Wake In Fright (14 page)

The driver switched on his lights as they moved off, for the darkness was almost complete.

The sound of the engine and the feel of the broken leather of the seat soothed Grant after the long hours under the tree hearing only the inexplicable rustlings in the dead grass and the occasional unpleasing cry of a crow.

‘Where you travelling from?’ said the driver.

‘The Yabba.’

‘Been on the road long?’

‘Only started today.’

‘In trouble?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In trouble with the cops?’

‘No. Not at all. Why should you think that?’

‘City feller like yourself, carrying bags, wearing those clothes. Stands to reason you ain’t travelling this way because you like it.’ Then, conspiratorially: ‘They watch the trains and aeroplanes, don’t they?’

‘Possibly. I wouldn’t know. But I assure you I’m not in trouble with the police.’

‘You say you’re not. I believe you. It’s your business, anyway. Shouldn’t have asked. Sorry.’

Grant could feel an unaccountable sensation of utter guilt.

‘No really, I’m just thumbing my way to Sydney because I’m broke.’

‘Sure, all right; you say it, I believe you.’

Both fell silent, Grant dumbfounded, the driver sceptical.

Not that it mattered, thought Grant, in fact it was rather amusing. Some day it would make part of a good story he could tell about his adventures in the west. But no, perhaps it would not do to tell a story about his adventures in the west.

He realised then that for a time his mind had stopped making determined darts back into the events of the past few days, but now it was searching, delving, remembering; and there were things that had better not be remembered. He felt a little sick clutch of fear—the noise of the kangaroo that disappeared. Strange the way he kept thinking about that. It could be explained quite easily, probably. But then there had been those bursts of light that night and…
No!
He would not think back.

‘How far is it to Yelonda?’ he said suddenly.

‘’Bout forty miles, I’d say. Take us about two hours.’

‘What do you reckon my chances are of getting a lift through to the coast from there?’

‘Fair, I’d say. Just fair. Your best bet would be to hang around the pubs. You’ll find somebody going through eventually.’

Yelonda duly appeared as a dusting of lights on the plain ahead. It had been a town which flourished when paddlesteamers had run up and down the Harden River, almost halfway across the continent when there was water in the river-bed. But the paddle-steamers had not run for forty years and Yelonda had died thirty-nine years ago.Was it forty years ago the paddle-steamers had stopped? He must check that in case one of his pupils ever asked him. Dear God, his pupils. It was strange the way he could forget things, and then they would leap into his thoughts so violently as to almost hurt…and before he saw his pupils again?

But at that moment the truck was stopping in Yelonda and the immediate problem was how to continue the journey to Sydney.

Yelonda was just a few broken-down houses interspersed with hotels. Half the people wandering around the dim streets were either Aborigines or half-castes.

The Harden River wound its way past the edge of the town, dark, narrow and deep by the standard of western rivers. Grant resolved to go downstream a little in the morning to bathe and shave.

The driver stood by while Grant pulled his suitcases out of the back of the truck, then:’Come and have a drink,’ more as a statement than an invitation.

‘No thanks,’ said Grant, ‘I’m off it.’

‘Off it? You mean you don’t drink?’

‘I’m just not drinking for the moment.’

‘I can see that; what I said was, let’s go and have one.’

‘Thanks, mate,’ said Grant patiently, ‘but I’ve given up drinking for a while.’

‘Well, I’ll be b——,’ said the driver;’you mean you won’t

have a drink with a man after he’s given you a ride for fifty bloody miles.’

Convinced now that poverty was no bar to drinking in the west, Grant did not raise the point. He shrugged in some embarrassment and murmured:’Sorry, mate, but I’m just not drinking.’

‘Well you can bloody well go and get ——,’ in tones of

complete contempt, and he turned and was lost behind the batwing doors of a hotel.

Peculiar trait of the western people, thought Grant, that you could sleep with their wives, despoil their daughters, sponge on them, defraud them, do almost anything that would mean at least ostracism in normal society, and they would barely seem to notice it. But refuse to drink with
them and you immediately became a mortal enemy. What the hell? He didn’t even want to think about the west or its people and their peculiarities. Let them be. Once he was in Sydney, who knew, he might never come back.

