by John Marsden
‘How would you like to find a gorgeous naked babe in your bed?’ I asked.
Without opening his eyes he said: ‘Well, I’ll settle for you in the meantime.’
I bit him sharply on the shoulder and he opened his eyes then. We wrestled like animals, twisting and turning and biting and growling, like kittens or puppies. Then there was a bit of a pause while I got the condom onto Lee. He said in surprise: ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Newsagent,’ I answered.
After a few minutes I got my legs around his hips and pretended I was squeezing him, but I knew I was just giving him his chance, letting him in. He was quick too. He had me pinned in a moment. I cried out so loudly I gave him a shock, but then he realised it wasn’t a cry of pain. It seemed like only seconds before we were both totally out of control, in convulsions.
Then, almost straightaway, we did it again, more slowly. It was nice. I heard myself whimpering as the moment approached, and although the convulsions were slower to start they seemed to go deeper. Like the foundations of my being were stirring and shifting and rumbling. Lee sounded kind of happy too. He kissed me so fervently afterwards that I was astonished. But pleased. It was like I’d been doing him a favour, when I was really doing myself a favour. I suppose we’d done each other a favour.
I let him slip out of me, then I snuggled into him and had a proper sleep, a comfortable sleep, about the best sleep I’d had since the war started. About 7 am I snuck back to my room, just to avoid the embarrassment of being busted by the others.
A couple of hours later, as Fi and I changed sentry shifts, Homer gave us a big spiel about how if we got another ‘Pineapples’ message at lunchtime he’d organise the next motorbike attack. He was absolutely determined to try this scheme where he’d run a live electrical wire into a puddle, so a soldier who stood in it would be electrocuted. Then he’d pull the wire out, run off with it, and they’d never know how the guy died. They’d think it was another accident.
There were at least two problems with this brilliant idea. One was that a doctor would be able to tell with one glance that he’d been electrocuted, which might strike them as a bit strange. If we were stuck in Stratton for weeks, and they realised guerillas were in town, things might get a bit hot.
The second problem was that even Homer couldn’t think of a way to make the rider get off his bike in the middle of a puddle. He didn’t have to get off his bike, just put his foot on the ground, so he was no longer protected by his rubber tyres. Sure we could easily drag stuff onto the road to make a roadblock, and that would stop them, but it would obviously be an act of sabotage. You could try to make a roadblock seem natural, but how? Saw-marks on a tree or a telegraph pole would be a bit of a giveaway, not to mention the noise we’d make cutting it down.
So it was probably lucky that we didn’t get the chance to try Homer’s idea.
Instead the time came for our last big adventure together.
When we called at lunchtime, instead of a coded message we got a straightforward statement: ‘Call back at twenty-one hundred.’
It sounded ominous – or promising, depending on which way you looked at it.
The codeword to trigger us back into action was ‘Oodnadatta’, deliberately chosen because it didn’t suggest anything too dramatic. Homer had wanted ‘Blast-off’, but as Ryan pointed out, if anyone was listening in and heard that, they’d know something big was about to break. Even a detail like that could be important.
At 8.59 Kevin and I attempted the radio check. Reception was poor and we didn’t make any contact on the first try. The standard procedure was to try again an hour later, but at ten o’clock, although we made contact, we got so much static we couldn’t be sure what they were saying. That was really annoying, because it meant we had to go all the way out into the country for the third one, at eleven o’clock. There was no other way we could be sure of getting a good signal.
It also meant that if we did make contact we’d be doing it at the normal time anyway, which made the idea of the twenty-one hundred gig a bit of a joke.
Light rain was falling. We sneaked through the streets again, but relaxed when we were out in the paddocks. Walking along with my head bowed, feeling the water trickling steadily down the back of my neck, I heard Kevin say: ‘I think she said “Oodnadatta” on that last call.’
Suddenly the water trickling down my back turned to ice. I shivered from head to foot. I reckon my body temperature dropped ten degrees.
‘Why didn’t you say so before?’
‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure. I’m not even fifty per cent sure.’
I searched my memory of the conversation, which had had more snap, crackle and pop than a bowl of Rice Bubbles. After a minute or so I convinced myself that the woman in New Zealand had said nothing but Oodnadatta. It was like ‘Count to ten without thinking of a rabbit’. Once someone’s put a word in your head it can stay there for hours.
‘Gee, I don’t know,’ I said to Kevin.
I was pretty anxious when we set the radio up again. I couldn’t stop shivering.
Now that we were away from the suburbs we got a good signal. It’s that fresh clean country air. Works every time.
I couldn’t believe how fast everything happened after that. It was like those sprint races at school sports days, where you do all the mucking around, taking off your trackies and getting down in the blocks and flexing your legs and the starter says, ‘On your marks’, and you muck around some more, and then it’s ‘Get set, BANG’, one following the other before you have time to react to the first one.
The next thing you’re going like mad down the track, making your legs go faster and faster, wondering how so many of the other runners can already be twenty metres in front of you.
Within a minute of making contact with New Zealand we were shutting down the radio again, staring at each other. Kevin had this terribly serious look on his face.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if our luck can survive this.’
