Little Exiles

by Robert Dinsdale

  He is about to retreat, when the man in black shifts — and he sees, on the far side of the circle, George sitting among the others, fat hands clapping just like every other boy. Jon freezes. There is a smile on George’s face that he has never seen before. His whole face is creased with it, like he couldn’t keep it down even if he wanted. He sits cross-legged and, in between his legs, one of the glass bottles stands, still frothing at the top.

  The song reaches its chorus, and Jon pulls away. If he listens carefully, he can hear George’s voice, singing as loudly and proudly as every boy around him

  Even when the song ends, Jon can hear his friend’s laughter, cutting through all the rest.

  In the afternoon, the bell rings and the whole of the Children’s Crusade ditch their tools to flock to the assembly hall. By the time Jon and Tommy Crowe arrive, the hall is already full. Hoping to snatch the seat directly behind George, Jon kicks his way along one of the lines. When he is almost there, one of the bigger boys from his own dormitory drops onto the bench before him. Jon burns, tells the bigger boy to budge. The boy just stares at him, offering a stupid shrug.

  ‘You give me that seat, or next time I do you a letter, I’ll write to your mother that you hate her and wish she was dead.’

  It is not the threat that drives the bigger boy away, only the idea that Jon Heather himself could spout something so vicious.

  Jon drops into the seat and leans forward. ‘George,’ he whispers.

  George has his chin tucked into his neck, but he won’t be allowed to stay like that for long. If he isn’t watching when the punishments begin, some cottage mother will clatter him with a cane.

  ‘Don’t, Jon,’ he replies, not turning around. ‘We’ll get done.’

  He wasn’t so miserable only a few short hours ago, Jon thinks. A day off work for songs and Coca-Cola. Next, they’ll be going on daytrips to the seaside.

  ‘I got into Judah Reed’s office,’ Jon whispers. ‘I saw the pictures.’

  George looks over his shoulder, his eyes wide.

  ‘It was just like you said, Georgie boy. Rows and rows of photographs, going back for …’

  ‘Did you find Peter’s sister?’

  Jon shakes his head. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to tell him.’

  ‘He’ll be cross.’

  He has no right to be. Jon might have been lashed for even thinking about doing what he did. Yet, George doesn’t care. George just doesn’t want Peter upset.

  ‘I don’t want you to go, Jon.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Why do you got to go? You don’t even know about Peter’s sister.’ He pauses. ‘It’s because of the wild boy, isn’t it? He’s your friend now. You want to be a wild boy.’

  ‘Georgie …’

  ‘Stop calling me Georgie. It’s a baby’s name. My name’s George.’

  Jon has never heard George snap so viciously.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jon,’ George finally whispers. ‘You’re my friend. But … you promised, Jon Heather. You promised you wouldn’t run away.’

  On stage, Judah Reed appears. It will be a simple, procedural thing. He says a few words, and then invites the boy onto the stage. The cottage mother whose hand he so savagely sunk his teeth into has a front row seat.

  He can be no more than seven years old, and he has no idea what is coming. The boys from his dormitory stand, and one by one they approach.

  After it is finished, Judah Reed leads the boys in prayers, and dismisses them. In their eagerness to dissipate, pews are toppled and boys pushed over. As George stands, Jon leans forward, whispers in his ear — but the hubbub in the hall is too much. He calls out, louder, afraid he is going to be overheard.

  ‘What if you came with me, George?’ He might need help, getting Luca to the rendezvous. George won’t be much help, but there’s nobody else to ask.

  George stands, elbows past the little ones at his side. ‘Why can’t you just be like everybody else, Jon Heather?’

  Then he is gone, clattering into little ones as he goes.

  ‘George!’ Jon calls after him, grappling out to try and catch his arm. ‘George, please!’

  George stampedes into the dormitory, flings himself onto his mattress. He buries his face in the sacking, starts chewing to keep the sobs at bay. When he rises for air, the first one bubbles up. His fists — useless, fat, baby fists — are clenched. He hits the mattress over and over.

