DEVIN’S JOURNEY ~ PART 8

Story by Linda S Barth     Artwork by Carole W

Harts Range

~ Northern Territory, Australia ~

ROSE QUARTZ

In August 1985, just a few months after Devin turned thirty-two, a man calling himself Noah Trent applied for a job working construction near Harts Range in Australia’s Northern Territory. As the cool, dry days of late winter slowly receded and spring slid in to take its place; chilled night breezes and frost-frilled mornings surrendered to brightening sunshine and outbursts of rain.

Good-natured and rowdy, hard-working and fun-loving, his coworkers had ribbed the new hire for weeks. He’d taken everything they’d thrown at him and lobbed it right back, and eventually they eased him into their midst as if he’d always been one of them. Some of the many men and very few women on the crews had even become friends of his, but only one had found their way into his heart.

He remembered the first day he’d seen her, looking as beautiful and resilient as the native violets that improbably grew in the dry, rocky soil. He’d been assigned to a crew excavating and laying pavement for the runway of a small airport to enable planes to deliver essential supplies to this remote area. All the newly transferred workers were paired with a veteran who would spend a few days teaching them the routines. He’d been told to report to Finn, and once at the worksite he looked for the assumed hard-muscled, rough-hewn man who would be his temporary mentor.

It had been one of the biggest surprises of his stay in Australia when Finn turned out to be Serafina, a woman his age whose delicate features and slender stature made her look like an overall-clad fairytale princess in the midst of a company of burly knights. He’d soon discover her size was the only diminutive thing about her. 

Although she’d been part of the mining community for nearly two years, as a woman she was still something of a misfit, another outsider sometimes accepted and appreciated, sometimes only tolerated, at other times disdained. They were drawn to one another almost from the moment they met. At first it was the shared sense of otherness that sparked their connection, but soon it became much more. Filling empty places in each other before either was entirely certain what was happening, they’d become far more than inseparable friends.

Of course, the jokes and remarks – some good-natured and others quite crude – had been plentiful, but with the strength of their relationship, they were able to fend them off. Finn’s practice of responding to jibes and salty remarks was to show nothing more than a shrug and a muttered “whatever”. The method surprised Devin by its effectiveness, and he quickly adopted it for his own. Both found it helped quash their far too frequent desire to flatten a critic with a highly effective fist to the nose or knee to the groin.

Eventually the attention forced upon them turned to other people, other things. With their heavy workloads and exhausting days, carving out time to be together was often a painful challenge. Still, they did the best they could and forced themselves to claim they were satisfied with that, until an opportunity arose in the form of an offer by their site supervisor, Glen, who, they discovered, had a heart as soft as a marshmallow despite his rough and tumble facade.

Over the years, housing for the workers at the remote mining camp had been cobbled together of tents, small stone cottages, and caravans. As the new guy, ‘Noah’ had been given a mildew-speckled sleeping bag and a tiny canvas structure that made the guesthouse at Rongbuk seem like the Ritz Paris, a place Aengus and he had been escorted from the night they’d tried to sneak into the bar.

Still, the tent wasn’t the worst accommodation he’d ever had, that is if he didn’t consider the haunting howls and growls of dingoes from dusk until dawn…or the olive python curled around the base of his water barrel…or the Eastern Tarantula he’d discovered perched on his knapsack when he awoke one morning. He’d raised the tent’s flap to urge the gentle creature to find a better place for a nap, then watched in horror as a four-foot long goanna made a spontaneous breakfast of the hairy arachnid. When he’d shared the story during lunch break, he’d realized all too soon he’d given more material to the others. It had been only recently they’d stopped referring to him as Spiderman’s numpty cousin.

He was determined to put up with all of it – amateur comedians for coworkers, unexpected encounters with an array of predators, nights spent in moldy dwellings – for as long as he could. It was all part of the adventure, and it kept him close to Finn, even though she was one of the fortunate few to be given a cottage. But everything changed one evening just before Christmas. It would turn out to be one of the best gifts he’d ever receive.

He’d been outside his tent after dinner, scraping tar from the soles of his workboots when Glen and his head foreman Jack strolled into the campground.

