Lunch with a Soldier

by Derek Hansen

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got all day.’

  ‘Oh, no. Your story first.’

  Billy told her all about the campers and how he’d squared things off with the police by lying.

  ‘I had to do it or else we’d have them up here wanting a chat with Rodney. They’d want me to act as go-between so Rodney didn’t start shooting.’ He turned towards Linda. ‘They’d want to know what I was doing up here at the house and probably welcome the excuse to come nosing around. They’d be aware of the rumours Jimmy’s been spreading and want to check them out.’

  ‘Poor Billy,’ said Linda. ‘You’ve got Rodney to look out for and now me.’

  ‘I’ve warned Rodney not to cause any more incidents. For what good it’ll do, I’ve told him to chuck his shotgun down one of his mineshafts.’

  ‘Well, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea,’ said Linda.

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  ‘While Rodney’s riding shotgun on his diggings, he’s also riding shotgun on me. I feel a lot more safe and secure knowing he’s out there on patrol.’

  ‘Safe from what? Where’s the threat? No one knows you’re here and most people wouldn’t be able to find this place anyway.’

  Linda turned her gaze back across the expanse of plains to a horizon that couldn’t be flatter if it had been ironed.

  ‘My turn,’ she said eventually. ‘I had a phone call this morning. I have the phone for outgoing calls and so I can be contacted in an emergency. Besides you, only four people have my number: my sister, my solicitor, my accountant and my general manager from work. When the phone rings, chances are there’s a problem.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘People don’t become distracted for nothing.’

  ‘My sister, Fran, rang. They’d taken my daughter away for the weekend to the Blue Mountains. The little old lady across the road claims she saw someone — a man — go into their house on Saturday morning while they were away.’

  ‘You mean, break in?’

  ‘No, she said he had a key and stayed in the house for more than half an hour.’

  ‘Anything missing?’

  ‘Fran’s not sure. The whole thing is weird. The house has an alarm and nobody outside of her immediate family and my daughter know the code. The alarm didn’t go off and it was still armed when they got back from the mountains.’

  ‘So someone had a key and knew how to disarm the alarm. Or the little old lady is imagining things.’

  ‘She’s old and her eyesight’s not the best, even with glasses. But she’s not senile. Fran also thinks someone has been in her office rifling through her files.’

  ‘Thinks?’

  ‘You have to know my sister. Everything has to be neat and tidy and in its rightful place. Every cushion has to be just so and magazines on the coffee table have to be neatly stacked and aligned with the edges of the table. If she suspects someone has been in her office I’m inclined to believe her.’

  ‘But nothing’s missing?’

  ‘That’s not the point. A normal burglar would have made a mess, tipped files out onto the floor and not just picked through them. Whoever went through those files was looking for something.’

  ‘What?’

  Linda took a deep breath.

  ‘Fran thinks it was my ex-husband looking for my address and phone number.’

  ‘I thought he was in gaol.’

  ‘He gets weekend leave.’

  ‘Does he also get your sister’s front door key and alarm code?’

  ‘Billy, the little old lady is not an idiot or a drama queen. If she says she saw someone then I’m inclined to believe her as well. Fran says someone was in her office. Her writing pads weren’t properly aligned. There were gaps in the drawers of her filing cabinets, as if someone had pushed files back to make it easier to remove one of them. She’s not making this up just to frighten me.’

  ‘Does your sister have your address?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But she has your phone number.’

  ‘In her teledex.’

  ‘No one would think of looking there.’

  ‘It’s under a false name. My sister’s family have their own lives. There’s probably a hundred names in the teledex that my ex-husband wouldn’t recognise.’

  ‘Is that the only place she’s written your number down?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘Then what are you worried about? If someone entered your sister’s home, and if it was your ex-husband, he wouldn’t have found anything.’

  ‘I think I’ve got a lot to worry about. If Fran is right then we know my ex is determined to come after me. So determined, he’s prepared to break the law and risk getting caught. If he’d been caught, he would’ve lost all chance of parole and served out his full sentence. He was risking another two years in gaol.’

  ‘But he didn’t get your number.’

  Linda bit her bottom lip. Billy was surprised by how tense she was and how worried.

  ‘He might have. We can’t be one hundred per cent sure that he didn’t.’

  ‘Okay, let’s assume your ex-husband somehow got a key and the code and your telephone number. What does it tell him? It tells him you live somewhere in the northwest of the state covered by the Walgett exchange.’ Billy waved his arm expansively over the plains below them. ‘If you were him, where would you begin?’

  Linda gazed at the bush that stretched as far as her eyes could see whichever direction she looked. Her number was unlisted and in the name of a company which existed only on paper in her accountant’s office.

  ‘If I were looking for you, Linda, I’d go around all the towns asking questions and showing your photograph. You came up here the first time over three months ago and people are still talking about you. In the unlikely event that some bloke comes up here asking questions and flashing your picture, don’t you think I’d get to hear about it?’ Billy slowly rolled another cigarette. The blowfly made the mistake of settling on Billy’s knee and got swatted for its trouble. The silence didn’t augur well for a wet summer.