  Suddenly there are little ones at his side. Martin pats him, like a dog. At first George hates it, but slowly his crying ebbs away. He looks up. Martin looks like he might cry himself.

  ‘Did Judah Reed get you too?’ he whispers.

  George shakes his head. He’s never hated himself more. He doesn’t want to be a cry-baby — he knows Jon Heather hates it. But Jon’s a bully, just like the rest of them. It’s only in here that they aren’t.

  He looks at Martin. Other little ones are ranged around, but Martin shoos them away.

  ‘It’s Jon Heather,’ George trembles. He wants to say it out loud: Jon Heather’s running away again. He’s got the wild boy and he doesn’t need me, and he’s going to find Peter and they’ll run away and, this time, they won’t come back.

  Jon Heather and Peter only pretend to like you, George. Like when a boy wants to read your books or have a go on your toy train. They’ll take it and run it up and down the path and then throw it on the ground — and they won’t even come in your house and have tea, because then people would know.

  But all he says is, ‘I don’t want Jon Heather to go.’

  Before he can go on, little ones on the other side of the dormitory start cheering. Through the window, George can see the younger man in black coming back towards the dorm, guitar in his hands. There’ll be more songs tonight. They dare not hope for more Coca-Cola — but it won’t be long before the little ones start chattering about it.

  George dries his eyes and starts kneading his hands.

  Up and over the latrines, through the thicket — Jon hurtles across the harrowed land. He doesn’t stop when he hits the scrub, but scurries on until it is thick enough to hide him. A pair of scrub turkeys rise, horrified, from their nest in a flurry of wings. Jon keeps his head down, cursing the stupid birds. When he dares to look up, he doesn’t see any men in black approaching. There’s a flicker in one of the dormitory windows, but that’s all. He’s got two hours until his cottage mother will declare lights out and do her nightly march around the beds. Enough time to get out, make the rendezvous, and get back in — but only if he hurries.

  His feet know the way. He bounces off roots, taking the shortcut through the branches of a sprawling eucalypt. Around him, the trees start to spread out, red land rising in hummocks between them. By now, the stars are coming out. He peers up, gets his bearings on the one that shines the brightest.

  Luca’s camp is sunrise of the compound. Ten minutes and he’ll be there. He has already been out of the compound another ten. That leaves more than an hour and a half to get Luca to the meeting spot, help him into Cormac Tate’s ute, and get back to the dormitory. Jon’s legs pound against the hard red earth. He’ll have to make up time now — when Luca’s draped over his shoulder, they’ll have to stop, take rests, hobbling forward like a three-legged race.

  A shadow moves on the plain. Jon whips his head around, his vision blurred. When he can see clearly, he shakes off the chill — it is only an errant kangaroo, as sickly as Luca, plodding along. It senses him and dips behind a big red boulder.

  Keeping the Mission on his right, he fixes his position by a toppled tree and sets out across the plain. Suddenly, it seems that the desert is writhing. He stops, tells himself he’s being a coward; there’s nothing out here that can hurt him. The things that can hurt him are all back there.

  It dawns on him: he’s scared. It isn’t the same as standing on stage, glaring at Judah Reed. At least, then, he knew what was coming. Now, he hears a scuttling, a slithering, and every story he ever read is liv
ing in his head. There are monsters out here. Demons and diabolical things. He wants to flee, but he’s already running. He leaps up, feet scrabbling as he flies.

  ‘Where did you think you were going, Jon?’

  The voice makes him stop dead in his tracks. He whirls around, searching for a figure in the darkness — but everywhere it is just the same textureless black. Without thinking, he takes off again, head down as if he might fly into some unseen barrier.

  ‘Jon,’ the voice repeats, calm and even, without even an ounce of anger. ‘You mustn’t think we are cruel. But you can’t play these games of yours anymore.’

  He has taken only two strides when something strikes him. The darkness explodes in front of his eyes. The ground rushes up. Suddenly, he’s flat on the ground, heaving for air. At first, he thinks his foot is caught in a tangle of root. He kicks to get free, tries to stand — but something is pinning him down.

  ‘Stand up, Jon.’

