by John Marsden
‘And living off the land, we’ve got to get serious about that. So the people back here should figure out some possibilities. Where are all the springs in these mountains? Can we trap rabbits or roos, or even possums? Ellie and I, our families have always killed our own meat, so we can do a bit of rough butchering.’
‘Same for me,’ Kevin said.
‘I can do a nice sweet and sour possum,’ Lee said. ‘Or catch me a feral cat and I’ll make dim sims.’
There was a groan of disgust. Lee leaned back and grinned at me.
‘We could bring animals in here,’ Corrie said. ‘Chooks, a few lambs maybe. Goats.’
‘Good,’ said Homer. ‘That’s the kind of thing we need to look at, and think about.’
Kevin looked gloomy at the mention of goats. I knew what he was thinking. We’d been brought up as sheep cockies, and the first thing we learned was to despise goats. Sheep good, goats bad. It didn’t mean anything, just went with the territory. But we’d have to unlearn a lot of the old ways.
‘You’re thinking in the long term,’ I said to Homer.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘The really long term.’
We talked on for a couple of hours. Corrie’s radio had had the last laugh. It spurred us out of our shock, our misery. By the time we stopped, exhausted, we’d come to a few decisions. Two pairs would go into town the next evening, Robyn and Chris, and Kevin and Corrie. They would operate independently, but stay in close contact. They’d stay there the next full night, most of the night after, and return by dawn the following day. So they’d be away about sixty hours. Kevin and Corrie would concentrate on the Showground. Robyn and Chris would cruise around town, looking for people in hiding, for useful information, for equipment even. ‘We’ll start to reclaim Wirrawee,’ as Robyn put it. We worked out a lot of complicated details, like where they’d have their base (Robyn’s music teacher’s house), where they’d leave notes for each other (under the dog kennel), how long they’d wait on Wednesday morning if the other pair was missing (no time), and their cover story to protect us and Hell if they got caught (‘Since the invasion we’ve been hiding under the Masonic Lodge and only coming out at nights’). We figured that was a place that wouldn’t incriminate anyone else, and a place that the patrols wouldn’t have checked. Robyn and Chris agreed to set up a fake camp in there, to give the cover story credibility.
The rest of us, back in Hell, would do pretty much what Homer had suggested – smuggle in more supplies, establish Hell as a proper base, organise food rationing, and suss out new hiding places.
Strangely enough I was quite elated at the thought of the next couple of days. It was partly that I was scared of going back into town, so it was a relief to get a reprieve from that. It was partly too that Kevin would be away for a few days, as he was getting on my nerves a bit. But mainly it was the interesting combinations that were possible among the people who were left. There were Homer and Lee, both of whom I had strong and strange feelings for, but made more complicated by Homer’s obvious attraction to Fi. It was an attraction he still seemed too shy to do much about, although he was more confident with her now. There was Fi, who lately had lost her cool and become nervous and tongue-tied when she was near Homer, despite the fact that it was still hard to believe she could like him – well, like him in that kind of way. There was Lee, who kept looking at me with his possum eyes, as though his wounded leg was the only thing stopping him from leaping up and grabbing me. I was a little afraid of the depth of feeling in those beautiful eyes.
I felt guilty even thinking about love while our world was in such chaos, and especially when my parents were going through this terrible thing. It was the steers at the abattoirs all over again. But my heart was making its own rules and refusing to be controlled by my conscience. I let it run wild, thinking of all the fascinating possibilities.
Chapter Fourteen
Monday morning a dark river of aircraft flowed overhead for an hour or more. Not ours unfortunately. I’d never seen so many aircraft. They looked like big fat transport planes and they weren’t being molested by anyone, though a half-hour later six of our Air Force jets whistled past on the same route. We waved to them, optimistically.
We’d been back to my place, very early, and brought up another load: more food, tools, clothing, toiletries, bedding, and a few odds and ends that we’d forgotten before, like barbecue tools, Tupperware, a clock and, I’m embarrassed to say, hot-water bottles. Robyn had asked for a Bible. I knew we had one somewhere and I found it eventually, dusted it off and added it to the collection.
It was tricky, because we couldn’t take so much stuff that it would be obvious to patrols that someone was on the loose. So we went on to the Grubers, about a k away, and helped ourselves to a lot more food. I also picked up a collection of seeds and seedlings from Mr Gruber’s potting shed. I was starting to think like Homer and plan for the long term.
The last things we got were half a dozen chooks – our best layers – some pellets, fencing wire and star pickets. As dawn broke we rattled on up the track, the chooks murmuring curiously to each other in the back. I’d let Homer drive this time, figuring he needed the practice. To amuse Fi I closed my eyes, picked up the Bible, opened it at random, pointed to a spot, opened my eyes and read the verse, saying at the same time, ‘Through my psychic finger I will find a sentence that applies to us’. The one I’d picked was this: ‘I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.’
‘Golly,’ said Fi. ‘I thought the Bible was meant to be full of love and forgiveness and all that stuff.’
I kept reading. ‘“Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men; preserve me from violent men, who plan evil things in their heart, and stir up wars continually”.’
