***
He saw her lying on a rock and smiled as he shook his head. It seemed an impossible scene with her stretched out naked, her weight balanced on her elbows, letting the sun dry her. He started to turn away just as she twisted around to look at him but he ignored her to get on with the task in hand. He walked around the rocks at the other end of the beach, set the billy down before filling the bucket with sea water. Once done he set about scouring the sand with the net. It took ten minutes for him to find the first prawns, their grey shells covered in seaweed. After scooping them into the bucket he trawled a different area and gleaned a larger harvest. Only when he had enough to feed them both did he stop to fill the billy with sea water from a clear pool.
Another time and he would have searched for crab and lobster – it would be just a matter of tracking down those secret places where they hid.
“What on earth are you doing?” the girl demanded, as she approached him.
“Getting us something to eat,” he mentioned, setting everything down and looking around for some driftwood.
“Really?” her eye brows rose. “You expect me to eat that?” she peered into the bucket. “God, they’re still alive.”
“Which means they’re fresh,” he responded, scooping up some dried grass and twigs. “Make yourself useful and see if you can find some wood.”
For a moment she looked ready to protest then turned away to do as he had asked. He watched her go and couldn’t help but think that there was a change in her.
She was now dressed in grey denim cut-offs, pink and white knee length socks tucked into a pair of old army boots and an urban camouflaged sports bra that should have laced up over her chest – but didn’t. Her hair had been tied back so tightly that it made her face look hard.
As soon as she returned, Keel built a fire and put the billy on. They sat side by side and watched the water bubble away as the prawns turned pink.
“How do you know how to do all this?” she asked as she peeled and ate her first prawn.
“Learned from my dad,” Keel reminisced. “We spent all our holidays down here. He taught me how to fish, look for prawns, crabs and lobsters – and how to cook them.”
“You’ve got good memories,” she said sadly as she half rose then sat back down again. “I suppose you’re going to move on?”
Keel shook his head. “Comes a time when I need to stop running and I guess you can take care of yourself. Stay or go it makes no difference to me.”
“I wondered when you were going to come down to basics,” she sneered. “Go on hit me with your best shot – we are the future of mankind. Right?”
“Wrong,” he snapped straight back. “We cocked up the world already; you think that I want to start the whole thing over again? Sorry, girl mankind can go to hell for all I care as long as they don’t drag me down with them.”
“Wow!” was her surprised response. “That’s not what I expected. I never wanted kids anyway and definitely not in this world. What life would it have?”
“This is true,” he nodded.
For a while they sat silently, both lost in their thoughts as they stared out towards the horizon. The afternoon drifted into early evening and with it came a chill in the breeze. As she shivered, so Keel removed his leather jacket and placed it around her shoulders.
“I got sacked from my last job,” she said, breaking the silence. “I trained at college as a brickie – they said that I’d never cope so I used to work out at the gym. I was good at my job and took all the insults. Then the summer came and there they were all stripped to the waist showing off their abs and tats. I took it all in my stride until it all got too much – probably due to the monthly visit – and I just stripped off my top and worked topless. They just stood there and gaped when they got a good look at me. So I got sacked for showing them up. They called me Dirty Nicole and the name stuck – all that training and I couldn’t get work.”
“They felt threatened,” Keel pointed out. “The difference is that I don’t.”
To emphasise the point he slipped the Colt from his waistband and placed it, butt towards her, on the rock between them.
“What’s that for?” she asked, suspiciously.
“Better learn how to handle that – for starters.” He was serious. “Doesn’t pay to take a knife to a gunfight.”
She picked it up and examined it.
“Britt did and he won,” Nicole grinned, wickedly. “Or have you never seen ‘The Magnificent Seven’?”
“Touché, kid,” Keel nodded.
“Just don’t call me that,” she suggested. “I’m not a kid. This thing started on my 20th birthday.”
“Fair enough,” there was a promise in his voice.