Black tribal star design with spiral centre

The fuel gauge on the Kenning truck gave up somewhere past Barstow, so Dad has taken to steering by the old brass compass he keeps wedged under the dashboard. You'll laugh, but the thing has an eight-pointed star scratched around its rim, and he swears the needle sits truer when the sun is high. We've been crawling along the road to Tonopah with the windows down and the radio dead for two days now.

The little spiral at the centre is where he started cutting. Grandad made the compass in a shed in Doncaster and never once explained the coil, only that a man who wants to go somewhere has to keep one eye on the middle. Dad took that as gospel. Every time we reach a fork he stares at the spiral for a full minute before he picks a road, and every time I want to tell him the spiral is just a bit of brass with a dent in it.

Last night the signpost at the dead cattle grid had been shot through, both arms hanging by a wire. Dad laid his thumb on the spiral and said we'd follow the coil inward, which made no sense at all until the track bent and brought us to a fence post with a tin mug chained to it. Under the post, a seep of water had darkened the sand into a black star with long, thin rays spreading out from it.

Bring the good matches when you come. We're camped beside the mug, and Dad has finally let the engine cool.

Love, Jo