We lowered our binoculars long enough, instinctively enough, to give each other a reassuring glance – we were both there, both seeing it – then looked back.
He was gone, of course, which completed the fright perfectly, had us scanning the intervening fields, noticing the pockets of shade like our own, patches of tree-shadow, the gloom in wind-dancing, sun-dappled copses, sockets of darkness where other watchers might be now watching us.
“Jeffers, I betcha!” Max cried as we scrambled down to our bikes, though we both knew it wasn’t. “He’s set us up.”
But there was no one else about and no interception as we pedalled back to the picnic grounds. All I could think of – and Max, too, I knew – was all that vast sunny space, the airy distances, the man waving, the sudden holes of black you just never noticed till you looked for them, then saw so suddenly, so nakedly.
Curiosity got the better of fear, of course. By the time we were cycling home at the end of the day, following the billowing dust of our parents’ cars, we were no longer spooked. The mysterious stranger was no Bogeyman, just someone who had heard the racket and come down to investigate, who then seemed to be looking out at us, had seen a companion, an acquaintance, someone he knew, and simply waved in greeting. Nothing to do with Jeffers, nothing to do with vigilant local farmers setting a trap.
But enough of the fear remained, the mood of that morning hour, to power our curiosity. We were determined to stage another scaring on the Tuesday, breaking our third day ruling but needing to do something, needing to be sure.
By the time we reached Hayvenhurst Avenue we had our plan. The four rolls of three-inch grey masking tape from Bidder’s barn were perfect and, as we weren’t the only kids to take regular shortcuts across the Bidders property to get from Hayvenhurst to the creek, we judged the risk well worth it.
In thick woodland three miles out of town, close to the Manton cutting, we laid out seventeen by seventeen eight-foot strips of tape in a grid, carefully backed so we finally had a steel-grey portcullis, what looked like an iron grate to be fixed over the track on more of Rusty Cramer’s fishing line.
We threaded line at the corners and sides, rolled up our grid, then did a few partial run-throughs, got the thing to the edge of the cutting and unrolled in less than four minutes. The hard part, scrambling down to get the end of the line hiked up and tethered to a tree on the other side, then weighting down the bottom lines with stones to get the tension needed, we figured would take another four to six, allowing for fumbles. We tossed a coin for the privilege and Max won.
We stored the grid in some bushes, rode back to town by a leisurely roundabout route, even stopped at the library to borrow a book on local bird-life, establishing our alibis there and justifying borrowing our folks’ binoculars again.
On the Tuesday we were out at the Manton cutting twenty-four minutes ahead of the 12.10 freight. It was hot and very still in the cutting. Cicadas droned in the trees; only the slightest breeze stirred the dry grass stalks along the tracks. The rails gleamed like streaks of chrome in the noon heat.
In moments we had the grid unrolled, tethered and tossed down. Max scrambled after it, soon appeared on the other side, hauled the grid taut and fastened it, then weighted the trailing tethers with rocks. That done, he scrambled back and lay panting beside me, admiring our handiwork.
It was as if it had always been that way – gated track, the lines like poured quicksilver coming and going, running off into the day, nothing else but insect song, dried grass stirring in the thermals off the rails, the barest flutter of breeze in the treetops.
“Let’s go!” Max said, and we were up and on our way, cycling out to Byle’s Lookout, using the long sweep of Salter’s Hill to put us up the other side in a record six minutes. We were on our stomachs, panting, binoculars up and focused before our front wheels had finished turning.
We were a lot closer than at Hank’s Creek and could make out the whole scene – the cutting exposed from this angle just before the tracks curved away towards Madrigal, everything as we’d left it, the scene deserted but for the grasses stirring and the improbable iron gate athwart the track. We could already hear the train approaching, a low sliding roar, building and building.
It was over in moments. The 12.10 was suddenly there, plunging at the grid like a demon. There was a scream of the steam whistle, oddly attenuated, it seemed, as if dampened by the cutting or the trees, then – thwap! (imagined not heard) – the grid was hit, carried away, and the eighteen bogies were clack-clacking their way off towards Madrigal.
