Hey Brother

by Jarrah Dundler

  ‘I was saying Dad’s scared.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon, Trysten. Scared of what?’

  ‘Seeing Shaun.’

  ‘Okay, well, yeah. Good point. He probably is. And so he bloody well should be.’

  ‘And he’s scared of Trev.’

  ‘Well, yeah, there’s reason there too probably.’

  ‘And you!’

  ‘Ha!’ Mum plopped the dough on the counter and threw her head back, flour dust billowing from her hair. Her jaw dropped, and her eyes went wide and wild like Trev doing the Yowie, and she laughed. Then after about ten seconds she stopped suddenly. She turned to me and, looking angrier than I’d seen her in ages, through gritted teeth said, ‘And so he bloody well should be!’

  She pounded the dough—driving her fists in, twisting her knuckles. ‘But that’s no bloody excuse, is it? Hey, Trysten…Listen, after the rain’s eased would you be a good fella and do us a favour?’

  ‘What?’ I knew what was coming—another bloody message request.

  ‘Could you go down to the creek and tell yer father that if he’s not up by Christmas lunch then I’m going to march down there meself and drag him up by that scraggly beard of his?’

  ‘Yeah! For sure, Mum—I can say that. For sure!’

  I bolted out into the pelting rain, not even bothering to grab a raincoat. I couldn’t wait to see the look on Old Greggy Boy’s face.

  As I slid and sloshed down the slope, avoiding the main track that had turned into a cascade of brown water, I thought of those early years on the farm when I was little, only six or seven, how we used to explore the land as a whole family, and how, whenever we went down to the creek we used to race down the slope to get there. All four of us.

  Mum and I would line up at the top of the slope. Ready, steady GO GO GO! Old Greggy Boy would yell, and Mum and I would shoot off. Twenty seconds later Dad’d count him and Shaun in. Taking the main track I’d always lead for the first half of the race, with Mum hot on my tail. I could hear her. Sense her. Only ever a metre behind me. Sure she could’ve taken me, but I reckon she was just keeping close in case I had a stack. Soon Mum and I would reach the halfway point, the section of the slope where the trees thinned out and the clumpy grass grew up to my shoulders, and that was when Dad and Shaun would overtake us. Zhoooom—Shaun on our left. Zhoooop—Dad on our right. Dad zigzagging along the wallaby tracks, springing like an emu. Shaun not taking any track, just charging straight-the-fuck-down—snapping saplings, barging into and bouncing off trees like they were defenders in a footy match. Dad and Shaun were always evenly placed at the halfway mark, before they disappeared into the thick scrub that covered the last fifty metres of the slope, but when Mum and I reached the bottom Dad was always crowing like a rooster. And Shaun was always shaking his head, looking round in disbelief and swearing that next time Dad’d be eating his dust. You just wait, old fella. You just wait!

  Yep, I thought as I reached the bottom of the slope, picturing him there puffy chested and sparkly eyed—Dad could be as quick as a fox. But mostly he was slow as a snail. He was the slowest of all when he was sorting through all his boxes of junk. And that’s what I found him doing when I got down to his caravan to deliver the message from Mum. Sorting through his stuff. Slow as fucken ever.

  It’d only rained for a day but Dad must’ve sniffed more coming, a whole lot more. The caravan was hitched up, ready to tow. The tray of the Landy was chock-full of all the junk that’d been lying round the van: sheets of iron, and rolls of wire, bundles of shade cloth, buckets, water containers, rakes and shovels and hoes. Anything that had been on the ground was up off it.

  ‘Gonna be a biggun, hey?’ I moved in under the annex, the middle of the tarp hanging low, sagging under the weight of a bucket’s worth of water that pooled on top of it.

  Dad, holding a cardboard box, poked his head out of the van. ‘Yep, Mick reckons we’re due for a flood. Few more days of the likes of this and these flats will be a few foot under. No doubt about it.’

  He ducked back inside.

  I reached above my head and pushed my palm against the ceiling of the annex. The pool of water rushed over the edge like a waterfall and hit the soggy ground with a sploosh. Water splashed up everywhere, even back under the annex, soaking the seats of the two camping chairs.

  Dad poked his head back out, frowned and motioned for me to join him inside.

