Settlers' Creek (26 page)

Some time during the journey — early on, he thought — his whole left arm from the shoulder right down into his fingers began to throb. He drove with his right hand. His left lay in his lap. Keeping it low seemed to dampen down the internal drumming but didn’t stop it entirely. At first he thought it was throbbing in time with his heartbeat but then he came to realise that it had its own rhythm, unique and unpredictable.

Box became aware that the road had begun to twist and turn through a valley. Pale limestone outcrops loomed up on both sides.

One squatted closer to the road than the others. Higher
up, parts of it actually jutted over the road. In the headlights, its profile became a frog, as perfect in its details as if it had been carved. It was a frog right down to the swollen throat and the heavy-lidded eye blinking after him in the shadows.

Red lights flashing ahead of him on a long straight stretch of road. Of course, a roadblock.

He was all set to run it — what movie did he think he was in? — when he saw that he was approaching the lights of a railway crossing. The car slowed and came to a stop.

There were no barrier arms, just the tracks over the road and the lights in the night. Pulses of hard red light. The bells were clanging, improbably loudly.

On either side of him, row after row of grapes were growing, the vines protected from the birds by white bridal veils, now drenched by the red light.

Box sat and waited.

The inside of the car lit up red and then cut back to darkness in an endless cycle.

Red.

Dark.

Red.

Dark.

For how long? Box had no idea.

It felt like he sat and watched the flashing lights and the blushing rows of bridal grapes for hours. No other cars appeared. There was no sign of a train.

In the end he edged slowly out over the tracks. No Cyclops thundered down upon him. As he drove away
the noise of the clanging bells faded. It took longer for the flashing red light to melt completely into the landscape behind him.

An agricultural supply shop, next to a dark dairy, before a closed café and then front-lawn-and-hedge, weatherboard houses strung out along the side of the wide road.

Box didn’t know the name of the town he was passing through. He would have known it on another day, but it was lost to him now. He had followed the instructions on the sign and slowed to fifty ks as he entered town. Now the Nissan was travelling past the houses in slow motion compared with the speed he had been going over the open road.

He felt that he could’ve got out and carried Mark on his back more quickly. He could have shot through doing a hundred but he didn’t want to risk being pulled over by some insomniac cop out collecting revenue in his big Holden. Chances were, though, that even the local policeman was home asleep. Crime, like everything else, was closed for business at this hour.

As he rolled slowly past the houses, Box imagined the people sleeping inside. He thought of them as ruddy faced and plain. He imagined the men and women of this town stirring in their beds as he went by; heads moving from side to side, rolling over and pulling the sheets higher, muttering instinctive spells in their sleep against the bloody broken-faced bogeyman moving by in the dark, his dead scarecrow son riding at his shoulder.

He was out of the foothills now, onto the plains proper where the road was as straight as if it had been divinely ruled across the fields of wheat and barley. Big irrigators worked in the night, sucking water out of the rivers and spraying it in high arcs over the fields, the jets catching the moonlight. Someone had wound down the driver’s side window, must’ve been him but he didn’t remember doing it. The cool air flowed over his face and into his mouth, drying out his tongue and making him wish that he had a bottle of water. To the east the sky was pale with the light of the city. He would be home soon.

He’d planned to approach the city from the southwest, using the back roads. But now, lost in the fog that had rolled in across his mind, he couldn’t imagine where he might turn off.

Or maybe he
had
turned.

The road he was driving down didn’t look like the main highway any more. The headlights were leading him along a narrow road with wide grass verges. There were high square walls of trimmed hedge on both sides.

His mouth was terribly dry. His eyelids were lead. The road seemed to falter in and out of his vision. And then it was gone.

Box heard a sound like thousands of fingernails scratching against wood and then a sudden explosion.

And then, blissfully, nothing.

There was an irritating scratching against Box’s cheek. Without opening his eyes he brushed at it with his hand but it didn’t go away. If anything, it actually got worse. Box moaned and opened his eyes, expecting to see the back of Liz’s head, her hair a dark tangle on their sunflower-yellow pillow.

Instead there was a steering wheel. The dashboard. The dials were still lit up. Pressed up against the windscreen glass — it took him time to work out what he was looking at — was a heavy latticework tangle of thin branches and dead twigs. The engine was still running and the headlights were on.

Box reached down and fumbled for the door. He found the latch and pulled. The door gave a fraction but, even when Box put his shoulder into it, it wouldn’t open any more than a crack before it sprang back.

The seatbelt was holding him down. He clicked it open, then twisted. Mark was still there.

Out the back window of the Nissan, Box could see the night sky. He leaned across the passenger seat and tried the other door and it swung open. Awkwardly, Box edged himself out from behind the wheel and over the gearstick and into the passenger seat. Wriggling and squirming, he got out. He found himself on his hands and knees among the fragrant smells of dried earth and macrocarpa. Box pushed through a thin screen of branches and came out onto a grass verge next to a deserted road.

