She was a dreamer, and he was a schemer. But they had a common goal, so together they traveled.
Hitching across northern Queensland heading for Darwin was hot and slow but fascinating for John. He’d seen Crocodile Dundee three times so he was getting a kick out the thick-headed truck drivers and weird little outback towns. He’d only just met Maria a few days before when they’d struck up a conversation in the park, and realized a mutual attraction. She was great company, even when she tended to ramble on about her plans for her future, a different set every couple of hours, but she had the body of a Greek goddess and a pair of smoldering eyes that Michelangelo would've baulked at. He’d discovered that she preferred by a mile to be appreciated for her creative mind rather than her perfect figure, but already he was harboring lustful thoughts of when she might be ready to ‘get naked’ with him.
All morning they stood on the edge of a medium-size mining town with hardly a car going by but finally a five tonne dump-truck loaded with bags of cement stopped for them. The driver was in his early twenties wearing elastic-sided work boots, dark green stubby shorts, and the obligatory blue singlet. He kept his cowboy hat on at all times.
The truck rumbled and bashed along the dusty dirt road at a steady hundred klicks with Maria sitting in the middle. The floor was so hot they couldn’t take their thongs off and the driver kept up a conversation with John, barely a word of which he could understand because of the road noise and astrain accent, so he just kept nodding every now and then.
That night they slept where the driver lived, with three other similar young men in a fibro house. John was amazed by the state of the place whereas Maria seemed to just take it in her stride. Whenever someone finished a beer they just threw the empty can out of the nearest broken window, and they were all broken, onto piles of garbage outside. One of the guys let them sleep on his double mattress, and then in the morning they were back on the side of the road.
God only knows the source of Mary’s inspiration but she sat there in a tiny patch of shade cast by a road sign, writing a poem. John was sweating, looking up the road, and thinking about what type of business he would start when he finished his MBA.
When Maria was satisfied with her work she gave it to John to read. It was cute but “Why?” John thought, “Not bad Maria, but you’ll never make money out of writing poems.” He said off-handedly.
“Ever thought that maybe there is more to life than making money?” Maria replied sharply. Obviously hurt by his careless ignorance.
“Well, ‘more to life?” you ask. “Yeah. Sure, there is also power. But they’re much the same thing.” replied John.
“Humh! Guess I should have known. Power and money hey, well, there's a far stronger power than you or anyone else will ever get from money, and that is the ever-present fourth dimension. You should know that or else you're simply denying the obvious. No matter how much money you make or power you attain that old tyrant is going to rub you out. No two ways about it. And there are….”, but John had turned to face her and cut her off by saying, “Okay, sweet oracle, please tell me then how you propose to change the situation you lament by writing a few poems?”
Mary looked inordinately serious, “Well, the way I see things”; she said while beginning to draw circles in the sand with a slender stick, “Life has no discernible purpose or meaning.” She paused, while John shrugged his mouth. “During the entire history of humanity, despite the philosophizing and mathematics, nothing definite has been found and even the lab-coats can’t discover the limits of the universe, so we don’t have a context to know how big or small we are, let alone how important or insignificant the human race, planet Earth, or 1970 was. We might be microscopic or gargantuan, but there is nothing absolute to compare things to. Some people claim to have “mapped” consciousness, experienced previous lives, discovered the universal symbols, but we remain jellyfish in time with separately motivated identities. You can escape into wishfull thinking, like religion, or mysticism, or you can try to insulate yourself from death in the way you intend to, by aspiring to wealth and power as accumulated material goods and status, but the only obviously significant thing anyone can do, as far as I am concerned, is to inspire, or even simply amuse, our fellow human beings and thereby possibly make their lives more enjoyable by teasing their emotions or massaging their imaginations to distract them from the anguish of meaninglessness. Perhaps, not so long ago when the world was dangerous there wasn’t time to dwell on less immediate issues but since the human animal incubated culture in it’s many forms evolution has not relied on biological conditions alone. Writing and art have shifted and accelerated the evolutional force onto a tangent since knowledge and expression have been recorded and accumulated. The effect on the evolution of the human mind continues and I wish to be a part of that.” she said, stopping the stick and looking into his eyes.
“That is what I am trying to do John, and if I find publication and become even mildly popular, then after my body is dead and gone my mind and my spirit shall live on to enrich the lives of generations that follow. In that manner I will have cheated times servant; death!”
“Really” said John. “But Maria, don’t you see that you are still only dealing in relative terms. Even if a song you write makes it on to the top-forty for a month, or your romantic verse is printed onto Valentine's Day cards one year, or your book of poems is flavor if the month in the states or somewhere, you’ll still end up being trashed. Or if you managed to write a classic, in the infinite realm of time you place so much emphasis on, your suggested immortality would be rather insignificant.”
John hadn’t considered how demoralizing he was being because he enjoyed a verbal tussle, “Maria, my dear, greed and fear are the only two pure forms of motivation, I desire money in order to fulfill my materialistic fantasies of a big house, fast cars, and a steel fence to keep the world where it belongs. That is my way to alleviate fear. Keep it outside and make sure it cannot afford to get in! My money will be spent on cocktails by the pool, cocaine, and an indigo Porsche. Experience and pleasure are ephemeral, but death to me means obliteration. I’m not my brothers, or sisters, keeper. I don’t owe anything to this world except to enjoy it for my allotted time. And then I’ll leave it alone.” Finished John with raised eyebrows and a slight lilt to his head.