“Evening, Noah.” Glen tilted his head toward the boot in Devin’s grasp. “Did you try using some WD-40 on that stuff? Otherwise, it’ll still look like a dog’s breakfast when you’re done with it.” 

 “I didn’t think of that. Thanks. I’ll go get some from the tool shed.”

Jack shook his head. “Don’t get arsed over it. Wait ‘til morning. We’ve got some right good news for you.”

Devin set the boot on the ground by the tent flap. “Yeah? What’s going on?”

“Be sure you tie that boot shut tight before you turn in.” Glen nudged Jack in the ribs. “Heard there’ve been a few of your tarantula mates out and about lately. Don’t want to surprise another one, do ya?”

Devin laughed and shook his head. “Not anytime soon. But I think it might happen one of these days. They seem to like sharing my quarters.”

“Well, I reckon you’re goin’ to be saying hooroo to the lot of them by this time tomorrow.”

“How come? Are all the local spiders going off on holiday?” Devin grinned. “Maybe they’ll take the damn dingoes with them. I’d be bloody stoked about that.”

Jack grinned and slapped Devin on the back. “Listen to you, mate! Soundin’ like a true blue Aussie! We’ll make a cobber out of you yet.”

“Sounds good to me. And heaps better than being called Spiderman.”

Glen pretended to consider the situation. “Wasn’t it Spiderman’s numpty cousin?” He chortled loudly. “But never mind all that. Don’t you want to hear the good news we came over to tell you?”

“Sure.”

“You’ve heard that with all the new hires comin’ in, we’re goin’ to have to be doublin’ up on sleeping quarters for a while, right?” Glen waited for Devin to nod. “The new crew will be takin’ over the tents. It’s a fair call.”

Devin felt his hopes start to rise. “So you’re saying if I’m willing to share with someone else, I can get into a caravan?”

Jack grinned. “Better than that – one of the stone cottages.”

“How is that going to happen? There are plenty of others with seniority over me.”

“Too true.” Glen huffed a dramatic sigh. “But sometimes other…factors…get you pushed to the top of the line.”

When Devin saw the two men exchange a wink, he knew without a doubt they were up to something. But maybe for once it would turn out to be in his favor.

“So now I’m at the top of the line, are you going to tell me where the line goes?”

“Bloody defo, we are. Why do you think we’re here, right, Jack?”

“Too right.” Jack’s smile stretched the width of his face. “So go on, tell him.”

Glen nodded as if coming to a decision after prolonged consideration. “Now, Noah, you get it your mate Finn has one of the stone cottages, right? Over near the road up to Palmer. Great little place.”

“Sweet as.” Jack agreed. “Finn got another new nickname that day – Tinny Finn – after nabbing that one.”

“Yeah, of course. I’ve been to her house dozens of times.” Devin frowned. “But you don’t mean Finn’s leaving, do you? She never said anything about that.”

“And she would have, what with you two bein’ such good mates and all. Nah, Finn’s not goin’ anywhere, but you will be if you move into the cottage.”

Devin’s eyes widened. “With Finn?”

“No, with the mob of roos next door, you drongo.” Glen rolled his eyes. “Yes with Finn!”

“We reckoned you’d be stoked about it,” Jack added, barely concealing a smirk. “In fact, it was Finn herself who came up with the idea.”

“Anyone with even one good eye can see Finn’s your better half, Noah.” Glen grinned at Devin. “So what do you say? You must be…up…for it, right?”

“Sure he is,” Jack waggled his eyebrows. “No more nights on the ground, layin’ there all stiff in his sleeping bag.”

Devin tried not to grin at the pair as he muttered, “Piss off, you mongrels.”

The two men guffawed loudly enough to alarm any dingoes lurking in the vicinity. But it gave Devin a chance to come up with an answer that wouldn’t add more fuel to their lascivious fire. When Finn and he had become an obvious couple, they’d also taken on the starring roles in weeks of innuendos, jokes, and, truth be told, more than a few envious glances. He knew he was going to accept the offer – no doubt about that as he and Finn had actually talked about the unlikely possibility  – but he’d try to do it as casually and low-key as possible.

