Hazard

Matty was drunk, so Ange left before things got toasty. Everyone knew a good paddock party required fire, but a backyard brazier was never going to be enough for Matty. He’d gotten himself enough wood and hay for a bonfire, and the Ketters Crossing youth had shown up like moths to a flame. Build it and they will come indeed.

It was nearing the end of spring, and Ange had asked him about the day’s fire danger rating.

“Go hard or go home!” he’d yelled, spilling beer as he punched the air with his tinnie.

So, she was going home.

Besides, tomorrow she had an opening shift at the bakery, and she really needed to keep her job until the end of summer and the beginning of uni, when she would finally escape this place. Tucked into the top drawer of her well-used desk was an early acceptance letter. Exams were over, and all she needed was the certificate that proved she’d done as well in them as she reckoned she had. It was a ticket out of there and into a world where people cared about more than the price of cows or cracking open another cold one.

---

She and Matty had been over for a while, and she wanted to pull him up on his irresponsible fire, but it was never a good idea to burn a bridge before you had a place to go on the other side.

Ange stomped up the slope. She’d had a few Vodka Cruisers, and the ground was uneven, but she could still manage the incline. The last bus to town would be along in twenty minutes, and the bus stop was uphill all the way from Matty’s place. The light from the bonfire was distant now, and the weak moon revealed only what was bitumen and what was not.

An unlit car zipped past and swerved at the last microsecond, tipping her back into a clump of pampas grass on the verge.

“HOLY CRAP.”

She picked herself up carefully. Someone had tried to kill the pampas by lopping it which had actually turned it into dangerous stubble. Cackles from the vehicle receded. Probably Matty’s neighbour Dan and his crew. They were a few years older, and trouble. A cautionary tale of what happened if you let Ketters Crossing dictate the rest of your life. Ange hoped they weren’t heading to the party to start something. She hated when Matty got drunk, though not enough to wish those gatecrashers upon him.

Her heart thumped wildly. She gazed out at the spot on the road where she had been, imagining blood-stained bitumen and a floral vigil, like so many of the roads around here. There was blood, but it coursed through her veins. She had survived.

The bus stop was just a sign nailed to the only streetlamp on the dark stretch of road. Ange wasn’t sure whether there was some smog from the bonfire or if she’d jolted her retinas in the fall, but there was a grey cast to the beam that made even the orange bus stop sign look pallid. She limped towards it with grim determination. In the pale pool of light, she inspected the damage. Below the hem of her shorts, her legs sported stripes of thin, shallow cuts from falling into the pampas stubble, and her Volleys were filthy, streaks of soot and crumbs of cowpat clinging to the canvas. They’d need a wash tonight so they would dry in time for work tomorrow. Her heart rate had slowed but there was still a comet of adrenaline whirling through her. She’d brushed up against death and could think of nothing to live for in Ketters Crossing.

“What dickheads,” came a voice.

Ange jolted, suddenly sober. She hadn’t seen anyone else at the stop or on the road to it. The owner of the voice stood slightly behind her, as if he’d just appeared. He was about her height but gangly in a way that suggested his trunk was yet to grow into his limbs. Grubby beige shorts finished halfway down his thigh and his grey singlet had certainly seen better days. A red checkered flannie hung loosely round his waist.

“Reckon!” Ange reflexively used her best ocker, which she trundled out for false confidence, and took half a step away.

The stranger seemed surprised by her reply. He rocked back on his heels. His scuffed pair of Blunnies told her he was probably from the paddocks rather than town, but Ketters Crossing wasn’t a big place, and Ange had never seen him before.

They stood in wary silence for a beat. Eventually the awkward moment turned towards companionable, though Ange still kept him at arm’s length.

“Where you headed?” he said eventually.

“What?” Ange frowned.

There was only one stop after this one: the pub in town. Everyone who lived in town lived near the pub. It was a good way to prevent drink-driving, but it meant boozy sessions that could stretch all night long.

“Are you going to Orange Hill or further?”

“Orange Hill,” she replied. Then, gently: “It’s the last stop. If you want to go to the city, you’ll have to catch the arvo run from there. The city buses don’t pick up here.”

“Oh. Right-o.” He sunk into the shadows but then stuck his hand into the cone of light. “Harry. My friends call me Hazard.”

Ange hesitated. She had to lean in a little to shake it. His hand wasn’t rough and dirty as she’d expected, but velvety soft. “Ange,” she said, then added, “My grandmother calls me Angelica.”

He chortled but seemed distracted by her touch.

“Where are you headed?” she asked, pulling away.

“I guess I could go to Orange Hill. Was hoping to get to the port by Sunday.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Ange supplied, unsure if telling him the truth would be helpful, “There’s one bus that goes at four in the arvo. It’s another six hours’ ride to Geraldton though.”

“Is it? Aw crap, I lost track of time,” Harry ran his fingers through his hair, which made a dusty halo above his head, “I could probably hitch.”

Ange shrugged. Not many vehicles travelling long distance took Ketters Road, but the number wasn’t zero, “What are you doing in Gero?”

“Meeting a friend,” said Harry, a little cagey. He looked at her and decided something, as if taking a risk, “Me boyfriend, actually. He’s a sailor. We’ve been writing to each other a while.”

Ange raised an eyebrow, “That’s very sweet. I’m guessing there aren’t many eligible guys in this small town.”

“Not many, no.”