But neither Max nor I jumped up to leave. Without having agreed on it, even mentioned it, we stayed where we lay, watching the tracks through our glasses.
And the man was there, just stepped into view from behind the embankment, seemed to be studying the rails where our gate had been.
Prickles of fear ran down my spine.
“Christ!” Max said. “Who is that guy?”
“Let’s go, Max!” I spoke in a harsh whisper, not wanting to see him look out and wave, not again. I remembered all the dark places in the trees, saw them again right there.
“Wait, will ya!” Max said, feeling a need to wait, and I probably couldn’t have left anyway. I needed it too somehow, this part of what we’d started.
And sure enough, the figure looked up, much closer than before, much closer, a man in his early fifties or thereabouts, in dark work shirt and drab workman’s pants, wisps of grey hair stirring on his mostly bald head, deepset eyes peering out. And he smiled as if in understanding, possibly a grim smile, and nodded, yes, yes, I know, and not waving this time, just turned and stepped out of sight behind the embankment.
“Who is that guy?” Max asked again, but more to himself than to me.
Death, for my money, I wanted to shout. Pavor diurnus. Day terror. The Bogeyman.
“Has to be planted,” Max continued. “They’ve been watching for us is what. Keeping an eye out. Listen, Paul.” He turned on his side to face me. “That may not be the guy from the other day. They’ve got help. Guys from the railway maybe. Planted them at likely places. Maybe they’re onto us, maybe not. So they wind us up by acting like they’ve seen us. He didn’t see us just now, just knew we’d be watchin’. They’re goosin’ us, Paul. Rattlin’ us.”
It made sense. Blessed good sense.
“What do we do?” My voice was still broken by fear, embarrassingly querulous.
“We’ve got a week left. We can plan good stuff for next year. Real good stuff!”
“Lay low now, you reckon?”
“Not on your life. We get ’em a good one. One last scare.”
“They could be watchin’. What do we do?”
“A night scare, Paul.”
“They’re not as good.”
“No, so we do it where we never have before. Where they’d never expect.”
“Like where?”
“In town.”
“Town!”
“At night. Late at night. We rig up something at the end of the platform.”
“But at night, Max. They just don’t see enough.”
“Yeah, so we rig something that uses that. We use the engine’s headlamp. Okay?”
“You got a plan?”
“Believe it, my man.”
For the last scare of the last week of what was to be our final summer at Portobello, though we didn’t know it then, we picked the Thursday, the 11.40 freight out of Madrigal, non-stop through Portobello at 12.16.
A monograph from the library – Nightbirds by George Lowry – furnished us with our alibi, while a coin toss gave me the privilege of the scare itself. Not something I actually wanted, but I wouldn’t let Max know that for the world.
We sneaked out at 11.45, pedalled into town, hid our bikes and slid down to the station. It was deserted on this late-summer night, the air already cooling towards autumn, with crickets sounding and an occasional fragment of a night-bird’s song to justify our visit if anyone found us.
We had minimal equipment just in case: a twenty-foot length of sturdy rope. Max’s plan was simple. The rope would be tied round my waist and fixed to the lamp-post at the southern end. I would lean out at a bizarre 45 degrees from the platform’s edge, giving the engineers enough time to see me before Max hauled me back.
It would be a dreadful sight for the engineers, a frantically waving figure leaning out – an impossible image to take with them as they plunged on through the darkness. So simple. So effective. Our bravura piece before we went our separate ways for another year, so we thought.
We rigged it up, did a few rehearsals so I could be sure of my footing and Max could get used to my weight. We agreed I would pull back myself if I wanted to – all we needed was for me to be glimpsed for a few seconds after all, and the approach was long enough. But leaving it to the last moment would make it the pièce de résistance of scarings.
