Colly 3

         The light travels forever out west. On the coast, on a clear day, the horizon might appear a hundred miles away, but in reality three or four kilometres would have you out of sight. But up over the range, down from the tablelands where the world was flat, like the bottom of some giant prehistoric lake, the light just rolled on and on and on.
         Colly Hansen had tested this years ago as a younger man, before the army and the troubles since. He’d fallen asleep driving across the Hay Plains one night, trying to pull off a one night crossing from Sydney to Adelaide. In a modern car it might have been a quick fifteen hours, especially considering the better roads of today, but back then at least twenty four hours if you could handle it and carried enough fuel. Colly had stopped briefly at Narranderra, fueled up and taken in a quick truckies breakfast, ie: a Heart ice cream and a bottle of Coke, and kept on heading west, past Wadi Wadi Springs toward Echuca. The road was straight as a die, boring, monotonous, a swathe cut through the wheat that had hordes of field mice scampering across. Colly made a game of lining them up so that as he put one under his tires the next would be just leaving the starting boxes for its own mad dash. His best score in the nighttime light was seven in a row, seven  little crop ruining pests sent to God.
         Out there, the road ran straight for over sixty kilometres. But at one crucial spot, about twenty kilometres from the Ivanhoe turnoff, the road jogs oh so slightly to the left. The eastbound lane and the westbound line up perfectly, and a young gun tired as all heck and running on caffeine fumes might not notice the change. Colly hadn’t. His eyes had closed ten kilometres back, and aside from a gentle swerving that helped rock him to sleep, he had followed the road on its thrust westward, albeit now on the wrong side of the road.  Flashing lights woke him, and the distant sound of a truck horn. At one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, Colly’s eyes sagged open and he was dazzled by headlights that cut the black night sky to shreds. He over-reacted, panicked really, and sent the car into a slide across the blacktop of the highway and into the dirt, pulling up against a tuft of mallee scrub with the only damage being a couple of flattened treads on his tires and some serious sweat stains in his shirt. He’d sat there waiting, engine running, breathing like a mad runner, waiting for the truck to arrive from the opposite direction. It took forty five minutes, and the truck was going at least as fast as Colly had been.
        Forty five minutes.
        And here it was happening again. Older, hopefully wiser but still trying to push time and get somewhere he needed to be faster than his body was going to let him. He yawned deeply and shook his head. The road in front and behind was deserted. He popped the air conditioner button on and adjusted the vent to have the cool to cold air brush across his face. Better, but not much. He yawned again, but a little less forcefully. Like it or not, he was going to have to stop soon. Stop, revive, survive. His old mate Hoppy quoted that little maxim every holidays as he manned the Driver Reviver at Macksville with Boney, Walshy and Kelvin the Mudcrab.
      Don’t ask.
      You won’t like the answer.
      Stop. Revive.
      Survive.
      Yeah. That’ll do it.
      A fingernail moon hung in the cloudless sky off to his left and behind, casting little light. Colly flicked his headlights off and quickly squished his eyes shut, something Mashy had done when they were kids heading up the coast for the weekend. Mashy swore that it improved his night vision, and Colly supposed that to a certain extent it was true, at least until some toolbag in a Porsche came up from the opposite direction with his highbeams on, the 100 watters ripping into the fully dialated pupils of the unsuspecting road warrior and causing untold amounts of agony and several pairs of damp undies, until the car was brought to heel at the side of the road and vision allowed to clear.
      Nothing.
      Black against black, shadows hidden inside deeper shadows. Colly guessed himself to be about an hour and a half from the next truckstop, and he hoped he was going to make it. But something was glowing there right where the road crossed the curve of the earth. Lights. Big lights. Not the Min Min type, but mercury – or sodium-arc lights that would illuminate, say, a truck parking area.
      “ Yes,” he said quietly to himself. “ A quick dingoes, a feed, maybe a shower and a couple of hours kip in the sleeper.”
      And just like those lights from so many years ago, these grew closer painfully slowly. An hour, more or less, and Colly pulled the truck around a slight bend and off the road into a carpark. He moved between the few cars to the back of the truckstop, where the truck parking area was, away from the tourists and their Landcruisers and caravans and the idea that somehow they were moire important than the working man who brought their food to their shops every day.
