The Road to Winter

by Mark Smith

  He lowered the gun and turned his head to the side like he was hard of hearing.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said.

  I couldn’t place him. His hair was long and wild and grey, and most of his face was hidden behind a beard.

  ‘You’re Tom Morrison’s boy, aren’t you? From the hardware?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You always spoke funny,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘I recognise your dog, too.’

  ‘Rowdy.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, son, but I only got enough food for myself. How you faring?’

  ‘Getting by. Mostly rabbits and fish.’

  ‘Your mum and dad?’

  ‘Both gone.’

  ‘How long you been on your own?’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe six months.’

  He was nodding and looking past me into bush, as though he was expecting someone else to be with me.

  ‘Seen any Wilders about?’

  This was the first time I’d heard about the gangs of men roaming the country to the north.

  ‘Nope,’ I said.

  ‘Many people left in town?’

  ‘None. Just Rowdy and me.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Through that first winter me and Ray traded food every month or so. I’d catch rabbits for him and he’d give me honey from his hives or veggies grown in his garden. It was tempting to move out there and live with him—I reckon he would have liked that—but I had my stores to protect and his farm was too far from the surf.

  This storm is taking its time to clear. I don’t sleep well, worrying about how the house will stand up to the rain and wind.

  The next day, when I check the river mouth in the afternoon, the sets are lining up like corduroy. Dad used to say that; meant they were one after the other. So I grab my board and paddle out again, duck diving under the sets as they crash over the bar. They’re bigger today and I need to be careful not to drift too far inside the peak.

  But I’ve only had a couple of waves when I hear Rowdy going apeshit. When I look back to the beach I can hardly believe what I see. He’s got someone bailed up, leaping up and down and barking at them, then dropping to the ground like he’s ready to go at them. I’m whistling for him to back off, but the waves are making too much noise for him to hear me. There’s nothing for it, I end up thinking. I’ll have to head in.

  I undo my leg-rope in the shallows and hold the board in front of me in case I need protection. But this bloke’s just standing there, putting his hand out, trying to soothe Rowdy.

  When I get closer I see he’s as small as me, thin as a whippet. Rangy. Hair long and ropey right down his back and falling across his face. He’s wearing an old pair of shorts and a way too big jumper.

  Then he starts talking and it hits me. It’s a girl. Voice real high and panicky.

  ‘You gotta help me,’ she says. ‘Wilders. They’re coming. They’re tracking me.’

  I’m struck dumb like an idiot. I haven’t heard a girl’s voice in so long it takes time to sink in. I understand enough to sense danger, though.

  I drop my board and take off for the safety of the tea trees. She’s onto the idea now and so is Rowdy, all three of us belting up the dunes, sending sand flying in the air behind us.

  We reach the top and dive under the overhang. The girl’s got me by the arm and she’s not letting go. I peer out and see five of them—Wilders. I’ve steered clear of gangs like this when I’ve come across them north of the fence lines. As far as I know they haven’t ventured into town before.

  These are big blokes. No guns, but carrying long bits of wood. Looks like knives taped to the ends. It’s no secret which way we’ve taken off, with our tracks all the way up the dune like a big sign saying, ‘Up here, up here’.

  I see them start to climb, lumbering-like. Slow. And not real smart, either. They don’t split up and try to head us off. Like dogs on the scent of a feed, all running together in a pack. I know I’ve got them covered but I don’t get cocky. I’ve always had a plan for this. Head for the bush upriver. Lead them away from home. Get into the thick mimosa and stay low, then double back home after dark.

  She’s still got me by the arm, the girl, hanging on like a leech. Even in the panic I think how strange it feels to have someone touching me. So I look at her and say, ‘Keep up,’ and start running again.

  Rowdy bolts ahead like it’s a big game, and the girl’s matching me stride for stride, doing it easy by the looks. We’ve got a hundred metres on them by the time they fight their way out into the open. I slow a bit because I want them to see us. I’ve got to draw them away from home. I hear them yelling and hollering, probably thinking they’re onto us.