The others were really impressed. So was I, but I wasn’t going to let on to them. ‘See, I told you,’ I said. ‘I do have a psychic finger.’
‘Try another one,’ Homer said. But I wasn’t going to throw my reputation away that easily.
‘No, you’ve heard the words of wisdom,’ I said. ‘That’s all for today.’
Fi grabbed the Bible and tried the same ritual. The first time she got a blank section of page at the end of one of the chapters. The second time she read, ‘“Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the province of Babylon”.’
‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to have the psychic finger.’
‘Maybe the one you read would make Robyn feel better about gunning soldiers down,’ Homer said to me.
‘Mmm, I’ve marked the page. I’ll show her when they get back.’ No one mentioned the possibility that they might not get back. That’s the way people always are I think. They figure if they say something bad they might magically make it happen. I don’t think words are that powerful.
We reached the top, hid the Landie, and took the chooks and whatever else we could carry into Hell. We’d have to wait until dark to get the other stuff. It was too dangerous being up on Tailor’s Stitch with daylight coming on, and so many aircraft around. And it was shaping up to be a scorcher. Even down in Hell, where it was normally cool, the air was getting furnace hot. But to my surprise we found Lee leaning against a tree at the opposite end of the clearing to where we’d left him. ‘Hooley dooley!’ I said. ‘You’ve risen from the dead.’
‘I should have chosen a cooler morning,’ he said, grinning. ‘But I got sick of sitting there. Thought it was time for some exercise, now that I’ve recovered from that truck ride.’ He was grinning, very pleased with himself, but sweating. I rinsed a towel in the creek and wiped his face.
‘Are you sure you should be doing this?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘It felt right.’
I remembered how quite often when our animals got sick or injured they’d get themselves into a hole somewhere – under the shearing shed was a popular place for the dogs – and they’d stay there for days and days, until they either died or came out fresh and cured and wagging their tails. Maybe Lee was th
e same. He’d kept pretty still since he’d been shot, lying among the rocks, thinking his quiet thoughts. He wasn’t yet wagging his tail, but the energy was returning to his face.
‘The day you can sprint from one end of this clearing to the other,’ I said, ‘we’ll chop off a chook’s head and have a chicken dinner.’
‘Robyn can cut the stitches out when she gets back from Wirrawee,’ he said. ‘They’ve been in long enough.’ I helped him to a shady place near the creek, where we could sit together in a damp dark basin of rock, probably the coolest spot in Hell that day.
‘Ellie,’ he said. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. That day back at your place, in the haystack, when you came over to where I was lying, and you laid down and we ...’
‘All right, all right,’ I interrupted. ‘I know what we did.’
‘I thought you might have forgotten.’
‘What, do you think I do that kind of stuff so often I can’t remember? It wasn’t exactly an everyday event for me you know.’
‘Well you haven’t looked at me once since then. You’ve hardly even spoken to me.’
‘I was pretty out of it for a few days. I just slept and slept.’
‘Yes, but since then.’
‘Since then?’ I sighed. ‘Since then I’ve been confused. I don’t know what I think.’
‘Will you ever know what you think?’
‘If I could answer that I’d probably know everything.’
‘Have I said something to upset you? Or done something?’
‘No, no. It’s just me. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, so I do things and I don’t always mean what I think I mean. Do you know what I mean?’ I asked, hopefully, because I wasn’t sure myself.
‘So you’re saying it didn’t mean anything?’
‘I don’t know. It meant something, at the time, and it means something now, but I don’t know if it means what you seem to want it to mean. Why don’t we just say I was being a slut, and leave it at that.’
He looked really hurt and I was sorry I’d said that. I hadn’t even meant it.
‘It’s a bit difficult sitting down here,’ he said. ‘If you want to get rid of me, you’re the one who’ll have to go.’
‘Oh Lee, I don’t want to get rid of you. I don’t want to get rid of anyone. We all have to get on, living in this place the way we are, for God knows how long.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This place, Hell. It seems like Hell sometimes. Now for instance.’
I don’t know why I was talking the way I was. It was all happening too unexpectedly. It was a conversation I wasn’t ready for. I guess I like to be in control of things, and Lee had forced this on me at a time and a place that he’d chosen. I wished Corrie were there, so I could go and talk to her about it. Lee was so intense he scared me, but at the same time I felt something strong when he was around – I just didn’t know what it was. I was always very conscious when I was near him. My skin felt hotter, I’d be watching him out of the corner of my eye, directing my comments at him, noticing his reactions, listening more for his words than for anyone else’s. If he expressed an opinion I’d think about it more carefully, give it more weight than I would, say, Kevin’s or Chris’s. I used to think about him a lot in my sleeping bag at nights, and because I’d be thinking about him as I drifted into sleep I tended to dream about him. It got so that – this sounds stupid but it’s true – I associated him with my sleeping bag. When I looked at one I’d think of the other. That doesn’t necessarily mean I wanted him in my sleeping bag, but they had started to go together in my mind. I nearly smiled as I sat there, thinking about that, and wondering how he’d look if he could suddenly read my thoughts.
‘Do you still think about Steve a lot?’ he asked.
