I peel back some of your hair and look at the gash on your head, where the blood has congealed. Would brain damage be a fitting punishment for what you did? Is that what I’ve done?
I shake you again. ‘Come on!’
Your eyelids flicker open, focus on me for a second, thenshut again. I hand you the water, but you’re too out of it to grip the bottle.
‘Open your mouth.’
And you do. I pour the liquid between your lips. You swallow, as if you trust me. You have no idea what I’m doing to you. And yet you must’ve done all this, once. Did you pull over to the side of the road too? Doubt yourself? Cry? What I’m doing doesn’t feel like revenge, not exactly. It feels like something stronger.
I wait until you’ve had almost half the bottle and your eyes are closing again. I see the sweat and dirt and yellow in your teeth. The possibility of killing you throbs inside me. I have the pills. It could be as painless as taking an extra sip. Death can be a gift. Sometimes it is beautiful—in some of Shakespeare’s plays, and in films about love and sacrifice—that last look, the release, knowing there is no more trying. A prize.
On the edge of suburbia, I pull into a petrol station in a small shopping strip. I change into a clean pair of shorts I’d left in the car and stash the bloodstained cargo pants under the seat. You’re still sleeping. Your skin is still hot and your hair is drenched in sweat. You stink even worse. I should clean you up properly, pull the rug off, let your skin breathe, tend the wounds on your head, change your shirt. I like the idea of dressing you, fixing you. But it’s too risky now. We need to move as fast as we can for as long as we can.
After filling up with petrol, I head to a builders’ merchant round the back of an industrial estate and buy rope, gaffer tape and a crate of water bottles. I pick up antiseptic, hand wipes and a packet of trail mix from a display near the tills. I’ll stock up onthe rest later. I probably look suspicious enough as it is, although I see other people are doing the same, preparing for road trips.
‘Hottest time of the year to be travelling,’ one man says to another in the queue. ‘Are we mad or something?’
I hurry back to the car and keep driving. When I turn on the radio, ‘Working Class Man’ blares out. Australian cock rock. You’d probably like it. The singer screams about running like a cyclone—just like us, whirring faster and faster. I drive into the sun, everything glinting gold. It’s hard to see straight, I’m so hot. Even the four-wheel drive’s power air-con can’t cope with the punishing heat. You start snoring; at least I know you’re alive.
This is what I wanted, isn’t it? You, me and this wide empty land. Action, taking a chance. Inviting you in.
I’m squinting, trying to keep my eyes open, when I hit the creature. A soft thud, then the steering goes. I pull the car over, but you don’t stir. The sun is everywhere. I know the advice: don’t drive at sunset out here, there are too many roos. But I haven’t hit a roo, it’s something smaller. When I get out, the heat slams into me, pushing me back. It’s my mother sayingStop.I gasp.
And then I see it, thrown aside like a piece of rubbish.
A fox.
Really? Out here?
I peer at it to make sure. The first one I’ve seen in Australia. As I approach, my eyes fill with tears, guilt twisting in my gut. This fox is skinnier and browner than the ones in London. Have I killed her? I kneel down. She’s panting, eyes closed, one of her legs twisted. I check down her body but can’t see any other obvious wounds, just a bit of blood on her forehead. Maybeshe’s got concussion like you. If I leave her here, she’ll get eaten, picked apart by raptors or dingoes. Or run over again.
I stroke the tip of her ear and think of my Sal. Perhaps she has mated now and is back under the bakery shed waiting for her cubs to arrive. Does she remember me? I lift this fox gently and the slit of one eye opens. She doesn’t resist as I wrap her in one of the new towels and lay her in the footwell of the back seat beneath you. You keep snoring.
Walebing, Miling, Wubin.The small towns we pass through seem entirely without movement, their houses like stones. The long, straight road continues endlessly past the service stations and memorial parks and grand old gold rush hotels. No huge road trains out in this darkness. Just the stars, the moon. And perhaps cows and roos I could hit at any moment. I keep driving, my eyes so dry and sore it’s almost hard to blink.