The Night Is for Hunting

by John Marsden

  But once the snake made its escape it was Gavin I was interested in. He was doing a pretty good impersonation of the snake to Jack, using his right arm to show how the snake flicked away from us.

  I said to Jack, ‘Gavin’s deaf, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack said, taking his eyes off Gavin’s snake impersonation and staring at me in surprise. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  Homer and Fi and I just looked at each other.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Homer asked me.

  Gavin seemed to realise now that he was the subject of our interest. He glanced at me. Although Jack had assumed we’d worked it out, I’m pretty sure Gavin knew we hadn’t. When I said ‘You’re deaf?’ he just shrugged and said, in his unusual, thick voice, ‘So?’

  I was stunned. And suddenly filled with admiration for him. What a gutsy little character he was. To lead this group of kids, this funny mixture of personalities and ages, to make them do what he wanted, when all the time he couldn’t hear them – boy, did that show force of personality.

  I think that’s when I first started paying Gavin the respect due to him. I suppose I could be hard and say he caused Darina’s death. But how could you blame him? It was just inexperience, and his natural suspicion of everyone, that he’d learned in Stratton during the last year. There was no doubting his strength of mind. And I’ve always admired strength.

  Anyway, we were all a bit stunned when we realised. ‘These bloody kids,’ Homer said in a sort of mock exasperation. He said to Gavin, ‘How deaf are you?’

  Gavin shrugged. ‘I can hear some stuff,’ he said.

  Jack said, ‘In Stratton, he could hear things like a big truck going past. He’d look up and say, “What’s that?” And if you yell really really loudly, he can hear you. But I don’t think he’d hear anything out here in the bush. There’s nothing loud enough.’

  When we told Kevin he didn’t believe us at first. I don’t know why he wouldn’t; I mean it’s not the sort of thing you’d normally get around to making up. But of course being Kevin he had to do something dumb: in this case testing Gavin to see if it was true. So for example the next morning he came up behind Gavin and yelled, ‘Boo!’ which as it happened was so loud that Gavin did hear. He turned around and looked. So then Kevin went through this stage of thinking Gavin was faking it, and he spent the next few days trying to ‘catch’ him again. It was really quite pathetic, and one of those times when I didn’t like Kevin much.

  At least Gavin seemed to relax a bit when he knew we knew. But a bit was only a bit: it meant that he muttered ‘Thanks’ a couple of times when I did something special for him, and he actually forgot himself so far as to spread me a biscuit at lunchtime one day. When he realised he looked so shocked that I didn’t count on it happening again for a while. I was right about that too.

  If he had been in a fight with Lee I think he must have forgotten; in fact if anything he developed a secret admiration for Lee, because I noticed him watching Lee closely on the rare occasions that Lee dropped in. Lee was the complete fighting unit these days, coming into camp only to grab some food and a few hours’ sleep. Instead of our normal system of sentries Lee was now it. I don’t know how far he roamed to protect us. The danger came from the west: that’s where the road was, that’s where the farms and houses were, so we were a bit uneasy about the threat from that direction.

  The kids were so weak we couldn’t do anything with them. They spent most of each day resting.

  On the fourth day we had to get them over Tailor’s Stitch and down into Hell itself. We’d nursed them up the spur, and it was a big strain too, as they wanted to stop every few metres. Poor little buggers: they had no strength, no stamina, no energy. We talked to them, joked with them, gave them a piggyback occasionally. There was no water up here but we told them about the beautiful clear cold stream waiting for them over the hill. I think we ended up making it sound like some kind of fabled magical river with healing powers. Casey probably thought she could dip her arm in it and it’d be instantly fixed.

