By the Seat of My Pants

by Lonely Planet

  When I lifted my head from my hands I found myself staring at a pair of emus, each a good six feet tall. They regarded me with curiosity, their fist-sized heads bobbing up and down on spaghetti necks. They were likely not used to seeing college kids covered in red dirt, bleeding and crying about the prospect of having to listen to Cyndi Lauper for infinity. And I was naked. I hadn’t seen a person in two days and it felt pretty cool to be driving around naked. Not that it made a difference to the emus. They sniffed through the debris left in the van’s wake from the road – my camera in pieces, more CD cases, more canned beans, more books, bottles of water, a compass, underwear, a boot, two pairs of shattered sunglasses, pens, paper, a cowboy hat, coins, cash, until they reached the van itself and got an earful of Cyndi’s chorus. At that, the emus ran off to wherever it is they run off to. Me, I had nowhere to go. The next town was about 200 kilometres away. I picked up a pair of underpants that had fallen out of the van and put them on. The cowboy hat and the one (right) boot too. And waited.

  Now, while patches of the Milky Way blossomed overhead, and the red of the desert was hugging the bottom of the sky, Cyndi was informing me of exactly how much fun girls just wanna have for the seventy-fourth time. It was getting cold. The matches were still somewhere in the van, next to my mattress, along with all my other worldly belongings. The thing had eaten them all. It had tried to eat me. And I felt like it might get up at any time and have another go at it. But I needed those matches for a fire. Then I saw the smallest blob of light on the horizon, as if the sun was coming back for me at the end of the road. Headlights.

  It took a long time before the lights got any bigger, and then impossibly long before I could see the camper van. The red sank below the horizon, then the orange, and finally the canary yellow. The sky was all black and blue and stars by the time the camper van got me in its headlights.

  I flailed my arms wildly as though they might not notice some bleeding guy standing in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere in his underwear, one boot and a cowboy hat. They came within three metres of me and stopped. Blinded in the headlights, I heard the windows roll up. Then the doors lock. Did this look like a carjacking to them? I pointed to my van. The camper van, the size of a small home, crept towards me nervously over the lumpy dirt and rocks that made up the road. It pulled up alongside me. The window came down and from within the dark interior a small voice asked, ‘What in God’s name is that noise?’

  ‘That’s Cyndi Lauper, sir’, I said.

  ‘Sounds like Satan’, he said.

  ‘You’re telling me, sir.’

  ‘What’s a Canadian doing out here?’

  ‘American, sir.’

  ‘America?!’ said another voice, a woman, from a bit further back in the darkness, probably the passenger seat. ‘Graceland?’

  ‘Nope. New Haven, Connecticut, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Connecticut?’ said the man. ‘No kidding? We’ve been to Detroit before. Went to a dry-cleaning convention there in ‘84.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Do they still have Old Landmark Church of God in Christ there?’

  ‘Not really sure.’

  ‘Have you been to Graceland?’ asked the woman. ‘We’ve been to Graceland.’

  ‘Nope’, I said. ‘Anyway, I’m kinda bleeding and cold and my van’s over there on its side and –’

  ‘What are you doing in Australia?’ asked the man. I could make out the top of his bald head now, and the woman’s silhouette – big glasses and big hair.

  ‘I was spending a semester abroad’, I said. ‘Studying at the Queensland College of Art. Just got done and wanted to see the country before I have to go back to the States and my van’s over there on its – ‘

  ‘Just travelling ourselves. Bought this camper van after we retired four years ago, started driving and forgot to stop. This is our fifth lap round the bush. We keep it at a slow clip, that way it stays right-side up. I’m Joseph and this is Mary.’

  ‘Josh.’

  ‘Well, Josh, where in God’s name are your clothes?’

  ‘In the van.’

  Silence. I didn’t feel like explaining that I had become scared to death of my own car. Then he said, ‘Well, Josh, did you see that sign way back there at the start of the desert that said “Four-wheel drive vehicles only, contact police before you begin and when you get through” or something like that?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Was your van four-wheel drive?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Did you contact the police?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Connecticut, huh?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Joseph opened the door, smiling. He was a cherubic old man with a thin horseshoe of white hair around his head. He got an enormous chain out of the back and we fixed it to the trailer behind their camper van. First we turned my van right-side up, put two of their spare tyres on it, then dragged it to the road. I picked up my belongings from the ground, tossed them into the van, and we set off towards what they said was a small town ahead. The beast seemed a lot less menacing now that it was on a leash. It resembled a gargantuan, crinkled egg blasting Cyndi Lauper as we putted along in second gear.

  To this day I can’t recall much that was said in that camper van. But I remember they were good people. I remember they said they were ‘believers’. And that they were explaining their philosophy of ‘B’s’ – beers, bananas and Bibles – when Joseph slammed on the brakes and I, along with several Bibles and bananas (I had yet to see any beers), went flying into the dashboard.

