the lost art of making an entrance…

by feral911

Posted to Stories on 2001-11-29 08:28:00

“i dunno about you, dave… but i’m getting pretty fucking tired of wasting my time out here.” dave looked at me and nodded his head in agreement. we were sitting with about twenty co-workers around a roaring campfire in the middle of the south australian desert night, fifty miles from the nearest road and at least four hundred miles separated us from the closest town of any consequence.
we were employed by an oil and gas exploration company, and the isolation was slowly driving me beyond the point of no return. “shit, man… what’s the point of earning a grand a week when there’s sweet fuck all to squander it on – i need women, drugs, loud music, bright lights… i need some fucking action!” i stood up, crushed the empty beercan in my hand and threw it away in disgust – the can hit the exploration manager on the forehead as he was trying to impress the pants off a butt ugly young graduate geologist. his face reddened instantly, “i think that you’ve had more than enough beer for one night, jason.” my mood was almost as vile as the geologist and my respect for authority was at an all time low, “go smell your mother, dickhead,” i replied. the manager looked at the ground sheepishly, then glanced up at his ‘personal assistant’ – a four hundred pound tub of guts named barker. barker stood up, folded his arms dramatically across his chest and gave me his meanest glare, “okay, jason… you can apologize to steve on the way to your room.” i laughed softly and shook my head, “you don’t fool me, barker… you’re big, but you’re not that fucking big – sit your fat arse down before i kick it into next week.” barker bent down and reached for a large piece of firewood. my old friend big buck was walking past the campfire towards the shower block – he looked like a building wrapped in a towel, he pulled the towel from his waist, coiled and doubled it over, then slapped the back of barker’s head with enough force to send him face first into the dirt, “don’t even think about it, fat boy.” the colour drained from barker’s face when he turned his head and saw buck towering over him, “i’m sorry, buck – but jason was…”
“save it chubby, i’ll deal with you later,” buck slung the towel over his shoulder, made a detour to the beer cooler, removed a cold can of victoria bitter and tossed it in my direction before disappearing into the shower block. i caught the can in one hand, slumped back into my chair and turned to dave, “i’m sick, man. sick of busting my arse twelve hours a day, seven days a week. sick of drinking until i pass out every night, and sick of struggling through the next day feeling like i’ve got one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel. christ, if it wasn’t for buck i would have caved that fat prick’s head in… and for what? i’m losing it, man. i’ve gotta get out of here.”
“i filled both of the fuel tanks on our p.c after we finished work today,” commented dave.
“is that a fact?” i asked.
“it is at that,” replied dave. and without further conversation our next move had been decided – the signs were much too powerful to ignore…(i suppose now is a good time to mention that the p.c dave and myself drove from the campsite to the job was constantly running on empty, as neither of us were prepared to spend more than a few minutes refueling it when we returned to camp… after all, we had beer to drink.) we stopped at the beer cooler and grabbed a couple of six packs each before making our way to the transportable room that we shared with the camp cook – simon. simon was barely twenty years old, just out of the army, and had been working for the company for about three weeks. he was sleeping soundly on one of the room’s four bunk beds when we entered. dave negotiated his way through the piles of dirty clothing and empty beercans, shook simon awake and handed him a beer, “c’mon, buddy, we’re leaving.”
“huh?,” said simon.
“leaving, man. me, you and jason… we’re getting outta here,” said dave.
“huh?,” repeated simon as he shook the sleep from his head.
“trust us… we’ve got a plan,” said dave.
within minutes our posessions were packed into bags and we were sneaking through the bush towards the company vehicle parking bay… our p.c was easy to recognise – a ragged skull and crossbones flag hung atop a fifteen foot bamboo pole that was attached to the front bull bar, and two powerful hi-fi speakers were attached to the roof with gaffa tape. we threw our bags into the back and started pushing the vehicle down the dirt track that led to the highway. dave got into the driver’s seat, i rode shotgun with the beer supply, and simon promptly fell asleep on top of the luggage in the back after the engine had been started out of hearing range of those at the camp.
shortly after reaching the highway we had a collision with a huge buffalo, dave injured his shoulder in the accident – so it was up to me to pilot the lightless, crippled vehicle for the remainder of the jouney. we limped into alice springs as the sun was rising, with wagner’s ride of the valkyries blaring from the stereo and steam gushing from the radiator of a vehicle covered in blood, dents and buffalo shit… i can still see the horrified faces of the earlyrising locals that witnessed our gory arrival as they retrieved newspapers from their front lawns or drove past us on their way to work.
i stopped the p.c before the large glass doors of the alice springs resort casino, we gathered our luggage and exited the vehicle. i tossed the keys to the slack jawed valet parking attendant, peeled a hundred dollar bill from my bulging wallet and tucked it into the top pocket of his coat. i patted him lightly on the cheek and said. “you’d better park this one carefully, zitface.”
dave, simon and myself pushed open the doors between our criminal past and the five star opulence that we deserved.