Were driving. Driving. Driving. Its been hot all day and now a cool breeze starts to push in the window. I look over at the mountains. (Theyve been cruising along beside us for hours.) The breeze is chasing the sun away. Its like all the heat has gone over to the west and the mountains have swallowed it up. And everythings starting to smell different too the clouds are scrubbing the ground with a big shadow, and this aroma is rising up as it passes.
I stick my head out to sniff at the air, and a motorbike goes past. Bam-nyaaaah! This guy is completely black. His bikes black too. And hes going soooo fast, hes like a smear. And he leaves behind his own smell that stuff they put in petrol at the speedway?
The whole countrys sloshing around with the smells that get left behind every time something happens. Its like history in the air.
I try to keep my eye on the bike. Just as he shrinks to nothing and disappears around the side of a hill, a big snag of lightning phwangs down into a paddock, like its trying to snag one of those sheep that are always looking at us as we pass by.
In no time, its raining. Smell it! Now the cars become an old ocean liner, and were drifting on water that goes deepdown salty and green for mile after mile. Dad stays at the steering-wheel. Hes our captain now, and hes on a mission. But its like were going nowhere and service stations and silos just float past and then leave us behind. You see, its changed againthe countrysideits ALIVE, its on the move, and this trip was the first time I learned about it just a kid going nuts in the back of a car.
I look up in the sky, and theres definitely something going on up there. And then I look behind us, and I see three or four of them following us! The GHOSTS are rising up from the road, each one as big as a man. Theyre like steam, and as soon as you see them, they disappear. But you know theyre still there. And theyre beautiful too, the way they walk. Swayinglike steamkind of floating and sliding, as if theyre practising the right way to be on Planet Earth. As if they can only just remember what its like to be human. Or like theyre IMAGINING it because this is their very first time. I decide Im not afraid of them. No, I like them, these ghosts that are following us around. Maybe theyre wanting to tell me something. To give me a message to carry around, like I could be a chattering parrot flying from tree to tree, or like wire between telephone poles.
I close my eyes. Maybe I sleep for a bit, I dont know. But when I open my eyes, the suns done a swap with the moon. We hear on the radio that a crop circles just been found, way out on a farm west of Narromine. My Dads grinning like a big ol frog. Hes loving the idea of these things. Well, yeah, somethings going on for him too!
Im thinking about all thishow parents are people toowhen we come over a little hill, and off in the distance theres a bunch of cars pulled up, and torches are waving around. The highways choking on something.
We coast on down, slow and quiet. Dads turned off the engine and weve just rolled the last two hundred meters or so. It didnt make ordinary sense, but somehow it seemed the right thing to do.
A ladys waving a bright tartan blanket. And theres a sound like air rushing out of a hole in the sky. The lady runs past. Shes screeching. Shes running straight down the road, flapping like shes wishing the blanket was wings. Dad gets out and says, nobody move. He walks towards the thing. The rest of us, we sit there. Then I open the door. Im expecting somebody to stop me, but it only takes two seconds to get out and five seconds to see it. Thats all I needed, and it didnt matter that Mum scooped me up straightaway afterwards.
There, sitting on the white line, is the motorbike guy. His bikes on its side, way down the road. And hes just sitting there in his black leather suit, his arms and legs straight out in front of him. But the thing is, theres flames all around him, like hes in this pool full of fire, and hes not moving even a finger. And theres a smell coming off him. And Dads standing there in front of him, inside the ring of flames, with one arm held out. And the air between them, its shimmering.
I get yanked back in the car, and everybodys saying DONT LOOK. Then I smell the rain come down againthis sheet of water just flies along the road and puts out the fire. I climb out the window in time to see the bike guy tumble over. I see one of those steam-ghosts rise up behind him and take off for the sky. Dad looks at it too, tilting his head back like a big old bird.
One big drop of rain hits me, SMACK, in the middle of the forehead.