The Road to Winter

by Mark Smith

  ‘She never came back.’

  The light is coming right into the kitchen now and my stomach is rumbling.

  ‘We need to eat,’ I say.

  I have to make a decision. I always thought if it came to this, if someone else showed up, I’d have plenty of time to watch them before I made contact. Check them out. Decide if I wanted them to see me. But here’s Rose right in front of me and I’m trying to think on my feet. The funny thing is, even though she’s wary, I’m okay with her being here. I can’t explain why exactly. Something about the way she looks, the way she talks. She’s no threat.

  ‘Come with me,’ I say.

  I ease the back door open and have a good look about. Rowdy slips by my leg for a stretch on the porch.

  Rose stands in the doorway. A small shudder passes through her body. Her legs are thin where the shorts fall to her thighs and her feet are bare. She lifts her face to the sun and shades her eyes with her injured hand.

  Leading her around the side of the house, I duck through a gap in the old cypress hedge to the garage next door, then pull the branches back and feel under the ledge for the key. I open the door and tell her to follow. It’s dark inside, but slowly our eyes adjust.

  She stops in the doorway and stares. The garage is lined with shelves full of all sorts of stuff—tinned food, gas bottles, tools, saws, candles, matches, rabbit traps, ropes and nets.

  ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘Where did you get all this?’

  ‘When things got bad down here, me and Dad started to plan this place. All the shops were cleaned out early on, but we figured there’d be plenty of valuable stuff in the holiday houses.’

  ‘So this is your house, your garage?’ she says.

  ‘No. Dad knew everyone left in town would know he owned the hardware and that they’d come to our place before too long. We picked this garage because it looked like it hadn’t been used in years and the place next door because it was a holiday house hidden away at the back of the block.’

  ‘Gas,’ Rose murmurs, looking at the big cylinders lined up along one wall.

  ‘First thing Dad thought of. He’d just got a big delivery at the hardware when the town was quarantined.’

  ‘So you can cook food?’

  ‘And run the fridge.’

  ‘Your dad was smart,’ she says. She stops then, but I know what she’s going to ask.

  ‘He died early on.’ I haven’t said this out aloud before, that my dad’s dead, that I’ll never see him again.

  ‘Did you have a mum?’

  ‘She lasted the first winter, but then the virus took her.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  I start rearranging some tins of beans on a shelf, trying to look busy. It’s easier to bury things when you don’t have to talk about them with anyone.

  ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘let’s get some breakfast.’

  After I’ve grabbed a couple of cans of beans, I walk back out into the light. Rose follows, but she’s looking over her shoulder into the shed like she can’t believe what she’s seen. I lock up, put the branches back and hide the key.

  Back in the kitchen I get started on cooking. I remember I have two eggs in the fridge. There are chooks that have gone wild and a while ago I found their nest.

  ‘Eggs,’ she says with excitement in her voice again.

  She takes one of them from my hand and sits it in the flat of her palm, still with a look of disbelief on her face at what I’ve shown her.

  I light a match and the stove hisses to life. Before I can put the pan on it, Rose comes over and holds her hands above the flame.

  I cook up the eggs and the beans, frying them until they’re just right. When I turn around, Rose has set the table with knives and forks laid out and a glass of water at each place.

  ‘I just had to do that,’ she says.

  ‘No worries,’ I say.

  ‘Nowrriz,’ she says, deep and low, and I realise that’s what I sound like to her.

  We eat in not-quite silence. I remember how she ate the rabbit last night and that she probably spewed most of that up on the garden. She finishes hers before I’m even halfway through mine, wipes her mouth with the back of her good hand then picks up the plate and licks it clean. She burps loudly.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Beth never allowed us to do that.’

  I try to muster a burp of my own but fail miserably.

  She laughs, her eyes softening for a few seconds, but then her face grows serious.

  ‘What do we do now, Finn?’

  ‘Well, first I have to go and check my traps. I set them yesterday morning. I don’t want to leave them any longer.’

  ‘Traps?’

