Red Dirt

by E. M. Reapy

  The lads filled the car, John Anthony made the air go different around him when he got in. Hopper touched the tinfoil in his pocket. He didn’t know when he’d take it or if he’d just fuck it out the window. He shouldn’t be touching psychedelics. He wasn’t right for them yet. He’d never really been right for them.

  ★

  The car journey upset him.

  He slept for the day part of it, except when they stopped – to take pictures, for food and after making shit of a kangaroo. During the night part, he was flooded with thoughts of Norman. It reminded him of Norman being in the car. He’d been bad to him. All Norman’d done was get him out of a spot and all Hopper’d done was fuck him over.

  The boys had argued but John Anthony made everyone shut up with his aggression. Hopper just stayed quiet. Guilty quiet. He’d smoked way too much last night with Ruby. He’d to stop fucking smoking. It made him too paranoid.

  He shouldn’t have touched Norman.

  Was he gay?

  He wasn’t gay. Sure Norman wasn’t either. He had kids and wives and hung out in strip clubs.

  Neither of them were.

  It just seemed like a fair way to say bye. Maybe take the sting out of robbing him.

  Then there was Ruby. She wanted him but she didn’t. Being with her only reminded him who he wasn’t with. It was like someone scraped out his heart when he thought of his old girlfriend, her getting it from another man.

  He hit himself in the head but he couldn’t shake the bad feelings of them. Them over here. Them back in Ireland. Jesus what was he at?

  All the times Hopper thought the wee fella had features like him, the same nose or the same hair. He loved when people agreed.

  He massaged his shoulders. His temple. They were going to be in this fucking car forever and he was going to get stuck with these fucking thoughts. He wiped the back of his neck.

  Her and the baby.

  She moved back in with her mother. He wasn’t allowed see the wee fella after that. Because he’d been cruel with the stuff he said to her and about her around the town. But she had been cruel too.

  Would the wee fella even remember him?

  ‘Fuck this,’ Hopper said. He was done with this thinking. He’d been in the car for too long. The dark was all over him.

  He shouldn’t.

  ‘I have that acid ye know,’ he said and checked his pockets.

  ‘What?’ Murph turned around from the front, amazed.

  ‘Will we take it? There’s another six hours in the car, like.’

  John Anthony said, ‘How long does that shit last?’

  Hopper lit his phone and unwrapped the tinfoil. Shane smiled at him and put his hand out for some like he was receiving the holy communion.

  Hopper rubbed his nose with his sleeve. ‘I don’t have any liquid, just tabs. Should be mild enough. Three hours maybe. Five max.’

  Complete horseshit. It’d probably go for at least ten hours. He’d not been off his head properly in months. He was buzzing with the idea of it.

  Shane smashed his straight away. ‘Been driving all fucking day. I deserve this.’

  Murph took a tab.

  John Anthony said, ‘Do what ye want but be fit for when we get to that farm or I’ll fucking kill yis.’

  Hopper smirked. Dead on.

  ★

  After an hour, or two hours, or maybe less, time felt slimy until the dragon in Hopper’s tattoo started to move. It peeled itself off his arm and floated in front of him. It had a green snake-like body, coiled and scaled. Little sparks and flames flared from its nostrils as it breathed. Hopper opened his eyes and smiled at it.

  ★

  The dragon spoke Chinese. Two whiskers coming out of its mouth swirled in the air. Hopper knew it was his guardian.

  Nobody else in the car could see it, he checked. Murph was staring out the window at the sky. John Anthony was looking at the road. Shane was leaning back into his headrest.

  But then Hopper looked at the dragon and down at his arm.

  MARIE

  His first tattoo. Uncovered. He gulped. He had been hiding from her name. His old girlfriend.

  Hopper scratched his head. His neck. His ears. He tried to shake the dread in his heart. He didn’t look at his arm again, he kept it stretched away from his body. The dragon hovered still and Hopper noticed something burning under its chin. A pearl.

  John Anthony turned around. He was talking but his words were all jumbled.

  ‘Wolf – Shotgun – Dundalk.’

  The dragon hissed at him.