  When I looked through the windshield there was a flock of camels walking through the yellow headlights, oblivious to us. It took a good two minutes for them to cross the road. I was in the process of smacking myself to try to wake up when Mary explained that camels were brought here before cars and then left to roam the deserts with nothing to do but procreate and now Australia had more wild camels than anywhere on earth.

  When the last camel walked off the road ahead it was replaced by an Aboriginal man in jeans and a T-shirt, waving his arms. His clothes, hair and face were caked in red dirt like mine. Behind him was a small station wagon, and next to that a woman, also covered in desert, holding a backpack. The car, other than being upside down, looked just fine. Joseph and Mary rolled their windows up and locked their doors.

  Ten minutes later Freddie and his mother-in-law Awoonga were sitting on either side of me as we jiggled along the road. We left their car where it was. Like Joseph and Mary, they had avoided hitting the camels, and, like me, they had knocked over a tree. They’d been travelling from Awoonga’s family’s farm to Freddie’s farm. Both farms were about 400 kilometres from this road on different sides of it. I asked them what they grew and they looked at me oddly. They said they had met a Canadian like me once down in Perth. I told them I was American. Freddie asked me how the black people were in America. I told him they were fine. He asked if their situation was like his. I told him that the predicament of the Native Americans was more like that of the Aborigines. He asked me the same question again. When I didn’t respond he asked me to ask his mother-in-law if she had remembered to bring the tomato sauce in her bag. He explained that tribal law forbade them to speak to each other. I asked him why. That was just the way it was, he said. We should all be so lucky, I said. After I asked her, Awoonga said the tomato sauce was on the back of Freddie’s shirt. She said it had exploded all over the car and it had made her very scared because she thought it was her insides. Freddie swore under his breath in some language I couldn’t understand, then asked if Mary had any tomato sauce. She said no, sorry, and gave us all bananas. Ten minutes later we pulled up to a small tin-roofed house adjoining an enormous garage, all by itself on the side of the road.

  ‘Told you there was a town here’, said Joseph.

  At least the lights were on. He pulled alongside the house and said they’d sleep here in the camper van for the night. Freddie, Awoonga and I step
ped out, walked up to the front door, and knocked.

  A couple of minutes later a woman opened the door, screamed, and slammed it shut. Another minute passed and a small man came to the door.

  ‘Where in the death of Adam are your clothes, mate?’ he asked me. His jaw was so slight and his chin so long it turned his face into a triangle.

  I explained the situation and he asked what in the death of Adam that had to do with my clothes. Before I could think of an answer he asked if that was Cyndi Lauper. ‘I love that song’, he said. ‘I wanna be the one to walk in the sun. Oh girls just wanna have fu-un!’

  I asked if he might be able to work on my van and get Freddie’s and work on that too. He informed me that he was watching the Tri-State Rugby Championship and that his wife was the mechanic but she too was watching the Tri-State Rugby Championship and they’d have to do it in the morning and he’d met a Canadian in Melbourne last year and we were very nice people. I said thank you.

  ‘See any dead roos on the way in?’ he asked.

  ‘There were a couple kangaroos’, I said. ‘I think there was one a few k’s south.’

  ‘Puffed up yet, was it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Bang on. Need to feed the chooks out back. Julia’ll grab it in the morning when she gets your mate’s ute.’

  I thanked him.

  Freddie just stood there, staring at the small man.

  Finally the man said, ‘What is it, blackfella?’

  Freddie cleared his throat. ‘Do you have any tomato sauce?’ he asked.

  ‘G’night.’ And the small man closed the door.

  On the other side of the road Freddie and I dug a small pit in the hard earth. While we scavenged for firewood he told me about a large rock fish named Alakitja who swam between endless white water lilies in the river known as the Milky Way. The lilies were so bright you could see them from the earth. ‘Stars’, said Freddie as he picked up another handful of twigs for kindling. ‘While hiding from the hard sun, Alakitja was caught by two brothers and they sit up there now eating him by their campfire which is also named the Southern Cross.’ He pointed to it.

  The entire band of the Milky Way, which isn’t as clearly visible in the Northern Hemisphere, arched overhead from horizon to horizon. Although I had never spotted it, I knew from the Australian flag that the Southern Cross was five stars and I did not understand how you could draw two brothers eating at a campfire out of five points, and I had no idea which stars he was pointing to but I told him they were nice. He tossed the kindling in the pit we had dug and began to cry. I told him they were better than nice, beautiful. He said it was not that. Then he walked off to a tree and I heard branches snapping off it. For the first time, my left foot began to hurt pretty bad.

