Ben’s farewell

“How did you meet him, Gran?”

I settled back into the corner of the swing and closed my eyes. “It was when I was … young. Seems like another person now.”

“‘Have to be flexible, Liana,’ he said. ‘Have to try another way. Rainbows aren’t forever,’ he added.

“And so he caught a westerly, just surfed it over, skirting the Bight. It wasn’t an easy trip. He’d done it years before of course, but there’d been more rainbows then.  

Memory dulls or heightens the past, depends on your mood.

He made it to Kalgoorlie and the fields of gold.  Kalgoorlie – that meant dusty reaches filled with hope, hope of riches.  No rainbows there, just drought. And there he stayed. Sometimes he would send me a message on an electric storm – just to let me know he was all right.”

“And was he all right, Gran?” Vanessa whispered.

“Oh, I guess so.” My voice dissolved in the humid evening air, like strawberry sherbet on Vanessa’s tongue..

“If he’d stuck to the prospecting, I guess I’d never have met him.  But he loved to explore, and his favorite type of exploring was going around the world and leaping in and out of stories. He liked it so much that he’d add his own and start living them, too. He went of in strange directions sometimes.”