It was less than a minute before he had to admit that was an impossible goal, but he didn’t care. He’d be moving in with Finn, and that tantalizing prospect was all that mattered. 

Glen’s parting comment that night still echoed in Devin’s memory, muttered after he’d told Jack to go on ahead and see if he could manage to find some cold longnecks if the rest of the crew hadn’t already drunk them all.

“I got one more thing to say to you, mate. I know we gave you and Finn a hard time for a while, but we never meant nothin’ by it. Fact is, some of us are jealous of what you two have.” A small, sad smile flickered across his face. “So here’s my advice and you can tell Finn I said so, too. Don’t mess this up. Not everybody gets a second chance.”

He began to amble down the path, then paused and turned back. “You might think I’m just talkin’ a load of bosh, but I’m not. Truth is, I wasn’t one of the lucky ones and I’ll regret it to the day I die.” A sheen of tears glimmered in his eyes, but both men chose to pretend they didn’t notice. He walked away, but not before muttering over his shoulder, “And if you don’t believe me, you can ask my ex-wife.”

Glen’s story stayed with Devin, although he’d not shared it with Finn. It seemed to him an omen, a risk he hadn’t wanted to take. Their future together was looking more promising than either of them had hoped, and even as he knew it might not be forever, he vowed to do all he could to make it be something to celebrate now.

And it had all worked out far better than either Finn or he had hoped. The little cottage at the edge of the makeshift community had gorgeous views of the mountains that never failed to take their breath away. Waking up each dawn to birdsong and breezes outside their window and the soft sound of their mingled breathing within the tiny bedroom had been almost magical. It had all become a wonderfully special place for them, an oasis where two outsiders no longer had any need to feel different or alone, not as long as they had each other.

But as seasons inevitably yield to change and all living creatures’ lives draw out, so would the world alter for Devin and Serafina. The day inevitably came when his bags were packed, a ride to Alice Springs had been bartered for, and a ticket on a long distance bus to Adelaide Airport.was in his jacket pocket.

On his last morning in the Harts Range Mountains, he stood at the side of the red dirt road and gazed toward the mountains. Ragged cliffs, steep gorges, piles and waves of metamorphic rock formations, their colors – auburn, chestnut, cinnabar, terra cotta – shadowed by night, becoming burnished under the rising sun. He squinted, sighting splatterings of jade and emerald, mauve and marble, coral and citron. Early wildflowers and newly reborn patches of spinifex grass. It looked as if a giant toddler had flung handfuls of fingerpaints into the air, scattering droplets in random puddles and stains.

He pictured the paths he’d hiked, alone and with Finn, up Mount Palmer to the ruins of the Spotted Dog mine where flashes of tiny mica chips still glittered in the sun, and shards of crystals – amethyst, beryl, garnet, rose quartz – scattered the ground if you knew where to look. He rubbed a hand over his wrist, feeling the shards of translucent pink stones Finn had strung on a rawhide cord he’d never removed since entwining it there.

The first time they’d hiked to the abandoned mind and scavenged its remains like two treasure hunters, he’d expected to hear stories of the stones’ significance, and Finn, as always, did not disappoint him. She told him rose quartz had always been her favorite, ever since she was a little girl and, like most little girls, enamored of the color pink. But as time passed and she learned of the stone’s promises, she loved it even more.

She shared the lore that rose quartz is the stone of unconditional love, that emotional  healing and joy emanate from it, that it represents both the giving and accepting of love. Its nurturing vibrations dispel anger, induce calmness, and strengthen loving bonds with others. And she added, as if she knew he would treasure these words perhaps even more than the others, rose quartz can help release the pain of emotional trauma and ease long-held heartache.

Rose quartz became another beautiful, powerful stone to help him heal, to soften scars he’d carried with him for such a long time, and to bind him to a person he loved and a place he hadn’t quite called home. Still, home is what it had been for this chapter of his life. A chapter whose final words were about to be written and read aloud.

He rasped a sigh and let his gaze roam further into the mountains. When he’d arrived at Harts Range, his first view of the raw, rugged vista seemed nothing like the mountains of Tibet; but as months passed, he’d found a sameness in them, not in their dissimilar appearance but in their aligned spirit, twinned offerings of challenge and shelter, change and eternity. Worlds of rock and stone, barren to an unseeing eye, nurturing to an understanding heart.

