A Blue Christmas

"We got the buggers, all bang to rights," Shona laughed, "we found at least four different narcotics, all in pretty substantial quantities, amounts that even a commercial warehouse would baulk at stocking, and not one of them dropsticks got away. Most of 'em were still snoring or taking turns rooting skank sheilas in the Winnebagoes with the air con on internal recycling full blast, trying to keep the black smoke out. The swat team tells me there were more sprog stains on the bed sheets than a Jakarta polly waffle on the first Sunday morno after payday. An' we caught that figjam Paddy Powell with his semi-hard old fella deep in underage territory with enough coke to stop even Edith Piaf's pain stuck to his face and all over the young sheila's tits. He'll be a homeless dero with nothing but a brass razoo to his name by the time we're finished prosecuting his fat arse."

"That's good news, officer. Does that mean we're free to—"

"Not quite, Cornwall, but I will tell you that you are one lucky bastard. We were going to throw the bloody book, and the bloody book shelves it was stored on at you, when we saw what you had in mind and started shifting those rubbers. Mike couldn't call and stop you on the satellite phone—"

"I'd left it in the sleeper cab."

"Right, so I had to try and get my boys in here early rising from their beds, get them fully briefed and on the road before I was ready. Your bloody tyre fire was the last thing I needed after working ten hours on the second busiest bloody shift of the year. For your future info, dawn raids are supposed to be at dawn when the perps are fast asleep, not running about putting out fires while it's still dark."

"I thought it would help us get away."

"Fortunately for you, most of the drongos decided not to run once you woke them up, but to pull down all the shutters in the Winnoes and carry on with the party until the flames died down. One bloke did wake up and ran naked into the bush, which made the swat team split their sides laughing, and didn't bother to chase him. He was a seppo more used to city life and, after picking up a thorn in the bell end of his nuddy little donger, he came back on his own to give himself up. They're still looking for a medic with the thickest specs and the smallest set of tweezers in his kitbag to sort him. I'm going home to get me head down for a few hours, then you and Bonnie are invited to a Chrissie Cookout at my community centre, we're throwing the shrimp on the barbie at one this arvo. A refusal to go or be one minute late is not an option, Bonnie needs this even if you don't. Nick off down there as soon as we've got your John Dory signed—"

"All done."

"Good onya. Now, there are toilet and shower facilities there, and you can even get your heads down for a couple of hours in your truck if you want. Just don't do a Holt on us and don't be bloody late! Remember, shrimps, roo steaks and snags, on the grills at one this arvo and we tuck in at half past."

Bonnie was bright, and upbeat when we were pushed out the door a few minutes later, she was optimistic about her new future and saw the end of her modelling career as a positive.

"I've been so busy working for so long, that the idea of taking time out and not having to continue being a slave to a strictly timed schedule is going to be great. I've got plenty of time to think about what I want to do with the rest of my life."

I think then she noticed how glum I was.

"Are you worried about your delivery schedule, Mark?"

"Yeah, well, no, not really. I reckon we've got just under 30 hours' driving time from here, if we do twelve hours tomorrow and the same on Thursday, we still need to get six hours in today and then we will have to find somewhere to stay tonight, probably after dark, some 500 clicks down the road. Mind you, if we can shower and rinse out some undies at Shona's community centre, then juice up on the way out of the city, we could park by the side of the road for one night."

"So we could still meet your schedule?"

"Yeah, I could still deliver at six am on Friday. Legally I can drive 14 hours at a pinch in any 24 hours, so we could even lose the whole of today and still just about make it."

"But you were hoping to stop and take photos along the way?"

"Yeah, I guess I was ... but I can come back this way again in a couple of years. We could still get a few hours on the road in today, depending how long we need to be at this cookout before we can get away. If the worse happens, knowing we won't arrive in Darwin until after 8am on Friday, I could bell the Goods In at The Darwin Sentinel on Thursday and request a delivery slot Saturday morning, or even Monday first thing at a pinch. My flight is Monday arvo, so a Saturday delivery would be preferred."

