Roadman Read online

  He drew a deep, hot breath and began cycling again.

  After an hour or so of much easier riding, he finally reached the gate to the farmhouse, which, from here, was still out of sight behind the small crop of gum trees. Either side of the driveway, two massive date palms cast tiny midday shadows over the gate, upon which a corrugated sign was hanging lopsided by long pieces of twisting wire: PRIVATE! DO NOT ENTER! Ignoring the warning, he lifted the small lasso of fraying rope that was looped over the adjacent post. The rusty hinges squealed in protest as the gate swung open. Before he hastened into the derelict property, he scanned the entire horizon behind him, checking for the telltale plumage of rising dust. Satisfied there were no oncoming vehicles, he entered, shut the gate, and looped the rope back over the post. The driveway (no more than two ruts and a central hump) was overgrown with weeds and grass that, like everything else in this shithole, had turned brittle brown in the summer heat.

  Cycling as fast as he could, the dragster followed the inner rut like a tram on its track. Magically, his thirst began abating with each eager rotation of his pedals, and within minutes he had rounded the small crop of gums. Then there it stood, burnt out and alone in the distance, a gutted skeleton in the middle of an overgrown field. Farmhouse no more, it was a dead turtle on its back with its legs pointing to the blazing sun, its head retracted into its shell (or cut off). Had been derelict since the murder of farmer Johnson and his wife in ’58, or so the old man had told him. Believed him too; had been one of the few days the drunken fool was sober. Apparently the flames were seen all the way from town. Someone had also said they’d heard an explosion, which only fuelled the rumour that the twin boys did it for the inheritance, though no-one knew for sure because nobody had seen noth’n of them since the cops pulled their parents’ charred skeletons from the smouldering coals the next day.

  “Pure fuck’n mystery,” the old drunk put it. And he was right, for once.

  Michael Joseph, one of the kids in his class at Serena Primary School, put it another way. “The Johnson farm is haunted. Everyone knows that. Even my dad says so.”

  Dr. Joseph was one of the only two remaining doctors in town, and everything he said was the truth. You could trust him more than the priest, or so lipstick lips reckoned, and she’d know. Maybe for that reason, the sight of the burnt out shell always made his stomach feel like someone had taken it with both ends and wrung it like a wet sheet. Approaching it, he sensed something unnatural, something that lingered, and he knew that if he stayed a little too long he was likely to end up lingering too. For fuck’n ever.

  He gulped with difficulty. Salty saliva scalded his hoarse throat like he’d eaten gravel. Then he cycled past the burnt farmhouse, careful not to linger, on to the next crop of gumtrees behind. The absence of cattle and sheep since the farmers’ death had allowed the grass to grow tall and high, brown tangles that grabbed at the bike’s spokes and chain and prevented him from riding all the way to his secret hideaway. He dumped the dragster as far from the rear of the farmhouse as he could and walked the remaining distance, finally stepping through the ring of eucalypts and wattles into the clearing. It was probably five degrees cooler in the shade, but he barely noticed, too eager to examine the traps he had set the previous week.

  He had earned a tidy sum tossing newspapers onto the neglected lawns and weedy driveways of Serena to pay for his hobby. At one cent a paper he made thirty cents a day or thereabouts, depending on how many paid their monthly bill to Stelios Polites, the Greek dickhead who owned the deli on the corner of Bay Road and The Esplanade. With the money he saved (more to the point, with the money he had hidden from his father; the thieving bastard had once discovered his stash under the mattress and spent it on two bottles of scotch and an overnight room at The Griffin’s Head with one of his lady friends), he bought two rabbit traps at the army surplus store on Bay Road, along with the switchblade he carried in his pocket. Guys who made a living from army surplus never asked too many questions, even to ten-year old kids. Besides, it was obvious what he was up to and there was nothing illegal about it. Trapping rabbits was a rite of passage for any country lad and no army surplus manager was going to refuse a kid his rite of passage, especially if he had the nine dollars and sixty cents to pay for two rusty, well-used rabbit traps that would’ve remained on the shelves until the next fucking century.

