Behind him, Matt saw lights appear in his rearvision mirror. He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, checked all the gauges and determined where he was on the road – a hangover from his truck-driving days. ‘Always know exactly what your rig is doing and where you are,’ he could hear his father repeating again and again.
The lights moved quickly towards him and he cursed the driver who didn’t seem to feel the need to dip them from high beam. Matt reached forward, his eyes not moving from the long straight stretch of road. He flicked up the mirror, so the lights weren’t in his eyes, then waited for the vehicle to pass him.
It didn’t.
Matt frowned and slowed slightly to give the other car every opportunity to pass, but it sat behind him.
It moved closer to the rear of his ute and as Matt glanced in the rear-view mirror, he wondered how on earth it wasn’t touching him. He pushed up the speed.
So did the vehicle.
He slowed down.
So did the car behind.
It tailed him the whole way to Spalding, mimicking his moves and pace until Matt began to feel unsettled. Whoever it was was acting very strangely.
As Matt flicked on his blinker to turn into his street, the car followed. Anxiety turned to fear.
Was this car tailing him?
Instead of pulling into his driveway, he kept driving, turning aimlessly down deserted streets. First left, then right, right, left. Finally he wound his way through the back streets of the town towards Adelaide and still the vehicle was on his bumper, its lights glaring through the back window and into the front of the car. Occasionally, the other driver even flicked on the spotlights to try to blind Matt. He realised from the position of the lights that they were very low to the ground. He wracked his brains to think of a car that had those sort of lights and all he could come up with was a really flash, new, low-to-the-ground car. Maybe a sports car.
Matt shook his head, wondering what on earth was going on. He tried to see the vehicle, but the darkness and bright lights prevented him. All he knew was the car was only centimetres from his tail and had mirrored every one of his moves for more than twenty minutes.
Then he felt it, a slight tap and his head jerked back, hitting the headrest.
Bastard! They’d hit the back of the ute.
Matt could hear the rumbling of a V8 engine now and knew the vehicle behind him was very powerful.
Bump! And again.
What the hell? With his hands sweaty and heart pounding, Matt once more indicated that he was turning left down a dirt road and slowed, his foot on the brake. The car behind him slowed too, waited until he had turned off the bitumen and then shot on towards the city.
Pulling the ute onto the side of the road, Matt ran from the cab so quickly that his feet slipped on the gravel as he tried to reach the bitumen. He peered into the darkness and watched the red taillights disappearing further into the blackness. They taunted him. There was no way he could tell what sort of vehicle it was, what colour, or even read the number plate.
‘Why?’ he wondered. ‘Why do something like that?’ Whoever it was and whatever the reason, it had certainly scared the living daylights out of him and left him wondering what he really had heard up in the isolated hills. There was no doubting the car had come from the direction of the noise.
Chapter 8
Two weeks later
‘I’ve been thinking, Matt. We really need to find some work,’ Anna said one morning after breakfast. She watched his face carefully for a reaction. As she’d expected, the shutters came down but she persevered, determined to get through to him. ‘And I know you’d prefer I stayed at home, but I’d like to help out, somehow. Would you mind if I tried to get some work? Kate and I have come up with an idea about a childminding business. It’s something I could do from here.’
Matt put his plate on the sink and turned away from her. ‘Do whatever you want to do,’ he said. ‘Sounds like it’s been decided.’
There was a silence and then Anna angrily said, ‘Far out, Matt! That’s unfair. I’m trying to talk to you about it now!’ She slammed her coffee cup onto the bench and took a deep breath. ‘I’ve just about had enough of you and your silence or snide comments. All I do is tiptoe around you, scared to say anything in case you bite my head off. I can’t talk to you. Don’t you care about anything anymore? This is ridiculous! When are you going to get over it?’
Matt looked startled by her outburst, then his surprise turned to anger.
‘Get over it?’ he yelled, his fists clenched by his side. ‘I’ve just lost my farm, everything I’ve worked for and you’re telling me to move on? And what about you? All you do is rub my face in it. “How’re you feeling? Do you want to talk? Do you still love me?” What sort of stupid bloody questions are they?’
‘We’ve been here for eight months, Matt,’ Anna reminded him. ‘For eight whole months I couldn’t get you out of the house but now you’ve decided to walk across the road to the pub and drink coffee or run away to some remote spot. All you do is mope around and feel sorry for yourself. I’d love to be able to drop all responsibility and sit in the pub doing nothing for hours on end. You’re not the only one who’s been affected here. You need something else in your life. I’m obviously not enough for you and neither is Ella. When was the last time you picked her up and gave her a cuddle?’ Anna sighed. ‘Matt, you’re alive, and you’ve still got a family who loves you. Was the farm worth more to you than us?’
Matt said nothing, and a flicker of hope flared in Anna’s chest.
But his voice was shaking with fury when he finally said, ‘Don’t you want to know who did this to us? Who actually sent us to the wall? This is someone’s fault. We were targeted. Someone stole that fertiliser and that’s the whole reason we lost the farm. I want to know who did it, even if you don’t.’
