Coral Hull: Prose: Notes From The Big Park: Night Drive

I MACKENZIE KNIGHT I A CHILD OF WRATH A GOD OF LOVE I FALLEN ANGELS EXPOSED I

CORAL HULL: NOTES FROM THE BIG PARK
NIGHT DRIVE

1. QLD And Cunnamulla

They were peeping through blinds, so we drove through to the caravan park, but it was full of bikies, dad started shouting out across his elbow, that was resting by the triangular side window, 'I hate fucking Cunnamulla, it's a cunt of a place,' I giggled from behind the glass, 'fucken cuntamulla, he mumbled, what a fucken hole', a few of the local boys looked like they were going to mount their bikes and come after us, so dad did a donut in the park, the dust and rock crunched and sling shot backfired beneath the turning rubber, 'Burn some rubber dad, all right!,' dale shouted from the back seat, dad said, 'i'm never fucken coming back up 'ere again, there's nothin' fucken up here, bourke's bad enough,' dad only liked brewarrina, anything a few hundred k up the road was fucked, he liked the rains that came down from queensland and the fishing along the darling river and he dreamt of fishing off the north east coast, but hated the towns, wanted to get back to brewarrina fast, to get his outback sea legs, on that straight line of bitumen from cunnamulla to barringun, it was getting dark, i thought we might be followed, was pleased when we hit the new south wales border, but everything was closed, anyway i just wanted somewhere to stop and get out, but i didn't trust the nervous inland dark, dad was pissed so my brothers and i had to keep him driving, to keep him upright, to keep the car on the road.

2. Drunk

Dad gets drunk, on 4 cans of 4xxxx, 2 litres of rum, taylor made cigarettes and prescribed drugs, all the way from queensland, over the counter drugs hit the desert mind like a quake, his speech becomes sloppy, the road horizon wavers, becomes bendy elasticised, intoxicated scrub, the desert inside my father is drunk, overly and overtly saturated, past its long still dryness, he was filling up like a thermometer, to burst into a red sky, dusty movement like a dry river, his senses crumbling down the banks, sliding into the long slow current of his own stupor, his thoughts like wings to elsewhere, too high to jump up and grasp onto, so they flutter to out of reach, the sun strongly in his eyes, rainbow hexagons following the eye down to a hard crust, it seems so hard and unwelcome for a drunk to fall onto, yet it is merciful, their soft sodden landing protects them from injury, the sunlight became a little colder as it left us, the more you looked down upon the car crawling like a white beetle, over distances and distances and distances, dad's hands loosely hung on the wheel, sunset lighting up the car cabin to the colour of the end of a lit cigarette, for now his concentration a little more focused, to compensate, for the tremendous loss that was occurring inside, as the bottle was lifted, the liquid was lost into his throat like a few drops of rain on a claypan, he was so old and dry, even 58% overproof rum couldn't satisfy him, as he slid down through the lid to inside the bottle, into the deadly brown currents, his thoughts snagged on limbs before their torn escape.

3. The Outback Navigator

He is our father, the outback navigator, the night is falling across the sky, we stop the car and get out, a red joey sprung on the dry land as the sun turned down its light, and rolled out the carpet of shadow under every stone and shrub, the reptiles disappearing before it and smaller mammals emerged big eyed, coming out for the nightshift, toby chased the joey, but had no chance of keeping up, there was something about the tiny red joey, all the way out there on its own that disturbed me, even though its small slim back had turned a deep red to accommodate the land it stood in, and although the sky turned a deep red ochre to accommodate the land it moved over, i knew that the joey had been kicked out of the pouch early, hours later my eyes searched the dead land for the mother, our cheeks now red, the car bonnet to exhaust, we were all drenched, glowing red beneath the same dusty blanket, the tree bark and saltbush grown black from olive and ochre, we were painted, for dad the land must have been rippling by now, as his sensibilities began to quietly drown, old stories beyond saturation point, in blow by blow bubbles, the rum bottle lifted again for a swig, i saw the sun through the glass, the sun setting across the rum, dad's eyes awash with it, the dust grown sticky around his lips.

