Wilder Country

by Mark Smith

  Then the back door opens and a lamp moves towards us.

  ‘Willow?’ Stella’s voice cuts through the night.

  I grab hold of Willow’s arm and pull her back. But then a familiar shape comes towards us and Rowdy nearly bowls me over.

  Kas calls out from the house. ‘It’s okay, Finn. Come in.’

  I don’t have a spare arm to pat Rowdy so I drop to my knees and let him lick my face. ‘Hello, boy, did you miss me?’

  Stella runs to Willow and hugs her.

  ‘This is Hope,’ I say, holding her up to Stella.

  She lifts Hope out of the papoose and nuzzles her into her neck. ‘Finn,’ she says, ‘it’s Harry. Come inside.’

  Harry is lying on his back on the kitchen table, three lamps hanging low from the ceiling above him. It looks like there’s been a fight in the house—broken chairs, the dresser overturned, and the front door is hanging off one hinge. Harry’s chest is bare and Rachel is cleaning a wound just below his ribcage on the left side. The table is covered with blood.

  I see his chest rise and fall. I wipe tears away and grip the back of a chair to steady myself. He’s alive!

  Stella stands with Willow at the end of the table, one hand on Harry’s leg, the other clutching Hope to her chest. Kas takes Hope, who starts to cry. Rachel looks up with the sound and the lamplight catches her eyes. She nods her head towards Stella. Help her, she mouths.

  ‘Stella,’ Kas says, ‘Hope hasn’t eaten in hours and I need to change her. Wils, go and get the saddlebags. We need some nappies.’

  Willow is grateful to have something to do, and Stella moves around the table, not taking her eyes off Harry.

  ‘What can I do?’ I ask Rachel.

  ‘More warm water,’ she says. The kitchen is a hive of activity, taps running, pots clanging on the stovetop and everyone trying not to bump into each other. ‘We have to stem the bleeding and—’ Rachel hesitates, ‘I have to get the bullet out.’

  Stella breathes in deeply. Rachel grabs my hand and pushes it on the cloth over the wound. ‘Pressure. Here,’ she says. Then she takes Stella by the shoulders and shakes her. ‘Help me,’ she says. ‘We can save him.’

  Stella lets go of the breath she’s been holding and the energy seems to return to her body. ‘Right,’ she says.

  Harry’s body starts to jerk on the table. He’s having a fit.

  ‘Roll him onto his side,’ Rachel says. ‘He’s choking.’

  Harry’s a big man. Even though his body is wasted from the winter, it takes two of us to push him onto his good side, leaving the wound on top. Blood and vomit spill from his mouth before his breathing becomes more regular again.

  Rachel is supporting Harry’s head. ‘Towels,’ she says, ‘blankets, cushions, whatever you can find,’ her voice strong, in command. ‘We need to hold him in this position.’

  Stella turns to the stove, opens the fire door and shoves more wood in. She sharpens a knife, drops it and a pair of tweezers into a pot of boiling water. When Willow returns with the saddlebags, she and Kas disappear into the bedroom with Hope.

  Stella leans down and holds Harry’s face in her hands. ‘Don’t you dare leave me, you hear? Don’t you dare.’ Her voice is soft though, gentle. She kisses his forehead and stands up.

  ‘Now,’ Rachel says, ‘I need all hands on deck. If he wakes—and he probably will—you have to restrain him, keep him still.’

  Kas and Willow come back into the kitchen. ‘She’s asleep,’ Kas says before I can ask about Hope.

  Willow’s eyes are wide but she positions herself at her father’s feet. We’ve rolled blankets along his side to support him. Stella holds his head while Kas and I are opposite each other, pushing our weight against him. Rachel drains the pot and waits until the knife is cool enough to use.

  ‘Right,’ she says. She opens the wound by rolling her thumbs either side of it, then alternates between wiping the blood away and pushing the knife deeper into the opening. Harry starts to convulse again, his body lifting and shaking. Willow cops a foot to her chest but she picks herself up off the floor and grabs him by the ankles again.