  ‘For rabbits. That’s what you ate last night. Most of it’s on the garden now I reckon.’

  She smiles.

  As I get ready to go out, I have a churning feeling in my gut. I hardly know this girl and I’m leaving her with everything I have. The house, my food, the stores. Everything. But I can’t see any way around it right now. She’s seen it all already and she could probably find her way back here if she needed to. Or lead someone else back.

  Before I leave I bring out the bow and arrows from my room.

  ‘You know how to use these?’ I ask, handing them to her.

  ‘Kinda. Aim and shoot, yeah?’

  ‘Close enough. I’ll be a couple of hours. I’ll give you a whistle like this when I get back,’ I say, making a noise like a wattle-bird, ‘Don’t come out unless you hear it.’

  I’m extra cautious today, taking the long way around behind the golf club to get to the ridge. Rowdy sticks close. At the top of the ridge I stop and scan the town below, but there’s no sign of movement, nothing to put my nerves more on edge.

  I’ve laid the traps along the old fence line that marks the start of the farmland. Today’s a good day. I get three. I stretch their necks quickly and tie some twine around their back legs. Then I reset the traps.

  As I’m heading back down into the cover of the bush, something catches my eye; something glinting in the sun across the paddock in an old hayshed.

  I duck down and watch, thinking it’s just a tin or a bit of glass catching the light. Then it moves.

  I place my hand over Rowdy’s muzzle. He knows what this means and drops his belly to the ground. I’m too low down to make out what it is so I crawl along to a low-slung stringybark and shimmy up into the branches. I’m holding my breath, but I can feel my heart pounding against the bark of the tree.

  There are at least half-a-dozen men sitting around a fire. Up higher, I catch the smell of meat cooking. I’m not sure they’re the Wilders that chased us yesterday until I see the trailbike catching the morning sun. There are blankets strewn across the hay bales and I can see two large red containers.

  At least I know where Ramage is now and that he’s not back in town hunting for Rose. But he could be getting ready to try again too. I’ll have to come back up later in the afternoon and check on them.

  I drop quietly down out of the tree, gather up the rabbits, touch Rowdy on his collar and we back away into the scrub.

  I’ve been gone a couple of hours by the time I get back to the house. I whistle to Rose and her head bobs up at the kitchen window.

  ‘All good?’ I ask as I come through the door. When I see her I stop in my tracks.

  ‘I hope it’s all right,’ she says.

  She has washed. I can smell soap. Her hair is still wet and dripping a little on her shoulders. Her skin is scrubbed almost raw and a few of the smaller cuts are bleeding. A new white bandage covers the wound on the back of her hand. But that’s not what I’m looking at. She is wearing Mum’s clothes, a blue dress that comes down just below her knees, a big floppy jumper and a pair of sneakers. Her hands are by her sides, clutching the material tight in her fingers.

  ‘I can take them off.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. It’s just…’

  ‘They were your mum’s.’

  I nod. ‘She lik
ed that dress. Dad always said it suited her. Matched her eyes, or something. I never noticed.’

  Different parts of my world are colliding, parts that have no right to meet. There’s some stuff that I’ve buried so deep that I never thought I’d face it again. Mum wearing that dress is one of them.

  ‘I’ll take it off, Finn. I’m sorry. I never should have put it on.’

  She starts to walk out of the kitchen. I don’t know why it happens or even how, but the next thing I know I’m standing behind her and I’ve got my hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Rose,’ I say, and she turns around to look at me because it’s the first time I’ve called her by her name. ‘Please, it’s okay. I like it.’

  Neither of us knows what to say next, so I pick up the rabbits and take them out the back to the wooden bench under the cypress tree. I slit the first one behind the neck and peel the skin all the way back to the hind legs. Then I gut it. I open up the cavity a bit more with the knife and make sure it’s cleaned out. It feels good to be doing something without having to think about it.

  When I’m done with the three of them, and I’ve hung the skins out for the maggots to clean, I take the carcasses back into the kitchen and put them in the fridge.

  Rose is sitting at the table drying her hair with a towel.

