As Free as the Chain Is Long

THE PREACHER

FROM THE

BACK SALOON

Near Ceduna, South Australia

Just above the hairline, hidden beneath the wires — the old grey patch spread like a puff of ash — feathery psoriasis scales flake from Denholm’s frontal lobe, a shedding symptom. To one side, mashing plums under hooves, the old wasted camels cud hay in the shade of the squat bottled trees — where, clung above, a koala and its joey snore choir-like in eucalyptic comas. Directly on high, the old crooked sun baking ore all around, and harping in sharp rasps from the steam, the glass-smiths at the furnace, blowing blue, spooled molten balloons. From the burrows to the traps, quick skinks snapping at the hot bug pocks popping off the green from the early scream so soon gone . . .

Denny Kareeda jumped at noon across the kitchen view — his shadowy erection a sun dial till 12.02 — swaying high above the lard the cook just plopped, and as she laid her rashes down to fry, the day fell limp, still light. She, under glass below, gripping at her belly like a helm; the wheel growling.

And so goes the all, when the never says so; and the more do it for the wait.

Songs of the box, the passing throng, braying low, leaking strange. Sheer it turns, sheer it stays. Den the done had no long say. An age each one takes with a pinch of dung, never to be flung once again. Amen.

One week on . . .

Sliver Livvy gutting hens, a nibble past dusk. The mice hidden ledged. Leek- frothing pans. A hot bread pong. Dim candlelight bobbing as she weaves, laying spoons. A gravestone on the bench — a black inscribed rod dated high above the slab, where Denny had loosely swung.

In saunters Claude, his boots buckled by mud, dropping to his stool — chin downed in the table's groove, eye to eye with the oldest crumbs. Head out of order. His pet crow perched still on the open sill. The day hocking itself to the moon once again.

Holtot the dolt sallies down the track, heading back home after a day on the land — ineptitude complete, but on form agreeable. Shirker by nature. Hobo by heart. Glutton by constitution. Curtains drawing at each shack he scanters by. Lights piffing off. Bread bins slamming. All the jars screwing tight. The shelving cans of on and on as he dawdles by for a scent. His nose a double leg, sheared at both ankles.

But ever as the same whither, the undone go. And for the-all-said-and-done gang shuffling anew, all hobble to the tune the same dance, even the parlor girls and snuff kings rolling in furs and gold.

This hinterland. This shanty town. This bay of caverns with its stiff breezes shooting through like needles, stinging all.

The rat gulls hovering at the cape catching all the bugs just shooed out of town. A crucifix towered on every kerb, relaying whats? for all to see, and yet the old sacrifice of that ancient day ruled by the pining cones — the Christmas pins clogging up the vents.

Murat Bay, hammered home of the nailing wood. The comic possums hanging startled off all the hoists. Claude, Holtot, their sister Livvy, raking brother Den’s plot as moody autumn spits her hair across the way. Livvy in a black catsuit —though I eulogised as well as I could. It was just a cow-milking pause, a passing through. A bed, some bran, adieu.

Nullarbor 1

Thumb out to the unwavering tar again, with my black dog Guard at my side once more. The biomass blooming new. The last ghost gum glowing fair, the same. And then a smoothed sea of mulga to come like at the end of a wave.

Ahhh . . . the oft said sham winks on but never wins. To just wander, released. To sever all the locks and mosey on free, ambling through the scrub above the vestal clay. To nestle the day’s last hours in the shrubs, snoring in the silence as the worms tunnel round.

Those glories with nature lock back into the purse of your soul as you buffet the stratosphere at the hour of your death, my drunken pop long wailed from the dais.

What a wish regaled. When truth is, each dawn is just an ache. Each lonely night, a bomb. Those old dead Sundays lingering back behind, like a bad song or a smell.

God, put my thumb out and get me away. These cicadas are the singers of madness, the sirens of Hell . . .

Nullarbor 2

Thumb in, as a dusty Datsun chugs to a sudden stop. Out here in the neverness some halt for nomads, after passing the carcasses of roos, slain one after another, kissing the burnt bitumen’s edge. Can't be missed against the wide baby-blue in a shiny black suit from Vinny’s row. Like bumps and valleys to the blind. But they only really halt by the loneliness the emptiness inflames. Then, as the sun wraps round my throat, illuminating God’s bond — it zooms off in dread like the rest. Thumb dead again.

The last thing people want is a sermon out here, as if that's my only vice. There's no help for a man of the cloth on this endless, heartless stretch.

You've chosen the road, it's all yours, ha ha, beeping ta-ta, shifting gears away, sometimes spitting at my neck.

The effervescent lulls of silence soon regroup, then sounds out a hearty roar again. No skeets aloft to help whistle away the drone. Nowhere for them to rest, or nest, or sing on this treeless plain. No one but the reptiles and the stalking crows — these old vicious butchers chopping at corpses by the mile, standing waist high on the road, hacking at the dead with beaks like axes, gagging on fur. Black as night, my jacket and tweeds, they hop from rotted roo to rotted roo only flaps away, burping fat from the slaughter, staggering to the next course ahead. They can barely walk, let alone fly sometimes. What a waste of wings. Sometimes there we all are, hobbling together, the whole black gang of us in a row. They squawk at me, and I preach to them psalms, and we part the ways at the next roadkill again.

