“I guess you want me to put my seat belt on? Or would you rather just tie me to the seat?”
You shrugged. “Whatever. I’ve got rope in the trunk if you want, lots of it.”
You laughed out loud then. It was a sound you didn’t make very often and a sound that didn’t suit you. It was too abandoned. Perhaps the wildness of it shocked you, too, because it didn’t last very long. You quickly closed your mouth and stared back through the windshield.
You revved the engine and we pulled away from the house, making our own track through the dirt. I could feel the sweat forming in the palms of my hands, at the back of my neck. I rested my head on the door frame and took a big breath of the dry breeze rushing past. My mouth filled with dust.
The ground was rough and it jolted me around. You didn’t drive fast; I don’t think it was possible on that shrubby, soft land. The wheels spun through the sandier parts, and you revved the engine hard to get out of them. You stopped a couple of times to pull grass from the radiator. I soon got a headache. There was dust in my eyes and ears. A small desert had settled inside my mouth. I reached for the radio.
“Doesn’t work,” you said immediately.
I turned it on anyway. Only a faint hiss came out.
“Told you. We’ll have to sing instead. Can you sing?” You were looking at me, genuinely interested.
“I joined the choir for six months in seventh grade. Don’t you know that already?”
You shrugged. “I wasn’t around all your life. I had to get money. Sometimes I was here, getting this ready.”
You flung your hand toward the collection of buildings disappearing behind us in a cloud of stirred-up sand.
“Did you really build all that?” I asked.
“Sure did,” you said proudly.
“I don’t believe you. There must have been something here first.”
“No way.” You frowned. “I built it all.”
I couldn’t help looking at you scornfully.
“Well, OK, maybe there was an old farm building or something…. I did the rest.”
“How?”
“Slowly.”
“How did you get the money for materials?”
You smiled mysteriously. “Quickly.”
“Tell me.”
You shrugged. “Another time.”
You turned back to the front, scanning the land.
“Do you know how long I’ve been here?” I asked.
“A vague idea.”
The car slowed again as it hit another thick patch of sand. I thumped my head back hard against the seat, suddenly frustrated by it all. “I think it’s my twenty-first day, but I’m not even sure….”
I bit my words back quickly, looking at your wide grin, instantly wishing I hadn’t told you.
“We should celebrate, then,” you exclaimed.
I swallowed, cringing inside. “What do you mean?”
The car tipped down onto stonier ground. As you felt the change in texture, you pressed your foot flat and spun the wheel. The back of the car twisted sideways, the engine groaning as the wheels struggled to keep a grip. You started laughing as I was flung into your shoulder. I saw sand and spinifex spin past in a blur. I scrabbled frantically for something to hold on to.
“Whoo-hoo!” you screamed.
As the car twisted again, you spun the wheel the other way. I was pushed into the door this time. I stuck my arm out the window and clung on to it. Clouds of dust flew up and into my face but I could hear you, still laughing, as you wrenched the hand brake and we skidded to a violent stop. Your eyes were shining as you rested your cheek against the steering wheel.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
“Having fun? Celebrating?” You looked out at the openness, grinning. “I mean, no one’s going to stop us, are they?”
I looked out, too, noticing the giant skid marks cutting through the untouched land behind us. “It doesn’t mean you have to kill me,” I said, immediately regretting my choice of words. When I looked back at you, you were thoughtful, your eyes sad.
“Just want you to have a little fun.”
I snorted. “Then you should have left me in England.”
When you took off, more gently that time, I looked at what you did. You stuck your left foot down on the clutch and put the stick shift nearest you into first gear. You didn’t touch the other stick. As you eased off, you pressed down on the accelerator. Dad had tried teaching me to drive once, in an abandoned railway yard behind the supermarket, but after I’d scratched his Mercedes along a hedge, he hadn’t tried again. You saw me watching.
“You wanna learn?”