  I stepped in, holding my nose—gah! What a stink! With all the rain it smelt almost as bad as those wet socks that were lost under my bed for a week. What a mess, too. The kitchen table, which was not much bigger than a school desk, was covered with Dad’s stuff—rusty tobacco tins, an old-fashioned shaving kit with one of those super-sharp razors that gangsters were always cutting other gangsters’ throats with in old movies, a silver wristwatch, mismatched sets of cutlery and crockery, a bronze challis (real bronze, and real old, he reckoned, and worth something ’cause it was from some famous castle in Europe), a Swiss Army pocketknife, a bowie knife, and stacks and stacks of books. Books on organic gardening, horticulture, permaculture, landscaping, DIY building, and old books with tattered covers and peeling spines—the classics, he called ’em. On top of one of the piles I spotted his favourite, the one he read to me when I was ten, about an old fisherman trying to catch a big marlin. I thought it was pretty boring, until the sharks showed up.

  Wedging the box between the edge of the table and his stomach, Dad’s eyes roamed from item to item. ‘Mmm.’

  ‘So, where will ya go?’

  Dad picked up an old alarm clock and placed it in the box. ‘Dunno yet. Depends on the Landy. Doesn’t seem to have the guts of late. Might not be able to haul the van. Hence the packing. I don’t want to lose the van and me stuff along with it. If the Landy’s got the guts, I’ll go set up camp at Mick’s for a while. If the creek crossing doesn’t go under, that is. Help Mick out with his landscaping work, I will.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I raised my voice over the rain thrashing the roof of the van. ‘I got a better idea. Bring the van up to the front paddock. Stay there a bit. Mum’s putting on a Christmas do, and you’re invited.’

  ‘Yeah? By who?’

  ‘Mum. Of course.’

  ‘Right.’ Dad twiddled the tip of his beard. ‘She said that? Your mother said that?’

  ‘She sure did!’ I slapped my leg.

  ‘Oh, okay then.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘I think I got it a bit wrong, hey. She invited you, though, I’m sure of that. She just put it differently.’

  ‘Right.’ Dad picked up a huge beer mug, almost as big as his head, and placed it next to another pile of his stuff on the table. I didn’t know if that was the keeping or chucking pile. It all looked like junk to me.

  ‘Well?’ He turned, tilted his head back and stroked his beard, running his hand right down the length of it. ‘What’d she say? How did she put it?’

  ‘She said…mmm…oh yeah! She said to tell you that if you’re not up by Christmas lunch she’ll come down here herself and drag you up by your pissy little beard.’

  ‘Huh? What’s that? She called my beard pissy?’ Dad moved his hand behind his beard and scooped it forward. He looked down his nose at it, weighing it in his palm.

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said, ‘sorry. Hang on. Nah, I got it wrong. It wasn’t pissy that she said. It was something else.’

  ‘Huh? What was it? Garn, tell me!’

  I rubbed my temples with my thumb and forefinger and closed my eyes. ‘Hang on, hang on. It’s coming. Pathetic. Was that it? Pathetic?’

  Dad tsked and rolled his eyes, turned his back on me and started rummaging through the junk on the kitchen bench. ‘Bugger off, mate. Yer just laying it on nice and thick. That’s what yer doing.’

  ‘Nah! Just can’t remember, hey. Oh, hang on. Got it this time. Scraggly! Yep, that was it. For sure.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ With the box under his arm, Dad moved to the tiny bedroom past the kitch
en. ‘Enough of that now.’

  I leant from my seat and peeped round the corner. Dad was standing in front of his bed, which was also covered with junk.

  ‘Mmm.’ He shifted things round on the bed. ‘What’s the date now?’

  ‘Twenty-second.’

  ‘Three days. Yep! Reckon I can do it. Reckon I might just do it. Got to be packed by then anyway.’

  I stood, looking over to the bench seats at the other end of the caravan. More junk!

  Dad walked out to the kitchen, rubbing his hands together. ‘Yep, I’m in. Tell Kirsty I’ll be up once all this is sorted.’

  ‘Right. See ya next Chrissy then.’

  15

  The potholes on Findle Creek Road brimmed with murky brown water like tiny dams about to burst.

  ‘That’s it, jubie,’ Shaun said. ‘Now, after this bend, shift her up. Give her a bit more on the straight.’

  The Tank lurched forward as I revved too hard after changing gear, then—thunk, sploosh—the front tyre jolted over a pothole. ‘Maybe we should wait till the rain lets up?’

  ‘Ah, c’mon, jubie—yer not ready to quit yet, are ya?’

