Heartstrings | Page 9

vehicle, askew, up to the wheel tops
in sand, covered in mud. He wept, lay back on the ground, and stared up into the sky.
Adain waited for death.
About mid afternoon he realised that the grim reaper was in no hurry.
He sat up and swore. Then he smiled. With difficulty he stood up.
Quietly, calmly, he lifted down the animal that had shared his ordeal, and set it upon the
ground. It seemed in no hurry either, but after a while, the survivors went each their way.
There was no time now, to linger in the forest country - he drove through it, after getting the
4-wheel mobile again, and pressing on across the desert edge to pickup Route One again, so
that the memory of the great trees hung at the back of his mind, somewhere with the dream of
the dancer, with a promise to return. Later, he would come back to learn the forest, and to
express it in his art.

Chapter 1. Haste ye to the wedding 6147

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Aidan was driving, but his mind was far away, and, missing the turn off, he did not realise for
almost an hour, that it had gone away behind him.
He nearly stopped his new 4-wheel drive troop-carrier, then and there, but decided instead to
carry on until he could find a truck bay, or an overnight camping spot at the roadside, to spend
the night. He had tried before to turn back, but became oppressed, almost nauseous, and
overpoweringly exhausted if he headed back East towards Sydney, and all that he had left
behind.
Around the roadway stretched the undulating, desolate lands. Sparse, twisted mallee, banksia,
and hakea trees, were scattered on the land, their trunks dark scribbles, and the greyish foliage
spattered thinly, too low to break the distant sharp clear line of the horizon. The under-scrub
consisted of thickets of wodjil, with grey leaved grevilleas, broom honey myrtle, and yellow
flowering yellow puffs of acacia. Clouds were scattered like sheep on the pure china-shining
blue above, and he smiled in anticipation, for the golden time would come in a hour or two,
and regardless, he would stop, get out, maybe take the camera to capture it, or just watch and
enjoy the changing light.
He drove on for another hour. The vehicle was neither fast nor comfortable, and on the
bitumen road it was out of it's element, as it was designed to take him off the road, into the
scrub, and away where he could be as he wished - one to one. face to face with his land.
Excitement had been building in him today. But it was a thin, sour thing, like vomit held
back in his throat, and had no warmth, no blaze to it, no butter or bread or meat in it. But it
was there, and it filled the empty cold space that he had been skirting around, watching within
himself for nearly a year now.
It was coming, though. The need, the love, the power. The power was regenerating, and he
was glad of this thin, nasty excitement, this nervous, twitchy feeling, like quick glances
behind, at the shadow that followed him.
He longed for a smoke, but would not stop, not until he found a place to stop for the night, a
safe, kind, empty place, with a screen of scrub for his campfire, where he could lay his strung
out body on the cold earth, wrapped in the swag, on the groundsheet, on the ground, to stare

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into the darkness, unsleeping, glad to be awake in the darkness in the night, listening to the
night sounds, waiting peacefully, watching patiently, for the first pre-dawn lifting on the
horizon, the dead chill of the early hours, and the anticipation of the glorious luxury of the
fiery dawn skies.
He decided to count his blessings. Mum had been a great blessing-counter, although now that
he had committed the unforgivable, her stoic habitual pride had collapsed before him.
‘Why didn't you tell me before?’
‘Jesus H Christ Mum! It's hard enough to tell you now.’
‘But why did you marry her, if you were that way?’
‘I'm not that way, Mum.’
‘But you just told me......’
He interrupted, ‘You didn't listen, Mum. You didn't listen.’
‘I know what I heard, Aidan. I know what you said to me. Its a good thing your father isn't
alive to hear it.’
His control evaporated in the heat of his blood. He heard it singing in his ears, high and thin,
‘You mean it's a good thing he isn't around to hear it.’
‘I told you