Trucksong (15 page)

Rolled down the mountain like a stone, clutching the typewriter and me tote. Scrabbling through the scrub, legs not working proper, me arm a bloody mess, whole body screaming for the haze. I’d been part of Sinnerman for so long I was lost inside me own self, withdrawed and sick but crashing through the bush as I pushed me way down the mountain away from the brumbies and whatever their plans were for me. I didn’t spare much of a thought for if Sinnerman would be feeling the pain of being apart as well, with no more patchfire wonderment from me linkmaker. I pulled the linkmaker out of me tote right then and tried to see what else was around on the mountain but the freeks were dead so down down down I rolled.

I came to rest besides a creek and drunk deep from the cool stream. I scarpered in to a little space with ferns all around and a place for me to lie till the blood crusted and the pain wore itself out. I had some roady that I ate and some roots dug from the ground and I laid there for a time. Now and again I would go to the stream for a drink and then lay back down. Night time come on and passed and daylight shone and I knew I had to keep moving so I pulled myself together and tried to stand on me dodgy legs. They were wobbly and the way was slow going but I kept on heading down. There was a path through the brush and I didn’t like to think about what made it nor where it went but I needed to stay clear from the brumby lair till I could work out what to do. I’d mount another stand on that mountain side but for now I had to get myself right, wean myself off of the haze staggers.

I hit the canyon floor and in me haze crazed dreamings I looked up at the rock walls stretched up on all sides by forces that wrenched them from the earth. There’s creatures that live in the rocks, they move faster than lightning and flit into cracks and crannies. Then there’s creatures that is made of rocks. They take one hundred thousand years to make a thought, a million to say a word and when they speak a whole sentence, it’s like a crack in the sky, it’s like the earth is come up outta the ground and you can see the stripes of all its different colours and patternings of ages. High up in the face of the cliff I saw the features of a stone man with a stone face made of big chunks of the canyon wall. His massy stone hands clutched at thick stone bones. Weeping eyes and a line for a mouth, heavy forehead and little ears even. He was falling forever through time, fallen away from his one true love who was up on the other side of the canyon in the cleft behind me.

I seen as how they had come apart, like me and Isa come apart, by the course of time running through and splitting up the ground underneath. Some kind of cataclysm of the earth ripped two sides of the canyon one from another, two things what used to be one. That stone man was clutching at nothing. It’d taken thousands of years to happen but when the thunder come, it split the ground and tore the stone man from his cold lover and when the sky cries the rain wets his face with tears. I camped the night in that place. It was eerie quiet just the sound of the river that run through the canyon and the face of the stone man with his silent grief, only you could hear the sound of it underneath. It was one of those words that takes a million years to speak.

All next day I bashed through the scrub along the canyon floor beside the river. There was a track there, it hadn’t been used for ages, there were no recent passings. So it was through downed trees and thick bush but I followed the path thinking it’d come out somewhere near a track and I could get myself another ride. I was weak and hungered when the canyon walls opened up to a green valley and I come to a shed built in the valley beside the river. I smashed the padlock to bits with a rock to see what was inside. There was a stove in there but I didn’t wanna light no fire. There were signs that someone used that place sometimes, maybe as a way station on the trek through the canyon, jars of tomatoes and onions in vinager and peppers and pumpkins and zackeenies sealed away from the air in the locker and dry goods on the shelf that weren’t got at by rats and animals. I made myself a home. I had a big feed and rolled out to sleep on the hard wooden bunk and nothing bothered me dreams, it was black and blissful peace for a while.

Woke up the next day forgetting where I was and whose skin I was sposed to be in. It was a odd feeling slowly remembering and realising the past was all gone now, all smashed up and bashed to bits and all I got left were this wreckage. I had to make the best fist of it though, I still burned to see Isa again and knowing as how the Brumby King put a bounty on my head for Sinnerman got me burnt up too. The burning didn’t pass but I needed to fix myself right so I laid up in the valley, carrying water up to the shed from the river and then when I feeled better I chopped some woods and started having a fire. Me arm healed up slow. I swum in the river and day by day I washed myself clean of the haze and the road. Jerked off to the memories of Isa in me head and made snares like Smoov taught and caught rabbits and trapped bright fish in the river.