You laughed, and shook your head slightly before pressing your foot flat to the floor again. My head stuck to the headrest and sand spurted everywhere. Some of it came through the window and settled in my lap. When the speedometer hit seventy, you yelled for me to pull the hand brake. There was a mad grin on your face as the tires snaked and skidded through the sand. I started screaming for you to stop.
“Pull the hand brake, then!”
I put my hand on the hand brake and pulled. Immediately, the car swung hard in an arc. I’m sure it went up on two wheels for a second or two. I was flung so hard into you that I couldn’t move away. The warmth of your shoulder slammed up against my forehead, and your body vibrated as you laughed.
We’d been driving for over two hours. I’d been looking for signs of a town, signs of anything. In all that time, there wasn’t even a road. It seemed crazy to drive for so long and to still be nowhere. Sure, the scenery had changed a bit during the journey; it had gone from being scrubby and pebbly and flat to being sandier and redder. Instead of the knee-high spinifex bushes, there were more spindly blackened trees. There was the occasional green splash of a eucalyptus, and jagged rocks pierced through the landscape like spears. There were other mounds, too, pointing up like crooked red fingers.
“Termite mounds,” you said.
It was nothing like being in England. When Dad drove us west for two hours last year we’d ended up in Wales, another country. But there, in that desert, two hours was like driving farther into fire. The more we drove, the hotter and redder it became and the more I feared I’d never be able to get out.
You pulled up slowly, near a small splattering of trees. “See ‘em?” you asked.
“See what?”
“Them! Right there!” You pointed at the trees. “Look for when their ears move, then you’ll see them.”
I looked at the trees. Suddenly, something twitched. An ear. I traced it down till I found the head and the long nose. I saw its big brown eyes, closing in the heat.
“Kangaroos,” I said.
You nodded, grinned a little. “Tasty ladies.”
“What?”
You pointed your first two fingers like a gun and, resting your arm on the steering wheel, you mimed it going off.
“You’re going to shoot them?”
“One of those flyers would taste good in my stew, don’t you think?”
I swallowed. I didn’t know you had a gun in the car. It scared me. You shifted in your seat toward me, thinking I was upset about what you’d said about the ‘roos.
“It’s OK,” you said. “I won’t shoot them, you know. We have plenty of food.”
I looked back at the three of them. The nearest kangaroo was licking the hair on her forearms.
“She’s keeping cool,” you said. “Her blood vessels are near the surface of her skin and she licks them to lower her body temperature. Pretty good method, right?”
You licked the back of your hand as if to try it for yourself, then scrunched your face at the taste. You smiled crookedly. Just then, one of the ‘roos reached up to nibble a low-hanging leaf.
“Aren’t they thirsty?” I asked, aware the dryness in my own throat.
You shook your head. “Don’t need water, or much of it; they get moisture from the trees.”
You were smiling as you watched them, with a look
on your face that I recognized. It was like you wanted something, needed something, from the kangaroos, too.
“Bye, pretty ladies,” you said as you eased the car away.
We drove on without speaking. I watched you from time to time. Your eyes were continuously scanning the land, never content with watching the sand in front of the windshield.
“How do you know where you’re going?” I asked.
“I follow the way the sand’s been blown. I look for markers.”
“Do you know how to get back?”
You nodded absently. “Course.”
“How?”
“It’s got stories, this land. It sings.”
“I’d rather have the radio.”
“Nah, Gem, I’m serious. There are songs out here, the oldfellas know ‘em, I know some of them … they’re like maps, they help you find the way. You sing ‘em and they show you the landmarks. There’s a whole silent music out here: dirt music.”
I ignored you and stared at the horizon instead. You didn’t speak again. You could have been thinking about the land singing or, just as easily, something more sinister. Your face revealed nothing. I’d never imagined what kidnappers thought about before. I mean, who does? Did you think about your family? The places you left behind? What exactly did you think about me?
