by Ryn Shell
He was getting so active, a real scallywag of enthusiasm and hard to keep track of at times. A shiver went through her at the vision of his dashing between trees in his Batman suit. She needed to remind Trevor—they had to divert funds from the nursery to fence in the new dam.
She’d diversified from berries to ensure there would always be produce or root stock to sell. Trevor took stock into the Queen Victoria Market several times a week. It fetched a higher price there than she got at any of the grow-it, make-it or bake-it markets held in the hills during the weekends. Together, with both their efforts, they just made ends meet.
She reached the top of the rise that overlooked the farm gate and View Road and noticed a familiar truck parked there. She’d been asleep when Trevor had driven up to the home. A ripple of annoyance spread through her that he’d not mentioned that truck being there. She did not want to see Linton Fife ever again. Trevor might be more brother than a husband, but he was the one who’d stood by her and had supported her and Carl. Not even a card had come for Carl on his birthday from his rat of a father. No word from him in four years—and now his truck near her gate.
She sighed and swept her eyes around the land. The earth was lit by soft golden sunlight as the last of the fog had dissipated. There was movement beside the firewood stack. She glanced away fast. Then realised—too late, she’d already been seen looking at him. Rose’s eyes slowly moved back and her gaze rested on the tall man leaning on an axe handle. A large pile of freshly chopped wood sat on one side of the track.
Rose negotiated the tractor beside the woodpile. “I hate to admit it, but that’s a welcome sight on a cold day.”
“The woodpile or me?” Linton asked.
She cut the motor. “Woodpile,” Rose said curtly and applied the brakes. She jumped down from the tractor and began throwing the wood into the trailer tray.
Linton joined her, and they made short work of it by working as a team, Linton picking up several cut timber logs at a time and handing them to Rose. She loaded them into the tray as he stooped for more.
“Damn stupid thing to do, to chop wood while wearing gumboots.” Rose brushed wood dust off her hands on to the side of her jeans. “You should use steel-reinforced toe boots for that job. But you always were immature.”
“Damn stupid thing to go walking on a late autumn’s morning.” Linton smiled. “I darn near froze my—”
“That’s if you’ve got any balls,” Rose snapped. “No room in the tractor seat for you. Best walk back. Trevor can put on the kettle and rustle up some scones for you.”
“It will be good to sit and talk to you both.” Linton realised he meant it. Being close to her, hearing her voice—the joy beat out the pain.
“I’ll be working.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not interested in remembering old times.”
“Or old friends?” Linton folded his arms and grinned.
“Who needs enemies with friends like you?” She studied him. Sandy blond locks, like Carl’s. Both of them in need of a haircut. It infuriated her that he roused—something—she wasn’t quite sure what. A familiar feeling similar to when she thought of Carl—but it wasn’t maternal emotion. Gosh, he confused her. He was so darn good looking, and she didn’t want to take any notice of him. It angered her that he’d deliberately flaunted his physical powers at her with his macho display. Standing beside the woodpile he’d chopped—just like a freaking bower bird. Just another arrogant male, showing off his collection of bits ‘n’ pieces to impress the female.
Linton looked at her keenly, seeking to break through her ice. “I have heard that farmers need bad weather to complain about, or they get mighty unsociable.”
Rose roared the tractor engine and manoeuvred it to puff exhaust fumes at Linton.

He watched as she drove the tractor down the hill and single-handedly unloaded the cut logs near the kitchen door. She remounted, gave a stern glare up the hill to where he stood. Then she steered towards a low-lying paddock where dam water glinted between forest trees.
She was gone from his sight along with his breath. He gasped to recover. The image of Rose had not diminished; it was clearer than ever. His Rose needed no cosmetic enhancement; her unpainted lips were as bright as her eyes. Her eyelids heavily laden with long, thick lashes. Both her mouth and eyes stirred a yearning within him. If not for the venom in her voice, he might have forgotten to withhold himself and kissed her. She’d smelled of soap and a trace of tea rose—the perfume he’d chosen for her. More important than the physical attraction to her looks was the rekindling of the kinship of spirit he’d always felt with her.