Anna was shocked by the vehemence in his voice but she forced herself to press on. ‘We have to put it behind us, Matt – look to the future. We need to work. We need money. We’ve got a child who depends on us. Knowing who did it isn’t going to change the situation we’re in right now.’
‘Don’t you miss working for ourselves, the farm, the smell of the dew in the morning? How can you enjoy living here? Don’t you want to get out? Go back to life as it was before?’
‘Matt, honey, we can’t go back to how it was.’ Anna could hear her own despair etched in her voice. ‘No, I don’t like the way things are now, but the farm is finished.We have to accept that. It wasn’t just the fertiliser.The bad seasons were the start of it. Then the truck fire. Bloody hell, the only reason that was such a disaster was because we couldn’t afford the insurance. You may not want to hear this, but it’s the truth: we were struggling even before the fertiliser was taken. I know you thought we might get out of jail if we had a good crop, but it was a big if. We would have faced the same problems when we fronted up again next year.’
Matt let out a strangled cry and spun around blindly, as if trying to escape the barrage of words. Lashing out, his fist collided with the flimsy cladding that coated the kitchen wall, leaving a gaping dark hole that exposed the stone work underneath. Then, without a word, he stormed out, nursing his sore hand.
Matt didn’t have to order when he went to the pub. The bartender, Joe, knew what he wanted by now and brought the strong black coffee to Matt without being asked. Today, when Joe put the coffee down, Matt didn’t even lift his head to thank him.
Matt had always thought Anna had believed in him; that she loved the farm as much as he did. But now . . . He banged his fist on the table and felt it rock. The movement was enough to jolt him out of the mist of anger he felt. When he looked around he caught one of the regulars staring at him. He flushed, embarrassed to have let his emotions show to anyone outside the walls of his home.
He’d started coming to the pub a few months before, needing to get out of the house. He’d sat at the back of the room, facing the wall, and invited neither conversation nor inte
raction. The few locals who had approached him had received nothing but a nod in response to their questions.They had soon left him alone.
Occasionally his father would come to sit with him, but Matt refused to acknowledge even Ian’s undemanding presence. Ian would sip his coffee until his cup was empty, then rest his hand on Matt’s shoulder and leave.
Over the following weeks, Matt had gradually shifted his position so that he was no longer facing the wall but the door instead. Though his sense of failure still felt too raw to talk to anyone, he found himself wanting to see life going on around him, even if he wasn’t participating in it. It was at the pub and through his father that he met a truck driver called Shane Lyons.
One day Shane had pulled in at the rear of the pub in a green truck hauling a white tautliner with a week’s supply of beer. A honk of the air horn had attracted Ian’s attention, so when Shane entered the dining room carrying the counter meal Joe had given him, Ian was already waiting with his hand outstretched.
‘Shane! Shane bloody Lyons! How are you, old mate?’The pair had shaken hands and chatted while Matt, only half listening, stared at the tabletop.Then he heard them mention the names of a couple he knew, Joel Cornell and Janey Sharp. He had raised his head to listen and, when his father glanced at him, he nodded ever so slightly.
‘Shane, this is my son, Matt. Shane and I met when he was still driving stock trucks for my competition. He’s hauling general freight now.’
Matt had enjoyed talking to someone who didn’t know him or his history, and he and Shane quickly found common ground in trucks and drivers they knew. It had been good to catch up on the news of Joel and Janey, too. He and Anna had received an invitation to their engagement party during the nightmarish final days on the farm, but they’d been too busy and stressed to attend.
Perhaps the biggest relief for Matt, though, had come when he’d blurted out the story of the truck accident. He’d never really talked to anyone about that night, but Shane had nodded his understanding and related a similar experience of his own; the back trailer of a truck he’d been driving had tipped as he drove through a winding valley. He hadn’t been hurt, but most of the stock he’d been carting had been killed. He didn’t drive road trains, B-doubles or long distances anymore. He wasn’t saying he never would, but he wanted to wait until he felt ready. He’d forced himself back in the cab, though, carting general freight on short runs. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘I have to keep some money coming in. I’ve got four young sons and a wife – they depend on me.’
They depend on me. Shane’s words echoed in Matt’s head as he left the pub and crossed the street to climb into his ute.
Anna’s anger today had floored Matt. She so rarely lost her temper that it had shocked him to see her red-faced and seething. And reluctant though he was to admit it, he knew he deserved it.
They depend on me.
He’d ignored Anna when she’d waved the bank statement in front of him. He’d pretended not to hear when she told him there wasn’t even enough money to buy Ella a dummy. He’d turned his back on her when she’d tried to hug him or offered support.
They depend on me.
Matt pushed his empty cup of coffee away and got up from the table. He had to get out. Get away. Try to get his thoughts in order. He certainly had never meant to hurt Anna, and by her backlash today, he knew his actions had wounded her.
He walked across the road, but as he was not quite ready to face his wife yet, he jumped into his ute and headed out of town.
Matt drove towards their old farm and when he saw the driveway he slowed to a stop and looked across the land.
