groans. And inside, the radio drones along: “After nine overs of play, Australia is none for thirty….”
I was trying to find something other than the cricket when I reached for the radio and skidded off the road.
Slowly, I start taking stock of the damage. There is broken glass in my nose and under my tongue. I lick my front teeth; having chipped them twice before, I assume they will be the first thing to go. But the enamel is intact. I try to wiggle my toes. They wiggle. I feel gingerly for the leak that is still draining blood down my chest and onto the ceiling. A deep gash in my thigh, a bloody nose, a sliced arm. I am bumped and bruised, badly shaken, but otherwise fine.
I undo the seat belt and scramble through the space where the windshield used to be. My leg hurts, so I crawl on hands and knees to the road. Here I am again, lying in the hot sun by an empty highway, waiting for a ride to carry me on.
My fortune knows no bounds. On this lonely stretch of road, a car happens to be just a few minutes behind me, and not just that: the driver is an off-duty cop from Alice. Immediately he takes control. Two strong hands plant themselves under my armpits and pull me onto the backseat. Two strong legs disappear over the embankment to collect my possessions, which have been thrown from the boot of the Ford. Then the man stands by the highway staring at the car and nodding in disbelief.
“Don’t know how you walked away from that one, mate,” he says.
Only then do I take my first look back. The rented Ford has become what is known in insurance circles as a “write-off.” It looks like a tinnie that someone has stomped on with steel-toed boots. The only bit of uncrushed metal is a small cocoon around the steering wheel. The rest is a steel and chrome coffin. In a way, I had it coming. “Mr. Leadfoot,” my father used to call me, as I sped through suburban streets as a teenager. They say the last words of airplane pilots, picked up from black boxes in downed planes, are usually “oh shit” or “dammit”—more an expression of annoyance than of terror. A black box in the Ford would have picked up a kind of mournful sigh: an unreformed speed demon wishing he could hit the rewind button to tape that part over again.
Now, slumped in the backseat of the policeman’s car, I feel like I’m lying in a bathtub with the water draining out. This is what shock is, I guess. Not fear or hurt, just a huge, gaping emptiness, like one of those bottomless pits in television cartoons. There is nothing to do but try and fill the hole, which I do by chattering at the policeman for the hour-long drive to Alice. If he gets in a word, I don’t hear it, so busily am I shoveling noise into the void.
In Alice my mind goes on automatic pilot. There are police forms to fill out, car-rental papers to sign. At the police station I sheepishly confess to driving over seventy-five miles an hour. “No worries,” the officer says, “most people burn down the Track at ninety.” It is all as straightforward and painless as paying a parking fine.
The officer asks if I want to go to the hospital. Suddenly, all I want to do is be home. The image of nursing my wounds in Alice, with nothing butmy own thoughts for company, fills me with a strange sort of terror. The officer seems relieved. He calls a tow truck to collect the Ford for transportation to a metal grave. Then he rings a taxi for me and goes back to watching cricket. “Matthews has faced eighty-eight balls on this wicket….”
It is on the way to the airport that the numbness finally wears off. My leg feels as if someone’s planted a kitchen knife just above the knee. And my head spins every time I think how much worse it could have been. I feel light-headed, short of breath, panicky.
Then absurdity intervenes. I rush onto the plane forgetting that my nose, shirt, and trousers are still caked with blood. I go to claim my assigned seat, which is in between two other passengers.
I was trying to find something other than the cricket when I reached for the radio and skidded off the road.
Slowly, I start taking stock of the damage. There is broken glass in my nose and under my tongue. I lick my front teeth; having chipped them twice before, I assume they will be the first thing to go. But the enamel is intact. I try to wiggle my toes. They wiggle. I feel gingerly for the leak that is still draining blood down my chest and onto the ceiling. A deep gash in my thigh, a bloody nose, a sliced arm. I am bumped and bruised, badly shaken, but otherwise fine.
I undo the seat belt and scramble through the space where the windshield used to be. My leg hurts, so I crawl on hands and knees to the road. Here I am again, lying in the hot sun by an empty highway, waiting for a ride to carry me on.
My fortune knows no bounds. On this lonely stretch of road, a car happens to be just a few minutes behind me, and not just that: the driver is an off-duty cop from Alice. Immediately he takes control. Two strong hands plant themselves under my armpits and pull me onto the backseat. Two strong legs disappear over the embankment to collect my possessions, which have been thrown from the boot of the Ford. Then the man stands by the highway staring at the car and nodding in disbelief.
“Don’t know how you walked away from that one, mate,” he says.
Only then do I take my first look back. The rented Ford has become what is known in insurance circles as a “write-off.” It looks like a tinnie that someone has stomped on with steel-toed boots. The only bit of uncrushed metal is a small cocoon around the steering wheel. The rest is a steel and chrome coffin. In a way, I had it coming. “Mr. Leadfoot,” my father used to call me, as I sped through suburban streets as a teenager. They say the last words of airplane pilots, picked up from black boxes in downed planes, are usually “oh shit” or “dammit”—more an expression of annoyance than of terror. A black box in the Ford would have picked up a kind of mournful sigh: an unreformed speed demon wishing he could hit the rewind button to tape that part over again.
Now, slumped in the backseat of the policeman’s car, I feel like I’m lying in a bathtub with the water draining out. This is what shock is, I guess. Not fear or hurt, just a huge, gaping emptiness, like one of those bottomless pits in television cartoons. There is nothing to do but try and fill the hole, which I do by chattering at the policeman for the hour-long drive to Alice. If he gets in a word, I don’t hear it, so busily am I shoveling noise into the void.
In Alice my mind goes on automatic pilot. There are police forms to fill out, car-rental papers to sign. At the police station I sheepishly confess to driving over seventy-five miles an hour. “No worries,” the officer says, “most people burn down the Track at ninety.” It is all as straightforward and painless as paying a parking fine.
The officer asks if I want to go to the hospital. Suddenly, all I want to do is be home. The image of nursing my wounds in Alice, with nothing butmy own thoughts for company, fills me with a strange sort of terror. The officer seems relieved. He calls a tow truck to collect the Ford for transportation to a metal grave. Then he rings a taxi for me and goes back to watching cricket. “Matthews has faced eighty-eight balls on this wicket….”
It is on the way to the airport that the numbness finally wears off. My leg feels as if someone’s planted a kitchen knife just above the knee. And my head spins every time I think how much worse it could have been. I feel light-headed, short of breath, panicky.
Then absurdity intervenes. I rush onto the plane forgetting that my nose, shirt, and trousers are still caked with blood. I go to claim my assigned seat, which is in between two other passengers.
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