Then I was looking around, Crow was nowhere. I scanned for a way out and I locked eyes with Isa.
She’d seen what I done.
I reached out to her but she turned and ran and I ran after her. She went straight into the path of the Brumby King humming up on the camp and in a second she was gone and the Brumby King was gone in the dust and smoke and I was left in the wreck of the camp with just the show gear, me typewriter and all the notes and Smoov’s linkmaker that I rummaged from his rags. I shot through and cast in my lot as a rider.
Chapter 8
I crawled out of the camp on me belly through the scrub, cutting myself up on the sharp rocks and stones. Search lights swept around above, the trucks rolled in the distance and the air was full of howling sound. I breathed in dust and sweated fearstink thumping heart. Sucked into this pathway like dust in the slipstream and swirling eddies in the air and rumblings in the ground. You can’t say where that dust is going but it’s pulled along even though one minute ago it was just sitting by the side of the road
Isa lost, almost like she was sucked up by the air around the Brumby King. Nothing but the smell of smoke and the ash of me thoughts that I sifted through to find the things that’d gone wrong in me life. Core of an apple with a maggot. Isa wet where I touched her. It was all gone, the brumbies came and smashed up everything and I was roading lonely now. The dreams of a life with Isa on the show circuit were smashed up like Smoov’s showgear. Broken like the bone broken faces in the camp during the raid. And the only thing I could think was how I had to find Isa. It was the only way I could make things right again. She was missing, lonely too, probably injured and hurting and Wotcher only knows what that Brumby King wanted with her.
I came to a ditch and I crawled along it till it turned into a roadside drain. There was a bloke in there wrapped in a blanket, white eyes open and flashing the dark. We whispered at each other as the rumbling rigs passed by all around.
‘I don’t want no trouble,’ he said.
‘Me neither, can I share yer hideyhole?’ I said.
‘You can share but I got nothin for you to use.’
‘I’m the same.’
Thumping pounding of brumby wheels rocked the ground. A flash of light lit the hole and his eyes were open wide. He saw me tote and the typewriter case and I said,
‘It’s just a old machine for wordin.’
He shook with fear and I was shook too. Taste of dust and tyre smoke from the burning camp thick in me throat.
‘I don’t want nuthin to do with this. I’m just passen through, ay,’ he said.
‘Mate I know it I lost me sis—’
A brumby skitter flickered past the opening and we shut up in the darkness. The grambling and hummering of the trucks rumbled outside. They shone their lights flickering around the drain close by. Time stetched out before us. The sounds slackened off after a while and he whispered, ‘They’s gunna be roadin like this all night?’
‘I dunno. Reckon they’ll probly head off once they’ve got done with their raidin and the skitters and droans has looted everything what can be taken.’
‘They took yer sis?’
‘I think she’s been took by the Brumby King.’
He went quiet for a bit then he said: ‘You sure she’s not dead?’
When he said that, I were chilled. I said: ‘Na, no way. That’d never happen to Isa, she’s tough and trucksmart. I saw pretty clearly she was gone into the smoke left behind by the Brumby King.’
He gave me a look like I were a sad sap and we curled up against the cold night while those trucks tore up the road above and the cloying piss stink closeness kept us safe.
Dawn came up, he were gone with his dirty blankets and the trucks had moved on. There were birds calling, daylight bleeding into the sky against a smudge of black smoke from the camp.
That morning I rememberd the time I lost me Mum and Smoov come along and picked me up from me misery into more misery. His face scritchy and his stinking breath and Isa was there too. The memory of her eyes locked on to mine. Thinking of that memory of Isa’s eyes set me blubbering, like maybe I’d never see her again. I let go of everything I’d been holding onto so tight in the night as I ran from the brumbies. Let go of what I’d done to Smoov, the flash of his fear right before I killed him, and the way he tried to talk though his throat was slit. It’s a bad feeling, knowing you’ve done something like that, but I didn’t have no choice if I wanted to be with Isa.
