“Listen,” you said.
“To what? There’s nothing.”
“There is. Maybe not shopping centers and cars, but other things … buzzing insects, racing ants, a slight wind making the tree creak, there’s a honeyeater up there, scuttling around, and the camels are coming.”
“What?”
You nodded toward the land below, a slight smirk on your face. “Go see.”
I stood and glanced down at the flatness. Sure enough, there was a bunch of hazy black dots down there, becoming bigger as they moved closer to our small hill. I no longer needed binoculars to see they were camels.
“You didn’t hear them coming … you’d need Superman’s hearing for that.”
“Who says I’m not Superman?” You were looking at me with one eye closed against the sun. I shrugged.
“You would have rescued me by now if you were Superman,” I said quietly.
“Who says I haven’t?”
“Anyone would say you haven’t.”
“Anyone’s just looking at it wrong, then.” You pushed yourself up a little, onto your elbows. “Anyway, I can’t steal you and rescue you. That would give me multiple personalities.”
“And you don’t have them already?” I muttered.
I ate the roll, and forced down more sparkling wine. When your eyes closed against the sun again, and I had nothing else to look at, I glanced quickly at your chest, curious, really. I’d only seen chests like that in magazines. I wondered if that’s how you’d got all your money … modeling. I looked down at my stomach. I grabbed at it, seeing how much fat I could lift up in a roll.
“Don’t worry,” you said, one eye open again like a crocodile, watching me. “You’re beautiful.” You tipped your head back. “Beautiful,” you murmured. “Perfect.”
“You wouldn’t know. You’re built like some sort of supermodel.” I bit my lip, wishing I hadn’t complimented you like that. “Or a stripper,” I added. “Prostitute.”
“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m repulsive,” you said, half smiling.
“Too late.”
You opened your other eye to squint at me. “Will you ever give me a break?”
“If you give me your car keys I’ll think the world of you.”
“No chance.” You shut your eyes again and leaned your head back into your T-shirt. “You’d only get lost and die.”
“Try me.”
“Maybe next week.”
You lay there for a few more lazy minutes. You looked almost peaceful, with your eyes closed and your lips parted slightly. A fly landed on your cheek, then crawled to your bottom lip. It stopped halfWay across and cleaned itself with your saliva.
After a while, you packed away the picnic, and we drove back down the hill. The car was almost vertical on parts of the decline and several times we hit rocks that sent the steering wheel spinning. The landscape shrunk as we descended, and when we hit the bottom I’d almost forgotten the view of endlessness that had spread out before me at the top.
You parked in the shadow of the hill. It was too hot to wait in the car so you told me to get out and stand in the shade. The camels came eventually. After ambling slowly toward us for several minutes, the camels picked up the pace, their body shapes getting larger as they came closer. They must have been traveling fast. You fixed your binoculars on them.
You turned and yelled, “Get in the car! They’ve seen us. They’re going to turn before they get here.”
There was a distant drumming of hooves on hard sand.
“Come on!” You waved me toward you. “Quick, or I’ll leave you behind.”
It was a tempting suggestion. But even though I pretended not to be, I was excited, too. I wanted to see how you were going to capture one of those huge creatures. You screeched off at top speed, even before I had the door closed, glancing over to check I was in.
“Sit down and hang on to something!”
The speedometer shot up as we raced toward the camels, the car going faster on the harder sand. Things were clunking and smashing in the trunk. I hoped the snake wasn’t still in there, getting flung around, about to ricochet in my direction at any moment. I could feel the tires skidding. The car swung wildly sideways more than once. Your face was intent, fiercely concentrating.
“This isn’t safe!” I shouted. My head hit the roof as we soared over a sandbar.
You glanced behind as your binoculars flew across the backseat, smashing into the door. “Maybe not.”
You laughed as you pressed your foot flat to the floor. I gripped the door handle tightly. The speedometer stuck on just about 35. We were almost level with them. You were right; they had turned before they got to us. Now they were running full tilt toward the horizon. Their necks were stretched and low, their legs taking impossibly huge strides. I’d never seen a wild camel before. It was scary how much they towered above the car. One well-timed kick and a leg could go right through my window.
“Get the pole from the backseat!” you yelled. “Quickly!”
I turned and reached for the long wooden pole with the roped noose at one end. I tried to get it to you, but it was difficult in the small space. It wedged itself against the frame, and I couldn’t pull it through the gap between the seats. You glanced at the pole, then back at the camels, trying to keep the car straight and level with them.
“I need it now!”
“I’m trying!
You reached around to yank at it. As you pulled it free, it hit you in the face. The car swerved alarmingly to the right and toward the camels. I screamed. Your hand lashed out at my shoulder.
“Shut up! You’ll scare them.”
You pulled the pole over your lap and out of your window. The noosed end was pointing at the camels. You were looking them over carefully. Sweat was pouring off your face. It was pouring off mine, too, despite the breeze rushing past me.