Linton had studied every movement and flow of her body and limbs and every layer of colour and light in her expressive eyes. Was he kidding himself? Had he seen a reaction to his presence that contradicted the coldness of her words?
Bloody stupid! She was right—he was bloody stupid. She was bloody ungrateful too. Not a word of thanks for the funds he’d been sending them every payday. Linton kicked a sod of dirt. What had compelled him to hang around? It hadn’t been his initial intention to meet up with Rose again. Something primitive had taken over his senses. Yes, she still had that effect on him. Turning away from the farmhouse, he strode between rows of dormant tree peonies to the outer fence, crawled under a wire and made a quick sprint for his truck.
As he drove, music failed as a distraction; she stayed with him—every inflection of her voice, each turn of her fingertips, and the sensation when her hand had brushed his as they transferred a split timber log.
Linton turned radio channels. The news. That’s better.
Sirens blared behind him. Linton glanced in the rear-view window to see a police car speeding towards him. Ahead of him, two police cars approached and blocked the road.
Cripes! Where did they all come from? He hit the brakes. The police vehicles barely allowed him space to pull a fourteen-wheeler over.
Lights flashed—yelling: “Get out of the truck! Get your hands on the bonnet!”
Linton flung the door open, his long legs extended, and he sprang out to land with a thump on the ground. Dust rose and the officer stepped back and coughed.
The radio announcer said, “NASA plans to send astronauts to Skylab to fix the damaged—”
A uniformed police officer threw open Linton’s truck door; turned the radio off. “It’s all right, Carl. You can stop playing hide-and-seek now.”
“What?” Linton moved to place his hands on the side of the truck.
Someone behind was frisking him. “Don’t move!” they yelled close to his ear.
Linton craned his head to watch as three men flung his bedding and gear out from the sleeping bay behind the driver’s seat.
A policeman grabbed his arm. “Where is he?” His voice anxious.
“Who?” Linton shook. The police were not intent on harming him. He could see the stress on all of their faces. What would distress grown men, men experienced in emergency situations to this degree? He instinctively knew. Hide-and-seek. Had to be a kid. My boy Carl. Linton heard a cry of anguish. “What’s happened to Carl?” His cry.
No longer following instructions, he spun and thrust the officer who attempted to restrain him aside. “What’s happened to my boy?” Linton took no notice of the calls for him to stop as he raced up the road towards the farm. Raced to Rose. He raced down the farm driveway.
Rose saw him and leaped from the step, agitation evident in her movements.
“Rose,” Linton screamed. His breath came in labouring bursts as he sped over the ground at twice the speed of the fittest police officer pursuing him.
Rose rushed towards the police. “Leave him alone!” Her arms flailed about over her head. “Linton’s not going to hurt me!”
Linton and Rose’s arms met—then dropped to their sides. An interchange of grief and fear conveyed.
“What’s happened?” Linton swallowed.
Sombre-faced police surrounded them, hands at their sides
as they observed the interchange.
Trevor entered the group and stood by Rose’s side, his arm circling her waist. “I checked on Carl when he didn’t—. He wasn’t in his bed.”
Rose placed her hand on Linton’s arm. “We’ve been searching.” She shook her head.
“No sign of him?” Linton grabbed Rose’s hand. He wanted to hug her, give her the comfort he should be allowed to give the mother of his child. He restrained himself. Rose would need to give him that cue. It wasn’t his right to use this moment to become intimate. He hated being concerned about propriety at this moment, when he needed Rose to know he shared her distress.
Linton and Trevor’s parents approached. The police stepped away from Linton. All eyes were fixed, expectantly, on Brian and Jean Fife’s terror-stricken faces.
7
At the sight of Brian and Jean Fife’s hopeless expressions, a feeling of dread hit Rose so strongly she almost collapsed to the ground. Linton’s arms encircled and lifted her back on to her feet.
