The Night Is for Hunting (12 page)

The other problem we had while we talked was keeping it secret from the kids. Casey in particular was a sharp little operator. She knew we were talking about Christmas and she always wanted to know everything that was going on. We kept sending her off on fake errands but she tried to sneak up on us, dodging in and out of trees, so she could eavesdrop. That year in Stratton had taught the ferals tricks that would stay with them a long time. Luckily our year in the bush had taught us a few tricks too, so I think we stopped Casey hearing too much.

I made her sit on a tree stump while I checked her arm again. It was hard to know what to do about it. As far as I could tell it was healing fairly well but I didn’t like to mess with it too much. I was a lot more nervous dealing with injured people than injured farm animals. I took the strapping off again. I’d been doing that daily, and washing it in the creek with my own laundry. The arm looked pale and a bit thinner than the other one, but you’d expect that. It wasn’t totally straight, but I didn’t know if that meant anything. The lump had definitely gone down.

‘How is it?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t know. I guess it’s getting better. It doesn’t hurt as much.’

‘Well, as long as you don’t knock it again.’

The day before, she hit it when she was chasing Natalie through the trees, and the screams of pain brought us all running. It wasn’t just scary because I thought she might have damaged her arm; it was scary because the noise she’d made was so dangerous. If there was an enemy patrol lurking on Tailor’s Stitch, they would have heard her for sure.

It did seem like she had a way to go before the arm was OK.

By the next day the food supplies were looking very bare. The boys had been avoiding the whole subject, because we were so dog-tired, and the thought of trudging up to Tailor’s Stitch again, and down the other side, into yet another horribly dangerous situation, wasn’t attracting any of us. But I told myself that there’s no point postponing pain. If you’ve got to suffer, you might as well get it over and done with. I wasn’t totally convinced about this, but I blocked off any dubious thoughts and waited till the five of us were together, after tea.

We were washing our plates by the creek. The kids were up at the fireplace. We didn’t have enough plates to go around, so for messy meals, which you couldn’t eat with your fingers, we had two shifts, the kids first, then us. But as I scrubbed hard at a bit of burned noodle I said very firmly, ‘We’ve got to go out tonight to get food. It’s no good putting it off any longer. We’re going through it like possums in peach trees.’

I bullied them into agreeing. The only trouble with that was that I seemed to be the one automatic member of the group chosen to go. After a bit more talk we agreed we’d need two others. Homer and Fi were the lucky candidates. No-one said out loud why it had to be them, but I knew why. It was because we couldn’t leave Fi and Kevin back in Hell on their own. If something went wrong, which was horribly possible with enemy soldiers prowling around on Tailor’s Stitch, we couldn’t be sure Fi and Kevin would cope. Fi was strong enough in her own way, but like the rest of us she had her limits, and dealing with a situation like that, with only Kevin to help, would be outside her limits.

Somehow we found ourselves standing on top of Tailor’s Stitch without me noticing that I’d got there. It happened quite quickly once we made the decision. And it was a lot easier having empty packs and no rifles. I floated up the steep sides of Hell wishing life could always be this easy. The pack on my back was so light; only the load in my mind was heavy, and I was getting used to that. So much unfinished business was in there. The kids of course. Casey’s broken arm, Natalie’s incessant crying, Jack’s long silences. And Gavin’s deafness. That was a new one for me. I didn’t know anyone who was deaf, except Mr Jay, and he was about a hundred and ten.

Then there was my fight with Lee, the things Fi and Homer had said to me, the presence of strangers on Tailor’s Stitch, the shortage of food ... the list seemed like it would never end.

But somehow, standing in the clear night air, under a sky that glowed like a shower of sparks, none of that stuff mattered. It slipped off me. It was like shedding your clothes before you step in the shower. I felt I was down to essentials again. In fact I felt very close to God at that moment. I guess if you’re ever going to feel close to God it’ll be while you’re looking at the heavens. I wondered sometimes how it must have looked in the old days, before pollution started drifting into the sky. Even up here, in this pure air, there was a heap of invisible pollution. We were looking at the stars through a dirty, murky screen. A thousand years ago the stars at night must have burned almost as fiercely as the sun by day. No wonder all those old civilisations were so into stars when they told their stories and thought about their gods. It’d have been hard to ignore a sky that glowed with a billion fires.