"I don't want to upset Shona by leaving her party too early, Mark. She's gone out of her way to get her family to sort out some spare clothes in my size, as so far the investigation team can't find any of my stuff. I can't see how they would recognise what was mine, anyway. And we can't go down to the carpark ourselves because it's a crime scene and if anyone other than the police goes rummaging around, Powell's lawyers would have a field day if they found out and could get him off on a technicality."

"How?"

"By saying we had the opportunity to plant evidence."

"No, you're right, we wouldn't want that. Look, do you want to drive over to the community centre now? It's Chrissie Day, I doubt if there's much traffic around and all the blues are occupied at that bloody truck stop."

"Wow, yes, I really would love to drive your truck again."

"If it's quiet around there, and there's enough room to manoeuvre, you could practice turning and reversing with the trailer. I'm working on the idea of getting a provisional licence for you from a mate in Alice."

"Would this be a dodgy licence?"

"Nah, course not. This would be a proper licence, but I would have to be with you and awake all the time you're driving on a provo, but it means you can do as much or as little driving as you wish, and be legal, while we burn up the miles."

"You'd let me do that?" she asked, as we reached the truck and, with another flashing smile, she used her own key to unlock the door.

"Sure, we've some time to kill until noon, unless you want to get your head down straight away, I don't think either of us got much sleep last night."

"No, I am far too wound up to sleep yet. Why not have 30 minutes playing with the truck and then a couple of hours' nap? Not much I can learn after an hour or so and, being tired too, and I'm well used to power napping on location shoots."

"Bonza. Sounds a plan." I said as we climbed in. Bonnie retrieved the ignition key, from the mug where we left it, before confidently sliding into the driver's seat. I had to smile, she was like she was 'to the motor born'.

Once again, I marvelled at how well her backside moved in my old trackie daks. I mean, back when I was interested in girls, I always thought of myself as a leg man, but Bonnie's pair of buns were like an electromagnet that was permanently switched on around her, or around me. OK, I still remembered her knees from last night, so the legs were still in with a flip chance. Oh boy, was I in trouble! Wherever I looked on this sheila she was like a bloody billabong bather to a hungry croc.

Quite honestly, I should just drive the 30 hours straight to Darwin and deliver that load of paper and dump Bonnie at her Consulate on Thursday morning, if only to maintain the status quo of my sanity and not prolong the agony of my awakening sexual antennae. One particular indicative antenna was no longer permanently soft and I was sweating even though the sun had only been awake for a couple of hours or so and not yet banished the chill out of the night.

I sat in the shotgun seat and keyed the community centre coordinates from Shona's post-it note into the sat nav. It was literally only five minutes' drive away, so we could've made it without the sat nav using a simple left-right-left.

Bonnie started the engine and reversed us straight as a die out of the blue's station into the road until we had enough room to turn. Then she moved us off smoothly down the road, as easy as if we were in a Fiat 500 with the top down.

I was reminded of when I first learned to drive trucks with Uncle Pete. He taught me all I know about driving. I was only 15 then, and wasn't even old enough to drive a ute, but my uncle had me moving the trucks of all makes, sizes and load weights around the yard and helping load them up from an even tenderer age. When I was free after school, and during vacation time from University, I worked in Aunt Milly's truck yard doing every job that needed doing. By the time I was 21 I was already a qualified and fully licensed Truckie, doing short haul mainly, with the odd long run chucked in for good measure. I grew up without a father and my mother was an alcoholic in denial, so Pete and Aunt Milly, my only other rellies, basically took me in as their own. I found out later that Aunt Milly was unable to have babies, so in a way I was a godsend.

Back in the present, I had to admit, Bonnie was simply a natural driver, with a great sense of balance and spot on spacial awareness, an unusual gift in a sheila, in my experience. I guess when you're on a catwalk in some voluminous skirt, or because you have to stare off into the middle distance, pretending to be a walking weightless wet dream, you needed the confidence to know exactly where your feet were treading. Falling off a catwalk was probably as easy as falling off a log.

"Beaut. Just like a pro," I remarked delightedly on her manoeuvres, and she rewarded me with that broad smile that she was blessed with and I was cursed to witness, further upsetting my resolve and equilibrium.

The community centre had a big car park, but had a height barrier preventing trucks from entering. However, it did have a delivery bay at the back of the centre, presumably for delivery of beer barrels. It meant reversing down a narrow forty-metre concrete drive with a carefully negotiated 45 degree turn at the end.