  Once we had the fire going, Awoonga joined us. As did a peacock, but I seemed to be the only one surprised by its presence. Its head drooped and it ignored us and looked very tired but happy to be warm. Freddie dug through Awoonga’s backpack, pulled out something the size of a subway sandwich and unwrapped the tinfoil around it. I told him it looked gross, like a cow’s tongue or something, and he said that was what it was. He cut it in three pieces and gave one to me and one to Awoonga.

  ‘Sweet, eh?’ he said, biting off a decent-sized chunk. ‘If only we had tomato sauce. If only.’

  It was sinewy but broke apart easily once you really got to chewing it. Like you’d imagine your own tongue probably would if you had the guts to really truly chew on it. And he was right, it would have been better with tomato sauce.

  He asked where I was going and I explained that I’d spent four weeks driving around the country and was now headed to Sydney to meet my girlfriend. I asked him if he had a girl.

  ‘I have three wives’, he said. ‘But I only have love for one.’ He nodded towards Awoonga. ‘Her daughter Wangara.’

  Awoonga smiled. ‘I have not seen her in one year’, she said. ‘Freddie is taking me back to his farm in his new car to see her.’

  ‘It is true about loving Wangara’, said Freddie. ‘I am not just saying it. I love her ever since she come to our place with Awoonga when she was eight years old and me ten. We would sleep on the floor next to our mattress so that we could listen for the Sun Woman. You see, the Sun Woman rises in the morning and lights a fire below the horizon and there she uses red ochre powder to decorate her face. Often it spills into the air and this is the red of dawn. She goes west to her other camp site and carries her torch, our sun, across the sky. The camp site is just below the horizon and there she smothers the torch and takes off the make-up she uses and it rises again into the air and creates the colours of dusk. To return to her morning camp she walks through a tunnel underground and everything is dark.

  ‘It is an old tale. But me and Wangara would lie on the floor and listen for the Sun Woman in her tunnel. We would lie across from each other and look at each other in the starlight through the open window until starlight went away and the Sun Woman put on her make-up and only then could you see the five gold spots like the Southern Cross in Wangara’s left eye that trembled each time she shifted her sight from one of my eyes to the other and the sun came into the room through the window on the wall then down onto the floor making our feet warm as it went higher in the sky and then over our bodies until it went into our eyes and we had to close them and not look at each other any more and only then did we sleep. I love her ever since then and many many suns afterward I still love her and the gold spots in her left eye.’

  Joseph came up to the fire and handed each of us a paper cup. ‘Banana oatmeal chocolate stout.’ He pointed to the small trailer behind the camper. ‘Our brewery’, he said. ‘Happy Independence Day!’

  ‘Whose independence is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yours’, he said. ‘Isn’t yours July fourth?’

  ‘Didn’t realise it was July’, I said.

  I used the beer to wash down the last bit of tongue. The drink was thick as tar, but sweet. Joseph said he had better climb back into bed with Mary but he had two extra sleeping bags in the camper van. Awoonga went with him to get them.

  Freddie glared at the fire across from me, his eyes like twin embers. His hair shot straight back, wiry and thick, grey and black like smoke. He sipped his beer. ‘What are you doing out here, Josh?’ he asked.

  ‘Looking for nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Well, you see, New Haven – it’s a city in the States – is the smallest place I ever lived. Finding a place which is empty, where there is nothing, is everything to me. I drove across the American desert last summer only to find the roads paved and the land fenced off. So I thought I’d give your country a go.’

  ‘You should come to work for me on the farm.’

  ‘What do you grow there?’

  ‘Grow? It is a farm.’

  I let it drop.

  ‘Car accidents happen quite often here’, he said.

  ‘No kidding.’

  ‘I was in another one last month.’ He lifted his shirt to reveal a bruised and glistening tangle of flesh below the left side of his ribs. ‘The gear-shifter did this. It speared me. But, Wangara, her face smashed, she died. I have not been able to tell Awoonga – or have someone tell Awoonga – this. None of her farm knows. But tomorrow we will be at my farm where everyone knows.’

  Awoonga walked back into the glow of the fire. She sat beside Freddie and lay the sleeping bags between them. Freddie looked up from his beer to me. His eyes were welling up, the fire’s reflection building in the bottoms, the tops white with starlight, and in between his pupils filled with bottomless supplication. Cyndi Lauper, mid-chorus, came to an abrupt halt. There was only the fire. There was none of the insect noises I had heard in other parts of Australia.

  I said goodnight, but Freddie was silent, unblinking, afraid to knock those twin reflections down his cheeks. The peacock stuck its head up as I passed it and entered the cold starlight. I crossed the road and opened the back of the panel van a
nd crept onto my mattress. Everything I had was in pieces around me, bathed in dirt the colour of dawn. I put my ear to the floor and heard the Sun Woman’s footsteps move further and further away, and waited for sleep until she lit her torch. It looked like dusk. Just on the other side of the road.