Gilgandra is either at the top of New South Wales or the bottom of
Queensland. I don’t remember exactly where it is and have no phone reception to
check. As a Victorian, it’s all the same to me. What’s for certain is that
there were XXXX signs on the pub, a very beautiful old pub, and that the ovals
weren’t ovals anymore but rectangles, with rugby goals at either end.
We were having problems with the leaf spring suspension on the left
wheel of our trailer. And the axle was fucked. And the mud flaps were shredded.
In short, the trailer was all at sea. At low speed it sounded like the tires
were rubbing against the checker plate; it was trailing so wonkily that I half
expected the whole lot to become the problem of the car behind us at any moment.
Driving through Gilgandra, the decision was made to stop and finally do
something about it.
There was a little sunlight left. We crossed a bridge over a river,
the names of which I don’t recall. Some blokes were fishing on the banks beside
it, and they had a large campfire going. On the other side of the bridge there
was a stretch of road that seemed as good as any to pull over on, and so we did
and then all of us got out. By ‘we’ I mean Pete, Stuart, Dharman, Sean and me.
Next to the road was a big expanse of nothing, naked earth, grassless and
weedless, which slowly gave over to a few shrubs and trees closer to the river.
My being out of the Landcruiser at all was almost symbolic: I knew
absolutely fuck all about cars, let alone trailers. I didn’t really know much
about anything, besides books that was. But still I stood with my arms and legs
crossed and nodded whenever Pete or Dharman – who by then was underneath the
trailer bashing the axle forward with a sledge hammer – said something about
what was wrong or how they planned to fix it. There was heat and a simmering sound coming from the engine; neither was abnormal. The strong smell of motor oil and coolant wasn't unpleasant. Then Dharman asked me to get the
jack out of the checker plate box on the front of the trailer. I got it and
handed it to him like I knew how to use one. Then Dharman asked me to head towards the trees and find a
big piece of wood – I wasn’t sure why.
I started to walk along a narrow byroad towards the river. I was
barefoot and there were a few prickles, and the sun had gone down completely, and
even trucks, usually tireless, had deserted the Newell. The amber light on the bridge was the
only beacon for ages; relative to the darkness it looked brighter than it
actually was and I still had a lucid enough recollection of bright lights to
understand that. Even the town,
Gilgandra, which I began to see on the other side of the river, was nothing but
a craggy silhouette.
Except for branches attached immovably to the little assortment of
trees, I soon found that there were no bits of wood bigger than twigs. Looking
behind me, I was surprised at how far the river was from the Landcruiser, the Newell.
I could see the silver surface of the river and the forked deadwood sticking
out of it. I could see that the river was shallow and weather-beaten, that the
drought would probably unmake it before the decade was out, turn it into a soft
place to pitch a swag, a dependable track for bushwalkers, still blue on their
big topographic maps, a wallow for wild boars. Then the rains would come and
make it again: I thought that rebirths of waterways warranted new names because
bad omens had been made of the old.
At my feet there was a long, solid object that looked like a log. After
bending down and grabbing it I found that it was made of cement and wouldn’t
budge. I was pondering the existence of such a strange and seemingly
purposeless object when a light appeared across the river. It was a cigarette
lighter, jacked to a sizeable flame, being held with both hands by the most
beautiful girl I’d ever seen.
·
Her ankles, I saw as I watched her bend down – quite gracelessly,
but a gracelessness that made my dick go hard – were festooned with bow-tied
strings, and jewels. I could see the perfect curvature of her arse in the
flickers, the way it melted into her hamstrings so effortlessly, her pleated
black – or brown or navy – skirt hiking right up. She made no effort to lower
it. She thought she was alone. In a way she was. Her face was so perfect as to
be almost waxen, and her hair was like water. The tree that hid my body now was
the widest along either bank, and, like a professional peeping tom, I’d gone so
still and quiet that I was hardly breathing. I soon saw that the girl had a bag
with her and that she’d crouched down to get something out of it. Then the
flame went out. I heard some indeterminate noises and then nothing. There was
nothing.
Her eyes were what I saw when it came on again, and I jumped in a
sort of shamefaced panic. Her eyes were staring directly into mine, as if she
had been aware of my presence the entire time. At that moment the flames
started to grow and the girl turned and ran into the darkness, which took her
too quickly for me to do anything.
Fire! There’s a fucking fire! I heard from behind me – while
obviously screamed, the words were as faint as whispers.
·
Pete’s gangly limbs looked totally out of control in motion. Dharman
didn’t swing his arms. Stuart had a cigarette in his mouth and lagged behind.
Sean, a champion district basketball player before he discovered ice pipes,
still ran like a man whose body wasn’t in drugged abeyance; despite the Akubra
flying off his head midstride, he was at me and asking excited questions just a
fast as she had stared into the foam and snake pits of my soul and then gone.
There was more smoke than fire; the underbrush was barky, meager. I
thought about the amount of stinging, reeking, choking smoke that people were
prepared to tolerate in exchange for the succor of a little fire and the
beautiful glow of embers. How metaphorical the straightforward could become,
and how quickly. The flames, we deduced, could only spread so far: there was a
parking lot between Gilgandra’s buildings and the river, and the night was dead
still. At worst, a few trees would get overrun and wrecked, charred memorials
of the time something close to danger came to town.
In the half hour that followed, what seemed like the entire population
of the greater region poured into the parking lot. It was as big a congregation
of people in a small area as I’d ever seen, I think. Most of the people were
older than fifty and overweight. It was a Saturday night. Then a fire truck
arrived and, moments before or after, two policemen on horseback. Ostracised by
all the rumble of all those conversations, all the familiar names I could hear being used to address people I'd never seen before, I began to fixate on the policemen’s boots in the stirrups, and the greyness of both
horses, when suddenly Sean made a gesture right in my face that was like a tiger clawing
and said, I’m gonna maul you. And I said, what? And Sean said, wake the fuck
up, we’re crossing over to get amongst it.
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