  Hopper started to get worse. He was seeing colours, dangerous colours. Ones that couldn’t be there in the dark, ones that made the panic noise in his chest.

  Shane said, ‘This LSD is a bad batch I reckon,’ and it echoed until Hopper caught the words, the meaning of them.

  Did he think Hopper was trying to poison him or something? Or maybe Ruby was trying to poison Hopper? Would she?

  He was scared. He was really fucking scared.

  ‘Straight for you, Hopper,’ John Anthony said. ‘Pyschopath – petrol – wee weird Aussie - knife?’

  The dragon hissed louder.

  They were all laughing. Even Murph and Shane. His friends. Everyone. Always laughing at Hopper.

  Why did everyone always laugh at him?

  The dragon opened his mouth and a great flame lit a scene in front of Hopper. The more they drove through that desert, the closer they were going to hell. Only badness was waiting for them at the farm. Nothing would be the same again. Hopper could see that clearer than anything, through the orange flames. It was as clear as being hungry or as being sad. So much trouble ahead.

  The dragon showed Hopper visions of a neck – his neck – in front of a big hole. A place like the Super Pit. Norman was there. A knife slit across the skin. Norman’s cloudy white spunk oozed out of Hopper instead of blood. A baby cried.

  MARIE

  The others were laughing. Still. Hopper couldn’t breathe. His arm. Still showing her name.

  The car had walls. Hopper felt around. The dragon flared some light and Hopper found the handle.

  He opened the car door.

  He got free.

  ★

  He came to in a tree but didn’t know how he got up there or how he didn’t fall out when he was asleep, if he did sleep. His hands and arms were scrapes and insect bites. He was clinging to a branch, body across it and legs dangling but he couldn’t shake the fear off, even hours later. The dragon was back on his arm.

  Hopper stayed on his branch. Birds flapped and landed above him. The air twisted into itself and looked like itself but different, like chipper oil on water.

  His skin felt like it was melting.

  He had to find the others and tell them the vision he had – continuing on that straight road in the red dirt wasn’t the way.

  But he couldn’t find them.

  ★

  Did they go? Did they go to the mad mango village without him? Would they?

  No one would do that on anyone, sure Hopper got them the acid, they’d invited him, they knew he wouldn’t know where he was now. He’d just freaked out, he was sound. Some bad tripping but the way out of that is through.

  Were they around somewhere? Looking for him? Getting some help? He was doing a job with them. They brought him with them.

  Were they gone? Hopper looked around the bush. Trees and birds and the road off further. A track road. Not the main road.

  Where the fuck was he? Where the fuck were the lads? Murph and Shane. His friends.

  They were his friends.

  He called out for them. He called until his throat went too dry and just made cracks when he shouted.

  He looked around, the sun was beating down on him. They were definitely gone.

  He was left with nothing but himself.

  Like always.

  ★

  Hopper followed the track. He was thirsty. So fucking thirsty. He got fizzed about the lads and punch
ed some tree trunks. Split his knuckles. Punched his head. But the thirst took over and that was all he could think about.

  He kept trundling through the desert. Parched. Water. Fuck. Water. Collapse. Fade coming. Water. Gold was bollocks. You couldn’t die without gold. Water though. Need water.

  He spotted an old Aborigine. He rubbed his eyes to make sure.

  The chances.

  Hopper asked him for a wee drop of water. The sunshine had dried his insides. Needed a drop of sunblock too. The colour red off him. Burnt alive in the heat.

  ★

  Hopper couldn’t understand why Norman and some Australians were such bastards to the Aborigines. Yer man was as nice as anything when Hopper approached him. He didn’t speak much English but Hopper didn’t speak the best of it himself at times, especially after hallucinogens. They put holes in his talking. Holes in his thinking.

  The Aborigine made his hands say, come on, follow me. Hopper followed him and they went down to this big open bit of desert with a few burnt-out cars. There were loads of kids and women with not much clothes between the lot of them. Some of the kids were chatting and jumping around Hopper when they saw him, asking questions in a different language. All Hopper asked was for water.