  ‘Good hunting?’ she asks.

  ‘Yep. I might make a stew with them.’

  ‘What else have you got that you’re not telling me about?’

  I can tell from her voice that she wants to make it up to me for wearing Mum’s dress without asking.

  ‘Fresh veggies. I’ve got some growing in a garden up the street. Just tomatoes, zucchini, some onions and stuff.’

  ‘But how?’ she asks.

  ‘Seeds. Dad’s idea again. We stocked up and now I collect the seeds when the plants die off. And there’s Ray.’

  ‘Who’s Ray?’

  I tell her about meeting Ray back during the first winter.

  ‘I’ll take you out to meet him when things quieten down a bit. After the Wilders have moved on.’

  I didn’t mean to tell her about the hayshed. She’s on her feet with the news, pacing up and down.

  ‘How many?’ she cries.

  ‘Six that I could see, but there might be more. I saw the trailbike.’

  ‘Ramage!’ She spits his name out. ‘Did you see anyone else with them?’

  ‘Anyone else? Like who?’

  ‘Kas.’

  ‘I thought you’d been split up?’

  She stops pacing and slumps into a chair.

  ‘You need to tell me what’s happened, Rose. I need to know what’s going on. Whether we’re in more danger than I think.’

  ‘There’s danger in just being a girl these days, worse still if you’re a Siley.’

  She sounds more weary than angry. She sighs.

  ‘When Kas and I couldn’t defend the farm any longer we tried to get away. There was an old shack up at the far end of the Pennyroyal Valley, so we headed for there. We did pretty well, living off the land mostly, but it didn’t last. Ramage’s men hunted us down. We tried to run, but it was useless.

  ‘Ramage had this big compound at his feedstore in Longley. High fences, barbed wire along the top. Big gates. Him and his men rounded up all the kids they could find in the district, boys and girls. Most were Sileys, but not all. Some were just kids whose parents had died. There were about fifteen of us. We slept in the hay, with empty chaff bags thrown over us for warmth.’

  Her eyes are sharp again, cutting right through me. She swallows hard and continues.

  ‘Ramage hired us out to farmers. We did whatever shitty jobs they wanted done. It was dangerous, especially for the girls. I never let Kas out of my sight. She’s only fifteen. I protected her as much as I could. I did some things I’m not proud of.’

  She looks at the tabletop, her hair falling over her face again. I wonder if she is going to cry, and all I can think of is how Dad used to be with Mum when she was angry. He’d tell her a joke. Try to get her to smile. I don’t think a joke’s going to work with Rose.

  ‘You want a cup of tea?’ I ask. It sounds all wrong, though, like I haven’t been listening to her, or been taking her seriously.

  But she surprises me with a laugh and says, ‘Thanks,’ and the tension drains from the room.

  But I haven’t thought it through. ‘Shit, I haven’t got any tea,’ I confess, and that makes her really laugh.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she says as I sit back down. Then she seems to size me up again.

  ‘Five days ago,’ she goes on, ‘Kas and I escaped. There was a man, Ken Butler, an old friend of Stan’s and a farmer from down near Nelson. He had a big white beard and used to stay with us when the yearling sales were on. He turned up at the feedstore one day and told Ramage he needed two labourers, and that he had food and whisky to trade. He paid more for us than he should’ve and told Ramage he’d have us back by morning.

  ‘Ken took us across the road to the old hotel. He said he would help us get away from Longley, said we should travel south. There was no guarantee we’d be safe there, but the further away we got from Ramage, the better.

  ‘Kas and I hid in a woodshed behind the hotel until it was dark. It had been cloudy all day, but like a miracle the sky cleared and I could make out the Southern Cross and the Pointers—pointing us south.’

  Rose hasn’t look at me once during her story. It’s like she’s reading off the tabletop, her one good hand moving up and down the wood grain, a fingernail pushing into the gap where the boards are joined. She has big hands. The one that’s not hidden in the bandage is scabbed all over and her nails are chipped. When she turns it over there are calluses rising up on every joint. Farm girl’s hands.

