Absolution by Patrick Flanery

his sticky breath. You knew that it would have been easiest just to leave them, butyou pretended to phone me, you mimed a conversation, laughing in a way that you have never laughed with me. I told you that I couldn’t wait to see you, in a way that I had never told you. You had a story ready, you were going to tell them that plans had changed, that I was about to leave for our beach house – a house that does not exist – and that I was getting a little forgetful these days, had been confused about plans. But when you returned to the truck Sam was awake and staring at you, his body crossed into a tight knot against the vinyl upholstery. He asked if you were coming with them and before you could remember your invented story you said yes, because he looked afraid.
    You bought a newspaper, peaches, another packet of Safari Dates, and bottles of water, which you put into your red rucksack on top of your clothes, folded neatly over your notebooks, hidden at the bottom.
    The interior of the cab was ripe with human sweat and dog breath, vinyl and petrol, the rotten egg of the child’s skin. As Bernard drove, Sam sat looking blankly ahead at the road. Every few minutes the child turned his head to stare at you. His mouth pouted, grime at the corners, sometimes opening to show his small teeth. There were globs of sediment in his tear ducts. No one had taught him to care for himself, even to scratch the sleep from his eyes. You smiled at him as if to say, ‘Yes? Ask me anything you like, tell me something, what is wrong, why are you afraid?’, but Sam only stared at you, his mouth hard and impassive, eyes yawning vacant in his skull. It was not a normal child’s expression.
    Near dawn, Sam’s nose began to bleed and you helped him with a tissue, pressing until the blood stopped. You wiped his face, and he turned away from you to bury it in the seat. You were accustomed to the smell of blood, but it was overpowering in the heat of the enclosed cab, the hot-iron stench. You opened your window, but Bernard told you to close it. ‘Gravel sometimes flies in. Rather I’ll put on the fan. We’ll stop soon. Always gettingbloody noses. You’d think he was a girl. What a girl, Sam, what a little girl you are, hey?’
    After another hour of driving Bernard stopped at a picnic ground. He parked the truck in the shade of a grove of eucalyptus trees clustered next to the road, their sharp-edged leaves rattling. It could have been anywhere along any road in the Cape. There was nothing to mark it as unique – the same stand of trees, the same concrete bench and picnic tables, at this one, perhaps, also a standpipe for water. There were no toilets, not even a barbecue pit or emergency phone.
    ‘I’m going to sleep,’ Bernard said. ‘You can stay and wait, or you can leave. Suit yourself. Don’t mind your company, but don’t want to keep you if your mother’s expecting you.’
    ‘What about the boy?’
    ‘Sam’s fine.’
    You walked around the picnic ground, looking for somewhere to sit out the day, while Bernard stretched along the length of the seat. Tiger was between his legs, the dog’s tail slapping the man’s gut. Sam slipped out of the cab after you and sat at the base of a tree, fiddling the earth with a stick, boring into the dust between his feet, red canvas shoes, withdrawing the stick, boring again, deeper, withdrawing, a chimpanzee using a stick to harvest ants from a hole. His dark hair was red with a layer of dust and his skin was peeling from sunburn.
    You knew it would have been wiser to keep moving, but the child kept staring at you, opening his mouth as if to speak, then turning again to the stick and the earth, grinding and digging into the soil, up and down, one hole after another.
    Cars were passing. If you wanted to play your part properly you would have continued your journey. Instead, you ate a peach and read the newspaper, which told you nothing you did not already know, nothing the authorities did not