There wasn’t really time for thinking about that though. We spent ten minutes standing in silence, like we were at Anzac Day or something, watching and listening. It was partly the effect of the burning sky but to be more practical, it was a safety measure too. If there were people on Tailor’s Stitch we wanted to know about them before they knew about us. But it was quiet enough. And the right kind of quiet. Not the dead silence where the air is beating with tension. And, on the other hand, not the anxious noises you get in the bush when something’s wrong: the clatter of frogmouth wings, the scrabble of possum paws up a tree trunk, the wild flight of a sleeping bird suddenly disturbed. None of that.

So it seemed OK, and when Homer glanced at me and raised his eyebrows I nodded ‘Yes’.

We moved softy and silently. Homer first, Fi second, me third. We didn’t so much walk, more prowl. Soft feet. Mr Addams, the PE teacher at Wirrawee High, talked about soft hands when he was teaching us cricket. ‘The best players have soft hands when they’re batting.’ I didn’t know quite what he meant but I remembered the expression, because it sounded funny. But walking along Tailor’s Stitch I concentrated on having soft feet.

We’d gone about two kilometres – in fact we were about to turn off the ridge to go down towards my place – when I first heard a noise that didn’t belong. I didn’t even know what it was. But there’s no mistaking a noise in the bush that doesn’t belong. I think it was probably a scrape of a boot on rock. Whatever, I knew straightaway that we had a problem. Fi was a fraction too far ahead to call her but I don’t know if I would have risked it anyway. Instead I picked up a pebble and chucked it at her. Typical Fi, she didn’t notice. Just kept gliding quietly over the rocks. It was a terrible moment. I thought if I made any noise I might cop a bullet in the back, but of course I couldn’t let her and Homer keep walking if there was danger. So I ran forward. The trouble was that the buckles on my empty pack rattled and jingled as I accelerated. I hadn’t bothered to do them all up. I cursed myself for not thinking of it earlier. But even that noise didn’t catch Fi’s attention. It wasn’t until I tapped her on the shoulder that she turned around. She got a huge shock too, when I did tap her; she jumped as though a drop bear had gone down the back of her shirt. I wished she’d been paying more attention, but that’s the trouble when you’re travelling in the middle of a group: you think you can relax.

At least Homer was quick to react. He heard the noise Fi made when she jumped around, and he jumped around too, then came back to us very quickly. And quietly for a big guy. Neither of them said anything; just looked at me. When I nodded behind me they melted into a band of trees so fast that I was quite impressed. It struck me, almost for the first time, that we had learned a few things, that we’d actually become rather good at this. We’d become genuine bush fighters, even Fi.

Before the war she wouldn’t have done anything more dangerous than stay at a party till midnight.

But there wasn’t time for congratulations. I melted into the trees as fast as the others, and stood behind a medium-size trunk gazing out at the track. I felt the heat of Homer’s body, then the heat of his breath as he whispered in my ear.

‘What was it?’

‘I heard something.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t know. A boot maybe.’

Homer edged away. I stood and waited. A cool breeze played up my legs and onto the back of my neck. A few minutes earlier I’d been thinking the breeze was sweet and pleasant. Now it seemed cold and unfriendly. But I didn’t think about that for any longer than I thought about how we’d become such great bush fighters. Instead I strained my ears so hard I could almost feel them growing longer and longer, out of each side of my head. I was like the guy in the Shakespeare play, the bloke who turned into a donkey. But try as I might I couldn’t hear a thing.

After fifteen minutes Homer loomed up beside me again in the shadows. He looked at me with a big question mark written all over his face. I knew what the question was. ‘Are you sure you heard something?’ He didn’t have to say the words.

Of course by then I wasn’t sure. At first I’d been confident that someone was behind us. The longer I stood anxiously behind my tree the more I started to doubt myself. The problem was there are just so many noises in the bush at night. It always seems like there’s more noise at night than in the daytime. I don’t think there really is; it’s because at night-time you hear them so strongly. They stand out. I knew I’d heard something. I just didn’t know what it was.