No one, the few drivers that pass, even slow down now. Maybe I've been around them all too long, blended in all too well with them all. Soon, no doubt, I'll be on my knees, tucking in with them the same. Then they in me. Me and their millions waiting for me to drop! The soft caw’s so often gone, then back again. The going gone. The gone aghast. The aghast agog, gagging on the masses.

The traipsing miles in tow. Hips slipping from the knees. Ankles buckling from the potholes. All the snakes crawling out from the spinifex seas to the road, lying straight on the cool milky dashes. A thousand dugites sprawled to eternity to pass, their forked tongues flicking to the jangle of the beads, the red ribbon of the book. But I'll not cast my shackle ahoy to the dust —not for heat, not for hunger, nor for loneliness, nor for love. Perhaps they’ll call the law in the end and send them on. I’m on the only road out of town.

In the spirit of Camino de Santiago, I counted out a saint for every faded broken white line I could bless up the guts of Highway One as I inched inward toward the nothingness . . .

"The Blessed Veronica of Bibasco for the illiterate . . .

Saint Felix of Valois for the forgotten, Home of the Forty Martyrs for the homeless . . .

Saint Ignatius of Constaninople for the scorned . . .

Saint Conrad of Piacenza for the ill . . .

Saint Nicholas von Flue for the ignored . . .

The Blessed Sibyllina of Pavia for the blind . . .

Saint Zosmos for the proud . . .

Saint Boniface of Mainz for the sad . . .

Saint John Baptist de la Salle for the bored . . .

Saint Ubold for the stout . . .

Saint Andrew Bobola for the contemptuous . . .

Saint Teresa of Lisieux for the frail . . .

Saint Vitus for the argumentive . . .

Saint Rainerius of Pisa for the short . . .

Saint Aloysius Gonzaga for the reluctant . . .

Saint Jane Frances Fremiot de Chantal for the bereaved . . .

Saint Rose of Lima for the vain . . .

Saint Victoria Fornan Strata for the hesitant . . .

Saint Placid and His Companions for the helpless . . .

Saint Peter of Alcantra for the simple . . .

Saint Gertrude the Great for the violent . . .

Blessed Saint Jude for the chronically hopeless, Home to the Holy Innocents for the handicapped . . .

Saint Joan of Arc for the volatile . . .

Saint Blaise for the hyperactive . . .

Saint Simon the Zealot for the afraid . . .

Saint Valentine for the forlorn . . .

Saint Gregory the Great for the surly . . .

Saint Pins V for the lame . . .

Saint Bede the Venerable for the regretful . . .

Saint Barnabus for the lost . . .

Saint Joachim for the misled . . .

Saint Rosalia for the reclusive . . .

Saint Sozon for the criminal . . .

Saint Francis of Asissi for the derelict . . .

Saint Bruno for the lonely . . .

Saint Bibiana for the shy . . ."

Nullarbor 3

Thumb out . . .

. . . thumb in.

Nullarbor 4

Th’mout . . .

. . . th’min.

Nullarbor 5

Th’out . . .

. . . th’in.

Nullarbor 6

Thou . . .

. . . thi.

Nullarbor 7

Th . . .

. . . th.

Nullarbor 8

th

Nullarbor 9, Western Australia

I don't lift the thumbs anymore. Just drag them along like the toes now, listening to them pass. Just the quiet, and me, and the signs in bullet ridden rows. If this ring weren't bound round my throat they'd stop without qualms, but no one wants a lecture out here, as if that's my only crime.

A young Tibetan peddled out of nowhere, pulling over for a breath and a smile. On a red racer, circumnavigating the land for the second time in a row. (On holidays from a pressing plant in Lhasa?) We didn't understand each other even in gestures too well. It was too hot to speak anyway. He topped up my canteen, gave tins of sardines, asked me to bless his tyres, and was off again, back down, gruelling away.

I'll not doff my collar amongst the treads littering the side. I've told the blue-tongues who begat who for miles on end; the adders of Eden; the bull ants of Job; the mulga of miracles; and the odd wispy cloud the tales of Noah, hinting rain — braying fark with the crows — stuffing maps of Mesopotamia in my dogs to lessen the pain. Humming Hymn 47 from my old parish board, trekking through a desert in burnt black to my Lord. A lift will come, like the rapture at last . . .

Nullarbor 10

The last red drop of fishy oil dripped from the corner of the can onto the faded white line of the road — but what a giant noise that lone sizzle made. The first word I'd heard all day.

What a pretty thing a sardine is, streamlined and shiny as a nail. Must be the embalming. Some say a fish has a soul like the bird. The sparrow swims the sky just as hard as the sardine whips the sea.

What I'd do for the ocean to come rolling up to me now. What promises I'd keep; all those old vows, this time followed to the post.

Can’t wait to see the whales at Bunda Cliffs. Maybe it’s there I’ll finally make the leap and join them, or have I missed them? Have I hitched right past the sea overnight?

That girl the sea, where could she be? I said out loud to Guard, looking around for him, but couldn’t see him anywhere again. Had he slipped underground somewhere, or fallen through to a grotto? I soon gave up looking for him and prayed to hear a distant whale call. Or had I slipped by the Bight? Fishermen often say the salted are yet to earn their souls. But for their inner wings, lifting them to the light, acrobatic. A taste of air, of light, that is all. First, the desire, and then the fall. That is all.

Already, the fat Eyre