Hunting Elephants

by James Roy

  'Do you like it?' Trent asked.

  'It's not really my kind of music.'

  'Don't really care.'

  'No, well, it's your room, so ... Hey, is this you?' Harry had just spotted a photo stuck to the mirror. It showed a boy in cammo gear, crouched beside a huge black shape.

  'Yeah. Two hundred and twenty-nine kilos.'

  'What? That?'

  'Yeah. Big pig, hey?' Harry caught Trent glancing up at him, checking his reaction, wanting him to be impressed.

  'Heck yes!' Harry said. 'Two hundred kilos!'

  'And twenty-nine. Shot him with a three-o-three, one shot. Here.' Trent pointed to his heart. 'Went straight down. But then, you could bring an elephant down with that rifle.'

  'Where was that?'

  'Back home in Nyngan.'

  'Are there a lot of elephants out there?'

  'No, but there are plenty of pigs. Thousands. They're pests, so ... Anyway, it's better than shooting rabbits.'

  Harry wanted to ask him why he wanted to shoot anything, but when he took another look at the posters and the magazines and the I GUNS sticker on the mirror, he could understand how that might be a pretty pointless question, a bit like asking, 'Why do you speak English?'

  'Does your pop like guns too?'

  Trent shrugged. 'I guess. I mean, he's got a couple, like a three-oh-three, and the twenty-two Remo I had this morning. He keeps them locked up ... or so he thinks.' A tiny smile appeared, then disappeared just as quickly. 'Now he's moved the key. Back home I keep my rifles in my room, but they won't let me bring them here. They don't know I have this, though,' he said, standing and pushing the door closed with his foot. 'Do you want to see something?'

  'Sure,' Harry replied cautiously.

  'Can I trust you?'

  'Yeah, of course.'

  'Because if you tell anyone I've got this ...'

  Trent knelt beside his bed and pulled a black sports bag from underneath, and after another quick glance at the door, he unzipped it and lifted out a strange-looking cross-shaped device, about the size of a tennis racquet. 'Ever seen one of these?' he asked as he handed it to Harry.

  'Is this a crossbow? Aren't these illegal?'

  'Not really. They're prohibited.'

  'What's the difference?'

  'You can hold a crossbow if you've got a permit.'

  'Hold?'

  'Own.'

  'Do you have a permit?'

  'No.'

  Harry slid his fingers along the groove that ran the length of the crossbow, and felt the heavy string. 'What does it shoot?' he asked. 'They're not called arrows, are they?'

  Trent shook his head. 'They're called bolts.' Reaching into the bag, he took out a short, stubby thing, about the length of a pencil, with coarse feathers at one end and a savage looking metal head at the other.

  'It's heavy,' Harry said.

  'I've got another attachment that lets it shoot ball bearings and rocks and stuff,' Trent told him.

  'Kind of like a slingshot?'

  'Yeah, kind of like that.'

  At the sound of the knock on the door, Trent snatched the crossbow from Harry and slid it under the bed. 'What?' he called, reaching for the bolt, which went under his pillow.

  'It's me – Greta. Can I open the door?'

  'Yeah, OK,' Trent reluctantly agreed.

  The door swung slightly open, but Greta didn't come in. She stood with her face to the gap. 'Trent, did you bring the bin up when you got off the bus?'

  He shook his head, continuing to flip through his magazine. 'Forgot.'

  'Well, when you do the chooks, could you go down and get the bin as well?'

  'Yeah, OK. I'll do it in a minute.'

  'You should take Harry with you.'

  Trent raised his eyes to Harry. 'Do you want to?'

  'Sure. Now?'

  With a barely concealed sigh, Trent dropped his magazine on the bed. 'Yeah, now. Let's get it over with.'

  Harry was happy to have an excuse to leave the room. It made him feel claustrophobic, with the curtains drawn across those huge windows, but at least he and Trent had moved on a bit since their first meeting. Even so, he didn't want to stay in there for too long. For a start, he had no idea what Trent might produce next from under his bed. A grenade launcher? An intercontinental ballistic missile? Maybe they could talk more about violent and illegal weapons as they walked down to the gate to get the bin.

