Color of Blood(92)

Dennis slowed the vehicle to a stop. The dust trail following them briefly covered the LandCruiser in a murky, maroon veil.

“Judy, I can’t just quit. Not now. We’re very close to this thing. Why don’t I just turn around and drop you off at the hotel? I’ll be back later today.”

She sighed and looked out the tinted passenger-side window.

“Fine. Let’s keep going. Besides, you’re helpless by yourself out here.”

Dennis drove off again.

***

After two hours of driving, Dennis had more or less picked up the knack for driving at a relatively high speed of forty-five miles per hour. He quickly learned to slow down at the bottom of a dip in the trail where they’d fishtail through a deep silt-sand mixture.

They continued farther into the desert, passing identical scraggy bushes and mounds of spinifex grass balls and spires. At one point, Judy pointed ahead to a low dust cloud that seemed to be getting closer.

Twenty minutes later, as if it were an apparition, a small, dust-coated pick-up truck roared past them in the opposite direction heading, presumably, for Newton. The Aboriginal driver honked his horn, waved, and was gone, spewing an outback dust trail in his wake.

Dennis tried to pay attention to visual markers: a low rise of weather-worn hills to the north, a strange outcropping of brown stone nearly straight ahead.

At one point, Judy yelped with glee when she saw two emus fifty yards from the road. “I’ve never seen one in the wild,” she said. “Just in the zoo.”

The tall, ostrichlike birds stared idly as they drove by.

“You don’t get out much, do you?” Dennis said.

“Oh, stop it. How many American bison have you seen in the wild?”

“Um, let me count. One, two, um, three. Actually, none.” Dennis laughed.

“Very funny, Yank.”

Dennis couldn’t help but notice strange bits of flotsam and jetsam tossed to the side of the track, including car batteries, a rusting car fender, two empty and nearly oxidized fifty-five-gallon barrels, and the occasional degraded beer or soft-drink can.

After forty-five minutes Dennis stopped, and they consulted their hodgepodge of road maps and Google Earth printouts.

“I think we should have found something by now,” Dennis said. “There’s nothing here but dirt. We’ll need to turn around soon to get back by sunset.”

Judy reached into her bag in the back seat and pulled out a set of binoculars. Without saying a word she got out of the car, went around to the front, climbed gingerly onto the hot hood, and scanned 360 degrees of the horizon. Dennis turned off the car and got out to talk to her and was again stunned by the heat. Looking up at her, he shielded his eyes from the sun.

“See anything?”

“Not much. Just a little bump or something there.” She pointed about thirty degrees to the left.

“What is it?”

“Don’t know. Could be a man-made structure—or a rock outcropping. Should we check it out?”

“Sure,” Dennis said. “I see what you meant about being prepared out here. If this car breaks down, we’re in trouble.”

They continued driving down the track. Both drained their water bottles.

After another twenty minutes, on the left side of the road they saw a four-foot-high barbed-wire fence. Every twenty feet or so, small white metal signs stated: Keep Out—Private Property.

Judy noticed the fence was not engineered to keep game in or out; there were two strands of barbed wire on the metal star posts. The top strand was about two feet from the other strand. A kangaroo could easily jump the fence, a dingo could slip through the strands, and a human could step through effortlessly. The fence seemed to simply be a warning for humans not to enter.

Dennis pulled the LandCruiser off the track into the bush to his left and followed the fence line into desert, perpendicular to the dirt track. He wove delicately around and over clumps of spinifex. They could see nothing inside the fence line except more desert.

Judy convinced Dennis to stop. She climbed onto the hood again and this time hustled gingerly onto the roof. Dennis got out and walked over to the fence.

“Nothing outside the fence, nothing inside the fence,” he said. “Plenty of nothing.”

“Dennis, you should see this,” Judy said.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest.”

Dennis scampered up the hood of the vehicle, its warmth adding to the stultifying atmosphere.

With the roof of the Cruiser indenting slightly from their weight, Dennis spread his legs so that his weight was over the sturdier edges. He took the binoculars and looked in the direction Judy had pointed.

In the distance, perhaps a mile into the fenced-off area, he could see a thin sheen of whitish dust and several large mounds of grayish soil. Scanning to his right, he could just make out the top of a corrugated metal roof.

“Some kind of operation out there,” he said, returning the binoculars. “Looks like a mining operation. This could be were our boys are.”

They climbed down the Cruiser, their palms burning from the vehicle’s heat. Dennis quickly turned on the engine and shoved the air conditioner on high. He noticed Judy’s cheeks were a soft pink.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yes, why?”

“You look hot. Your face is red.”