‘So why now?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Spit it out.’
He wouldn’t look at me
‘Then piss off.’
He finally answered, though he still wouldn’t look at me. ‘I’ve been thinking about those lights we saw last night, reckon I’ve got a theory. I want to know if I’m right or wrong. And I’ve got this feeling that it might not be safe while I’m gone.’ He finally looked at me. ‘Bill, mate, I can’t let anything happen to you. I just can’t.’
My hand shook, the tea threatening to spill—something serious must have been troubling him for him to come so clean. ‘No bullshit?’
‘No bullshit.’
‘Have you told anyone else?’
‘Yeah, of course I have. I told Lou and Sheldon to keep an eye out, to spread the word.’
I looked him in the eye. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
His face darkened. ‘Trust me, Bill. I know what I’m doing.’ He smiled sadly. ‘You’re it, mate. You’re the only one who gives a shit. I haven’t got anyone else,’ he said matter-of-factly. I understood that if I said ‘no’ now, he would gladly set off alone through the dark bush, headed in whatever direction his obscure urges had chosen. He stood up, folded his arms over his chest.
‘Are you coming or not?’
He was even more frightening than he had been earlier—a black silhouette cut from the same cloth as the night. I looked over the land, ignored his glare, thought it over. Despite the strange fear that now coursed through me, I was halfway convinced. It had been too many years since I had been out of town, too many months since I’ve even crossed the empty river that marked its western edge.
‘Well?’
What choice did I have? What else is a mate supposed to do? He’d had my back enough times and I was flattered to be in a position to repay the favour. I made up my mind, knowing that I would regret it.
‘Right then, where do I sign up?’
He didn’t laugh as he got to his feet. ‘I already dug out your kit, just in case. I reckon if you go find something to wear that’s a little more appropriate …’ He waved at his black body armour.
‘Expecting trouble, are we?’ I asked again.
He ignored my question, ignored my interruption, kept on. ‘… while I’ll knock on the head whatever chores you didn’t do today.’ He looked down at me, sanctimonious, smug.
‘Dickhead,’ I said, walking away.
Tobe laughed. ‘Don’t forget your gun.’
I carried the lantern from room to room, searching through boxes of junk, rummaging through the detritus of my family’s history. I found some clothes that were more suitable—old, threadbare jeans that were too long; a stiff shirt that was too big as well—an all-black, dead-man’s outfit. The material was dry, hard. I paced around, trying to guess who the clothes had belonged to. My great-grandfather, maybe—the clothes were so big, and my folks always used to say that he was built like a brick shithouse.
I stretched my shoulders, windmilling my arms. Stalking around the house, dressed in what might as well have been a stranger’s clothes, I was starting to get excited. Maybe this time Tobe’s mad flight of fancy might actually break the day-to-day.
There was no sign of him anywhere.
I went back to the kitchen, made some more billy tea, something to pep us up for the long night ahead. Of course, I had only just settled down to enjoy it when the back door banged open, hitting the wall behind it.
‘Do I smell what I think I smell?’ Tobe asked, catching the door before it swung back and smacked him in the face. He stepped inside, smiling wide. ‘There enough left for me?’
I sighed, got out of my chair, poured a second cup. We touched them together, drained them dry.
‘Okay, where’s my backpack?’ I asked, eager to get going before I came to my senses and changed my mind.
‘Out under the veranda.’
‘You pack enough water?’
‘About ten litres each, enough to see us through until we find some more. Or give up and turn back. Or get into trouble and die of thirst.’
I shot him a sour look.
‘Okay, okay.’
I smiled with satisfaction, walked away. ‘Can you get my gun and all that while I check my stuff?’ I yelled over my shoulder.
I unzipped my pack. Inside I found a pair of animal-skin shorts, a floppy hat, a dun-coloured shirt that was full of holes. A couple of tarps, folded tight. An extremely primitive first-aid kit. An ancient pair of barely working binoculars. A tin pan for cooking or boiling water or collecting whatever might need collecting. A pouch of bush tobacco, a tinderbox. A hammer and some rusty rails. Three oversized canteens, a couple of undersized canteens. Salted roo, dried berries, shrivelled figs, all wrapped in possum skin. Strapped to the side were two more oversized canteens.