      Colly shut the engine down, waited for the turbo timer to cut out and opened the door. He fell more than dropped from his seat to the ground, landing on his feet and catching the handrail mounted to the cab to stop him from kissing the asphalt,. His arse was numb, not that office worker kind of numb where they sit on their backsides all day and look at computer screens but numb. He pushed the door shut and locked it and shuffled toward the back door to the diner. Like all good truckstops, truck drivers had their own entrance, away from the maddening hordes of screaming whinging kids, wives and felt hatted pensioners doing the grey nomad thing.
      As expected, the screen door was unlocked, and Colly pulled it open to step inside. There was a ringing of a small budgie bell to alert the workers that someone was coming in. Colly let the door swing shut behind him and looked around. There were tables set up in a roped off area for drivers, all the tables unattended. In the main dining area there were maybe a dozen people. Not wanting to seen antisocial, no more than usual at least, Colly stepped over the dividing rope and sat at the long counter. A tired looking lady in a red and blue uniform wandered over, a pencil shoved into her hair behind her ear. Her name badge said Kayla, and Colly thought she’d either borrowed someone else’s shirt or she was the first Kayla invented. It was a young girls name, like the checkout chicks at Woolies. The little cutie at the ringroads service station was a Kayla, too.
      Kayla peered over the top of her glasses, a  tired smile that seemed genuine enough on her lips.
      “ What’ll ya have, luv?” she asked in that truckstop waitress voice they must do a tech course to get.
      Colly looked at the chalkboard menu.
      “ Can i get an ‘all day breakfast’ or does it have to be day?”
      The waitresses smile widened a little more.
      “ Be dawn in a couple of hours. I think we can sneak you in a little early. Coffee?”
      Colly nodded.
      “ Hot, thick and strong, three sugars and no milk.”
      Kayla made her notes on a pad, tore them off and turned to a hole in the wall that led to the kitchen.
      “ Big brekkie, chuck in extra bacon and egg, and a big coffee.”
      She turned back to Colly.
      “ You look hungry. No extra charge.”
      “ Thanks.”
      “ Got far to go?”
      “ Bourke, Bree, up to Charleville and a bit more than that.”
      Kayla pulled a face.
      “ Bugger. How long you been driving?”
      “ Melbourne.”
      “ Whoa. That’s dedication.”
      Colly shrugged. A bell rang and a hand held out a steaming mug of coffee through the hole in the wall. Kayla took the mug and passed it across to Colly, who sniffed it quickly and found it to be to his liking. Too many places gave shithouse coffee, over cooked, old crap. This was fresh, with the rim of crema around the top. He picked it up and sipped it, feeling the too hot liquid scald his lips and tongue.
      “ Be careful, luv,” Kayla said. “ I’m sure Ronny’s themometer is stuffed, because we have a few burnings with his coffee.”
      Colly shook his head and sipped again.
      “ No, it’s great. Just what I need.”
         Kayla pointed at him with her pencil.
         “ What you need is about eight hours sleep.”
         An alarm bell chirred, and headlights flashed in the front parking lot.
          “ You right to wrestle that by yourself?” Kayla asked.
         Colly nodded.
         “ Should be okay.”
         “ Good-oh. Food will be a few minutes yet. If you need anything, give me a yell.”
         She wandered off to the front register and watched the goings on outside. Colly turned around on his seat and looked around. Over by the windows in a booth he saw a youngish couple, maybe early twenties, hunched close together, facing each other across the table, chatting to themselves. It didn’t look too animated, but at this time of the morning who really wanted to be chatting in a diner in the middle of nowhere. Still, Colly thought that something there wasn’t right. He trusted his feelings. All too often they’d saved his hide from something nasty. Four years in jail made a man observant, and in touch with the mystical waves of energy that passed between people. It was either that or cop a knife in the back for some slight you weren’t even aware of committing. Eight years on and Colly still read the waves like he was still inside. It was no longer a skill, but a habit. Something hinkey was going on over with those two, but what he couldn’t say, but the youngish couple beared closer scrutiny if he decided to hang around for a while and rest.