  I reckon we’ve got them beat when I hear it. It takes a while to sink through my thick head because I haven’t heard that noise in so long it’s like an echo. A motor. I look up and there’s another big bastard on a trailbike weaving his way through the tussock grass and coming straight for us. He’s got a metal stake in his hand and he’s holding it like it’s a tennis racquet.

  We’re running out of options. I don’t think we’ll make it to the mudflats. I look to the girl, her eyes wide, and I say one thing.

  ‘Swim.’

  I run to the bank of the river and wade out into the current. She’s beside me and Rowdy’s next to her. The tide’s coming in so as soon as we get into deep water it starts to sweep us along. We keep stroking hard so we can get to the other bank well short of the bridge.

  The girl swims like a mullet. She’s climbing the bank by the time I get there and reaching down to me. She’s streaming wet, all her clothes sticking to her bones and she’s looking at me kind of fierce and needy at the same time. I take her hand and it’s strong.

  The Wilders are jumping up and down on the other side like they’ve never seen a river before. Rowdy clambers up the bank and shakes himself dry. No time for resting, though, and we take off into the scrub, heading for the hills.

  I lead us up to the ridge above the football ground where I stop and look back down to the river, watching and working out what they’re going to do. Eventually they walk towards the road bridge, the trailbike moving ahead of the pack.

  They cross slowly, maybe wary of being ambushed. It doesn’t look as though they’re going to track us right away. The trailbike circles back to them and they spend a long time standing around and pointing up towards the ridge.

  The sun’s getting low by the time they give up, lazy bastards, and I see them heading north towards the fences, where I’m guessing they came from.

  The girl’s staring at me now, backing away.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she says, out of breath. She has an accent I’ve never heard before.

  ‘Fnn,’ I say, and the name sounds funny. I haven’t said it in so long.

  ‘Finn?’ she says, stretching the i sound out.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why do you speak like that?’

  ‘Like what?’ I say.

  ‘Growly.’

  There’s no time to explain now.

  The sun’s gone when I get to my feet. I wait for a bit to see what she’s going to do before I start walking home.

  I hear her following me, kind of stop-start like she’s not sure. Rowdy’s padding along next to her as though he’s known her all his life.

  ‘I’m Rose,’ she says at last.

  There are words running around inside my head, but I can’t get them to come out right. So I don’t say anything. I just turn round to look at her. She’s maybe eighteen or nineteen, though it’s hard to tell because her black hair is so long and wild and her clothes are too big for her. Her skin is dark, like she might be Indian, and her arms and legs are covered in cuts and scratches and scars. She’s got a rag tied around one hand with blood seeping through it.

  It’s a stand-off. Her hair keeps falling over her face, but her eyes are sharp like knives.


  ‘You live here?’ she asks.

  ‘Maybe. Where d’you come from?’

  I can see her trying to figure out what I’m saying, piecing the words together. ‘North,’ she says.

  ‘Wilder country?’

  She nods.

  ‘You a Wilder?’

  ‘Do I look like a Wilder to you? I escaped from them and I’m never going back.’

  The night is closing in. Even though I’ve still got my wetsuit on, the wind is cutting through me. She’s shivering too. I make a sign for her to follow me down the track towards town.

  A strange sort of silence comes over us. I’m trying to put together everything that’s happened since I paddled out for my surf. I’ve made decisions without having time to think them through. The last two winters I’ve had nothing but time, but today everything has changed in a couple of hours.

  I can hear Rose behind me as we make our way down from the ridge. I’m still wary of the Wilders being about, tricking us into leading them to my place, so I take a roundabout route, scouting along the banks of the river, keeping low until we get to the flats by the mouth.

  We’re lying in the tussock grass when she crawls up next to me, almost on top of me. Close up, she looks like she’s been living rough. There are little bits of twigs and leaves caught in her hair. And the smell of her.

