An Undertaker’s Odyssey

The canopy of Felix Locke’s two-seat buckboard is

sinking in the dirt two miles back; ants,
the colour of old blood, tearing the canvas to shreds,
dragging it below the earth’s crust,
lining their seething nest with sun-bleached, fraying cloth.
On the resin-sticky box seat, radiant heat crisps dirt-coated hair,
sweat dissolves and fades in the heat while
flakes of salt catch under short, work-stained fingernails.
In the desert silence, sunburnt air rasps through four sets of lungs;
the short, sharp breaths of two men,
the camel’s guttural moans and resentful bellows,
the diseased snuffle of a mangy pony,
suffering.

Mahomet Mahomet’s whistle is a shrill foreign sound

which brings his camel to a lurching, jingling stop;
beside the Afghan, a shiver of wild energy
surges down Felix’s stiff spine
until the undertaker has to wrench hard on the
chafed leather reins in his moist hands
to halt his cloudy-eyed nag-
Cracked hooves tear the earth’s scalding hot
skin, the pony’s once magestic head drooping,
sun-damaged skin peels from its muzzle hovering
in the humid air; the patchwork of bruises
on the skin beneath bloom with violent hues
of green, yellow and purple like the storm clouds
crackling overhead (The body? No more the man,
that mad, lost miner. He is
Dead
Have you found the body? without doubt)

Felix’s voice is a bare whisper in his parched throat,

resonating in the final traces of moisture, sticking in
the grit gumming lips and teeth together, but
Mahomet hears it on the hot wind, amplified
by the cloying air, the syrupy humidity.

No.

Suddenly, the camel buckles at the knees, folding

to the ground in an inverted fountain of crushed (Rust is the colour of blood-soaked
rust- sand)
The Afghan cameleer slides into the veil of dust, ripples
of hot air escaping from billowing shirt and breeches,
body slicing a swathe through the haze.
A spiral of vibrant impressions spring to life in
Felix’s mind:
The moon sliced in two
by a mountain range, water seething around a
a bridge of moist earth risen from the sea bed-
rivers running red with blood, the land beneath his
cart writhing with flies, lice, locusts, the emaciated pony
shrivelling and dying in its harness, boils bursting across
his flesh as the angry clouds in the sky darkened-
Twin plagues of typhoid and death.

Thunder splits the air, snapping Felix upright, heart

hammering. A blinding sheet of lightning flashes
across the northern horizon, spooking his pony.
Rolling its bloodshot and bulging eyes,
the animal turned nightmare creature
swings its wild, unfocused gaze to Felix,
a flood of fire surges through his veins; a frantic,
instinctive wave, urging him to run-
waves crashing against his flesh,
bearing down with the suffocating weight
of miles of ocean water;
crushing his chest-

Abruptly, Mahomet Mahomet appears beside him once more,

emerging from a shroud of heat haze and desert sand;
the crystals of water and dust suspended in the air cast a
shadow at his side while the mirage of a shimmering ocean
flows behind him. The wind changes,
a scorching easterly screams across the land,
drowning out the thunder like a giant’s breath,
violently lashing grit across Felix’s face.
Welts swell on his cheeks, weeping fine rivulets of blood
that crisscross weather-worn skin.

The landscape clears as the dry gusts stream across the barren desert,
catching up the lingering dust in a whirlwind of dancing flames,
flowing away towards the coast, glittering
like fools gold in the harsh sunlight.
When Felix glances upward, Mahomet Mahomet
is standing impassively by his camel’s side, watching
as it grazes on tufts of razor-sharp Spinifex.
 Warrigal saw the man struck by lightning. (Warrigal? That strange
He lies a mile to the east, dead. language-
Wildman,
Dingo)
Felix turns away from the cameleer,
spotting the ethereal native, just a shadow in the distance,
freed from his crystalline prison of water and sand,
moving as quickly as the desert whirlwind.

An intangible force, ancient and powerful, thrums in

the muggy air around the undertaker.
As he glances between the Afghan and the Aboriginal,
there is an inexplicable tightening in his aching chest;
the hidden pain of feeling lost, lonely and insignificant
rising to the surface, frothing like angry pockets of air in
in boiling water,
condensing,
as rising steam does,
into a searing stab of utter despair-
the tragedies of life in a time of gold and typhoid;
a blistered brand on the undertaker’s heart.