And anyway there wasn’t nothing for it but to get back out to the road so that’s what I done. I crawled out through the spinifex and put the red dust green grey mountains in the back of me and the easter sun in me face, same way the tracks of the brumby mob headed. And if I could track down that Brumby King I could find Isa and we could live a life together on the show circuit.
I could feel a following behind, I saw its cloud of dust and I knew in me heart it was the same thing that followed us in to Hind Pass and it’d been following me since we fled from the brumbies in the gorge. Maybe longer. Maybe it wasn’t after Smoov at all. Anyway, nothing I can do about the past so I roaded without looking behind. Felt the glare of those following eyes on the back of me trucksuit. In the wasted land I sopped up water from stinking sinkholes, moving from one to the next along the lay lines that had been in use for longer than humans walked on two legs. No food for days but that was all right, I could live off me own body a while so long as I had water. Looking for a mount, looking for anything that could speed my passage through that blasted flatscape of dry cunt creekbed and thorny prick termite nest stickin up from the ground on the trail of the brumbies that fled to the east. You can’t live long out there if you don’t got some knowing of the desert and Smoov taught us how to read the signs and rig a snare for rabbits. So come dusk and the red sun sinking I found a warren and snared up a mangy old doe. Skinned and dressed and chewed raw, sweet blood and strips of red flesh. I didn’t wanna risk a fire and I were that hungry it didn’t bother me none. Laid down underneath a truckdream of stars in the void, lonely as a flea on a salt pan. Tried to hide myself as best I could.
I woke dead of night, no more moon, stars shifted around all wrong and there it was, the follower, right in front of me eyes. Its face was bleached white bone, its eyes were white, it had a crooked beak and a black hoodie over its head. In the black dot in the centre of the eye I saw me own face reflected back at me. It wore a trucktyre coat and when it opened its mouth it let out a croak. In its hand it had a cloth bag and it held the bag out for me. I felt me own hand reaching out and going into the bag though it was the last place I could think of where I’d wanna put me hand. Inside was little rattling things, dry like wood. I pulled one out and looked at it and the creature clacked and croaked some more and I saw that dried up bone in me hand, a backbone of some creature, smaller than a man but bigger than a dog. There was a mark carved in black on that bone and I saw it was an /I/.
Next thing I knew it was dawn and I was soaked in sweat, a fever in me head and no idea of whether it was a dream or otherwise. I’d not seen them bones before, nor the sign and I puzzled on it as I moved me aching body onwards under the cover of low clouds sweeping across from the north. It was an /I/ like that /I/ that stared out from my /eye/ but wasn’t /eye/ nor /I/. It was an /I/ reflected in an /eye/, the dead bone eye of the creature, the follower. The Crow. It was also the /I/ for /Isa/ and that’s the sign I took it for as the day moved and I moved through it knowing which direction to go but not where my fate lay. I came to a road and I figured that would be as good a place as any to sit for a time and recover myself. No sign of the follower. It’d taken what it wanted for now, moved me own hand somehow just by freezing me there in the moment.
Clouds burnt off and it got hot but I stayed at the roadside puzzling on me dream or whatever it was. There was a rumbling from the distince and a bright spark of sunflash on metal. Me heart thumped in me ribs, it was an indie for sure, heading east like I was. I pulled Smoov’s linkmaker from
the tote where I’d stowed it with the typewriter. I waved a link through the air like I seen Smoov do, me head rushing with the thought this could be me first truckride solo.
The truck must have seen me wave and it ground down the gears as it slowed. It stopped long enough for me to climb up, but it wasn’t an indie at all. It was a dumb slavegrid hauler left from the oldtimes heading on the tracks between the camps and it wouldn’t let me into the cab. It was just gunna keep on going when it saw I didn’t have nothing ready to trade but I swung up on the back anyway. Me first truckride spent in an open air trailer. There wasn’t nothing wild about it, nothing like what I’d expected it would be when I was young and listening to the riders tell their stories round the campfires. Outside the night air rushed past in a cold clear blast and underneath the road clattered by. The slavegrid truck wasn’t on the link freek no more but it let me stay because I was there then and the darkness came down on me though there weren’t no truckdreams just blackness and emptiness of the end. When I woke there was another rider in there with me and I moved back away, wanting no company. A match flare lit the creases in his face and I saw it was Crow, same one as what talked to me that night in the camp, same one what waved to me when it was Smoov’s turn. Same coat, but different from the creature in me dream. He took a toke off of his pipe and offered me some. I shook me head.