  I’m listening to her, but I’m still missing something. I don’t know anything about Kas.

  ‘She’s my little sister,’ Rose explains. ‘She always had it tougher than me. She was born with a birthmark on her face, a big red mark that covers one cheek and runs down onto her neck. She could have been embarrassed about it, but it just made her fierce.

  ‘She rode the horses. That was her thing. I was an okay rider, but she was way better. She could talk to them, make them understand her. We used to joke about her being the horse whisperer.’

  There’s something softer about Rose when she talks about Kas. She narrows her eyes a little, like she can see the shape of her sister but can’t quite make out her features.

  ‘After we left Ken, we walked for three days without seeing anyone,’ she continues. ‘At the end of the third day, we reached a place called Swan’s Marsh.’

  I nod. ‘I know it. On the other side of the main range. We used to play football there sometimes. Did you see anyone there?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Not at first. We skirted around the back of town, keeping to the trees until we found a safe spot that had a view along the main street. Before I went to check things out, we agreed that, if we got separated, Kas should keep moving towards the coast, as far away from Ramage as possible.’

  Rose takes a deep breath.

  ‘I found them out the back of an old general store—four men and a couple of kids sitting around a fire. The smell of cooking meat was driving me wild. I knew it was stupid, but I was so hungry I wasn’t thinking straight. I walked out into the open and stood about ten metres from them. They all moved at once, grabbing sticks, and one guy picked up a shovel. They circled me.

  ‘It was so stupid. It was never going to be right for a girl to be travelling on her own unless she was running from someone. A woman stepped out of the back door of the store and came up close to check me out. She had wild red hair and she stank. She smiled—most of her teeth were missing. She said they didn’t have much, just a bit of deer they’d shot, but I was welcome to join them.

  ‘So they gave me some food, and I ate like a pig but I didn’t care. They all just sat and watched me. Then one of them asked where I was from, and something in hi
s voice gave me the creeps.

  ‘I told them I’d come from the north, that I’d avoided Longley because I’d met people on the road who said bad things about the place. It was weird when I mentioned Longley. One of the men spat into the fire and said they hadn’t seen anyone on the road in months. Then he asked me if I was one of Ramage’s Sileys.’

  Rose looks away and I reckon she’s embarrassed. I’ve got to admit, it sounds pretty dumb to have just walked into danger like that.

  ‘I got to my feet slowly, said thanks and I’d be on my way. But one of them grabbed me, one of the big guys. He tied my hands behind my back and dragged me off to a pump shed at the back of the yard. Said he’d be back for me during the night.’

  I have to look away, out the kitchen window to the backyard. I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want to know if she’s been abused. But she squares off her shoulders again and stares me down. I know she’s going to tell me the rest, even if I don’t want to hear it.

  ‘It was pitch black in there,’ Rose continues, quieter now, ‘and the fumes were making me sick. I must’ve slept because I woke up when I heard the door opening. I made out a figure in the moonlight and kicked out as hard as I could. Got him in the balls, too.

  ‘He grabbed me by the hair and tried to drag me out of the shed, but then there’s this strange sound, like metal hitting bone and the big guy falls sideways onto the pump. Then it goes quiet.’

  Rose is shaking her head now, a small smile playing on her lips.

  ‘It was the woman. I couldn’t believe it. She helped me up and cut the ropes around my wrists. She started talking fast, telling me I had to run. Ramage would find out eventually and he’d come after me with everything he had. She pushed a chunk of meat into my hands, said us girls have gotta stick together these days. Then I started running.’

  The afternoon sun slants through the kitchen window, filling the room with light. Rose turns her face up to the warmth and closes her eyes.

  I don’t know what to make of her story, but the way she tells it makes me think it’s the truth. She talks a lot with her hands, splays them on the table then rakes them back through her hair. And her eyes narrow every now and then when she tries to remember details about what’s happened. I’m mesmerised just looking at her, this other person, this girl, sitting across from me at the table, her skin, her eyes, her smile that disappears as soon as she lets it sneak out.