For the love of a short story…

An empty space, so wide and deep and infinite it devours everything.

I LOVE short stories. Reading and writing them. As an author, they provide a wonderful testing ground for ideas and techniques. As a Melbourne copywriter, they offer the opportunity to stretch my creative wings. Saying this, I thought I’d publish one of my short stories here… I wrote The Desert in 2016. I hope you enjoy it.  

The Desert

The desert track stretches straight and true through the middle of nowhere.

When I squint at it through the windscreen, the sunlight glinting off the bull-bar turns my vision white.

‘Jen,’ Joel calls from the dark underbelly of our car. ‘Pass me the torch. It’s in the glove box.’

I rub my eyes and flip open the glove box. The maps he’s collected spill onto my feet like leaves. ‘It’s not here,’ I yell out the window. The hot wind carries my voice away.

I wish we’d stayed longer in Dalhousie Springs with the seasoned campers.

That morning I’d watched them emerge from their tents, with wild hair and rubber thongs that flip-flopped the cracked path to the toilet block. They looked at ease next to their campfires and under the bonnets of their dusty vehicles. Natural.

Pulling into the campgrounds in our new BMW 4WD, with its sleek black curves and Scandinavian roof pod had made me uneasy. It reminded me of a posh kid at a public school, parked in a row of dinged-up four-by-fours. Our tent was the same, complicated in the way expensive things are, and the sun burnt my shoulders as we tried to construct it. Joel whistled, Achy Breaky Heart as he worked, but I didn’t complain. I didn’t have the energy.

After dark, I walked past the springs and stared out, into the desert. It was black, like standing on the edge of an abyss.

‘Sometimes you’ve just got to throw yourself in,’ Joel had said one morning a month ago, our toes almost touching beneath the cotton sheets.

I stared at the ceiling in response.

‘C’mon Jen.’ He brushed his foot against mine. ‘Hear me out.’

The fridge whirred in the kitchen next door, a soft, motorised purr. If I concentrated on it, all other sounds fell away. Beyond the fridge, Joel kept speaking. He talked about sand and underground oceans and frogs that bury themselves in the ground. I pulled my foot away from his and curled my knees to my stomach, trying to ignore its softness and the way it barely pushed against the elastic on my pyjamas.

The fridge rattled to a stop. ‘The Simpson,’ he finally announced. And I almost laughed despite myself, at the vision of Joel in a desert.

Joel remerges and holds up his mobile. ‘It’s alright, I used the light on this instead,’ he drops the phone back into one of his many pockets before the dust clogs up its circuitry.

It covers everything, this red dust. It powders my boots and clots up the tent, makes my eyes itch and stuffs my nostrils. The wind filters it over the landscape, the way a baker sifts icing sugar over sponge cakes. I nod, hair blowing across my face.

‘It should be okay.’ He shrugs. ‘We’ll keep driving and see.’ He slaps the dust off his shoes so as not to spoil the carpet and climbs in.

Another car pulls over in front of us. It’s a monster, covered in aerials and spare tyres. Its driver peers at us in its side mirror. Someone has scratched, ‘please wash me’ in the dirt on the back window.

‘You right?’ The driver calls, opening his door. ‘Need a hand?’

 ‘We’re fine,’ I say, getting out of our car to stretch my legs. I walk towards them.

‘Just checking the engine’. Joel sticks his head out the window and takes off his Ray-Bans.

When I reach them, a woman leans over the man and gives me a funny look. Her hair’s frizzy with perm and she’s wearing a saggy t-shirt. It looks comfortable.

‘Is this your first crossing, pet?’ she asks.

I nod.

‘Looks like someone’s done their planning,’ the woman glances at Joel in our car then smiles, ‘but be careful anyway. Tune into channel ten. It’ll give ya road updates.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, staring at a small girl asleep in the back seat. Pillows and soft toys surround her, and I wish she’d open her eyes.

Joel calls out again. ‘It’s all under control,’ he says. ‘We’ve got a satellite phone.’

The grin on his face makes me stare at my boots.

‘Good for you,’ the woman shouts at him as the man waves goodbye. ‘Hooroo.’

We drive for hours.

