I have not walked in years, but here I am, shod and watered and shouldering my daypack full of fruit and nuts and the most practical clothing I could lay my hands on at six this morning, a half-pound of milked bran and sultanas sloshing in me as we wait for our third to get back from the toilet so we can start; and start we do on his jogging return, striking out across the carpark for the path, which is broad and flat and almost-but-not-entirely disappointing, we having hoped for a bushwalk and found ourselves instead on a highway of sorts, replete with an almost tame wallaby five minutes along who eyes us with disdain or stupidity before hopping a few inches to the left and re-engaging with his cud.
The path rises, lifting us and our spirits slantwise around the crown of a hill, staggering at the first stride-breaking vista, sloughing packs and jumpers in the unexpected sunshine, sweating curses and salt in the bright breezeless glare of the midmorning, we an odd trio of best friends and acquaintances and workmates and conversation accordingly screwy, vacillating between baking soda and atrial fibrillation and Saturday nights, two doctors and me in breaking boots.
On, up, gnawing apples and bitching about when we’ll get back to the coast again, the track having darted inland, thin identical brush as far as we can see in all directions, but beyond the near hills a sense of absence intangible, of cliffs and void and screaming drops that hundreds of feet have shuffled at the edge of, stomachs knitting sheer at the thought of stumbling from such a height; then suddenly we reach and pass the apogee of our journey, a slow rise before the path sweeps left into a slight breeze that ruffles fringes and carries us down toward the first drop of sine-wave headland, rock-cut steps underfoot and another rest break looking out over the upthrust hummocks of the cape, seeing the path ahead, here a suggestion, there a scar, ginger cake and scroggin going down by the fistful and the imperious sweep of the scenery cutting frequent sighing pauses in the conversation.
Descending we bunch up, pack mules stabbing our steps careless into the valley, the track at the bottom kinking around a vast cauldron in the ground, fifty feet across and a six-second delay between a far-lofted stone and the echoing crash of impact invisible in the wet dark below, and casting around for another rock I see a cigarette butt, shrivelled and weathered like some dead-forgotten chrysalis, my hand already reaching for it and as my fingers close against the yellowed husk I am
dislocated
I am I am Pauly fuck Pauly mate get your head in the game I am shaking my head rain in my eyes coming in on the wind like bricks sweeping my forearm across my face to clear my vision with Grant a shape defined only by the rain bouncing off his coat and the violent blaspheming as he wrestles the rest of the tarp off the Ditch Witch, ropes biting my other hand as the gale gnashes and rips at the flapping silver-blue sheet, flaring hugely now with him getting the last knot undone before he heaves the vast jerrycan into the middle so it can’t fill and drag us out into the night, clapping a hand on my shoulder he yells Good on you Pauly let’s get this fucking thing up the hill now, turning away to rip at the starter, water running ankledeep everywhere visible, top drain trench obviously swamped, the sluice around us thick with weeks of hard-slog daylaid gravel, work washing away careless of our blisters and bent backs and sunburn, the Ditch Witch coughing and barking into life, headlight slicing a wedge of the dark streaked with cometlike stabs of rain, a swinging strobing valley of light before us as Grant coerces it away up the hill, the four-stroke grumbling and slipping as he goes.
At the top the wind is worse; the rain a glance away from sleet; the trench – fucked – locatable only by the orange dropper marking the top end, itself at a forty-degree angle and worsening as topsoil and clay alike wash around it, a stubborn metallic Moses spraypainted and plastic-capped and tilting further as we force the Ditch Witch out off the remnant of the path, over the low shrubbery, Grant yelling Fuck the impact statement and dropping the trench-head into the scrub to chew a path, sap-smell of shredding bush fighting up through the rain but the pushing easier, our feet sliding and rolling across torn root and stalk until some arbitrary distance is passed and Grant leans heavily on the handle to turn us back across the face of the hill, winding the engine up to a roar before dropping the nose of the machine further, nipping and bouncing then grabbing and gouging into the shaly earth beneath the water, the output chute spitting chunks of mud and rock across my boots as I stand wheezing on the low side of the hill, Grant’s grin a slash of white amongst the rest and someplace faintly the keening of some misbegotten bird or just him whistling through his teeth and I follow staying clear of the output, hunch deeper into my coat and think about maybe having a smoke and then the engine coughs once, a stark break in the sound filled at once by the thrashing of rain on leaf and rain and then engine again and another cough and then it dies and Grant no longer smiling says I’m going to kill that lazy cunt by whom he means Jeremy who was using the Ditch Witch yesterday and obviously failed to refill it and is now hopefully suffering for his sins in the leaky tent back at Camp Two but has nonetheless still dropped us in the shit, Grant thumping a fist against the handle then grabbing it again as the Ditch Witch shifts and looks to slip sideways down the hill despite the trench-head being lodged pretty deep and he says Sorry Pauly looks like you’re on fuel mate but as I go to step past him he stops me with a hand on the shoulder and says Here and from his pocket extracts something and fusses in the dark and then his face is lit in a stutter of sparks and then another and somehow he lights the cigarette, cupping his hand above it like a tent and passing it to me across the darkness.
It stays alight like a miracle for the entire ankle-rolling slog down the hill, rain diverting antimagnetic around the lit end, itself glowing like the kernel of a forge and the only illumination for miles, a hole in the night I follow until I trip on a root and sprawl winded and terrified across the tarp invisible in the black, my mind record-skipping again and again on the indivisible fear that I could just as easily be gasping headfirst into that fucking cauldron wherever it is and my heart bashing tachycardiac in my chest until a seep of rain at the waistband of my pants drags me back to myself and the track and the fuel and I somehow lash off three corners of the tarp to groundhugging trees and grab the jerrycan, the clouds above finally tearing for a moment and the moon inviolate lighting the entire scene like a flashbulb drained of colour, the track a river I set to climbing while I can see it properly, fuel reeking metallic and heavy in my hands and Grant a blur in the distance and then the clouds close and he is gone.
On the climb I pray silently for Jeremy’s damnation, a wordless rage that spurs me up into the wind accelerating heedless of my footing and makes the jerrycan feel lighter with every step and finally Grant and the Ditch Witch loom ahead and I hurl my burden at his feet and he hauls it up laughing and cursing Fucking Jeremy and sets to work filling the tank while I breathe the bowser-stench thick around us, then he says Right that should do the bastard and I hear the squeak of the cap going back on then just the howl of the squall and then Grant saying What the fuck close by and the suggestion of his arm pointing down the hill at what when I turn is a faint glow and by the time my vision sharpens is a clearly spreading fire undimmed by the rain, grabbing then engulfing the tarp in a breath and darting suddenly up the hill toward us, my crooked path picked out hypnotically by the coruscating tongue of light, me first to act turning away and reaching blindly for the jerrycan, afterimages of the flame discolike in my vision and behind me growing lighter and lighter until I find it, grasp the rough metal of the handle and swinging like a hammer-thrower, release it high and hard away from us, caring not for angle or it being near the fire but just away away away from us in a spinning spray from the leak wherever it was as the flames reach us and hesitate like a diver on a board hanging then they leap
sideways they leap following the soaring jerrycan they leap and arc and pounce and the hill and the night and the track and we are lit by a light seeded by a cigarette but grown huge and making a sound like the crumping of thunder knocking away a wave of rain and us and we are
I am
blinking in the light of the sun.
Michael Blake is a beard with one of Australia's most highly-awarded young writers. His fiction and non-fiction have been published nationally and internationally. He holds no degrees.