      Further to the right, closer to the back actually, two women sat, older women, dour expressions on their face. They had the look of people who were expecting to be somewhere way way different than this, and maybe they were having car trouble or something, stranding them here until help arrived. Colly wondered if he should maybe offer assistance, but thought better of it. Both of the women glared at him but he held their gaze until they turned away, whispering something to each other. Another lesson learned from his time on Her Majesty’s pleasure; don’t show fear and don’t back down. The ladies continued to whisper their whispers.  Colly shrugged, drank his coffee and looked around some more. An older man, maybe in his late fifties sat by himself, reading a paper and drinking coffee. He must have felt the weight of Colly’s gaze upon him because he looked up and made eye contact, nodded shortly and went back to his paper, turning the page and snapping it flat with a flick of his wrist. Snobbish old prick, Colly thought, then immediately changed his viewpoint. Just another bloke on the road. How would he be id\f some big, rough looking bastard showed up and started eyeing him off?
      The automatic doors hissed open and Colly turned to see who the newcomers were. Four guys, dirty and scruffy in workclothes, their eyes bright with something more than the joy for life came in. They grabbed bags of chips, lollies and bottle of Coke and dumped it all at the register. Colly heard Kayla ask what they were up to.
      “ Headin’ down to Sydney for a couple of weeks,” the steadiest one said. He had a red rag tied across his bicep, something Colly found odd.
      “ Yeah,” the guy continued as his mates gathered more crap to eat. “ We got a month off, four grand bonus each and the address of some nice young ladies to visit off the internet.”
      The other three laughed the ‘hur hur hur’ laugh of the intoxicated male drongo and started to gather their stuff into their arms as the talkative one paid the bill for the food and fuel.
      “ You boys want a bag for all that?” Kayla asked.
      “ Nah, well be right.”
      “ We’ll see ya in a couple of weeks, eh.”
      Kayla nodded.
      “ Drive carefully,” she said as they staggered out the door.
      “ Fukken as if ...” one of them said, but Colly couldn’t tell which one.
      The doors slid shut as the kitchen bell rang again. Kayla came back and took the plate of food that was thrust through the hole in the wall. She sat it down in front of Colly, turned and grabbed some cutlery from a rack, picked up a couple of bread rolls and put them on a small plate, placing the lot neatly next to the meal. Three eggs, six or seven pieces of bacon, four sausages, baked beans, chips and a tomato were stacked on the plated. Colly’s mouth watered at the sight and smell.
      “ Tuck in before it gets cold, luv,” Kayla said before bustling away.
      And tuck in he did, ripping into the bacon and eggs, sopping up the gooey yolks with the bread rolls. Kayla called something through the hole in the wall and stepped back as a jug of coffee was thrust through. She carefully took it and went to the older man, who held his cup up for a refill. The two ladies declined, as did the youngish couple. Kayla took the pot back into the kitchen through a swinging door around near the register and Colly heard her chatting with the cook.
      The food was going down well, and Colly felt invigourated by it. Maybe he could punch on for another couple of hours before copping a nap. Both Kayla and the cook were laughing about something – probably the customers – and all was well with the world.
Colly worked his way down to where he could see the porcelain of the plate,, but it looked like the meal was going to beat him.  He needed something to lubricate it, and tomato sauce was the first and best thing to come to mind. He got up and walked over to the counter.
      “ Hullo?” he called toward the hole in the wall. “ Hullo.”
      Kayla’s face appeared at the hole.
      “ Need seconds, luv?” 
         “ No, but some sauce would be good.”
         Kayla stuck her hand out the hole and pointed to the left, toward an array of sauce bottles cleverly disguised as sauce bottles on the counter.
         “ Just help yourself, but remember to put it back for me, will you?”
         “ Thanks.”
         Kayla disappeared back into the inner most sanctum of the kitchen again. Colly picked up the red bottle and went basck to his seat. As he sat down and started to drown the remains of his meal in sauce he heard the voices of the youngish couple raise above a whisper. Colly threw a quick glance at them as he returned to his breakfast.
         “ You don’t have to do anything, Shell,” the male was saying, his voice pitched a little high and strained. He was leaning forward in his seat, his elbows on the table top. The girl, Shell (Michelle?), was leaning back, her hands in her lap. She was looking down toward the floor, and Colly wasn’t sure, but there looked to be the glisten of a tear-track down her cheek. She said something  quietly. The guy raised his hands and thumped them onto the tabletop. Colly stopped eating and looked ceiling-ward.
