I kick up little stones, the dirt around them creates small plumes of powder, little mushroom clouds. Every step a tiny nuclear test.
Rusted barbed wire is draped through termite ridden fence posts. Posts as regular as metaphors in short stories. Is the fence supposed to keep me out or something else in?
The landscape is desolate, no evidence of rain, for years, decades.
The road appears endless, straight, not a single kink all the way to the horizon, and possibly (or is that probably?) beyond.
It is a gravel road, marked on my map by a broken line - - - -
. . . crunch . . . crunch . . . crunch . . . I must have been walking for days. Dragging my feet . . . crunch . . . crunch . . . crunch . . . every step, a new explosion, increasingly causing pain.
There’s a heat shimmer on the horizon, normally more pronounced when there is a bitumen road, those soil fields blurring in the distance. My vision is confused, is that a horizontal fence line or just the place where the curve of the earth drops out of sight?
Suddenly, a large plume of dust, could it be a vehicle? Out here? Crunch . . crunch . . crunch . . I speed up my walking (only two dots between the crunches! How else do I signify a quickening on the page?) The cloud of dirt particles is settling, it IS a car, no actually it is a utility van (but who calls them that? They’re “utes”), a tray on the back of a cab.
I draw closer. Hear the vehicle’s car stereo, is that Velvet Underground’s ‘Venus In Furs’? Surely not . . .
Downy sins of streetlight fancies
Chase the costumes she shall wear
Ermine furs adorn the imperious
Severin, Severin awaits you there
Crunch, crunch, crunch, I’m very close, the door is open, however there is no driver, just an empty driver’s seat. There’s nothing in the back, nothing in the front.
Suddenly from the depression on the side of the road a large black plastic rubbish bag, packed to capacity, is thrown onto the back tray, it lands soundlessly, not even the plastic crinkling as it hits the steel…
Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather
Shiny leather in the dark
Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart
Another garbage bag flies through the dry humidity less air, and another, and yet another. There is a sudden frenzy of stuffed bags being thrown into the tray of this van. A roadside clean up job in full flight. I’ve walked for days and not seen a single scrap of garbage, and now there’s bags, packed to capacity being tossed into the back of an empty vehicle.
I walk slowly around to the passenger side of the vehicle, cruchcrunchcruch, and peer down into the roadside depression.
A shirtless man, in worn tattered blue overalls, is crawling in amongst the dehydrated weeds. His muscular arms, covered in bright tattoos, are grabbing at the air and throwing what appears to be imaginary trash into an open garbage bag. From my line of sight, it appears as though he’s putting nothing into the bag, but it is filling, growing bigger, until the sides are straining.
The worker pulls the drawstring, trapping whatever it is that has been discarded tight inside. He throws it onto the back of the ute, and frantically starts the process again with a fresh rubbish bag, torn from a large roll.
Severin, Severin, speak so slightly
Severin, down on your bended knee
Taste the whip, in love not given lightly
Taste the whip, now plead for me
Lou Reed’s voice, the only sound. The garbage collector somehow remaining silent throughout his frantic toil.
Bag after bag is filled, tightened and thrown onto the tray. Time seems to have warped; I’ve witnessed at least one hundred of these bags being thrown, but the same song on the car stereo is still playing.
I slowly creep up to the side of the ute, and look at the tray, it should be filled, overcapacity in fact, but it’s empty.
- Excuse me
- How can I help you?
- What are you doing?
- Collecting
- Collecting what?
- Trash
- Trash?
- Your discarded dreams
- My dreams?
- Yes, the ones you’ve left behind
- The dreams I’ve left behind?
- Yes, the ones you no longer want
I am speechless. Dreams I no longer want?
The worker stands, stretches thoughtfully, mindfully, slowly and purposely, as though the activity of collecting my dreams has stiffened his joints. He slaps his hands together to clear the dust, slaps his overalls, like some deranged German Schuhplattler performer.
He walks to the driver side of the vehicle, crunch, crunch, crunch, taps his steel capped boots on the tyres to release the dirt or to check the pressure, I’m not sure. And slowly, deliberately he climbs into the cab. Closes the door and winds down the driver’s side window.
- I’ll be seeing you
- Wait . . . wait
- What?
- Where are my dreams? Your tray is empty
- Empty?
- Yes, I saw you load bag after bag of my dreams onto the back of your ute, but there’s nothing there
- Nothing there?
- Yes, your tray is empty
- Nobody’s dreams are empty
And off he goes, the tyres spinning in the dirt and gravel, throwing small stones backwards, and plumes of dust upwards.
I am tired, I am weary I
could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears
Tony Messenger is an Australian writer, critic and interviewer who has had works published in many places, including Overland Literary Journal, Southerly, Mascara Literary Review, Sublunary Editions in the USA and Burning House Press in the UK. He blogs about translated fiction and interviews Australian poets at Messenger’s Booker.