‘Tobe? I’m done.’
No reply. I turned back, couldn’t find him in the house, walked outside, couldn’t see him there, walked back inside, found him in the kitchen. He was climbing out of the cellar, a guilty smile on his face. He looked at me, not caring, dragging a small wooden box with him—chocolates that had been stashed in the dark for so very long, saved for a special occasion.
‘You’re pushing it … Did you bring anything to trade? You know, anything that’s actually yours?’
‘Uh, yeah—a bit of bush tobacco, some wild weed, my know-how, your charm … And these.’
He smiled again, shaking the wooden box, the old chocolates rattling like weathered bones in a gale. I gave up. If we did run into trouble, such a precious prize might be the only way out.
‘All right, then. Have it your way.’
He smiled smugly as he stuffed the chocolates into his pack. He heaved it on his back, tossed me a box of ammunition and passed me my rifle. It was a relic, its wooden stock cracked and split. I loaded it, tucked the leftover bullets in my pack, and hoisted the whole lot on my back; almost collapsing under its weight.
It hit me how long it had been since I had done this.
‘You okay?’ Tobe asked, trying not to smirk.
‘Yeah, I’m all right.’
I managed to balance myself. We walked out to the back veranda; I blew out the lantern while Tobe shouldered his rifle. The dead rabbit was nowhere to be seen—I guessed that Red and Blue had helped themselves to a midnight snack. We trudged past the veggie patch. Stopping at her grave, I whispered a goodbye.
Tobe smiled sadly, but didn’t say anything. He knew better.
I left him to say his own goodbye, knowing that his burden couldn’t be shared. I had a last look around the house, came back to find him double-checking his gun.
I double-checked mine, with a lot less grace.
‘Red! Blue! Come on!’ he yelled abruptly.
We waited. They eventually showed, bounding out of the dark bush, running across the moonlit paddock. They met us under the veranda, drank from a dog bowl I hadn’t seen Tobe leave out. They gulped at the water thirstily, finishing it off. They knew how it went.
‘After you,’ Tobe said.
‘No, after you, I insist. I’ve no idea where we’re going.’
He didn’t laugh.
Five
We tramped across the dying grass, took the long dirt road that led to town. The heavy tug of my pack slowly eased to a minor annoyance. We clambered over fallen branches and around felled trees, carefully, and in no hurry. Every scratch could be a problem, sometimes a fatal one. Red and Blue trotted ahead, staying in sight like the good dogs they were. The trees we could see clutched at the sky, their jagged branches reaching into the gloom. Dust blew in dirty clouds; the bush litter underfoot trembled in the soft winds. Empty paddocks surrounded us; they were all the same, frozen tableaus glowing silver-grey.
We kept on, the dirt road seemingly stretching to the horizon.
Neither of us spoke; breathing steadily, shaking out tired muscles and old aches, we settled in for a long night. The rhythm of our
feet slapping on baked earth, the beating of our hearts, the wheezing of our lungs—they were the ticking of our clock. A fugue state happens when you spend enough time walking the land. It doesn’t matter whether you’re following the dark line of a highway or winding down a dirt road or beating a track through the bush. Your mind empties, your body runs on automatic and time loses all meaning, its only marker the great arc of the sun or the moon. Ever onward, you keep a steady pace, disconnected from the strained mechanics of your body, thirst and weariness only muted sensations. Putting one foot in front of the other, feeling like you could do it forever—that becomes your whole world.
We eventually hit the highway into town, the dirt road ending at a shadowy T-intersection. We came to a halt. Well, not really we; I was so lost in my trance that I didn’t notice Tobe stop in front of me.
I crashed into him.
‘Watch it,’ he said, turning to face me.
One of the dogs barked, I couldn’t tell which. They ran back, looked at us with puzzled eyes.
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ I said.
Tobe took a torch from his belt and flicked it on. A wan beam barely illuminated the blacktop. He cranked a handle on the torch; the beam grew brighter. Ancient gums hugged the roadside. Enormous, monstrous, long dead; they were barely shadows of their former selves.