“I’m going for the young female,” you shouted. “The one nearest to us. You OK to drive for a moment?”
You started to lean out of your window.
“What are you doing?”
“Take the wheel!” you ordered.
You didn’t give me much choice. As soon as you shouted it you were gone, leaning dangerously out of the car, which started to bank toward the camels. If it kept going like this, your head would probably crash into the back end of one of them. I was tempted to let it.
“Take the wheel now!”
I reached over. I could hear the camels grunting with the effort of running. I could hear you breathing hard, too. I took the wheel. It was hot and sticky from your grip. Your left foot moved over to be on the accelerator instead of hovering near the brake. Your right leg was resting on the door frame. There was only the hand brake to stop the car if we needed to.
“Keep driving in a straight line!”
I tried not to look at you or the camels. Whenever I did, I started veering toward them. I looked at the sand in front. I swerved to avoid a spinifex bush, nearly sending you headlong out of the window.
“Jesus! You’re a worse driver than me!” You laughed into the wind.
You hooked your right leg behind your left one, and leaned farther out. You held the pole steady, drawing out the line of rope that was trailing behind it. Your thigh was pushing into my arm; I think you were holding it there to keep your balance.
“When the noose is over her head, get out of the way. The rope will rip through the car. Duck down if you can: If you get tangled in the rope, it could snap you in half. I’m serious.”
I looked at my body stretching over from my seat and at my hands clamped tight around the wheel, and wondered how it would be possible for me to get out of the way of anything. The car jerked and shuddered as you pressed the accelerator. You were ready to throw the noose. Your whole body was tense and concentrated, your leg pushing harder against my arm.
I forced myself to keep breathing. Your arm was up and ready to throw. You leaned farther out, your long torso stretched to its limit, eve
ry muscle tight. If I pushed you, would you tip right out? You circled the pole around your head, gathering speed and momentum.
Then you let it go.
I caught a glimpse of the noose heading toward the camel’s head, the rope flying fast behind it. The end of the rope whizzed through the car, past my arms, burning my skin as it went. It whipped over your bare stomach, too, branding you with a deep red streak. You almost plunged out of the car as you struggled to hold on to it. And then, suddenly, the car was banking hard, turning of its own accord. I felt the back swinging around to the left. I tried desperately to spin the wheel the other way.
“Leave it!” you yelled. You dropped back into the driver’s seat, almost sitting on top of me. With one hand, you grabbed the wheel. You spun it toward the camel.
“Hang on!”
Your left foot stopped pressing the accelerator and went straight onto the brake. And then the car really did start to spin. I tumbled into my seat, trying to grab at anything, and shut my eyes.
You were out of the car fast. The camel was making this awful sound, a deep, desperate moaning. It echoed around the desert.
I came to look. “Have you hurt her?” I asked.
“Just her pride.”
Her long neck was circling around and around, her eyes white with fear. I reached up and touched the hairs on her thigh. “Poor thing.”
Quickly, you wound rope around her legs. Then you took a bucket from the trunk, and one of the large containers of water. Grunting a little, you lifted the container up so it rested against your leg, then carefully poured the water into the bucket.
You tried to encourage the camel to drink, murmuring, “There now, easy, girl.”
You were stroking her neck, trying to make her calm. But the camel was just looking over her shoulder at her disappearing herd. She moaned and moaned. She tried moving toward them but you were tightening the rope around her front legs. She kicked out one of her back legs, missing me by inches.
“Careful,” you warned. You sprung beside me, wrapping the rope above the camel’s knee. “Go over to the other side.”
You chucked the rope over her hump. “Pull that,” you said. I pulled. “Harder.”
I hated every second. Each pull made the camel grumble and gurgle and look around at me with her desperate eyes. You were pulling from your side, too. Eventually the camel’s front legs buckled and she knelt into the sand.
“Enough!” you shouted.
You threw yourself onto her hump, pressing your whole body weight down on her. You leaned into her until her back legs crumpled underneath and you were sure she wouldn’t get up. Then quickly, you wound rope around the camel’s knees, tying them so tightly she couldn’t move them.
“That’s cruel,” I said.
“Do you want a brain hemorrhage from a kick to the head?” You scratched the skin above one of the camel’s knees. “There are crueler ways of doing this, believe me.”
I did. You probably knew crueler ways of doing most things. The camel’s moan had grown in volume and desperation. It sounded too loud to just be coming from her; it sounded like the whole desert was joining in. I wondered if anyone else could hear. The rest of the herd were just dots on the horizon again, almost impossible to see. She was still moving her body toward them.
“You’re dreaming if you think you’re going to get away, girl,” you muttered.
All her legs were hobbled and she was tied to the car. It did seem pretty unlikely that she was going anywhere. I wished she could, though. I wished she could break her ropes and gallop after her herd, calling loudly all the way.
“Would you take me with you?” I whispered to her warm, panting side.
I moved around so I could look at her face. Even scared, she had beautiful eyes. Dark and brown with soft-looking eyelashes. She stopped searching for her herd to glance at me.
