Highways to a War

by Koch, Christopher J.

  One strip fascinated Mike more than any other, to the point of obsession: Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, set on what was then called the China Coast. He would lie on his bed studying it for hours. We would read it together, when we were ten, carried along by the pictures, struggling to understand the speeches in the balloons. We were really studying these texts for clues to an alarming and seductive adult cosmos that was waiting in the future, and many of the more puzzling speeches I can still remember, as an archaeologist might remember hieroglyphics he once spent years deciphering. (“You’re the Dragon Lady? The woman pirate?” “It is so! And thanks to the fair-skinned one, I look myself again!”) The American boy Terry was clearly Mike’s alter ego, and we followed his life, from his boyhood in the South China Sea of the thirties, when Chinese pirates were the villains, to his manhood in World War Two, when Colonel Flip Corkin of the U.S. Air Force became a leading figure, and the villains were our villains: the Japanese. That Mike would one day go to the China Coast to lead the life of Terry (in that weird Far East which was not east for us, but north), I always took for granted.

  Now that we were adolescent, the stories had come into focus; and what had been enigmas in our early years were comprehended. We pretended to be casual, now; we weren’t children any more, and Terry and the Pirates was just a comic strip. But we still sometimes read Wags in the sleepout, as a ritual to pass time, and Terry’s spell persisted, especially for Mike. And we couldn’t be casual about its women, who had now altered their dimensions for us. There was a blond and beautiful American adventuress called Burma, and an equally beautiful villainess (to use the terminology of the time), called the Dragon Lady. That Dragon Lady, Mike would say, and he’d shake his head and grin. I think he was in love with the Dragon Lady: a Eurasian who was as alien to us, in our Anglo-Saxon island, as a being from another planet. And certainly we were both in love with Burma.

  When he wasn’t reading in the sleepout, Mike would listen to a green portable radio on the chest of drawers next to his bed. He liked Country and Western music, and nevvscasts. At such times, his face deeply shadowed in the candlelight, he appeared older than fifteen: his heavy white eyelids were like seashells, exaggerated in a way that made him unfamiliar. He lived an interior life that he didn’t talk about, and I guessed that some of it had to do with the Second World War, as well as with Terry and the Pirates. He still admired his brother Ken without reserve, and greatly regretted that the War had ended before he could go too.

  It’d be good to serve your country, he said, and stared into the candle, lying with his hands behind his head.

  Even at fifteen, I privately found the direct expression of such a sentiment quaint and old-fashioned; and I glimpsed for a moment the degree to which the books in the wardrobe must be influencing him, as well as Wags. No doubt his hero worship of Ken played a part too—a!though Ken’s personal influence on him wasn’t calculated to make war desirable; rather the reverse, as I’d seen long ago over the guns.

  When we were younger, we’d played a silly game with .22 rifles. Ken used to take us rabbiting and wallaby-shooting, and had lent us each a .22 for our personal use. Without his knowledge, at Mike’s suggestion, we began a stalking game with them: a version of our juvenile games of cowboys and Indians to which an element of realism was added. Recalling this now, I’m half appalled.

  There were rules. We fired over each other’s heads, or well to the side. And knowing the alarm it would have caused had we been found out, we played the game well away from the farmyard, on the steep, grassy hill behind the pickers’ huts, on the other side of the wire fence that marked the boundary of the Langford property. There, among yellow tussocks and gray boulders coated with lichen, on the edge of a forest of gums, we stalked each other. And it was there, I often think, as well as on the football field, that Michael first began to develop the uncanny skills that would stand him in such good stead on the battlefields of Indochina.

  We took turns at being the hunter and the hunted. Given a short start, and limited to an agreed area of bush, you had to try to evade discovery. If you were spotted, a shot was fired directly over your head, and you then had to freeze and surrender. I was good enough at the game to keep Mike interested; but I was never as good as he was. When I hunted him, crawling or stumbling along through the prickly undergrowth between the gum trees and black wattle, it was like hunting something gone insubstantial. If his bright blond head hadn’t given me a small advantage in spotting him, I might have had to give up altogether.

