We Ate the Road Like Vultures Read Online Free PDF Page A

brain full of nothing, and they stopped still and watched us haul that elephant into the swaying, bottomed-out truck and then we drove off. They never cameafter us and that little town would never sell us out. We’ve been here too long.’
    â€˜And we spend a small fortune here.’ Chicco was pragmatic about Mexican loyalty and my week’s experience told me he was right, wealth was the only love source in that hungry place.
    â€˜Well, that was the weirdest story I’ve heard in a while.’ I spoke far too soon cos I was cut off by the scratchy bell from outside the door. We all froze and listened. After a moment and a deep sigh Carousel pushed a button on the side of his chair and it whizzed him upwards onto his feet.
    â€˜Fucking peak hour, twice in one day after not a peep in a decade.’ He looked stiff and old as he lumbered towards the hallway.
    â€˜What about the Mexicans?’ I wondered aloud.
    â€˜Back door—they know.’ Chicco sighed. Suddenly he grinned. ‘Hey—you get the door, Lulugirl! You get rid of whoever the fuck is out there at this time of night and you can stay in the spare room.’
    Carousel raised an eyebrow—more at the spare room comment than the idea, and smiled that tiny wry smile of his.
    My choices were obviously limited so I tried to hide my delight at the joyful prospect of a roof over my head for the night and headed past Carousel for the door.
    It shouldn’t be too hard to get rid of someone, even if they were here for the same reason as me, which was unlikely considering I was the first in a lifetime, surely anyone would be dismayed at the presence of a young girl and leave.
    By the time I opened the door I had my speech all prepared and my rhotic ‘r’s’ ready for a wild ride but what I saw was so far from what I had expected and what I heard was so much crazier than anything that had happened so far that I invited the visitor in to meet my grandfathers and promised him dinner and the spare room.

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    You have to keep believing what you believe, and there ain’t nothing like good travellin’.
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    I F I WAS SURPRISED AT MYSELF FOR LETTING THE guy in, Chicco and Carousel were more so. They clearly believed me incentived enough, so they were silent as I brought down the hall a tall, young man so unearthly in his beauty he should have been on a billboard for some sort of underwear. I only came up to his bicep, which I noticed because he was in one of those shirts with the sleeves ripped out. He was tanned to the colour of Ironbark honey and his hair was white blond and long and straggly in that ‘Oops, am I bedraggled and phenomenal?’ kind of way. And if there is a way to describe his eyes, I don’t know it, and I’m not a writer so I’ll have to use a few clichés—like those rivers of ice up in theScandinavian mountains, so light in their blue that they are more a reflection of the sky than anything of themselves.
    Now, I’m not a girl who falls all over the hot boys, I’m really not, but that said, in Chillingham, New South Wales, there are only about five boys with straight teeth and two eyes that look in the same direction, and four of them would be unaware of books being anything other than a printed guide for growing high quality weed. So I admit, part of the reason I didn’t send the guy away was that I needed a bit longer to look at him.
    And I was not the only one having a good old-fashioned stare—Chicco and Carousel were speechless in their recliners, ashy smoking joints loose in their gums. This was truly a man—though he might be too young to be called a man—who stopped time. And he was also a man who was used to this sort of reaction cos he waited until we all remembered to breathe and then smiled, revealing the sort of teeth dentists’ children have, and stopped our collective hearts again for a moment. Chicco whistled