I shake my head. “Think about it, Nat. We could barely get the tanks
off
the truck. There's not a hope in hell of pushing them back up that ramp.”
“No worries,” Mel says dismissively. “We'll leave them there. We've only got a day's drive to get to the lake.”
“Um, we do have to get back to Wiluna too,” Nat points out.
“We'll dump a few of the water jugs and fill them with gas,” Mel says. “And then, on our way back, we can stop at our fuel drums and siphon out some fuel to fill the main tank for the trip home. It'll be fine.”
I can't see any alternative, but as I watch Mel pouring clean water onto the desert sand, the uneasiness in my belly solidifies into something more like dread.
Eventually we have the truck reloaded, minus the fuel drums, and we are heading north again. We cross the first dunes, great rolling mounds in the otherwise flat red earth. It is beyond desolate. At one point we drive by the rusted ruins of an abandoned Land Rover, and I can't hold back a shudder. I can't imagine a lonelier place. I lean out the window and click a few photographs to distract myself, but it is a relief when the landscape begins to change. More shrubbery and actual treesâdesert oaks, offering scraps of dappled shadeâand finally Durba Springs, an oasis in the desert. Towering rocky cliffs, white-trunked gum trees leaning out over the still water in the gorge, clumps of long grass lining the banks: It is breathtaking.
We set up camp on the grassy banks of the creek. Above us, the rock walls glow vivid red in the late afternoon sun. I dip my hands in the water. It is still and green with algae but feels wonderful against my hot dry skin. Above me, electric-green birds scatter from a treetop, and I watch in silent amazement, suddenly overwhelmed. Glad to be here. Glad to be alive.
The evening passes peacefully, the temperature poised between the heat of the day and the chill of the night. We eat baked beans for dinner. Then Nat lies down in her tent, and Mel and I play Crazy Eights by the campfire. The sand beneath my sleeping bag radiates warmth, and I sleep like a baby, despite Mel's thunderous snoring beside me.
In the morning, I wake early and wander around, taking photographs. I imagine having a big show back home, maybe in a gallery or something. My pictures of the desert glowing on white wallsâ¦
“Yo, Jayden?”
I spin around. “Nat?”
“Snap happy, aren't you?” She laughs.
“Time to go, dude. Mel's starting to twitch and Lake Disappointment awaits.”
It is a long drive over countless dunes: long sand ridges running from east to west, stretching out like massive waves in an endless line to the horizon. Hot and hard and bumpy. In places our wheels spin in deep sand, and I wonder how we'd have managed if we were still loaded down with fuel. In other spots, the track is completely overgrown. I am so focused on not losing sight of it beneath the spinifex that I miss the first glimpse of our destination.
“There it is!” Mel shouts. “Look at that!”
A vast expanse of silvery white glimmers in the distance. I blink a few times, trying to focus. “That's Lake Disappointment?”
“That's it, my boy! We've made it!” Mel's eyes are an intense, piercing blue against his sun-reddened skin. “This is what I've been waiting for. The culmination of my hard work. The zenith! The pinnacle! The summit!”
The truck hits a pothole with a bang that practically knocks my teeth out of my head. Nat grabs the steering wheel. “Mel!”
“Relax, my dear girl. Relax.” He takes the wheel again, pulling us back onto the track with another bump.
Ahead of us the lake is becoming clearer and less like a mirage. Vast, salt-encrusted, like nothing I've ever seen before. We've arrived.
We get out of the jeep, legs cramped and backs aching. Mel shoots off into the shrubbery to hunt for wildlife, and Nat and I set up camp on our own. We work in silence for a few minutes, putting up the tents, and then Nat turns to me. “Jayden?”
She sounds hesitant and I realize it is the first time we've been alone together since Mel interrupted our conversation in the dark. “You were right,” I say quickly. “The other night, what you said about Mel being sort of crazy? I think you're right. All that stuff about pinnacles and summits⦔
“That was nothing compared to other stuff he's said.” She tosses her sleeping bag into her tent and zips the flap closed. “But that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I lift the campstove from the back of the truck and set it on the ground. “What then?”
“Um, well. Okay.” Nat sucks on one of the silver rings in her lower lip. “So, I know I've been a jerk.”
“You haven't.”
“Yeah, I have. I was totally obnoxious when I picked you up at the airport.”
“Ancient history,” I say. “I'm over it.” Nat has a smear of dirt on her cheek and I wonder if I should tell her. Then again, I probably don't look any cleaner.
“The thing is, Mel was sort of a mentor to me. Taking me to conferences, helping me out with papers. Then a couple of months ago, it all changed. He was furious that I talked to Polly and Ian at that conference⦔ She trails off. “I know he doesn't trust me. Sometimes I see him looking at me with this strange expression, like I'm his enemy or something.”
“Weird.” I want to tell her what Mel had said to me but I don't think I should. “What does all this have to do with me though?”
Nat lifts the bottom edge of her T-shirt and uses it to wipe the sweat from her face, flashing a few inches of skin, a silver navel ring and a tattoo of a dog above her hip bone. “So, Mel didn't plan this trip very well, did he? Like, we shouldn't even be here before April, for a start. But every time I'd say something, he'd have some comment about how his nephew wouldn't be so negative, his nephew wouldn't be putting obstacles in the path of science, his nephew wouldn't complain about a little hard work.”
“Ha,” I say. “Mel's hardly seen me in the last few years. I'm a champion complainer. Ask my mom.”
“According to Mel, you were superhuman. By the time he told me you were coming⦔
“I was the last person you wanted to see.”
She nods. “Yeah. With the possible exception of my ex.”
I want to ask about him but something else occurs to me. “So why did you come if you thought the trip was such a bad idea?”