‘Fancy seein you here,’ he said.
‘Yeah, fancy. You followin me now?’
‘Sure you don’t wanna toke? It’ll ease yer pain,’ he said.
‘I’m not in any pain, mate.’
‘Oh don’t play the hard man with me, cobber. I know your type. Always in some kinda pain. Always got someone else to blame for what was done with yer own fists. Always lookin for some relief from the knowin of the blood on yer wrists.’
‘You got me all wrong. I done nothin. I don’t feel nothin,’ I said.
‘Ha ha, well be like that if you wanna, but this spike will cure yer ails. One taste and she’ll be apples.’
‘I don’t got no ails, I already told you. I don’t want yer apples.’
‘Try some of this. It’s the juice from a stoned up indie true bred. They’ve always made the best gear, to tempt the riders who’ll give em the best patches.’
He moved closer, I pushed him away but he grinned and pulled his spike.
‘Carn, it’s good shit.’
And in the darkness I just wanted to lose myself from all that’d happened, so I took the spike. The truckdream held onto me through the cold night and the thoughts I had of Isa kept me going. I knew through it all I was getting closer to her on the easting road and with the haze humming in me veins, I felt I was getting closer to putting the pieces of bone together into a whole. I thought of the first time I saw inside of something, I felt the pull of it on me eyes, downwards. I couldn’t look away. It was a roadkilled dog. Freshly dead and glistening it was, flies shiny and black on the bright red. A spray of blood from its mouth where it coughed up its last. Blue and yeller guts spilled out for all to see, the inner secrets of life all spread out in the dust and gravel. Dead eyes empty and wide and white in fear, and I knew: all creatures know death that comes in the dark and takes the light from a life. Everyone’s scared when it’s their turn. Some run towards it and if you don’t know how to live, maybe it’s a way out. Little beating heart pumped all its life out onto the ground.
Chapter 9
Next day and I was grimy from the truckride, blood behind me eyes. Blood in me dreams, creatures in me dreams, skeletons and bleached bones of animals that have never been nor never could be, animals made up in someone else’s mind, a slaved truck with a load of scared riders pushing through the night, riders on the way to slaughtering in the maw of the road. And there was nothing at all to it, just the smooth flow of the surface with nothing beneath it neither. It was all just words wrote out of order on this typewriter I found.
I came out of me dream lying roadside where the truck stopped for watering, wasted and bruised from that spike and laid out underneath the water tower in the morning sun. All I had was me tote and typewriter with all of Smoov’s notes in the lid, his linkmaker and a cell of jenny juice saved up to slot the substrate when it fades. Me mouth full of broken and rotted teeth. I knew I had to find a tasty rig to roll with if I stood any chance of catching up with the brumby mob. Their trail was going cold now, and I had to find Isa, it was pulling me along like a thread from the future. So I staggered to me feet. Sun to me face so I knew I must of been on the right road. Clouds from the past at my hind. Me tears didn’t come, me eyes was dry as lies. The old life was dead and gone but sometimes there’s some killing you have to do before you can become something new.
The road a straightedge rule bordered with bodies of cars and bodies of burnt out trucks and bodies of roos. Those roads were tough on vehicles as well as roadkill. Every little bit used up, bones picked clean. Same as with the machines come to scavenge too, looking for parts or even a whole new body to mech with a new truckmind. I saw one in there, an old Kenworth foraging sad in the wreckage almost out of juice. Old trucks turning back to dust, it’s the cycle, isn’t it? But there’s ways to find bits of yourself in new bodies. We are all made from the same stuff, it’s come from the stars in the night sky and that’s where it’s all gunna go in the end and meantimes it’s sure to come back around. Your body knows all this, even if your head don’t, like those feelings you’ve seen something before but you know you ain’t never, or when you meet someone and it’s like you’ve known them your whole life and you just slot right in. Or how some folks can try their hands at something and they pick it up real quick, like how Isa just took to the show and tell, she had done it before she were Isa, I knew it. There’s another world trying to break through into this busted one. If only it could, that would be something to see. Maybe things would be better than they is now. Maybe that’s what Isa was on about, trying to find the bridge between the two worlds.
