Red Dog by Louis de Berni'Res

Author:Louis de Berni'Res [Berni'Res, Louis de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Historical, Travel
ISBN: 9780099429043
Google: oodgK-tM50YC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 3396
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1999-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

HAS ANYONE SEEN JOHN?

John bought a nice powerful motorbike because, although he already had a car, he liked the idea of riding around on hot days with the breeze blowing in his face. It was great for short journeys, as long as you weren’t carrying much with you, and anyway, the girls quite liked a man with a motorbike as long as he wasn’t a crazy driver. Once or twice he put Red Dog on the seat in front of him, with his paws on the petrol tank, but he didn’t seem to like it very much, greatly preferring the comfortable seats of trucks, buses and cars. When John kickstarted his bike, Red didn’t make any moves to come too, as he always did when his master started up the car. Instead he lay in front of the door, waiting for John to come back, or he consulted his encyclopaedic memory, and took a stroll to one of the houses where somebody might have fed him years before. Sometimes in the fierce summer he went to the shopping centre where Patsy had once tried to kick him out, and lay in the air-conditioned cool of one of the shops, seeming to know by instinct when John was due to return.

One night John went to have a meal at the house of a couple of friends, and he took the bike even though it was July and the nights had been very cold indeed. Red Dog was out on patrol, looking for other dogs to fight with and cats to chase, and by the time he came back, John had already gone to dinner.

What happened after that dinner will always be a mystery.

John had some beers, but he wasn’t too drunk to drive. He was in a happy mood, because of the company of his friends and the good meal they had given him, and there didn’t seem anything wrong with the bike as he started it up and drove off down the road. His friends waved him goodbye and went back inside to clear up and go to bed.

There is a sharp bend on the road coming into Dampier, and the turning is very abrupt in the place where John had to turn off. In the undergrowth around the verges are heaps of the great red rocks that make the landscape of the Pilbara so particular.

John never made it round the bend of the road. Perhaps he misjudged his speed, perhaps there was a stone in the road that made him skid, or perhaps the beer had affected his judgement more than he realised. Perhaps the cable on his accelerator jammed. It is just as likely that a wallaby suddenly hopped out in front of him, and he tried to swerve to avoid it.

Whatever it was, John lost control of the motorbike, hit the kerb and went flying through the air. As bad luck and destiny would have it, he landed on a rock, which caved in his chest.

No-one knows

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