Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

Afterwards he would be pained and shy with her, struggling to meet her eye. He would make promises. Tell her how he’d given it up years before she came to him, and that he would again.

She started going with him when he got paid for a patch. Men he knew in the towns saw them coming and laughed at him. Couldn’t give your missus the slip, Val?

When it was just the two of them and he brought bottles back to camp, she took her bedding out into the scrub. He would shout for her but she kept her distance until he was past noticing, and then came in closer to make sure he was okay. One night she watched while he burned the fingers of his left hand slowly, methodically, with his lighter. His drinking hand. It didn’t help – it just meant she had to take on his patching jobs for two weeks. That was when she started carrying his toolkit, in case he lost it when he fell down somewhere. His hand healed, but bit by bit he got too shaky for fine work. Within a year she was the patcher and he was the one who trailed her round the circuit, fronting up for the jobs to make it look more legitimate. Customers stopped caring pretty fast though. Like Val said, she had the knack for it.

He was going to leave her, she saw it in his eyes. The guilt he couldn’t carry. He would leave her somewhere and go north and she would be alone, circling in the dark. She watched him every minute, would have left any place to go with him, but she couldn’t make him stay.

For a while he fell back on shearing, or cooking for shearers, or fencing. He’d always been able to turn his hand to anything, but in the end all he could do was shake and drink.

She was fifteen when he died in the free hospital. After that she just kept going, town to town, the way they always had. Nerredin was just another stop on the circuit for almost ten years, and then one day it was something else.

Sometime in the dark, she was shaken awake. Li, time to go.

It was Stokes talking. She sat up and her brain contracted.

Come on, get your shit together. You got five minutes.

A thumping behind her eyes. Big, slow tongue. She heard movement around her, the ute doors slamming. We breaking camp?

Stokes flicked torchlight into her face, making her wince. This is what we came for. There’s a convoy coming through, big one. They’ll refuel at the roadhouse.

And?

And, so we’re gunna resupply too.

Her stomach clenched. I don’t want to do that.

Sure. But you don’t really have a choice, do you? We don’t carry passengers.

Li made it clear of the bedding before she threw up.

Jesus, what are you – cut? I need you to be up for this. That was the deal.

She’ll be all right. Jasmine’s voice behind him. She can match with me. You’re okay, right, Li?

Li got up slowly, turned to face them both. Jasmine didn’t seem to be suffering. She seemed sharp, focused, almost pumped. She held out Li’s waterbag and Li drank carefully.

I’m okay, she said. I’ll be ready in five.

How was it possible that she could smell the water runners before she heard them? First the top notes of fuel and rubber, and then something deeper, a heavy and expansive smell that made her throat ache. Then the dust and the roaring, like a howler with lights.

From the scrub Li counted the Quench tankers pulling up in front of the roadhouse. The others crouched around her, watching, as the tankers filled the truckstop and overflowed into the rest area, out of the light.

Twenty-seven, Jasmine said quietly, at her elbow. It checks out.

When did my info not check out? Dev asked. Name a time.

He and Eileen were on her right, with water containers, Lucas and Stokes behind them with the wheel brace. No torches. Shaun and Mira had the ute ready two hundred metres back, on ground that was too soft to hold a heavier vehicle.

The drivers were climbing down stiffly, leaving the headlights on while they started fuelling up, or heading inside to wait their turn. The security guards took up positions, guns at the ready, but there weren’t enough of them and they were getting distracted by the smells of fried food and koffee from the roadhouse. No way a convoy this size could cover all the angles. It occurred to Li that maybe the crew she was with could highjack a tanker after all. One tanker. If there were more of them and they all had guns, if they shot out most of the headlights, and if there wasn’t a CB radio in every cab to call for Company backup. No. Hijacking convoys was just another bullshit story people told each other in a place like makecamp, so they could feel like someone, somewhere was winning. Stokes had a different name for what his crew did. He said they were mosquitoes. They didn’t take Company on, they just fed off it.

On the way there, the mood in the tray had been keyed up but not tense. Stokes said they were just going for water and spare tyres this time; Quench ran its fleet on biofuel and they needed diesel. Fifteen, twenty minutes’ quiet work. The convoy would go on, barely lighter and none the wiser, and she would be in the back of the ute again, closing the gap. All she had to do was make her contribution. So now she watched the scene outside the roadhouse, looking for the spots with the least light and the biggest gaps between security. She felt dried out and queasy. Felt like shit. There was a delay on every thought and the smell from the roadhouse kitchen wasn’t helping.

Jasmine put her mouth against