As they met a patch of cracked asphalt on the highway, the lolly wrappers rustled on the floor. Sam had been steadily growing nauseous the more the car shuddered over potholes and swept around bends. Outside, crushed foxes and dead kangaroos lay on the side of the road. Katie was watching out the window whenever one slipped by, boosting herself up on her arms.
‘Just kick the back of my seat if you get too hot back there, Sammy. I’ll open up another air vent,’ Dettie said, peering back at him through the rear-vision mirror.
Sam nodded with his mouth open and his forehead rattling on the window. His thumbs were hooked in his shorts, trying to relieve the bloated feeling in his stomach.
‘You want me to switch the radio on?’
He didn’t respond, so Dettie skimmed through the stations. There were snatches of conversation and squeals of static until finally the car throbbed with a wail of pipe organs and drums. Dettie’s foot tapped a beat on the pedal, and the car surged along with the percussion.
They’d been driving for hours now, and as the sun had risen higher in the sky the air had dried out, until the wind blasting through the vents simply pushed the heat around. Dettie’s driving was much looser than his mother’s, sweeping over rises in the road and gliding heavily around curves. Katie, in the front seat, was fine, but in the back it made Sam’s stomach churn.
Katie was still staring outside. ‘Why are there bags on the road?’
Dettie tried to hum the melody but didn’t know the tune.
‘Aunt Dettie?’
A car flashed by, and Dettie complained about people crowding the road.
Katie turned to Sam. ‘Why are there bags?’
Even if he hadn’t felt so ill, Sam wasn’t sure how to convey to her what they were. What they had been when they were alive. He shook his head.
From his position slumped down in his seat, the sky was bigger than Sam had ever seen it. Thin clouds hung like silky scars on the horizon, and birds lapped across it in wide, heavy arcs. The horizon seemed so low—unblocked by buildings or trees—that the undulating hills looked like a great green ocean frozen in place. Sweat dampened his skin, and he tried to position his face beside Dettie’s seat to catch the breeze from her vent. Her breath smelt of smoke and the liquorice allsorts she’d been snacking on, and the scent of it, blown back over him, churned in his belly.
A roar of air drowned out the radio as Katie started winding down her window.
‘Katie, I told you to leave the window alone,’ Dettie snapped, leaning over and clicking her fingers. ‘Now put it up. Quick smart.’
‘But I’m hot.’ Katie waited, still holding on to the handle.
‘Look, I’ll turn up the fans a bit if you’d like.’
‘I want the window down.’ Katie’s voice was sleepy in the heat. Sam felt the wind whip on the back of his head, cool beneath the sweat in his hair.
‘Katie, I said put it up.’
‘Why?’
‘Do you know how many impurities are in the air out there?’ Dettie covered her nose with her wrist. ‘How much pollen and car fumes? The insecticides these farmers use? And us travelling at this speed? You could breathe in a bug, or goodness knows what else.’ She let out a couple of little coughs, frowning. ‘Now I’m tired of explaining myself, just put it up.’
Katie rolled her eyes and puffed out her flushed cheeks. ‘It’s too hot,’ she said, winding up the window slowly, letting the air hiss through a small gap at its top for a few seconds longer. When their aunt glared at her she turned it shut.
Sam’s hair fell flat again. He felt wet and queasy. The velcro strap for his vent was already soaked with sweat. Something seemed to be swirling in his chest.
Katie leant towards the air vent, opening her mouth and sucking deeply in and out. She waggled her jaw, watching Dettie from the corner of her eye.
‘Will you stop being silly and settle down?’
Katie turned her attention back to the road, stretching up in her seat. ‘Aunt Dettie, what are the bags on the side of the road for?’
‘Nothing. Never mind.’
‘Are they blankets? They look like bags.’
‘Don’t worry about them.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
They rumbled on, passing several fields dotted with grazing cattle, a vineyard and a couple of dams so low they looked like craters dotted with chocolate milk. The occasional house, nestled beneath the shade of spreading gum trees, vibrated by.
‘How long is it to Perth?’ Katie sat up on her hands, scanning the road ahead, her face knotted with concentration.
It was as though Dettie had not heard her. She pursed her lips and pushed a little harder on the accelerator.
Katie pointed to another brown lump approaching them along the road.
‘That one looks like—’ She leant forward, pressing her face to the glass. ‘What are they?’ He voice quivered slightly. ‘Are they blankets?’ she said again, already clearly certain that they were not.
Dettie exhaled. ‘They’re not blankets,’ she said, and lowered the volume of the radio.