He’d traveled the mountains of Poland and Austria, Brazil and Alberta, Madagascar and Montana. But until this moment he’d never seen the ranges of peaks and valleys, cliffs and caverns as he did now. Each was the other half of a mirror image world, inverse paired universes made of rock, one segment evolving under endless sky, the other stretching ever deeper into the earth.

He’d left behind one such world and embraced others; he’d rejected sameness and celebrated differences. He hadn’t known until now that those paired words – same and different – were not always opposites. In the end, it had never been about trading one world for another. It had taken time and distance, both literal and figural, to realize that while the settings changed like photos in the fluttering pages of a book, and as the boy grew to a man, something true and essential had never wavered, never altered.

He had always carried the essence of himself in his heart, in his soul. He had evolved as he’d longed to do, as he was meant to do, but he’d never lost sight of who he’d always been, who he’d always be.

How had he never understood this until now? At one time the thought would have deeply unsettled him, but now it gave him comfort in its validating truth. His mouth stretched in a shadow of a smile. All the years, all the people, all the places, the multiples of Devins he’d embraced and the still singular Devin who’d seen and done it all. They were different, they were the same, they were him. And maybe that was all part of the plan Fate had designed for him. He hadn’t escaped his destiny; he’d embraced it.

He murmured lines from a long unremembered poem. “To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”

His smile widened. He should have given Blake more credit back in the day. Or paid more attention to the far more current but equally accurate adage Finn was so fond of saying. What goes around comes around. Finn had been right about a lot of things.

He glanced over his shoulder toward the stone-walled cottage where he’d felt safe, where he’d been happy. His long months of work in the Australian Outback – repairing access roads, maintaining pipelines, dismantling old structures and building new ones – had been grueling but rewarding, and it had paid surprisingly well. When he’d gone on a supplies run to Alice Springs with Jack, he’d been able to purchase the camera he’d been coveting since he’d spotted one in a shop in Spain. From that moment, he’d spent much of his free time honing his skills as a photographer.

He walked a few feet down the road, watching the sun illuminate the mountains in shades of colors bright and shadowed. He had a good half-hour before he needed to report for work, to finish a job he’d started. He should have brought his camera. About to turn back to the path leading to the cottage, he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and a familiar object nestled into his grasp

“I thought you might want this.”

He turned and smiled at Finn. “Somehow I’m not surprised you’d think of it.” He turned his head to press a kiss to her hand and felt strong, soft fingers grip him tighter.

“I enjoy thinking of things to make you happy. I enjoy thinking of you.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I always will.”

He sighed softly. “And I will always cherish what we’ve had. But…”

“I know.”

The smile they shared was bittersweet, and with unspoken accord they released the  waves of pleasure and pain, neither wishing to infuse their last few days together with sadness and regret.

He lifted his head toward the mountains. “I want to get a few shots of the light at this time of day.”

She huffed a laugh. “You mean the nine hundred you already have aren’t enough?”

He stroked a gentle hand through her hair, along her cheek. “I’ve learned that with certain things, there can never be enough…but sometimes they have to be.”

He watched her blink back tears, and then walk away. He took a single irresistible step toward her, then forced himself to remain where he was. With a soft, sharp sigh, he pushed up the sleeve of his flannel shirt to caress the shards of rose quartz wound around his wrist. They warmed to his touch, and he looked down to see the glow of light deep within their hearts, then raised his head to feel the radiance of a smile shimmering to him from the threshold of what had been their home.

The sun cresting the highest mountain ridge seemed drawn to her, surrounding her in an aura of radiant color. Her sienna hair lifted on a sudden breeze. Her topaz eyes twinkled with an undimmable luster. She bathed him in heat, seared him with fire, gave him light to help push back whatever darkness might lie ahead.

“Serafina.” He murmured her true name, the one she’d been forced to surrender in her fight for acceptance in a world that had tried to shun and stifle a vibrant, brave woman. The name he’d helped her reclaim, the one she would never abandon again.

“Serafina, my fire, my angel. I will carry your flames and your courage with me always.”