I release some sort of pathetic squeak, pretending to myself that it can pass for dissent.
He cocks a finger to my head. ‘Yep, that’s right. Bang bang. I can’t wait.’
•
At first I thought he was asleep. Then I noticed the syringe still sticking out of his arm, and the vomit coating the front of his T-shirt. I sat down next to him and I am embarrassed to admit that the first thought in my head was whether I should run away, leave someone else to find the corpse. That thought didn’t last for long though, just long enough that I’ll never forget it. I sat next to him and gently pulled out the syringe and took off his T-shirt, wiping away the vomit from around his mouth and chin.
I cried, but I’m still not sure if it was for him or for myself. I had not yet got to know this man who was still so very much a boy. I had been up his arse, I had sucked on his cock, but I knew very little about him. I knew that there was someone I should calclass="underline" the police? the ambulance? When my crying had been exhausted, I got up and made my way to the kitchen where I boiled some water over a small electric stove. Then I went back into his room and went through the pockets of his jeans. I found nothing and began to panic. No, it wasn’t even panic, just a shortness of breath, a quickening in the beating of my heart, but I knew that if I did not find what I was searching for soon then the anxiety would escalate to full-blown hysteria. I searched through all his pockets, in his shoes, hoping to spy the dull sheen of aluminium foil. When I couldn’t find a thing, after scouring every inch of carpet, going through every item of clothing in the wardrobe, I sank exhausted onto the mattress. My panic, laced with desperation, turned into anger at the dead man beside me. But I refused to look into his face, as if even with his eyes shut forever, my shame would still be reflected back at me in the clear black surface of his skin. After another bout of crying, I slowly dug my hand under his thighs and found a metallic object with my finger and edged it out from under him. I opened the foil and sniffed at the powder.
I used his fit to shoot up. If there had been more heroin I may have taken the whole lot and willed myself into a narcotic death. I knew so little about him that I did not know if by injecting drops of his blood into my body I would be infecting myself with disease. At that moment I did not care. When the euphoric wave of the rush swept over me I was able to lie back on the bed and grasp at sanity. I smoked a cigarette and went to call the ambulance.
•
They asked me his name. I could give them that. They asked me his next of kin. That I could not answer. The smack was good, very good, and I wondered if he had touched heaven when he died.
They asked me if I knew his friends, a relative, someone who could vouch for his past. I shook my head. The ambulance men gave me twin looks of disgust as they dismissed me and put him on a stretcher. Outside, the neighbours had gathered to bear witness to his death.
‘What happened?’ a young woman holding a baby asked me.
‘He OD’d.’
She clicked her tongue in distaste and wandered back to her house.
I thought I heard one of the ambulance men say that ‘picking up after these black bastards is a waste of time’. I might have been mistaken. But the thought was definitely in the air.
•
I fall in and out of sleep watching the endless straight road, half dreaming of Led Zeppelin. When I awake the road is still stretched out before me but now darkness has fallen on the plain. Melodic country and western is playing on the stereo. I stretch, yawn and reach for my pack of fags.
The driver chuckles and turns to me. ‘Good sleep, mate?’
I nod and light my cigarette. The air blowing in my window is now cold and uncomfortable and I reach into my backpack to pull out a jumper. The driver, wired on speed and lack of sleep, is impervious to the cold in his singlet and shorts.
The shapes in the desert are now dark shadows suggesting bush phantoms, but I am aware that these are only fantasies drawn by my imagination and that what lies before me is the same flat earth that I have already spent an age watching. The only object which I can be sure of is the road. Lit by the high beams of the headlights, the straight narrow chasm across the continent appears to be leading us towards infinity.
A mounting hunger is gnawing at my stomach. I turn around in my seat and look in the back of the cabin for a bag of chips I bought at the last stop. When I turn back I see a small dark shape move out of the shadow landscape and into the path of the truck. The driver shouts out a warning, I hold my breath and there is a loud bang which seems to explode right inside my head. In that moment the desert evaporates and only the shock of the collision is real. Then the moment passes and the wind howls back through my open window; there is only the cocoon of the black desert earth and sky, and Bonnie Raitt.
The driver turns to me and gives a sheepish laugh. ‘Sorry, mate, I think I might’ve just hit some pissed coon.’
•
I wasn’t the only white person at his funeral, but I was the only one who looked like he didn’t belong there. I spent the whole day in a stoned haze, a wall of opiates protecting me from the harsh outside world. I may even have pretended that my exclusion was of my own choosing. I chain-smoked cigarettes on the porch and watched a procession of men carry in slabs of beer from the pub down the road. The women sat in groups drinking beer or cask wine, telling each other stories or holding each other’s hands. No one was rude to me but nor did anyone welcome me. I assumed I was an uncomfortable presence, a reminder of the way their son, nephew, brother, cousin or friend had lived and died.
I was struck by the very Australianness of their mourning. Here there was no Mediterranean lamentation or hushed silences. No women in black forming a shrill fresco of despair. Instead everyone was getting pissed.
An old woman sat in the backyard, surrounded by a circle of other women. She sat there not moving and it seemed she was looking past the timber fence, past the suburb and into another world altogether. I managed to find some courage and stepped off the porch. As I walked towards her the group surrounding her looked suspiciously at me.
I ignored everyone else and walked straight up to the old woman. ‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t seem to hear me. But I was determined to proceed with my confession. ‘I wish I could tell you something about him.’
She did not avoid my eyes but I felt that she was looking through me, ignoring me with all her senses.
‘He told me about your place up north. I think he missed it very much.’ Was I making this up? He had never spoken those words to me, we had never been so intimate that he revealed emotional desire, but I do remember one conversation in which sex and drugs did not figure but instead he told me about swimming with crocodiles while an old woman chanted a song that kept the beasts tame.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated lamely.
This time she turned to me and started a low quiet laugh. Tears filled her eyes. She said something to me but I did not understand her. A young woman sitting beside her started to laugh with her and soon the circle of women were all laughing and crying together. I stood there, humiliated.
The young woman tugged at my shirt sleeve and whispered to me, ‘It’s okay. She just called him a silly young poof. Maybe he wanted to come back home but he was too busy running around after you white guys in the city.’ She shook her head at my obvious dismay. ‘Hey, boy, don’t worry. We’re not upset at you. His spirit be happier now.’ She looked into my eyes and gave a soft whistle. ‘You look after yourself, boy.’ She offered me a beer.