  When Mike hunted me, I would wriggle on my belly along the bush’s floor, breathing in the sharp, papery smells of eucalyptus, fallen bark and ants: waiting for his shot to ring out. Once, the bullet thudded into the trunk of a blue-gum six inches above my head, and I laughed hysterically, raising my arms in surrender.

  It was on that afternoon that we suddenly heard Ken’s mighty shout. It came from down the hill: his tall figure was toiling up towards us through the grass, and soon he stood over us, hands on hips. He still wore the Digger hat, stained and bent and faded so that it was just an old hat, now. His eyes seemed darker blue and more wide open than usual.

  You stupid young buggers, he said. For once, his big grin was missing.

  Just firing a few potshots, Mike said.

  Ken held out his hand. Give us those twenty-twos, he said.

  We knew better than to argue, and handed them to him. He sat down on a small boulder a few feet away, the rifles across his knees.

  Mike looked contrite. We’re sorry, Ken, he said. We won’t do it again.

  You won’t get a chance to, Ken said. He shook his head. Bloody hell.

  Mike tried grinning at him, but Ken didn’t grin back. He sat in silence, and we sat down next to him, as long shadows put their fingers across the valley, and the sun left the red roof of the house and the white road between the poplars. Far off, we could hear the voices of pickers among the hops, and the barking of John Langford’s collie dog, Angus. When Ken spoke again, he seemed to be talking to himself, looking out over the valley.

  You pick up a rifle and it gives you big ideas, he said. You think it makes a man of you, holding a gun. That’s all bullshit, boys. You don’t feel quite so good after you’ve used it on someone. Only mad bastards find that enjoyable.

  Tell us how it was in New Guinea, Ken, Mike said. He was always trying to get Ken to talk about the action he’d seen, but Ken never would.

  Not now, Chick, Ken said. But suddenly he looked at us, and said: You want to know how I killed my first Japanese? All right, I’ll tell you.

  I glanced at Mike. His expression was utterly intent; he’d waited years for this.

  It was just after I got to New Guinea, Ken said. I was twenty-one; I’d never seen action. The blokes up the trail ahead of us had knocked out a Japanese machine-gun post, and we were told not to take prisoners. We couldn’t; we were outnumbered. There was one Jap still alive, with a bullet in his guts, and our sergeant told me to kill him. “Shoot him, Ken.” That’s what he said to me.

  He shook his head, and let out a quick breath through his nose that might have denoted amusement, but didn’t. “Shoot him, Ken.” He repeated the words wonderingly, as though they contained the key to something: a puzzle he’d been trying to solve for a long time. So I picked up my .303, and put a bullet through him, he said. He was the first man I’d ever shot. Then I went behind a tree and threw up.

  He thought for a moment, while we kept absolutely quiet, waiting.

  He was just lying there, looking at me, this Jap, he said. He was quite a young bloke. Sometimes I still see him looking at me before I go to sleep. I killed a lot of other Japanese in the fighting after that, and it got easier. But he was different. He was in cold blood. I don’t reckon that bloody sergeant should have made me do it. No, I don’t reckon he should have.

  He glanced at us; but the glance told us nothing. Then his face softened a little, and became almost friendly; he seemed to be coming back to us. So
don’t you young blokes think it’s fun, killing people, he said. It’s no bloody fun at all.

  He stood up, holding the guns. I’ll keep these for now, he said.

  He turned and walked off down the hill, erect as though marching, pulling the battered Digger hat low over his eyes, not looking back.

  Mike blew his candle out, and I did the same.

  Sometimes Ken has bad dreams, Mike told me. I’ve heard him sing out, at night. He still thinks about the War, now and then. And he lost his girlfriend Peggy by going to the War. He was engaged to her, and she broke it off, while he was up in New Guinea. Married someone else.

  Why would she do that? I asked. Any girl’d want Ken.

  Selfish, Mum reckons. All those Stantons are selfish.

  There was silence for a while; then his voice came softer, out of the dark. Hey: you got a girl yet?