At 12.05 we checked the knots, and Max took his place behind the post. I leaned out over the track, satisfied myself that there was ample visibility, and waited the few minutes, counting bits of the darkness like the worry beads Max’s Mum used at mass, noticing it all: the dim lines made by fences, trees, cast-iron fittings, the soft lights of Main Street reaching out, striking into my eyes – look here! look here! – the red and green signal lights, the double tracks themselves, made into sliding sweeps of silver by a moon we couldn’t see. There were just the crickets, the warble of a bird sounding far off, a few barks from a dog even further away.
“Get ready,” Max said, needlessly.
I hung there, leaning out, sharp with anticipation and too much darkness, noticing it all, listening, straining for the slow sliding roar that would grow, edge up, come as both a wave of sound and a shiver underfoot, watched for the single eye, the shouts of steam. I strained for that unmistakable train rhythm –
locomotive locomotive locomotive
There it was! Yes!
And there were words on that rush of sound as well.
“What do you two think you’re doing?”
We froze in disbelief, Max gripping the rope, me leaning out.
And there was Rusty Cramer, fifteen, burly (fat), vindictive (blamed, implicated by the fishing line), and angry (dangerous).
“I said what do you two think you’re doing?” He came towards us like a big block of night, something dislodged from the ordinary world and sent careening, spinning out wildly into all this calm.
“Wait and see!” Max cried, not wanting to lose our chance, not now.
“Yeah, well I knew I’d catch up with you arseholes sooner or later.”
He was close and threatening, still improbable, but Max tried to keep him talking. “It’s a joke we’re pulling, see. Watch what happens now.”
“You’re both for it, you dumb shits! I’m gonna bust ya!”
“Watch the train first, okay. Here! Wow, look at that!”
“What?” Rusty Cramer said, and turned, saw the freight thundering on its run through the town, looked back, tried to figure exactly what it was we meant to do, turned again just as the light hit me and the whistle screamed in warning, terrifying me and keeping Rusty distracted. “What the hell!”
I remembered to wave my arms frantically, judged my own jump-back only to have Max haul me back first.
Actually I fell back, and the train was there, past, gone, leaving the steady thunder of bogies howling after it. And Max ran at Rusty, pushed him hard, sent him slamming into the iron sides of a bogie, where he sprang away again, slammed into the lamp-post, thud after sickening thud.
I was on my feet in seconds, staring, horrified, dangerously close to the track myself, saw Rusty Cramer pinball from bogie to post to the gravel, saw him flat, torn and dead. Saw Max wide-eyed, determined to have his alibi, his scapegoat, never for a moment saw the guard’s van rushing up, dim and forgotten, or the bar or strap or trailing line, whatever it was that struck my skull and sent me flying, falling, and thinking as I fell: “I’m dead too!”
I didn’t die. I spent three months in hospital with a fractured skull and got used to having a metal plate over the weak spot as a constant reminder of how lucky I was. Mum didn’t say much about what happened, mostly: “There, there, Pauly, you just rest.” But Dad gave me most of it.
“That damn fool Cramer kid!” he said on my second day out of a seventy-day coma. “What do you remember, son?”
I played dumb, frowned a lot, asked him to tell me more.
“Rusty Cramer’s dead, you know, Paul?”
“What about Max?”
“Max. He phoned it in. Said you were after night birds, stumbled on the Cramer kid doing one of those pranks on the station.”
“Right. That sounds right. Don’t remember too much though.”
“Course you don’t. You startled him and he got hit, then something brained you good. You’re very lucky, Paul.”
“Seem to remember that. Where’s Max?”
“Where do you think, son? School’s been back nearly ten weeks. He said he’d write or call, keep in touch.”
“Right. So Rusty Cramer did all those things.”
“That’s what the cops said. Blaming it on outatowners. Thug of a kid. I guess it’s just as well he blew it.”
“Why’s that, Dad?”
