Alice in the Rain

Alice in the Rain

As she picked out half a bread roll from a municipal rubbish bin, Alice chuckled. She had got away all

right! It had been a toss-up between taking the bottleful of oxycontin she’d squirrelled away after

contracting shingles last year or hitting the road. She had hit the road. Her thoughts returned

automatically to that terrible time. She had gritted her teeth as tears of unspeakable pain dripped

out from underneath her closed eyelids. But she was saving those tablets if it killed her. Alice

smiled at the irony of it. She bit into the cheese and tomato roll. It wasn’t bad; not too old, and she

hadn’t eaten for a day. It nearly did kill her though, the shingles, and she winced as she recalled the

agony of her pulsating nerve endings last March. Those magical, precious tablets were still with her

though, lying in wait at the bottom of her bedraggled backpack, whispering sweet nothings to her in

moments of extreme hunger or loneliness. But she’d taken another route. This time. Back then, when she'd decided on the road option,

Alice had picked up one or two important things she would need on her journey, like the faded

photographs of her mother, her beloved husband and her two spoilt tabbies, all long gone now, one

of the science medals she’d won to remind her of her former life’s work, 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 her last partner who for decades now had

slowly brought her to her knees.

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 grandniece 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

she stayed, Alice would look for a soft piece of earth that smelt good, that had morning sun and

shelter. She would rifle through her backpack, find the brown envelope of seeds and then proceed

to scrape away at the soil. At five centimeters, she would deposit 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 grumblingly 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 suddenly

thought, 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 sea of endless and ubiquitous water.