Spinifex

We’re running to jump onto the tray. No, that’s wrong. Running is the wrong word to describe this, this burning in my lungs as the spittle flecks and I concentrate on my legs. I can hear him alongside, more measured than me, breath coming hard but even. Nothing like my ragged gasps.

It’s supposed to be easy. You grab the lip and then pivot yourself up. One smooth motion as he comes past and then you’re up and on and safe. Shudder of the diesel and the bump of your head against the glass of the cabin. Spinifex, I think it’s called. Yeah. Watch the spinifex as it brushes the wheels.

The spinifex is tugging at my feet and trying to pull me down onto the red ochre clay. But I shift my weight and dig my toe in. The last step is more of a stagger and I reach out I think I’m going to miss it. Think back to year nine science and digging the soft pencil into the softer lab bench. “Relative velocity is a measurement of velocity between two objects moving in different frames of reference.” The ute has a k on me, probably less, but I think our vectors are converging with, what? What are scalars? Is that two dimensional? Fuck, I can’t remember. I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe. Reach for it. Reach.

And my fingers grab and I wrench myself up and as I lie on the tray breathing in great ragged gasps I can feel him beside me. And he sits up and spits over the edge. Lost in the dust that’s getting kicked up now.

“Shit mate, thought you were going to go the worm burner for sure there. Yas staggering all over the shop. Fitness, eh. Fucking fitness.”

Slaps me right in the gut and it burns, burns like the air that’s finally going back into my lungs. Fitness. Fuck that, I can see the stars, and they’re beautiful.