A Stolen Season

by Rodney Hall

  Several bursts of diversionary gunfire crackle away to the left. Unexplained action and our good luck. The turbans split up. This could be the break. Now move! We move. Nobby cops it instantly. Shot in the neck. He’s down. O mate. Can’t stop the bleeding. Fuck fuck fuck. Already too late. Nothing to do but hold him as the afterlight of sunset fades. Down comes the dark, like a guillotine. Little bursts of silence go off like bombs. His warm blood pushing out and away. Hang on. And Ratso, the runt, in some trouble of his own, letting out gasps of pain and desperation. Don’t tell me he’s injured and nursing a foot. Don’t tell me he needs to be carried. Jesus! The truth’s been all too clear ever since the outset: he’s a coward, poor little prick. So this looks like defeat, what with the rest of the squaddies nowhere to be seen. Wiped out or taken prisoner—and torture would be the worst thing of all—or gone to ground. Beyond safe limits a line of desert hills, dimly visible, now and then sparkling with the bright star of an explosion. The war of the righteous vanishes into night.

  I’m the NCO so the decision’s mine. I tell them the plan, ‘Near here there’s an empty irrigation system. I spotted it from the chopper.’ Private Fletcher leans close, like he can test the info for weight. Even with his night eyes. ‘The grid connects to the riverbank. Get there and we’re made. Chances are pretty good.’

  He growls, ‘You better not be bullshitting.’

  Our dark hut with its shattered roof stands abandoned on the black land under the empty sky. Too early for moonrise. Soon a man won’t be able to see his fucking hand in front of his fucking nose. A single vehicle drones invisibly along the road that runs hidden in a sandy depression. Now the Milky Way begins to emerge—a glittering universal lake seen upside down—as if you’ve been stood on your head. Thing is . . . to get a fix on east, the way to the river, and not lose it. Christian Fletcher takes the lead, followed by us others. Out across the infinite nowhere. Treacherous stones underfoot. The least noise a dead giveaway. ‘Halt,’ I whisper. ‘Ssh!’ We stop: Ratso, Killer, me. That lone vehicle drones, remote as an insect.

  Check our bearings. Back there the ruined house showing up as a block of no stars. The coward moans. Hurt and whimpering. Fletcher whispers, ‘Watch it, Rat, this shale shit breaks easy.’ Hushed syllables die in the dark. The desert blacker than the black edges of the sky. The distant motor changes gear. Coming closer. Sure enough, yellow headlamps—up the swoop of that rise—lance across bumpy terrain. Killer takes command.

  ‘Go!’ he breathes.

  Two car doors bang shut. There are guys in black loose in the night. Armed and dangerous. With more to come. We run doubled up, to put some ground between us and them, because their eyes’ll soon adjust. ‘Down!’ It’s Killer again. The shale hot as a frypan. He can be felt more than seen. ‘Now, Griffiths, which way?’ My mind clear and calm: ‘There’s only the slope to go by.’ ‘Are we close?’ gasps Ratso. He needs calming. ‘I reckon. The long trenches run east–west. Short ones north–south.’ ‘Got you,’ Killer growls. There’s nothing more to be said. Body thinking for itself and muscle-memory alert to change. When the motor cuts, the silence is absolute. The coward blubbers. Stumbling and losing balance. Boots slew into furrows. A field, maybe. Well, furrows could be a good sign.

  Back there a flashlight illuminates the window space of the hut . . . then shuts off. Enclosed in our own limbo we wait. Don’t move before the moment comes. Action powers the mind. Aeons thunder. Go. Flat on our bellies we crawl like clumsy snakes—except Rat can’t help letting out a muffled groan or two—there’s no telling how far we need to go. The ragheads begin jabbering quietly in the distance. Remote voices carry for kilometres in all directions. More glints of the flashlight. No time to waste. Breast-stroking the dirt, bulky equipment drags under your chest. Helmet dislodged. Plus, this is taking way too long.

  Fletcher hisses, ‘Where’s your ditches?’

  I hiss back, ‘Close.’ He grunts and I reckon he’s willing to believe. But there’s big doubts to be overcome. And more territory. Grit in the mouth.

