You gunned the engine again, threw the truck into gear, and accelerated as Bernard ran alongside, then, running faster, put himself between the truck and the road. ‘Close your eyes, Sam.’
The boy put his hands over his eyes as you reversed, braked, revved the engine and sped forward, knocking Bernard flat. The collision threw you and Sam forward and then back against the seat.
You reversed again, revealing the fat man’s twitching body, pink shirt stained dark, his mouth working, a gash of blood spurting from between his teeth. You shifted back into first gear, turning the wheel so the full weight of the truck ground into him.
‘Keep your eyes closed,’ you said, and drove back and forth over him until he was still. Each time, the truck bounced less violently, flattening Bernard as if something large and manmade had dropped on top of him, from out of the sky, from the dark clouds overhead.
To think I once said you lacked the mother’s instinct.
At least, that is your version of what happened, the reason you give me in your final notebook for the change in your plans, and the responsibility you took for the child. Somehow, it is not a version I can believe. I try for another, one that fits with what I know you were capable of doing.
Bernard went on snoring, never regaining consciousness as you brought the stone down on his brow, over and over, until your arms and face were covered in a thick splatter.
So one could get blood from a stone.
You had done worse things in your life.
Taking the keys from the ignition, you shut the door, walked around the cab and opened the passenger door. You grabbed his feet and pulled him out of the cab, knocking his head against the four metal steps. It left a red trail, speckled with stars of pale tissue. Sam was hyperventilating, his eyes large and dark, and without warning he convulsed, vomiting onto the ground, his body wracked with heaving until only foam dripped from his mouth.
You dragged Bernard’s body into the ravine, hiding it in the same thicket of thorns where Tiger lay dead. Scavengers would clean up most of the mess before nightfall. You washed yourself at the standpipe, cleaning your arms and face, scrubbing the bite on your right leg, making yourself feel nothing. It was a talent you had developed.
Sam stared at you, his face and shirt splattered with vomit.
‘Can you wash yourself?’ you asked, putting your hands on his shoulders.
‘Yes.’ He splashed his face and hands, wiping his shirt with wet palms, getting himself wetter than he intended.
‘Do you have any other clothes?’
‘I have a bag. In the truck.’
‘Go and change.’
‘It’s sticky,’ Sam said, peeling his hand from the brown vinyl upholstery of the cab seat, a film of blood covering his palm.
‘Wipe it on the floor.’
As you pulled the truck onto the highway, the rain started. You switched the cab’s ventilation to recycle, to keep from breathing the worst of the fumes rising off the water that coated the windscreen, resisting the wipers that fought to clear a view. It would be impossible to drive at night if such rain continued. Sam pushed and pulled his bloody fingers apart, spat on them, rubbed his hands like someone trying to start a fire with friction, and bent double to wipe them on the cab’s rough carpet, finger-painting in the pile. When he had exhausted this game, he sat up again, examined his hands, and tried to clean the arcs of dried blood from under his fingernails.
‘I’m hungry,’ he whined.
‘Get in my rucksack. Have some fruit.’
Sam reached for the dates and ate four, watching your reaction to be sure he did not take more than his share. He flicked on the radio and looked at the map. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Back the way we came. Into the storm.’
1989
He had only one picture of his parents together, with him in his mother’s arms, and it was taken when he was only a few months old, and through everything that happened he kept it in his bag in a plastic sleeve between the pages of a book so that it wouldn’t get bent or torn or broken. In the photo his mother’s wearing jeans and a yellow T-shirt with a man’s green head printed on it and his father’s wearing shorts and nothing else, because it was January. Anyone could see from the picture why they would have fallen in love with each other. They’re both tanned, nice bodies, nice faces. What is a nice face? Everything in the right place and the right size and smooth skin, but his father had a scar on his cheek, a scar that he loved. His father was strong and supple and the boy would kiss his father’s scar whenever he was there to put him to bed, which wasn’t very often because of the work that took him away from the house most hours of every day. He remembered the taste of that scar on the tip of his tongue. His parents were not bad people he was sure but maybe they were not very smart people even though they read books and knew all about the world.
When Bernard stopped the boy woke up.
I’m going to sleep over there. You stay in the cab. Lock the doors and don’t let anyone in but me you understand?
What if—?
But Bernard was already walking away from the truck to the only shaded spot. He had a towel and spread it on a patch of ground near a half-dead tree and then put a magazine over his face. It was hot in the cab and the boy was sweating so he rolled down the windows. They were half a kilometre from the road and there weren’t any houses around, just fields in all directions. Bernard had left the keys in the ignition. The boy knew how to drive because his father had put him on his lap but Bernard didn’t know that.
The boy waited until he could hear Bernard snoring and then opened the door of the truck and without getting out tried to pee onto the ground outside but little came out. There was nothing to drink in the cab and nothing to eat. There was an ablution block because it was a campground but the boy would have to walk past Bernard to get there. He wondered how long he could last without anything to drink. Was it two days? He didn’t have a watch and the truck didn’t have a clock, so the only way he could guess how long he’d been sitting there was by watching the sun, but even that didn’t help. He’d never paid much attention to the position of the sun so that days might have gone by like that, and he wouldn’t have known except for the coming of night. But he didn’t last until night.
It looked like it might be midday and he edged the door open again, took the keys, locked the cab and walked towards the ablution block. His stomach was making empty noises and Bernard was snoring and there were pied crows fighting over a trash bin that hadn’t been emptied in a long time, and over all that was the sound of wind blowing the dirt around and there was a red-brown layer of it on Bernard’s body and collected on the bodybuilding magazine covering his face. A picture of a man who was naked except for a little green bikini flexed his muscles on the cover. Bernard’s snores vibrated against the pages and the man’s green bikini and his flexing muscles moved like a cartoon.
The boy went into the ablution block and tried the taps at the sink but no water came out so he went into the showers and when he pushed the chrome taps they didn’t give. No one had camped here for years because it wasn’t on the way to anywhere nice and the place itself wasn’t nice so what was the point? The only water was in the toilets but he wasn’t going to drink that. Half-dead flies were bouncing off the floor and the ceiling. One of them landed on his arm and he caught it with a slap, squirting blood against his skin.