         “ Unreal,” he thought as he turned slowly in his chair. “ Just get comfortable, and we have a domestic.”
         He looked at the youngish couple, mostly on the guy, who seemed to be a little more agitated than the situation warranted. The guy in turn flicked a glance around the room to see who was taking notice, his gaze lingering on Colly for a moment before returning to the girl. He leaned further forward and hissed something to Shell, who nodded her head, and leaned forward again, lifting her elbows to the tabletop and resting her head in her hands. The guy looked back at Colly.
         “ What?” he demanded, bristling like a bantam rooster.
         “ Nothing.”
         Colly started to turn back in his seat.
         “ Yet.”
         “ Just butt out mate. It’s none of your business.”
         Colly stopped, then turned back. The bantam rooster had slipped along the booth seat to the edge. Colly eyeballed him, revised his earlier estimate. Twenty two or three, bad attitude, probably coming of a little marijuana high and feeling a tad aggressive. Fair enough, what people did in their own place and time was none of Colly’s business, but when it intruded on his peace and quiet, it became a part. He stared back at the young gun, impassive yet stern.
         “ Keep it quiet and it’ll stay that way.”
         The young gun sneered an evil sneer as the girl reached out a hand to touch his arm. He shrugged her off and turned back to Colly.
         “ Just feed your face and keep quiet. You’ll live longer.”
         Colly closed his eyes and shook his head.
         “ Why me,” he muttered quietly. “ Why do they see a big guy and go all tough and macho?”
         He opened his eyes and stared hard at the young gun.
         “ Just keep it down, okay?”
         The young gun sneered again.
         “ Yeah, whatever.”
         Young Gun slid back in his seat and Colly turned back to his now cold dinner. The two older ladies were still muttering to themselves. The man with the paper lowered his eyes back tom his paper, turned the next page and snapped it down fast.
        “ Maybe there’s a microwave about,” he thought.
        Kayla might be in the mood to do him another favour and give it a quick warm up. He looked for her and saw her standing at the door to the kitchen, looking in his direction, her eyebrows raised.
         “ Any chance of a warm up?” Colly asked, pointing at his plate.
         “ ‘Course.”
         She strolled over and picked up the plate.
         “ Ronny!” she called through the hole in the wall. “ Throw this into the mike for a minute, will you?”
         “ Did he go and smash that young prick?” Ronny called back.
         Kayla passed the plate through as Colly shook his head. 
         “Jesus,” he thought. I’m a pacifist.  “ Why does everyone take one look at me and expect me to go berko all the time.”
         “ Just warm it up, Ronny,” Kayla said as Ronny took the plate.
         She turned back to Colly.
         “ Sorry.”
         Colly didn’t reply. He’d heard it all before. Everytime he ended up in one bizarre situation or another there was always some little redneck out to make a name for himself. In prison, after the usual getting to know you dance routine, everyone left him to himself. He made it plain and clear that he was there to do his time and stay out of any party politics that might abound. The rest of the inmates had accepted that, and after one trial run had their man face first into a toilet bowl, they left him alone. Even the intended hitman treated him with enough respect, once he came back from the medical ward a few weeks later.
         The outside electronic bell rang again, and a set of headlights flashed across the front doors.
         “ Starting to get busy, “ Kayla said as she moved across to the till area.
        She punched some buttons on the console to release the locks on the pumps and watched as the customer filled his vehicle. From inside the kitchen came another ‘ding’ that announced Colly’s food was again back to temperature. The outside customer appeared to be taking his/her time, so Kayla ducked back, grabbed then plate as it appeared out the hole in the wall and placed it back in front of Colly.
        “ Hot Hot Hot,” she said, waving her hand in the air.
        The front doors slid open and a man dressed in a dirty jeans jacket and dirtier jeans, with ripped boots on his feet, greasy dark hair cascading down to his shoulders and dark glasses covering his eyes. That interested Colly. Immediately he was reminded of that bad song from the eighties, and the old eight track cartridge in his head started playing the song.
      I wear my suuunglases at nite ... sumthin sumthin sumthin feels so right.
        Maybe.
        Mr Clean grabbed some chips, a couple of bottles of drink from the fridge, demanded some cigarettes, a cake and a sandwich from the display. Kayla put all the food into a box, rang it up on the till.
        “ Hundred an eighteen dollars, luv.”