  Evidence of a trench cut. It is, it is. Fingers groping confirm it. At last, at last. Can it be true? ‘The edge, ssh, quiet!’ I whisper. Soil crumbling under hands. Fletcher replies, ‘The edge, roger that.’ I can’t tell whether this is his by-the-book training, or whether he’s stirring me. Then he reports, ‘I have the edge.’ Bodies slither for an instant out of control. Gravel cuts into knuckles and cheek. I give warning, ‘A metre and a half deep.’ He confirms, ‘A metre and a half, roger that.’ His gear creaks and grinds as he rolls in. We collide. His shoulder compact and heavy. Made it!

  Stillness settles like sediment. With a new emergency . . . the faint clank of goat bells. A flock of goats. Shit! Goatherds would know every centimetre of this place. ‘Where’s Ratso?’ I ask in panic. Fletcher’s ghostly voice answers, ‘The rat’s not coming.’ The stroke of darkness heavy. While being hunted by a dangerous enemy, most dangerous is my ally, all too close and by my side. The truth knocks the wind out of me.

  ‘I’ll go back for him,’ I say. Fletcher says, ‘You won’t.’ I whisper, ‘That poor little bugger never stood a chance.’ He whispers, ‘That poor little bugger would have got us killed.’ Another flashlight burns into the moment, startlingly close. ‘The grid runs on a diagonal,’ I murmur, ‘the first T-junction’ll give us bearings.’

  The killer grabs my shoulder in a violent grip. Now we can hear hushed hunter voices. Ragheads. All too close, they exchange factual-sounding information. Little bells clacker and dingle. Fletcher shoves me ahead, even though it’s not him that knows the alignment. Easing our bodyweight. With timed heartbeats. Testing the ground. We rely on dust underfoot to absorb the noise of escape. Deep softness a silent ally.

  But if my creaking lungs can be heard that will be the end of me.

  Black on black, ghosts meet. And a weird phenomenon begins to take shape all around our position, creeping at the edge of sky—an optical illusion behind the parallax—some sort of afterglow from flares, perhaps. What the fuck! Back in the moment, this new thing—this weird suggestion of dawn—looms on all sides. Like the night itself has begun to rot, eaten out by cosmic decay. The creepiest trip. A super-invader thing unrolls the long horizon. Big as the planet. Jesus fucking Christ!

  Warm lips press against one ear. Goosebumps bunch and shiver. Hair bristles when his lips deliver a single command, ‘Down!’ As he enforces his will the whole sky kneels on my back. Sudden shadows, monsters, lean against the eventuality and the milky glow seeps around the world. Moonrise about to happen. That’s all it is! A universal tide of grey air submerges everything.

  He lets me go. We crouch in the dry ditch. Crawl on all fours. Thank God for the corner that’s just ahead. Good luck. Geography to the rescue. Nothing can stop us now. There’s comfort in being right. Pounding heart proud of leading so dangerous a man to safety. Plus teaching him a lesson in command and obedience. The grid confirms my rank. Our way to the sacred river is clear. Provided the promised fucking moon doesn’t beat us to it with oversupplied light. And, no sooner thought of . . . than this is what happens. Betrayal. The hopeless trench only shoulder high. The deeper the dust the shallower the cut. Under a stilled explosion of silver the landscape mushrooms in every direction. Terror crawls around my helmet rim. Too late for caution. We see where we are. Therefore so can they.

  A half-moon, the shape and colour of a copper axe-head, emerges. So does something else . . . huge and silent, hatching, till we can see it’s only a concrete blockhouse. The defunct pumping station, perhaps.

  And with light comes sound. Men speak quietly but openly, reasoning—men who have no need of concealment—and their voices carry. We know these guys are ferocious fighters. One of them interrupts himself to hawk and spit. Frustration in the spitting. The breeze delivers a thread of cigarette smoke. Keep moving. Me first. Killer crouching close. Only seconds to spare for recovery. Are our telltale tracks v
isible in the dust? Check. Cancel that. No. The soft floor swallows every knee-print and hand-print. Listen. An enemy commander speaking what sounds like tactical information. Other voices answer. Evidently they’ve decided which way to head us off.

  Coming in from the distance: one more vehicle. Slamming doors. Well, this adds four or five men to our problem. Motor left running. That’s a help. Fletcher in the lead slithers down the shallow trench. Supple as a leopard, belly to the ground, his weight saddled on cushions of thigh muscle. I give the order, ‘Bear east.’ He whispers back, ‘Roger, east.’ This exact same instant the full force of moonblaze swamps the land. To stay out of sight we need to be one corner ahead. Somewhere—location middle distance—a single shot fires. Odd. Particularly because the men in black tend to spray bursts of rounds in all directions.

