Nugent by Michael Blake

Nugent by Michael Blake (23) This is Nugent, and nobody lives here.In the metres between the town-name signs,at the base of the bowl of hills, there is nothingbut a stout hall and a locked church with a broken organand a house and a shed racing each other into theground. Outside the town-name signs there is a Community,houses and farms pocking the otherwise relentlesscarpet of trees. I used to ride here in highschool – on bikes not fitto wear the title – skipping and skiddingthe five leagues to my best friend’s house;perched shag-on-a-rock at the lip of the bowl. It was Nugent that showed me what cold feels like,sitting in a drafty study at two in the morning, cocoonedin a sleeping bag and the tobacco-drip grip of caffeine,multiplaying Warcraft II while the wind and some possums clawedat the iron on the roof. Here I held the illustrious title of Pheasant Beater,huddled in a secondhand coat tapping sticksand fighting through scrub in weather that spunfrom wintry sunshine to slashing rain andgales with teeth made of sleet. Then the season changed, and cubbies becamestubbies and we got older and I gained a newappreciation for sitting on the front porch with an emptyafternoon and a full beer and nothing to do but watchthe sun plunge away over the lumpy horizon. It’s here I think I grew up, gaining friends andexperience and scars in this place that seemsto hold something that my hometown lacks. We once dug a well, five metres downinto the rusty brown earth of the place.I remember standing at the bottom, ankle-deep in mud,taking my can of Cascade Bitter from the nicheI’d carved for it in the wall, and looking up, to see a circleof familiar sky and faces staring back, worryingabout the strength of the walls. When I was sure they’d all stopped lookingI raised my can in a silent salute.