He was walking towards the river with his suitcases. Tonight he would camp under the bridge, bathe early in the morning and walk out on to the road a way to try to pick up some more game, then wait for a lift again. By the time he had walked a hundred yards he was saturated with sweat and he put his cases down to rest.

Across the way was the Yelonda picture theatre, a comparatively vivid patch of light in the dull street. People milled around outside or dived across the street for a few drinks during the interval.

A poster glued to the front of the wooden hall which passed for a theatre advertised some obscure movie that Grant seemed to recall as a product of the war years.

He stood looking at the picture crowd and wondered why the celluloid image of American culture should have penetrated so far into this desolate land. Strange it was that these withered and weathered people of the west should be fascinated by some American director’s concept of war; that they should pay to come from their wooden homes to sit in discomfort for hours, dripping sweat, to watch a badly
scratched film of purely formal heroics.

Still, let them be, let them be. City people went to B class movies too, so what the hell? He turned to pick up his cases and was suddenly obsessed by the word ‘Sydney’.

Sydney.

SYDNEY, in large capital letters.

He shook his head and realised he was reading the word.

It was on the door of the cabin of a semitrailer parked in the main street of Yelonda.

It was the last line in a block of printing on the door. Grant stood back.

J. CARRINGTON

Haulier

7 HOLDEN STREET

WYTON

SYDNEY

A road transport might well go through to the city in less than four days. Four days: dear God, he could go without food for that long, and anyway what money he had would carry him through. Four days, say at the most five.

Grant chewed his lower lip, trying to control the hope he realised depended entirely on the driver of the semitrailer for fulfilment.

Where was the driver?

He looked around. The nearest hotel to the vehicle was the one across from the picture theatre. It was reasonably certain that the driver would be in there. But if he were not and Grant was in there looking for him he might come back and drive off. On the other hand he might be spending the night in the hotel and Grant would face many hours of waiting by the roadside.

He decided to try the hotel. He could keep an eye on the road in case the driver came back.

Leaving his cases where they were he hurried across to the hotel. It was crowded now with people from the theatre, but they would all leave in a few moments when the interval ended.

In fact, as Grant pushed through the batwing doors into the yellow, smoky light of the bar, he heard a handbell ringing outside, and the men began to drink their beer at a gulp and make for the doors. Soon there were only about twenty left in the bar and Grant peered at each, trying to decide which would be a professional transport driver.

He stood in a corner where he could see the semitrailer and several of the drinkers turned and stared at him. Strangers were not all that common in Yelonda.

To Grant all the men in the bar seemed alike, sunblasted
with blank eyes. He could see nothing about any of them that suggested a transport driver.

He went across to the bar and when the bartender was down at his end asked: ‘Any idea who owns that semitrailer across the road?’

The bartender, a short man in a waistcoat who looked as though he might own the hotel, stared at Grant. Then he turned and bellowed to the bar in general: ‘Gent here wants to know who owns the semitrailer across the road,’ and went on with the business of pulling beer.

Everybody in the bar turned and looked at the ‘gent’, then a heavily built man of about fifty detached himself from the wall he had been leaning against, drinking alone, and advanced on Grant.

Grant felt his hopes subsiding as the man came nearer. His face was gross and heavy and he had small pig-eyes. He stood in front of Grant and looked at him enquiringly, but said nothing.

‘You…you own the semitrailer?’ said Grant at length, conscious that everyone in the bar was still staring, and listening.

‘What of it?’ The voice seemed to come from somewhere down in the man’s stomach rather than his throat.

‘Nothing…just that I…I wanted to see if I could get a lift.’

The man looked at him blankly, presumably thinking, but giving no indication of it, then: ‘Where you going?’

‘Right through…to the city I mean…I’m trying to hitchhike…you see I…well…’ Grant petered out miserably.

Again the man looked at him ruminatively.

‘What’s it worth?’

Dear God, he’d met probably the one man in the west who would demand money for a ride.