  At the entrance to the first warren were the remains of a pregnant doe. Her rear foot was caught between the teeth of the trap and there she had died, painfully and slowly. Judging the extent of the flyblown corpse and its stench, it must have happened soon after he laid the trap last Saturday. It was bloated and its eyes had been removed, either by the ants that were swarming over its face or by the crows that flew overhead. He cursed, but what could he do? He would have to figure out a way to come here more often than once a week, otherwise this kind of shit was going to happen all the time. Arming the sweat off his brow and shooing away the flies from the corpse, he removed the doe from the trap and threw it into the wattle bushes, which gobbled it up like a pack of hungry mutts that hadn’t seen food for days. He reset the trap, careful not to get his fingers jammed in its rusty teeth, and then went searching for the other trap he’d set on the other side of the clearing.

  Nearing the second trap, he thought he could hear the whimpers of a struggling animal. His heart lurched quicker and, for the first time in his life, he felt the stirring of life in his underpants. Just a faint tingle, but it could well have been a kick to the balls. It stopped him in his tracks. Then, after a few seconds, it went away. Confused, he continued on, but nearing the warren he felt it again.

  Then he heard the whimpering sound again and bent down to investigate. The trap was pulled into the mouth of the warren, held firm by the peg he had hammered into the ground through its chain, which he now pulled, dragging the trap and its wriggling prey out of the hole. The tingling in his pants grew stronger when he saw what was there. The metal teeth had seized one of the rabbit’s hind legs, ripping into its flesh and chomping almost all the way through the bone. The rabbit wriggled with blind panic when he tried to pick it up, and he giggled. Grabbing the rabbit by the neck, he then tried to prise open the teeth of the trap. They were clenched tight, stuck by the rust.

  He tried again without luck. A drop of sweat dripped from his forehead onto the rabbit’s writhing belly. His hands were shaking, and the tingling thing in his pants grew bigger. God, it was downright uncomfortable. It now felt harder than the switchblade in his pocket.

  That was it! Reaching into his shorts, he removed the switchblade, and in one swift motion the rabbit was free, its hind leg twitching in the metal jaws like a lizard in the mouth of a ravenous dingo.

  Arming the sweat off his brow again, he looked around, wanting to be quick. In the middle of the clearing stood a granite rock the size of a toppled refrigerator, perfect for what was on his mind. How he hadn’t noticed the rock before he didn’t know. He stared at it, mesmerised, and wandered over to it in a trance. On the ground at the base of the rock he saw an empty Mars Bar wrapper. A thought whispered through his mind, a thought that made his heart skip a beat. Did someone else know about this place? At this point in time did he really care if they did, did he really give a blue razoo if they were hiding in the wattle bushes and watching his every move? With his mouth as dry and dusty as the A131, he reached out and stroked the hot, smooth surface of the rock. The thing in his pants was now even harder (how was that possible?), now as hard as the granite altar on which he flung the rabbit down. It squirmed and tried to kick him with its one remaining hind leg, and as it twisted its head he caught its fear-struck, accusing gaze, but nothing was going to save it now.

  He did what he had to do.

  When next he looked at his hands they were crusted with congealing blood and gripping the handlebars of the dragster. He was speeding back down the A131 toward the sea and home with no recollection of how he had got here. Time had somehow been removed from his memo
ry, but he didn’t care. He had a lump in his shorts the size of Ayer’s Rock and a smile on his face as wide as the billabong. But the A131 had ripples in its surface that were just as solid as the Rock, and potholes just as big as the billabong, and he realised too late he was going too fast. The front wheel plunged into the gaping mouth of a large pothole and he lost control. The front wheel was swallowed and the rear wheel kicked up like a bucking brumby, flinging him over the handlebars in a crumpled heap onto the side of the road where a grader had long ago piled a rubble of gravel and dirt.

