Me too, Tom thought. Me too. And as the rain had started again, he put on the wipers.
They drove in silence for the next three hours. Route 1, after undulating over the outliers of the Great Dividing Range, settled down on to the lowlands plains. On each side of the road there were dense fields of spear-leafed sugarcane, the rows of which strobed by in a greenish blur. The rain petered out after an hour or so, leaving wraiths of mist clinging to the cane fields. The occasional clapboard shack, raised on stilts, that loomed up had the deathly aspect of a sudden apparition.
Narrow-gauge railtracks crossed the road at intervals, along which clattered locomotives pulling wagonloads of cut cane: so much sweetness, Tom though, in such a sour place. He had to stop for these trains, but when he saw a road-train, either ahead or in the rear-view, he had to pull right off the blacktop, so as to avoid being crushed as flat as roadkill when the three — or even four — semi-trailers came roaring past.
It was at once tedious and nerve-racking driving for Tom; while, as navigator, Prentice had nothing whatsoever to do. There was only one interprovince highway: this was it, they were on it; and would remain on it through a thousand kilometres of cane country, a thousand of hill country, and a further two thousand of desert before they reached the Tontine Townships. Here Tom would leave Prentice and make a left.
The SUV rollicked down into the broad creek bottoms, and rattled acrosss the bridges of railway ties with a reassuring hum of its tyres. Tom, despite the need for intermittent tricky manouevres, lapsed into that waking dream that is the virtuality of long-distance driving.
Besides, he had driven Route 1 before, with his family, up to the lodge in the cloud forest and then back to Vance. He tried to convince himself that this was merely another jaunt, and that Prentice was only another idiot child. A child Tom was taking white-water rafting or parascending — for the garish signs advertising these attractions reared up along the roadside, their metal tenderized by the shooting practice of passing drivers.
They drove on through rain-washed country towns where the only signs of life were the semicircles of smoking men standing along the sixteen-metre lines outside the bars, and the brightly lit plate-glass windows of agricultural equipment dealerships. Darkness fell on the land, sudden as a cloth dropped on a birdcage. The SUV’s headlights carried a runway of bashed bitumen before them, and so they took off into the void, over and over again.
The car had moai bars, but, even so, Tom knew that once they were into the hills, and then the desert, they would have to avoid night driving. He had been warned that the giant flightless birds zeroed in on the lights of moving vehicles; they were damned by their own unevolved psychology to bomb the human occupants with their feathery bulk, and in the process commit suicide.
It was ten thirty when Tom pulled into the forecourt of a lonely motel. The illuminated lozenge of its sign crawled with bugs, and, as he stepped from the car, Tom was perfused with the soupy night-time atmosphere.
Standing in the tacky lobby, while a surly Anglo girl laboriously copied the serial numbers from their laissez-passers into the register, Tom looked in a strip of full-length mirror fixed to the wall and saw the two of them, now dressed identically in elastic-sided boots, jeans and khaki shirts. Like his bête noire, Tom had even acquired a broad-brimmed bush hat, complete with a roll of nylon fly screen. He wanted to grab the girl’s skinny wrist and cry out: ‘I’m not like him! I’m only travelling with him because I have to.’ Instead he put this to her pale face: ‘Is there anywhere a guy can score some liquor hereabouts?’
By the time Tom got back, Prentice had retired to his cabin. But, as Tom was unclipping the two Galil rifles from the rack, he re-emerged to ask: ‘I say, Brodzinski, would you mind terribly. .’ The request was completed by the tube of ointment he held in his hand, and a tilt of his weak chin that exposed the gooey corruption.
‘You want me to put that stuff on your goddamn neck?’ Tom took an incredulous swig from the fifth of whisky.
‘It’s, um, it’s. . well, back in Vance Lady Mulgrene was doing the honours. .’
Prentice wasn’t ashamed; only hesitant, like the moths batting at their heads in the yellowy downlights.
‘Is this to do with our respective grades of astande?’ Tom said. The whisky was planing away his emotions with bold strokes.
‘Oh.’ Prentice smiled. ‘I hardly think so, old chap. It’s just awfully awkward to spread on an even coat. D’you mind?’
Tom took another swig. ‘Lissen, Prentice.’ He was slurring a bit. ‘If I’m gonna do this at all I’ll need rubber gloves — I don’t wanna get it.’
‘I hardly think that’s possible.’ Prentice’s clipped tone suggested Tom had committed a dreadful solecism. ‘You see, Brodzinski, it’s psoriasis — it only flares up like this when I’m bally stressed!’
Tom carefully set the bottle down on the concrete and took the tube. Prentice grunted softly as Tom smoothed on the ointment. His breath was sour. The flesh beneath Tom’s fingers felt deeply cracked — fissured, even. When he had finished he said: ‘I gotta wash my hands now.’
‘Of course, old chap, of course,’ Prentice said, yet made no move to thank him or even open the door to Tom’s cabin.
Sitting sideways on the bed, Tom sipped his whisky and flipped through the tourist brochures that had been left on the pillow. Should they be so inclined — this being cane country — he and Prentice could visit the Giant Sugar Sachet at Wilmington the following morning, then go on to a hobby ranch at Villeneuve where tame auraca could be ridden.
The lump in his crotch had been bothering Tom all day: $10,000 made a turgid wad of cash. He ungirded himself and got it out: it smelled of his genitals handled by bank tellers’ fingers. He would have to find a better hiding place. Casting round, Tom lighted on Songs of the Tayswengo. There was no way he was ever going to plough through all of it — even a few pages knocked him out cold. Tom got out nail scissors and spent the next twenty minutes neatly excising the central portion of each of the pages comprising the final chapter of the book; this, he idly noted, was entitled ‘Tayswengo Dawnings: A New Future’.
When he had created a big-enough compartment, he put Atalaya Intwennyfortee’s blood money in it and closed the book. With the artful application of a few strands of Sellotape, it was possible for anyone to pick up the heavy volume, and even read the front sections of it, without being aware of the small fortune it contained.
As the level in the bottle of whisky fell, so Tom’s head sank down on to the book: a moneyed pillow. Gazing woozily at the bedside table, he contemplated his cellphone and digital camera. Unsteadily, Tom aligned the two devices, hoping, blearily, that they might somehow work it out between them during the night.
In that night, Tom found himself with Sergeant Elldollopollollou. The massive Tugganarong cop wore a soiled diaper — he reached his brawny, reddy-brown arms out to Tom. ‘Cuddle me!’ he cried. ‘Cuddle me!’
Tom took it as an order.
9
They did visit the Giant Sugar Sachet at Wilmington. Prentice insisted on Tom photographing him standing on top of it, striking a pose at the railing, which was a steely simulacrum of crinkled paper.
Through the viewfinder, Tom saw Prentice’s head, and behind it clouds of white vapour gushing from the refinery’s cooling pipes. Prentice also wanted to do the tour, but Tom drew the line at this. The air smelled sweet and burned. Tom, who had a hangover, gagged on it, saying, ‘If we’re gonna make the Tree Top Lodge before nightfall, we gotta get a move on.’