Juniper Flat · Meet the driver

Blue Comet

At the wheel: Sonny Leung

Datsun Fairlady 2000

The distance to the window

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Night porter Sonny Leung had a fine view of planes from the Juniper Flat freight office. He drew their paths, guessed wrong about half of them, and learned to mark what he could actually see.

Juniper Flat, 05:10

The freight office has two clocks. The one by the telephone is right. The one next to the door has run seven minutes fast since Sonny knocked it off with a bag of oranges. This morning he checked both before going out with his work shoes in his hand. Leave them on and he'll bring siding dust into the Datsun. Change too early and he'll have to carry it from the office to the lot anyway. He changes on a step at the threshold.

Sonny used to watch the last morning plane from the window after he filed his shift sheet. He drew a little line across the paper each time and guessed what town the light was headed for. His colleague Dottie began writing the destinations on the back once she got interested enough to look them up. One line on his drawing really did point to Latchford. The light happened to be from a crane.

First closed circuit, 06:40

Dottie came to the track for his first private test, armed with a folding chair and a second pair of dry socks. Sonny had driven the Datsun Fairlady 2000 around a short training strip many mornings. The little track ended at a window beyond which he could see the next street. Here the first bend hid most of the course.

On his first drive he stared down the straight, aiming for a distant door. The Datsun went wide of a join in the track, and he was still thinking about the join when he reached the turn. Dottie couldn't tell from her chair what had gone wrong. She had seen where his helmet pointed, though. He drew her a picture using the back of the sock wrapper. She put marks where the turn had been visible to her and discovered the two drawings disagreed about almost everything.

“This one's an airline route. Unless it lifts pallets, in which case I'll be back in a minute.”

Sonny Leung · About the lights outside the freight office.

Hill Shed, 10:25

By the time he took the diagrams to Jade Fang, the original had a ring from a coffee mug and a damp patch no one wanted to ask about. Rin had a better question: what was he looking for where the pavement changed color? He showed her how the wheel had gone over it. She asked him to draw the next seam instead.

Their Datsun notes now occupy opposite sides of a pad. Sonny writes down the seam, shade or joint that would tell him a turn is coming up. Rin is liable to add the place she noticed an unexpected change in how her own car felt. He can't use every mark on a run. That used to bother him enough to read the whole pad again before getting in. Now he leaves himself two entries and gives the page to someone else.

Homebound, no entry yet

Sonny is saving up days off for a long practice booking that includes changing light. He'd like to know whether he can carry the same sense of distance from early morning all the way to dusk. The trouble with a night job is that the deliberate part of your day can collide with everyone else's breakfast. His partner Ben has drawn a line through two proposed Saturdays because they promised to help friends move house. The booking slip has a blank marked alternate date. Sonny is actively resisting the urge to put all of spring in it.

He has almost made peace with the fast clock at work. On mornings he is driving, he turns its face to the wall. Dottie turns it around at lunch and checks the lot for the Fairlady.

“Two marks, please. If I have three I'll spend the whole straight thinking about the third.”

Sonny Leung · Handing his pad over at practice.

Mic at the pits

The moving light

Mack Was that a plane?

Sonny Leung I drew its route for three nights. Dottie finally drove me over there. It was a crane unloading potatoes.

Mack Frequent flyer, then.

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