  Dazed, he spat out a mouthful of dust and blood and propped himself up to inspect the damage. At least all his teeth were where they should be, but he was in a right fuck’n mess. He was covered in gravel and dirt, his shirt was ripped almost all the way from his right armpit to the lower seam, and his skin was peeled raw from both knees and palms. He touched a newly formed lump on his right brow and flinched at the sting.

  “Stupid dickhead,” he muttered, then gingerly picked himself off the ground and staggered over to his bike. Like the broken neck of a roadkill, its front wheel was buckled out of shape. His shoulders slumped. If he walked back home he was going to be late for supper — way fuck’n late — and that meant getting the leather strap across his arse, which was sore enough as it was. He rubbed it semi-consciously, and winced. Hitching, he figured, was the only way he would make it in time. Gently, he sat by the crippled dragster and waited. The rock in his pants, he noted, was now a limp rabbit.

  Luck was not too long in coming, though. His dad’s mate, Mr. Fynn, pulled up half an hour later in his VW Beetle and asked if he needed a lift. “Looks like you’ve just been attacked by a potato peeler, son,” he said. Max could smell scotch on his breath, even from outside the car. “Want me to take you to Dr. Joseph?”

  Max shook his head, glancing down at his injuries. “Just need a lift home, if that’s all right,” he said. “Have to make supper before dad gets home.”

  Mr. Fynn nodded. “Was on my way to meet him now at The Griff. I’ll keep him busy for a while if ya like.” He gave him a wink.

  Max tried to smile his thanks, but the painful grazes on his face meant all he could manage was a half-twisted wince. The dragster was too big to fit in the car, even with the front wheel bent at right angles, so they left it by the side of the road. This was the countryside, where the yokels knew every bloody other yokel and no-one bothered to lock their doors when they went to work or on holidays, so he wasn’t worried about it being gone when he returned to pick it up, whenever that would be.

  “What you doin’ all the way out here on your own, anyway?” asked Mr. Fynn.

  Max climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door. He said nothing, preferring to just stare ahead through the windshield at the dusty road and grit his teeth.

  Mr. Fynn started the engine. “Does your father know you’re ‘ere?” He gave a long, sly wink, waited for a few seconds, then said, “Don’t worry ‘bout me, son. Your secret’s safe. Been keep’n secrets since way b’fore you came kick’n and scream’n into this world.”

  Max looked over at him, not liking for one second the look from the man’s bloodshot eyes. “Trapp’n rabbits,” he said, which was true. What he didn’t say was that he had poked out its eyes with his army knife, flayed, gutted and buried it up to its neck to be eaten alive by the ants or crows. The thing in his pants stirred at the memory.

  “Trapp’n rabbits, eh?” Mr. Fynn threw his head back and laughed, accelerating toward the township. “Good on ya. Now, I’m gonna let you in on one of my li’l secrets.”

  CHAPTER 2

  With the Remington slung over his left shoulder, Max bent down and caressed the female carcass, admiring the clean entry wound through its skull. He inhaled a deep intake of roo scent, holding it in as long as he could before exhaling. The time it had taken from pulling the trigger, rising from his vantage point and crossing the terrain to examine his prey couldn’t have been longer than thirty or forty seconds. Yet the tingling that had filled his jocks at the instant of the kill had already given way to a fading throb (long gone were the days when it could last a whole morning or afternoon), but it sparked into life again for a brief moment at the smell of fresh death.

  “Come now my beauty,” he said, grabbing hold of the base of its tale and heaving the carcass onto his back. Its head bounced against the back of his knees as though a kid with boxing gloves had taken a few jabs at the back of his legs. “Gotta get you back to the humpy before night sets in.”

  He glanced up at the western hill where the roo’s two partners had instinctively bolted at the crack of gunfire. The sun had dipped behind the tree-covered crest, jacketing the valley in a dark shade of camouflage-green. He could see no movement up there except the gentle sway of the topmost eucalypts. He figured the roos were making bloody sure they kept well out of sight, maybe even watching him from behind a crop of granite, trying to work out what he was going to do next.

  If they had any fuck’n sense, though, they’d bolt for it right to the top and outta fuck’n sight.

