Catherine Jinks TheRoad (67 page)

‘But –’

‘We’ve got to go back, Del! We said we would! Christ, we’ll be hours late as it is – especially if we have to load up the station wagon!’

Del pondered this remark and was forced to acknowledge the sense of it. Still, she was reluctant to abandon their search for the lost child.

‘I can look for ’im,’ she said, ‘while youse blokes are packin the stuff.’

‘No, Del.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we need someone to stand guard, for God’s sake!’ Alec was losing his cool. The stifling caravan, the ache in his temples, the churning in his gut, the faint odour of petrol that clung to his shoes – they were all getting to him. ‘We’re sittin ducks, here, give us a break!’

Del sighed. She scrubbed at her wiry grey hair with one hand as she surveyed the caravan: its checked curtains, wood-grain Laminex, souvenir ash trays, painted wall clock. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she murmured, shaking her head. ‘This could be my place ...I just can’t believe it . . .’

‘Believe it,’ said Alec, shortly.

Then, impelled by a sudden wave of nausea, he rushed to the door, staggered down the steps, and vomited onto a tussock of windmill grass.

Col didn’t stop at the Coombah roadhouse because there were some bikes parked out the front of it. Not neat little Japanese toys but big, stripped-down American bastards. He tried to be optimistic about these things, but sometimes he was just too tired. He didn’t think he could cope with a biker gang. Not while his visit to Elspeth still lay ahead.

He couldn’t afford to waste energy.

The road beyond Coombah offered little in the way of distractions. You could fall asleep at the wheel, if you weren’t careful. Col was very mindful of this danger. Because he woke up so early in the morning, he had a tendency to drop off sometimes when his mind wasn’t fully engaged – in front of the cricket, perhaps, or while waiting in the car for Moira. So he extracted a very strong peppermint from the jar in the glove box and sucked on it vigorously. Then, when that was finished, he turned on his radio. But the reception was already becoming problematic, breaking up at increasingly shorter intervals. He finally had to turn it off again, and shove a tape into his cassette player. Though this ageing machine had seen better days (most of its black plastic buttons had long ago cracked and fallen off, to be replaced with tape and putty) it was sturdy and reliable. It never spewed out twisted brown ribbons, or refused to yield up any cassettes that it had swallowed. On the contrary, it was the most cooperative part of the whole ute, continuing to provide hour after hour of flawless music while fanbelts shredded and radiator hoses snapped.

Col enjoyed music. He had a little collection of classical pieces that he played over and over again: Tchaikovsky’s
1812 Overture
; the
Dambusters March
; highlights from
Carmen
; Handel’s
Messiah
. This time he chose Beethoven’s ninth symphony, using it to give him courage. He was quite sure that these trips to Broken Hill were draining the life out of him. Slowly but surely they were breaking him down. He made a point of not dwelling on life’s less pleasant aspects, but it was hard, sometimes, when you were getting on. When your friends were succumbing to pneumonia and emphysema and osteoporosis. When your sister was disintegrating – turning into a vegetable. One day, he knew, he would not have the strength to drive back. Not immediately. He would have to find a bed somewhere and recover overnight.

If he had a few grandchildren, it might help. But his waster son had failed in this department also. There would be no young life investing Col’s last years with vigour and warmth. Not unless you took into account his little next-door neighbour.

Col sometimes tried to work out where he had gone wrong with Kevin – where he and Helen had both gone wrong. It had always been his firmly held belief that Kevin took after his Uncle Morris, Helen’s useless brother. What could you do, with genes like that? Morris, it seemed, had been born selfish. He had done nothing but sponge and booze and wander from pillar to post his whole life. Col had never lifted a hand to Kevin. He had never spoiled the boy, but had provided everything that a child could ever want: home, food, clothes, birthday presents, sound advice, money for an apprenticeship, money for long-distance education, money to set himself up in Melbourne ...And for what? So he could live off his girlfriends, off the government, off his mother, even off poor Elspeth when her mind first started to go. Col clenched the steering wheel when he thought of that. He swatted the memory away; but it would return, he knew. In the dark of the night, or during lunch at the club, or on the bowling green. It kept popping up like an evil little wasp, trying to puncture his carefully constructed feeling of wellbeing. He would never forgive his son for taking advantage of Elspeth. That was when he had turned away – when he had given up on the useless little so-and-so. He’d decided that he had his own life to live, and couldn’t live Kevin’s for him.

It had destroyed his marriage, of course. Not that he and Helen were by that time the same couple who had married in her father’s own church, down near Bendigo. They had been very young then, and had grown into different people. But they had managed to rub along all right until the business with Elspeth. After that, they had become estranged. Helen had kept making excuses for her son, even when he repeatedly failed to visit her in hospital. Kevin had claimed that it upset him too much, to see her there. And she had believed it, too.

Col, who was no stranger to hospitals, had been ashamed of Kevin. A man might be unmanned by suffering, but that didn’t mean he ran away from it. On the contrary. He fronted up every visiting hour with a bunch of flowers and as much family gossip as he could painstakingly collect.

Kevin had been drunk or stoned at his mother’s funeral. Col was sure of it.

His thoughts snapped back to the present as his gaze snagged on a shape up ahead. Blinking, he saw that it was a car. No – a car and a man. Two separate shapes, in fact, which grew more distinct the closer Col got to them. The car was a utility, but not a utility like Col’s. Though covered in dust, and dented here and there, it was a fancy new model, dark navy, with tinted windows and antennae sticking up all over it. A mean-looking machine, big and heavy and challenging.