  Fi’s way of motivating them was to make up a story about the water fairies. ‘Do you know,’ she said as we sat in a grassy spot halfway to the top, ‘in the river in Hell there are little rock pools where fairies live? They sit there at dawn combing their beautiful hair and arranging their gossamer wings.’ Jack sighed, rolled his eyes at Gavin, then lifted a leg and farted loudly. Despite this Fi was keen to go on. She said, ‘And the prettiest fairy, whose name is Princess Rainbow –’. At that point Homer retched loudly over the back of a tree trunk. Fi glared at him, but personally I was grateful to Homer. I don’t know how old Fi thought the kids were. For a moment Natalie looked like she might have been impressed by the story, but she picked up pretty quickly that it was uncool, so she turned her back on Fi and started chewing on a piece of grass.

  I had a sudden thought that maybe Fi actually believed in her river fairies. I didn’t want to pursue that idea: I pushed it out of my mind fast, before it did any damage.

  As we made our slow slow way up the spur Lee hung well back, making sure we weren’t followed. Then, when we were close to the top, he overtook us to go on up and check the ridge. He sure had become lean and fit. As he passed Gavin, the little guy, to my surprise, yanked at his T-shirt and asked, ‘Can I come with you?’

  I made one of those faces at Homer that says ‘Can you believe it?’ I was pleased when Lee nodded though. It was the first time Gavin had shown any open interest in us or the things we were doing, and I’d have hated for Lee to knock him back.

  So off they went and that was a minor relief for me, because it meant one of the kids was more or less at the top, on Tailor’s Stitch. Only three to worry about now, although for this kind of stuff they were the three most difficult. We toiled on upwards, me just about ready to jump off the nearest cliff, but using precious energy to cajole and humour and encourage.

  With an hour of light left, I finally saw the familiar ridgeline ahead. It had been the slowest trip I’d ever done. I could have knelt on the rock and kissed it, like the Pope when he turns up at an airport. But again we decided to wait, like Iain and Ursula and the Kiwi guerillas, before going over the top. I hadn’t always thought it was necessary, then or at other times since, but at dusk, with a largish group, it seemed sensible.

  The kids flopped against the rocks and made their usual grumbling noises about how tired and hungry and sore they were. I passed out the last of the water and tried to ignore the grumbling. I could almost wish Gavin was there. At least he wasn’t a whinger.

  It took the whole hour of daylight for them to get their breath back, even though we’d been progressing at the rate of a snail with a wooden leg. I was hoping to get into Hell without another stop, despite the track being so narrow and slippery and overgrown. It was downhill all the way.

  Then Lee reappeared suddenly with Gavin, and bullied us into getting up and moving fast to the top of the track. He was very impatient, and it got everyone’s backs up. I didn’t know what the big hurry was, but it misfired, because the kids virtually went on strike. In the end, to shut them up, I carried Casey, Homer carried Jack, Kevin carried Natalie and only Gavin walked in on his own. Natalie was asleep by the time we got to the campsite, which says a lot for the gentle way Kevin carried her.

  It was a horrible night though. The track was always difficult, and in the dark, when we were tired ourselves, it was too much. As if that wasn’t enough it started raining in the last half hour, and it got as greasy as a frypan.

  Luckily none of the kids wanted anything to eat. We shoved them into two tents. We had four tents altogether these days, all of them doubles. We’d had three empty places for quite a while. The little kids fitted into their two tents easily and then we drew bits of grass to decide who’d squash in with them. Lee drew the short straw.

  I crashed, and I assumed the others did too.

  When Lee woke me I figured he must have been even more uncomfortable than I’d expected. Through the openin
g to the tent, behind his lean shoulders, I could see it was barely dawn. There was just a dark grey in the sky to contrast with the black of the night. It was still raining, a depressing drizzle that looked as though it might go on forever.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked sleepily. I was gradually working up to feeling annoyed, but I didn’t have enough energy for that yet. The first morning in ages I had a chance to sleep in, and Lee had to wreck it.

  ‘Can you come for a walk?’ he said. Then he disappeared. For a moment I lay there wondering if I’d dreamt it, but I could hear him moving around outside. Cursing silently, so I wouldn’t wake Fi, I pulled on my boots and crawled out of the tent. When I did I realised he meant what he’d said quite literally. He had a pack on his back and was obviously set for a hike.

