Trucksong (7 page)

Temper Storm the head man moved up then and said: ‘Best off now, Smoov. Take yer kin and move it on.’

‘It’s gloomin darker, Temper, and we gotta show to do. We won’t be roadin now.’

‘Yes yer will, Smoov, yer gunna cause trouble if ya stay. I’m gunna give yer meat and smoke for the way, but yer on yer own now. Don’t come back around next time.’

Smoov wrinkled his face up and went to move the show gear.

‘Orright, Temper, I hear ya. I’m takin me childers and I’m headin off and I won’t be back and now there’s not gunna be no more shows for this camp.’

He sort of stopped a bit, waiting for someone to say he should stay. But there weren’t no one said nothing.

‘Suits us, Smoov,’ said Temper. ‘Road and be well.’

I thought Smoov was gunna do his block but he didn’t. He just turned tail and walked. The crowd closed in around him and I caught a glance of the preacher’s smug smiling face as the camp thronged around him to hear the messages of a saver.

There was an alarm right then, from the watch tower. The brumbies we saw that afternoon were massing for a raid and I thought on that Brumby King and what it wanted, and it’s hard to know how to defend against something like that, almost like trying to work out what a thunderstorm might want or why. It just was. It swallowed up everything in its track and doused it with death and like a thundercloud, it didn’t have no thoughts for what was left behind in the mud and the blood. So the camp folks were keeping their eyes out for that dust cloud, the sign of the Brumby King and its roading mob. They’d built fences and ditches and they’d hammered spikes into the road around, facing out. They’d laid grease traps and they’d buried bombs besides the road. But seeing that cloud on the skyline sent me cold. I don’t wanna ever see it again. It was the brumby mob moving fast, off road.

They weren’t coming in along the track where we saw them earlier. They were coming from the waste to lay waste. And then on the other side of the camp was another mob. In the brumbies were six rigs, led by the black beefy Brumby King itself and the new wrangled Silver Peterbilt next to it. Then there come the Left Tenant, white and blue and another blue on blue and the rest of the brumby mob followed by a crowd of droans buzzing about in their wake looking for whatever they could scab.

Looking closer at the other mob I could see it was just two indies roading. They weren’t part of the brumby mob, but they were gunna get caught up in the storm of the Brumby King. One red and white and one with purple patterning, roading partners roaming free. Their path was getting crossed with the brumby mob right in front of the camp. I stood watching, I couldn’t take me eyes off what was happening. The indies didn’t realise the threat of the brumbies or they thought they could take them, because they didn’t change course until it was too late and the brumbies were all around. The Brumby King took a fancy to the purple and so it crashed up against it while the Left Tenant and the other brumbies circled around and kept the red and white busy. The King wasn’t mucking around trying to mount with its donk, it wanted to wrangle the purple into its mob. Even though the red and white done its best to drive off the King, it was overwhelmed and outnumbered. It drove off by itself, to the westing while the King and its mob pressed on.

Watching from the fence, the greasy camp boys went pale. There wasn’t nothin no one could do, it was just a matter of time before they’d be on us.

‘Carn,’ I said to Isa, ‘we gotta move.’

‘Wheres Smoov?’

‘He’s gone to sling his tote from the showgear. There’s no time, we gotta go.’

‘I’m not leavin till he’s given me the codes so as I can show in me own right. Anyways we would be killed out in the open.’

Maybe she was right but I didn’t wanna stick around, I felt the pull in me guts. We would die if we stayed. We had to go, but we’d already done too much talking, the heat was coming down. The first shots of rocks were falling down, launched like missles from the brumby trucks, they were raining pain and stone and shards of bone.

A crash right next to us and a brumby busted through the fence, wheels jarring through the shocks, engine screaming, dust flying, rocks falling and folks were running to get away. The panic hit me. I grabbed Isa’s arm but she still wouldn’t come. She pulled away and I just had to run to save myself. The air throbbed with the beating of battling trucksound, steady bass rumbling and horns tweeting and dripping with jammy delay.

The Left Tenant came on hard, howling and screaming diff and high pitched turbine whine cutting through the deep rocking grumble sound of the donk. And then it blasted a tune, a cranking dub that whipped the following brumby mob into a frenzy of high revving engines and the blat blat blat of exhaust brakes. Up come the Left Tennat’s own second, light blue frag patterns on dark blue, its vents wide open under blank view screen sensors as it sucked up all the air around to cool its searing manifold. Once they’d busted through the fence, they went all different ways through the camp looking for damage and destruction. The noise was terrible, dust and smoke in me throat and every breath was hard won from the thickening air. Camp folks screaming in panic and fetching up their gear, whatever could be carried. A dog ran past snarling and snapping, fear inside its eyes but angry outside.

