Innisfail

Our ring gear is shot through and those plans of mountains and waterfalls, of unfurled roads like bowling alley balls, pelting into the distance - they are sitting in broken pieces, waiting to be scrapped. We are in the north, somewhere large enough for a garage but too small for parts. The town’s industry is banana picking, and the banana pickers rise at 6am to go to the banana fields. By 9pm there is nothing but quiet dogs and wet dust air, and on the main road a drive-through store with a laminate sign the size of a lorry: SUPER CHEAP LIQUOR.

We buy rum in a brown bag, walk to the banana fields which are silent and night time. There is a dog, but he is too concerned with things which concern dogs in hot climates; his sweat, the insects, fireflies with wings like drunken bats. There are stars, so we place bets on them; play bluff, exchange constellations, look serious into the long night. We drink. The rum is like running through a field of striped candy canes, hand in hand with a ruby haired Egyptian. We drink it lying in the earth under the great wallowing bananas.

I raise him; three sisters and a Great Bear.
He, confident; the Milky Way.

By the time we get home, the van is wheezing gasoline tears into the sky of our spoils.