The guy stood there, then looked around. He grabbed the box and stuffed it under his arm.
        “ Put ut on me tab, eh?
        “ Kiwi,” Colly thought.
        Kayla made a grab at the box, leaning forward, and in a flash Colly saw the immediate future flash through his mind. The guy dropped the box back on the counter and grabbed Kayla’s arm, dragging her forward and pressing her down on the counter top. Shell screamed, and the two older ladies cried out and huddled together. The man with the paper sat bolt upright, forgetting his paper. The local news was being made right here in front of his eyes. With his free hand, the thief pulled a wicked looking knife from under his jacket and held it against Kayla’s throat.
        “ Opun the tull, shove the munney un the box.”
        He gave Kayla a good shake and pressed down with the knife. Kayla struggled to reach around to the till. The newspaper reader started to get up. Mr Clean turned slightly toward him.
        “ Move an’ I’ll fukkin’ kull her. I’ll cut her fukken froat.”
        The man slowly sat down again.
        “ What are you doing ...” one of the older ladies started, her voice high and tight.
        “ Shut the fuck up you old cow or I’ll stuck her, and thin you.”
        The older ladies squeaked and fell silent. The robber bounced Kayla off the counter again.
        “ Hurry up, butch. Greb the cush and put ut un the box.”
        Kayla struggled to reach the keyboard of the till, but managed to hit the no-sale button and open the register. She grabbed the notes by the handful and dropped them into the box, twisting her arm as she did so to move around with the lummox holding her down. Colly looked to the hole in the wall and saw Ronny the cook looking out, a walk-about phone in his hand. He was whispering to someone on the other end of the line, hopefully the cops, and not a story editor from New Idea.
        “ What are you lookin’ ut, you bug pruck,” the robber screamed, spit flying from his mouth. His sunglasses had slid down his nose, his dark eyes wide in the bright lights. Colly realised he was the one being spoken to. The thief thumped Kayla into the benchtop again. Kayla cried out as her arm popped.
        “ Oh, bugger this.”
        Colly grabbed his plate and flung it under hand, frizbee-like at the robber. It was still hot from the microwave and burned his hand, but he put every ounce of muscle he had into the throw. Steaming remnants of bacon, eggs, sausage, chips and a big dollop of baked beans sprayed out from the plate, spattering the walls and floor. The plate, spinning straight and true smacked into the robbers head, just above his left eye. The robber s head cracked back and he let go of Kayla as he dropped to the floor. She collapsed to the countertop again, and she knocked the box with the snacks and cash onto the floor. The knife went spinning off behind the chips and snacks.
        “ Right.”
        Colly pushed himself up from his chair and strode around to the front service area. Kayla was getting up from the coi8nter, her face grey. She held her right arm close to her body.
        “ You okay?” Colly asked.
        Kayla nodded, biting her lip. On the floor, the robber was writhing around, holding his head and screaming obscenities. Colly bent down and grabbed the Kiwi by his long, greasy hair and dragged him to his feet. The guy was nearly the same height as Colly, but only half the size. He screamed and grabbed at his hair.
        " Fukkin lut me go!” he screamed.
        Colly balled up a fist, pulled back and smashed the thief in the face, mashing his lips against his teeth, knocking out the front two. The guy spat blood at Colly, so Colly gave him another one, this time spreading the Kiwi’s nose across his face like an overripe strawberry. Amazingly, the guy kicked out at Colly’s stomach.
        “ Right oh then,” Colly said.
        Still holding the guys hair, Colly flung the robber back against the sliding doors. As the robber rebounded, Colly took hold of him again, kicked him in the thigh to knock him to his knees, dragged him to the counter and slammed the thief’s face into the micro corry front three times. All the fight fled from the Kiwi’s body and he sagged down, stopped from hitting the floor because Colly still held him up by his hair.           
         “ You going to hold him up forever?”
         Colly turned to find the newspaper man next to him.
         “ I’ve got some cable ties in the car. They’ll hold him.”
         Colly nodded, and the man went outside to get them. Ronny was out of the kitchen, holding Kayla.
         “ You want me to fix it?” Colly asked.
         Kayla nodded, tears in her eyes. Her glasses were cracked and hanging off one ear. Colly came around the counter and felt Kayla’s shoulder.