  While Curious Reg stuck his snout deep at the base of a clump of spiky grass in pursuit of some fascinating creature, Harry unlatched the gate, and Trent pulled the big green wheelie-bin through. It rumbled all empty and hollow across the gravel, catching the attention of the last of the council workmen, who was packing up his gear. He gave a wave, which Harry returned like he imagined Frank might have done, with a nod, and the casual raise of a couple of fingers. Country style.

  'Big day tomorrow?' the workman asked, dumping his steel toolbox on the back of his ute with a heavy crash.

  'Sorry?' asked Trent.

  The man nodded up the hill. Through the trees, the marquee was just visible.

  'Oh, no, that's for Sunday,' Trent explained.

  'Frank's getting hitched again, isn't he?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Good for him. Hope it doesn't rain before Monday.'

  'Oh well, that's why they got the big tent,' Harry replied.

  The workman laughed. 'I'm not talking about the wedding – I'm talking about this thing.' He pointed at the culvert, still marked out and cordoned off with bright red and yellow tape. 'We should finish it on Monday, so it'd suck if it washed away on Sunday.'

  'Did the weather people say it was going to rain?'

  The workman lifted his eyes skywards, as if that was where the weather people lived. 'Yeah, possible showers over the weekend. Well, have a good one, guys.'

  'Thanks,' Harry replied, threading the chain back through the end of the gate and hooking it up. Then he gave it a proper tug, just so Trent couldn't accuse him of not shutting the gate properly. 'Come on, Reg.'

  The boys didn't say much as they pulled the bin up the driveway. In fact, Trent only spoke twice. The first time was to point out an array of ragged holes at head height, in the smooth bark of a tree. Thick red resin had oozed and congealed, scabbed solid like glass stalactites. 'That's what a crossbow can do,' he said. 'See how close together those marks are? You can be pretty accurate with a crossbow.'

  'So I see.'

  The second time he spoke was when he suggested that Harry should take the bin around to its place at the back of the house, then meet him up at the chicken pen. 'I forgot to get the scraps for the chooks,' he explained.

  'All right, I'll see you up there ...' Harry said, his voice trailing away to nothing, because beyond the chicken shed, the old caravan had caught his eye again. He frowned, and pondered. If the van had been parked and left to rot until the tyres perished, why had Frank gone to the trouble of building piers, and running a power cable up there? It must still be in use, he thought. But why the need to use it at all, when it was parked in the backyard of a huge five-bedroom, three-bathroom, triple-garage ranch-style house? A huge ranch-style house that only three people lived in for most of the time.

  'Huh,' said Harry under his breath as he rolled the bin into place. 'Interesting.'

  Trent was already in the pen with the chickens. It seemed very weird and even a bit surreal, watching someone in black jeans and a slightly worn death-metal T-shirt skulking around in there, talking to chooks. Harry wondered if Trent had forgotten that he wasn't alone, from the way he was chatting to the birds. 'Come on, girls, out of the way,' he said softly as he stretched one arm into the roosting boxes. He withdrew his hand quickly as one of the hens pecked at him. 'No, chook, no.' Then, when he stood up, he had five creamy-coloured eggs in his hand. He placed them gently in his little basket. 'Still warm,' he said. 'She's all broody, this one.'

  'Do you like chooks?'

  Trent sniffed. 'Not really. Why?'
/>   'Just the way you talk to them – I thought you must like them.'

  'They're OK, I guess. They don't lie to you.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Well, they just kind of ... do their thing, really. They get up early, and start pecking and scratching and doing what they do, and then they lay eggs. They never have a day off, they never lie around, and they never say one thing while they're doing something else. What you see is what you get with chooks.'

  Harry smiled. 'It sounds like you do like them.'

  'Like I said, they're OK. You can trust chooks. But I don't become friends with them. I'd never have a pet chook.'

  'Why not?'

  He looked at Harry, hard. 'Because you shouldn't have to eat your friends, that's why.'

  That made sense, Harry thought. 'Do you have chickens back home in ... where was it?'

  'Nyngan. Yeah. Well, we did, until my stupid father got drunk for about a week and a half and forgot to feed them, and they died. We had six, and three died, and the other three were going to die, so we had to kill them.' Trent's face was suddenly twisted with disgust. 'With an axe, except they were too sick to even eat. So they died for no reason. It's not like they're pests or anything.'

