An engine roared up behind him then slowed down. ‘Want a lift, mate?’ a voice yelled above the chugging of the motor.
A bronzed, rough-hewn face grinned at him from the window of a battered ute, a tattooed arm resting on the window. Reuben hesitated, touched by the offer, but wasn’t in the mood for company.
‘Thanks but I’ll keep walking.’
‘No worries. Have a good life.’
He sped away in a cloud of dust. Have a good life? It wasn’t until Reuben boarded the train at Wacol that he realised they were kind words from a stranger, to a man trudging along a lonely road two kilometres away from a prison.
As factories, warehouses and drab shacks in weed-choked yards slid past him, his mind churned over the events of the past month. One of the few good outcomes was that although he hadn’t yet bee