  Rachel waits until Harry is still, then goes back to work. Kas and I are straining to hold him on the table, our heads almost touching as we lean in from each side.

  I don’t know how long it takes but it feels like hours of Harry coming alive with the pain, then falling back unconscious, only to start awake again. There’s nothing delicate in what Rachel’s doing, digging into the open wound looking for the bullet. Stella has her head turned away, and Willow presses her chest against her father’s legs. There’s a moment when Kas and I lock eyes. My strength is falling away and my branded arm is throbbing but everything in her eyes tells me I can’t quit.

  ‘Tweezers!’ Rachel says. Two fingers of each hand are knuckle deep in the wound.

  ‘Trace my right index finger down,’ Rachel says to Kas, her voice amazingly calm.

  Kas’s hand shakes but she steadies herself and pushes in with the tweezers. ‘I feel it!’ she says.

  ‘Take it slow. Slow,’ Rachel says.

  Finally Kas holds the little lump of metal up to the light. Rachel quickly puts pressure back on the wound before pushing small pieces of clean cloth in just below the skin. She looks up. ‘I don’t know what damage has been done inside,’ she says. ‘All we can do now is clean around it and stitch him up. The rest is in God’s hands.’

  Once she finishes the stitching we carry Harry into the bedroom and somehow manage to get him onto the bed. Stella and Willow stay with him while Rachel, Kas and I clean up the kitchen.

  Rachel is exhausted. She sits down at the table and her head slumps onto her folded arms.

  ‘Has he got a chance?’ I ask her.

  ‘The wound’s on the left side—if it was on the right he’d be dead. But he’s lost a lot of blood and the risk of infection is high. He’s strong, though. And stubborn. As long as he’s breathing, there’s hope.’

  ‘What happened?’ Kas asks, ‘when the Wilders came.’

  Rachel sits back in her chair and hugs her arms to her chest. ‘We waited for ages,’ she begins. ‘We started to think maybe they’d leave us alone—or it could be we just wanted to believe that.’ A small smile crosses her lips then the frown returns to her face. ‘They arrived yesterday, about twenty of them. Steb and Jack were guarding the valley entrance. They killed four or five of the Wilders, then took off into the bush and made their way back here. We heard the shots. Harry led a group out and they hid along the sides of the road: Will, Vic and Simmo. James and Kate took the young ones up towards the ridge at the back but Willow refused to go. She had her bow and arrows and she wanted to fight.’

  Rachel smiles again. ‘She’s tough, that one.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘The whole thing was so confused—gunshots, people yelling, screams in the night. We regrouped in the morning but Vic and Will were missing. Ramage arrived later, probably thinking it’d all be over and he’d just ride in and take control again. But the Wilders weren’t organised at all. We reckon some of them took off when the fighting got tough. In the end, just half a dozen of them followed Ramage into the yard. He sat there on his trail bike, barking orders and telling us to show ourselves. Harry stepped out to confront him, Steb and Jack with him. It was a stand off until a couple of the Wilders panicked and started shooting. Ramage rode straight at Harry. Fired from close in, but Harry shot him first.’

  Rachel stops and shakes her head. ‘No one saw Willow out there. She shot one of the Wilders in the leg with an arrow before Ramage swung around and nearly ran over her. He grabbed her, dragged her onto his bike and took off.’

  She looks at us, one after the other. ‘Where did you find her?’ she asks.

  ‘We ran straight into them. Willow escaped.’ I say.

  ‘And Ramage?’ Rachel looks at me with hope in her eyes.

  ‘He was wounded.’

  Kas doesn’t say
anything but I can see the question in her eyes.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ I say. My face burns.

  I get to my feet and walk to the washroom.

  Kas follows me. We stand with our shoulders touching, washing the blood off our hands and arms.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ she says.

  I can’t look at her.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen,’ she says, ‘but I want to be with you, no matter what. I—’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Kas?’

  ‘Tonight, when we were holding Harry and I looked up at you, in the middle of all that I felt something so strong.’

  ‘What?’

  It comes out as hardly more than a whisper. ‘I love you,’ she says.

  It’s like a thousand strings that’ve been pulling tight across my chest suddenly let go and I can breathe again.