  Hands close around his shoulders, hauling him into the air. The fingertips are cold, and he dangles there, unable to twist free. Then, with a jolt, the hands release him and he drops to the ground. His first thought is to bolt — but, too late, the hands are around him again, wrenching him so that he faces the way he has come.

  At last, he sees a face. Judah Reed looks at him. By his shoulder, like a second head, there stands another of the men in black. Perhaps it is the man from George’s dorm, but Jon cannot be sure.

  ‘We’ve been here before, haven’t we, Jon?’

  His hands still on Jon’s shoulders, Judah Reed crouches. The same height as Jon, he still seems monstrously large. There is a patch of dried spittle in the corner of his lips.

  ‘Where did you think you were going to run to, Jon?’ He seems almost sad. ‘Don’t you know how hard we have all worked?’

  And now Judah Reed is holding him, hugging him, and his touch is gentle and firm. It is the silliest thing, but Jon suddenly remembers being five or six years old, watching as the fathers came back to the terrace, seeing the little girl next door enter her daddy’s very first embrace.

  ‘Jon Heather,’ he says. ‘Look at me.’

  Jon squirms back, just enough so that Judah Reed is no longer touching his face.

  ‘Look at me,’ Judah Reed repeats. ‘You can’t just leave the Mission, Jon. It isn’t why you’re here. What kind of parents would it make us, if we just let you wander off, into the big wild world?’

  Words froth in Jon’s throat. ‘There were others,’ he says. ‘Boys who ran …’

  If he hears at all, Judah Reed does not seem to care.

  ‘It’s going to be the very last time, Jon.’ Jon can taste his breath, dewy and warm and smelling of today’s mutton. ‘Once, we can understand. Twice, we can even correct. But three times, Jon, and we start to get worried. We brought you with us so that we could rescue you, help you make something of your worthless little life, not so that you might bring everybody else to their knees.’ Judah Reed takes hold of his chin, angles his face so that Jon can’t help but peer into his own. ‘Bad boys,’ he says, ‘can be the ruin, not of themselves, but of everybody around them. Bad boys,’ he goes on, ‘must take their medicine.’

  Peter goes to the window, pulls back the blind. The evening redness is already fading to grey. Cormac Tate was supposed to be back here an hour ago. If there’s one thing he’s certain of, it’s that that old engine would have taken him to the moon and back, without stalling once. Peter fixed it himself, and he’d stake his life on it.

  There are voices downstairs. Peter listens at the door, resisting the urge to go down and tell them Cormac’s in trouble. He opens the door just a crack, to hear if there’s news of some accident out on the highway, and Dog seizes the advantage, wriggling through. After a quick cuddle against Peter’s legs, he too rushes to the window, scrabbling to the ledge with his forepaws to keep watch.

  Peter is about to slump onto the bed, when Dog lets out a shrill yap. He rushes to the window, shoving Dog out of the way. Below them, a ute draws into the yard.

  ‘Dog,’ he says. ‘You deserve a bastard big bone!’

  Dog looks at him, confused, but nonetheless pleased.

  In the yard, the ute stops. Peter sees, for the first time, that there are two people in the cab. That must be why Cormac’s late; he’s picked up some hitchhiker or roustabout, as he’s prone to doing.

  In the yard, a man in black steps out of the cab. The station foreman emerges and greets him with a wary handshake. They chatter for seconds that last interminably long — and then, together, look up and scan the farmhouse windows. Peter drops back — but he knows he’s been seen. He kicks Dog out of the way and tightens the straps on his tucker bag.

  Peter rushes to the door, but there he stalls. Without Cormac Tate, there’s nowhere to go. Perhaps it’s nothing. Perhaps it’s just one of the routine visits the Children’s Crusade have always promised, some simpering man in black here to check that his transformation into loyal Australian boy is almost complete.

  He hurries back to the window, peers through the blind. The ute is still there, but the man in black and foreman are nowhere to be seen.

  Downstairs, the front door slams.