‘Here,’ Tobe said, tossing me the torch.
I caught it clumsily, almost dropping it.
‘Dickhead.’
I smiled, guilty as charged. Tobe unclipped a second torch from his pack. This time, the highway shone. He looked west. The bloated full moon easily broke through the skeletal canopy.
‘Which way?’ I asked.
‘Where else did they go, in those stupid stories we loved when we were kids? All those cowboys and frontiersmen …’
I blanked in front of him.
‘Go west, young man.’
I groaned.
We followed the highway, Red and Blue once again taking the lead. It was empty, apart from the occasional wrecks that had rusted into hulks. We weaved around those abandoned monuments and accidental memorials, passing a weather- beaten sign full of bullet holes, the letters faded, illegible.
I remember when it used to say ‘Welcome to Newstead’.
The dead trees slowly thinned out. Tobe killed his torch as we hit the first signs of so-called civilisation, motioned for me to keep cranking mine, held his finger to his lips in an exaggerated gesture. I took the hint, keeping my trap shut as we passed through the heart of town. Every building was dark, even the ones I knew were still occupied. No candles or lanterns flickered within. In the moonlight, everything was less threatening, less bleak. The shut-up shops, the derelict houses, the potholed streets, the withered trees, the bare-dirt lawns—they all lost some of their horror, assuming a grand, tired dignity instead. It felt like home, a home I loved, a home I had always known, unchanging and forever. I drank it in, Tobe’s earlier warning and the threat of danger forgotten in the face of such beaten beauty.
I couldn’t stop smiling.
The broken buildings creaked softly, relaxing in the relative cool of the night. Their faint murmur joined the rustling of the few leaves still clinging to the dying trees, barely audible but always there. We kept walking. I felt eyes on me as we passed the ruined primary school, knew that some First Country folk would be watching us.
Every other house in town was falling down or had already fallen down or was moments away from doing so. And still they were left alone; everyone knew who had once lived in them, who had given up, who had trekked to the camp in the hope of making a new life above the line. Sure, anything useful had been salvaged. But nothing personal had been touched, nothing that once lived in the hearts of our former townsfolk, no matter what it might fetch in trade.
This was something that we had all agreed upon.
We passed them by. Soon, we saw a light flickering within the pub, faint through the heavy windows. I thought about stopping, just for a minute, to say g’day to Louise. Halfway through reaching out to tap Tobe on the shoulder—to tempt him with the idea of a smoke and a shot—I sized up his stride and thought better of it.
The pub disappeared behind us. We finally hit the empty Loddon River. The highway came to a stop, a flimsy rope bridge taking its place. The riverbed was filled with rubble; all that remained of the real bridge that had once soared across it. We had destroyed it ourselves, a long time ago, to cut the town off from the world. I gawped at it. Red and Blue disappeared down the steep bank, darted over the rubble, ran up the opposite bank, as surefooted as mountain goats. They howled happily. Tobe stepped onto the rope bridge, strode across, as surefooted as his dogs. I grabbed hold of the whipcord rails, took a step, floated across, too terrified to look down.
I hit the highway on the far side, almost fell to my knees. Tobe ignored me.
We soon hit the Avenue of Honour, the western edge of town. Tobe shook his muscles out, took his possum skin pouch from his pocket, rolled some bush tobacco, lit up. He held the pouch aloft, offering me one. I held up the torch I was still cranking and shot him a dirty look.
‘Yeah, you can probably give it a rest. How’s she look?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Pass it over.’
I did so. He flicked it on, shone it around. Dead oaks and elms lined the highway. The beam from my torch was strong, lighting them up in all their ravaged glory.
‘That’s how you tell whether she’s working or not,’ Tobe said.
He tossed the torch back; as clumsy as always, I almost dropped it again.
‘Tuck it away,’ he said. ‘We won’t need it for a while.’
I stashed the torch in my pocket, took out my own pouch, slowed to a stop. I shrugged off my pack, dropped it to the ground, followed it down, parked my arse. Tobe stared at me and said something under his breath.