Its driver presented a striking contrast.

Drawing up alongside him, Col was surprised to see how young the man was. No more than thirty-five. From a distance he had looked much older – perhaps because of his clothes. That style of shirt, for instance; it wasn’t what you normally saw on men under fifty these days. The pants too were strangely old-fashioned, like something that might have been worn by Gregory Peck or Cary Grant. And they didn’t fit well, either. Col noticed that. They were too short at the ankle.

Lifting his gaze to the face of the stranded motorist, Col registered his unshaven jaw and crooked nose. The fellow was badly sunburned too. But on closer inspection, he seemed harmless enough: small and wiry, with deep-set eyes and hollow cheeks, he looked as if he hadn’t been eating too well. In fact he looked a bit off colour.

‘You all right, mate?’ Col inquired, switching off Beethoven’s ninth in mid-adagio.

The motorist rubbed his hands on his dusty beige trousers. Nervously, he glanced up the highway.

‘Uh . . .’he said.

‘Car trouble?’

‘Yeah . . .’ Something about the way he forced out that word, in a kind of breathless bark, made Col wonder if he had a speech problem. He had that look about him – that withdrawn, slightly defensive look displayed by one of Col’s former work-mates, who had suffered from a badly repaired cleft palate. Poor little bastard. He’d hardly ever opened his mouth.

But it soon became obvious that the problem wasn’t one of expression. It was one of embarrassment. Shamefaced, the motorist mumbled something. He scratched his neck, and shuffled his feet.

‘What?’ said Col. ‘You’ll have to speak up, I’m not as young as I used to be.’

‘I
ran outta petrol
,’ the young man admitted, in a surprisingly rough voice. He gave a half-hearted smile, which sent jagged lines crawling up one cheek. ‘God knows how.’

‘Bit of a guzzler, is she?’ Col remarked, studying the well-endowed vehicle in front of him with a practised eye. Its driver glanced back, still fidgeting.

‘A bit,’ he said.

‘Well you’re out of luck here, mate,’ said Col. ‘I’ve not got any spare on me. Do you want to hop in, or wait for someone else?’

The young man hesitated. He seemed rather lost. Col wondered what he was doing out here, in those Salvation Army clothes, driving such a flash truck. He would have looked more at home in a Depression-era jalopy, Col thought.

Could he have
stolen
it?

‘Did you come from Broken Hill?’ Col continued. (The ute was facing south.) ‘Because that’s where I’m going.’ And if he didn’t get a move on, he wouldn’t get there in time. ‘Your choice, mate,’ he added impatiently. ‘Only I can’t afford to waste time.’

‘Thanks,’ said the young man, as if the word had been jerked out of him. ‘I’ll come.’

‘Coombah’s closer –’

‘I’ll come.’

He walked around the front of Col’s ute, heading for the passenger door. Upon reaching it, however, he paused. Then his pale eyes flicked towards his own vehicle.

‘You want to bring something?’ asked Col. ‘You can sling it in the back.’

But the young man shook his head, and climbed into the seat beside Col. He seemed to shrink into himself, hunching his shoulders, folding his arms and pressing his knees together. A muscle flexed in his jaw. He didn’t even glance around as Col changed gears and started off again, leaving the other ute behind.

He seemed preoccupied.

‘Nice truck,’ said Col. ‘Is it new?’

‘Nah.’

‘Must have cost a bit, though,’ Col pressed. He had a hunch that this bloke didn’t actually own the vehicle, and was surprised when his remark elicited a sudden torrent of words.

‘I bought it off a mate. With my insurance money. It was an accident. Bloody kangaroo, bloody
huge
, the size of a cow, straight out of nowhere in the middle of the night. Eyes like headlights. Went straight at me. That’s why I got the bullbar. Never again.’

Col blinked. ‘Ah, well,’ he said. ‘It happens. Roos on the road.’

The young man sniffed, and gazed out the window. Col didn’t know what to make of him. He didn’t seem drunk, or drugged, but there was something a little off-centre about him. Col couldn’t put his finger on it, at first. Desiring more information, he said:

‘What’s your name, anyway? Mine’s Col.’

‘John.’

‘Got family in Broken Hill, John?’

‘Nah.’

‘I do. Sister’s there. And my niece. Funny old place, Broken Hill. Do you live there?’

A brief pause. John shifted, and began to rub his hands together.

‘No,’ he said at last.

‘From further afield, are you?’

John nodded.

‘Queensland?’ asked Col, and John turned a pair of deep-set, bloodshot eyes on him.

‘I thought my mate could help me out,’ he rasped. ‘I thought he had a job for me, but I was wrong. I lost me other job.’

‘Ah,’ said Col.

‘I had that job eight years, and they sacked me. For no reason.’ The harsh voice grew even harsher. ‘Then the roo wrecked me car, and I did me back in. Best mate did the dirty on me. Wife chucked me out. It’s been one thing after the other, like a bloody curse. I’m having nightmares.’

‘And now you’ve run out of petrol,’ said Col. ‘That’s too bad.’

Nevertheless, he spoke with a hint of relief – because he knew what the matter was now. He knew why John had an edgy and broken-backed look. The poor bloke was punch-drunk from ill fortune. His life was going down the toilet. Ten to one, he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Well, that was all right. Col could cope with that. There was no shame in buckling, when you lost everything you’d ever worked for.

The shame was when you didn’t work for anything, and had nothing to lose.