  ‘Water, lads. Water. Any chance?’

  He stuck his tongue out to show them. It was coated white. All the juice was sweated out of him and into the desert sky.

  A woman came back with a jug for Hopper to drink from and the jug was lovely with its bright yellow, red, orange dots and shapes. It was what snooty ones go on about, go walking around big halls looking at, pointing at, going ‘Oooh, yooaaah,’ at. The jug was art. Hopper was proud to be drinking out of art.

  The water was better than anything he’d ever tasted before. He drank it greedily and thanked the Aborigine and his family for being so sound.

  He said, ‘Come on The Town,’ and punched the air, just for the laugh because they wouldn’t know it. But they still smiled, their teeth moon white on their dark faces.

  They had an old telly which was showing a news report that all these lads who lived in Libya and Egypt and that part of the world had the fizz. But it was too hot to watch TV, so Hopper walked around the place having a look in the tin-roofed houses, trying not to be a spare prick.

  ★

  In the late afternoon, the Aborigine man got a hollow piece of wood with holes in it and put it on top of some brown grass he’d piled up. His wife put her hands over both sides of the wood. The man got a stick and stuck the bottom of it through the holes. He worked it round and back the other way, up and down. Hopper’s eyes got bigger and bigger. He had it.

  Smoke.

  The Aborigine kept going. Up and down, backwards and forwards. More smoke. The brown grass, she took it. She took the spark and lit.

  ‘Fucking nice one,’ Hopper said and the Aborigine nodded. Hopper took out his lighter from his jean’s pocket. Put his thumb on the wheel and lit that up. Held down the red tab to keep the flame going.

  ‘This is the way I do fires, boss,’ Hopper said, the metal going hot near his thumb.

  The Aborigine nodded again and took a lighter out of his shorts pockets and sparked that. He held his flame up too. Hopper gave a big laugh.

  ★

  At the night time, he stayed with them sitting in front of the campfire. He didn’t talk much. None of them did. They just watched the fire’s show, it going high and wide and low and dipping and flaring and shimmying across the air.

  The Aborigine went, ‘Wimberoo?’ and the kids screamed and jumped excited. He passed on leaves to his wife and she took one and passed them on. All the kids took one and they gave Hopper the eyes to say, ‘You as well.’

  He took one and passed the pile on to the little one that was beside him. The Aborigine picked three of the kids and they stood over the fire warming their leaves until they started to bend. Then they put them into the hot waves of the fire and the leaves flew into the air. They cheered for each other. The kid beside Hopper didn’t win but she was clapping anyway.

  New go.

  The Aborigine picked Hopper, a different kid and a teenager. They stood and did the same thing.

  His leaf shot up, ‘G’wan,’ he roared at it and the kids laughed.

  The teenager won. Hopper didn’t know what he was supposed to do, so he just gave him a small clap.

  After a while of playing and chilling, the kids got sleepy. Hopper was sleepy himself. The woman brought them away leaving him and the Aborigine in front of the fire. Hopper shook his hands because he was sound but as well as that, he was a good dad to them wee ones. Hopper wished he was his dad when he was small. He had a pang thinking that he was once a dad himself.

  The Aborigine squashed a jumper inside another jumper and pucked it into a rectangle shape. He passed it to Hopper and put his hands together like he was praying against his ear.

  ‘Pillow?’ Hopper asked and he nodded. ‘Thanks, boss.’

  The Aborigine walked away to his wife and kids. Hopper took a deep breath, concentrated on the fire and went asleep to the crackle and pop of wood and grass burning.

  ★

  The Aborigines gave him some fruit and the whole family hugged him the next day when he said he’d be on his way. The mother was playing country and western on an old time hi-fi, a big box of a radio Hopper hadn’t seen since him and Ger robbed one from the electric shop in the town when he was twelve.

  They gave him a bottle filled with water for the walk.

  ‘Ye’re awful sound,’ he said.

  When Hopper was off, he got back to the main road and found the teenager hiding from the sun behind a tree. He was sitting on hard dark coloured grass, doing a bit of glue. Hopper watched him inhale. He sat beside him and was offered a huff.