“Maybe you’re right, John, but I don’t think so. You denigrate human nature, and dismiss love and compassion. Natural feelings which are more inspiration than motivation, but imagine a lonely person, a desperate person who has lost sight of the beauty and wonder of life. If they can be reanimated, or amused, by reading something I had written years after I’ve died, that is what I consider to be real power, and power for good, not your kind of power won by the heartless exploitation of other people and the environment.”
At that point, John realized he was on a losing track and he’d enjoyed the previous night cuddling with Maria so much that he didn’t want to say anything else to jeopardize future liaisons. “Okay. What would I know?” he said in response. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. Maybe you’re right about art and culture, and I should devote more time to helping others. It’s a material world, my training has been confined to marketing, and managing, and maybe it would be a good idea for me to broaden my horizons and adopt a more humanitarian point of view. You know, that was one reason why I came on this trip”. He said, intending to give her the pleasure of knowing that she'd opened his rigid conditioning. He read the poem again. “I see what you’re on about.” He said, nodding his head earnestly.
They traveled on to Darwin where they stayed for a few days in a beach camp just out of town before continuing on their way to Perth. Maria spent most of her spare time writing. It was the usual kind of banal, over-optimistic romanticism, but John knew well enough to make the right appreciative noises now that they had been making love for a few nights. He had become completely addicted to her. She had the smoothest olive skin that he stayed awake just to enjoy the feeling of holding her close to him.
On the way to Fitzroy Crossing they managed to get stuck in the middle of nowhere after a drunken fencer had given them a ride out of a one-horse town. They’d walked a few kilometers away until darkness fell and John lit a small fire from the sticks they could find. It was cold in the desert but sharing the sleeping bag kept them both warm.
Just before dawn a small storm passed over the sleeping pair and roused John. He was cramped and uncomfortable so he pulled himself out of the bag and stood above the stunted bushes to look around. The desert floor was red, with a patchy carpet of purple and yellow flowers. To the west for the first time could be seen the blue line of the Indian Ocean and to the east the isolated shower of rain which had moved toward the rising sun and turned the sky gold and green. It was magnificent and John was feeling very glad to be alive standing there naked in the broad expanse of desert.
About eight o’clock a rickety looking school bus came out of nowhere and rolled by with a motley crew of unwashed urchins hanging their rough heads out of the windows yelling gibberish. The driver was an unshaven character who looked like a very old Humphrey Bogart. He waved to them and they waved back, wondering where they had come from and wishing it were going in the opposite direction.
Half an hour later the bus re-appeared on the horizon and stopped in front of them in a cloud of its own dust. The driver looked about as pleased as John and Maria were. “Only going a few miles down the road, but is better than nothing”, the old guy said.
John took a quick look at him and came to the conclusion that they must be hard up for drivers out there. The guy was obviously a total alcoholic, probably only managed to stay sober for the trip to school. “Thanks, that’ll be fine. We really needed to move. It was getting a mite tedious back there.” said John.
Maria just sat quietly in the middle. The old bloke tried to get her talking but she didn’t seem inclined. She was deep in thought John figured but then it became obvious to him that she was irritated because the old guy just couldn’t stop himself from taking furtive glances at her smoothly bumping breasts, except for the briefest glimpses at the road. Maria was wearing a light cotton top without a bra and the poor old bastard probably hadn’t seen a women for months, and he’d probably never seen such stunning girl as Maria in his entire life. So what did she expect?
After about fifteen minutes they arrived at a turn-off which looked as though it took you from nowhere to the backside of nowhere else. Why anyone would want to live somewhere like that was a mystery to John. The bus driver kept them chatting for as long as he could but Maria forced the issue, nudged John, and they were soon back on the side of the road with nothing but clay-pans, tussocks, and some crows in the distance.
Fortunately for them it wasn’t long before a geologist in a utility came zapping along and decided to stop. They squeezed into the Datsun and away they went. It was the best ride they’d had for days, much more comfortable than a truck and so much faster. About midday they stopped in at a roadhouse and all three ordered food and something to drink.
As they’d driven in, a bunch of station-hands were leaving in a 4WD and they yelled some obscene remarks at Maria as they resumed the bitumen. After they’d bought some take-aways the Datsun was back on the road and making such good speed that they soon caught up to the rednecks on a downhill stretch of road. There was no traffic except for the Toyota
The geologist survived the rollover, and so did John, although the spinal damage put him in a wheelchair spoon-fed by his Mum, but Maria, she was killed. Outright. By the St. Christopher medal on the dashboard which punctured her forehead.
The wreckage was strewn along the side of the road. The station workers looted the bags, stole Maria’s underwear, and after flicking through the pages threw her notebooks to the wind. It was a sad and ignoble end to a sensitive and well-meaning girl. And did she achieve her dream of immortality? Well, her poems and songs blew across the parched desert until the words were faded by the relentless sun, John didn’t even remember who he was most of the time, the geologist tried to put it all behind him, but as for immortality she did live on, for a while anyway, in the groggy mind of the old bus driver. In his alcoholic haze her face was gone but clearly he retained the memory of those two nipples bumping and bouncing beneath that shadow of a cotton top.
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