  I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t have the energy for this.

  But I knew Lee well enough not to waste time asking questions. It took only a minute to get ready. I’d slept in my clothes, as we usually did these days. I grabbed a sweater and trudged off to our toilet site for a leak, doing up my boots as I squatted there.

  When I got back Lee did something that chilled me to the bone. He handed me a rifle.

  We had a strange little arsenal in Hell. A collection of guns from all over the place, starting with the .22 and the .303 we’d brought from our own homes after our discovery of the invasion, and others we’d picked up along the way. We didn’t bother with them much, because they were so heavy to drag around, and we had so little ammunition. Plus, it was a good idea not to have rifles if we were caught. We still clung to the faint hope we could get away with a cover story of being innocent kids who lived in the bush and hardly knew there was a war on.

  I took the rifle Lee handed me though. I was getting scared. Lee looked so damn serious. ‘Hadn’t we better tell the others where we’re going?’ I asked.

  ‘I left a note for Homer,’ he said.

  We didn’t talk again until we were coming back up onto Tailor’s Stitch. The path from Hell led towards Wombegonoo, a bare rounded peak with good long views in every direction. But before Wombegonoo the track ended in a gum tree with multiple trunks. The tree was concealed from anyone standing above it. From the trunks you walked up a sheet of bare rock, which was good because it meant you left no footprints.

  I lay against one of the trunks, wanting to groan with utter weariness. Only pride prevented me from giving up and telling Lee I wasn’t interested. It was too hard, too hard. Especially on an empty stomach. I think Lee needed a rest too, because he was leaning against another trunk, looking quite grey. But all too soon he straightened up and looked at me as if to say ‘Are you ready?’

  I nodded. Pride again. We went over the top of Tailor’s Stitch taking maximum precautions, rifles ready, keeping low and scanning the ridge in both directions. I still didn’t have a clue what we were doing, and that annoyed me more and more, but I was in the mood now to be annoyed by anything.

  On the other side we followed the usual policy when we were going along the ridge in daylight, keeping well below the skyline. Again Lee made it clear that we had to be extra-careful, moving with extreme caution. We went about three-quarters of a kilometre I’d guess. Then Lee turned to me and put his fingers to his lips to tell me to be especially quiet. We began tiptoeing downhill, moving with excruciating slowness and looking around at every step. At one point we waited at least ten minutes while Lee stared through the scrub. I stared equally hard in the opposite direction, not sure what I was looking for, but feeling bloody nervous. It was well and truly light by now and still raining, but the type of rain had changed. Instead of a steady drizzle it blew in gusts, sometimes stopping for a few minutes, then starting from a slightly different direction. It was a miserable morning for summer. Warm enough, but miserable. I kept reminding myself that we needed the rain, but it didn’t help my attitude.

  We went on, but soon stopped again. Peeping over Lee’s shoulder I saw a large clearing. Something about the way he crouched and peered into it for so long made it obvious that this was our destination. We waited half an hour. That was pretty typical for us. We usually tried to err on the side of caution. ‘Time spent in reconnaissance.’

  At last though, Lee was satisfied. He led me into the clearing, right to the middle. We stood, staring down at our target. I felt like Robinson Crusoe, looking at Man Friday’s footstep in the sand. Because at our feet, in a place no-one should have visited for twelve months, in an area inhabited by no-one but us, were the nice fresh remains of a campfire.

  I knelt and ran my hand through the ashes. It was like a grey-white porridge. Even in this damp and squally weather a little cloud of white powder blew away when I stirred it up. My hand was whitened by ashes that stuck to my skin. I pulled up my sleeve and burrowed in further. There was still a faint trace of warmth in the heart of the fire. I was satisfied. Not much rain had fallen on this.

  ‘It’s still warm in the very centre,’ I said to Lee.

  He nodded. ‘So what do you think, the last twenty-four hours?’

  ‘No, you can’t say that. If they left it to burn itself out, it could have been three or four days ago.’