‘Look, I want a fiver. Time for a piss and a smoke.’
Tobe’s smile burnt white in the night. ‘No worries.’He joined me on the blacktop; Red and Blue followed, lying flat out. They looked tired, but I knew they were playing possum. Tobe and I took out canteens and drank deep. I let myself unfold, fell onto my back, lay there looking at the stars. Tobe poured a drink for the dogs and then squatted on his haunches. Neither of us spoke, we just listened to the faraway wind. For a moment, life was beautiful.
And then my base needs took over.
I ground out my bush tobacco, pocketed the butt, stood up, walked far enough from Tobe to maintain my decorum. I did my thing against a tree, helping it along.
‘So, where exactly are we going?’ I asked, zipping back up.
Tobe didn’t look at me. He pulled on his pack, called Red and Blue to him, started walking. ‘I already told you—we’re heading west.’ He kept walking.
‘Hey, hang on …’
‘We head west until we stop.’
He didn’t look back.
I quickly strapped on my pack and hurried after him. I was over his shit, but that wasn’t new—I had been putting up with it for years, I knew that some things never change. We walked on, the dead trees stopping dead, revealing thick and shadowy bush to the north, more empty paddocks to the south.
‘I’ve got an itch I can’t scratch,’ Tobe said. ‘So we’ll keep on until it’s gone. Whatever happened last night—whatever the fuck that was—came from somewhere out west. There’s not much out that way. Once you get past the Borough, there’s nothing but paddocks and bush until the Pyrenees. Whatever happened …’
‘You want to go fossicking around the mountains?’ I asked, butting in.
There was nothing secretive about the Pyrenees; they were just somewhere we used to go for a break, where we could laze around and forget the day-to-day. We would spend days looking over the sunburnt country from the top of its cliffs, or foraging for food in its canyons, or searching for water in its caves, happy to get away from the everyday.
‘If you’ll let me finish,’ Tobe said,
‘I reckon we need to go further. Maybe try for Ararat or Stawell, maybe even Horsham. Whatever it was probably came from somewhere around there. It had to happen in a town—it was a hell of a show if it happened out in someone’s back paddock.’
All up, Tobe was talking about a ten or twelve-day hike, to the ruins of big towns. There was always the potential for trouble in places like that, always a chance of running into some Creeps. My feet, my legs, my back, they groaned. Ten days! Maybe twelve! You’ve got to be kidding me …
‘That’s a bloody long way. Who’ll look after the joint while I’m gone?’
No reply.
‘Do we even have enough supplies to make it that far?’
Tobe stopped walking, turned to look at me. In the bright moonlight his face was calm. ‘Man up, Bill. Man up or go home.’
I said nothing.
‘Look, you know I need you out here. I need you watching my back. But it has to be your choice, mate. I won’t beg. No fucking way. So you either grow a pair and maybe we’ll find out what happened last night, or you run along home and get yourself to bed.
I thought it over. I was tempted … ‘Okay, you win,’ I said. We were mates through and through, even though I sometimes hated him.
‘Good man.’ He laughed. ‘And before I forget—I made a deal with Lou before we left. She’ll check on your patch, make sure everything’s ticketty-boo. She’ll even lay a flower, if one happens to bloom.’
I didn’t let on how grateful I was. ‘What’s the trade-off?’
‘I told her I’d convert that heap of hers to solar. You know—that piece of shit Holden out the back of the pub. Then she can hightail it north if she decides to go, hopefully outrun any Creeps on the way.’
‘Can you really get it back on the road?’
‘Maybe, probably, don’t really know. Won’t know till I try.’ He smiled at me, so confident and cocksure. ‘Fair enough.’
We kept on down the highway, following a crooked finger pointing west, a grey line that separated the thick bush from the empty paddocks. We walked on, an easy pace that still got the job done, the echo of our feet slapping on the road the only thing we left behind. In the moonlight and the starlight, the land became hazy, the dead and dying trees warping, melting into each other, always changing, always the same, paying us no attention, oblivious to our hike.
The Rain Never Came Page 5