We kept on, the dirt road seemingly stretching to the horizon.
Neither of us spoke; breathing steadily, shaking out tired muscles and old aches, we settled in for a long night. The rhythm of our feet slapping on baked earth, the beating of our hearts, the wheezing of our lungs—they were the ticking of our clock. A fugue state happens when you spend enough time walking the land. It doesn’t matter whether you’re following the dark line of a highway or winding down a dirt road or beating a track through the bush. Your mind empties, your body runs on automatic and time loses all meaning, its only marker the great arc of the sun or the moon. Ever onward, you keep a steady pace, disconnected from the strained mechanics of your body, thirst and weariness only muted sensations. Putting one foot in front of the other, feeling like you could do it forever—that becomes your whole world.
We eventually hit the highway into town, the dirt road ending at a shadowy T-intersection. We came to a halt. Well, not really we; I was so lost in my trance that I didn’t notice Tobe stop in front of me.
I crashed into him.
‘Watch it,’ he said, turning to face me.
One of the dogs barked, I couldn’t tell which. They ran back, looked at us with puzzled eyes.
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ I said.
Tobe took a torch from his belt and flicked it on. A wan beam barely illuminated the blacktop. He cranked a handle on the torch; the beam grew brighter. Ancient gums hugged the roadside. Enormous, monstrous, long dead; they were barely shadows of their former selves.
‘Here,’ Tobe said, tossing me the torch.
I caught it clumsily, almost dropping it.
‘Dickhead.’
I smiled, guilty as charged. Tobe unclipped a second torch from his pack. This time, the highway shone. He looked west. The bloated full moon easily broke through the skeletal canopy.
‘Which way?’ I asked.
‘Where else did they go, in those stupid stories we loved when we were kids? All those cowboys and frontiersmen…’
I blanked in front of him.
‘Go west, young man.’
I groaned.
We followed the highway, Red and Blue once again taking the lead. It was empty, apart from the occasional wrecks that had rusted into hulks. We weaved around those abandoned monuments and accidental memorials, passing a weather- beaten sign full of bullet holes, the letters faded, illegible.
I remember when it used to say ‘Welcome to Newstead’.
The dead trees slowly thinned out. Tobe killed his torch as we hit the first signs of so-called civilisation, motioned for me to keep cranking mine, held his finger to his lips in an exaggerated gesture. I took the hint, keeping my trap shut as we passed through the heart of town. Every building was dark, even the ones I knew were still occupied. No candles or lanterns flickered within. In the moonlight, everything was less threatening, less bleak. The shut-up shops, the derelict houses, the potholed streets, the withered trees, the bare-dirt lawns—they all lost some of their horror, assuming a grand, tired dignity instead. It felt like home, a home I loved, a home I had always known, unchanging and forever. I drank it in, Tobe’s earlier warning and the threat of danger forgotten in the face of such beaten beauty.
I couldn’t stop smiling.
The broken buildings creaked softly, relaxing in the relative cool of the night. Their faint murmur joined the rustling of the few leaves still clinging to the dying trees, barely audible but always there. We kept walking. I felt eyes on me as we passed the ruined primary school, knew that some First Country folk would be watching us.
Every other house in town was falling down or had already fallen down or was moments away from doing so. And still they were left alone; everyone knew who had once lived in them, who had given up, who had trekked to the camp in the hope of making a new life above the line. Sure, anything useful had been salvaged. But nothing personal had been touched, nothing that once lived in the hearts of our former townsfolk, no matter what it might fetch in trade.
This was something that we had all agreed upon.
We passed them by. Soon, we saw a light flickering within the pub, faint through the heavy windows. I thought about stopping, just for a minute, to say g’day to Louise. Halfway through reaching out to tap Tobe on the shoulder—to tempt him with the idea of a smoke and a shot—I sized up his stride and thought better of it.
The pub disappeared behind us. We finally hit the empty Loddon River. The highway came to a stop, a flimsy rope bridge taking its place. The riverbed was filled with rubble; all that remained of the real bridge that had once soared across it. We had destroyed it ourselves, a long time ago, to cut the town off from the world. I gawped at it. Red and Blue disappeared down the steep bank, darted over the rubble, ran up the opposite bank, as surefooted as mountain goats. They howled happily. Tobe stepped onto the rope bridge, strode across, as surefooted as his dogs. I grabbed hold of the whipcord rails, took a step, floated across, too terrified to look down.
I hit the highway on the far side, almost fell to my knees. Tobe ignored me.
We soon hit the Avenue of Honour, the western edge of town. Tobe shook his muscles out, took his possum skin pouch from his pocket, rolled some bush tobacco, lit up. He held the pouch aloft, offering me one. I held up the torch I was still cranking and shot him a dirty look.
‘Yeah, you can probably give it a rest. How’s she look?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Pass it over.’
I did so. He flicked it on, shone it around. Dead oaks and elms lined the highway. The beam from my torch was strong, lighting them up in all their ravaged glory.
‘That’s how you tell whether she’s working or not,’ Tobe said.
He tossed the torch back; as clumsy as always, I almost dropped it again.
‘Tuck it away,’ he said. ‘We won’t need it for a while.’
I stashed the torch in my pocket, took out my own pouch, slowed to a stop. I shrugged off my pack, dropped it to the ground, followed it down, parked my arse. Tobe stared at me and said something under his breath.
‘Look, I want a fiver. Time for a piss and a smoke.’
Tobe’s smile burnt white in the night. ‘No worries.’He joined me on the blacktop; Red and Blue followed, lying flat out. They looked tired, but I knew they were playing possum. Tobe and I took out canteens and drank deep. I let myself unfold, fell onto my back, lay there looking at the stars. Tobe poured a drink for the dogs and then squatted on his haunches. Neither of us spoke, we just listened to the faraway wind. For a moment, life was beautiful.
And then my base needs took over.
I ground out my bush tobacco, pocketed the butt, stood up, walked far enough from Tobe to maintain my decorum. I did my thing against a tree, helping it along.
‘So, where exactly are we going?’ I asked, zipping back up.
Tobe didn’t look at me. He pulled on his pack, called Red and Blue to him, started walking. ‘I already told you—we’re heading west.’ He kept walking.
‘Hey, hang on…’
‘We head west until we stop.’
He didn’t look back.
I quickly strapped on my pack and hurried after him. I was over his shit, but that wasn’t new—I had been putting up with it for years, I knew that some things never change. We walked on, the dead trees stopping dead, revealing thick and shadowy bush to the north, more empty paddocks to the south.