  A whole day and night of sleeping and lounging round in the shed had recharged Shaun’s batteries. At 8 a.m. he’d bounded into my room, dangling the Tank’s keys in front of my face—‘We’re on!’ His eyes had sparked like flints when I fired up the engine. Then, from the moment we buckled up he’d barked orders at me like I was a new recruit, a jubie, at the army training centre down south and he was a corporal. Shaun’d decided that because I didn’t have the ten bucks I owed him for losing the bet, he was going to make me a jubie for the day. He had a smug look on his face the whole ride. Like he was enjoying bossing me round.

  I’d sucked at first. I crunched the gears. I rode the clutch. I hit more potholes than I missed. But after a couple of ks with Shaun barking orders—shift now, veer here, steady, not so hard on the brake—I had the hang of it. Other than the column gearstick, the size and the heavier steering, the Tank wasn’t that much harder to drive than the Corolla. Ten ks later, as I rolled the Tank over the Davises’ cattle grid, I was chuffed. I’d made it all the way to the end of the valley.

  Outside my rain-streaked window the scene looked like a little kid’s painting—the Davises’ farmhouse a blurry yellow, the dairy cows smudges of black and white, and beyond, way beyond in the distance, dark green mountains. I gazed at them, remembering how Shaun and Adam used to do week-long treks up there for prep training—all the way over those mountains, to the ranges and the waterfalls that fed Findle Creek. Then the rain bucketed down harder, smashing on the car roof, gushing over the window, so that the painting became just one big blurry smear, like the kid who’d painted it had run his hands through it.

  I felt pretty good about how far I made it. But I wasn’t too sure about this rain.

  ‘Maybe you should go from here,’ I said, almost having to yell for Shaun to hear me.

  ‘No way, jubie. You gotta go up and back and then do the whole thing again, without hitting a pothole. That’s how Greg taught me.’ Shaun reached over and flicked the wipers onto a higher setting. ‘This should help. Just relax, Little Man, at the speed you’re going we’ll be fine. This road’s not even half as bad as the ones I saw on tour. Should’ve seen them—wound round the foothills of these massive mountains that make our ranges look like pissy little termite nests. Narrow, too—half the width of this road, with sheer drop-offs on the side. One wrong move and off you’d go. Plus, you had to watch out for landmines.’

  For the next couple of ks back down the valley, the rain eased off a bit and I relaxed into it. I imagined we weren’t on Findle Creek Road, but on a road in Afghanistan. The potholes weren’t potholes, they were landmines. And we had an enemy on our tail. I needed to maintain a high speed while still dodging the potholes.

  I put my foot on the accelerator and watched the speedo climb to forty. Forty-five.

  ‘That’s it, jubie. You may just make the cut.’

  I slowed the Tank as we approached the old timber bridge. Halfway across it Shaun asked me to pull up.

  I stopped. Shaun wound down his window. The smells of the gushing creek—silty water, mossy rocks, rotting leaves and sticks and bark—drifted in.

  ‘Whoa.’ Shaun whistled. ‘She’s coming up, hey. Only a metre and a half from the bridge! Only a few days in it if the rain keeps falling at this rate.’

  ‘Ha! Went to see Dad yesterday, and he’s getting the van ready in case it floods. Said what you just did.’ I mimicked Dad’s gloomy voice. ‘Only a few days in it!’

  ‘Ah, piss off!’

  ‘You two gonna make up if he comes up for Chrissy?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m over it. It’d be good to make peace. For both of us to apologise.’

  ‘You? Why do you have to apologise? He’s the one who hit you!’ ‘Yeah, Tryst, but I goaded him something fierce. He was never keen on the idea of me joining the army—always making hints about how good I was with engines and motors and fixing things, wanting me to be a mechanic. So when the news came that I’d made it in he got real stroppy. Wouldn’t say why, though. Wouldn’t say nothing at all. So I bailed him up. C’mon, Greg, tell us: why don’t you want me to go? Hey? Why? And then he walked away from me, saying nothing. Can’t fucken believe you, I said. Then I poked him in the back again and again. Can’t fucken believe you’re sulking ’cause I’m going off to do something with my life while you’re turning Pop’s farm to shit. Then I called him a useless old prick. That’s when he hit me.’

  ‘Shit. Bit harsh, don’t you think?’

  ‘Nah, not really. Mum’s called him close to that, after all.’

  ‘Nah—didn’t mean that. I meant him hitting you.’

