Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [34]
Sure I can get to the highway – if estimation of km and direction correct. Leg swollen from blood pumping around break, shin dark purple. But a direct, no-nonsense pain is easier to defeat than the electric nerve damage shooting along my neck and shoulder.
And worse than the physical toil, the snapped tibia and twinge of shoulder, is that I can only guess at my progress by calculation. I squat on my good knee and look above the bush, but have no landmark to gauge distance. It really is nothing but horizon, the irony of a landscape so flat you can see the camber of the earth. Death would seem a preferable end to crawling this arid plain for ever.
Palms scalded from burning sand, and not even midday. I can barely grip the pen. Crawled and cursed through pain for nearly two hours in sweltering heat – cooling breeze has blown to sweeter climes. Took socks off and wore over hands. If anyone did find me like this, crawling on all threes – tied right arm into sling with underpants – with the snakes and scorpions, they’d have me committed for believing I were a marsupial. Even the lizards seem to laugh, skittering away, then stopping and turning, cocking their heads to mutter, ‘Who’s this idiot stumbling through our desert?’
Unzipped my sleeping bag and slung it between two of the more sturdy bushes. Solid shade, but I’m roasting without the breeze and soaked with sweat. Hate to think the salty millilitres in my clothes exceed what I’m drinking.
Feel fresher without ibuprofen – and hopefully no nightmares of resurrected priests – but every drag of right leg a Herculean effort. My jaw aches from gritting my teeth so hard. Need to focus pain away from aggression, as swearing as loud as I do must burn precious calories. Have to trick my brain into believing a broken leg is bliss. Somehow.
Will rest out heat, boil pasta – lid on to stop precious water evaporating – and crawl on.
So hot. Napped two hours then cooked. Pasta, tuna, onion, tomato puree, and a little pepper never tasted so good.
Plan to beat pain by thoughts of future … with you. Forgive me for the liberties I’m taking, but I’m going to transcend agony and doubt by building us a home in my mind. I picture a little stone cottage by a bend in a river, caressed by weeping willows and fields of corn, where the only sounds are the wind in the leaves and chattering ducks. My focus, instead of staring at the sand and bearing pain, will be constructing a dream by hand. I can see pallets of stacked bricks on the gravel driveway, waiting to be laid. And when I’ve finished the house I’ll weed, trim, cut, and prune the garden. You’ll be able to meander a stone path to the river edge, between rosebushes and bougainvillaea, and toss crusts of bread to the swans.
Sorry to presume so much of your brief affection, but I need a world beyond this burning sand.
Foundations of our little stone cottage dug. I’ve gone for small and beautiful: kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, and a roof terrace. When it’s warm we can haul the bed outside and sleep beneath the stars. Already the walls are two feet tall. Progress rapid because I’ve tricked pain into creation. With each shuffle of my buckled body I laid another brick and crawled closer to rescue.
Only resting does the agony return. And the doubt. Or is it logic? Maybe I can make the distance. Maybe I can beat the pain. But without water? I’m down to 2.4 litres – 2.9 if you count the emergency supply I’ve been saving in the empty Gatorade bottle. Even if I drink my own urine the fuel remaining won’t last the journey. How far could I crawl without hydration?
My thoughts are spiralling. Should rest mind and body, but need to cook before the sun goes down. Tonight’s chef special is rice, packet tomato soup and, you guessed, a little pepper.
Sitting before a huge fire of spinifex and a dead tree. If I torch the bush could I hitch a lift home on the fire truck?
Leg numb, shoulder aching from dangling when crawling. But if I take the pain and consider the progress of our little stone cottage, I’m almost