Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories Read Free Page B

lad?’
    The old bastard wouldn’t leave me alone. If he was determined to get an answer, I’d give him one.
    â€˜The state’s always paid me bills, Pop. I’ve got no complaints with it. I’m on me long service leave at the moment, so piss off out of me face, will you.’ That shut him up for a full two seconds while I went back to soaking up cold beer and to dreaming.
    When I got out of the joint, I tried everywhere to buy that book. It was out of print, so I bought a van that still had a bit of life in it. I was going to find out for meself what freedom smelt like. I’d seen a good bit of the eastern states, stopping long enough to keep the dole coming while dodging trouble when I could, then up the back of no place, me van started kicking its last.
    The land looked as dead as the kangaroos and empty beer cans decorating both sides of the bitumen strip that cut its way between stunted grey mulga and naked red loam. Hell’s own rubbish dump couldn’t’ve looked or smelled much worse. I thought I was a goner, could see the headlines: DUMB BASTARD DIES IN DESERT .
    It’s uncanny, but a few times now I’ve reckoned me van has an instinct for self preservation. Sounding like a traction engine, snorting steam and blowing smoke, she kept her bald tyres turning long enough to roll into a tin shed opposite a pub. I left her there, due to the pub’s veranda owning the only patch of shade in town. All I wanted to do was celebrate me reprieve with a beer, and there’s this bald-headed, verbose old bastard sitting there, stirring anything that moved.
    â€˜So you’re taking a holiday on our taxes, are you, boy?’
    You get out of the habit of looking an ugly bastard in the eye where I’d been. I sighed, real deep, then turned to face him, sort of slow.
    He must have been seventy, but was tall and broad as a barn with a face hacked from the backside of a termite mound, and not one solitary hair to mar the billiard ball polish of his dome. He was the biggest, ugliest old bastard I’d ever seen, but I’m no midget. I eyeballed him over the top of me glass, itching to give him a clip under the ear, just as a warning to lay off me, then I saw his eyes laughing at me from between sun-dried corrugations. They knew me. Those bloody old eyes knew my life story.
    â€˜Have a beer, you senile old fart,’ I sneered, and tossed five onto the bar.
    â€˜I’d choke on it,’ he said, and he left.
    A few of the younger drinkers were sniggering into their glasses, so I swaggered over to their corner.
    â€˜Who’s he think he is? The world’s fuckin’ conscience?’ I drank another beer, but half an hour later, bored with the company, I’m outside in the heat again, checking on me van.
    â€˜Ya water pump’s stuffed. Pushed ya fan into ya radiator. She’s not going no-bloody-where for a while, mate,’ a pair of sparrow ankles poking out of grease stained boots commented from beneath my van.
    â€˜Can ya fix it?’
    â€˜Got any dough?’ the lanky owner of the boots asked, shooting out, riding a metal creeper and picking on his front tooth with a screwdriver.
    â€˜I’ll have it by next Thursday,’ I said.
    â€˜Righto. The day after that, I’ll do the work. Got me?’
    â€˜Gotcha,’ I said, then like a bloody fool I undid the zip section of me wallet and dug out a fifty I never spent. It was me insurance, me get-back-to-some-place money – and there I was handing it to him.
    â€˜Wash that screwdriver before you go sticking it into me motor,’ I said, taking a last look at me fifty before walking off to find a takeaway.
    Lucky to find a general store cum milk bar, wasn’t I?
    â€˜What’a you got to eat?’ I asked the kid behind the counter.
    â€˜What d’ya want?’ she said with a thrust of twin green plums that barely caused a ripple in her t-shirt.
    â€˜Salad