  'Why didn't you feed them, if your dad couldn't do it?'

  'Because I wasn't there,' Trent replied, as if Harry should have known. 'I was here. I was here because he was always drunk and crazy, and couldn't look after me. But we thought that he could at least look after some chooks. He's an idiot.'

  'That's what Mum says about my dad,' Harry said.

  Trent gave a humourless chuckle. 'I don't know your old man very well, but I can tell you for sure, he's not even close to mine. You'll meet him tomorrow.'

  'Will I?'

  'Of course!' Trent replied, frowning. 'It's his old man's wedding – why would he stay away from that?'

  'I don't know – I guess he wouldn't,' Harry said quietly. 'So, you don't live with your dad any more?'

  Trent shook his head. 'I haven't for a while, but we're going to try living together again while Pop and Greta are on their honeymoon. Dad reckons he's changed. We'll see, I guess.'

  'So when are you heading back to Nyngan?'

  'Not until Pop and Greta get back. We're going to stay here and look after the place. The counsellor bloke my old man's been seeing reckons it would be good for us to try living together again in a "neutral venue",' Trent said, making quote marks in the air with his fingers. 'I think he reckons us living together is like a game that one of us has to win. I just want to see my mates again. This school sucks.'

  'And who's going to look after your place back there while your dad's here with you?'

  Trent smiled. 'No one – all the chickens are dead already. So he's just coming along for the wedding, and we'll be here together for a couple of weeks.'

  'So, are you excited about the wedding?'

  Trent had begun ladling chicken grain into the feeder with a chipped mug, while dust from the feed hovered in the air around him. 'Excited? Not really. It's going to be just like normal. There'll be all these people, and I won't know any of them, but they'll know who I am. They all know everything about me, even though I've never met most of them. They'll be all like, "Hey Trent", and I'll be like, "Yeah, hi, whoever you are". And someone else will go, "Oh, so that's Trent!" Then Pop'll make some long speech, and he'll probably cry in the middle of it, just like he always does. He's a bloody sook.'

  'What's he cry about?'

  'Probably the war, so I guess that's OK. I think it's all right to cry about the war.'

  'Are any of his army mates going to be at the wedding?'

  'How would I know? Why?'

  'I just thought with the whole war thing, and mates sticking together ... I talked to him about it a bit when we were working on the four-wheel-drive.'

  'You helped him with that? And he talked about the war? Oh, you are special, aren't you?'

  Harry let that one go. This kid had a sharp enough tongue already, without giving him any more reasons to use it.

  'Why are you so interested, anyway?' Trent asked suspiciously, and Harry was keen to throw him off whatever scent he thought he was on.

  'I don't know. I just am. You know, having a war hero in the family. It's cool.'

  'Yeah, I guess. Dunno why he won't talk about it to me, but.'

  'A lot of vets don't like to discuss it.' Harry didn't mean to sound like some kind of supposed expert, but once it was out there, that was exactly how it made him sound, and he cringed inside.

  Fortunately Trent barely seemed to notice. 'If he doesn't want to talk about it, how come it's always me he doesn't want to talk about it with?' he said as he took the lid off a large plastic drum and started scattering sawdust around the pen. 'Whenever he says anything to me it's just to tell me off.'

  There was nothing Harry could say to that, so he attempted to change the subject. 'Have you ever been for a ride in his jeep?'

  'The precious Mutt? Nuh.'

  'Really?'

  'Really. Never even sat in it. I've only seen it running once or twice. Goes all right, I think.'

  'Does he go out driving with other jeepy guys?'

  Trent shrugged. 'Wouldn't know. Don't really care. I'm not into all that car stuff. You are though, hey?'

  'Yeah. My brother was mad about cars,' Harry said. 'He'd have loved to have seen a real army jeep.'

  'So you both liked cars and mechanical stuff? You know, before he ... you know ...'

  'Yeah, but he especially liked motor racing. He was nuts for it. He was all Holden, though. I'm Ford.'

  Trent was unimpressed. 'I hate that crap. I don't see the point. At least shooting pigs gets rid of one more pest.'