  It’s something I’d almost forgotten about, the smell people have. I could always tell when Mum had been in a room just by the smell she left behind. It must have been the deodorant she used, or the perfume, and I loved its sweetness and the way it seemed to just hang in the air. Dad too, though he was different. There was linseed oil from all the old furniture he used to work on in the shed. And two-stroke. The smells from the hardware: rope and paint and fertiliser. Somehow he seemed to carry all of them around with him.

  And now here’s this girl, Rose, and she stinks like piss and sweat, a bit like the smell of the melaleucas after it’s been raining for a few days and the leaves on the ground start to rot.

  ‘What’d you think?’ she says, pointing to the river mouth.

  In my mind I’m trying out the words before I say them.

  ‘They could be trying to trick us,’ I say. I clear my throat and try some more. ‘Could have doubled back on their tracks, watching for us.’

  I’m on a roll now, like I’m discovering a new language and I can’t use enough of it.

  ‘I reckon we wait till it gets darker and then cross at the mouth. The tide’s turned so we should be able to wade across. We’ll be out in the open, though.’

  She has this unnerving way of looking straight at me while I’m talking. I figure she’s trying to read my lips.

  ‘I don’t know what you just said, but if you can point to where we’re going, that’d be good,’ she says. Again, there’s the accent I can’t place. It’s sort of singsong, like she rolls the words over on top of each other.

  I point to the other side of the river. ‘My place is back up the hill, on the other side of town. Once we get over the river we’ll be sweet. There’s lots of cover.’

  ‘Okay.’ She nods. ‘We have to cross the river and go up the hill. So we wait till it gets darker.’

  She makes it sound like it’s her idea.

  She turns onto her back then and buries herself down in the tussocks. We’re up above the high-tide mark so the sand is dry and soft.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘For helping me.’

  ‘Didn’t have much choice, did I?’

  It sounds harder than I mean it to.

  ‘I mean,’ I say, ‘not with the Wilders and all. Bastards, that lot.’

  She turns to me and I see how dark her eyes are. Dark and shaped like almonds.

  She doesn’t hold my gaze, staring down at the sand like she’s embarrassed. We lie like this for ages, until a quarter-moon begins to rise. Rowdy has been watching the whole thing and he seems confused, looking to me then to Rose. He starts to lick the salt off my feet.

  ‘Time to go,’ I say, finally. ‘We’ll get some cover on the other side of the dune until we get down to the mouth. We’ve got no choice then, out into the open. We’ll have to run to get to the water. Stick together. Signal. No talking.’

  There’s no movement on the other side of the river and the sand under our feet means we can move quietly. Finally we get to the beach and start our run to the water. The tide’s slacker now, but there’s still a strong pull. I feel Rose take my hand and together we wade across.

  Rowdy is ahead of us, already on the other bank. He knows there’s something up and that he needs to keep quiet. Just as it starts to get shallower, and we think we’re in the clear, a noise erupts behind us. In the weak moonlight I can see half-a-dozen figures silhouetted along the top of the dune.

  ‘Warda,’ a man’s voice yells and it sounds like pain and anger mixed in together. ‘Warda!’

  Rose grabs my arm so tight her fingernails dig into my skin. She doesn’t stop moving, doesn’t turn around—just pulls us both up onto the bank, lets go of my arm and starts running for cover. I come after her and find her crouched under the first line of tea trees.

  The screaming from the other bank hasn’t let up, but the noise of the waves and wind in the trees drown out the words until it sounds like a dog howling.

  Rose squats on her haunches and her whole body seems to be heaving with the effort to breathe. I can hear the snot in her nose with each inhale.

  ‘Don’t let them get me. I can’t go back,’ she says. Her voice cracks.

  We have to move. I find the way to the track that takes us under the old viewing platform and away to safety on the hill overlooking the river.