I showed Bonnie just the once how to gauge where the end of the truck was and how to control the reverse direction of the trailer while turning, and she had a total of six goes at it. The first couple were not perfect but nor were they the expected disasters either. No, once she got it right on the third go, she really got it, and she was perfect on each of three more times.

She was so focused on her concentration, that her tongue poked out of her lips, and she looked too adorable to bear looking at. I felt really proud of her achievements though.

This was one tough sheila who could shrug off a really bad experience and clearly do whatever she set out to do; she was a force of nature. No wonder she stood up to those deadbeats who wanted to abuse her back at that truck stop. I thought to myself, 'Good onya, Bluey!'

"Right, we'll leave the truck here out of the way in the delivery driveway, Blue, so we can keep out of the way of the cars, and we'll have a clear space ahead of us if we get a chance to getaway clean."

"So, the only burning rubber we'll leave behind this time will be tyre tracks?" she laughed.

"That's right, Bluey," I grinned, "Just gun it up to 8000 revs and slip the clutch, and we'll be off like a peregrine on pep pills!"

I really liked this woman, she was not just a dumb, good-looking sheila, whose shit didn't stink. No, she was bright and funny and not so precious that she couldn't refer to her broken nails without an ounce of regret. I just had to concentrate and remind myself that I could only like her, even though my body was urging me to lick her! Bugger, this was the hardest thing I've had to get through. Twelve years with Maggie was a walk in the park compared with a few days with Blue Bonnie.

"Bluey? You referred to me yesterday as 'Blue' and now a couple of times more. So did Shona once or twice back at the station. Why is that?" she asked.

"In Oz, anyone with red hair is called 'Blue' or 'Bluey'. It's a term of friendly affection rather than an insult."

"Why? Where did that come from?"

"Don't exactly know, to be honno. The saying goes back a long way. It is not derogatory in any way, it's accepted as more a term of endearment, so a red-headed mate would quite cheerfully answer to 'Blue' or 'Bluey' as an affectionate nickname among his mates. If I wanted to insult a redhead, not that I would of course, you might be called a 'Bloodnut' or 'Ranga'."

"You have a completely different English language down here, some of it is so funny. Where do these words come from?"

"Well, most redheads over here are of Irish descent, I s'pose, mostly with blue eyes or green eyes, so it may be from that. A Blue is also another word for a fight and most of the Irish that came here after the Irish Famine in the 1850s were very poor labourers, who liked their drink and got into lots of fights—"

The blanket I slept in last night was on the floor by the seat, so I picked it up while I was speaking and spread it over my lap. The morning was already heating up outside and inside due to all the glass around the cab, so I didn't really need it, I was just tidying.

"Oh no, Mark, you are not sleeping out here again," she insisted, "You, we, have a perfectly comfortable bed back there. I insist you sleep in or on the bed if you insist. I can sleep under the covers if you don't want to risk touching a so-called sheila in your sleep. But you will sleep in your own bed for the next couple of hours. Come on."

She took my hand and pulled. I gave up without too much hassle. I was dog tired anyway and could really do with a kip. It was far too light in the front seats for comfort, facing east with the sun shining straight in. I was sure that as soon as I closed my eyes in bed, though, I'd be gone to the Land of Nod.

"Carry on what you were saying about redheads," she said.

She pushed me up through the curtains, climbed in and pulled them closed behind us with one hand. It was cooler lying on the bed out of the sun, I admitted to myself.

"Well, a nut is your head," I continued, "so 'a bloodnut' literally means 'a redhead'. The great ape orang-utan is orange, so 'Ranga' comes from that. We often put an 'a' or 'o' after shortened words in strine."

"Strine?"

"Australian ... we shorten words to as few syllables as we can get away with."

"Right. Well, I can see how being compared to an ape might not be acceptable to your average redhead, but you know, I think 'Bluey' sounds ... nice. I like it."

She shimmied across to the other side of the bed. Not wearing any undies under her daks, she had to leave her daks on, or so I thought at the time. I pulled off my trackie daks, as I did have me grundies on underneath, but I kept my tee shirt on. I took my watch off, too, adjusted the alarm to 12.45 and left the watch on the shelf on the side of the bed.

