Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [2]
When not buried in the pages of interviews and evidence, I stare blankly at the walls. Like a patient sitting in the corner of a hospital day room.
But I’m only policing. Einstein carried out thought experiments, peered into the workings of the universe via his mind. I’m staring at walls conducting thought investigations, peering into the mind of Billy K, why he might run, who with, and where. The reasons he’d dive into a spring tide with his precious guitar.
I’m now also one of the 200,000 who vanish each year. An official missing person with a last known sighting. And of that staggering number I plan to be one of the majority, part of the 99 per cent found, like the senile wandering from their houses, catching the bus to the coast in a dressing gown and slippers. Or the office workers who have upped and run, leaving a pristine desk and crowded inbox, simply to start a new job without giving notice. Too well I know the anguish of families left in limbo, the fathers who quit jobs to walk the streets with photos of a runaway child, the mothers afraid to leave home in case they miss a call.
And the trips to the morgue. Escorting relatives to identify bodies pulled from the undergrowth, the lost sons and daughters, beloved children, now laid out for the coroner.
Thinking about this when the first guests come down for breakfast, showered and scrubbed, drowsy but bright in new clothes bought especially for their holiday, I go back to my room and wash. I have work to do.
After showering I put back on the same shirt, jeans, and underpants I’ve been wearing for three days straight. I take my jacket from the back of the chair and shake it vigorously. Time for me to buy a new outfit. A new skin for a new Jim Dent.
Terra Incognita
16 June 2002
Dearest Monique,
I’m alone but not afraid. Not afraid, because with a pen and paper, the means to write a letter, I have a lightning rod to your soul. Company and love in the middle of a desert.
Last night I camped between the Aboriginal communities of Arlparra and Alpurrurulam, at least 200 km from the next fuel stop. And this is the real red centre, dinosaur country, a landscape forged by the weight of ancient seas. I expect to see a stegosaurus snuffling through the bush any moment.
I slept on the groundsheet of the tent, dreams filled with shooting stars and thoughts of you. The warmth of the rising sun, along one side of my body, was as though you’d eased into my sleeping bag during the night.
Life was good. I stoked the embers and boiled water for a coffee. I was riding across a barren and desolate road to you. How precious the world had become. Tiny birds chirped in the branches of a red river gum. Lizards scurried between the dunes. From the simmering distance, a mob of kangaroos watched as I checked the oil, softened the shocks, adjusted the panniers and rang the air with a pitch-perfect engine.
Fast and fearless, I rode all morning, slipping and sliding on the drifted sand. Rested at midday beneath another gum, drank a litre of water and again checked the oil and panniers. After an hour soft sand turned to rutted dirt and potholes. Vibrations rattled every bone in my body, and I stopped once more to check the fittings, worried the bike would disintegrate in my hands. Every nut and bolt had been loosened by the shuddering ride. The engine block was only a few turns from falling off the frame.
I scanned the lie of a dried-up creek bed, smoothed by the last rains that washed along the narrow, shallow banks. But the creek was omitted from my map, so I climbed the higher branches of the gum and followed the watermark to the horizon. The compass needle and creek pointed the same direction as the highway. I declared the ghost of a river my road and revved up the engine.
You’d be the first to warn about veering from the known track in a featureless landscape. I can hear you now, cursing the brash Englishman,