Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

In a servo someone has left behind a newspaper called Shearing World. I get a cup of black coffee and a juice and flick through the paper. There’s a column at the back where they advertise for work, and where people advertise themselves as wanting work. Almost every one has a tick by ‘Experienced’. I can hold a bloody sheep, and I can take its fleece off. Yes, I think, fuelled by the coffee and reaching for my Holidays. I pick a place that sounds busy, and that is far away, Kalgoorlie, and I buy a map in the servo so I can find it. It is nearly two thousand kilometres if I drive to the coast. I also buy three litres of tropical juice and two litres of water. My money should last, I can take my time getting down to Kalgoorlie if I want. Otto has been surprisingly good at saving, there’s more money than I was expecting in the tin. I wonder if I should have just taken half. It makes me think again how if he does find me he’ll kill me.

On my way, I stop now and again to look at how the land changes. The further south I get the redder things are. I get to the coast in the early morning, after a drive through the night, and tread out in the flat water at Monkey Mia. It smells familiar and good. There’s a sign that says SWIM WITH THE DOLPHINS, and about a dozen tourists wearing orange life jackets bob around in the water at the end of a pier. I’m stunned at seeing so many people all at once. A smallish fin flits between them and I can hear them laughing apart from one young girl who screams because she’s terrified. And she should be, that orange’ll be visible to any passing darkness, not just the dolphins. I walk away from them up the beach, far out from the shore, but somehow the water only ever reaches my calves, not deep enough to swim in. Right on the point, a pod of dolphins, sixteen or so of them, come in close to me, and I can see their slick rounded backs and their blow-holes as well as their fins. I wave my arms about; partly I am waving hello and partly I want them not to come too close.

Back inland, at an empty truck stop, there’s a goanna on the picnic table and I sit for a while on a rock nearby and watch him. When I stand up he darts off the table, and rizzles into the scrub. There’s a dunny at the picnic area, but just going near it sets off a bloom of blue bottles and the smell is a familiar one. I go in the scrub and say sorry out loud to the goanna.

I park up on the side of the road, because I’m too tired to keep going the hour and half to the next servo marked on the map. But it’s a jumpy night, and even though Otto doesn’t know what direction I went in, I turn the engine back on, drive onto the plain and park behind a lump of flowering scrub for a bit of protection. The doors are locked and then I sleep deeply, curved to the shape of the truck’s seats, with the handbrake butting my ribs. I wake before dawn and there’s a small dingo not far from the truck, he’s got his paws around the back leg of something that died a long time ago, and he’s chowing down happily. My stomach moves inside me, and hurts. It’s probably time I ate something. I swig on the last of the tropical juice and decide not to ever drink it again, three litres is too much.

When I reach the next servo, everything smells of cooked meat, and it takes me such a long time to choose something to eat, the lady behind the till gets itchy.

‘Something you can’t find, doll?’ I jump.

‘I just can’t decide.’ And I flush because it sounds like I think I’m choosing a wedding ring. I find a salad roll tucked away in a corner of the fridge and pick up a bag of cheese twists and a Coke.

‘After all that,’ says the lady, but now I’m up close to her I can see she’s not trying to be a bitch, and I smile. ‘You’d better have one of those on the house,’ she says like she’s poured me a whisky. She’s added a chocolate Freddie the Frog to my toddler’s meal. I catch sight of myself in the window as I go to sit down and I am thin and even in the reflection I can see the dark shadows under my cheekbones. I save the Freddie the Frog until it melts in the glove compartment. He represents something I’m not sure I understand.

When I see kangaroos I am so surprised I don’t slow or swerve or do anything other than watch as they bound past the bonnet of the car, and I catch one on the hindquarters and it flies up in the air like I’ve made it into a different creature by hitting it. It comes down and when it lands it doesn’t just lie there dead, it’s on its feet before I can even stop the truck, and it is gone into the low brush faster even than it was moving before. I sit watching, my hands wrapped hotly around the steering wheel, my heart bouncing at my gullet. I can’t believe it just got up and went, I was going at least ninety. I laugh out loud at how wonderful life is that it takes a hell of a knock like that and it’s just fine, and I find the steadiness in myself and get out of the car to check the damage. The fender is dented, but there is nothing to be done about that, and the paintwork has gone, through to the body. I look up at the roo as she bounds mightily away, but all at once she stops mid-bound, and her legs fly out from under her, spazzing, like she’s caught on an electric fence. She drops and lurches up again, her legs going every which way, her small arms stretched at the sky, her claws splayed like stars, and the dust flying all around. The others are just blurs in the distance now, and she is going mad, I can hear her body smack the earth every time she lands. I don’t let my thoughts touch the sides as I take the crowbar out of the toolbox in the back of the truck and I cross over the empty road.

All I let myself think walking through that scrub towards her is that I am capable, I am strong in the arm and so is my crowbar. She is all over the place, there is blood coming from somewhere, which is all around the clearing she has made in the scrub. Her eyes roll and her thrashing makes a wind at my face. I wish my crowbar was a rifle. I watch her head, wait for it to come around with her twitching, which has slowed, and when it comes towards me I raise the crowbar high in the air, picturing the sheep with the black spots on its nose and thinking, You are capable , and I bring it down with everything in me onto the side of her head, and there is a crunch — I’ve broken through which is good news for both of us in the long term. Her juddering slows, but there is still movement, and quickly I bring it down again and again until long after she has stopped her twitching and until there is really not much of a head left.

I take a step back. Behind me I hear something coming on the highway and when I look it’s a road train. It honks loudly at the sight of my truck, which is not pulled over and is in the middle of the road, but he doesn’t slow down; instead he crosses to the other side to pass it, but not enough that he doesn’t take off my wing mirror. Even from here I can hear a voice laughing from inside the cab as my wing mirror bounces and then smashes on the bitumen.

Inside, while Lloyd sat on the sofa, I’d filled a mug with water. He drank it and then held his forehead in his hands. I washed the mud off my face and dried it with a tea towel. Outside rattled against the windows. I turned the kitchen light on and it flickered on and off and on again.

I wondered how old he was — younger than my father the last time I’d seen him, but older than the farmers who came to offer their services. I took mugs out of the cupboard and put them back. I found a pack of paracetamol and set them on the counter, wondering if I should offer them to him, or if that would encourage him to stay. I watched him from the corner of my eye, watched for a look or a sudden movement. I ran an itinerary of the kitchen. Hammer under the sink, half a brick on the window sill.