We were under pressure of time too. If we were to get to a farmhouse a fair way away – and it had to be a good way off so no-one would connect us with Hell – we had to get a move on. By dawn we needed to be back in the mountains, back in the safest place we knew.

So after another five minutes I shrugged at Homer and Fi and moved out onto the edge of the track. We stood listening for a couple more minutes then took up the same positions as before, me in the rear. And off we went.

The road, rutted and rough as it was, did a few funny things on its way down to the paddocks. Dad and I had put in detours where there were washaways, and in a couple of other places where wheel ruts were so deep that even a four-wheel drive would get lost in them. One of these detours was a faint track over soft grass, on a flat piece of land. Homer chose that track rather than taking us through the deep ruts. We were on the grass when I heard another noise that I knew simply didn’t belong.

I stopped hard. This time Fi was paying close attention, and she stopped too, within two or three steps. And Homer, watching through eyes at the back of his head, stopped straightaway. We all moved quietly off the path, to the left. I tiptoed up to where Fi was waiting for me, arriving at the same time as Homer.

‘Well?’ he breathed.

‘Same again.’

‘What is it exactly?’ Fi whispered.

‘First time was a boot I think. On a rock maybe. This time was a stick breaking.’

‘Where?’

‘Back on the main part.Where we went off on the detour.’

No-one said anything for a few minutes, as we waited and listened anxiously.

Finally Homer murmured to me, ‘We’ve got to take the initiative.’

‘I was just thinking that.’

The last thing I wanted was to stand around waiting to be caught. Without any more discussion Homer and I moved off in different directions. I went to the right, Homer to the left. Fi, sort of knowing this wasn’t her scene, stayed put.

I went so carefully. I lifted one foot, let it hover like a helicopter while I looked for a good place, then planted it firmly but gently. Then the next one. At the same time I peered through the darkness, looking for the slightest sign of a patrol. In a way – incredibly stupid though this is – I half-hoped some soldiers would be there. I’d be left looking like a complete idiot if they weren’t. And I’d have held up our trip for a dangerously long time.

Of course I didn’t really want them to be there. I just hated to think of the act Homer would put on if he found a wombat caused the noises.

When I was within twenty metres of the place I’d heard the stick breaking I stopped again and stood, sniffing the wind like a dingo. And knew at last that I wasn’t mistaken. Someone was there. I smelt him, I felt the vibrations of the air as he moved slightly, I sensed him. That was as much as I needed to know really. I got ready to withdraw. Now that I was sure, everything became easier. We would have to abort the food trip, take to the bush, circle back to Tailor’s Stitch, and at the same time try to check out who was shadowing us in the darkness.

I took three steps backwards but as I did I saw a glimmer of movement. It seemed like the person on the track had gone to the left, a little further downhill. I felt a flare of fear in my stomach. I was fairly sure he was moving as a reaction to my movement. I hadn’t been as careful and quiet as I thought. Suddenly this whole situation, dangerous enough before, was out of control. And a moment later I realised something worse: in moving to my left the soldier was likely to run into Homer.

We had no weapons on us, but I was desperate enough to look for one. I crouched down and ran my fingers across the ground. There were plenty of stones, but at the furthest reach of my hand I felt my fingers close on a rock the size of an orange. I would have liked one even bigger, but this would have to do. I grabbed it and started creeping forward. I had to be quicker than before, so I paid a bit of a price as far as silence went.

Suddenly everything happened at once. It was like a game of chess became a game of football. A patch of black in the darkness ahead moved quickly, even further to the left. At the same time I saw Homer’s bulk loom up on the track. He was coming up the hill towards the guy. Homer yelled out, a kind of grunt of surprise, when he realised they were about to run into each other. I yelled, to distract the man, and chucked the rock as hard as I could, straight at the dark shape. A rock versus a rifle didn’t seem like a good deal, but it was all I had. I missed, but only by the width of my little finger. And I was already following up, charging straight at the guy, bellowing like a thirsty heifer. Anything to distract him and give Homer a chance.