Brian stepped forward, indicating with one hand for Linton to step back. He took over and supported Rose against him. His head bowed over Rose’s. “We found Carl’s footprints.”
Her eyes lifted, connecting to his, pleading.
“At the dam water’s edge,” Brian whispered hoarsely. “There’s a team of young people there. They will find him.”
Rose moaned softly. “He wouldn’t go in the water without me.”
Linton urgently asked, “Can he swim?”
“He learned to swim last summer. He will be all right.” Rose wrapped her arms about her head and rocked. “He’s got to be. He knows basic water safety rules. He knows to float on his back if he gets tired swimming.”
Linton had seen and heard enough. Not one for hanging around holding a pity party, and incompetent where it came to knowing how to fix screwed up human relationships, Linton chose action for his emotional release.
After a brief touch of this hand to Rose’s arm, he quickly blurted, “I’ll get him,” and he was off, racing downhill across paddocks.
Trevor and Rose followed, they long jumped over market garden beds and hurtled two fences rather than take the longer route via the gates to reach the dam.
By the time they arrived, the water’s edge was surrounded by volunteers. All the neighbours and many of the hill’s community had come to help.
The dam was a relatively large one for a small farm property due to a regularly topped-up supply of water from a local creek that flowed all of the time, aside from an occasional extremely dry season. Due to Rose and Trevor having preserved most of the natural surrounding rainforest, there was minimal evaporation; as such, their private dam provided a constant cool oasis in all seasons.
A green, damp natural-grass raised bank extended beyond the dammed area to an adjacent natural swamp, a sanctuary for bird life. The morning air filled with the high-pitched honking and squeals of birdlife. Small dry islands surrounded by swampy waterways provided safety from foxes and feral cats for the many water birds that made the area their home.
Now, in late autumn, the water course that flowed past the dam, on the other side of Rose and Trevor’s property boundary, had changed from a stream to a river.
“He’s here.” A bronze skinned, weather-worn man straightened up from a crouching position at the dam edge. The tracker had followed the trail of tiny fresh footprints from a bare-footed boy from the house to the dam.
“Without footwear…” He shook his head. “There’s no way he could clamber through the dense scrub…” He pointed up the hill. “The outer boundary, he couldn’t get through there so he wouldn’t have made it through to the river. Don’t waste time searching there, he’s here.” His eyes scanned the water. “He is here. Find him quick.”
“What if we don’t find him quick,” Trevor whispered. “Will he be lost to us in this mud?”
“If he’s in the water, a little boy like that will float to the surface in a day or so, when his body bloats up. We got to look for a survivor. Little boy’s playing Batman.” The tracker’s voice brightened. His eyes expressed tears and laughter lines. “He’s playing—having fun. He knows the water. His mum’s shown him.”
The tracker moved forward, doubled over. His eyes scanned places of soft moss and wild orchids without disturbing them. “He’s played here.” He pointed to a large treefern trunk lying horizontally on the ground. “He hid here.”
Linton, Rose and Trevor combed the bush near the dam edge.
“He’s a bright boy,” Trevor said striving to show confidence for Rose.
“I saw that.” Linton agreed as he emerged from beneath a bent treefern trunk. “He respects you.” He nodded his head to Rose. “He might be scared to show himself with this crowd around.”
Rose held back a branch to allow the brothers clear access to the entrance of a thicket of shrubs. “He wouldn’t have done more than paddle in bare feet. On a cold May morning he’d have been walking higher up the bank, not down in the cold mud and wet.”
Trevor called, “Carl! Where are you?”
A swan honked in reply. Black swans’ nests abounded; large mounds made of reeds, grass and sticks, many a metre-and-a-half wide and almost as high, dotted the edges of many mud islands.
Several of the nests were islands in themselves, set aside from the banks and totally surrounded by water.