         “ It’s just popped. I can get it back in, but it’ll hurt.”
         “ Are you a doctor?” Ronny asked.
         “ You want her to wait for one to show up?”
         “ Just do it,” Kayla gasped.
         Colly turned her around, felt some more, adjusted his grip on her body, and wrenched. Kayla gasped and collapsed in Colly’s arms. She vomited onto the floor as Ronny danced back. Colly lifted her back up and turned her around. He picked Kayla up and sat her on the counter.
         “ Better?” he asked, ducking down to look in her eyes.
         Kayla gave a wan smile and shook her head.
         “ Hurts like a bastard, actually.”
         “ I did warn you.”
         She nodded and leaned forward against Colly’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her and looked at Ronny.
         “ Got a blanket or something?”
         Ronny nodded.
         “ Out back. For the drivers if they need one. I’ll get it.”
         Ronny ran back into the kitchen as the sliding doors opened and the newspaper man returned, holding up some of the biggest cable ties Colly had ever seen.
         “ Cops use them as emergency handcuffs.”
         The newspaper man knelt next to the robber and bound his wrists behind his back with two ties. As a precaution he also tied the man’s two thumbs together.
         “ He’s not getting out of that.”
         The newspaper man got up off the floor and came up to the counter.
         “ How is she?” he asked.
         “ She is starting to feel good, leaning up here against my hero,” Kayla said. “ Could have done without the preamble, though.”
         “ Do you want me to get you down.”
         “ Don’t you dare,” Kayla said. “ This is the closest I’ve been to a man in two weeks.”
         Colly laughed, Kayla hissed in pain.
         “ Sorry.”
         Ronny came back with the blanket and lay it gently across Kayla’s shoulders. Colly moved away as Ronny tucked it further around Kayla.
         “ Cops are still ten minutes away,” Ronny said.
         “ They get here when they get here,” Colly said. “ How’s the arm?”
         “ Like someone tried to chop it off with a hacksaw.”
         “ Yeah, and it’ll stay like that for a while. When the ambo’s get here they’ll strap it and probably run you to hospital for x-rays.”
         The robber on the floor wriggled a bit and groaned.
         “ So long as I don’t share a ride with him,” Kayla said.
         Lights flashed against the walls from outside. Colly felt a finger tap him of the shoulder. He turned his heads as best he could and saw it was the sour one of the two older ladies.
         “ Do you think the police will need us?” she said.
         “ Probably,” Colly replied, trying to turn a little further without disturbing Kayla. “ They’ll probably want your statements as to what happened. Cops are funny like that.”
         “ Our lift has arrived.”
         She pointed outside. Just leave your names and contact numbers, I suppose. Ronny here can take them. That way you can still make statements if they need you too.”
         The woman nodded. She looked at Colly, her lips thin, her gaze stern.
         “ Shit,” he thought, “ A civil libertarian.”
         “ Thank you,” she said.
         Colly stood there, slightly stunned as the woman returned to her friend. He watched them pick up their belongings and head for the sliding doors. As they rasped open, the other woman stopped.
         “ Just kill him and drop him in the nearest creek.”
         She turned and followed her friend out the door. Colly heard car doors open, then shut as the sliding doors closed. The lights outside flashed again as the car turned beneath the bowser awning and drove away. The newspaper man returned to his paper. Ronny grabbed his coffee pot and ran over to fill the mans mug. He came back to the counter and held it up to Colly.
         “ Want one. On the house?”
         “ Kind of got my hands full, but thanks.”
         “ Don’t you dare make him let go, Ronny. I’m warning you.” Kayla said in a dreamy voice.
         Everyone stayed quietly until the cops arrived. The hood on the floor woke up briefly but went back to sleep when Colly let Kayla down into a chair and popped him one on the chin again. The ambulance arrived maybe five minutes after the two police men entered the diner and looked around. They dragged the robber outside and dropped him on the steps outside, making sure he was still breathing before coming back in to take statements and details. The police spent a little extra time going over Colly’s details, taking the registration number of both the truck and the trailer, questioning him about his movements for the next few days and running back and forth a couple of times to their car.
         “ Keep in contact, Mr Hansen,” the younger of the pair said as he dropped his notebook back into his pocket.
         The ambulance guys went over Kayla witha fine tooth comb. They checked her arm and stated she needed to go to the hospital. Kayla put up a protest.