4. Roos At Barringun

I watched the kangaroos go down, as dad said 'whoo, there goes another one,' i turned back to see them injured in the tail lights, heads crushed, organs strangely detached, some remains still moving against all odds, along the imperfect road into death, those roos were on their way to peace from this, tails and gangly legs as pointers, but it didn't seem fast enough, the air filled with chronic pain, but it was too dark and i was young, the next time i turned back to the windscreen a grid sign almost smashed through it, as my foot came down onto the top of dad's shoe to the brake, dad had nodded off over the wheel whilst rolling a smoke, he was driving along the stock route, he said, 'Fuck,' i said, 'we are driving in the fucking stock route, you idiot!,' dale and brendon had dozed off in the back, but i was frightened of the dark, too full of distrust to sleep, it was the nervous dark in the distant trees, the animals eyes, movement felt before seen, along the darling riverline, the immense space of the galaxy blazing through the windscreen, the clear inland air that crystallized, gaving way to yet more space, the dark up underneath the car, it was the dark in the spaces in-between, the mid-range dark, along the ground and circling stars, toby trembled and kept shifting position from the seat to the floor, as the thunder traveled up from each cattle grid and sped into the cabin, toby jumped over into the front seat from the back, to land face first in my lap, to tremble on his pads, his hind legs stuck up like spokes inside the car, as we mowed down the roos, on the hop to further out, small ears and heads appeared briefly, before the bonnet bash, in two to four bumps turning down under the car, i tried not to think about it, i couldn't drive, i imagined us stuck out there for days on end, with no water and shade, the dark nights moving in closer and closer, as i rememberd not bringing the torch and matches, i forced dad to keep driving to bourke, another roo went down and was destroyed, 'see whatcha fucken made me do,' he said, again drifting into semi unconsciousness, over a dead wheel.

5. Bourke

The car door swung open, i put my shoe onto the bitumen, i was going to get out, go straight to the bourke police, it seemed like there was no-one else, nothing else i could do, 'whooo, get back in, no ya fucken don't,' my shoe sole dragged along the road, as i grabbed the door and swung myself back in, it felt like I was holding onto a hurdy gurdy ride, reeling in front of the cop shop and the corner bourke pub, dad spun the car around and i was caught between the road and cabin, a blur of street trees and a few house lights over by the town tennis courts, the trailer jack knifed behind the ford, trailbike handlebars pierced the freezer and fridge, 'well, that fucked it,' dad drove back out the way he came in, my brothers had been woken up by the low orange town lights, we all screamed 'You're going back to Cunnamulla!,' i tried to grab the wheel, although i couldn't drive i would prefer to twist us off into our own darkness, within the town limits, rather than travel back into the deep night of queensland, later dad told us that he was simply taking the property road back to brewarrina, but we wouldn't let him drive a little back further north to find it, so we ended up on bad stretch of pot holed road from bourke to brewarrina, it was the longest 99 km stretch ever, sheep flow like white liquid luminous fog across the road, green and orange eyes lighting up, a startled bird in the headlights, it was quieter for kangaroos, although a big emu narrowly escaped hopping past the car bonnet like it was a picnic table, 'see,' dad said, as another trailbike handle spiked through the fridge in the wire trailer, 'that fucked it,' a small orange light at 3.00 am, a few wide streets awash from it, finally we were in brewarrina.

6. Drying Out At Brewarrina

'Chris, let me in, open the fucken door will ya, Chris' dad stumbled around in the backyard, finally finding comfort on the spongy green lawn, an outside light came on, christine opened the wire door and saw my two brothers and me, bright-eyed animals weary from distances, standing near where dad had fallen, 'help us lift him in,' she said, as he began to sob and say, 'i fucken told 'em 'bout that road, dad drank another 1/2 a bottle of vodka before falling unconscious on the loungeroom floor, he lay on a thin foam mattress at christine's flat comatosed for 4 days, occasionally he would get up to get a drink or piss outside, another day he was crying, wanting to die, then he slept for 14 hours straight on the home run to consciousness, we waited for him to get up or die, dale threw some rocks outside, i drank rum and watched christine scale some yellow belly on the bench, brendon held up a porno magazine over dad's sleeping body, i took a photo of him doing it, it was another blonde on her back, her legs caste into a diamond shape, fish like ribs protruding and arms twisted back up behind her head and open lips on the deep pink sheets, beneath her the full bulk of dad, red nose twisted into an old break, face screwed up into the hospital sheets, so that they furrowed into the skin beneath his eyes, his black stubbie shorts and stained shirt, he slept it off like a mountain in the middle of the small flat on the floor, the sunlight streaming into the sink from the window slats, he kissed good-bye to three days of his life, three mornings were unaccounted for, as his brain and blood struggled with the alcohol, on the fifth day he was dough-eyed, red-irised, his hair up like a cockies comb, shocked like a little boy nursing his first really hot cup of coffee.

    

This website is part of my personal testimony that has been guided by The Holy Spirit and written in Jesus' name.

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