Roadman Page 8

  But this morning the cat didn’t jump on his bed and he had slept through magpies’ ‘Get Out Of Fuck’n Bed!’ calls. Most unlike him too. Had even slept through transition from dark to light, only waking because he was busting for a piss and had almost wet the bed (courtesy of Mr. West End Fuck’n Lager). That’d been just after half past nine. Probably would’ve slept to midday if it hadn’t been for the call of nature, and would’ve missed most of the fuck’n weekend. So now it was Plan fuck’n C, and at this rate he was going to miss the best part of the morning fishing at the billabong.

  After what seemed a fuck’n eternity, crawling through the southern Adelaide suburbs and being held up at what seemed every fuck’n traffic light, he finally turned off South Road and onto the South Eastern Expressway. He’d been wrong though. It hadn’t taken him twice as long to get to the Expressway as it would’ve had he done what he should’ve done and left last night. It had taken at least three fuck’n times as long. Nearly an hour and a half had passed since he backed the Cherokee out of the driveway onto Amesbury Road. An hour and a half fuck’n wasted stuck in traffic. An hour and a half in which he could’ve been sitting back and relaxing on the banks of the billabong, fishing rod in one hand and can of West End in the other.

  He put his foot to the floor and sped on. He didn’t care about speed cameras. Several years ago he’d fitted both front and rear plates with one of those illegal diffraction covers that he’d swiped from a truck at a roadhouse out past the River Murray. The truckie was too busy shoving bacon and eggs and baked beans into his fat face to notice what was happening to his eighteen-wheeler parked outside. So even if the speed camera caught him flying past, the fuck’n cops would never be able to read the numberplate and send him a fine. He figured they were working as they fuck’n should as he was sure as hell he’d been snapped several times since he’d put the diffraction covers on and not once had he received a speeding ticket.

  This thought, at least, made him smile. So, nah, he didn’t give a flying fuck about speeding. He didn’t give a flying fuck about noth’n except wasting his weekend stuck in traffic. If only the fuck’n cat had woken him up as it should’ve, he wouldn’t be wasting half the fuck’n morning trying to get where he should already fuck’n well be. Where the hell was the stupid thing anyway? What the fuck was it up to?

  Max exited the Southern Expressway at the city limits just before Old Noarlunga and onto the Main South Road. Ignoring the Victor Harbor turnoff he continued south-west towards Aldinga and Myponga. He was now in the countryside and he could feel the weight of city stress slipping behind him. Not completely (nah, you could never get rid of it completely), but enough to make him feel as though he might just be able to kick back and relax and salvage the fuck’n day after all. Enough even to ease his foot off the accelerator and bring his speed back down to the legal limit.

  Just before noon he pulled into the Aldinga roadhouse to fill up the Cherokee and stock up on the essentials of life — bait, beer and ice. As he jumped into the driver’s seat and started the ignition, he noticed a hitchhiker in army-seconds (not too dissimilar to his own jacket and attire) with his thumb out. He’d positioned himself and his belongings where the roadhouse exited onto the main road. Beyond him, twenty or so kilometres further on where the road started its twisting incline up the bluff of Sellicks Hill, a thin plume of dirty grey smoke spiralled into the sky, dissipating inland at the top of the hill as the sea breeze shunted it eastward over the vineyards and dairy fields.

  Farmer doing a winter burn off, Max figured, exiting the roadhouse.

  He caught the eye of the hitchhiker, a twenty-something tourist with a patchy overgrowth on his face and a limp ponytail sagging between his shoulder blades, but ignored his request and drove on. In the rear view mirror he saw the hitchhiker’s arm drop to his side and shoulders slump and for some unbeknown fuck’n reason he felt sorry for the poor fucker. Max pulled to the side and slammed on the breaks in a cloud of dust. He watched the hitchhiker scramble for his rucksack and sling a strapped PVC tube longer than the Remy over his shoulder before running toward the Cherokee.

  For a fleeting moment Max thought of speeding off and laughing in his face just as the loser reached the side door, but then thought otherwise. What the fuck, he reckoned, it might be interesting.

