Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [33]
Too many questions without answers. I have nothing to wager, and no second chance. I’ll crawl, hobble, hop, and scrabble to the highway. I’ll rest here today, stow the essentials in the backpack and set out before dawn tomorrow. I’ll fashion a crutch from the exhaust in the hope that my shoulder can bear some weight by the morning.
Feels good to have a mission. My spirits have lifted. Again you give me strength. And to think you cycled from south to north by pedal-power alone, no cheating with a combustion engine – what good they are.
Dozed through midday, then burned the last tyre rubber on fire. The black smoke distress signal is finished. After hammering a crutch from the exhaust pipe, I realised my panic had actually turned to a brief peace. I lay in the shade of the bank, undeterred by my grinning skeleton friend, and watched puffs of cloud drift on the wind.
To see the clouds waltz across the sky is to think of the day you walked into the bar in Darwin, scarf swept over your shoulder, announcing you had conquered the length of Australia with a flick of your hair and dusted boots. Where the Victorians set out to cross the sunburned plains as though marching to war, you rode into the desert to befriend its wilderness, to learn from those who evolved on the scorching sand, how a flame can leap from a twisted stick, the waterholes and quenching plants.
Any man who saw you in that room didn’t go home and think of his wife. My trip lost meaning, it seemed trivial. I suddenly had nothing to do in Australia except win your heart.
Fitful sleep. In and out of ibuprofen daze. Strengthening wind rustling bushes and whipping up sand. My paranoia turned a whistling breeze into hissing snakes. Last thing I need is a King Brown in my sleeping bag.
But the real threats are nothing to the imagined, what the brain can do to a weakened body, the fleeting dream I conjured of the skeleton last night. I closed my eyes from the starry sky to see the sunlit desert and a reverend approaching in a black frock, his coat-tails whipping in the wind like a flapping raven. I looked to the creek grave. It was empty, the body gone. The reverend strode towards where I lay, crippled and pinned by the bike. He carried a shovel that glinted in the sun. The closer he came, the more frantically I tried to wriggle free. When I finally wrenched away the bike, I saw my legs had gone. I dragged my torso along by my hands, but the reverend didn’t chase.
It wasn’t me he was laying to rest. He was digging his own grave. The body he pulled from the bushes was his, but naked, a swine-pink belly that wobbled, the same ruddy cheeks and fuzz of thinning red hair, fat fingers bulging over the knuckles. And the silver cross, which the living lifted over his head and placed upon the corpse. He then took the shovel and cut the ground with the fervour of a man tunnelling to the centre of the world. He climbed from the grave and rolled in his dead self. No thud, as though the body never hit the bottom, still falling. He shovelled on the dirt, but it didn’t fill the grave. I woke when he walked away because I was terrified. Terrified he hadn’t even noticed my presence. Even in my own dream I could die a forgotten death.
It was still an hour before dawn, and while the western desert glowed with the coming dawn, the sunlight in my sleep had been so bright my eyes had to adjust. Is this possible? That the glare in a dream can dazzle on waking?
And of course the bones were still in the creek. I’m a fool for even checking.
Built up the fire to boil water – 3.4 litres remaining – for porridge and coffee. Stocked backpack with ALL food, stove, Swiss Army knife, lighter, sleeping bag, First Aid box, compass, and map.
The exhaust pipe crutch is redundant. Shoulder too numb for the weight. Because the broken leg and dislocation are on my right side, I have no use for a prop. I have to crawl out of here. For my life.
Two hours of slow progress, maybe 1 km covered? Impossible to crawl in a straight line as spinifex so thick. Thirsty already,