Black swans colonised in groups on Rose and Trevor’s dam. Few of the searchers were showing any respect for the habitat. Men and women waded through the shadows, dragging sticks, stirring up mud. They waded to the bird sanctuary islands, dragging sticks through the reeds, disturbing and disintegrating nests. Carl’s tiny footprints were trampled over. Soon there was confusion amongst the searchers as to where the boy’s footprints had been before they had disappeared into the water.
Searchers called out and crawled into hollows, with total disregard for their personal comfort. Most were obsessed with the urgency of finding Carl. They poked into recesses and tore away shrubs.
The exploration of each mud island within proximity of the bank continued until barely a blade of grass remained attached to the soil. All that remained was flattened grasses covered in black mud as Brian and Jean, desolation evident on their face, led a group of volunteers back to the farm house for a cup of hot sweet tea and scone for refreshment.
The search for Carl had been underway for five hours by the early afternoon, and the once noisy swampland was silent. Not a bird could be seen. Several nests had escaped destruction and floated unanchored on the waterway. Boats arrived and were being part carried and partially dragged through the undergrowth and placed in the water for a search of the furthest islands. Everyone knew that such a search would be pointless. There was no way that a three-year-old child on foot could reach the bird islands in the centre of the dam.
Those with boats went back over every part of the waterway, dragging hooked sticks, lifting out snags, branches, any solid matter they could find under water.
In the late afternoon, Trevor’s partner Alvin approached with a basket. “Scones and tea?”
“Any water?” Linton asked.
“The tea’s sweet. It will give you energy,” Alvin said.
The two men eyed each other warily.
“Thanks, that’s just what we need.” Rose took the offered basket, set it on the ground, extracted three enamel mugs and filled them with black tea. She handed a mug to Trevor and Linton. “What are you hearing up at the house?”
“We’re as puzzled as you are about where he is.”
Rose’s voice raised in an urgent demand for information. “What are the police saying they think happened?”
Alvin hesitated.
Rose looked grim, her hands clasped in front of her. “What?”
“They don’t know…” Alvin’s voice trailed away. “They—they’re sort of hoping he might have been abducted—think that’s the best chance—”
“Chance of what?” Rose shrieked. “No
one’s got my boy.” Trevor took Rose by the shoulders; Linton wanted to.
She shoved him away. “He wouldn’t go with a stranger and he didn’t drown.” She turned and yelled, “Carl! Carl! Carl!”
Linton looked uncertainly at the milky grey sky and then to Alvin. “Have you heard the weather for tonight?”
“Snowfall’s expected overnight below six thousand feet.”
The three of them—Linton, Rose, and Trevor—chucked their part filled mugs on the ground. They split off into different directions calling, “Carl! Carl! Carl!”

It was Linton’s idea to involve young children. The search organisers were horrified when he revealed the plan he’d formulated. But how to get the searchers to listen? Rose heard his voice raised over the sound of the worrywarts. She pushed her way through them to where Linton stood red raced and argumentative.
“Arguing isn’t going to help,” Rose addressed the cynics. “We’re all exhausted. I’ve walked every fence line, calling for my boy and looking for his footprints.” She shook her head, her chin thrust upward as if to defy gravity from allowing the moisture above her lower eyelid from flowing. “Trevor…” she reached for him, gripped his arm, “…he has walked every inch of this farm.” She turned to Linton. “You’ve done the hardest part, checking out the swamp, the dam and the rainforest water catchment.”
Rose startled everyone by flinging her arms around Linton’s neck and kissing his muddy cheek. Her arms remained around his neck, although she stepped back, drawing her body away from him. Tears unashamedly flowed as she said, “I don’t think I could cope if you were not here searching for our boy.” She released him suddenly and turned, blushing in embarrassment, burying her head in Trevor’s shoulder.
Hugging Rose, Trevor said, “Our efforts to find Carl are not working. What more can we—what else can we try?”
Rose drew away from Trevor and squared her shoulders. “Let’s do what Linton suggests.”