Highway of Lost Hearts

Mary Anne Butler

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781925004687
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A woman. A dog. A campervan. And 4, 500 kms of wide open road.%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%Mot wakes up one morning to find that her heart is missing from her chest. She can breathe; she has a pulse—but she feels… nothing.%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%So, she decides to go and look for it. With her dog enlisted as co-pilot, Mot heads down the highway of lost hearts into the deepest core of the Australian outback—navigating red dirt landscapes, fire and flood, brittle dryness, vast salt lakes, age-old mountains and murky waters filled with lost souls.%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%An allegory for a country that's lost its heart, Highway of Lost Hearts is half gritty road journey, half magic realism and all heart. It leaves you pondering the question: when your heart goes missing, what lengths will you go to in order to find it again?

MOT:

I wake up one morning to find that my heart is missing from my chest.

I can breathe, I have a pulse, but I feel…

nothing.

So. I decide to go and look for it. I pack up my van, hoick the dog up into the passenger seat, and head down the Highway of Lost Hearts.

And as I reach the outskirts of this city, I realise that my heart has been missing for some time.

Or if not missing, then at least…

empty.

At Katherine, I stop for provisions. I leave the dog in the car with a bowl of water and the windows open, and promise her a bone from the fresh meat section on my return.

As I juggle my goods back to the car, a can of tomatoes falls at the feet of a woman in a wheelchair. I bend to pick up the can and offer her a small smile of apology.

She reaches out a gnarled claw at me; upturned and fused like a dead inverted crab.

And I think: she wants money.

But no.

She’s trying to touch me.

And my body jerks itself backwards and I’m on my feet, walking away.

… leaving my tomatoes lying there.

The dog greets me with a thump of her tail, and asks me where the bone is.

I tell her she’s not eating it in the front seat. She can have it when we stop.

… and she sulks all the way into the next town…

At Mataranka we dwell amongst a motley collection of gravestones, glowing in the heat of the day. The dog hunkers down with her bone while I wander through the plots, bringing the names of dead people back to life:

Burkey the Builder

Ginty

Bruno Kutschki

Doogs—all 21 years of him

KW—no date, no name

Elisa Lambert; born seventh of the third, 1892; deceased eleventh of the third, 1892

—and the shock of her five short days on this earth makes me look away.

The slideshow starts inside my head:

Night.

Ocean.

A body: floating.

Ruptured; wafting and shapeless.

There is no map for this journey.

The dog huffs at me; her jaws bloodied. I haul her twenty-seven kilos up into the jump seat, and she issues happy meaty farts all the way to Larrimah.

* * *

At the Daly Waters pub, a curtain of bras hangs down from the ceiling. A bearded, barefoot version of Wild Bill Hickok straddles a bar stool, a stubby of Fourex fused to his hand. ‘I Eat Pussy’ proud across his chest. I ask him if he’s seen any hearts pass by this way, and he leans towards me like he’s got a secret:

‘Dunno about hearts, love. But you’d be wantin’ to find some mojo first, wouldn’tcha?’

He pisses himself laughing and goes back to his beer, tipping it upright and draining the last dregs before calling for another.

I go back to my van and add ‘find mojo’ to my list.

And as I drive, I think of dead people.

The weight of them in the silence of my dreams.

A ute full of young blokes passes, pig dogs in cages on the back. Rifles primed, ‘Khe Sanh’ blaring out. One of them checks me out as they pass, but I’m invisible: too old for desire, and too young for ridicule—so he averts his head, cracks a stubby and drinks instead to the passing tarmac. White lines like a road map, towards his next kill.

The dog picks up the scent of the pig dogs and props up, ears alert, whimpering to go on the hunt as well.

No.

Sit.

SIT!

I teach her to drink from a plastic water bottle while we drive. It rests at her paws and she licks it when she wants a drink. I pop open the nozzle and squeeze it while she schlurps the drops. If I do it too fast, it goes up her nose and she issues a snuffle-cough, so I slow down. Gradually, we get the pace right and work together in a soft rhythm until she turns her head to one side, refusing to schlurp any more.

As night draws close along the Highway of Lost Hearts I stop in at Dunmarra to camp for the night. I wait at the counter while this big bloke ambles across…

‘Drivin’?’ he says.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Teleporting.’

‘Smartarse as well?’

‘Ah… fair enough. Fuel, thanks. And a stubby of Coopers Green.’

‘You out here all alone, are ya?’

‘No. I’ve got a dog. A big dog.’

He nods, holds out my change but won’t let it go.

‘Where ya stayin’?’

‘Um… not sure.’

‘Well, the next town’s Elliot. It’s a blackfella town, just so’s ya know.’

‘Well, they were there first. So yeah; I guess it is.’

He goes suddenly still. ‘You wanna watch it,’ he whispers. ‘A girlie could get herself in trouble talking like that, way out here.’

He puts my change down on the counter halfway between us, so that I have to reach towards him if I want it.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Okay. Thanks for the warning.’

… and I leave my change lying there…

Down the track me and the dog pull over to rough-camp it for the night. I hide the van behind some scrub, lock the doors, wind the windows up and keep the dog close by.

Late in the night she lets out a long, low growl.

… and all night long, I feel like I’m being watched…

* * *

The energy of grief barrels me down the highway, day upon day, and I think: I am empty. Truly empty.

And I want to drive myself into oblivion.

Away from memory; from my own imagination.

I want to leave myself on the side of the highway and drive on without me.

But the country’s central artery takes me straight to Tennant Creek, where I order the most expensive steak sandwich in the world and get a thin, tired piece of gristle in return—wedged between white bread sheets; sexed-up with burnt onion and mounted by barbeque sauce as thin as blood.

I sit outside in the 40-degree heat; peel off the gristle and handfeed it to the dog. The chef wanders over with scraps in a plastic bucket. ‘M-m-mind if I f-feed the dog?’ he asks.

I nod okay. The man is toothless and wizened and skinny as string—a rollie drooping from the corner of his mouth; fingers stained brown with the rolling of ten thousand others. He lets the dog forage into his greasy, salted palms; peels back her gums to look at her teeth and notices the two rows of missing top ones.

‘L-like me,’ he laughs. ‘T-t-toothless and g-g-gummy.’

He looks at my van with something like longing.

‘You l-l-live in there?’

‘Me ’n’ her.’

‘You want c-company?’

I shake my h...