Free The Rest is Weight (UQP Short Fiction) by Jennifer Mills Page B

whine and rattle of the engine.
    As I came to a rare corner, the moon appeared to grow brighter and dim again, a trick of the changing light. Alice Springs appeared as an orange glow between the sudden hills. Canberra glows like that when you drive towards it in the night, and it means you’re under half an hour away. This town is so small, I knew we must be close.
    ‘Is it eighty here?’ the Minister said. I looked down. I was driving too slowly, holding the wheel too tight.
    ‘I was looking at the ranges,’ I said. But they looked dull and featureless to me, just dark lumps like the piles left by an earthmover on a kerb. I wondered what would possess someone to want to live out here. I watched the speedo rise.
    The night was broken by a flash of movement, black and white and red like a bad joke. I felt something big hit the bull bar and I pressed the brakes so hard the Minister had to grab the bar above the glove box with both hands. It happened in less than a second. I did not have time to think about my driving, only to brace my body against the spin. But we didn’t flip over. Either luck, or engineering. It was only after we squealed to a stop that I realised I’d remembered not to swerve. We sat in the awful silence for ten, twenty seconds, the time clicked out by the hazard lights.
    ‘Shit,’ I said. My shaking hands were glued to the wheel.
    ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a roo. I’ll make sure it’s dead,’ he said, suddenly brightening. He wiped his hands on his knees. I imagined this was what he meant by getting to know the country: taking a story home to impress the gang with his outback know-how. It was all depressingly schoolboy, and he forgot the tyre iron. I unfastened my seatbelt and climbed out of the car.
    ‘Nothing,’ said the Minister, adjusting his tie. He bent to look under the car. ‘Nup.’
    I walked back along the highway, checking both sides of the road. The moonlight was bright enough to see by. I saw a lump on the verge a way behind us, a big roo, but as I got closer I could tell by the smell that it had been dead for a while.
    I gave up and turned towards the car. Then I saw the man I must have hit rise in the headlights. He was standing in the middle of the road, beyond the Minister. He was clasping something to his chest. His hand half covered a red patch on his shirt. He looked solid enough. He looked alive. I slowly raised my hand to him in a greeting that I realised might look like surrender.
    The Minister was leaning on the car, bored now that he had nothing to club. He was staring at his shoes, probably thinking about getting them cleaned. I was glad he was distracted. I thought I might have time to assess the situation, deal with the injury, cover my tracks.
    The man raised a hand to me from beyond the car. It was clenched. He held something in the fist. The red shape was revealed on his chest. My heart raced. I must have hit him hard. I thought of first aid, of broken ribs, and whether or not you were supposed to bandage them. I thought of damage control, media contacts, the name of the journo from the local paper. How much cash I had in my purse. I am a good problem solver. I breathed. I walked slowly, without taking my eyes off him, until I could focus.
    It wasn’t blood. It was a shiny pattern on the shirt. I recognised the logo of a Melbourne football team. It was just some man out on the road for his own reasons. Maybe I didn’t hit him. Maybe he was looking for something he dropped. There was a reason. There was a reason he was gone by the time I reached the car. He went somewhere.
    ‘Mustn’t have hit it hard enough,’ the Minister said when I get back into the driver’s seat. ‘Bounded off into the bush I’ll bet.’
    I started the engine. ‘He went somewhere.’ The blood pounded in my ears. The problem seemed to have solved itself. I drove carefully back to town, both hands on the wheel.
    In my room at the hotel I opened my laptop and my folder of papers.