“You remember he had a rope fixed to a post and was leaning out – how Max said you found him? Well, he scared the train drivers good this time. One had a heart attack from it, they reckon; died right there at the throttle. The other guy says Rusty must’ve scared him to death hanging out waving like that. You probably stopped other deaths happening, son. I’d try and look at it that way.”
“I will, Dad. I will. I guess it’s the only way.”
Max and I did get to speak about it after a fashion, but on the phone, long-distance, three weeks later. I didn’t ask him the most important question: how he could have done it, how; actually avoided it, convincing myself that it had been spur of the moment (though it hadn’t been, of course, definitely hadn’t been!), just something implicit in all our earlier games of death and mayhem, one more unreality, cartoon-like almost, not to be dwelt upon too much. And while we made our peace, alluded to his quick-thinking, run-to-the-phone-for-an-ambulance call, spoke of Rusty’s death (murder!) guardedly, and that of the engineer (manslaughter), even mentioned the newspaper clipping from the Mail Dad had kept about how the autopsies on Rusty Cramer and the driver were botched, we had to postpone the full weight of our discussion and debriefing, the reality of it, till our next meeting – other important things like the mysterious man at the cuttings, the botched autopsies, all the stuff that mattered all of a sudden.
“I’ll write to you,” Max said, far off across the country. “And we can talk about it in the summer.”
Which didn’t happen, of course. After the accident, Max’s parents didn’t choose Portobello that year, and with my sister dating, we didn’t get there either. Two years after that, Dad’s job took us down to Australia; I finished high school in Sydney, and in 1967 went on to do an Arts degree at Sydney University, and Max Sefti and I scaring the train became one more unresolved part of that ineffably dear, long, slow, blink-and-it’s-gone, quickly stolen thing called childhood.
II Sydney University 1967
Imagine what it was like then towards the end of first term, sitting with nine other first-year students in our English tutorial, when the door opened and in came a student forced by part-time employment commitments to change tutorial groups, who turned out to be none other than Max Sefti – here in Australia, in Sydney, at this university, walking into this room.
It shattered the smooth consensual reality in a moment, was wonderful and utterly bizarre, even vaguely alarming. We had shared lectures in Wallace and Carslaw but hadn’t spotted one another.
There were no words to capture it, absolutely none. The tutor’s remarks, the Innocence and Experience poetry of William Blake, stood no chance except as vivid counterpoint, but afterwards, over coffee in the Refectory, I found out about those missing parts of my life.
It wasn’t an optimum spiel because Janice and Becky, two girls from our tutorial group, tagged along with a friend of theirs, an intense-looking, dark-haired young guy named Lucian. Consequently what might have been an incredible yet surprisingly natural bridging of days became the kind of narrative back-tracking I’m giving here. It was certainly interesting in itself since I was able to hear Max tell his version of it at last, filled with his forthright young adult confidence and my own self-conscious, artless lapses into cliché, an understandable refrain of: “My God, but you here!”
The facts came out all the same, though as part of some incredible freak accident, certainly not as premeditated (however briefly) murder: Rusty lying dead, the unseen guard’s van, my being struck hard enough to fracture my skull, send me into coma and require a long convalescence. That helped win back Janice and Becky’s attention; they asked about the plate in my skull, exactly where it was, could they touch it, things like that. Dark-haired Lucian frowned and seemed clearly fascinated.
I heard how Max had given the police – the very ones we’d caused such trouble – an account of finding Rusty on the station, startling him in mid-scare, causing him to stumble and fall so he was hit and flung back into the lamp-post. He told how an unfastened strap or buckle flailing about had struck me on the side of the head, and how ready the authorities were to believe, actually believe, because Rusty had been such a swine of a kid all his young life and we did have our birdwatching book and all.
I learned, too, how Max had had the presence of mind to retie the rope from my waist around Rusty’s, had got that done minutes before the police and the ambulance arrived so everyone believed, so no one even for a moment thought to suggest we might have been in collusion with him, a local kid working with two outatowners.
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