrounded by Armageddon level smoke and flaming debris. Without another word, he spun his wheel to the left, putting the truck onto a dusty road that seemed to have no business being on the side of a highway. Ahead of us, only barely visible through thick smoke, was a monstrous looking mountain looming above with benevolence.

‘What the hell are you doing?!’ I cried. I was no Einstein, but going hell bent for leather into a state forest in the middle of a bush fire didn’t seem like protocol. Gary didn’t say a word, his face still creased and undecided.

The rest of the ride is a bit of a blur. The forest of Mount Cole is as stunning as State forest’s get, but the roads are winding and tedious. The smoke didn’t seem to follow us into the mountain, either. In fact, after a few minutes, I had forgotten all about the fire.  A sudden tiredness had crept over me, the scent of lavender and honey flooding into my nostrils as I drifted out of consciousness.

Gary nudged me, shaking me out of a light dream. He pointed out the windshield. In front of us was a yellowish, dusty road with thick, tall bushland either side of it. Above it all was the most beautiful blue sky I had ever seen. 

Of all things I have forgotten in my old age, the entrance to Sunshine will never be one of them. The smell of lavender and honey; the tight yet cozy road to the gate; my youth, un-tainted and still full of hope -- all of it, still there, beneath the cobwebs and dust that coats my old mind.

The gate had two brick pillars on either side that raised to the height of two men. In front of the right pillar was a blue sign that read in faint white colors:

 “Sunshine: Home”

Underneath it in scribe text:

“Population: One hundred and fifty”

 The gates themselves were pearly white and opened inwards. Gary later told me that they never shut.

‘There’s no need,’ he said, his face now purged of concerned lines. ‘Besides; ain’t no one out there who can get to sunshine cept me.’

Once we passed through the gates, the tight road burst out into an open meadow. In the middle of it all was the clustered buildings of a small town. Acting as a kind of natural wall, tall mountains incased the town snuggly, bordering it like a protective hug from a defensive mother bear.

A sudden warmth manifested in my chest. It enveloped me, then projected out towards everything I saw. I found myself eager to lie on a patch of cut grass and just be.

The road descended downward towards an old roundabout with a water fountain in the center of it. Sunlight danced off the water in ways that only a summer sun can, rays of reflected light making it look like diamonds you might like to put on a lady’s finger. 

The first exit of the roundabout went straight ahead and towards most of the residential area.

When you left the roundabout’s second exit, you reached the town center.

On the left was the town hall. It was tall and weathered looking, resembling an ancient castle of sorts. At the top of it was a large church bell so old that I wondered if it still worked. In the upper center of the building, a clock sat stubbornly immortalized at two o’clock.

There was no supermarket or fast-food chains like you’d see in every other main street of the time. In fact, everything on that strip was locally owned and operated. We passed cafes, book shops, butchers, grocers. Each of them open and spacious, every door wedged ajar to allow the Summer breeze to drift through them.

The end of the main street was home to the, “The Barnaby Corner Hotel”, and across from that, “Red Ralph’s Pizzeria”. 

The Barnaby Corner hotel was a double storied building made of sandstone. It sat on the corner of the main road like a piece of art frozen in time. From the outside, I could hear the cheering of locals and the clinking of beer glasses. Suddenly, I was thirsty.

Gary parked his old truck out the front of the corner hotel and took me inside. If the town’s population was one-hundred and fifty, half of them were in the main street glaring me down like I was a leper. The other half, inside this bar.

A four-piece band was playing a tight rendition of “La Bamba” in the back corner. The patrons in the bar raised their voices to speak over the music, creating a mixed buzz that only a live music venue can give you. Every table was full of people and jugs of beer. The tables that weren’t scattered with beer jugs had smiling patrons bringing them over with childlike enthusiasm. One keen and rather intoxicated man had three jugs hugged tight to his chest. He tip-toed anxiously to the table where his friends awaited, all of them cheering him on with patriotic cries.

 As Gary and I stepped towards the bar, the music cut out. The singer finished short through a booming ‘Bamba!’ The chatter of the patrons soon followed. Eventually, all that could be heard was the clinking of beer glasses and cutlery. I looked over towards the publican, who was holding a pint glass upside down and cleaning it with an old rag. His mouth hung open like one of those clowns at the carnival.

‘Ah. Gary?’ A man who was sitting by the bar rose from his chair. He had an old-style top hat that he took off his crown and placed over his heart. He was a slender man, middle aged and had a healthy face. He possessed a caterpillar like mustache that crept along underneath his nose, and if he had of had a monocle placed over one eye, no one would’ve objected.

‘Gary, who is this man?’ He said. Every patron, including the tight band, were staring straight at me. Their eyes wide and shocked.

Gary asked the mustached man to retrieve the mayor. With a click of his slender fingers, a pair of men ran out the door and darted down toward the town hall. There was a painful, awkward silence, then they returned.

 Through the window by the hotels entrance, I saw a stout, proud looking woman glide past it. She entered the bar and soon after introduced herself as the mayor of Sunshine: Rebecca Thwart. Excusing herself, she asked me to leave the room, assuring that Gary would be sent out soon enough to retrieve me.