“Where are you from, anyway?” There was an edge to her question that she didn’t intend.

“Huh?”

“I mean, I haven’t seen you around. I thought I knew everyone who lived here. It’s not a big place.”

“Oh, I uh, I used to live here a long time ago. I went to visit my brother Ben.” Harry pointed vaguely in the direction opposite to Matty’s place.

Ange knew of the farmstead around the side of the hill. Like most places around these parts, Ben had a few head of cattle but was better known for his expanding honey business. “Ben Allen … is your brother?”

Harry nodded.

She studied him. He didn’t elaborate, nor did he seem to think he had to explain the decades-long age gap between septuagenarian Ben Allen, who’d just welcomed his second great-grandchild, and himself, a man seemingly in his early twenties. A pang of fear darted through her.

Harry felt the shift and scrambled to regain congeniality. “Now, now don’t misunderstand,” he held his hands out splayed, as if to placate an animal.

Ange shrunk back, “Misunderstand?” Her heart rate shot up again and kickstarted the adrenaline, which had lain dormant.

“It’s been a while since anyone could hear me,” Harry blurted, “I just wanted to talk. I wanted to tell someone. I’ve been trekking between the house and the bus stop waiting to tell someone.”

Ange suddenly realised why the bend in the road was called Hazard’s Corner. Until a few years ago, when they lined the road with a couple of walls and those black and white striped panels, roos would sometimes get struck by utes taking the curve too fast. All these years she thought it was a speed warning.

The light thickened. Minutes before, she had imagined herself dead. The fact of her survival had somehow unveiled another dimension. She could see Harry, hear him. She had touched him.

“Could you tell him?” pleaded Harry.

“Ben? That you’re still … here?”

“No, Dennis.”

He told her the address he remembered, and she typed it in her phone. There was no signal this far out, but she could still save it to her address book.

“Tell him I was on my way. Tell him why I couldn’t come.”

“What year was your last letter?”

“1975.”

She winced, “I’ll do my best.”

He fished a tiny slip of paper out of a ragged wallet, “Take this,” he said, “I have to go now.”

Ange squinted in the poor light. It was a stamp for 18 cents. White wildflowers sprouted in clumps on a red background. When she looked up, Harry was already walking away from the bus stop towards the bend, a dusty rucksack on his shoulder. There was a light in the distance further up, a truck, perhaps.

From down the hill, a revving. Dan’s crew hollering. Ange stepped back from the road into the shadows, her heart thumping again. The car hurtled past without clocking her—

In the dim moonlight she saw Harry with his thumb out—or thumb up?—the oncoming truck screeching towards him…

—and slammed straight into the protective wall.

Harry and the truck disappeared, and in the hollow silence she realised she was staring at the wreckage of Dan’s car and a heap of mangled bodies.

“OH SHIT.”

She retched, but nothing came out. Through ragged breaths, she stared at the phone in her hand. No bars, but she dialled emergency anyhow and started loping back down the hill to Matty’s place where she might get one bar.

“Emergency services. Police, fire or ambulance?” the voice was faint but audible.

“Ambulance? Uh, probably all of them,” said Ange, quivering. “Western Australia … Ketters Crossing … Hazard’s Corner … H-A-Z-A-R-D …” Later, after the first responders had come to view the wreckage and retrieve the bodies, after the cleaning crew had come to mop up the fragments of vehicle and clean the road of blood and oil, Ange found herself once again standing at the bus stop as the fingers of dawn reached out of the night.

The rubberneckers from the party had left, partly out of boredom, partly because they were wasted. Matty had offered his couch; a stoic police officer had offered a ride to Orange Hill. Ange had chosen neither, instead she left a voicemail for her boss to excuse herself from her shift. There was a pent-up force inside her compelling her to stay.

And now she was alone again.

“Did I miss him?”

“HOLY CRAP.” Ange spun around, electrified.

The man sported a day’s stubble but otherwise had a neat appearance: a starched white short-sleeved, wide-collared shirt over a white singlet and navy flares. His brown shoes gleamed dully, as if they’d recently been polished but had the misfortune of touching the muck of Ketters Crossing.

She took a guess, “Dennis?”

“Dennis Townsend. I came as quick as I could.”

He stuck his hand out and she shook it, a firm handshake with a velvet touch. He felt more real than the events of the night.

“You just missed him,” Ange relayed.

She realised the stamp had transferred itself from her hand to his. She wasn’t even aware she had been holding it until that moment, “Now he’s gone.”

“To Gero?”

“To his maker,” Her eyes were too tired to prevent a thin trickle of tears spilling down her cheeks, belated tears for a man she’d never known and was already long dead, “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh.” Dennis looked pensive, “I was thinking of him, when I met mine.”

“He was defo thinking of you,” Ange offered. She looked towards Hazard’s Corner but when she looked back, Dennis had gone.

---

Her visits to Ketters Crossing were infrequent in the following years, but each time she came, she went to the bus stop at Hazard’s Corner, just in case. Someone had tied a trio of fuzzy dice to the bus stop sign in memory of Dan, Mark and Finn. Over the years the weather wore them bald until they were shapeless clumps.

Sometimes, if she was there in the evening, she’d see the lights of the phantom truck and hear a revving starting at the bottom of the hill that met and ended in dark silence, and she would feel her heart skip with the memory of the crash, the thrill of her own survival. But those blokes, like her, had escaped Ketters Crossing the only way they knew how, and she never saw them again.

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