Through the dust and smoke and bodies rushing here and there, all of a sudden I came face to face with Smoov, his eyes wild. He made to grab me arm and pull me back with him and I didn’t say nothing. It all happened so fast I just wanted to be done with it. All them pent up feelings came rushing out, Brumby King or not, I wasn’t gunna go with Smoov no more. I stepped sideways as he over reached and he fell into the space where I used to be and then fell down onto his knees. Between Smoov and the blur of moving bodies behind, I saw Crow. He wore a coat made from trucktyre and he had silver hair but you could see as how it had been black as night and his brown face was lined and white eyes that he looked in me eyes with a glare and I knew we were tied together on the roading. Fear hit me like cold water gulped too fast and settled in me guts, wanting to loosen me stools. The face of Crow twisted sharp, it was cold and hard like broken brick.

‘Do it,’ Crow said.

Smoov was down on his knees in front of me, he looked sidewise up and the sweat beaded on his face and runned down his neck. He didn’t say nothing, like he knew what was inside me, what he’d given me the power over him to do. Crow said: ‘Carn, you barstid. Otherwise you got buckleys of havin it off with the girl.’

He spat the end of his durry into the red dirt. In the chaos a moment of still. The jenny’s throb and the clear blue sky and high white cloud. Wind blowed from the east, sun overhead and way, way up a flapple rode updrafted. Folks moaned and dogs barked and the brumby mob ran them down and crying mouths were crushed under wheels till they didn’t cry no more. There was no home, no quiet place to shelter the storm. It was just whatever wits you had and I wished it was different but it weren’t. I slit Smoov’s throat with the shiv and seen the white line of fat under the skin before the red blood bubbled out and Smoov looked up into me face and gurgled but no sound came. Blood ran over his hands where he tried to hold it in over his new grin. He fell over onto his front and lay still while the red dust turned black.

Then I was looking around, Crow was nowhere. I scanned for a way out and I locked eyes with Isa.

She’d seen what I done.

I reached out to her but she turned and ran and I ran after her. She went straight into the path of the Brumby King humming up on the camp and in a second she was gone and the Brumby King was gone in the dust and smoke and I was left in the wreck of the camp with just the show gear, me typewriter and all the notes and Smoov’s linkmaker that I rummaged from his rags. I shot through and cast in my lot as a rider.

I crawled out of the camp on me belly through the scrub, cutting myself up on the sharp rocks and stones. Search lights swept around above, the trucks rolled in the distance and the air was full of howling sound. I breathed in dust and sweated fearstink thumping heart. Sucked into this pathway like dust in the slipstream and swirling eddies in the air and rumblings in the ground. You can’t say where that dust is going but it’s pulled along even though one minute ago it was just sitting by the side of the road

Isa lost, almost like she was sucked up by the air around the Brumby King. Nothing but the smell of smoke and the ash of me thoughts that I sifted through to find the things that’d gone wrong in me life. Core of an apple with a maggot. Isa wet where I touched her. It was all gone, the brumbies came and smashed up everything and I was roading lonely now. The dreams of a life with Isa on the show circuit were smashed up like Smoov’s showgear. Broken like the bone broken faces in the camp during the raid. And the only thing I could think was how I had to find Isa. It was the only way I could make things right again. She was missing, lonely too, probably injured and hurting and Wotcher only knows what that Brumby King wanted with her.

I came to a ditch and I crawled along it till it turned into a roadside drain. There was a bloke in there wrapped in a blanket, white eyes open and flashing the dark. We whispered at each other as the rumbling rigs passed by all around.

‘I don’t want no trouble,’ he said.

‘Me neither, can I share yer hideyhole?’ I said.

‘You can share but I got nothin for you to use.’

‘I’m the same.’

Thumping pounding of brumby wheels rocked the ground. A flash of light lit the hole and his eyes were open wide. He saw me tote and the typewriter case and I said,

‘It’s just a old machine for wordin.’

He shook with fear and I was shook too. 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 follower, right in front of me eyes. Its face was bleached white bone, its eyes were white, it had a crooked beak and a black hoodie over its head. In the black dot in the centre of the eye I saw me own face reflected back at me. It wore a trucktyre coat and when it opened its mouth it let out a croak. In its hand it had a cloth bag and it held the bag out for me. I felt me own hand reaching out and going into the bag though it was the last place I could think of where I’d wanna put me hand. Inside was little rattling things, dry like wood. I pulled one out and looked at it and the creature clacked and croaked some more and I saw that dried up bone in me hand, a backbone of some creature, smaller than a man but bigger than a dog. There was a mark carved in black on that bone and I saw it was an /I/.