I waited on the street for what didn’t seem that long at all. A Ute rolled passed. Inside it a pair of leather faced, grumpy, old men. They greased me off with threatening scowls, slowing their Ute to a walking pace to get a better look at me.

 A mother with her child turned the corner. She let off a sharp gasp of horror when her eyes met mine.

‘Come Sally! Mummy forgot to pay the butcher! Come now!’ The mother lied, yanking her protesting child mercilessly behind her as she turned back from where they came. Then, Gary returned from the bar and took me back inside.

It was decided that I was to be granted temporary residency in Sunshine. This was to be treated as a probationary period, with a meeting to be held at the end of the six months to decide whether I stayed or was banished. I wanted to say that I only needed to spend the night or would even take a ride off a generous patron now if they were willing. But to tell you the truth, a part of me was excited. The glow that I had felt since entering this strange little town was still with me, and although everyone in it seemed to believe I was some great threat to them, I felt comfortable.

It was at that moment that August Grace walked through the door. She was wearing a black button up shirt and had a white apron tied around her waist. Her black hair was up in a messy bun so that thick, curling strands of it gently fell to the sides of her face. Behind those strands of hair sat a pair of green eyes, relaxed and vibrant all at once.

In her hand she held a paper coffee cup. When she saw me --a stranger-- standing there with the mayor of her town in her place of work, she dropped the coffee cup, sending hot milk in all directions.

Then, right on cue, the bands singer shouted into the microphone ‘Para bailar La Bamba!’

The silent bar came back to life. The patron’s glasses raised to the ceiling. The band’s music kicked in. And I fell in love. Not just with the black-haired girl that stood across from me, but with the small town that had just given me a chance.

The slender man with the moustache’s name was Ralph Redding. He owned the Pizzeria across the road from the Corner Hotel and offered me work as a kitchen hand.

 It was a proper pizzeria of old. We hand rolled the dough, hand stretched the bases, cooked the pizzas in a wood fired oven and served it all with fresh ingredients from big Joe’s farm down the road, or from one of Gary’s supply runs. As the months went by, Ralph even offered me to take over the business when he retired. I was flattered, but still was just a kid. Melbourne was buzzing away in the east, and while life felt as good as it ever had, I found myself asking if it could be more.

I started dating August early on.  Eventually, she let me stay at her house, which beat the back room of the Pizzeria by a pitcher’s length. 

 After seeing each other for three months, we made love. The next day I told her that I loved her. That was the day that everything changed.

Sunshine was a strange place. My watch stopped working the moment I passed through those gates and the locals told the time by looking where the sun was placed. The sky was always blue and not a drop of rain ever fell, though Big Joe’s crops grew as strong as any farm I’d ever seen. The outside world was all but non-existent. The only movies you could catch were ancient ones from the fifties, and you could only see them by going to a packed town hall on a Friday night.

 The glow never left me while I was there, but neither did the call to the outside world, to the city, to life.

It was the night I told August I loved her that I proposed we leave Sunshine.

 The idea scared her. There was one sacred rule of the town: Never leave. August was born there, so to break that rule was to turn against everything she knew. But I could see there was a part of her that yearned for what was out there, what her life might look like outside of the small town that had hugged her tight since birth. 

By midnight, we were in her fathers’ old green truck, beaming down the main road toward the white gates exit.

She held my hand as I drove, her thumb gently caressing the top of it. I remember that I was smiling, that sunshine glow as radiant as it had ever been inside of me.

‘Angus?’ August said. The truck approached the gate steadily. I looked at her.

‘I love you too.’

Those were the last words I ever heard her speak.

The truck crossed through the gate. The smell of lavender and honey rushed my nose; my vision began to blur. I felt that sudden tiredness I’d felt the day I arrived in Sunshine. Then I realized that my hand was no longer being held.

August had disappeared into thin air.

 I skidded the truck to a stop and stared at the empty seat in disbelief. She was gone. It was as simple as that.

 I swung the truck around in search of the entrance. Nothing. Gone. Just like her. In its place an old, un-traceable road that ascended into the mountain.

The glowing feeling evaporated. I have never felt it since. 

It took me six years to give up on looking. Even so, I travelled to that mountain every year, just to sit there, happy enough that perhaps she was near.

I am an old man now. I’ve had children and grandchildren. I fell in love with a wonderful woman and we were married and happy for fifty years. But I never forgot about Sunshine, or August Grace.

After my wife’s passing, as often happens, my health began to deteriorate. It was soon after this that I saw him again.

 I was being helped along to my old green truck by my grandson, when out the corner of my eye, I saw a sharp twinkle.

 A pair of jumbo-sized spectacles were placed neatly on a handsome, young man’s face. Behind the glasses, a pair of squinting, beady eyes stared back at me, though they were the warm and inviting kind. He smiled at me, then climbed back into his truck and drove off to the West.

It was then I decided I might try and find that little town one last time. Suddenly, I feel that warmth underneath my chest again. Things seem brighter, like the contrast levels have been turned all the way up. And, peculiarly, I can’t seem to stop smelling lavender and honey on the Summer air.