  The hitchhiker opened the passenger door, out of breath and coughing away the dust. Even for such a short sprint he was panting and out of breath. The loser looked fit, was certainly not overweight, nor did he look sickly or pale with some kind of incurable fuck’n disease. The kind of disease that sent young men travelling the world looking for easy foreign pussy before they went home for one last roll of the dice with some unregistered and clinically unproven treatment regime that had only ever been tested on rats or destitutes in some dodgy lab in India. Max figured that whatever was stashed inside his rucksack or PVC tubing had to have weighed a fuck’n ton.

  “T’anks, man, I’ve bin stuck here for dree ’ours,” the loser said and Max felt his shoulders tense. The German accent was as undeniable as it was un-fuck’n welcome. The black, red and yellow striped German badge sewn onto the shoulder of his surplus army jacket confirmed his assumption, if ever he needed fuck’n confirmation. “Could you giff me a ride?”

  The tension in his shoulders spread down his arms to his fingers, which gripped the steering wheel like a hawk’s talons gripping a brown snake. He suppressed a tremendous urge to punch the German loser in the face and get the fuck away as fast as he fuck’n could, even if it meant running him over in full view of everyone inside the roadhouse.

  The hitchhiker now seemed wary, as if his much-promised lift was about to change his mind and leave without him. “Please, man, I need to get out of dis shithole.”

  This made Max laugh. His grip on the steering wheel eased. “Sure, where you goin’?”

  “Melbourne.”

  “Hah, shit, you’re goin’ the wrong way, mate.”

  “Zat’s de whole point.” The loser was actually fuck’n smiling.

  “Don’t know what the fuck you mean, but get in if you want. I’m only going another fifty clicks.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Max told him to put his gear in the rear of the Cherokee. When he returned to the passenger side, Max sensed sudden doubt in the young man’s demeanour. He followed his gaze to the Remy on the passenger seat.

  “I hunt roos,” he said, though why he felt the need to explain himself to this loser he couldn’t figure out. He tossed the Remy onto the back seat.

  The hitchhiker visibly relaxed and jumped in. “You kill your own national animals?” he said as the Cherokee headed south towards Sellicks Hill and the plume of smoke rising above it.

  Yep, and a whole lot more too, Max wanted to say. More than you’d know. Instead he said, “I’m Australian. That’s what we do.”

  The German fucker actually laughed. “You Ossies are strange.”

  Max held his tongue. He was already beginning to doubt the sense in giving this loser a ride. Still, it wouldn’t be for long. He’d set him down at the Myponga town hall before heading to the humpy at the Johnson farm. As he sped up a little faster, hoping to limit the time he had to spend listening to this fucker, something shifted in the back of the Cherokee. He glanced at the PVC piping through the rear view mirror, thinking maybe he did share something in common with this guy after all, besides his German fuck’n heritage that was.

  “You carry a rifle?” Max asked.

  The hitchhiker glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, zat? It’s a didgeridoo. I spent some time wiv ze Aborigines up north in ze desert.”

  This time is was Max’s turn to laugh. “What the fuck for?”

  The hitchhiker shifted in his seat, as though he had a sudden bladder spasm, the kind of spasm that said you’ve got two minutes to find a toilet or tree at the side of the road before the floodgates open and you ain’t gonna get another warning. “Zey treated me well,” was all he said. There was an uneas
y silence before he asked Max, “Where you heading?”

  “Out bush, fish’n,” he said. He was about to say, “Maybe a bit of roo hunt’n,” but then thought better of it. He’d heard it all before from fuck’n green neck ignoramuses like this German prick and he couldn’t be bothered getting into another fuck’n argument about the immorality of shooting roos, even though they were as much a fuck’n pest as the rabbits and the mice, only ten times the fuck’n size. Had this prick ever talked with the farmers about the devastation these animals caused to their fields and crops while he was up fuck’n north playing didgeridoo with the fuck’n natives? Nah, not on your fuck’n life. One-eyed, narrow minded, ignorant tourist on a mission to change the fuck’n world to his way of thinking.