         “  I’m fine. I just need a few hours sleep and ...”          
         She winced and sucked in a lungful of air between clenched teeth as the paramedic tested the range of movement in her arm.
         “ ... maybe a couple of Panadol.”
         “ Just go with them,” Colly said.
         “ But ...”
         “ Just go.”
         Colly turned as Ronny came back from the kitchen, holding the walkabout phone again.
         “ Boss ain’t happy about locking the place up.”
         “ Forensic bloke will want to go over tha place, not that there’s much to find.”
         Ronny pointed up to a small camera mounted up in the corner of the ceiling.
         “ We’ve got a record of everything.”
         “ You going to be right?”
         Ronny nodded and slipped the phone under the counter near the register.
         “ I’m good.”
         Kayla was still protesting weakly as the paramedics loaded her into the ambulance. The cops had already dropped the awakening robber into the back of their ute and were reporting in to their base. The newspaper guy was packing his stuff and getting ready to leave.
         “ Been nice working with you,” he said as he left.
         Colly looked around the nearly deserted diner. Only the youngish couple remained, and neither looked happy. That itch in Colly’s spine was back, daring him to ignore it.
         “ You two going to be long?” Ronnie asked them.
         Young Gun glared at him.
         “ Yeah, we’re goin’”
         The youngish ones pushed their chairs back, scraping them on the floor. Young Gun grabbed the girl’s arm. She reacted by pulling away, slapping his hands away.
         “ Don’t grab me Brett. I hate that when you grab me.”
         “ Just get out in the bloody car.”
         The girl bristled, looked quickly at Colly, then back to Young Gun.
         “ No.”
         The guy looked like he’d been slapped.
         “ What?”
         “ I’m just over it, Brett. I’m going to wait here for a ride.”
         She flicked another glance to Colly. Young Gun caught it.
         “ What? With that prick?”
         “ Maybe.”
         Young Gun’s face was turning an interesting shade of red. Colly bit his lip.
         “ More bloody trouble,” he thought. “ I have to get rid of that sign on my forehead that says FREE SHOT.”
         Young Gun grabbed at the girl again but she evaded his hand. Colly balled his hand into a fist. The girl turned and stormed out of the diner. Young Gun waited a moment before following. Colly watched the girl walk up to the cops and start talking to them, waving her hands around. Young Gun quickly joined in, pointing back at the diner, in Colly’s direction in particular. The cop listened impatiently, shook his head and said something that set Young gun right off. He took a swing at the cop, who smoothly swatted the punch away, spinning Young Gun around and pushing him forward onto the bonnet of the police car. The cop pulled Young gun’s arm up behind his back in a hammer lock, leaned over close and said something into Young Gun’s ear. The girl started shrieking something about police brutality, which started the robber kicked and yelling in the back of the police car. Both police stated yelling things about jail, obstructing and assaulting police. It grew into a loud slanging match. In the end, Young Gun was allowed up off the bonnet. He and the girl stalked away, vowing to call lawyers and the hounds of hell onto the New South Wales police department.   
         “ Bloody idiots, “ Ronny said.
         “ Takes all kinds to make a world,” Colly said. “ Why they come into my life has me stuffed.”
         Ronny chuckled.
         “ Well, I’m off,” said Colly as the police got into their car and headed off. “ You need a lift anywhere?”
         Ronny shook his head.
         “ Gotta wait for the boss to show. He’ll be here in a minute.”
         He held his hand out to Colly.
         “ Thanks.”
         Colly took it and shook hands with Ronny.
         “ Someone had to.”
         “ I guess.”
         Colly said goodbye and went out to his truck. The youngish couple were still in the parking lot, yelling at each other in their weirdly painted van. He kept to the shadows as best he could to avoid being seen by them. The night was a shot duck so far. He didn’t need round two in a domestic added to the programme. And after all this there was no way he was getting that couple of hours sleep.
         He got into the truck and fired up the engine, waiting for it to settle into its familiar rumbled before releasing the park brake and moving back out toward the road. He honked the air horns as he passed Ronny standing at the opened doors of the diner. Ronny waved, stepped back into the diner and allowed the doors to close. Colly saw Ronny in the side mirror reach up and lock the doors. He rode the bump onto the road and turned north into the darkness.