"Er, do you want me to sleep on top of the covers?" I asked, rather reluctant to join her underneath without her say-so.

"No, I only suggested that to dissuade you from sleeping rough in the driver's seat. It's really uncomfortable, and far too bright outside to properly catch up on your sleep and I don't want to feel guilty any more about taking up the whole of your bed. We are both dressed decently. If you get under the covers I could even sleep with my head on your shoulder, which would be nice. I would really like that, it would be of some comfort to me, and I have given you my promise already that my hands won't stray. I'm sure I can resist you for a couple of hours, well, at least I'm pretty sure." She smiled mischievously.

Yeah, I wasn't worried. I was sure she could resist me, easily enough even if I was the last bloke in the Nevernever. As I said at the outset, I'm just a bog standard bloke, one that couldn't even hold onto his bloody wife, after two years of courting and ten years married; so no worries about my desirability rating having any influence on any sheila's desirability index, especially one so beaut.

On the other hand, I was naturally attracted to Bonnie, well, being one of the most beautiful women that ever existed, what bloke with a pulse wouldn't be? But I knew that even in my prime, right, of maybe ten years earlier, I'd never have stood a Buckley's with a bonza sheila like Bonnie.

The whole issue was academic anyway, besides, I was far too much of a wuss to even think about having a go at her. The rejection would be both certain and highly embarrassing to us both, and would make the rest of the trip to Darwin to the broad end of unbearable. I was never one to even consider forcing myself on a lady, even when I was a teenager with raging hormones. Besides, no-one as ordinary as me would have any hope of doing the naughty with this girl.

"Oh, righto then, I think I can trust you with my virtue, Blue, so I'll get under the covers. To be honno, I'm really buggered, what with the lack of sleep, and all the tension since you pulled into the truck stop. Strewth, I could kip like a koala on spiked cocoa."

She pulled back the sheets by invitation and I slid myself under the cool blanket. Out of the sunshine, the sleeping box had remained relatively cool. As soon as I settled my head on the pillow, she laid a hand on my chest, cuddled up close and rested her lovely head on my shoulder, her freshly shampooed hair enveloped both my nostrils.

"Nuh-night, Mark, my wonderful white knight," she mumbled, already sounding sleepy as if she had switched off her adrenaline as soon as she hit the mattress.

"Night, Bluey, sleep well."

"Mmmm."

It seemed she only took half a dozen breaths before her breathing settled into a long, deep and even rhythm and she was clearly fast asleep. Over the next hour, she would snuffle and gently snort, wriggling herself deeper into me until her nose was next to my throat and I could feel the warmth draught of every exhaled breath. Her head was so close that my nose was buried in her hair and I could smell a hint of my shampoo and soap. I could feel her steady breathing, warm across my throat, and I feared that even if I was as still as a dead dingo, when she woke up she'd have to believe I was perving on her.

The truth was that I was the last person in the whole State of South Australia who'd consider cracking on with her, or with any girl for that matter, considering what I had been through with that bitch Maggie.

I must've dropped off somewhen, though, even if it was only for a few minutes. My alarm went off and I slept right through the bloody thing. Bonnie had to reach across me to turn it off. In doing so, one of her tee-covered tits, or it might well have been both, swept across and then returned back over my now wide awake and utterly stupefied face. Meanwhile, her leg brushed against my donger, which was as stiff to attention as a flagpole on ANZAC Day. She had to have noticed and I was mortified.

She casually settled her head back on my shoulder, her hand back palm down on my madly beating chest, while her naked knee continued to straddle my thigh and pressed itself hard against the obvious way my body betrayed my automatic reaction to her close proximity.

"Mmm, is that for me, or are you just ... bursting for a wee?" she asked dreamily, her voice barely above a whisper. I couldn't see her face, tucked tightly as it was into my shoulder, but I could imagine that she was smiling, probably even quietly laughing at my extreme embarrassment.

"Well, probably six of one, half a dozen of the other." I think I croaked, my throat as dry as a Pom's bath towel.

"Well, we better take care of that, hadn't we?" she suggested, whispering in that throaty voice that sent shivers up and down my spine. Now virtually every muscle in my body felt like they were in spasm.