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He just nods. “I said, what will you give me for the petrol. I have a jerry can in the shed if you’d like but petrol is expensive out here.”
“Oh, sure,” I say quickly and bring out my wallet from my jeans. “Um, I have some coins,” I say, rifling through it. The last cash I took out was in Wanaka, which reminds me that I owe Gemma a lot of money. “I have eighty cents,” I say pathetically. “But the girls probably have a load of cash.”
All right, now I’m just saying all the wrong stuff.
He raises his brow. “The girls?”
“My friends, they’re back at Mr. Orange, waiting for me.”
I can tell he wants to ask what Mr. Orange is but he only nods stiffly before turning and walking away. I wait there for at least five minutes as he disappears behind his house, debating whether to just give up and head back to the bus or stand there like an idiot and hope he comes back out.
My patience and/or stupidity pays off and he eventually emerges carrying a small red can of petrol. I do an inner whoop of joy in my head and then start walking back along the road just before he reaches me so I don’t have to do the awkward walk with a burly, silent sheep farmer.
The views are amazing on the way down, though, just as I thought, with the powder blue of Lake Pukaki stretching out to the bare suede hills of the east and up to the jagged white peaks of Mount Cook to the north. I want to stop and take a picture to paint later but I don’t dare with this man at my heels.
When we get back to Mr. Orange, Gemma and Amber are waiting, leaning against the side of the bus, facing the views and the sun. Once they see Mr. Friendly coming, they straighten to attention.
“Girls,” I say, “this kind gentleman has agreed to help us out with some petrol. Do either of you have some cash we can give him?”
The two of them start frantically digging. Amber pulls out a five-dollar bill and a bunch of lint and candy wrappers from her purse. Gemma frowns, flipping through her wallet.
“I just have my credit cards and my bank card,” Gemma says, her voice shaking slightly. “I spent my last bills this morning.”
I look at Mr. Friendly hopefully. “Will five bucks do?”
He gives me a level gaze. So does his dog. “It’s worth more than that. What else ya got?”
Oh boy. “Well, you see,” I say, scratching the back of my neck, “we were broken into the other day and they stole everything valuable.”
The farmer walks over to the bus and peers inside the window. “Sure is a nice specimen, though you should know better than to try and take her up roads like this.” Then he pauses. “What’s that?”
I join him by his side. He smells like strong cigarettes. I follow his gaze to the stack of seventies porn on the backseat. I had been rifling through it earlier, comparing the bushes of 1977 to 1979.
“Uh, really old Penthouse and such?”
He grunts. “All right. I’ll take it.”
“Say what?” I glance at Gemma and Amber huddling by the end of the bus.
“Petrol for the nudie mags. Fair trade. Keep your five dollars.”
“Really?” I ask, feeling momentarily torn up about it. “You sure you want those?”
“Oh, just give him my uncle’s porn stash, Josh,” Gemma hisses.
I do as she says, bringing them out of the bus and placing it in Mr. Friendly’s arms. “Do you want some Pink Floyd tapes to go with it?”
He scrunches up his face, the first emotion I’ve seen from him, and passes me the jerry can, before walking back up the hill, the dog trotting after him.
“Thank you!” I call after him. I look at Gemma who is shaking her head, her brows pinched in worry as she pushes past me to the driver’s side.
“Hey,” I say, touching her arm for her to stop. “I’ll drive. You just relax.”
“I’m fine,” she says, lying once again.
So I let her be, knowing if I insist, she’ll snap. She seems very close to losing it. I go and pour the can of petrol into the bus and Amber gets in the backseat, making sure I’m up in the front beside Gemma.
She starts the car and slides The Wall into the cassette player, as if to punish me for trying to sell the tapes to Mr. Friendly.
“Hey You” starts to play and my mind is focusing on the lyrics, applying them to Gemma. Is she feeling so desolate, alone, wanting to give in without a fight? It’s a tumultuous, heady song and it takes us down the steep dirt road, to the paved one that runs along Lake Pukaki. To my surprise she takes a right, heading back the way we came from Twizel.
“Aren’t we going to Mount Cook?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Lake Tekapo.”
I shrug, but I’m actually relieved that we’re heading back toward civilization. The whole running out of petrol and trading porn with a sheep farmer has put me in a weird mood, and tensions in the bus are running high, crisscrossing like threads in danger of snapping.
“What’s in Lake Tekapo?” I ask, trying to get her to talk, to open up. She’s slipped her sunnies on her eyes so I can’t try and read them.
“A very blue, very cold lake,” is her simple answer.
I eye Amber in the rearview mirror and she gives me a worried look in exchange. We’re just along for the ride.
We motor away from the mountains and toward the cloud-filtered sunshine and rolling brown hills of the east. Lake Tekapo seems to be a popular stop, and as we get closer I can see why. The lake is even bluer than Pukaki was and the town along the banks is a pleasing slice of civilization.