As me strength came back I started wandering further and further out, through the hills around. I never seen another soul while I was there. It was so peaceful I didn’t understand how come there was no one else around. Maybe it was cut off by the canyon and the mountains all around. The land was bountiful, but how come there wasn’t no one there living off of it? The only thing I could think of was brumbies and the pull they had. So I laid low and healed myself and wandered the valleys around the mountain searching for clues and signs and a way up the summit to where I would find Isa at last.

On one of me wanderings I found a path through the forest and an opening on to a bald topped mountain what had been laid bare by giant machines from the past times. The hilltop was gouged by monsters’ teeth that ripped the earth up in strips of different colours. Though the bush was thick on all sides and growing back to reclaim its share of the land it was like the ground were poisoned. Nothing growed on them walls that stretched up and up in layers and steps torn in strips from the mountain. Guts of the earth vomited up and scratched bare by machines the size of what I couldn’t even figure in me mind. There was one still there, a massive bucket could of held four shipping cans and its rotted metal teeth each bigger than a truckcab. Huge tracks like a dozer, three times taller than me. As I got close I could see there was no sign of use nor movement in them rusted and broken parts, just the steel frame gnawed at by flapples and feral bigdogs but too big to be busted into pieces. It was an awesome sight to see something so big and the size of the works that them what came before must of been doing. And what could be so precious in the ground? They must of been digging for some kind of secrets, something what we would never understand except with help from the Wotcher if it could be made to make sense.

I climbed in to the depths of the blasted mountain top and down in it off to one side there was a camp all ringed in wire link fence what’d fallen down and there was buildings and sheds looted and open to the weather. Walking through the wreckage of all what had gone from the past times struck a sad feeling in the silence of that place. All the power in their hands and all they done were dug big holes in the ground and rip the guts outta the world. It was a big place, they must of been mining for some serious data and some deep knowing inside that place. And on top of the sadness I realised there might still be power in the ground there yet, and if I could get it to tell its secret maybe I could find out some more about what them brumby trucks were up to. The camp was stripped bare of tools and anything useful by flappling scavengers and trucks looking for parts to repair themselves. But I wasn’t looking for use or repair, I was looking for answers and a way to find out how I could make my final move to get Isa outta the clutches of the brumby mob. Maybe there was something left behind that could tell a story of brumby trucks and the way things come to this.

Crossed through over the rusted fence rattling at my passing and I walked into the camp. The Warby mountains in the near distance swallered up the sky. The sun sank behind and the valley was in shadow though there were still hours of daylight left. Hulking wrecks of machines and rusted crumbling metal gave off a nasty oily smell of tears and charcoal mixed with soil. Shipping cans with their doors swinging on broken hinges showed their rotted wooden floors to the afternoon air. Caravans and porta buildings with wilting walls and gaping windows spread their legs and let the rot have its way with them. I headed towards a shed that seemed less broken down than the others. The door opened with a groan and I come inside. In the corner there was a scarbling and a shuffling and on the outside of me vision I seen a scuttling manshape shifting from a beam of sunlight into the darkness. Me heart beat faster, it was the first human form I’d seen for days. If it was running, maybe it was more scared of me than I were of it. I called out. I was feeling bold or maybe just missing talking with another.

‘Who’s there?’

The silence was eery and strange. The metal of the shed pinged as it cooled from the passing of the sun. Then a feeling took hold of the back of me neck with a cold hand and I backed outta there and walked away without turning.