“You’re trapped, too, now,” I told her. “Don’t bother thinking of escape. He’ll only come after you.”
She dropped her head. Her eyes were on me, watching. It was like she understood. I nodded.
“You and me,” I whispered. “You and me, girl.”
In her moment of stillness, you stepped toward her. You reached up to grab at her face. You had some sort of halter in your hand. As soon as she saw you, she reared her head away, far out of your reach. She roared this time. The sound was monstrous and guttural. You put your hand on her neck, trying to pull her head down.
“Hey, girly,” you murmured. “Hey, pretty girl. Don’t do that.”
The camel hated it. She roared and gurgled and swung her head madly. You just kept pulling her toward you, your strength even winning against a camel. She looked briefly at me again, blinking her long, lovely eyelashes. Then she turned to you, and was sick on your head.
There’s nothing like camel vomit. That greenish-brown, lumpy goop that smells like dog shit and sewers and piss all mixed together. It’s undoubtedly the worst thing I’ve ever smelled in my life. Worse than Dad’s farts. Worse than baby poo. Worse than anything. And your head was covered in the stuff. As I watched, you spat some out of your mouth. You wiped it off your cheek with the back of your hand. You used your fingers to scoop it out from your eyes. Then you leaned over and threw up some of your own.
I wasn’t far behind you. As soon as I caught a whiff, I let go of my stomach. I’m hopeless like that, always sick when someone else is. I had to sit down in the sand and stick my head between my knees, it was that bad. And the sound of you being sick didn’t make it any better. I kept throwing up for ages, longer than you, even. The camel stopped moaning sometime in the middle of all this. She was probably pretty satisfied with herself, probably laughing at us. I wouldn’t blame her. Or maybe it was just the moment when she gave up hope, when she realized her herd was gone forever and there wasn’t any point in moaning anymore.
I rolled over and leaned against a tree. The smell of rotten puke was everywhere. The flies had already latched on to it; they were buzzing relentlessly, dropping down onto the sick and then trying to land on my face. The heat only made it worse, making my head spin. I looked at the sand stretching for miles, but it was hard to focus on it.
The journey back was the worst of my life. Worse even than the one where I was stuck in the trunk, which I can’t remember anyway. Even with all the windows down, the smell was still there, infecting every corner of the car with its foulness. When the sick dried on us, it smelled even worse. Something like foot odor meets sour milk. It didn’t help that the smell was mixing with the squashed-fruit smell from the picnic, which was now spread all over the backseat from your mad driving. We drove with our heads out the windows.
The camel trotted along behind us, obliging on her rope. It was as if she had got us back in some small way, and was happier. I threw up more than once, down the side of the car … thin white dribbles of bile.
The next day you were out with the camel, training her, in a pen you must have made the night before. You’d stuck more fence posts in the ground and wound rope around them, linking this all to the chicken-wire fence already around the Separates.
I came out to watch. You had her head in a halter attached to a rope, and she was following you. She was calmer now, almost resigned. She carried her head lower, and she’d given up on moaning. You were talking to her softly and gently, in words I couldn’t hear or understand. She seemed to like it.
“What do you want to call her?” you said when you noticed me.
“Stolen,” I said. It was the first thing I thought of.
“That’s not much of a name.”
“But she is, though, isn’t she? Stolen from her herd.” I felt bad that I’d helped.
“She’ll learn to love us,” you said quietly. “Did you feel the same about your cat when you chose him from the animal shelter?”
“That’s different.”
You walked over to where I was standing and pulled on the camel’s rope. She lowered her head so that I could pet her. You placed
your hand against her stomach, thinking. “We should call her Wobbleguts,” you said.
“That’s a crap name.”
“It’s accurate. Took me forever to clean the side of my car.” Your eyes were soft as they stayed on mine for longer than they needed to. You moved the rope toward my hand. “Here. Do you want a go at leading her?”
I stepped carefully into the pen, taking the rope without needing to touch you. I patted her front shoulder, trying to reassure her. I thought calm words, tried to let her know I wasn’t going to hurt her. She towered over me, all legs and muscle. There was still a faint smell of sick about her, mixed with something else … something dirt and desertlike. She smelled like sand.
“Just walk straight, she’ll follow.”
I took a few steps and the camel came with me. She lowered her head and sniffed gently at my shoulder. I could feel her lips touching the collar of my T-shirt, her warm breath on the back of my neck. Her feet were clomping heavily next to mine.
“You are a lovely girl,” I whispered to her. The bottom of her jaw worked around in a circle, chewing on something. I was surprised at her gentleness, her willingness to give in. It didn’t seem like she was wild only the day before.
“We need to teach her to whoosh down next.”
“To what?”
“Sit. Here, go through the fence again.”
You took her rope from me and pushed me toward the fence. I ducked through it and you shoved her rope back into my hand.
“Just hold it there, firmly. If you’re on the other side of this fence, she shouldn’t be able to kick you.”