  'Why do you like it so much?'

  Trent shrugged. 'Shooting? Feels good, that's all. Feels scary too, sometimes. You see this pig running at you, and you line it up, and you know that you've got one shot. Just one. And if you miss, or just nick him, he'll be heaps mad, and he'll come for you.'

  'Yeah, but it's not really a sport, is it? I mean, it doesn't seem fair unless the pig's got a gun too,' said Harry, repeating some stupid quote he remembered reading somewhere.

  The glare he got from Trent was savage. 'Yeah, but I weigh seventy kilos, and the pig weighs a hundred and fifty, two hundred, even three hundred. Plus he's got tusks.'

  It seemed like a fair point.

  Trent leaned down and, with a bit of tugging, slid the leg of his jeans up to just below his knee. A long, red, crescent-shaped scar ran down the inside of his left calf, slightly raised and shiny. 'Luckily the mongrel who did this only got my leg.'

  It was a very fair point.

  Trent pulled his jeans back down. 'After you,' he said, ushering Harry out of the gate. 'You know, if you were ever in Nyngan, you could ... I mean, I've got a few different rifles. There'd be one there that you could use – one that ...'

  'One that wouldn't knock me on my bum?' Harry suggested.

  The glare was gone, and the shy grin was back. 'Something like that.'

  'Not the three-oh-three?'

  Trent shook his head slowly. 'No, not the big fella. Something more your size. But I don't suppose you'd ever come out to Nyngan anyway.'

  'I don't know – I might. What's in Nyngan?' Harry asked, trying to sound like this might actually be a possibility, at some point in the future.

  'Apart from wild pigs? Not much. Stuff all, actually. And someone like you wouldn't come near a place like that.'

  'Why not?'

  Trent looked Harry up and down. 'I don't know. I just don't think you would.'

  'I might. You never know.'

  'Whatever. You'd probably get gored to death anyway.

  If I didn't invite you, I'd probably save your life.' 'That'd be good of you,' Harry replied. 'Thanks, mate. Thanks for the non-invitation.'

  'Don't mention it. What's wrong?'

  'I'm just wondering about that,' Harry said, nodding towards the caravan.

/>   Trent followed the direction of his gaze. 'What about it?'

  'Does someone live in it?'

  'It's Pop's.'

  'What's he do in it?'

  'Don't know. He keeps it locked, and I don't ask.' Trent opened the back door of the house, and turned to face Harry. 'Neither should you.'

  The coin wasn't behaving itself. It was meant to disappear completely, but it was still slightly visible above the crease of Harry's thumb. He swore under his breath and tried again, watching his hands closely in the bathroom mirror. This time the coin fell tinkling into the sink.

  'You in there, Harold?' Dad called.

  'Yeah, I won't be a minute.'

  'What are you doing?'

  'Nothing.' He put the coin away in his pocket, along with the magic book, and opened the door.

  Dad was standing there with a half-smile on his face. 'Did you win?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I'm an accountant – I'd recognise the sound of money anywhere. When I heard it fall into the sink I thought you must have hit the jackpot.'

  'No, no jackpot.'

  'Keep practising.'

  'It's hard.'

  'Making people believe their eyes isn't always easy, Harold. You should see the surprised faces of some of my clients when I show them how much company tax they owe.'

  'Good surprise or bad surprise?'

  'That depends on what figure they thought I was about to show them.'

  It was getting dark, and dinner was about to be served. Except for Frank, everyone was there, even Trent.

  'Where's Pop?' Greta asked him.

  Trent shrugged. 'Wouldn't know.'

  She shook her head in frustration. 'The van,' she said. 'Excuse me, everyone.'

  Harry's attention was caught by Robyn, who was sitting across the table from him. She'd made the tiniest of movements, a whisper of a shake of the head. She saw Harry watching her, and smiled briefly, as if to convince him that what he'd seen was a mere illusion. But he'd seen it.

  Outside, Greta slid the door closed. Harry saw her cup her hands around her mouth. 'Frank, dinner's on,' she called. A moment later: 'Yes, now. We're all waiting.'

  'What does he do up there?' Harry asked as she came back in. His question threw the room into a sudden silence, except for the steady ticking of the clock on the wall.