‘We haven’t been that lucky,’ I thought. ‘We’ve had three of our friends die already.’
But I didn’t say that, just hugged him. We ran, jogged and walked all the way back to Grandma’s without talking again.
Of course the five of us – plus Gavin occasionally – had swapped lots of ideas about what we should do to carry out Colonel Finley’s and Ryan’s orders. None of our ideas were going to be easy and none were going to be safe. Plus Gavin was a major complication. We’d made a few attempts to convince him that anything he wanted to do to help us was bound to be a bad idea, but I guess we all knew that we were stuck with him now: when it came to Gavin there was no Plan B, C or D.
We also knew that he could die in the weeks ahead. I didn’t let myself think much about that either, except to tell myself I would never forgive this terrible war if that happened. I mean, I wasn’t going to forgive it anyway, but I didn’t think I could survive myself if this cheeky little brat with no neck, built like a cane toad, ended up like Robyn or Corrie or Chris. Or Darina.
Needless to say though, when Gavin got the news that we were going into action he wasn’t intimidated at all. In fact he did a series of handstands down the corridor. I thought it was amazing. The more I saw of war the less I liked it. With Gavin, who had seen some awful things and had had terrible experiences, it was like he couldn’t get enough. He said he wanted to get back at the soldiers, and I’m sure that was part of the story, but I think he also was thrilled by the danger and adventure. Maybe he thought he was indestructible.
Funny, I’d once thought that about myself.
We packed carefully. Thanks to Ryan we had more weaponry than ever before. It seemed like next time we were caught there wasn’t going to be much point pretending we were just innocent teenagers who’d been having a sleepover at a friend’s while the war raged around us. No, this time we packed the explosives and the ammo and the weapons, knowing that trying the first of Ryan’s cover stories would be a
waste of time. We’d never get away with a lie that big. If things went the way Ryan had predicted, we were heading into the grand final. You can’t fake it in a grand final.
By 1.30 am Lee and I were ready. We sat outside the house, being lookouts waiting for the others and at the same time talking about our first target.
‘I don’t want this war to end,’ Lee said suddenly.
‘You what?’
He shrugged, and looked away. I was annoyed with myself. I’d jumped on him too quickly, without waiting to see what he meant. You couldn’t do that with Lee, except with sex maybe. Now I’d have to draw it out of him.
‘What, are you worried about how it’s going to end?’
‘No, not that.’
‘After the war? You’re worried about that?’
I realised what it would be.
‘You mean with your little brothers and sisters?’
Now that the end was vaguely in sight it started to dawn on me just how it was going to be for Lee. When the war was over, he would have an awfully big gig, coping not just with the stuff the rest of us would have to confront, but more, with the fact that he didn’t have parents any more. Of course we all might have to deal with the deaths of close relatives – we didn’t know yet – but with Lee it was a certainty. We could still look forward to reunions with mothers and fathers; he couldn’t. Hope wasn’t part of the equation of his life.
I took his hand and studied his lean brown fingers. ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do?’
‘Nuh. How can I? How can anyone? In the last year I reckon I wouldn’t have spent two seconds thinking about life after the war. Might as well think about having a holiday on Jupiter.’
I began to feel afraid that he was not planning on being alive at the end of the war. It would be terribly, horribly, like Lee to go out in some huge heroic blaze of glory, hoping to say in that way what he’d never managed to say in words.
‘What about your sisters and brothers?’ I asked nervously, wanting to remind him of them again, to remind him of the importance of staying alive.
He broke away from me impatiently, standing up and walking across the lawn, with his hands pushed into his pockets. I thought he was going to keep walking away, but instead, when he got to the front fence he kicked the gate then turned and came back. He stood in front of me, scowling, still with his hands in his pockets.
‘It’s so unfair,’ he said angrily. ‘I don’t want to be a parent. There are things I want to do, places I want to go. And you know what’ll happen instead? I’ll be stuck with the kids, packing their lunches and wiping their noses and wiping their bums. Great, isn’t it? Great future. If only I had grandparents.’ He laughed. ‘“If only.” I’ve never trusted those words. I never thought I’d start using them. They’re useless words, but right now ... See, if I had grandparents, at least they’d take care of all that day-to-day stuff and I could get on with my music. But as it is ...’
He kicked out again, at a tree this time. ‘It’s like I’ll go back to being a peasant, with the older kids looking after the younger kids. I’m not a peasant. And I’m too young to be a parent.’
I searched my memory. ‘Didn’t you say that the people who looked after your mother when she came to this country ... weren’t they like grandparents to you?’
‘Yeah ... yeah, that’s true. I thought about them maybe helping out. But I don’t know. They’re pretty old now. And it’s like everything else, you don’t know if they’re alive or dead or somewhere in between. The trouble is, you don’t know anything, you can’t plan anything, your whole life’s sitting in the freezer.’
Homer came out of the house, struggling to put on his pack as he lurched towards us. We all had huge packs, with a lot of weight, but Homer’s was the hugest. Sometimes when I was handfeeding stock I’d load the ute with so many bales of hay that you could hardly see the vehicle. That’s what Homer looked like when he got the pack on.