Their old home.
He ignored the heat of the sun and the flies trying to cluster around his eyes, nose and mouth as he stared across the country, his arms crossed.
As much as it hurt him, he could see some positive changes had been made to the farm – some changes he had wanted to make himself but had never had the money for, like the new boundary fence he now walked across to and leaned on. If he was being sour, he would say the farm looked like a tax deduction, but he’d run out of energy to even be upset today.
The sheep in the paddock next to him were due for shearing and he could see even from a distance that their fleeces would yield well.
There were two sealed silos towering above the shearing shed and what looked like a new header in the shed.
He was aware the new owner had money and, despite disliking him, he could put the bitterness he felt aside, knowing his farm was well cared for.
For the first time, as he looked at his lost dream, he realised there was nothing more he could do. It was finished.
He stood there until the sun began to sink, gazing longingly at what was once his. Then, as the flies disappeared and the stock made their way to the troughs for their nightly drink, he got up and strode towards his ute with a new sense of purpose. He hated what had happened to his family, but he knew what he was going to do now.
‘They depend on me,’ he whispered.
Chapter 9
Two months later
Matt swung the large rig into the depot on the edge of Adelaide and pulled up on the gravel pad. After letting the truck idle down he gathered the few belongings he had taken with him on the round trip to Ceduna.
His CDs were his closest friends at the moment. When he was driving he turned the music up loud and sang along, and sometimes he could almost forget about the permanent ache in his chest.
Before his accident, driving had been just a means to make some extra money. Now he did it for the money but also because he could lose himself in the driving. He didn’t have to think; all he was aware of was the pull of the truck and the white lines of the road ahead. With drums and guitar riffs reverberating around the cab, he felt like he could cope with what the world had thrown at him. But only when the music pounded.
The truck shuddered and Matt’s ears began to ring as he adjusted to the silence.
‘G’day, mate. Good trip?’ Shane thumped on the door and kept walking.
Matt gave him the thumbs-up, then yanked open the door and jumped down from the cab. He walked over to the throng of other drivers who’d also just returned from long trips.
It had been Shane who had suggested Matt apply for the driver’s position that had become available at Jimmy Marshall’s ‘East-West Haulage’. Matt had been excited at the thought, but he knew Anna had been apprehensive about all the extra driving that it would involve.
The depot was situated on the outskirts of Adelaide and Spalding was two hours’ drive away, through a mixture of wide open plains and paddocks seeded with a variety of crops and dotted with stock. Closer to Clare the country changed to high hills and deep valleys all covered with tall gum trees that gave the land a time-worn feel.There were winding roads and tight corners, all of which worried Anna.
‘It will be another two hours’ driving on top of what you’ve just done. Won’t you be too tired after days on end at the wheel?’ she’d asked. ‘What if you have an accident on the way home?’
‘That won’t happen. If I’m too tired, I’ll bunk down on the side of the road or stay in the truck. It’ll be fine.’
‘Why can’t you drive for your dad again, Matt?’ Anna had tried to change his mind once more.
‘I can’t, Anna.’ He looked despairingly at her. ‘I just can’t face people who know me at the moment.’ He hadn’t added that he hoped the drive home would give him opportunities to track down who had stolen their fertiliser.
Recently stories had begun to filter through. Small things had gone missing; a bloke had had a pencil auger taken and two weeks later a lamb weighing crate had been snatched from the back of a ute while parked in the pub car park. Maybe he hadn’t been targeted. Maybe he was just the first one. Matt had thought if he heard about another theft he could check out the location. It would give him more time on the road at odd hours and maybe, just maybe, something would fall his way and he might be able to track down the culpr
it.
And it had worked.
Not a week after he had started, he’d heard of a farmer to the east of Spalding who had had three of his electric fence units taken. Matt had decided to see if he could find the farm. Following the road map, and after twisting and turning down many dirt roads, he found an out-of-the-way farmhouse nestled in between two hills.
Matt shut off the engine and got out.
Silence.
He leaned against his ute, his arms crossed, and breathed the night air. Still not a sound. He glanced around, and although it was dark, he could make out the shadow of a fence and hear the rhythmic clicking of the electric fence. Click . . . click . . . click.
The lone light from the farmhouse was a speck in the distance and, as he watched, it went out. Whoever had taken the units would need nothing but a torch.
As he thought hard, Matt realised that if anyone saw him here, he would have a lot of explaining to do.
His eyes flicked over to the green glowing numbers of the clock on the dashboard and he took notice of the time. He pushed himself off the car, ran across to the fence, quickly disconnected the unit and brought it back to the car. He checked the time again. Two minutes.
How easy it would be if you knew what you were after and how to find it.
He had replaced the fence unit and continued on his way back to Spalding, excitement building. He was sure he could find out who the culprit was and his truck-driving job was the key.
Matt really enjoyed the camaraderie of this tight-knit group where nobody really cared what his history was. Shane, Joel and Janey knew why he was back driving again, but to the others he was just Matt, who drove trucks and had a wife and child at home.
Purple Roads Page 5
