What was there to shoot at out there? Kangaroos, he supposed, dingoes, like the one that had passed by the car. It was cold now, like some bastard was playing a joke, but he didn’t get back inside the car.
The thing in the dark was most likely a dingo. There was something that sounded like laughter in the big space. The gun sounded again, and this time he saw a spark up ahead, a long way ahead, but still there. He found his hammer in the boot and repositioned himself back on the roof, the hammer resting heavy and cold across his burnt ankles. In the blackness something padded softly around the car. His heart beat steady and loud and he bit his lips in case he’d imagined it. In the far distance a gun was fired and the noise bought an old heat to his palms, and his arms twitched thinking of the kick of it. There were no stars, nothing to see past the nose of the car, and it gave him the creeps. But once the dark had settled he felt differently. He could flash his headlights on and off a few times, see if it bought anything. Perhaps in the dark, it would be easier to spot help. The furthest one he could see was a hairline in the distance. They stretched over the red hip bone of the landscape, a measure of how big the space was. Someone would come – there were telegraph poles for Christssake. He tried to think what had bought him out here. He closed the bonnet.Īs the sun set, he clambered onto the roof to sit and watch night approaching like a cloudbank. He stood right over it and saw it shine back at him, put a finger down but his finger was not long enough to touch. He opened the bonnet of the car and studied the radiator. The road was just as long and straight and empty as it was before he fell asleep, the sand and grass and dirt were the same, deeper in colour from the lowering sun. The sun didn’t burn any more, but sent low rays and long shadows out over the ground. His throat felt swollen like he’d swallowed an unripe peach. With his eyes closed he waited to get used to it, to know that the pain wasn’t going away. The sun had moved and seen to his ankles and shins on its way: they were red and big like peeled plums, and hurt like bloody rope burn. Sleep came quick and unexpected, so that he woke suddenly with the feeling something had changed. Sometimes there was a thump through the ground – a kangaroo, a footfall – but it may only have been the blood in his ears. A couple of parrots sang out on their way to somewhere cooler. When the sun was high and the inside of the car was too much, he lay underneath and wondered what bits of the engine would hold the cleanest water, recited the names of the stations, in order, of the West Central line. Syrup from a can of peaches wet his lips, but the sweetness got at his thirst and he chewed the peach halves, sifting them through his teeth to try and get all the juice out. His tongue lost the feel of sandpaper, and became a small brick in his mouth. He tried passing the time by opening one of the books he’d bought with him, but Sherlock Holmes did not stick, and he let the book rest coolly on his forehead, smelling the stale moths of the bookshelf at home and trying not to get angry. It cooked itself on the dashboard and became sweet and hot. All the doors were open as wide as they would go but the air didn’t move. He took his sleeping roll out and laid it over the back window to block out the sun. Far in the distance was low-lying scrub, a black line on the horizon. You were supposed to wait, so he walked in circles around the car, standing tall to try and see over the desert to where someone might wave back at him.
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Up ahead was Quilpie, but that was a full thumb’s stretch north.
A night’s drive from where he had last stopped. The map showed nothing, just the long black line of a road cutting through all that desert, straight as a pin. ‘Right on, baby.’ And he’d started the engine and driven away. ‘Right on,’ she’d said when he told her he was headed into the desert. But then he’d shaken his head and it was back to normal. Stay out of Vietnam’ and he’d imagined running her head under the tap, holding open her eyes and her mouth, making her see.
The woman from the caravan park had come out, with her hair parted in the middle, and a T-shirt that read ‘Girls say yes to boys who say no. He’d filled it at the drinking fountain at Cobar. The drinking water was gone as well, and he could not remember doing that. The spare can was empty when he’d been sure it was full. Already the sun was hot on Leon’s knuckles gripping the steering wheel. It was just past nine when the fuel ran out.
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