  The heels of his boots dug into the dirt as he started the long trudge up the southern slope to the humpy, just as a pair of white cockatoos flew overhead squawking at each other. The noisy fucks seemed unable to decide which tree to land on, like an old married couple in a restaurant squabbling over which table to sit. He followed their erratic zigzagging flight path until they disappeared behind a high line of eucalypts, roughly in the direction he was headed. Which might take the better part of forty minutes to reach, he reckoned. At least the breeze had dropped its fuck’n nagging. He figured as soon as the female grey had hit the ground it had got what it had wanted and then pissed off looking for some other sucker to do its dirty work.

  Glad to be fuck’n rid of ya, he said to himself. Glad to be fuck’n rid of all of ya good-for-noth’n bitches.

  Better yet, at least the temperature was dropping in the wake of the sun. Couldn’t bear the thought of trudging up this hill with an extra forty kilos of dead flesh with the sun burning a dirty great hole in the middle of his head. Still, the speed of the drop probably meant it was gonna be a cold one tonight. Probably wake up to a ground covered in frost and a billy can full of solid ice. Which meant he couldn’t leave things till morning. Would have to gut and skin the carcass before he hopped into the swag and got some shut-eye. And man he was tired. Hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in…

  “Fuck knows,” he grunted, as the deadweight on his back shifted sideways and caused him to stumble over a protruding rock. But sleep was the last thing he was gonna worry about right at this moment. Had to get out of this valley and up to the humpy before Venus and her pretty fuck’n sisters decided it was time for happy hour at the Sky Bar.

  “There are Abos,” he remembered the old crout saying more than once, usually with a ciggy hanging out of his mouth and a stubby of West End wedged into his fist, “and then there are black Abos, black as fuck’n hell.”

  Same went for the night. There were nights that were dark, and then there were nights that were so fuck’n dark you couldn’t see your cock when you went for a piss, let alone what you were pissing on. Out here in the bush it was nearly always the second kind of dark, except when the moon was full and shining like a midnight sun, and the last thing anyone with a brain cell between their ears would want was to spend the night on this slope freezing their balls off next to a rotting carcass they’d have to use as a windbreak.

  Max trudged on. Halfway up the slope, to his surprise, his thoughts were suddenly cut short by what he guessed was the sound of some bitch screaming for help. Could almost hear another voice too, he reckoned, a bloke’s, but then their yelps were drowned out by a flock of squawking cockatoos that had taken flight over the darkening valley. Must have been more than two hundred of the noisy fuckers. The racket was deafening, and while the flurry of white feathers circled overhead like some screeching apparition from the billabong he scanned the area both beneath and abov
e his eye-line. Trouble was, the way the echoes bounced around the valley, the voices could’ve been coming from any direction. Down below in the creek, from where he’d just come. Over on the western ridge, where last few rays of daylight were luring the cockatoos like a swarm of demonic moths. Even further east along the creek where it cut sheer cliffs through the steeper part of the valley, the gorge which every kid at school this side of the Fleurieu Peninsula knew the Abos had tried to claim as sacred land a hundred years ago to stop the Myponga dam being built upstream. Those same cliffs, in fact, down which he’d sometimes spied abseiling rock climbers through the Remington’s telescopic lens and pretended to pick them off one by one.

  He let go of the roo’s tail, allowing the carcass to slide down his back and thump to the ground. In the same motion, he hitched the Remington to his shoulder and pointed it in the direction of the gorge. From this height, even through the telescopic lens, it was difficult to see anything behind the eucalypts. Would’ve been much easier from higher up near the humpy, but he thought he could make out the top of the gorge at least. Was nothing of any particular note, just the hazy green of the trees and the grey of the craggy gorge. Certainly no flashes of bright yellow or orange or red bouncing down the cliff face like yoyos on extended twine. Man these pricks annoyed him, almost as much as these noisy fucking cockatoos. Had considered many times reporting them to the cops, even to the South Australian Water authorities, but wasn’t he also trespassing on government land? Would be too many fuck’n questions fired in his direction, and that he needed like a .22-cal to the head.