  “Ze nature in zis country is unbelievable,” the loser said, gazing out the passenger window.

  About the smartest thing he’s said so far, Max thought. “When you know it like I do, you find all the best, unspoiled places,” he said, scanning the road ahead.

  The Cherokee was nearing the base of Sellicks hill, about to start the winding journey up and over the crest. He’d mistakenly thought that whatever was burning and causing the plume of smoke to twist skyward had been at the bottom of the hill, roughly where they were now. But from what he could see the smoke was emanating from somewhere closer to the top on the side of the hill fronting the sea. Which was odd because there wasn’t much in the way of arable farmland on that part of the hill, just rocky outcrops and cliff faces.

  “Ve haff nothink like zis in Germany. Everywhere is cities and roads and fucking autobahns. Agh, it’s ugly, man.”

  Max took the first bend slightly faster than he intended, causing the luggage in the back of the Cherokee to slide to the left. The German didn’t seem to notice. “Roads don’t make the world ugly,” Max said. “People do.”

  “Oh, man! I can see you’f been bitten a few times, ja?”

  Max gritted his teeth. What was this, some kind of evangelical pop-psychoanalysis of his fuck’n life? Some kind of two-minute head shrink by Dr. Fuck’n Freud? What the fuck did this loser know about fuck’n anything? And how old was this pretentious little prick, huh, giving these two-bit life lessons as if he was some kind of spiritual guru? Twenty-two? Twenty-five at max. At least fifteen years his junior.

  “I don’t get bitten,” he said. “A man protects himself.”

  The loser smiled and glanced over at Max. “Ve can’t control much. Ve are at ze mercy of our enwironment. Zat’s vot I learned in ze desert.”

  Max took a sharp left turn, then another tight right hander, careful not to stray onto the other side of the road and smash into the delivery van coming down the hill. “Bullshit! Control a man feels when he reels in a fish he knows he’ll be cook’n over fire later that night and having his belly full. That’s real.”

  The German’s smile widened. “Ja, zat’s ze kind of ting I’m liking. Know any good fishing spots?”

  Yeah, why not, Max thought, calming himself. Even though he’s a fuck’n crout, I might make an exception in this case. “Sure do. Wanna go? I’ll take you to my special spot,” he said, and extended his hand. “My name’s Max.”

  The hitchhiker shook his hand. “Gerhard. Pleased to meet you,” he said, then just as they rounded a left hand bend he shouted, “Whoa! Look at zat!”

  On the left hand side of the road, on a flatter part of the hill in a slow vehicle turnout, a broken down Honda sedan was on fire. Flames leaped out of the broken side windows, charring the outside paintwork and sending a thick plume of smoke toward the cloudless sky. The inside of the car looked completely gutted, but Max paid it little heed. He was thinking of fishing and beers and maybe a spot of roo hunt’n.

  At the top of Sellicks Hill Max ignored the Serena turnoff along the coast and headed inland toward Myponga along Main South Road. He figured he wasn’t quite ready to show Gerhard his secret weekender at the Johnson farm as yet. Holy fuck, he hadn’t even shown Sarah, even when they were in the honeymoon phase of the marriage, back in mid-nineties when they were still in party mode, when employment was good, he was getting laid more than once a week, and the Crows were a half-decent footy team. Back when he actually even liked the evil bitch. But she’d shown no interest in leaving the city shopping precinct, let alone extend herself beyond the city limits, more than content to leave him to his own when he felt the need to get away for a weekender and get back to his roots.

  Which was a blessing in fuck’n disguise in the end. She started turning nasty a year or so into the marriage, somewhere around the middle of ’97. About the same time the Crows won their maiden flag and he got told not to bother coming back to the assembly line at Mitsubishi because he’d turned up drunk once too often for the foreman’s liking. She had absolutely no fuck’n idea where he spent his time on the weekends, only that it was somewhere near his hometown; and even then she probably couldn’t point on a map where she thought Serena was. Maybe if the shithole had had a Westfield shopping mall she might’ve had some fuck’n idea on where she could waste his hard-earned cash on stuff she wore once and then threw away because it made her fat arse look even fatter. But Serena was noth’n more than your two-bit country town whose halcyon days as a fishing and whaling port were well behind it and whose highlights now included a couple of rundown pubs, a dusty football oval, a silted harbour, and an underused boat ramp. Even the beach wasn’t very enticing. Most locals chose never to swim there, including him, preferring the beach at Silver Sands at Sellicks or further on at Aldinga and leaving the seaweed and rock pools of Serena beach to the summer influx of city slickers to enjoy.