  No, I said, I hadn’t got a girl. Had he?

  Yeah, I’ve got a girl, he said. Don’t tell anyone this, Ray. It’s one of the pickers.

  I laughed. I know, I said. That red-haired girl.

  Don’t laugh, Ray, he said. I’m in love with her. His voice was low and fervent: he was clearly serious, and although he was only fifteen, he had the dignity of youthful maturity. Her name’s Maureen Maguire, he said; and he divulged it like a deadly secret.

  We’d reached the age where the hop fields and the hills and the whole flowering land were filled with a buzz and murmur of desire. But this was still the era of sexual reticence and innocence, and although we’d exchanged inadequate information on human coupling, and occasionally told each other dirty jokes, girls and women were an almost total mystery, whom Mike in particular contemplated with reverence. So to me, and no doubt to Mike, the red-haired picker in her hand-me-down dress and faded linen sun hat was a nymph of the glades. To think of her being Mike’s girl pierced me with pleasurable envy; but I told myself that it was Mike who deserved her. He had the daring to woo her; I didn’t.

  My amusement had been caused by the fact that he thought I hadn’t been aware of his feeling, simply because he’d never said anything. He’d imagined I was unaware of his secret life.

  But I knew about it. I’d caught glimpses of it, but had been tactful enough not to mention it to him. He would disappear at times, particularly in the early evenings, making it plain he wanted to get away on his own. Left to my own devices, I’d gone walking about the property; and one evening, venturing past the pickers’ huts, I’d seen an extraordinary domestic picture. In one of the glassless windows, a family was framed in kerosene lamplight, sitting around their table over a meal: a middle-aged man and woman, the red-haired girl (plainly their daughter, since the woman had similar red hair), two small boys, and Mike. He was laughing and talking with them easily, gesturing with one hand, a cup of tea in the other. They were all smiling at him, and the parents had pleasant, kindly faces. The young squire among his tenants, I thought. I’d reached the age of such silly witticisms; and as I’ve said, I envied him.

  I was also awed. He was trespassing into one of John Langford’s most seriously forbidden zones. What if his father found out? I put this question to him now.

  He won’t find out, Mike said. To hell with him if he does. Those pickers are good people; and they’ve got so bloody little, Ray. Dad says they thieve things; but the Maguires would never do that. I’ve started taking them eggs and vegetables that Mum lets me have.

  Wouldn’t your mother tell your father? I asked.

  No, he said. She won’t tell him. Only Luke Goddard might tell him.

  Luke Goddard was a hermit. He had lived for years, with John Langford’s permission, in a dilapidated shack on the boundary of the property, not far from the pickers’ huts. No one knew what he had been or where he’d originally come from. He was a tall old man with a mane of white hair and deep-sunk, pale eyes whose stare was both shocked and shocking; I for one couldn’t meet it. He seemed always to be walking about, head bent, dressed in a Tasmanian bluey: the dark pea jacket worn by bush workers.

  There used to be many such hermits in the country, and legends were invented giving them illustrious or tragic origins. Luke Goddard was variously said to have been a wealthy farmer who’d been ruined; an ex-sailor; a jilted lover; the disgraced son of an English nobleman. But no one really knew, since he seldom spoke, except in monosyllables, and ignored most greetings. Mike and I had seen him in conversation with the pickers, but old Goddard barely spoke to members of the Langford family—despite the fact that he sometimes wandered across the property. For some reason, John Langford tolerated him; even seemed to be amused by him. Mike and I would laugh at him as he went by when we were younger, and he would sometimes turn on us, waving his fist and shouting words that we couldn’t understand, making us afraid of him.

  Luke Goddard? Why would Luke Goddard tell him? I asked. That’s crazy. He never talks to anyone. He wouldn’t talk to your father. Even if he did, your father wouldn’t listen to him.

  Wouldn’t he? Mike’s tone was bitter. He’d sooner listen to Luke Goddard than me, he said.