My stomach flipped when I imagined that and I presumed the worst. The more we drove, and the more I thought about what you could be thinking, the tenser I got. If you killed me then, out there in the middle of nowhere, no one would know. No one would dig for a body in that endlessness. It would be like trying to find a certain grain of sand.
You stopped the car with a skid. “Camels,” you said. You pointed at something that looked more like specks on the windshield than a bunch of large animals. I raised my hand to shield my eyes. You leaned across me to the glove compartment, then dropped binoculars into my lap. “You’ll see better with those.”
I lifted them to my eyes. “It’s blurry.”
You reached over and twisted the knob on top. You were too close to back away from. A faint sweat smell clung to your chest.
“I can do that myself.” I moved the binoculars from you and focused until the image was clear.
Five camels, four large ones and a slightly smaller one, were walking slowly, loping across the horizon. With the heat haze behind them, they looked like moving streaks of sand, twisting with the wind.
“I didn’t believe you when you said there were camels.”
“They’re feral,” you said. “Imports, like you. They were brought over to make the railway.”
“Railway?”
“Yeah, long way away.” You nodded. “And it doesn’t run much anyway. Nothing much runs anymore, out here.”
“Why not?”
“Everything’s moved out—the rocks are mined, animals extinct, oldfellas gone. It makes everything quiet, too quiet. Can’t you hear it?”
“What?”
You turned the car off.
“Silence.”
You shielded your eyes and watched the camels.
“Aren’t you going to try to catch one?” I asked.
“They’re too far away to chase. They run pretty fast, you know? Hopefully they’ll get curious and come to us. Either that or we’ll need some firmer sand to drive on, to get the speed to catch ‘em. We’ll have to wait, see what they do.”
“For how long?”
You shrugged. “However long it takes. Few hours, maybe.” You opened your door. “Hungry?”
I shook my head; food was the last thing on my mind.
“I’ll get the ropes ready, then.”
You got out and went around to the trunk. You rustled in there. I turned in my seat and watched you pull out a coil of rope. I stiffened, imagining you wrapping that rope around my body.
The keys were still in the ignition.
I could do it. I could get to them, if I was quiet. I could slither up and over the hand brake and into the driver’s seat—easy. Then I could speed off before you stopped me, before you even realized. Surely, it wasn’t that hard, driving. I’d done it before; I knew how to change gears. I could leave you out there, perhaps running you over as I went.
I watched you in the rearview mirror. Your head was down, your hands shifting things around in the trunk. I moved my leg up so that my knee was resting on the seat, beside the hand brake. All I had to do was stretch my leg across to the driver’s side, then maneuver my body over. I lifted my leg above the hand brake. Slowly, slowly, inch by inch, I started to move into your seat. I didn’t make a sound, not so much as a chair creak. The only thing I could hear was my heartbeat. I lowered myself onto your seat. I put my hands on the steering wheel. Even with my legs stretched all the way out, my feet couldn’t quite reach the pedals. I shuffled forward until I was on the edge of the seat. I moved my hand to the keys. Silence. I realized then that I hadn’t heard your rustling for a while. I glanced in the rearview mirror.
Something moved to my right. My breath caught as I realized what it was. Its silvery head was resting on the edge of the open window, no more than a hand’s width away from me. Its beady amber eyes were staring back at mine, its tongue flashing in and out. It was smelling the air, smelling me.
I took my hand from the keys and pushed myself back into the chair, pressing my body as far away from it as I could. The snake stopped. It turned its head sideways. I knew it was about to strike at me. I couldn’t look. Quickly, I scrambled back across the hand brake. But my foot caught. I fell into the passenger seat, hitting my head and shoulders hard against the door. I checked my body. Nothing hurt. Had it got me without me even feeling it? Its silver-brown head was still there, watching, resting on the sill.
It was then I saw your hands. They were also on the sill, holding the snake just under the head. Your face moved into the window frame, too, inches from the snake’s.
“Pretty snake, hey? Found her near the wheels. We nearly ran over her … lucky we didn’t.”
