The Man in the Road
It is ever so important in Dust to make dust through various means. A favourite is a double-waggoned dumper trailer pulled by a Mac truck at speed. Two trucks swap turns, and start time (as everyone in Dust knows) is 7:30 AM. So until 4PM every 10 minutes or so you can expect to hear something like a Lear jet, but far off, a mile? Two miles off a Lear jet coming down the gravel road. Gravel on gravel, double semi dump gravel truck at speed. When it arrives at the corner the air brakes go of like thunderclapfarts, the dust swirls backwards around the cab, it shoots out from all 16 wheels. The truck flies past then comes to the hairpin corner ½ mile down. A sound like shrieking souls in a fire leaps out of the bush and rushes down the road, poor souls, some other kind of brake, or grinding gears, slowly the Lear jet recedes to the place where the gravel is needed.
We are spared the sound of dumping.
Experiments were tried. A kind of calcium road was once laid down. It made milk when it rained. Where there are marshes the road is always rutted deeply, the water seeps up.
I hope you are not in a rush in Dust. The roads won't have that.
One day I was on my way to see the small- town doctor. A horrible man. But I was sick. I saw a mother black bear and a bouncy cub eating strawberries, then I saw a figure on the road. Wolf? No, human. In the middle of several nowheres, temperature about 25 degrees Celsius, dust everywhere. He was standing by an old farm, ochre plastered walls, a barn, a charming abandoned farm.
I pulled over and put a mask on. (pandemic)
He said “I need a ride home”-(the direction I was coming from) I said “I have to go to an appointment” He said “what kind of appointment?”
I said tell me your name, I'll find someone in town to come get you.
He did and he said “everyone knows me, this is my farm, my family farm, from way back.”
I took his name to town. The post office lady said “don't give him a ride” and sent me to a trailer over near the school. Television blaring Dr Phil inside, I knock; nothing. I creep into the open garage attached to the trailer, pet food bowls, garbage, filth, squalor, but not cinematic. Anti- cinematic squalor. There is an ancient man dozing in an easy chair. A girl appears. I ask her about the man on the road and she says no. I want to offer to clear the place up, she looks overwhelmed.
I do the doctor appointment. I film him rolling his eyes at me.
I remember that we are all little cells existing separate and connected to one another, like houses with different cultures inside, like people with whole histories inside.
I drive back and I don't see the bear. The man in the road is gone as well.