Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [64]
I dare not read back this letter. A macho Englishman would shudder admitting he needed someone so much. I want to write this every time I put pen to page, but I’m afraid of scaring you with the strength of my emotion, my love. I wish I’d gathered the courage to tell you this when we said au revoir at Threeways junction. I promise I’m not just declaring it now because I’m only a drop of water from thirst.
It’s dark now, and I must dig, scratch and burrow for my life. I’ve built up the blaze and dragged it to the edge of my hole. Half naked, covered in dirt and lit by the flames of a desert fire, it’s only the dream of our stone cottage that reminds me I’m human.
Nearly sunrise. I’ve dug all night without rest, and my left palm is blistered and raw. Blood covers the mudguard shovel. I’m completely naked and black with dirt. Stripped off again so I wouldn’t sweat and fade away before morning. Now I emerge from my hole, earth-dark and wild, a muddied beast of the underworld blinking in the daylight.
I’m about to gulp down my final water. There should be some ceremony to commemorate my farewell to H2O. I should thank the two hydrogen atoms and the oxygen hanger-on, for everything they’ve done. From floating a single cell in the Cambrian seas, to filling swimming pools and water pistols. I wonder how much longer the 60 per cent of my body that’s water will remain.
To the stuff of life. A la votre!
Not moved for three hours. The less I move the less I’ll evaporate. I want to sleep, but eating coffee all night has frayed my nerve endings. Until I dream away the heat and thirst, I’m taking slow and measured breaths, calming my beating heart, conserving strength. I close my eyes from the bones of the reverend and see the cottage. The second floor is complete, the rafters fixed in the brickwork. I’m awaiting the delivery of the slates so I can climb into the sky and nail a roof above our heads.
Even when a snake slithered along the bed of the creek I didn’t stir. Maybe I could’ve killed it and drank the blood? But I was hypnotised by the muscle of light, the forked tongue of a bible villain. I don’t know this species, whether it’s venomous or not. In this land I’m as innocent as Adam before the fall. I’m a trespasser, an alien. There could be a water hole ten feet from this spot, an ice-cold bore deep enough for me to submerge my entire body. But I don’t have this knowledge. I know every station on the Central Line, the name of each prime minister since the war, that Buzz Aldrin was the second man on the moon, a byte is a group of bits, who shot John Lennon, Mg is the symbol for magnesium, slugs and snails belong to the Gastropoda class, the speed of light is 2.997 924 58 x 10(8) metres per second, Reginald Dwight changed his name to Elton John, a zygote is a fertilised egg, and that evaporation is to change from a liquid or solid state to a vapour.
I’m becoming air through ignorance.
I’m going to find out which plants have moisture, which ones will double me up with stomach cramps, poison my blood, or keep me alive.
I’ve not eaten myself to death, yet. My stomach churns, but I doubt it’s fatal. Took my knife and crawled on to the ridge. Hacked off root ends and waxy leaves, peeled back the bark from a small tree and dug out the pithy trunk. Even before the sun rose high enough to be a burden on my back, I twice had to rest from dizzy spells. No danger of falling as I’m already on the ground, but when the horizon tilted I thought I’d be rolled from the Earth.
I crawled into the shade of a clump of spinifex and chewed on my bounty of twigs. What to eat and what not took Aborigines generations of trial and error, death and sickness. I have two days. The roots and leaves I’ve gathered are so dry they cut my mouth. The tree has a tongue-shrinking tang. Maybe the reverend wandered outside for a snack and never returned?
Although I knew I had to get back to the solid shade of the creek, my body refused to move, and despite the baking sun, I lost the will to whip it onwards.
Then the nourishment I needed walked