I read The Old Man and the Sea, in silent protest, picturing Santiago floating across the ocean, small waves licking salt from his boat. The words sway on the page as I try to ignore the gut-twisting lurch of the car scaling another dune. Beside me, Joel groans as if it’s his body, and not the vehicle, carrying us up and over each one. The dunes swell, row after row, from the desert floor like a set of red breakers.

‘They call this place an erg,’ he says in an off-handed way. ‘A sand sea.’

I lay the book on my lap and wind the window down so I can feel the sun on my face. It’s a lifetime since I’ve felt this warm. I widen my eyes, imagining light streaming into my retina. The doctor said it would help, letting the sun in. Something about boosting the serotonin levels in my brain.

We move at a snail’s pace across the desert.

The car dips and wheels, a mechanical speck amongst immensity. The cobalt sky stretches like a canvas overhead and the track runs straight as an arrow, shooting for the vanishing point. We slow at a collection of signs, sticking out at angles. The signs point to far-off places like Birdsville and Approdinna Attora Knolls. Someone has written, ‘to bugger all’ in black texta next to Poeppel’s Corner.

The thought of so much emptiness makes me dizzy. There’s nothing to contain me here, nothing to hold me together.

‘I need to wee,’ I say, grabbing the door handle.

‘Okay. Hold on.’ Joel pulls over.

I scramble out of the car.

Joel gets out too. ‘Here,’ he says, giving me the satellite phone and a nervous peck on the cheek. ‘Don’t go too far.’

 ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say, handing the phone back as I walk away. ‘I just want to get away from the road.’

I know he’s thinking he should follow me.

He’d taken time off work for a while and hung around the house being cheerful. His boss understood. The firm even sent flowers, a bunch of red roses in an expensive cardboard box. Joel had arranged them neatly on the dresser in our room under our wedding photos. But I couldn’t stand the way their colour bled into the fresh white walls, so I moved them while he cooked.

‘How can you bake chicken while this is happening?’ I wanted to scream at his back. But the tidy knot of his apron strings and the fuggy smell of stuffing drove me back to bed.

­­­­­­I walk until I can’t see Joel anymore. Walk until the curved line of our roof pod melts into the track. Then I sit and notice the small things, sprays of wildflowers near my boot and a skink scurrying into a clump of spinifex ahead. I wonder how anything can survive here, in a landscape so averse to life. But what do I know? I scratch the surface of the ground with a stick, cutting deeper and deeper, until the earth grows dark and I hear Joel behind me.

‘Did you go?’

‘Huh?’

‘To the toilet. Did you go?’

‘Yeah,’ I say putting the stick in my pocket.

We drive on, taking the French Line west, traversing dunes and gritting our teeth against the corrugated track until Joel points out a flat patch beside the road.

‘Camp?’

We set up in silence, talking only to retrieve a tent pole or to pass a peg. Joel speaks less now. Without walls and reverberation, he’s quieter. We sit together, in the fading light, on our bamboo fibre chairs and drink beer. I’d forgotten how much pleasure a cold beer brings. The crisp bite it makes sliding down my throat. I watch Joel, the way he places the bottle caps carefully on the ground, collecting like coins around his boots.

‘You forgot stubby holders,’ I say, mouth shaping into what might be a smile. I know he’s drinking the beer for me.

‘Yeah,’ he says, quietly. And, I think this place is getting to him.

Nights are the hardest.

At night I have to contend with my body. The night is my enemy.

Joel goes to bed, his sense of duty sufficiently dulled with beer to forget me for a while.

‘I’ll be in soon.’

‘Okay,’ he says brushing a hand across my shoulders.

At home, night is a hungry black hole ready to suck me in. I keep the bathroom light on, to protect myself from the shadows that lurk beneath the bed and slip between our slatted blinds.

In the desert, the night sky shimmers with a million galaxies, keeping the dark at bay. I draw cold air into my lungs and listen to unseen creatures, scuttle and squawk nearby like an invisible orchestra. I draw my knees hard to my chest. It hurts, and I wonder if my milk is all gone.

‘It’ll take a few days.’ The nurse had sat opposite. ‘But I brought these to speed up the process.’ She put a bottle of pills on the kitchen table between us and offered an apologetic smile.

The wet patches on my t-shirt made my skin itch but I didn’t care. ‘I don’t want it to dry up.’

The nurse leaned forward and took my hands. Her hands were rough and ragged around the nails, but gentle too. ‘C’mon love. It’s time.’