‘I’m afraid I’m broke.That’s why I’m begging rides.’

And that probably settled it. The man would be afraid he’d have to feed him, and it seemed too bloody foolish to say that he intended to shoot his food. Shoot! Perhaps…

But the man was speaking: ‘It should be worth a couple of quid.’

‘It would be,’ said Grant,’but I’m really flat broke—look…’

‘Tell you what, make it a quid and it’s a deal.’

‘I’m sorry, but I’ve only got six bob, but I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a rifle…I’ll give you that if you’ll take me through.’

‘What sort of rifle?’

If only he could spit in this man’s face and walk out.

‘Twenty-two. Quite a good one…and about a hundred rounds of ammunition.’

‘Where’s the rifle?’

‘Over in my case, near your truck. I’ll get it.’

God curse the man’s swinish face, thought Grant, as he hurried over to his cases. The loss of the rifle didn’t worry him, but having to travel with an animal like that did. Still, to make the trip in one run was worth a great deal. He wrapped the pieces of the rifle in an old plastic raincoat because he felt he was already drawing enough attention in the bar.

The man was draining a glass as Grant arrived back. He took the rifle without comment and examined it.

Then he said: ‘What about the ammo?’

Grant took the rounds from his pockets.

‘Sorry I haven’t got a box.’

The man took them and dropped them into his own pockets. Did that mean the deal was made?

‘There’s not a hundred there,’ said the man.

‘I’m sorry. I thought there probably was.That’s all I’ve got.’

‘All right. I’ll take you. But you ride in the back.’

‘OK.Thanks.’ Grant couldn’t work out why he had to ride in the back; probably the man hoped to sell the front seat to somebody else. In any case he was grateful because that meant he might be able to sleep.

‘Let’s have a drink,’ said the man, and a cold hand spread around Grant’s stomach. The devil and blast it! Was this the stock conversation of everybody west of the Great Dividing Range? Of course it was. He knew that already. But…ah well,
he could not afford to quarrel with this man as he had with the other two drivers.

‘Surely,’ he said, ‘but it’ll have to be my last for the trip, a couple of rounds’ll clean me out.’

‘It’ll be the last for the trip, I’m going straight through.’

‘Going straight through.’ The grateful words consoled Grant for the three shillings he paid for the two glasses of beer—it was even more expensive at Yelonda than at Bundanyabba.

His companion almost immediately turned his back on him and began a mirthless conversation with the man alongside him with whom he apparently had some business dealings.

Grant drank his beer without pleasure. The taste nauseated him and his empty stomach rebelled. Still, it soothed his parched mouth and throat. He must remember to fill his water bottle.

‘Going straight through’—that meant he might well be in Sydney before the Sunday.

When the beer was finished the man ordered two more without looking at Grant and made no move to pay for them. Grant waited as long as possible but it was obvious that he was expected to pay. So he did. And that left him with seven-pence.

He stood sipping his beer in utter humiliation, aware that he would accept any sort of treatment from this fat-faced swine rather than lose the lift through to Sydney.

The beer drunk, the fat man waved again at the bartender, and Grant interrupted nervously: ‘I’m afraid that cleans me out. Would it be all right if I waited in the truck?’

The man turned to him, his face expressionless.

‘Cleans you out? You mean you got no more money?’

‘I told you I’m broke,’ said Grant, pleadingly. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’ Couldn’t the bloody fool understand English?

The man looked at him for a while.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘you wait in the truck. I’m gonna have a few more.’

‘Thanks,’ said Grant wretchedly, and turned away.

‘Here,’ said the fat man, ‘if you’re really broke I don’t want to take this off you.’ He held out the rifle.

Grant looked at him, stupefied.

‘Take the bloody thing.’

‘But I…’

‘Take it.’ There was nothing gracious in the man’s manner. Grant took it.

‘Thanks,’ he said, utterly routed.

‘Here. I’ll buy you a bloody beer.’

‘No. No thanks. I’d really rather wait in the truck if it’s all right with you. Thanks very much all the same.’

‘Just as you like,’ and the man turned to his business friend.