  ‘I dunno. I really shouldn’t,’ Hopper said.

  The teenager offered it again and Hopper hesitated, sighed, took it. They lay against the tree and the world went almost perfect for a few seconds.

  ‘Sometimes wonder,’ the teenager said.

  Hopper turned his head to face him. He was the first to speak English. It sounded strange coming out of his mouth.

  ‘Sometimes wonder, is this what my country felt like before the Invasion,’ he said and took another huff.

  Hopper shrugged. His face was numb.

  The teenager offered him another, his eyes and mouth all fuzzy. Hopper stood when it wore off. When he said he’d to move on, the teenager offered him the lot of it, plastic bag and the big tube full of industrial strength.

  ‘For you, brother.’

  Hopper didn’t want to be rude and he didn’t want to stop now so he accepted. He took the biggest drink of water and it was like kettle water with the heat of it so he left the bottle on the ground.

  Unsure of what day it was or which direction he had come from, he followed where the sun was starting to go down. That must have meant south, or did it mean south when everything was upside down here, he wasn’t sure but he kept going. He didn’t give a fuck anyway ’cause the auld glue would keep him lit for a while.

  ★

  Hopper was soothing the goosebumps off his arms and wincing ’cause he’d rubbed at his sunburn too hard. Boiling and freezing all in the one go. He was on the straight road to Perth. It was the middle of the night maybe. Gone mad cold.

  And there they were, two big strong kangaroos. He could see them because of the moon.

  They were standing ahead. Not bouncing. Still, but looking away. They smelt like horses and their muscles reminded Hopper of horses too but horses sitting down and ready to spring. Not the horses to make glue from. But their faces looked a small bit like the hares they’d have the greyhounds chasing.

  The nature of the world was funny like that.

  A spider sometimes looked like a crab. A lizard looked like a tree and a hippo like a whale. Sometimes, people looked like dogs with big eyes and tongues panting when they were hungover dying for water. Or pigs with snouts hoovering everyone
else’s drugs without paying. Or sharks, with mad teeth to rip you apart, like the State, pretending to help ya out but shredding the shite out of you and your family when you think you’re safe.

  Hopper said to the kangaroos, ‘Hey. Hey,’ real quick until they turned around, their top paws a-tingling.

  They looked mad curious, clicked at each other.

  The big kangaroo goes, ‘What’s the problem, sir?’ with a soft voice on him like David Beckham.

  Hopper’s eyes opened wide. He laughed. ‘Are ye fucking Tan kangaroos?’

  The big kangaroo turned to his wife kangaroo and said, ‘I can’t understand a word out of that fellow.’

  ‘Ah, here,’ Hopper whispered. ‘I’m not that fucking bad. Only sometimes.’

  The wife said, ‘Come along, now,’ like Victoria Beckham. Posh. She clicked her lips and the two of them started down the road.

  Hoppin’.

  They went on like that for a few minutes, Hopper scratching his head, blinking and deciding if he’d go with it.

  Sure he’d go with it.

  Why wouldn’t he?

  He asked the kangaroos, ‘How is it ye are the Beckhams?’

  They both halted suddenly, looked at each other and the wife clicked. ‘Well, we figured we wouldn’t scare you if we spoke like this.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of the Queen or any of her crew but I hope ye don’t think I’m English too?’

  ‘Not at all, sir. We was just assuming the identity you put on us,’ the bigger kangaroo said.

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘It means,’ the wife said, ‘that you picked it. But don’t be afraid, just come with us.’

  ‘So ye’re saying that I’ve put those voices on ye? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, you tell us?’

  Hopper didn’t like football or clothes. Why would he pick them? Something scratched at his memory. The airport. Ruby’s magazine.

  ‘Now concentrate,’ the big kangaroo said. ‘Why are we here?’

  Hopper started groaning. ‘This is more of it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Concentrate.’

  Hopper’s throat went dry. ‘They fucking left me. I thought we were mates but they went. Don’t want to cry. Don’t. I been through worse but I was stupid. Stupid.’ He whacked his head with his fist.