Catherine Jinks TheRoad (14 page)

‘I didn’t see anything,’ he confessed at last.

‘I did,’ said Louise, and everyone – except Noel – looked at her.

‘You did?’ Linda sounded sceptical. ‘Where?’

‘Back there. It was a mailbox, painted white. Beside a road.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘How far back was it?’ asked Peter, before his mother could. Louise screwed up her face, which was olive skinned, like Linda’s.

‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘Quite a long way.’

‘Stop the car.’

Linda’s tone was calm, but Noel was startled nonetheless. There was a minimal slackening of speed as he adjusted the weight of his foot on the accelerator.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Stop the car. Please.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘Just
stop it. Please
.’

Noel made a long-suffering noise. He flicked the indicator (though there was no one behind him for as far as the eye could see) and pulled over to the side of the road. Then he turned off the engine.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘Mum? Can I go to the toilet?’

‘In a minute, Rosie.’ Noel was looking at his wife, who sat with her elbow resting on the windowsill, and her forehead resting on her hand. ‘Are you feeling sick?’

‘No.’

‘Then –’

‘Louise,’ Linda interrupted, ‘will you please get out and help Rose go to the toilet? Put your shoes on first. And take this tissue.’

‘Oh, but
Mum
...’

‘
Now
. You too, Peter. You can get out and stretch your legs. You’ve been sitting down for too long.’

Peter didn’t argue. It would have been unwise to do so; his mother was in a touchy mood. He knew that she was only ejecting her kids from the car because she wanted to talk to Noel in private. But, although he was curious, he wasn’t going to insist on taking part in the conversation.

‘Come on,’ he said to Rose. ‘We’ll find you a big bush.’

‘Okay.’ Rose was quite happy to piss in the dirt, because she welcomed the excitement of it. Pissing in the dirt was the sort of thing that she could tell her friends about in kindergarten.

For Louise, however, the novelty of crouching behind a bush to pass urine didn’t make up for the discomfort and embarrassment she felt whenever another car passed them while she was so engaged.

‘I think I’ll wait for the roadhouse,’ she said as she climbed out of the car. Peter shrugged.

‘Suit yourself,’ he replied. ‘But at this rate, we might not even get there.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’ She sounded cross. ‘We have to get there some time. It’s on this road.’

‘Yeah, but haven’t you noticed? There’s something pretty weird happening.’

Together, he and Louise guided Rose across the ditch, past the line of white posts and into the wastes beyond. Dry pellets of animal dung crumbled beneath their feet. A spiky twig worked its way into Louise’s sandals,making her yelp.The sun warmed their scalps and dried the sweat on their skin.

They headed for a clump of small trees (or large bushes) which stood about twenty metres from the side of the road. It wouldn’t provide a lot of cover, but it would certainly act as a better screen than the thin grass and silver-grey ground-hugging saltbush. Peter made as much noise as possible, crunching along heavily, to scare away any nearby snakes. He didn’t think there
were
any snakes, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He saw some ants, and wondered if they were the type called meat ants. A pamphlet at the Broken Hill Visitors’ Centre had referred to meat ants, but Peter hadn’t discovered the significance of the name. He hoped that they weren’t like piranhas, able to strip the flesh off a human foot in a few minutes flat.