  It’s not until we are getting closer to my place that doubt starts to creep in. I’ve been living here on my own for so long it’s like I’m about to break something sacred, something that’s just been about Rowdy and me. We’ve guarded it, protected it, hidden it away. It’s our secret and now I’m going to share it with someone I’ve only known for a couple of hours. How do I know I can trust her? How do I know she’s not in with the Wilders and waiting to lead them here when she finds out where we live? I slow my pace.

  She knows what’s going on straightaway. ‘You can blindfold me if you want to,’ she says.

  I can barely see her in the dark now and a thought comes into my head: I could leave her here. It’d be easy. But there’s a stronger feeling that makes up my mind for me. It comes from what she said back there under the tea trees—how angry and how deep it was.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ I say. ‘Just follow close.’

  We cut through the houses to climb the hill for couple of blocks, then trace the line of sheoaks that drop their needles like a carpet until we come out by my back shed. I hold up my hand and peer around the corner at the house. Everything is quiet.

  ‘Clear,’ I whisper and we walk across the yard. Rowdy brushes past and goes straight to his blanket in the corner. I know my way around the house without even thinking, but she’ll be unfamiliar with everything.

  I grab one of the kitchen chairs and ease her into it. On top of the mantelpiece I find the torch and switch it on. She starts at the sudden light.

  ‘You’ve got light,’ she says. ‘Batteries!’

  I keep the beam pointed at the floor.

  ‘My dad owned the hardware before…you know, before.’

  In the glow of the torch I can see her nod.

  ‘Look around,’ I say. ‘Get your bearings. I can’t afford to leave the torch on for long. The batteries are precious.’

  She follows the beam around the kitchen. It’s strange looking at it like this, breaking up something I know so well into small parts for her to take in—the sink, the fridge with its pilot light glowing soft down by the floor, the table and chairs. I realise I have never moved any of the other chairs out even though there’s only ever been me here; like I’ve been waiting for someone else to turn up.

  ‘A fridge!’ she says, a little too loud.

 
‘Gas. I’ll explain later.’

  She squats down on the floor and reaches her hand to the pilot light like it might not be real.

  ‘Come with me,’ I say.

  I show her the lounge room, the bedrooms, the bathroom.

  ‘Tank water,’ I say, before she asks. ‘Had a wet spring so plenty at the moment.’

  Back in the kitchen we sit down and I turn off the torch. The darkness swamps us again until my eyes adjust and I make out the shapes I’m used to. I open the fridge and take out the rabbit I cooked last night.

  Somehow, it’s easier talking to her in the dark.

  ‘The fridge?’ she asks.

  ‘Gas bottles,’ I say. ‘When everything was falling apart, Dad and me moved a heap of them into sheds around town. I know where they all are. Won’t last for ever, but at least I’ve got fuel for now.’

  There’s a long silence then with just the sound of me cracking the bones of the rabbit as I pull it apart. I find a plate on the sink and put the meat on it. The gamey smell fills the kitchen.

  I move around, pulling down all the blinds and shutting the doors, like I’ve done so many times on my own. I want to see her now, so I light the candle I keep on the side bench. She looks different in its glow, softer. I can’t see her cuts and scrapes and scars.

  ‘Hungry?’ I ask.

  Without taking the time to answer she grabs a piece of rabbit and pushes it into her mouth, chewing and breathing hard. Then she takes another piece, and another.

  ‘Easy,’ I say.

  I take a piece of meat before it’s all gone. She gnaws on the bones, breaking them open and sucking the marrow out.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I haven’t eaten cooked food in a while.’ Her eyes are still darting around the room, like there might be danger lurking somewhere.

  ‘That’s okay.’ I take what’s left of the rabbit and give it to Rowdy.

  When I look back Rose has slumped over her arms, her head turned sideways and, as best I can tell, her eyes are closed. I tap her shoulder and she reels back in her chair.

  ‘Down the hall,’ I say, pointing. ‘Bedroom on the right.’