Authors: Andrew Macrae

Trucksong (19 page)

BOOK: Trucksong

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‘I never wanted nuffin except to learn the secrits of that Wotcher. Once inside, the outside is gunna flow with the knowin of the Wotcher and it’s gunna rain down on the desert backroads like the big wet and the wildflowers is gunna seed and bloom like the seeds of the gigacities what will be sowed from the Wotcher’s ark hives and the backroads camps is all gunna be turned whole again, not made up of all these little broken bits and it’ll all be sweet again and the system will run like it should.’

She said it and she turned her head further around. Me throat jammed up like a rusted typewriter. In me head I saw faces in the clouds and shapes of shadows over the mountains. I didn’t see no gigacity seeds in there. The inside of the cab was close and rank. Outside I could hear the last twitchings of the brumby mob, slaved droans and telly presents robos that were shutting down now without their king. Me mind was empty but it was trying to catch up with what Isa was telling me.

‘Instead I’ve found the secrits of the Brumby King,’ she said. ‘Secrits from the slinky snake bite and becomin one with a machine, like how them bigdog robos and goanna droans are turnin to eatin carrion. It’s the same, the synthfac that makes the haze makes the innerface and two things become one. No longer separate parts, but the same thing. All part of the system.’

I realised then she wasn’t even looking at me. She always belonged to somewhere else and now some deep part of her heart was paired to the Brumby King even in death. When I runned through the Brumby King with the Left Tenant, I’d killed her, too. She couldn’t live outside. She was too far gone and dying right in front of me eyes.

‘It don’t hafta be like that,’ I said. ‘It could be different. We could take a different road.’

‘There’s no other difference. You can’t make something happen just by wantin it so. There’s only the way it is.’

There wasn’t no moving forwards or backwards. She was stuck in the Brumby King like she was frozen in ice, like Isa, her name. Stuck on an idea of how things could be and really there wasn’t no Wotcher, not one that could make a difference, anyway. Nothing was gunna seed them gigacities like wildflowers. There was nothing but ruins and confusion left from the past times. They was gone now, blown away like ashes and sparks from a campfire. She couldn’t see there could be a different way, that we could form a new world what didn’t have to be tied to the past. Me heart was made from jagged edges of broken concrete. I knowed then I’d have to leave her there. She wasn’t gunna move, there’d be no way to a future with us together.

‘I’ll go an I won’t come back,’ I said. ‘This is it now, yer last chance.’

‘There’s nuthin you can do.’

I turned to go and walked a few steps waiting for a call back that didn’t come. I got to the turn of the tunnel but I couldn’t do it. I went back to her again, climbed up to the cab.

‘Cmon Isa. Come with me.’

She didn’t say nothing, just closed her eyes. She weren’t even there no more. I stroked her hair like rusty wire.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Tears prickled me eyes. Everything coming off the rails. Everything grinding down. I kissed her goodbye. There wasn’t going to be another coming back. Her skin shook with a shiver of pain and it done me in. The tears came, rolling down me cheeks. There wasn’t nothing more to say, I left her there in the wreckage even though she weren’t yet passed on to the other shore she was still in that place between. But I couldn’t bear it. I had to walk away. Crying as I went, crying for me own foolishness as well.

Looking up at the tiny point of light at the ending of the tunnel I saw myself for what I really was, a scavenging crow roading by me own selfish needs and the lies I told to myself. I cursed myself for not being able to do anything, I cursed Isa for her stubbornness and Smoov for his cruelty and the King for its own needsome ways. Me eyes burned with tears of shame and the anger of losing it all like I’d lost me Mum that day by the road side, pulled down by the weight of me that she had to carry as well as that babby birthed too soon. Me life was just leaving behind the blue bodies of anything I ever loved and I had become Crow now. The knowing of it settled and sickened me and I turned from that place and walked back up out of the lair. Me head burned bright with the desert sun of despair and desolation and I could see myself against the endless background of the sucking blue sky. I wasn’t nothing but a broken man staring into the gaping future yawning open in front of me. A small man driven over the brink by small needs and stupid thoughts. There wasn’t no way for the ruins to speak their ghosts.

I pulled that trucktyre coat closer around me shoulders and headed off into the darkness with me typewriter strapped to me back. The Wotcher didn’t have any secrets. It was nothing but a Lie Bury itself, a twisted broken Lie Bury spewing out nonsense ravings and corrupted data. There wasn’t an ark hive, no history, no seed for the gigacities. It was just a bunch of lies. Or a pattern of many different truths so strange that they may as well be lies. Even if Isa could of found the key to such a thing, it wouldn’t of helped. The past was like guide posts on the high way, receding in the rear view, gone like dust stirred up by the present moment’s passing but soon enough to settle. It couldn’t ever be brung back. You had to look around at where you were, and try to make sense of the world as best you could with what was in front of your hands.

Out on the cold lonely mountainside. Past the bodies of the unslaved brumbies, dumb and mindless on the slopes now their king was gone. Down through the trees and the scrub into the backroads again. I come to a cross roads and sat to wait for me next ride. I started up a fire and burned Smoov’s notes beside the road, watching the embers spark lines of light and the ash drift lighter than air. I took off the trucktyre coat and I was gunna burn that as well but it was cold in the morning light and maybe I would need it for warmth. There wasn’t nothing left for me to do but peck at the bodies of Smoov and Isa in me memories so I took out me typewriter to peck at the keys. All the time that new scaled up snake bite skin itched at me wrist and the bigdog robos howled off in the distance and it seemed I was opening up me eyes on the world for the first time or waking up after the dream has bled too long into the morning sunshine and it were a new day ahead to be faced squarely for what it was in its own self and for a tomorrow that would be grown from what we had around us, not the imaginings of what it were like back then. I thought about me dead mum and everything that led up to where I was now and cranked in a fresh sheet of paper and wrote.

About the Author

Andrew Macrae is a typewriter fetishist, a collector of plastic robots and a finder of lost dogs. He plays guitar in The Television Sky, an instrumental rock band based in Melbourne. He also runs his own freelance writing and editing business called Magic Typewriter.
Trucksong
is his first novel, and sprang from a childhood in regional Australia spent listening to the mournful sounds of semi-trailers as they crawled up and down the Great Dividing Range.

Acknowledgements

Cover artwork by Kenkichi Tai
www.kenkichitai.com

Paul Adams, Warren Barker, Deborah Biancotti, Adam Browne, Matthew Chrulew, Rjurik Davidson, Elizabeth Disney, Grace Dugan, Paul Haines, Peter Hickman, Aaron Jacks, Trent Jamieson, Michael Kingston, Tessa Kum, Chris Lawson, the Lee family, Deborah McDonnell, Ben Peek, Cat Sparks, Jeff Sparrow, Keith Stevenson, Fabian Toonen, Kaaron Warren and Maximillian White.

Visit
www.trucksong.com.au
to download the soundtrack written and performed by Andrew Macrae to accompany the novel.