  ‘Ah, well, I was pretty pissed off at the time. Pissed off that he didn’t even congratulate me, that he wasn’t supportive. That’s why I arced up at him. Looking back, pushing him like I did, I guess I got what was coming to me. Push someone hard enough and eventually they’ll snap.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess. Still, I reckon you’re the one who’s owed an apology. Never said why he didn’t want you to sign up.’

  ‘Nup. Not at the time, and we ain’t said a word to each other since that fight.’

  ‘I reckon he’s spent too much time hanging with that feral Mick. Might’ve turned into a pacifist or something. Like that Gandhi fella.’

  ‘Big words, Little Man. Sounds like they’re actually teaching kids in that poor excuse of a school these days. Anyway, if Greggy comes up and makes amends I’m open to it. But I’m not going down there to see him.’

  I snorted. ‘Ha! Mum’s right, youse two are stubborn as each other.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever. Enough idle chitchat, jubie. Let’s get rolling.’ I shifted the Tank back into gear and crept over the bridge, the timber beams clopping and clattering.

  Back on the road I moved up gears and in no time had the speedo nudging forty-five. ‘Stuff Greggy! I reckon you done good. Real good! Everyone does. Mum. The boys. The Davises. All my mates at school. Everyone thinks you’re a hero!’

  ‘What?’ Shaun snapped. ‘You been telling your mates I’m some kind of hero?’ He paused, and when he continued he sounded flat and deflated, like Dad before he says something dark and stormy. ‘Tryst, I ain’t no bloody hero.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  As I continued driving, Shaun stayed quiet. Real quiet. Out of the corner of my eye, I could sense him looking at me, then down, then back to me. He was squirming in his seat, too. Like he was trying to say something but couldn’t quite get there. Shaun was never tongue-tied, never lost for words, so it made me nervous.

  I put my foot down a bit more. Fifty ks an hour.

  ‘Shaun?’ I said. ‘What are you talking about? Why aren’t you a hero?’

  Shaun roared. ‘’Cause it was my bloody fault, that’s why!’

  ‘What? What was your fault?’

  ‘The contact, Tryst
. That’s what! The whole bloody thing was my fault.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Shaun’s speech got faster, the words tumbling out. ‘Before, Tryst, just before the contact, when we were moving to the OP, when we were supposed to be moving quiet as mice—’cause we knew we were getting close to them, immersing ourselves deeper and deeper into their territory—when we’d just done five fucken ks that night…’ In the corner of my eye I could see that he was rocking back and forth in his seat, shaking, slapping his hand tap-tap-tap on the dashboard. ‘I slipped on some fucken rocks and tumbled down a bit and sent more rocks falling, all this fucken shale going down down down into the valley. The noise, Tryst, ah, the fucken noise. Wolfy looked at me like he wanted to wring my neck. We all sat still for a few minutes, waiting, listening, watching. Nothing. So we moved on towards the OP…then there was this rifle shot, clack!’

  Shaun stopped rocking, drew deep heavy breaths. Then he sniffled. Was he crying?

  I shifted the Tank down a gear, started slowing down, preparing to stop. To stop and talk.

  ‘No,’ Shaun shouted. ‘Keep driving!

  I put my foot down, kept my eyes on the road ahead. The rain had eased. And through the grey drizzle I could see the long straight, followed by a snaking section where the road was flanked by gums. After all the bends were two giant gums, the ones that stood on either side of our gate like guards.

  The home stretch. I shifted her back up a gear.

  ‘But, Shaun,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter now, does it? I mean, youse beat them, didn’t ya? And youse got out of there unscathed.’ ‘Nah, Tryst. We didn’t. Wolfy didn’t. We’d thought we’d taken them all, then one of the fuckers popped back up from that ridgeline. Fired three shots. One hit Wolfy right in the neck. Ah—fuck!’ Shaun’s leg jiggled up and down, his fist thumped against his door, and his voice was so shaky I was sure he’d have tears in his eyes. ‘Ah, fuck, Tryst. Should’ve fucken seen it. Fucken underside of his neck torn open, so you could see his fucken cheekbone and all this dark blood oozing and spurting out. And while K-Dawg and Smithy, our patrol medic, were fixing him up, while Rusty was calling the FOB for the medic chopper, all I could think was how I’d fucked up and how my mate Wolfy, my brother, with six fucken tours under his belt, was gonna die ’cause I’d fucked up.’