  ‘I’ve never said that to anyone,’ she says.

  Everything that’s happened today is spinning around in my head, but above all of it is Kas, right next to me, the smell of her hair, her breath on my skin.

  And she loves me.

  In the morning the house is quiet. I find Stella in the kitchen asleep at the table. Kas is with Harry. ‘How is he?’ I ask.

  ‘Breathing,’ she says.

  ‘That’s good, then.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s good.’

  It’s a relief to get out of the house after breakfast. Rowdy’s not going to let me out of his sight. He limps into the sunshine and I get my first chance to have a good look at him. The wounds on his hip are healing well and he’s put on some weight. He can’t move like he used to but his eyes are bright and his tail hasn’t stopped wagging all morning.

  The bodies I saw in the yard last night have been moved, and it doesn’t take me long to find Jack out in the paddock, digging more graves.

  ‘Need a hand?’ I say, approaching him from behind.

  He points at a long-handled shovel on the ground. ‘Go your hardest,’ he says.

  Rowdy watches us work.

  ‘How’s Harry?’ Jack asks, as I start to dig.

  ‘Alive.’

  ‘Rachel herded us all out last night, said there were too many people around for her to think.’

  ‘She operated on him.’

  ‘Shit! And he’s still alive? Make sure she doesn’t feed him anything she cooks, that’ll finish him off for sure.’

  I can never tell when Jack’s taking the piss. But this time he smiles and nudges me with his shovel handle. ‘He’s as tough as a Mallee bull, Finn. He’ll make it.’

  ‘Who are we burying?’ I ask.

  He stops and looks towards the back of the shearing shed, where bodies are laid out on the ground, each covered with a sheet of black plastic. ‘Wilders,’ he says, spitting the word out. ‘They don’t deserve a decent burial but what else are we going to do with them?’

  ‘Rachel said Vic and Will are missing.’

  ‘We haven’t seen them since yesterday morning. We’re hoping they’re chasing the Wilders that took off into the bush.’ He strikes his shovel hard into the wet earth and throws the soil on a heap behind him.

  ‘No one else was hurt though, no one from the valley?’ I say.

  ‘Lots of cuts and bruises but other than that we escaped okay. What about you?’ he says, looking at the bandage on my arm.

  I’m almost used to the constant ache. I unwrap the bandage and show Jack.

  ‘They did it to everyone at the feedstore. All the kids.’

  Jack is furious.

  We dig for an hour hardly saying a word. Finally, Jack is standing thigh deep in the grave. He throws his shovel onto the pile of dirt and says, ‘That’ll do. It’s only gotta be deep enough to keep the foxes out.’

  Steb and Simmo appear over by the shearing shed. They pull the plastic off the bodies and drag them, one at a time, to the grave. There are seven. I do the maths in my head: twenty came from Longley, plus the two prisoners who were already here, Steb and Jack killed half a dozen before they even got into the valley and now we’re burying seven. That means at least nine have taken off. If they join forces with Tusker, or with Ramage, they could still be a problem.

  But when I mention this to Jack, he shakes his head. ‘The ones that escaped won’t be in any hurry to come back here,’ he says.

  The four of us fill the grave over the slumped corpses. My arm is throbbing now, but I enjoy the short walk back down to the sheds with the men. I feel like I’m part of something, one of them.

  Steb and Simmo wander off but Jack hangs back. When they’re gone he asks me what happened with Ramage yesterday. I do my best to explain—it feels like I’m unloading a burden.

  Jack leans against the shed wall, his face turned to the sun, hands in his pockets. ‘How do you feel about it, now?’ he says.

  ‘I dunno. Half the time I think I should’ve killed him, the other half I think I did the right thing.’

  ‘I guess we’ll know soon enough.’ He can’t hide the disappointment in his voice.

  As the days pass, Harry improves only to slip back into unconsciousness again. Kas and I take our turn at sitting with him during the night. Stella is directing all her attention to Hope, feeding and changing her, playing with her, rocking her to sleep. I’m sure Kas feels she should be taking more responsibility, but she knows Stella is better equipped to do it—and it gives her a distraction from what’s happening with Harry.