  Yeah, was a blessing in disguise all right.

  Max glanced to the heavens and thanked his lucky fuck’n stars Sarah had taken as much interest in his extra-curricular weekend affairs as she had getting on her knees and blowing his cock. God knows her disdain for all things country and rural had saved him a major head fuck over the past couple of years or so.

  The Cherokee descended the last twisting kilometre of the hill and levelled out onto the open plain toward Myponga. Just before the town came into view, Max turned right against the traffic onto the gravel surface of Lake Road.

  “Not long now,” Max told Gerhard. “This road will take us behind the billabong… I mean the reservoir. I know a hidden track that will take us to a shady spot on the water where we can drop a line and not have to worry about fuck’n rangers giving us a fine for trespassing and fish’n without a license.” Then he looked at Gerhard. “You have to fuck’n promise you won’t tell no-one about this spot, okay, not even your best mate or girlfriend.”

  “Sure, your secret’s safe wiv me,” said Gerhard.

  Max was happy to take him for his word, even though it went against his better fuck’n judgement to trust a complete stranger. And a fuck’n German stranger at that. All it took was for one nosy fuck’n ranger to stick his fuck’n nose where it wasn’t wanted and he could get in to a whole heap of shit over this, and for what? Just to show a fuck’n tourist a good time?

  Fuck, he must be getting soft in his old age.

  Twenty minutes later they were sitting on the banks of the billabong baiting their hooks and swilling cans of West End Draught. Even though it was shady and a little cool, Max had removed his jacket and was sitting on it crossed legged. Gerhard stood beside him, rod and beer in hand, scanning the lake and surrounding forest.

  “Oh man, someday I’m gonna moov here and get me a piece of dis freedom,” Gerhard said, sipping his beer.

  Max belched and grinned. “Best country in the whole fuck’n world. God’s country.”

  “Sure, you haff it all here.” Gerhard tossed in his line, still admiring the lake and forest as he had. “Seems strange, but dis place reminds me a little bit of the lakes around Bavaria. ‘Specially these pines.”

  “Only thing wrong with this place.” Max stood and cast his rod. The line arced high and then dropped, the sinker hitting the water fifty metres out with a
plop! Then he sat back down on his jacket cushion and swigged his beer. “These pines aren’t native. Aussie pines don’t like to grow so close together and they like more sandy soil closer to the sea. Don’t know why these ones were planted here.”

  “I t’ink dey are supposed to prevent erosion and help keep ze water healthy somehow.”

  “Maybe,” said Max. “Anyway, it’s only in this section around the lake. The native bush picks up at the dam and runs all the way along the creek to Serena down by the sea.”

  “One good ting about dis,” said Gerhard, “nobody can see us. Even if you were on a boat in the middle of the… what did you call dis place?”

  “The billabong.”

  “Ja, the billabong. Even if you were on a boat you probably wouldn’t see us sitting here wiz our rods and beers. You could do almost anything you want here.”

  Ain’t that the truth? Max thought, feeling the first tug of the line. “Ha! Fish are bite’n today.”

  He teased the inquisitive fish by hooking the line with his index finger, just like he was squeezing the trigger on the Remy, then, after the third nibble he yanked the rod back hard. The fish fought hard, thrashing back and forth at the bottom of the lake, only giving up as it was reeled in near the surface.

  “What kind of fish is dat?” asked Gerhard as Max landed his catch. It flopped and twitched its tapered tail as it struggled to breathe. Max stepped on its broad, flat head and removed the hook from its grotesquely large mouth.