  It can only mean they’ve found Ratso, the poor bastard. Well, that was almost certainly a wasted bullet.

  Fletcher on the move again, his back giving no sign he has noticed. Pointless to wonder what makes him tick. Or how he can be who he is. Least of all his assessment of me. Anyhow, he sinks from view. How did he do that? Gone into a lapping gurgle of water with scarcely a ripple. Where? Goggling to make out what’s at the edge of darkness. There, yes. He emerges, streaming wet, on a tongue of sandy soil that collapses under his weight. Proof. His body mercury. Without a sound he slips down into the current. Risen light throws long shadows across the far bank where shrubs stand up like a black-and-white photograph. Together we wade with the current, the river closing around our escape. Braced against the pull of a gliding flow the trick is to distribute your load. Highflying gunshots reach us from far off, thin as snapped sticks. Submerged to the neck for hours: Killer’s head, my head. Turning, he snags my eye with the glint in his. Success . . . plus, it almost seems to me . . .

  Up on dry ground, empty shell casings crunch underfoot.

  ‘Hey, Chris, look!’ (Never having used Fletcher’s first name before.)

  An airstrip ahead. Our airstrip. But empty and evacuated. A hollow concrete arch. The entire fucking invasion force gone.

  He shakes his head. ‘They’ve lit out on us, the bastards.’

  The vacated air sour with a stench of abandoned latrines. Of all things this is the most unexpected. Standing side by side while the completeness of failure takes its time to sink in.

  ‘Hopeless. We’re going to need a vehicle to get out of here.’

  Killer’s face cracks open to reveal a friendly grin—his first. There’s no better man in an emergency than Killer.

  Semiconscious, Adam looks around him. The war engulfs everything: furniture, room, house . . . he clambers up the riverbank and over a chest of drawers, crouching for cover between the piles of junk bulldozed to either side. Among huge moonlit shadows. (Ah, but how would you cope with injuries like this, Chris? What if it was you escorting that correspondent when the rocket exploded?) Not even a stray dog or thread of smoke disturbs the stillness of the airfield with its potholed runway and a windowless control tower. Fletcher stoops to inspect scraps of fresh trash where the field kitchen once was. And drags some black plastic off a pallet of bottled water. Sharing the find. Trampled ground still warm from the daytime sun. A whiff of gasolene in the air. The half-moon floats fat and bright. ‘Fuck the bastards,’ he says, detaching wet lips, because it’s the Moqtada he is thinking about. He takes another swig and checks on the time.

  The issue standing between us is how he silenced Ratso. Ratso showed that being deadweight is a dangerous business. ‘Chris . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, mate?’ Fletcher thrusts his face too close—black pupils reflect the moon in miniature—while he narrows in on the unasked question.

  I fall back on an excuse, repeating. ‘Nothing . . . just . . . we’re going to need a vehicle.’

  ‘Roger that,’ he responds now the okay routine has kicked in again. ‘Shouldn’t be hard.’

  Sure enough, he finds just the thing. A motorized stairway. No one thought to disable that. The little engine snarls into life. Killer grins from the boxy glass cab. ‘Climb aboard, soldier.’ So the stairway lumbers with awkward stateliness across the landscape. It will be a while before we discover the fuel tank is half empty.

  *

  In the city it rains all afternoon long (rain the television forecast failed to predict), downpipes gurgling. A hail of drops scatter stars across the windows. Blessed rain. Seated at her office desk Bridget hears the spickling. The slate roof of the restaurant opposite presents itself as hashed by a silver comb. Having taken a break from tinkering with her new design, she stares down along the city laneway below. There she spots him. Across pavings tufted with a grey fur of droplets her elderly employer trots toward shelter. One hand clamps his hat to his head. In a minute he’ll come puffing up the pokey stairs, brushing his shoulders, calling out, and all ready to launch into a cheerful account of his adventures.

  He would share everything with her if he could.