“Probably shouldn't have.” Nat unloads a water jug from the truck, her back turned. Then she straightens up and faces me. “I grew up in Adelaide,” she says. “Never been anywhere much. Melbourne on the train, that's about it.”
“And you thought you'd start with⦔ I wave my hand, gesturing at the infinite emptiness around us.
Nat sits down on the hot ground, elbows resting on her dusty knees. “My grandmother was from this area.”
Didn't seem to me much like a place one could be from. “You're kidding.”
“She was Aboriginal,” Nat says. “Which means I am too, sort of. Partly. Only I just found out last year. It was like some big family secret or something.” She made a face. “I tell my dad he should be proud, but I think he's met too many racists in his life.”
“She still lives there? Your grandmother?”
“Nah. She was taken off to school like the rest of the kids. She died when my dad was a baby, and he got adopted by a white family.” She looks up at me. “But that's why I wanted to come here. Just to see where she was from.”
“So, does it feelâ¦you know, like home or anything?”
She snorts. “Right. About as much as it does for you, Jayden.”
I look around me. It isn't beautiful in the same way as the wilderness I am used to. It isn't anything like the lakes and forests back home. Still, there's something about it that is getting under my skin in a way I didn't expect. Something about the immensity of it, the sheer
bigness
. And it feels ancient. It feels like the rest of the worldâall the craziness of cities and newspapers and Hollywood and stock marketsâ can't touch it. Beside the desert, all that other stuff seems sort of irrelevant and unreal.
Then I realize I haven't even thought much about Anna since we'd been out here. I let myself picture her face for a moment, just as a test, to see if the usual flash of pain will catch me in the gut.
And it doesn't. All I feel is a tug of soft-edged sadness.
Our camp is near one of the old stockroute wells, and Nat wants to walk over and check it out.
I look at the boxes of food in the back of the truck. “Should we start dinner first?”
“Mel can do it when he gets back,” Nat says. “I'm not doing everything.”
“Fine with me.”
We walk in silence. The well isn't far from the camp. It's just some old pieces of wood leaning together over a caved-in hole. Someone has nailed a sign to it that reads
Jesus is Coming
.
Nat laughs. “Here? As if.”
“This place is kind of beautiful,” I say. “In a weird sort of post-nuclear-holocaust way.”
Nat peers into the well. “No water. Not a drop.” She licks the sweat from her upper lip. “I have a bad feeling about this trip, Jayden. It's creepy out here.”
“Nah. Just, you know, empty. And way too hot.”
“I want to go back.”
I laugh. “You are such a city kid.”
“Yeah, I know. Aren't you?”
“Not so much.” I hesitate. “Um, I do a lot of photography.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
I shake my head. “Wildlife stuff. Lakes. Bears. So I do some hiking. Actually, I don't like cities much. Too many people.”
“Antisocial.”
“Nah. Well, lately maybe. I had this girlfriend.” I touch the sign, wondering who left it there and what happened to him. “We split up a few months ago. Guess I've been a bit antisocial since then.” Understatement. Up until last week, I'd barely left my bedroom unless Mom guilt-tripped me into going to school.
Nat opens her mouth to say something, but just then we hear an engine start up and I turn to see Mel driving toward us.
“Jayden, talk him into going back to Wiluna,” Nat says urgently. “Please. He's more likely to listen to you than to me.”
“I don't know.” I'm in no hurry to get back.
“If he doesn't find anything soon⦠I don't want to stay out here for days and days. Please, Jayden? Will you talk to him?”
I nod. “Sure. I'll talk to him.” Tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.
“Get in, get in.” Mel leans out the window and gestures to us. He points at a spot on the horizon, near the edge of the shimmery salt lake. “I want to check a little farther north,” he says.
“Now?” I get in the passenger seat and Nat scrambles into the back. “How about some dinner? I'm starving.”
“Later,” Mel says. “I didn't come all this way to waste time eating.” He drives straight across the desert sand, bumping along, seemingly oblivious to the rocks and shrubs in our path.
“Uh, Mel? You think maybe we should stick to the track?”
“My dear boy.” He sounds both amused and impatient. “This is a four-wheel drive. An off-road vehicle.”
I glance over my shoulder at Nat. “Ask him,” she mouths at me.
I'm pretty sure he won't listen. Seems to me that Mel only listens to people when they are agreeing with him. “So what's over there that can't wait?” I ask instead.
“We'll see,” he says. “I have a good feelingâ”
“Stop!” Nat shouts. “Mel, stop!”
Mel brakes. I look around for a kangaroo bounding toward us but can't see anything. “What is it?” I ask, and then I see the smoke.
We all leap out of the car. Smoke is pouring from under it. Mel pops the hood and more thick black smoke billows out.
“Spinifex,” Nat says, swearing under her breath. “Gets sucked into the engine and ignites.”
I lean in through the driver's door. Grab the tiny red fire extinguisher that is strapped to the roof. Yank it free.
“Give me that.” Mel snatches the fire extinguisher from me and begins spraying wildly. It doesn't seem to be helping much. Clouds of smoke billow into the air and sting my eyes.
My brain is stuck, thoughts spinning like the truck's wheels in the sand
. Do
something.
I run to the back of the jeep and haul out a water jug.
“Damn it,” Mel shouts, tossing the fire extinguisher to the ground. He takes the water jug from me and tries to pour it onto the engine, but the heat and smoke drive him back. The jug is heavy, and he can't get close enough. Most of the water spills onto the ground.
“Sand,” I yell. “We can smother it. Put it out.” I start grabbing handfuls of dirt.
“Too late.” Mel stands and watches the smoke turning the blue sky black. He seems oddly calm about it all.