‘Ready boys and girls?’ he asked.
‘Been ready for half an hour,’ Lee answered.
‘Any chance you’ll ever say “girls and boys”?’ I asked.
‘None at all,’ he said cheerfully.
We had to wait twenty minutes before the other three were ready. Gavin and Fi were last. I laughed at Gavin, who zigzagged across the lawn like an old drunk. We’d put every gram in his pack that we thought we could, without having him tip over. It was touch and go. The slightest tail breeze and he’d fall flat on his face.
‘Is it too heavy?’ I asked. I was teasing him really. But he didn’t see me ask the question, because my face was in darkness, so I had to move a little to where he could see.
When he did work it out he just turned down his lips and shook his head. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I could take more.’
Little bugger. I was never going to get him to admit to any weakness. He was as tough as my father, and that’s saying something. As tough as my grandmother, and that’s really saying something.
Five hours later no-one was feeling too tough though. We made good time, because there was a half-moon, and that was easily enough light for us to go across country, instead of having to use roads or tracks. The range of light you got at night was amazing. It could be so black you could hold your hand in front of your face and not see it – and I did this often enough on dark nights to know what I’m talking about, especially early in the evening – or so light you could see every blade of grass and every rabbit hole you were about to put your foot into. So in one way it was good having a bit of decent light this particular night, but bad in another way because it meant we could travel at a tooth-rattling pace.
The night was humid and I was soon sweating, at the speed Homer set. I could hear Gavin grunting and puffing behind me, but typically he didn’t complain, and what was more important, he kept up. No-one talked, even though there were stretches when it would have been safe enough. But not only did we need all our energy for walking, I imagine the others were doing the same as me: thinking.
Tiring stuff, thinking. Mental aerobics are always tougher than physical ones. For me anyway. I’d rather walk than think, but to do both at the same time is a big ask.
Of course there was only one thing to think about. The war. What it had done to us, what it continued to do, what it would do in the future. I ranged between the extremes of light and darkness: from imagining the reunion with my beautiful parents and our return to the farm, to imagining the moment before my death as the bullet erupted from the gun. The pain as it tore into me, the terrible pain as my life spurted out and flowed away.
It seemed that life was heading towards one extreme or the other. That was another thing I’d learned about war – it was big on extremes. Maybe that’s why the old men struck me as kind of excited when they talked about their wars. Sure they talked about the suffering and the fear and the grief, but you felt that underneath was a secret, and the secret was that the war was the biggest and most exciting thing in their lives.
I knew that whatever else happened I would never feel that way about this war. Maybe if no-one I knew had been killed, but this war had cost me so much that I could never think of it as exciting, or an adventure. It would always be the worst time of my life, and with all my being I longed for it to end.
Eventually I got into a kind of rhythm with my walking, and as the k’s passed I was able to escape to a daydream where all my rellies survived the war and we had a big reunion at home, like the family Christmases we’d had once in a while. The sun rose, but I barely noticed it, although it was a relief not having to worry about where I put my feet.
Lee, who was leading at that stage, called a halt, and I realised with a shock that it was nearly 8 am.
‘Where are we?’ Fi whispered.
‘That’s the Russell Highway
,’ Homer said, pointing down the steep slope that ran away from us.
The highway was a ribbon of black, lying across the countryside like a strap of licorice, before climb
ing a series of steep hills.
‘It’s quiet,’ Fi said.
‘Too quiet,’ said Lee, the movie fanatic, always fast on the cliches.
We decided to hole up and take a rest. I was hungry, but couldn’t be bothered opening my pack and searching for food. Fi said she’d do sentry, so I lurched off to a hollow full of bracken and wire grass and crawled into that. Gavin wriggled in beside me and snuggled into me like a chicken getting under its mother’s wing. Inside a minute I heard his breathing slow down and in another minute I’d say he was sound asleep. I envied him. If only it was that easy for me.
But as I lay there listening to him I think I must have dozed off myself, because the next thing I knew the sun was high in the sky and it was after eleven.
It wasn’t surprising that I’d woken. There’d been a dramatic change in three hours. The quiet road, stretching out lifelessly earlier in the morning, was now almost unrecognisable. The noise alone would have been enough to wake me. Vehicles growling and grunting, vehicles whining and straining as they took the bend and tackled the steep climb. I could even feel a slight vibration in the earth as the big trucks rumbled up the hill.
Beside me Gavin was still asleep and to my left I could see Fi equally out of it. But Homer’s broad back was just ten metres away, and he was obviously awake, watching the convoy. I wriggled over to him, feeling sluggish and crotchety, like I usually did after these restless naps.
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
‘I made an executive decision. There’s nothing we can do at the moment, in broad daylight. And I figured sleep could be pretty rare in the next few days.’
‘How long have they been going past?’
‘Ten minutes. Nearly fifteen.’
‘God. That’s a lot of vehicles.’
‘Yeah. There’ve been a few breaks but. Hey, have a look over there. What do you reckon that’s all about?’
I looked where he was pointing, to the south-east. For a moment there was nothing, then I saw what he meant. A series of flashes lit up the sky, first a big one, then three or four little ones.
