The Man in the Shed
“She slept late. We argued over silly things. I knew what was the matter. And she did, too. We were travelling north, that time, into bright clear skies. It was late January and a drought on the east coast of the island had split the hills open. The slightest breeze gave rise to a dust cloud, and where we pitched our tent you could smell the earth on the caked Manawatu riverbed. I thought the great outdoors might turn things around for her and, I suppose, us. We read and spent a lot of time walking the dry riverbed. I had walked ahead this particular afternoon, imagining divorce, a new life, a new woman perhaps, and a new house, street, suburb. Suddenly I remembered Kath. I turned around and found her crouched over, parting driftwood and dry reed, clearing the way either side of a massive claw-mark in the mud.
The next day scientists from the National Museum’s Natural History Unit cut out the block of mud with the footprint of Dinornis robustus. Television arrived and interviewed Kath on-site.
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