Taste of dust and tyre smoke from the burning camp thick in me throat.
‘I don’t want nuthin to do with this. I’m just passen through, ay,’ he said.
‘Mate I know it I lost me sis—’
A brumby skitter flickered past the opening and we shut up in the darkness. The grambling and hummering of the trucks rumbled outside. They shone their lights flickering around the drain close by. Time stetched out before us. The sounds slackened off after a while and he whispered, ‘They’s gunna be roadin like this all night?’
‘I dunno. Reckon they’ll probly head off once they’ve got done with their raidin and the skitters and droans has looted everything what can be taken.’
‘They took yer sis?’
‘I think she’s been took by the Brumby King.’
He went quiet for a bit then he said: ‘You sure she’s not dead?’
When he said that, I were chilled. I said: ‘Na, no way. That’d never happen to Isa, she’s tough and trucksmart. I saw pretty clearly she was gone into the smoke left behind by the Brumby King.’
He gave me a look like I were a sad sap and we curled up against the cold night while those trucks tore up the road above and the cloying piss stink closeness kept us safe.
Dawn came up, he were gone with his dirty blankets and the trucks had moved on. There were birds calling, daylight bleeding into the sky against a smudge of black smoke from the camp.
That morning I rememberd the time I lost me Mum and Smoov come along and picked me up from me misery into more misery. His face scritchy and his stinking breath and Isa was there too. The memory of her eyes locked on to mine. Thinking of that memory of Isa’s eyes set me blubbering, like maybe I’d never see her again. I let go of everything I’d been holding onto so tight in the night as I ran from the brumbies. Let go of what I’d done to Smoov, the flash of his fear right before I killed him, and the way he tried to talk though his throat was slit. It’s a bad feeling, knowing you’ve done something like that, but I didn’t have no choice if I wanted to be with Isa.
And anyway there wasn’t nothing for it but to get back out to the road so that’s what I done. I crawled out through the spinifex and put the red dust green grey mountains in the back of me and the easter sun in me face, same way the tracks of the brumby mob headed. And if I could track down that Brumby King I could find Isa and we could live a life together on the show circuit.
I could feel a following behind, I saw its cloud of dust and I knew in me heart it was the same thing that followed us in to Hind Pass and it’d been following me since we fled from the brumbies in the gorge. Maybe longer. Maybe it wasn’t after Smoov at all. Anyway, nothing I can do about the past so I roaded without looking behind. Felt the glare of those following eyes on the back of me trucksuit. In the wasted land I sopped up water from stinking sinkholes, moving from one to the next along the lay lines that had been in use for longer than humans walked on two legs. No food for days but that was all right, I could live off me own body a while so long as I had water. Looking for a mount, looking for anything that could speed my passage through that blasted flatscape of dry cunt creekbed and thorny prick termite nest stickin up from the ground on the trail of the brumbies that fled to the east. You can’t live long out there if you don’t got some knowing of the desert and Smoov taught us how to read the signs and rig a snare for rabbits. So come dusk and the red sun sinking I found a warren and snared up a mangy old doe. Skinned and dressed and chewed raw, sweet blood and strips of red flesh. I didn’t wanna risk a fire and I were that hungry it didn’t bother me none. Laid down underneath a truckdream of stars in the void, lonely as a flea on a salt pan. Tried to hide myself as best I could.
I woke dead of night, no more moon, stars shifted around all wrong and there it was, the
‘I don’t want nuthin to do with this. I’m just passen through, ay,’ he said.
‘Mate I know it I lost me sis—’
A brumby skitter flickered past the opening and we shut up in the darkness. The grambling and hummering of the trucks rumbled outside. They shone their lights flickering around the drain close by. Time stetched out before us. The sounds slackened off after a while and he whispered, ‘They’s gunna be roadin like this all night?’
‘I dunno. Reckon they’ll probly head off once they’ve got done with their raidin and the skitters and droans has looted everything what can be taken.’
‘They took yer sis?’
‘I think she’s been took by the Brumby King.’
He went quiet for a bit then he said: ‘You sure she’s not dead?’
When he said that, I were chilled. I said: ‘Na, no way. That’d never happen to Isa, she’s tough and trucksmart. I saw pretty clearly she was gone into the smoke left behind by the Brumby King.’
He gave me a look like I were a sad sap and we curled up against the cold night while those trucks tore up the road above and the cloying piss stink closeness kept us safe.
Dawn came up, he were gone with his dirty blankets and the trucks had moved on. There were birds calling, daylight bleeding into the sky against a smudge of black smoke from the camp.
That morning I rememberd the time I lost me Mum and Smoov come along and picked me up from me misery into more misery. His face scritchy and his stinking breath and Isa was there too. The memory of her eyes locked on to mine. Thinking of that memory of Isa’s eyes set me blubbering, like maybe I’d never see her again. I let go of everything I’d been holding onto so tight in the night as I ran from the brumbies. Let go of what I’d done to Smoov, the flash of his fear right before I killed him, and the way he tried to talk though his throat was slit. It’s a bad feeling, knowing you’ve done something like that, but I didn’t have no choice if I wanted to be with Isa.
And anyway there wasn’t nothing for it but to get back out to the road so that’s what I done. I crawled out through the spinifex and put the red dust green grey mountains in the back of me and the easter sun in me face, same way the tracks of the brumby mob headed. And if I could track down that Brumby King I could find Isa and we could live a life together on the show circuit.
I could feel a following behind, I saw its cloud of dust and I knew in me heart it was the same thing that followed us in to Hind Pass and it’d been following me since we fled from the brumbies in the gorge. Maybe longer. Maybe it wasn’t after Smoov at all. Anyway, nothing I can do about the past so I roaded without looking behind. Felt the glare of those following eyes on the back of me trucksuit. In the wasted land I sopped up water from stinking sinkholes, moving from one to the next along the lay lines that had been in use for longer than humans walked on two legs. No food for days but that was all right, I could live off me own body a while so long as I had water. Looking for a mount, looking for anything that could speed my passage through that blasted flatscape of dry cunt creekbed and thorny prick termite nest stickin up from the ground on the trail of the brumbies that fled to the east. You can’t live long out there if you don’t got some knowing of the desert and Smoov taught us how to read the signs and rig a snare for rabbits. So come dusk and the red sun sinking I found a warren and snared up a mangy old doe. Skinned and dressed and chewed raw, sweet blood and strips of red flesh. I didn’t wanna risk a fire and I were that hungry it didn’t bother me none. Laid down underneath a truckdream of stars in the void, lonely as a flea on a salt pan. Tried to hide myself as best I could.
I woke dead of night, no more moon, stars shifted around all wrong and there it was, the
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