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dollar bills and quarters.
    â€˜Well that was truly delightful, Trudi,’ he said. ‘Exactly what I needed. But now I have to leave. My handsome prince is waiting outside with a pumpkin coach drawn by six white mice.’ Just a little unsteadily Les turned towards the door where the big black bloke was standing next to a cigarette machine.
    â€˜Hey!’ called out Trudi. ‘Are you gonna come back and have another drink with us before you go back to Darwin? Saturday nights are good. We have a band.’
    Les looked at the big black bloke, who was about threeinches taller and at least ten stone heavier than Les, and smiling feinted a left rip at his massive stomach. ‘Ain’t nobody here big enough to stop me.’
    The black bloke flashed back a white grin that was almost as big as he was and opened the door for Norton. ‘You have a good one, brother.’
    As Norton stepped through the door he stopped and gave Trudi a wave. ‘See you later, alligator,’ he called out boozily.
    Hank was sitting in the pick-up, smoking a cigarette, with the motor running and the lights on. Pleasantly numbed from six stiff drinks in about half an hour Les swung inside on top of his gear in a better frame of mind to cope with the seppo. They took off in silence and about two miles back onto the highway Hank spoke.
    â€˜That was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. What made you come out with all that crap?’
    â€˜It’s … I say, it’s called having a joke, boy. You do know what a joke is, don’t you, Laurel?’ The drinks hadn’t helped the sarcasm that had been building up inside Les either.
    â€˜I sure know what being stupid is when I see it.’
    Tomorrow, thought Les, staring ahead into the night. I’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight. Then tomorrow, after I’ve let this prick show me around a bit, I’ll hit him right on the chin and break his jaw then move into a motel or head over to Miami or something.
    â€˜Back at my place,’ Hank took a big drag on his cigarette and gave Les a super smug look, ‘I’ll show you something that ain’t stupid.’
    â€˜Yeah. Like what?’ Norton couldn’t stop himself laughing. ‘A photo of you at your senior prom, wearing a white sports coat and a pink carnation?’
    â€˜You’ll see and feel something you don’t see in Australia.’
    I can’t wait, thought Les. He was going to sling off some more but changed his mind and just wound down the window.
    They drove on pretty much in silence with Les stillabsolutely clueless as to where he was; all he knew was that it was still dead flat and they’d come about ten kilometres. Or six miles in seppo talk. Hank turned off the main road onto a smaller one, then another. Now there were vacant lots and single-storey homes that reminded Les of holiday houses on the north and south coast of New South Wales, only there were no fences and they all had double garages and huge driveways. There also seemed to be more trees and behind some of the houses Les could see what looked like ponds or lagoons shining a murky silver in the moonlight.
    Hank turned left through some trees and they crunched up a long driveway to pull up in front of a rickety carport with a lopsided roof hanging over some car beneath. There was a single-storey house to the right with a light on over a verandah out the front that still reminded Les of a holiday home. A narrow path led from that house to a smaller one about thirty metres away that had an extra storey built on top; it too had a light left on and even from that distance Les could see the paint was peeling off and weeds grew up to the front door. All round were trees with this creepy-looking grey-green fern hanging off them, which Les later found out was called Spanish Moss. It might have been the night and the oppressive heat, it might have been the Spanish Moss in the moonlight, but