  The rule for a fire was that you had to stick your hand in its middle. If you couldn’t, the fire wasn’t out. So the first thing I knew was that experienced farmers or bushwalkers hadn’t lit this fire. They’d never walk away without putting it out properly, especially in summer.

  I asked Lee, ‘Do you know who’s been here?’

  ‘Not a clue. I didn’t see them. But I found the fireplace last night, just as you were about to go down into Hell. I had Gavin with me and I didn’t want to spook him, so I didn’t make a fuss. I don’t think he even noticed it.’

  ‘Was it still smoking?’

  ‘Maybe.Hard to tell. It could have been smoke, or it could have been wind blowing the ashes.’

  ‘Let’s look around.’

  We made like detectives, combing the grass, looking for evidence, at the same time listening anxiously for any sign of the people returning. The first thing we found was their actual campsite. They’d had four tents, bigger than ours. You could tell, because the grass was still flattened slightly. And to prove it, I found the holes where they’d hammered in their tent pegs, and even a rock they’d used as a hammer. It had little chips out of it, little white scars.

  That was all we found. I was surprised, because I thought they’d have left some food remains, like empty packets and stuff. I wondered if they’d buried them, the way we did, and I started looking for signs of a hole filled in. I couldn’t find anything. They mightn’t know how to put out a fire but at least they seemed to respect the bush enough to clean up their mess.

  Then Lee appeared out of a patch of bush and beckoned. I went down there and he showed me a path leading to a spring, the water supply for this campsite. It was a pretty path, winding around through dainty little green plants like teardrops on the ground, with moss spread among them. Tiny white flowers peeped out from under the leaves.

  I thought, ‘If God created them he must have fantastically skilful fingers.’ I’m too clumsy to make something that beautiful and delicate.

  Five minutes into the trees we came to the spring: a gurgling flow of beautifully clear water seeping from a thick mat of undergrowth. There was a couple of small pools but most of the water ran over rocks, with that irresistible bubbly sound like soft laughter, that must be about my favourite noise in the whole world.

  I wandered along its banks, looking for anything that might give a clue to the identity of the phantom campers. They were either friends or enemies – everyone fell into one category or the other these days – and they were nearly certain to be enemies, but it would help a lot if we knew something about them.

  By the second pool, a large shallow one surrounded by rocks, I knelt to have a closer look. There was something filmy about the water here, as though a cloud had slipped out of the sky into the pool. Not a full-on cloud: more like a trace of mist. I
put my mouth to the water and drank like a dog. In the first gulp I tasted what made the water cloudy. It was a slight soapy flavour. They’d used this pool for washing. The water was so pure, so fresh, that you could see and taste the traces of soap, even though it might have been several days since the campers had been here. I sat up, wiping the soapiness from my mouth. As I did I noticed a trace of colour among the moss, a colour that did not fit in. I felt in there and pulled it out. It was a fragment of paper, still stiff and new. I smelt it. The soapy smell again. This was the wrapping paper from their cake of soap. I looked at it. The writing on it was not English. It was not our alphabet. I had seen the paper before. In the barracks of the Wirrawee airfield, when I was checking it out, that terrible exciting day that we tore the place apart. In the store cupboard of the barracks I’d seen dozens of cakes of this official army-issue soap, all with the same labels. I knew now who our mystery campers were.

  Chapter Eight

  The truth was that we couldn’t do much about the enemy visitors. For one thing, we still didn’t know a lot about them. They could have been a patrol searching for us. They could have been a patrol having a general look around the mountains, making a routine inspection. They could have been a group of off-duty soldiers taking a stroll to admire the beautiful scenery. All three theories were equally possible. But if there was one thing that made me lean towards the first theory it was my fear of the results of our airfield attack. That attack took us out of the nuisance category and put us into the category of major dangers, who must be caught and eliminated. At all costs. That’s the way they’d be thinking. ‘If they’re there, find them. No matter what it takes, kill them.’