Ants on highways
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Brett Caldwell
The movie Three Kings is playing on the small LCD TVs that hang from the bus's ceiling. In the film, George and his band of American soldier anti-heroes right the wrongs of the United States' failure to defeat Saddam by saving some ‘good' Iraqis.
One of the Gulf War's unforgettable images was the complete annihilation of a convoy fleeing along the ‘Highway of Death' – the road between Kuwait and Basra. Coalition aircraft attacked and destroyed the remnants of the fleeing Iraqi Army and many civilians. Described by some participants as a ‘turkey shoot', the rout was complete and clinical. Over several hours, Coalition pilots destroyed at least fourteen hundred vehicles and killed an unknown number of people. The US military claimed the casualties were minimal – maybe one hundred. Other sources believed the number to be as high as fifteen hundred. In burnt-out vehicles, charcoaled bodies sat and stared at the road ahead, a morbid peak-hour traffic jam. The Coalition didn't gain any strategic or tactical advantage from the massacre, but someone, somewhere, justified the act.
SOMETIMES PREDATORS KILL without need. I too have been a predator.
As a boy, friends who lived on a farm near Goulburn took me hunting. My friend's dad armed me with a rusted Remington 870 shotgun and a handful of blood-red cartridges.
I had killed before. I'd shot sparrows and starlings with a BB rifle, and tallied the body count on the garage wall in pink chalk. I'd burnt ants with a magnifying glass and dripped burning plastic onto their nest; the tiny balls of fire made a strange sound as they fell – ‘phfttt, phfttt'.
Armed with our twelve-gauge shotguns, we walked slowly across the dry paddocks for about half an hour until we got to the far side of a lake. There were dozens of ducks and waterfowl. Most flew off, but for the few that remained there was no escape.
After a minute, or perhaps longer, the shooting stopped.
Someone crushed the head of a wounded bird under his boot. We gathered the dead birds and stuffed them into hessian sacks. Victorious, we returned to the farmhouse where the men drank cold beer and cleaned their shotguns.
EXIT AHEAD. Three cyclists pedal in tight formation. Their legs pump in unison, at a cadence of ninety revolutions per minute. They avoid the traffic jam easily and pass the broken-down truck and the driver who is still waiting for assistance. Wheel to wheel, each bends forward on aero-bars to cut wind resistance and increase speed. Their shaved, muscled legs are lathered in a film of silky sweat. Large, wrap-around sunglasses, giving each an insect-like appearance, shield their eyes from sun, wind, and road grit.
One rider spits, another reaches for his water bottle and squirts a stream of water on his neck. The third tears open a chocolate bar wrapper with his teeth and scoffs the morsel of rich nougat. He crumples the wrapper and throws it away. The riders communicate with simple arm gestures – a subtle movement of the elbow or hand. They change the lead position rhythmically, in a swaying dance, each taking his turn to attack the wind. The riders pass a swollen roo carcass, sending the two large, black birds feeding on it to flight, then they divert onto an off-ramp.
By 7 pm, the traffic will have dissipated and most commuters will be home, eating their dinner and perhaps talking to their children about their day at school:
‘How was school?'
‘Good.'
On the highway, the truck that stopped the traffic is repaired and moving south. The driver settles into a long night heading towards some distance place.
Sarah Ahmad has changed her mother's dressings. The old woman suffers from dementia. She looks at Sarah. She knows who she is, but can't recall her name.
Jared is home. He has finished his second scotch and wonders what to do next; his numbers don't look too healthy.
The Harley riders have changed and ordered a three-course meal and a few bottles of expensive Australian wine.
The cyclists have showered.
The greyhound bus is parked at the back of the Sutton Forest McDonald's. The driver sits in the restaurant alone with his thoughts, sipping hot black coffee. He absentmindedly clenches his fists to relieve stiffness in his knuckles.
High above, a passenger jet cruises in the darkness. The ride is smooth. The evening meal is over. The cabin lights dim – some passengers kick off their shoes and cocoon themselves in blankets. A few whispered conversations hang in the air.
I am sitting at my desk staring at Google Earth. It is boring. Everywhere I go is familiar. Webs of black tar and concrete highways bind the planet. Every city looks alike, every suburb sprawls into nowhere, every mountain has a summit, every river flows aimlessly towards the sea. I zoom in on my home.
On the Hume Highway, a wombat looks into a swarm of bright headlights and blinks. Nearby, the colony of ants continues to sup upon the can's sticky sweetness. ♦