  Billy stayed for lunch and managed to convince Linda that someone had called in at her sister’s house, found nobody home and called back half an hour later. It seemed quite plausible that the old lady had seen the man arrive the first time and leave the second time and drawn the wrong conclusion about the period in between. Linda also conceded that her sister’s husband and teenage children used the office and didn’t share Fran’s obsession with tidiness. It wasn’t just Billy’s arguments that helped her relax but the quiet, unhurried way with which he presented them. His calmness seemed to rub off on her. Their conversation came as easily as it had the previous night and she promised him dinner on her return from a trip to Dubbo to buy fresh food and supplies.

  Billy left Linda far happier than she’d been when he’d arrived. He also left in a happier mood. Despite the heat and the loss of a day’s work, he felt like celebrating. He was convinced that his next dinner with Linda would deliver what Rodney’s shotgun had postponed.

  Billy’s good humour didn’t last long. Disregarding the heat he took a circuitous route back to his homestead so he could check on parts of his property he didn’t often get to. Rabbit burrows had become full-blown warrens while his back was turned, harbouring God only knew how many of the pests. If the summer turned out as hot and dry as he feared, he’d need every blade of grass and edible shrub. He didn’t want it wasted down the throats of rabbits. Bulldozing the warrens offered the best solution, but bulldozers cost money to hire and the infestation didn’t justify the expense. The best he could do was hit the warrens with poisoned carrots. It wouldn’t wipe the bunnies out, but that was about all his budget ran to. What was really needed was someone to come up with a successor to myxomatosis before the rabbit population built up to plague proportions again. As much as Billy had an aversion to poisons, he made a mental note to return with some
strychnine.

  His dark mood deepened as he continued on his way past more warrens and patches of roly-poly which had taken over where the sheep and rabbits had grazed out the buffle grass. His inventory of jobs that needed doing continued to grow. Apart from the lamb marking, he had calves to castrate and brand and the mob of steers to send off to market. He could feel things slipping away from him and that only added to the tension and made matters worse. Rodney was partly to blame and so was Linda. He just wasn’t accustomed to outside influences deciding how he spent his days, but conceded he was as much to blame for letting them.

  Thinking about Linda only brought another worry to the surface. When she’d mentioned she was intending to stay in Dubbo from Monday to Friday he hadn’t said anything, but that hadn’t stopped him wondering why she would need five days to shop for supplies. Why would she need five days? How did a person spend five days in Dubbo? Sure Linda had some shopping to do and would probably visit a hairdresser and maybe go see a couple of movies, but that didn’t take five days. It puzzled him, adding another concern at a time when he needed his load lightened.

  He almost groaned out loud when he saw the tyre tracks, recognising immediately what vehicle had left them. But when? Were they old marks or were the pig shooters still prowling around somewhere on his land? Billy could feel the pressure building inside his skull and heard the pounding in his ears that always came with it. He stopped the ute, closed his eyes and kept them shut till long after the dust had settled, only opening them when the kelpie began whining and licking his face. His hands were still on the wheel and reasonably steady, which was a good sign. But Billy knew he was pressing his luck. He cursed his brother, engaged gear and pointed the ute directly towards the homestead. Time healed, and he needed time to calm his mind and create some kind of order so he could deal with things one at a time. One at a time, one at a time, one at a time. That was the only piece of advice he’d been given that had ever made sense. He needed to put his feet up on the rail, smoke a few rollies and maybe suck a beer. Just the one, because that was all he had cold — all he ever had cold, just in case. But, more than anything, he needed to look aimlessly out over the scrub towards the sand ridges and let his mind drift off down any road it liked to oblivion. Before he could think of doing anything, he needed to think of nothing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The corporal and a private from Wagga helped Billy up out of the tunnel. One of them patted him on the back and someone slipped him a rollie already lit. The guys were smiling and making wisecracks, but the truth was no one dared to look at him directly or catch his eye. They didn’t want to see their hero damaged, didn’t want to see the most capable and courageous man in the platoon broken down by the contact underground, didn’t want to see their own fears and weaknesses exposed. They wanted Billy to laugh off the experience like he always did, or say something that made them laugh, or do something that added to their respect, anything, so long as they could cling to their belief that they could emerge from Vietnam with their minds as well as their bodies intact.

  The regular grunts liked having Billy attached to their platoon. When they went out on patrol the sergeant put him fourth in line behind the forward scout, the second scout and the lieutenant. Most platoons liked to stack a bit of firepower up front and fourth place normally went to the man with the M60, while the first sapper went in midway through the section. But Billy’s eyes picked up irregularities other soldiers didn’t and the lieutenant liked having him nearby. Billy could see small things, insignificant things, things that were apart from the natural order: pieces of bamboo arranged in patterns, the deliberate cross-hatching of leaves, wilting plants and other subtle man-made indicators of mines, booby-traps, trip wires and tunnel entrances. Neil had always claimed Billy had ‘abo eyes’ because of his ability to track wild pigs and locate straying stock. When they went out looking for emu eggs amongst the lignum, Billy always led because of his knack for picking up emu tracks and following them over rock-hard ground until they’d found what they were after. But keen eyesight was just a part of Billy’s ability. Equally impressive was the fact that he’d developed a sixth sense for booby-traps, whether above ground or below. Whenever the patrol stopped for a break, the lieutenant always let Billy check the site out first. Like the forward scouts, Billy took risks on behalf of the entire section.