  Melbourne—dear old Melbourne—forever held back by easygoing tolerance. She knows it so well. Her city. The broad flat sprawl of suburbs, traffic converging along avenues of elm trees grand enough for Paris (though without Haussmann buildings to match), a patchwork of little parks where fountains bubble at half pressure, the central north–south, east–west grid, a huddle of frumpy shops and a web of tram wires slung between the buildings. Magnificent botanic gardens that sweep disappointingly to the banks of the sluggish Yarra River. Here and there are grand foibles—leftovers from the gold rush of the 1860s—the Treasury and Parliament, law courts and mint. The mantle of colonialism is immortalized by streets named in honour of a miserable tribe of British administrators and nobility. Echoes of London and London’s veneration of classical trappings sprout as columns, pediments and porticos. And somewhere out there, embedded in lawns, Government House flies the flag. Such glitz as there is is pitched at the poker-machine market. The whole city haunted by inadequacy. Why? Because nothing can ever be done to match Sydney’s harbour, Sydney’s opera house or Sydney’s beaches. Even so, secreted along cobbled lanes (like this one) the city’s treasures are everywhere to be found: tiny wine bars and cafés full of people conversing in lazy voices while making the most of a marvellous variety of food from around the world, and coffee to rival the best in Italy.

  ‘You should have seen me, Bridget!’ The old man’s hat emerges between the spindles of the banister as he reports in triumph, ‘Running! At my age!’

  Adam slumps, head lolling. Speedy heart. Alert to the danger of a fall. The Contraption—power pack faintly murmurous—cradles him. Yes, here he is, all right. Shaken and sick to the stomach. Home is the place he thought he would never reach. Safe on the far side of the world. He disengages from the emergency. Calming his agitation he flexes his fingers. The Contraption responds by whirring while wrist and elbow joints click into action. He frogmarches his bag of pains across the room to get the circulation going. He lifts and lowers his arms till the blood returns. This is good. Flapping like a slo-mo pterodactyl at the moment of take-off. What a joke! Screwy old world.

  He embarks on a complicated motion, wiping away tears of effort. Metallic knuckles bump his cheeks. The thought of Ratso haunts him. How did Fletcher do the job so swiftly and in silence? Ratso, flat as a rag and already dead—pain and humiliation cut short—only to have the enemy shoot him dead a second time.

  A magpie struts across the verandah and on to the porch, cautiously negotiating the slippery floor. Having paused and cocked its head to take a sharper look in through the open door—observing him—the bird struts back the way it came with nothing achieved, alarm strategically concealed as dignity. A mug stained with cold tea waits on his table. That, plus a tiny plastic pouch of pills. The morning well advanced and stormy. Bridget is out at work and likely to stay there till five. A segment of shadows can be seen slanting off down the garden steps to the world beyond reach. A low battery
warning flashes on the laptop screen. Distant dogs, let loose to dash around the public gardens, bark in competition. Adam’s hands seek one another among the folds of his garment.

  The television jumps to life halfway through the news. The world is full of trouble, shootings and terrorist attacks. By cruel coincidence today is the day the government has announced a planned ‘re-engagement’ with Iraq. The coverage runs a clip of somewhere known to him—documentary footage from the war that finished him off. With shock he watches a fleeing figure in loose robes who reaches the middle distance, where he throws wide his arms and tumbles—wind tries lifting him from the ground but with no success. Even the place looks familiar: the abandoned shell of a car and a gutter running the length of the road.

  The image lives.

  There’s something Adam needs to understand. His mind lights up at the thought of research. This is the tool. He has the program on call. Able to watch or not watch. Death with choices. Meanwhile he reaches for the Contraption to get him back to his work station. Help me with this thing, he thinks he says. And Bridget is there already, so perhaps he did.

  ‘Aren’t you. Out. At work today?’

  ‘I’ve been and come back, sweetheart.’

  Computer in reach, he assembles fingers ready for action.

  ‘Ar. Good.’

  The best thing is she doesn’t seem upset by what he’s doing though she knows he can’t leave the past alone. Returning to the scene of the crime, in an agony of ambivalence. He needs her to know what he went through. Meanwhile anxious to protect her from knowing. Well, nothing will be hidden once the promised television interview is out there. He agrees with her that Ryan is bound to try uncovering everything because that’s his job. Let it rip. This could be a renewal, a way of showing her how much has never been shared. The ambivalence tears him apart at every level. Aching with possessive desire even while he wants her to be free to leave. Depending on her help when the right thing would be to let her go. Meanwhile his flesh, a cling wrap of tissues, struggles to self-repair.