‘No, not Steve. Oh I mean I think about him in the same way I think about a lot of people, wondering if they’re all right and hoping they are, but I don’t think about him in the way you mean.’
‘Well if I haven’t offended you and you’re not with Steve any more, then where does that leave me?’ he asked, getting exasperated. ‘Do you just dislike me as a person?’
‘No,’ I said, horrified at that idea but getting a bit annoyed too, at the way he was trying to bully me into a relationship. Guys do that all the time. They want definite answers – as long as they’re the right answers – and they think if they keep at you long enough they’ll get them.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘sorry I can’t give you a list of my feelings about you, in point form and alphabetical order. But I just can’t. I’m all confused. That day in the haystack was no accident. It meant something. I’m still trying to figure out what.’
‘You say you don’t dislike me,’ he said slowly, like he was trying to figure it out. He was looking away from me and he was very nervous, but he was obviously leading up to an important question. ‘So that does mean you like me?’
‘Yes Lee, I like you very much. But right now you’re driving me crazy.’ It was funny how often I’d thought of us having this conversation, but now that we were having it I didn’t know if I was saying what I wanted to say.
‘I’ve noticed you looking at Homer kind of ... special since we’ve been up here. Have you got a thing for him?’
‘It’d be my business if I did.’
‘Cos I don’t think he’s right for you.’
‘Oh Lee, you’re so annoying today! Maybe you shouldn’t have tried walking on that leg. I honestly think it’s weakened your brain. Let’s blame it on that, or the weather or something, because you don’t own me and you don’t have any right to decide who’s right or wrong for me, and don’t you forget it.’ I stormed off in a hot passion to the other side of the clearing where Fi and Homer had been making a yard for the chooks. The chooks were in it, looking shocked, maybe because they’d heard me chucking my tantrum; more likely because they were wondering what the hell they were doing there.
Oh. ‘What the hell.’ I just made a joke.
I watched the chooks for a while, then cut across the clearing again to where the creek wandered back into thick bush and lost itself in a dark tunnel of undergrowth. I’d been thinking for a few days I might try to explore down there a bit, impossible and impassable though it seemed. This might be the time to do it. I could work off some anger and get my mind onto something else. Besides, it looked cool in there. I took my boots and socks off, stuffed the socks in the boots, and tied the boots round my neck. Then I bent over and tried to pretend I was a wombat, a water wombat. I’m the right shape for that, and it was the only way to get under all the vegetation. I was using the creek as a path, but there was a definite sensation of going along a tunnel. The greenery arched so low that it scraped my back even when I was almost kissing the water. It was cool – I doubt if the sun had penetrated the creepers for years – and I hoped I wouldn’t meet too many snakes.
The creek was narrower through here than it was in our clearing, about a metre and a half wide and as much as sixty centimetres deep. The bottom was all stones, but smooth and old ones, not too many with cutting edges, and anyway my feet were getting tough these days. There were quite a few dark still pools that looked very deep, so I avoided them. The creek just chattered on, minding its own business, not disturbed by my creeping progress. It had been flowing here for a long time.
I followed it for about a hundred metres, through many twists and turns. The beginning of the journey had been sweet, like most new journeys I suppose, and there was the hope that the ending might be sweet also, but the middle part was getting tedious. My back was aching and I’d been scratched quite sharply on the arms. I was starting to feel hot again. But the canopy of undergrowth seemed to be getting higher, and lighter – here and there glints of sunlight bounced off the water, and the secret coolness of the tunnel was giving way to the more ordinary dry heat that we’d had back in the clearing. I straightened up a little. There was a place well ahead where the creek seemed to widen
for ten metres before it turned to the right and disappeared into undergrowth again. It spread out into a wider channel, because the banks were no longer vertical there. They angled gently back, and I could see black soil, red rocks, and patches of moss, in a little shadowy space not much bigger than our sitting room at home. I kept wading towards it, still bent-backed. There were little blue wildflowers scattered along the bank. As I got closer I could see a mass of pink wildflowers deeper in the bush, back from the creek. I looked again and realised that they were roses. My heart suddenly beat wildly. Roses! Here, in the middle of Hell! Impossible!
I splashed along the last few metres to the point where the banks began to open out, and sploshed out of the creek onto the mossy rock. Peering into the wild of the vegetation I struggled to distinguish between the shadows and the solid. The only certainty was the rosebush, its flowers catching enough sunlight through the brambles to glow like pieces of soft jewellery. But gradually I started to make sense of what I was seeing. Across there was a long horizontal of rotting black wood, here a pole serving as an upright, that dark space a doorway. I was looking at the overgrown shell of a hut.
I went forward slowly, on tiptoe. It was a quiet place and I had some sort of reverential feeling, like I did in my Stratton grandmother’s drawing room, with its heavy old furniture and curtains always closed. The two places couldn’t have been more different, the derelict bush hut and the solemn old sandstone house, but they both seemed a long way removed from living, from life. My grandmother wouldn’t have liked being compared to a murderer, but she and the man who lived here had both withdrawn from the world, had created islands for themselves. It was as though they’d gone beyond the grave, even while they were still on Earth.