Back in me valley shack that night, but I couldn’t get the mine camp out of me thoughts. It pulled me back the next day, I come in to the camp site and straight away I seen a path what must of gone down to the creek. Further down the pathway there was signs of fresh passing, boot marks and broken ferns so I followed along. It wasn’t too rough going and a riot of green all around rushing to claim back the land. Worked me way round a stone bluff and then there in the forest beside the creek was the downed body of a massive robo with arms and legs. Wasn’t often you seen a twoleg robo and more common were bigdogs or other kinds like flapples. This were the biggest robo I’d ever seen. It was painted yeller with flakes coming off, black stripes where the saftey markings were, covered in writings now and marked with strange signs, the sign of the lizard, the sign of the snake. Then I realised it wasn’t no robo, it was a waldo for lifting in the mines and it need a rider to work. I smashed through the vines and the bushes to get up close to the cockpit riding cab. The waldo was laid down across the creek, arms spread wide, like a felled tree. Round by the arm pit there was a ladder to a hatch way in to the cab.

I climbed up, me steps ringing hollow on the rungs, and when I got close to the cage where a rider would sit, I startled. Inside there was a bloke with a horse’s head. I shrank back, terrified. Straight away I was reminded of the prophet from the camp what challenged Smoov on the day of the raid. Me eyes had been laid on many maimed folks but this was something else. He held himself in the shadows but I could see the skin of his body was brown and peeling, fried from too much sun and weather, and his horsey mane was matted into dreads. Big yeller teeth glinted in his mouth in between cracked lips and his eyes gleamed brightly from either side of his head. Ears pricked up high and he looked at me side to side. It was like meeting santy claws after hearing all the stories and deciding they wasn’t true and then this bloke hauls up and tells you it’s been him all along.

He wasn’t suprised nor threatened to see me, it was like he expected me. I was in a daze in the cab of that machine. Smell of fuel oil and solvents and grease and synthfac haze polymers.

He said: ‘Come towards the endin of things, the through lines is thickenin, the tangles is formin straight. The worm oorrooborras is spinnin in space and where its head touches its tail there’s dyin and there’s bein birthed at the same time forever and ever.’

The words rained on me, even though I couldn’t take no meaning from them. I thought about it for a second.

‘Mate you’re talkin bullshit,’ I said.

He smiled, pulling his lips back over his teeth, and said: ‘I know everything there is to know even if it don’t make sense to many. I got a big horse’s head fulla brains what is there for the pickin.’

He held himself back from the light but I could see his teeth in his mouth.

‘Waddaya know of the Brumby King, then? The mob that’s holed up on that mountain up there.’

He clacked his teeth. ‘King is all ways changin, ay?’

‘Is that how come you’re here in the dark in the bush in a busted robo?’

‘I’m chasin after the King coz of what it done to me reputation. Raidin and rainin pain on the camps and all I’m tryin to do is predict the time that the saver’s gunna come down. There’s many calculations and mathemagicks to be accounted. Well, the saver didn’t come this time but it’s gunna come down soon. And I’ll tell ya its probly gunna be me as a saver in the meantimes coz I’ll clear the backroads from that brumby scum. Its mechin babby trucks with seeds from the Wotcher’s Lie Bury, lookin for the original truck form, tryin to find a truckbody what don’t break down, what can heal itself like a wound heals, like a scab that scars up on a limb. Even a bigdog robo can do that but the brumbies can’t, not yet. They don’t wunna depend on humans nor other trucks for nothing. They wunna mech their own changes.’

‘So you’re gunna go after the Brumby King then, all by your horse’s self?’

He went sly then and wouldn’t talk but I noticed the grease on his hands. He seen where me glance gone, so he said: ‘Yair well I’m fixin up this waldo to make the haul up the mountain to the lair so I’ll have something to use against the King.’

He got even slyer then. ‘You don’t wunna lend a hand, do yer? I could use some help. These hoofs of mine is no good for mechin and fixin.’

‘You’re a drongo, mate. I dunno nuthin about mechin and I’ve got no fancy goin back up that mountain ridin in a robo with you ravin about a saver and a horse’s head on yer shoulders.’

‘I’ve got me a secret weapon against the King. I know its weaknesses. I know all about it.’

He moved a hand back there, and I seen he had a book nestled in where a rider would keep a linkmaker to hail all the slick indie trucks.

He said, ‘This manual is given me the word on the King.’