I sensed Joel at the door. Sometimes his face was like my reflection and I could hardly bear to look at him.

‘It’ll be less painful this way.’ The nurse spoke in a voice that meant business.

But she didn’t know what I knew. The pain was all I had left.

I don’t undress before climbing into our camp bed.

Next to me, Joel smells like the days of our courtship, when I’d drag him to pubs to listen to bands. He’d lean on the bar with all the charm of Mr Darcy to watch me smoke and sway my hips in time to the music. He’d drink beer then too, but only because the wine was so bad. Later in bed, I’d take off his clothes and tell him he smelt like a brewery.

It’s easier when he’s asleep, to be close to him. There’s no guarded conversation or wistful glances. No remorse, when I turn him away.

I brush the hair from the collar of his t-shirt and inhale the back of his neck. It smells like Pears soap and makes my heart ache.

I roll onto my back and listen to the desert outside. The wind’s picked up and it batters the tent like a stuck kite. A dingo cries in the distance. I imagine the desert contracting after the heat of the day, reshaping itself for tomorrow. I picture stars overhead. See them fading, slowly, without a whisper, into the morning’s smudgy brightness.

She’d arrived in a burst of fire, so fast I thought I’d die.

‘A live wire, this one,’ the midwife joked while Joel fumbled with the scissors and the cord. The cord slithered and slid through his fingers. In the end he butchered it.

‘Looks like you’ll have you’re hands full.’

But they already were. They were full of her downy head against my breasts and the soft, slippery skin of her back. When I ran my fingers up it, I could feel each impeccable bone in her spine, like a tiny xylophone. It puzzled me how there could be so little of her, yet so much.

Joel stood beside us and beamed, a big, silly smile he couldn’t contain. And I thought how strange he looked, standing there, all dishevelled and helpless.

‘My girls,’ he kept saying, the smile wobbling a little. ‘My two girls.’

I gasp.

Suddenly the sleeping bag contracts and there’s no air left in the tent.

‘Fuck.’

I struggle with the zip and kick my legs in an effort to escape. Everything shrinks. The roof of the tent slopes down and the walls slump in.

‘Argh.’

The sleeping bag twists as I fight, holding me tighter until my throat burns with a muted scream. Then there’s a rip. The zip comes away from the fabric and I lurch for the door, tearing at the fancy Teflon straps until I find an opening.

I fall to my knees outside the tent and suck in great mouthfuls of cold air until the heat leaves my body. When I look up, the sky is on fire and shadows shift across the landscape.

‘She’s turning blue.’

I didn’t know what they were saying and I didn’t care, until I felt the weight on my chest lighten.

‘What?’

The nurse carried her away.

‘Joel?’

Another nurse pulled a sheet over me as if my naked body was suddenly inappropriate. Then the room tipped as the people in it rushed to one side. They lay our baby on a steel cot.

‘Joel.’ I reached for him. ‘What’s happening?’

Joel didn’t look at me.

A doctor, nurses, more doctors rushed into the room. They rubbed our baby’s back, too rigorously, until I thought she might break.

‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Don’t hurt her.’

They huddled, a heaving white circle around her, as Joel, an outsider in blue, orbited them.

‘Jen,’ he yelled like I was far, far away. ‘She’s hardly breathing.’

I wanted to hit him, to make him take it back. I clasped the handrail and pulled myself upright and out of the bed.

‘Give them a little space,’ a nurse said softly, trying to lead me away when I got too close.

But I caught a glimpse. Her final breath, I like to think, so she knew I was watching.

The desert is inside me.

An empty space, so wide and deep and infinite that it devours everything; Joel’s voice telling me he loves me, the nurse’s touch, the people we meet along the track. When it’s done, it turns on itself, growing bigger until I lose sight of its edges and can’t tell where it ends.

But I see it here.

It’s laid out before me, turning shades of ochre in the morning light. I feel its sand sifting through my fingers and inhale its crisp dawn air. I watch the darkness disappear and glimpse its beauty.

I hear Joel shift in the tent behind me, imagine his hand outstretched, searching the mattress. I stare at the landscape transforming in front of me. The dunes like welts softening in the sun and the track ahead. I breathe again, softly, and evenly. And, with the light, the shadows flee.  

The End

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You can find my novels, Small Blessings and Hello, Goodbye at Allen and Unwin.