PART TWO - Ninety-Six

“PART TWO:

On the Bus

“ . . . there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.”

—William S. Burroughs”

NINETY-SIX

Trees along the highway like the skeletons of contortionists hired to distract commuters from the rising temperature outside. Bushfires devastated coastal New South Wales earlier that year, resulting in the death of four people. Over three hundred houses were lost. Many thought it nothing but blind luck that James Bridge escaped damage. Its townsfolk sat drinking beer on their front lawns, watching the skies roll brown as others less fortunate burned to death. Denial was the best distraction because bad things didn’t happen in places like this. Not in The Bridge.

Airwaves still brimmed with news of Anna Wood, the Sydney girl who died in October from water intoxication after taking Ecstasy. There was a sense that something bad was seething in the cities, something which was yet to touch these country suburbs.

Jed Frost, Liz’s brother, begged to differ. Anna’s death gave pills some press and as a result, business was a-boomin’.

On television were ongoing memorials for New South Wales State MP John Newman, shot outside his home in Cabramatta, the first political assassination in Australian history since the seventies. People changed the channel and watched Full House instead.