![]() As she runs she kicks off her slippery town shoes and feels dry furrowed earth rising and falling and crumbling under her bare feet all the way to where he’s lying.Įyes rolling back to her. She stares blankly at the silhouette on the horizon for what seems like a long time before she realises it’s the huge rear wheel of the tractor she’s looking at, the vehicle tipped upside down like an abandoned toy. The quiet one.įrank’s wife notices the dust floating like a heat mirage as she drives up the track with the weekly shopping. ![]() Yeah, his wife, they said finally, nodding. Pounding through dust and weeds in that unearthly silence, steeling yourself for what you’re going to find. His wife found him, they went on, pausing to let their listener visualise this, a nightmare they’d all had: hearing the faint throb of the tractor engine changing as it rolled, either roaring or cutting out or else you’d be hanging out the washing, maybe, and look up to see it in the distance already on its side, metal glinting, upturned rake tines like fangs.Įveryone had imagined, sometime, making that crazed run across the paddocks, faint with whimpering dread, the air sickeningly still over your head like the eye of a storm. Turning at the embankment, some loose earth, must have been looking the other way and, bang, look what happens. ![]() ![]() Not dead, they said, but might as well be. He misjudged the bank of the dam, people said when they heard Frank Slovak had overturned his tractor onto himself. ![]()
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