  Billy wanted to sit down somewhere shady, lean back against the trunk of a tree and shut his eyes, not for long, just long enough to get his thoughts back together and everything under control. But even with his mind screaming for time out, instinct stopped him in his tracks. Experience and training had drilled into him the fact that the Vietcong booby-trapped the area around their firing positions and Billy had no reason to think this firing position would be an exception. He also noted that the tree he was heading for was precisely the sort of nice shady tree hot and tired soldiers like to rest under, and precisely the sort of place the Vietcong were likely to booby-trap. He took a drag from his rollie, holding his hand hard against his lips to stop the shaking, and scanned the ground for telltale signs. It took all of his self-control to look thoroughly and, although he saw nothing suspicious, he nevertheless dropped to his hands and knees and began to prod the dirt between him and the tree with his knife. Certain that he’d be left alone, he didn’t search for mines all around the tree, just along a strip where he could stretch out with his back against the trunk.

  ‘Barb’s back in business!’

  Billy had no idea who had called out, or who laughed in response, only that the laughter sounded relieved. The trunk felt coarse against his bare back and he was momentarily aware of how much he stank. But both things were irrelevant. Now that he could finally relax he wanted to scream, cry and turn back time, but mostly he wanted to crawl away into a hole somewhere and stay there. He butted his rollie because he had no chance of holding it steady enough to bring to his lips. He crossed his arms tightly across his body to stop them shaking, crossed his legs for the same reason, and all the while his inner voice shrieked at him desperately.

  ‘Think it through, don’t lose it, don’t lose it, think it through …’

  Don’t lose it. Think it through. Billy tried to think it through, to come to terms with both the events and his fear, but he didn’t want to go back down the tunnel, didn’t want to bear witness a second time, didn’t want to face up to what he’d done, didn’t want to remember. The tunnel had changed everything. He’d survived, but the experience had pulped his confidence, trashed his convictions and torpedoed his strategy for getting out of Vietnam alive and intact. If he couldn’t rely on himself, on his wits and on his skills, who could he rely on? The tunnel had taught him how vulnerable he really was. It didn’t matter that he was good. He could be good and still get killed because circumstances took his skill out of the equation. His thoughts raced out of control, ricocheting around inside his head like a pea in a whistle. He fought for control and finally let his thoughts free to run away wherever they liked, so long as they got him away, away from his fears, away from the tunnel, away from his enemy and her desperate silent plea for help, and away from the lottery of his existence.

  Though Billy was a crack shot with a rifle, he decided that if he had to join the army he’d try for the Engineers. Probably through watching old war movies or reading war stories, he’d got the idea in his head that Engineers were people who built or repaired bridges for an advancing army and blew them up when it was retreating. The thought of building bridges or building anything appealed to Billy, as did the notion of repairing vehicles and operating heavy machinery. Nothing about Holdens, Fords, trail bikes or tractors was a mystery to him and he could rip a gearbox out, replace clutch plates or do an engine rebuild with his eyes shut. He figured that by becoming an Engineer he’d spend most of his time in Vietnam well away from the shooting and serve something like an apprenticeship at the same time, which might come in handy when he got back home. When they told him about mines, booby-traps and tunn
els he paid attention, even though he thought the information would have no bearing on what he did. He was a Plant Operator and a Plant Operator when posted to Vietnam.

  During his first month in Phuoc Tuy, Billy’s duties lived up to his earlier expectations. He was put to work on a variety of constructions and roadworks, sometimes at the control of machines, but mostly with a pick or shovel in his hands. He spent a couple of days laying wire, which was how he earned his nickname. It was hot and dusty most of the time, and hot and muddy when it rained, but, apart from the oppressive humidity, these were conditions that he was used to and he’d no real cause to complain. His first mission out of Nui Dat was to clear trees for a firebase and that was something else up his street. During his school holidays he’d picked up a few dollars helping farmers down Coonamble way clear scrub for crops. He was actually looking forward to going out into the countryside because his work up to this point had all been around the base and because the job was comparatively low risk.

  Knocking down the trees for the firebase and clearing them away went off without a hitch. Billy had grown up around tractors and agricultural machinery and loved being at the controls of the big bulldozers. In no time at all he had the Caterpillar D8 up and dancing. Judging by the encouragement and comments he received, Billy thought that in carving out the firebase he’d also carved out a career for the duration of his Vietnam service. But armies have their own way of doing things and, in recognition of his skills with the big Cat, he was sent out to lay mines.

  He was paired off with a bloke called Tom who’d been in Vietnam for six months and was dedicated to survival. He was anything but impressed at being partnered with someone who had so little experience.