  Each night, Kas treats the wound on my arm, gently rubbing cream into the burn. The redness is retreating but that just highlights the ‘R’ more. I hate looking at it. I hate what Ramage thinks it means. I touch the raised skin on the back of Kas’s hand.

  ‘Now you know what it feels like,’ she says.

  The farmers are three men down without Harry, Vic and Will, and there’s a lot of work to be done in the paddocks. The fighting has delayed the spring planting so our days are spent walking behind a bullock-drawn plough, dropping seeds into the dark soil.

  I look across at Kas as she walks along the other side of a furrow. The wind blows her hair in wisps over her face. She tucks it behind her ear, looks up and smiles.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘Just looking,’ I say, returning her smile.

  But we soon fall back into the work again. The same thought is playing on both of us. What happens next? Kas hasn’t said anything more about staying but, as things start to settle in the valley and the days get longer, my mind is turning to the coast.

  A week passes and we think we’ve lost Harry half a dozen times, but he keeps fighting back. He’s like a drowning man, just making it to the surface for a gulp of air before sinking again. Somehow, he keeps finding the surface just in time. He’s not as feverish as he was but the wound isn’t healing and most mornings the sheets are stained with blood.

  Finally, he stays conscious long enough to talk. His voice is dry and Stella spoons soup and water into his mouth. She has to put her ear close to his lips to hear what he’s saying. It doesn’t make much sense but I see the relief on Stella’s face with him trying to communicate.

  We’re a month into spring. The wildflowers are creeping out of the bush into the paddocks, and the flies have returned to pester us. I help Jack reinforce the fences, while Kas moves cattle down onto the river flats, happy to be back riding Yogi. Rowdy follows me everywhere, worried I might go off and leave him again. He’s moving much more freely, though he favours one leg.

  Stella is returning to her old self. She can see Harry getting a little stronger every day and she’s like a proud mum with Hope. Every morning she’s up before the rest of us, seeing that she is fed and happy. When the time comes to head out to the paddocks, Stella fits her into the papoose and does her fair share of the planting. Kas watches this each morning and I get the sense she’s weighing up what’s best for Hope against the promise she made to Rose. We haven’t spoken about leaving yet but the time is coming. Most of
the planting is done and, even though we’re welcome to stay in the community, the coast is calling me. I want Kas to come with me, but I’m nervous about bringing it up. We’re treated as adults here, included in all the decision-making, and I notice the affect this has on Kas. It’s like she has a new sense of herself. She smiles more easily and dags around like an idiot when there’s just the two of us. She doesn’t tense up when Stella hugs her and she’s like a big sister to Willow.

  After dinner one night we walk up to the rocky outcrop above the home paddock. We climb to the top and look down at the farmhouses and sheds. Kas sits with her knees drawn up to her chest.

  ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ she says.

  I sit next to her. The sun has dropped behind the ridge and it shoots golden rays through the treetops. There’s no wind and the crickets are making a racket in the still air.

  ‘I don’t know what to do, Finn,’ she says. ‘I want to stay and help raise Hope, but I don’t want to lose you.’

  She sweeps her hair behind her ear, revealing the birthmark on her face.

  ‘You remember the argument we had up here?’ she says. ‘When we first arrived with Willow.’

  ‘Yeah. You said I should make decisions with my head and not my heart.’

  ‘I was wrong,’ she says. ‘It’s not always one or the other, is it? Sometimes it’s both.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Kas.’

  She turns to me. ‘Stella is a better mother than I’ll ever be. If we stayed, I’m not even sure what use I’d be. But I promised Rose.’

  Thoughts are flying through my head: about Angowrie, about Mum and Dad, about where I belong. But, above all that, there’s this ache to be with Kas.

  ‘I made that promise, too. And I want to be with you, regardless.’ I can hardly believe I’m saying the words aloud.

  She smiles, then, and gives the smallest shake of her head.

  I have to look away. I could stay here but it would never be home. Not without the salt in the air and the constant sound of the ocean as a backdrop to everything.