Wake In Fright Read Free Page B

had either to drink or blow his brains out.
    Still, he must take it a little more easily next term. ‘Next term’, the thought was like a nervous start, ‘next term’, six weeks away, another year in Tiboonda would begin again. Another year in this apology for a town, himself an outcast in a community of people who were at home in the bleak and frightening land that spread out around him now, hot, dry and careless of itself and the people who professed to own it.
    Better not think about that. Better not think about anything, except the sea, draw the image across his mind like a deep shadow and pretend that it warded off the heat that seemed to thrust long, hot fingers through his skull into the living, tender cells of his brain.
    In its own good time the four-fifteen arrived at Tiboonda. Its alternate name was the Friday Train, which distinguishedit from the Monday Train. The two were Tiboonda’s only transport connection with the outside world, represented by Bundanyabba, apart from the road, which could not be travelled when it rained because of the mud, nor when it was dry because of the dust which would bog cars just as hopelessly as mud would.
    The Friday Train pulled a dozen freight cars and two passenger carriages. The engine was the superb type of monster that can only be found in the remoter sections of the Commonwealth, and which always reminded the teacher of the sort of thing Indians chased in American western films.
    Even before the train pulled into the siding, he could hear the singing. On every slow train in the west they sing, the stockmen and the miners, the general storekeepers and the drifting workers; the Aborigines and the half-castes shyly joining in on the outskirts. And somebody always has a mouth organ, and they sing with desperate, tuneless gaiety the songs of the American hit parades which filter through the networks of the Australian Broadcasting Commission or from the static-ridden apparatus of the occasional country radio station.
    Out over the desert plains, behind the roar and grind of the ancient engines, the dreary words and trite tunes of modern America caused the dingoes to cock their ears inwonder, and deepened measurably the sadness that permeates the outback of Australia.
    The singers had all congregated in the front carriage.The schoolteacher boarded the rear carriage. He didn’t want to sing. He was alone except for a middle-aged Aboriginal stockman with white hair and the stubble of a white beard. He was a full-blood, with the broad features of his people, and he stared constantly out of the window as though there might be something in the plains he had not seen before.
    The schoolteacher had seen the plains, and he had made the trip to Bundanyabba before, so he knew that, for the six-hour journey ahead, the countryside would change so little there would be almost nothing to indicate that the train had moved.
    He put his bags on the luggage rack, opened a window, and stretched out on a seat, with his feet poised on an armrest.
    ‘There is a heart that’s made for you,’ the singers were chanting,

    ‘A heart that needs your love divine,
    A heart that could be strong and true,
    If only you would say you’re mine.
    If we should part my heart would break,
    Oh say that this will never be,
    Oh darling please, your promise make,
    That you’ll belong to only me.’

    And that, thought the schoolteacher, was the fate of a race of singers who had long since forgotten how to make songs.
    He closed his eyes as the train began to move. The clatter of the wheels, the sound of the engine and the discordant cries of the singers formed a senseless rhythm as he drifted into the semi-coma of the train traveller.

    •

    The Friday Train swayed on across the plains and once every five miles or so there would be a decrepit homestead, and the train driver would sound his whistle. A ragged band of children would assemble and conscientiously wave and wave until the train was out of sight and