I CRUISED ALONG THE Gunshot Road, shading my eyes and peering into the afternoon glare, desperately searching for the Galena turn-off. I only had another hour’s light, and didn’t fancy my chances of finding Jojo in the dark. The map was crap and Jacob’s directions crapper.
I wasn’t paying a huge amount of attention to the road, I admit—a nasty habit I’ve acquired since coming back out bush. Sometimes I even read while I’m driving. Nothing heavy, mind you—crime, perhaps, maybe a magazine. I’m not the only culprit, I’m sure. Meeting another vehicle out here is an event of such magnitude you tend to get out and talk about it.
So it was partly my fault that I was damn near killed. But only partly: if the other bastard hadn’t come fanging round the bend in the centre of the road, we wouldn’t have come anywhere near as close to colliding as we did.
As it was, a split-second glimmer in the corner of my eye made me fling the wheel to the right and go thrashing off into the gravel. The beige Toyota seemed to be ninety percent bull-bar and rubber, but its rear bumper clipped mine and threw me into a fishtail.
Somewhere in the ensuing seconds, I experienced that gut-wrenching moment of weightlessness that rises inside when you’re up on two wheels and about to flip. At what felt like the last possible moment, the gods of gravity and balance reasserted themselves, and the car came crashing back onto all fours.
I clutched the wheel desperately as we smashed through gravel and scrub and gradually decelerated to a velocity at which I could ease her down through the gears.
My vehicle drew to a halt—unlike the other bastard, I was pissed off to see, who hammered along the road as if nothing had happened, chains clattering, canvas canopy flapping in the wind.
I flopped onto the wheel, my heart kicking like a bull in a chute. Threw an angry glance at the disappearing Toyota. No chance of a licence plate in all that dust, but one bizarre image had imprinted itself on my mind’s eye: had terror been playing tricks with me, or had I really spotted a pig’s head mounted on the bull-bar?
A pig’s head. Very Territory, but still not something you saw every day. And yet I had seen it before. Wasn’t there something like that parked at Green Swamp on the day of Doc’s death? I’d have words with that porcophile prick if I ever saw him again.
I checked out the damage: a terrible array of scratches and scars down the right side. Cockburn was going to love that. I walked around the back, dreading what I might see.
‘Ah, the fuck!’ I threw my hat onto the ground, kicked a rock.
The rear bumper was torn out of its socket, the support panel twisted. My larynx seemed to drop into my colon. I leaned into a tree for support, almost weeping. He was going to tear me limb from limb.
Maybe I could get a bit of panel-beating done before I handed the car back to Cockburn? Maybe the sensitive family man I’d glimpsed would understand that these things happen on the job, let me off lightly? Maybe the pig’s head that had just run me off the road would reattach itself to its long-lost body and grow a set of wings.
Bloody hell, this trip was turning into a disaster. I climbed aboard and headed west, still looking for the Galena turn-off. I wanted to see Jojo, now more than ever.
As I drove, questions about the rampaging utility rose to the surface of my mind. Where had it come from? The car was a bit up-market for any of the Rabble. Some whistle-headed deadbeat from the town, no doubt.
Could the driver have been the nosey bastard who’d been spying on us? Or, for that matter, killing wallabies out at Dingo Spring? He sure as hell wasn’t a rep for the World Wildlife Fund.
I was still seething when I spotted a set of fresh wheel marks cutting in from the south. I pulled over, examined them.
The Pig’s Head, for sure. The dust hadn’t settled yet.
I looked down to where the tracks disappeared into a patch of mulga scrub lining a rough creek bed. What had he been up to in there? Why had he been haring down the road? Was he running away from something, or did he always drive like that?
I stood on the steps to get a better look. Spotted something, a cloud of black smoke in the distance.
Curiosity told me to follow the tracks in the direction of the smoke haze, caution and the prospect of a little Jojo TLC told me to push on to the west.
I compromised: told myself I’d give it half an hour, turned south and followed the creek.
It was rough going, but the Tojo was up to it. I threw her into rock-crawling mode, and for ten minutes I gave the vehicle its head as we pitched and canted along rocky slopes and beetling creek beds.
Eventually the terrain levelled out and I came to the source of the smoke: a wildfire rolling through the spinifex. It had already burned a patch a kilometre or two square, but was running up against the barren slopes and unlikely to get much further.
Lightning strike? There hadn’t been any. Runaway campfire? Perhaps. I poked around the eastern edge of the burn, found an abandoned campsite. Empty bottles and tinnies, wrappers and patches, a punctured jerry can. All recent. Lengths of black metal: used welding rods.
Mr Pig’s Head? Probably.
What had he been welding?
I picked up a handful of hot stubble, blew it away. Fragments and floating ash drifted across my fingers.
Something stayed in the palm of my hand. Melted plastic. Poly pipe.
The beer and the jerry I could understand—everybody out here needed fuel—but the poly?
Irrigation.
What was he growing?
I walked out over the burn, scratched around. Nothing jumped out at me; whatever had been here was thoroughly destroyed.
I glanced at the westering sun, stored my suspicions away. They’d keep, as would Pig’s Head Bloke. Time to be on my way.