I walked the lonesome road, waiting for the right ride. That first truckride trailer was a balls up, and I was still sickened from the spike of hazy truckdream, but it was a seed planted. Somewhere on some level I knew I wanted more. Feeling sick and feeling like Isa’s disappearing further and further away with each wasted hour. Pretty soon there was a rumbling and a grumbling and a dust cloud blowed up in the west. I flipped the freeks and found the source, it was an indie for sure and this time I was ready with a patch file from Smoov’s list. The truck tasted the patch I blinked over to it, something that would buzz its truckmind the way the haze buzzed mine. It was coming slower and slower until I saw it, a red and white rig. It grew in me eyes, something to behold, its rocking power and the size of it. Then I felt its heat as it came in for a stop and idled right beside me. It was tricked with patchwork glyphs and sygils patterning messages from mysterious places and I saw a name written in curly writing: /Sinnerman/. I realised then it was the same rig that lost its mate to the Brumby King in the raid that also took Isa. The King had driven off with that other one glyphed Storm and something in me said Sinnerman was on this same road as me for a reason. Something in me made me want to touch it, so I got up close as it hummered there. I smelled the air around, alive with newmint particules and longchain polymers, breathed it all in in a big giddy swallow. Me hand reached out without me doing anything to move it and I watched as I touched smooth metal skin, felt the cool surface and it seemed to move under me touch from the vibrations of the donk. I sighed, and then Sinnerman gunned it, grumbling thunder from deep inside and it moved away, circled around and came back, blowing black smokestack exhaust. A beat started up and the wave rocked with its sounds. I calmed me breathing and reached out with me mind through the link, touching something in the freek, feeling in me head the shape of that light, those sounds.
Perfect timing, perfect play of the link, you have to get it just right as the indie is coming up the road. Too soon and they’ll bolt, too long and, well, it’s a matter sometimes also of just letting them
get used to you. Use to yeour sweatstink, your human ways. I talked in a soft whisper, low in me throat, soothing. It just came natural. Dunno how you’re meant to soothe a machine, they’ve got programs of their own, but if they can see your no threat at least you can get started. That’s how it was with Sinnerman. I just put me bag down and sat in the dust and shuffled patches through the link, shifting through different cycles. Though it was flighty and wanted to be roading after its mate, it was also curious to see what I was up to, see what patches I’d come up with. It wanted a rider for this road and maybe it sensed I was roading after the Brumby King for the same griefstruck reasons. I found a nice combo between two different patch sets, tweaking its inner runnings the way haze or cactusflower grog tweaks a human brain, and soon it settled down. I blinked a new patch and tried to tempt it, but it thrummed away again, spewing smoke from the stack. I calmed myself and thought of how Smoov would of done it in his chats with indie trucks, but thoughts of Smoov didn’t really help with calm. Just a wave of fear and guilt but I put it to one side and tried again.
Another patch, called Skull Deth. It seemed to speak from the list, something about it, so I tried that one on and the indie pricked up its whole body and started to shake and shimmer. I stood there as that massive machine came right up to me, growling engine vibrating into the ground and through me body. It glowed with power. I put out me hand to touch its cold steel flank again and it moved even closer to get more of a whiff of that Skull Deth in its link. Smell of nothing, scent of always moving freeways and blue sky dreams. Shifting in those sands. Me heart fast and loud in me ears to be so close to my first true indie truckride, and it was a fucken bewdy, too. Red and white steel glimmering in the daylight. No load nor trailer, wild and free. Like I wished I could be. Well I blinked the Skull Deth through the link and Sinnerman settled right down. It opened up the hatch for me to climb in. I put me foot on the first chrome rung and climbed up to the rider’s cab.
Trucksong Page 6