  ‘Oh, Jon …’ Judah Reed slumps against a red boulder, kneading at his brow. ‘You don’t know how much I hate this.’ He averts his eyes. ‘We promised you boys the world. You can have it all. It’s here, waiting for you.’ He pauses. ‘But I’ve seen hundreds of boys come through this Mission, and there is always one, Jon Heather, who needs to be taught what’s good for him.’

  Jon tenses. His ankles are roped together, tied to a tree ten yards in front; his wrists, bound behind his back, are tied to a tree ten yards behind. He could move — but only to topple over backwards, giving slack to the cords.

  ‘Sir, shouldn’t we?’

  It is the younger man in black.

  Judah Reed stands, obviously wearied. ‘You know this is for your own good, don’t you, Jon?’ he whispers brokenly. ‘You need to start liking it here. You need to start seeing what life has to offer. If you don’t, we’ve all failed. We might as well have left you in those terraces that the Lord abandoned, and gone on our way.’ He opens his palms, a gesture of openness and honesty. ‘Some boys start thinking differently after reading a book. For others, it’s a song.’

  Once, a jolly swagman camped near a billabong.

  ‘But, for some, the lesson has to be more sudden. More permanent.’ He walks past Jon. Jon sees him go, a blur of black through his drying tears. ‘It can work, Jon. You’ll come out of this stronger, prouder. You’ll know what you have to do, if you’re going to grow up. I’ve seen it work before.’

  Because it happened to you, Jon thinks. Because you were a little boy whose father never came back, who got put on a ship and sent to the ends of the earth, who cried so fiercely to go home that they beat him and starved him and shackled him up.

  The voices grow faint.

  ‘We will be back for you, Jon. The Children’s Crusade never abandons its own.’

  There are footsteps, there is silence — and, too late, he realizes they have gone.

  He bawls out. They can’t leave him here. He’s more alone than he ever was, that night he ran. He’s more alone than he’s ever been, slaving in the Mission or cringing in a dormitory bed. Though he knows it is futile, he strains until he feels his skin starting to tear. He screams out what he thinks are un intelligible curses, every vile thing he can think of — but a moment of utter clarity passes through him, and he realizes he has, in fact, been begging, saying sorry over and over again: sorry that he ever betrayed the Children’s Crusade; sorry that he never worked hard enough; sorry that he doesn’t have what it takes to be a good Australian boy.

  His sobbing peters into silence — and then there is nothing in the world, only the whispers of the scrub and the desert to keep him company through the long, lonesome night.

  He has no way of gauging time. He tries to keep his eyes on the horizo
n, but there are long hours until dawn comes and, already, his feet are tired. He wonders if he might kick forward with his feet, push backwards with his chest and, in that way, somehow lie down. But he hears things skittering — spiders or scorpions, lizards or snakes. He sniffles again, bleats out. For a second, the skittering is still, as every creature keeping this midnight watch with him freezes in uncertainty. Then, the night begins all over again.

  ‘George!’ he yells. ‘George, help!’

  He wonders if his voice can be heard, down in the Mission. He wonders if George is lying in bed, little ones gathered around, burying his head in his pillow so that he does not have to hear. Suddenly, he knows it is true; all across the compound, in every dormitory shack, they can hear him. It was, he remembers, that way once before. Luca’s story loops and turns in his thoughts: a little boy, bleating in the night, and gone the next morning.

  As soon as he has recalled the story, it will not leave him. Now, he knows, he cannot cry out. It is not only Mission boys who will hear. It is men in black. It is honoured guests. It is whoever watches these woodlands to take little boys away, the sort of men who might pay Judah Reed to take a little one away, the sort who might pretend to rescue a boy and lead him off to some darker prison.

  Sometimes, the childsnatcher really does come in the dead of night.

  He stifles his crying and tries to clear his thoughts. Once his breathing is under control, he blinks the tears out of his eyes and lifts his hands to inspect the knots. If he strains, taking up tension in his legs, he might be able to gnaw his way free. That, he knows, is what a proper wild boy would do. He puts the rope to his teeth. It is cold and hard and he can hardly grip it at all. Still, strand by strand, tweak by tweak, perhaps he can fight his way free.