He shrugged. Yeah, we were. We hung out after school, went to parties. He looked back down at the paper, at the conviction politician in his suit and hard hat, the drilling rigs, the straggling exodus, the map with its old and new demarcation lines. I painted houses with him and his dad after we finished high school. Before he moved to Valiant.
Matti came to lean over his shoulder, studying the pictures. Is he a bad man? She could switch mode just like that.
I haven’t seen him in a long time, sprout. I couldn’t say what kind of man he is.
But did he do a bad thing?
Frank sighed. Yeah. Yeah, I think he did.
Li watched him figuring the right amount of truth to give her. She said what she knew he believed but wasn’t sure she did. Matti, people can do bad things without being bad people.
Can they really?
Really.
How many things?
She watched the clouds, which were also in the water. Clouds that rolled and crashed, reefs of gold and orange with the sun moving through them, clouds that flared and spent themselves like smoke. She ran from the fire, she crossed the sea. She found herself back here on the salt, alone.
If Val was here now, he could tell her what was wrong with the fish. He’d like it here. It wasn’t North, but it was closer. He used to tell her that one day when she didn’t need him anymore, he was going to save up a whole season, two seasons, and just go, head all the way up. See for himself. One night at a circuit camp she lay in her blankets by the fire and listened to him swapping stories about people who’d been to the sacrifice zone, or tried. No one had a story about anyone coming back, but Val said that didn’t prove anything. He reckoned it wasn’t as bad up there as government wanted them to believe.
Li said, What about your check-ups?
Thought you were asleep, young one.
I bet they don’t have the hospital up there.
Val had a thyroid condition and his liver was shot. Once every season, a free hospital set up camp on the circuit.
True enough, Val said. I wouldn’t be much good without my pills.
I bet it’s not even like that anymore, Li told him, like what Eddie said.
Val nodded and fished a thread of tobacco off his tongue. Nobody’s home is what it used to be, Li-Li.
The sun’s heat thinner again. Time to start back. Nerredin was flat country too, big fast sky. Matti liked cumulus clouds the best; they lay on their backs on the dirt behind the house and she said the sky looked like a pop-up book. The memory felt dusty and generalised. Li tried to imagine Matti seeing this sky, these clouds, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it anymore.
The bottle was full. And the hole had filled with saltwater again – the edge of the lake had moved a metre south while she slept. She drank and decanted and then packed up the still. It’d be under water soon.
Before she put the compression bandage back on, she tried moving her foot a little, testing her weight carefully. It felt better. She should leave tomorrow, even if she couldn’t get far. She had some water now, some food, and there were towns east of here where she could resupply. But there was a heaviness on her. She was barely going through the motions in her head.
Walking back, she kept her eyes on the ground and concentrated on each step, on the new effort of carrying wood under one arm, because that seemed to be about all she was good for. When her stick knocked against a small piece of wood, she stood staring at it for a long time. Knew she was seeing something that wasn’t there, and knew that was dangerous. The smooth surface, all that compressed movement, the wild grain in the wood. Matti’s horse.
Li got down clumsily and caught it up in both hands. Brushed salt from the creases of its limbs and mane, put it to her lips and traced Matti’s scowl, Frank’s promise. The fastest horse in the West. She shuddered with tenderness. Couldn’t believe it but she held it, and it fit neatly in her palm, all action, mane flying back, legs a blur somehow. It was real. Real. She wiped snot and tears, tasted the salt on her arm. Remembered Frank at the bar with that long-distance look as he worked the horse out of the wood. She missed him so much. They should be doing this together. I promise you, she told him. I swear.
She drank again when she got back, drank her fill and there was still water. Leaving felt real now. Tomorrow.
The four-wheel drive’s bonnet had rusted through in places. The engine was gone but the bonnet prop was still there. She dug a fire pit and roasted the rabbit on the prop. The smell made her weak, carnivorous. Her stomach growled and her mouth filled up with spit, but when the meat was ready, it was too rich for her to eat more than a few mouthfuls.
Dark fell down all over the lakebed. She stayed by the fire, with the heat easing deep into her bones. Somewhere out there, the sound of howling. She unbuttoned her pocket and held the horse, remembering Matti asleep in the tent, gripping its wooden head. For the first time she let herself see the fragility of the thread she’d been following – rumours and reported sightings, maybes. But the horse was real. Impossible but real. Out there, in all that salt, Matti had led her right to it. So, it was true. Sooner or later anyone could roll a six.
Tomorrow she would walk back to the highway with both feet on the ground. And there would be another truck, a driver who was persuadable. She would sit up in the cab