  The next night, we lay silent for a time. A high wind, an early warning of autumn, had come up outside, mourning through Clare’s front verandah and bumping into the door of our little closet.

  It was a wind I associated with Luke Goddard: a wind of great loneliness. It had come out of the steep, dark hills of this country: the ranges that enclosed the town of New Norfolk and the valley of the Derwent. It had come from places like the Black Hills and Moogara, where the farms were few and poor; it had come from farther still, howling out of the valley of the Ouse, and from beyond Lake Echo; from the empty Highlands, the snow country, with its hundreds of lakes and tarns, cold, abstract mountains, and button-grass plains where nobody went.

  Ray? You awake?

  It was Mike. I’ll tell you something about my old man, he said. He’s got a locked room, where no one’s allowed to go. A storeroom. No one gets in there.

  Where is it? I asked.

  Down the end of the hall, Mike said; and I knew immediately which room he meant. A small hallway ran off at right angles from the main one that connected the two zones of the house. The sitting room was entered from this secondary hallway, and two of the bedrooms; and it ended at a dark-stained cedar door that was always closed. I had sometimes regarded the door with faint curiosity, but had never asked what its purpose was.

  What does he keep in there?

  He just says family papers.

  Sounds boring.

  Yes, he said. But why should he keep it locked?

  I had no answer to this.

  Listen, Mike said. I know how to get in there. I know where he keeps the keys. You want to come?

  We went in the early afternoon, when the men were all down in the hop fields. It was around two-thirty: a bad time of day, I reflected later.

  Two-thirty was a time of blank arrest; a time of tedium, with all the dangers tedium carries at its heart. Two-thirty on a hot January afternoon was a time when I no longer loved the farm. The bright dance of morning was gone, and the inviting shadows of deep afternoon had yet to appear. It was a passage without possibilities; a time when the stale, glaring exterior world promised nothing, and the mind recoiled. Tedium, almost visible, brooded in the glum little gully on the western side of the house, where stinging nettles grew: dark, malicious weeds that people were said to have eaten, in the other hemisphere. Tedium squatted in the yard on the wood-heap, where the sun gleamed dully on the abandoned axe. The axe, and all the other objects about the farmyard, appeared to be lying here for eternity, and to be stuck in a congealed light like fat. Inside tedium was no still center, but something else: something brutally restless and vicious, which occasionally caused grown men and women out here to become mad. Two years ago, it had caused Don Maxfield, on the next farm up the road, to batter old Arthur Baker to death with a crowbar in a quarrel over the sale of some stock. That would have happened, I felt sure, at around two-thirty. Yet this was the t
ime that we chose to go into John Langford’s storeroom.

  The key was on a ring with a number of others which Mike had watched his father push into a drawer in a rolltop desk in the sitting room. It was a simple matter (as one of the stories in his British boys’ books would have put it) for him to slip in there, get the keys, and bring them down the half-dark passage to the locked door of the storeroom. Deliberate and unhurried, he tried them one after another in the lock under the white, nineteenth-century china handle.

  When he’d found the one that fitted, and we’d hurried inside, he quickly closed the door after us. There was a sort of glowing dimness in here that was strange; but superficially, nothing in the room appeared unusual. It simply looked like what it was: a storeroom, with tin trunks and cardboard cartons stacked against one wall, old pieces of furniture standing about haphazardly, and a long walnut table in the center piled with papers, files and books. But I knew immediately that we’d found the core of the house’s secrecy: the cell which contained its essence.

  Secrecy sang in the static air, like an old valve radio with the volume turned down. It was air that seemed to have been trapped in here for decades, and which smelled of mildew. The faded wallpaper looked very old, and had a pattern of English wildflowers. The glow was created by a faded, parchment-yellow holland blind drawn over a single tall window at the far end, sealing the place completely. The sun of two-thirty, trying vainly to get in, was filtered and transmuted into a thick yellow substance like mustard: a half-light which I guessed was the only natural one the room ever knew. There was no electric bulb in the high ceiling; a kerosene lamp with a china base stood on the table by the books, and I imagined John Langford lighting it.