Catherine Jinks TheRoad by Unknown Page A

in a touchy mood. He knew that she was only ejecting her kids from the car because she wanted to talk to Noel in private. But, although he was curious, he wasn’t going to insist on taking part in the conversation.
    ‘Come on,’ he said to Rose. ‘We’ll find you a big bush.’
    ‘Okay.’ Rose was quite happy to piss in the dirt, because she welcomed the excitement of it. Pissing in the dirt was the sort of thing that she could tell her friends about in kindergarten.
    For Louise, however, the novelty of crouching behind a bush to pass urine didn’t make up for the discomfort and embarrassment she felt whenever another car passed them while she was so engaged.
    ‘I think I’ll wait for the roadhouse,’ she said as she climbed out of the car. Peter shrugged.
    ‘Suit yourself,’ he replied. ‘But at this rate, we might not even get there.’
    ‘Don’t be stupid.’ She sounded cross. ‘We have to get there some time. It’s on this road.’
    ‘Yeah, but haven’t you noticed? There’s something pretty weird happening.’
    Together, he and Louise guided Rose across the ditch, past the line of white posts and into the wastes beyond. Dry pellets of animal dung crumbled beneath their feet. A spiky twig worked its way into Louise’s sandals,making her yelp.The sun warmed their scalps and dried the sweat on their skin.
    They headed for a clump of small trees (or large bushes) which stood about twenty metres from the side of the road. It wouldn’t provide a lot of cover, but it would certainly act as a better screen than the thin grass and silver-grey ground-hugging saltbush. Peter made as much noise as possible, crunching along heavily, to scare away any nearby snakes. He didn’t think there were any snakes, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He saw some ants, and wondered if they were the type called meat ants. A pamphlet at the Broken Hill Visitors’ Centre had referred to meat ants, but Peter hadn’t discovered the significance of the name. He hoped that they weren’t like piranhas, able to strip the flesh off a human foot in a few minutes flat.
    It seemed unlikely.
    ‘Okay. Here,’ said Louise. They stopped behind the nearest tree, which wasn’t much taller than Noel, and Rose pulled her pants down. Peter looked away. He surveyed the area around him and saw a crow sitting on one of the other trees in the stunted little thicket. It sat quite still, head cocked, looking at Peter with one eye. He said ‘Shoo’, but it didn’t move. It didn’t even blink.
    ‘Finished?’ said Louise. ‘Okay, here.’
    ‘Can you wipe my bottom?’ Rose pleaded.
    ‘No, I can’t. You’re five years old. You can wipe your own bottom.’
    Suddenly Peter spotted another crow. Like the first, it had fixed him with its bright, blank gaze – though unlike the first it was standing on the ground, near an ants’ nest. Its feathers were glossy, its legs gnarled. For some reason it made him nervous.
    ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
    ‘I can’t!’ Rose protested. She was having trouble with her shorts, which had somehow become entwined in her underpants. With a sigh, Louise corrected the problem. Then they went back to the car, Louise chivvying Rose along whenever the little girl stopped to pick up a feather or study a pellet of dung. Several times along the way Peter glanced over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of the two crows. But they had disappeared from sight.
    In the car, Noel and Linda had come to a decision.
    ‘We’re going back to that mailbox,’ Linda informed her offspring. ‘We don’t have much petrol left in the tank, so we’re going back to borrow some from the people who live in the house with the mailbox.’
    Peter and Louise exchanged glances. Louise said: ‘What about the roadhouse? Can’t we buy petrol there?’
    ‘We can’t be sure we’ll get to it,’ Linda replied. ‘Not with what we’ve got in the tank right now.’
    ‘But you said we were really close,’ Louise