Judging by the angle of the car he’d missed a telephone pole by less than a metre. Couldn’t have been doing a hundred, though, not when he’d hit the hedge. He didn’t remember. His foot must have come off the accelerator when he fell asleep — passed out? It must have. Otherwise he would’ve woken up dead.

He was about to attempt to reverse the Nissan out of the hedge when headlights appeared up the road. The lights got closer and then slowed down. It was a light truck, the words ‘Hills Haulage’ and ‘Home Relocation’ written on the side
.

A figure got down from the cab. Box couldn’t see his face in the darkness. ‘You okay, mate?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘What happened?’

‘Not sure exactly. I must’ve gone to sleep.’

A low whistle. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

‘Yeah. I was lucky.’

‘Which way were you going?’

‘Into town.’

Box saw the man’s head turn. He was looking along the probable path the Nissan had taken — off the road, over the grass verge, into the hedge. He let out a low exhaled
expletive into the air. ‘You must have a guardian angel.’

‘I’m going to try and back it out,’ said Box.

Box pushed his way back into the hedge. The Nissan’s lights were still on, the beams split into a hundred shadows by the tangle of branches.

Why not just give it up now? he thought. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Stubborn prick.

He scrambled awkwardly back into the Nissan but caught his bandaged arm on the passenger door. He heard himself grunt.

‘You okay, mate?’

‘Fine,’ he called.

A fresh waft of the rank smell filling the car. Mostly it was Mark but probably some of it was him as well. Box wedged himself behind the wheel and put the car into reverse. The engine roared and the car lurched back but then jammed on something.

There was a bang on the rear window. Box could hear the truck driver yelling. He took his foot off the accelerator and the engine roar sank back.

‘Hold up. She’s caught.’

Box turned off the engine and again went through the awkward pantomime of getting out the passenger side. When he was out on the verge again he saw that the truck driver had fetched a torch and was shining it under the car. A pin prick of fire close to his mouth showed Box the man’s cigarette. The smell of cigarette smoke made him suddenly desperate for a warm drag of nicotine.

‘There’s ya problem. There’s a bit of a ditch. Both your back wheels are off the ground. I’ve got a rope in the truck if you want to give towing it a crack.’

‘That would be good. Thanks.’

‘No worries.’

Box watched as the man manoeuvred the truck into position and then a tied a tow-rope onto the back of the Nissan. The driver went back into the cab of his truck and sat behind the wheel. He closed the door, but reached above his head and flicked on the internal light. Box saw his face for the first time. He was clearly Maori.

He leaned out of the cab. ‘Is she in neutral, with the handbrake off?’

‘I’ll check.’

Box pushed back into the hedge and leaned inside the car and rattled the gearstick. When he emerged he called out, ‘All set.’

The Maori put the truck into gear and began to slowly move forward. The hedge groaned. There was the scrape of branches along the side panels of the car, sounding as deep as any street kid’s coining. The Nissan moved slowly backwards. It pitched on the uneven ground, then rolled smoothly back onto the grass. Behind it was a dark hole like an arched doorway in the hedge.

‘How’s it looking?’ the driver called.

‘That should do it.’

‘Okay.’

Box untied the rope from the Nissan’s tow-bar and then got back into the car. He started the engine and drove slightly forward. There seemed to be no problem. Like the man said, he must have a guardian angel.

The Maori came over to the window and looked down at Box.

‘Looks like you got away without much damage.’

‘I got lucky.’

‘If I was you I’d buy a Lotto ticket soon as I got home.’

‘I might do that. Thanks for your help.’

Box saw the man’s eyes move to the back seat. ‘Shit. Gave me a fright. I didn’t know there was anyone with you.’

With the internal lights off Box knew that the boy was just a heavy shadow.

‘My son, Mark. He’s not feeling too good.’

‘Is he hurt?’

‘Nothing like that. He’s asleep.’

The Maori screwed up his face dubiously. The torch in his hand lifted slightly but he didn’t shine the light through the window. Box knew that the driver was a moment away from seeing the truth.

‘Thanks again for your help. I don’t know how we would have got on if you hadn’t come along.’

‘No worries. I’m sure you would have done the same for me. You got far to go tonight?’

‘No,’ said Box truthfully. ‘We’re almost home.’

‘Okay. Take care.’

‘You too.’

And then the man stuck his hand in through the open window. Box reached up and took it and they shook.

‘Cheers,’ said Box.

‘God bless, eh.’

And then Box pulled away. He bumped the car slowly over the verge and back onto the smooth road.

‘Almost home. Won’t be long now.’