I don’t know whether you saw the look of terror still in my eyes. Or whether you knew I’d been in the driver’s seat, trying to get away. For all I knew, this was your sick way of punishing me.
“It’s harmless,” you said. “Pretty much. If that’s what you’re worried about…. ‘Bout the only one out here that is.”
“Why do you have it?”
“To show you.”
“To scare me?”
“Nah.” You looked fondly at the creature. “I thought we’d take it back to the house. A pet. You can name it.”
“I’m not driving anywhere with that thing in the car.” I spoke breathlessly, the words coming out in starts.
“We’ll attach it to the camel, then.” You grinned. You took the snake away. Again I could hear you clunking things around in the trunk. I hoped it wasn’t the snake going in there. I had to keep swallowing to stop the vomit rising in my throat. I breathed in three deep breaths, as deep as I could make them with my heartbeat racing. I shut my eyes tight and imagined I was back home, sitting in our hot airing cupboard. When I heard you get back in the car, I kept them closed.
“I’m sorry if it scared you,” you said quietly. “I just wanted you to see it. I forgot you don’t like snakes yet.” You turned the engine on. “Come on, I’ll try to make it up to you.”
Then you started driving. You didn’t speak again for some time. My body swayed and my head was pressed back into the headrest as the engine roared and struggled with the land.
After more rough driving, you stopped the car. I heard your door shut and the trunk snap open. When I finally opened my eyes, all I could see was sky: bright blue, cloudless sky, with a large bird circling in it. I sat up. We were parked somewhere high up. Through the windshield I could see the desert stretched out before me like a map, an endless blanket of brown and orange and flatness. There were small squiggles of green—the spinifex—and humps of gray—rocks—and long dark worms of dry riverbeds.
There were trees
around the car with red-black trunks, and ants crawling up them. I even heard birds somewhere above me: small birds, chattering like kids on a school excursion. There were rocks around us, too, with swirls and patterns in their texture. Tiny flowers grew out of their crevices, and a slight breeze made their petals sway. Considering the barren land all around, this place was a kind of oasis.
You’d spread a picnic to the left of the car, under one of the larger trees. You sat at the edge of a faded tartan blanket, chopping some sort of fruit. The seeds oozed out as your knife cut in. Flies were settling on the rolls you’d made earlier. You didn’t brush them away.
There was a bottle of sparkling wine. It seemed so out of place standing up in the sand that I couldn’t stop staring at it. I got out of the stifling car, drawn to the promise of a breeze more than anything. You poured me a glass, then poured yourself a smaller one.
“Just as well I brought it.”
“Why?”
“Your twenty-first day! It’s special. You must think so, too, or you wouldn’t have said.”
Once again I wished I’d kept that information to myself. I looked down at the glass in my hand. “Have you drugged this?”
You knocked yours back in one annoyed movement. “I won’t do that again, I told you.”
I shook the glass slightly as I studied it. Some of the liquid fell over the top and onto my hand. It was warm. Back home, my parents hid alcohol in a locked glass cabinet. Instead I’d get drunk with my friends in the park on someone else’s booze. But out there, with you, I didn’t want it. I tipped the liquid into the dirt. You poured us both another glass right away.
You handed me a roll. The damper bread was hard as rock and the tomato slice inside looked like it had melted. You caught my expression and shrugged.
“Best we have.”
“If you’re trying to impress me with a picnic, it’s not going to work.”
“I know,” you said gravely. “I forgot the strawberries.”
You took your shirt off and wiped your forehead. Then you knocked back your second glass and lay your head onto the T-shirt, staring up at the tree branches. Something was shaking the leaves up there, and you frowned as you tried to figure out what. Sweat beads formed on your chest, settling in the hollows of your muscles. I took a tiny sip from my glass. It was like hot fizzy tea. I recognized a sweater from the dresser back at the house sitting folded on a corner of the blanket; I grabbed it and stuck it on top of my head. The sun was beating down through the branches and leaves, making the landscape lazy.
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