I refused the beer and instead pointed to the old woman. ‘Tell her I wanted to say I’m sorry.’
The young woman whispered my apologies to the grandmother, who turned her head to me one last time and nodded. With that I was dismissed. The circle fell back into conversation and drinking.
I turned away, walked back through the house and out onto an ugly suburban street. My anger finally conquered the chemicals in my blood and I spat a large glob of venom onto the dry pavement.
And what about you, you bastards? I was thinking. What about you lot? You were family. You should have done something. And now you insult him. You were too busy drinking and getting out of it in your own way. You fucking good-for-nothing lazy black bastards.
I’m ashamed even as I write these words. But it would be more shameful to pretend I did not think them.
•
The truck keeps thundering through the night and I am stunned and frozen. As the driver’s words sink in I mutter a pathetic, ‘Are you serious?’
He laughs at my unease. ‘If I’ve put one of those black arse-holes out of their misery, I’m happy.’
‘Stop the fucking truck.’ I grab for my knapsack and clutch it to my chest. ‘I said stop the fucking truck.’
He says nothing for a moment, he does not slow down. Then he points a finger out into the dark. ‘Look out there. It is real easy, dead easy, to lose someone in this place. You could lose a body here and no one would ever find it.’
I am pierced by his menace and I am shivering with hate and fear. I cannot stand the stench of him, the poison of his amphetamine sweat.
The truck slows down with a loud scream. I open my door and prepare to lower myself down. As I am about to jump, he slams a fist into the back of my head. I sprawl onto the hard road and I let go of my pack. He revs the truck and I am scared he will run me over. Though my body and face are hurting I roll off the road and he roars away, the lights of the truck carving up the thick black night.
The first thing I do is fumble for my pack in the pitch dark. After a few minutes of fruitless searching I sit exhausted on the ground, massaging my aching jaw. I look up to the sky. The astonishing celestial dance pacifies me and I begin to grow accustomed to the dark. I watch the stars, let myself breathe, then attempt another search. I find the pack close to where I fell. My relief is quashed when I remember the reason I am here alone in the middle of an empty world. Shivering from the cold and the thought that somewhere close is a dead human body, I make my way back down the road. The asphalt shimmers in the night light and I have little difficulty keeping along it. But I have no concept of how much distance we had travelled between the accident and my undignified fall from the truck. As I walk along I keep looking up to the sky, asking the stars for warmth and light.
There are sounds out here. Alien sounds. Of course there is the wind but underneath its whistle there seems to be a soft pounding booming coming from the very depths of the earth I’m walking on. Time too has no concrete shape in this terrain and I have no idea how long I have been walking. The black night is now forming faces and bodies which change shape with every breath I take, as if they are breathing along with me.
Somewhere in the distance I hear a rustle and I am scared. The cold night air digs through the wool of my jumper, runs up and down my legs and reaches far into the core of me. The shapes are now forming lizards and snakes writhing in front of me. The road itself seems to pulsate, as if keeping a beat to the disconcerting pounding of the earth. I’m beginning to feel foolish and almost regret leaving the truck. But then I remember the driver’s malevolent laugh and I keep walking.
I first smell the body. The scent is very much animal. Nervously I kneel to touch it. It does not move. I run my hand along a thick hide which still feels warm. Excited and relieved I trace the curves of its body and feel thick liquid. The blood has not dried yet. ‘It was a roo,’ I scream into the night, ‘it was only a fucking roo.’
I find my cigarettes squashed in my shirt pocket and put a battered one in my mouth. I smell the blood on my hand. Appalled, I spit out the cigarette and wipe my hand in the scrub. I light myself another cigarette and lie back in the dirt.
The sky is raining down sharp slivers of light and I’m disappearing into the fire. Around me the earth is still shifting: animals and flora come in and out of view. It is almost as if an acid trip is coming on, but though my body is sinking into my mind, there is no bitter pharmaceutical aftertaste. I’m vanishing. Reptiles and insects are weaving around my legs and the night no longer seems cold. Up in the sky the familiar constellations have gone, replaced by ancient primeval clusters. A collection of stars forms the outline of a great lizard and in its centre one large star pulsates to the rhythm of my heart.
My fear has gone. In the distance a mountain is forming, a large purple dream at the edge of a pitch-black horizon. The mountain becomes the giant face of a black girl and as I look at her, earth starts to crumble down her face and she begins to age. I cannot tell how long this takes. I think that perhaps I’m dying. But if this is death it does not hurt and it does not touch my body.
The old woman of the mountain surrounds me and I can make out the hollows of her eyes. Her mouth opens and she sucks in the world. The ancient stars do a final dance, a mad symphony of colour, then they too disappear into her mouth. I shut my eyes and when I look up again the stars of the Milky Way are back in their place. I look around me, I look back up at the sky, I grab a fistful of dirt but all that I can sense are the physical shapes, sights and smells of the desert. The vision has gone.
I remain in the scrub, exhausted. The cold begins to eat into me again and I curl into a tight ball. I’m aware that I have just experienced a kind of magic, that I have finally been touched by the caress of gods, but I’m also sure that the magic sung tonight, all the colours and light, the fire and music, were not meant for me. My presence here is not needed. I sink into sleep, grateful for that accident of fate.
I will wake the next morning bathed in sand. I will spend most of the day thirsting for water and running a dry tongue across burnt lips. A truck will pick me up late in the afternoon and the driver will tell me stories of women and drugs and how the boongs control the economy. I will neither agree with him nor argue with him, but he will find security in the colour of my skin and proceed to off load hatred as if talking to a close friend. At Port Augusta I will get off and wander the streets seeking food. It will take me another two days to get to Sydney and when I arrive there I will avoid my old friends and acquaintances. I will not touch chemicals and instead I will slip quietly into a peaceful life in the inner western suburbs. I will gather a new circle of friends and I will learn how to play cards, and how to bet on the horses. I will feel safe and I will not question this safety. But occasionally, when a hot wind blows in from the west, I will remember that they are gathering guns in the outback.
The T-shirt with a Fist on it for Malcolm Hay
AMANDA RETURNED FROM THE AIR FRANCE counter shaking her head. She took her book out of her backpack and sat on the plastic seat next to Daniela. ‘Sorry, honey, it’s going to be another thirty minutes before they even open the counter.’
Daniela slumped further in her seat. All over the lounge, distressed and anxious travellers were volleying between the one television monitor listing departures and the other showing an episode of CSI: New York dubbed into Arabic.