Scrublands(17)
‘Shit,’ says Martin. He sips his coffee, but it no longer tastes so good.
MARTIN SITS IN HIS ROOM AT THE BLACK DOG AND ASKS HIMSELF WHAT THE fuck he is up to. He’s all too aware that his editor, Max Fuller, his old friend and mentor, has gone out on a limb to give him this assignment, that there are plenty back in the newsroom who reckon he isn’t up to it. And now he’s doing his best to prove them right. It’s a straightforward assignment: how is the town coping? More in the writing than in the reporting, right up his alley. But instead of asking the barman at the club, or the woman at the op shop, or chasing down the real estate agent, all he’s done is talk to a criminal in a wine saloon, lust over a bookstore keeper still mourning her mother and traumatise an already traumatised kid. And count gunshots like some half-baked conspiracy theorist on a grassy knoll. What a fucking joke.
He walks into the bathroom and takes a piss. The urine is bright yellow as it streams into the bowl. Dehydrated, thinks Martin. No bloody wonder; wandering around town like Sherlock Holmes instead of doing his day job, seizing this chance Max has orchestrated for him. He washes his hands, splashes water onto his face, regards his reflection in the mirror. His eyes look puffy and bloodshot from lack of sleep, the nascent sunburn unable to disguise his skin’s underlying pallor; there’s a general sagginess to his flesh, revealing the first suggestion of jowls. Forty years old and looking older, the handsome pants man left behind somewhere in the Middle East. Mandy Blonde must be laughing herself sick. How miserable, how pathetic. The kid was right: he is a cunt.
He decides he’s had enough. He’s not up to it. Not anymore. Not up to another three nights fighting insomnia in the Black Dog, not up to another three days wading around in the grief and trauma of an entire town, stirring it up. For what purpose? A nicely written piece for the fleeting entertainment of the suburbs; a nicely written piece likely to go off like a grenade among the denizens of Riversend just as they’re finally putting their lives back together. By which time he would be long gone, back in Sydney, well clear of local distress, being congratulated by colleagues, getting one of those proforma herograms from management. He thinks again of the boy, seeking solace on the church steps, sent running, crying, down to the empty riverbed. By him. But enough. Time to leave. Time to find something else to do between here and oblivion.
At the counter, the proprietor is unsympathetic. ‘Sorry, love. No refunds. We’re like the Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave.’ She laughs at her own joke. Martin doesn’t.
‘Okay, I won’t check out, but I am leaving.’ He takes the key back off the counter. ‘I’ll post it to you. Don’t let anyone into my room.’
‘Your choice. Send us the key by the end of next week or it’s another fifty off your credit card. Have a good drive.’ Her smile is as convincing as her hair colour.
Outside, the sun is overhead, slamming down like a hammer on the anvil of the car park. Just like when he arrived the day before, except today a gusty wind has come up, blowing hot air, bellows-like, in from the desert. Thankfully, the hire car is in the shade of the carport. Martin loads his overnight bag into the boot, pops his daypack on the back seat with the remaining bottles of mineral water, takes a long swig out of the bottle he’s already opened and places it on the passenger seat.
He starts the car, drives to the edge of the highway. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s made no flight booking, made no calls to Max Fuller or anyone else. But he’s not staying, that’s the main thing. On a whim, he turns right, heading towards Bellington and the Murray. There will be coffee and phone reception and internet. And a river with water in it.
The road is dead straight and deserted, save for the roadkill deposited by last night’s trucks. He watches in fascination in his rear-view mirror as the bottoms of the receding wheat silos begin to dissolve in the heat haze, leaving only their upper halves to float eerily in the sky. Martin stops the car, steps out. The mirage is still there. He takes a final snap with his phone. Riversend disappearing up itself.
He’s just getting the car back up to speed when the ute appears from nowhere. One moment he’s alone—earth, sky, road and nothing else—the next moment there is the blaring of a horn. He jerks involuntarily, almost leaves the road. Then the ute is alongside, the bare buttocks of some yob stuck out the passenger-side window not two metres away, accompanied by raucous laughter and screeched profanities. He brakes, and the ute accelerates away, fingers gesturing obscenely from both driver and passenger sides. There’s a red P-plate on the back of the vehicle.
‘Shit,’ mutters Martin, feeling shaken by the suddenness of the incident. He considers pulling over, but continues on his way. Out here, there’s not a lot of difference between sitting in a stationary car and one doing a hundred and ten kilometres an hour. In his mind he constructs the event as a narrative, rehearsing it, as if still intending to write his piece.
The ute has dissolved into the liquid distance and he’s once again isolated on the flat and featureless plain. He searches it for a dark line of trees, but Riversend’s river is too far behind him and the Murray is still more than half an hour away. There is nothing but stunted saltbush, dirt and the flatness. The car is alone on the highway, speeding from the illusory past to the insubstantial future. He feels as if he is aloft, orbiting a revolving earth. Deliberately he embraces the illusion, persuading his mind that it’s not the car that is moving, but the earth spinning underneath its wheels. For a long moment the illusion holds but it’s brought to an abrupt halt by a rapidly approaching curve in the highway. Back in control, Martin slows ever so slightly and navigates the bend, speeding past a woman waving her arms frantically beside a red car on the verge.