Wilder Country

by Mark Smith

  I put the lamp on the ground and crouch in front of her.

  ‘I was scared, Finn,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’ I try to hold my voice steady but I’m shaking all over.

  Kas walks over to us, wiping her mouth.

  I look at her closely, trying to see if she’s hurt, but her eyes are glazed over. It’ll be a while before she talks about what happened in the shed.

  I try not to think about Ray, but I can’t stop myself—his funny bow-legged walk, his way of making me feel at home. I can’t believe he’s gone. Not like that. Not in his own home. Kas sits and the three of us hold each other tight.

  We take the lantern and walk across the home paddock to what’s left of the house. It’s still giving off heat even though it looks like it’s been burning for days. I can’t bear to think of Ray in there somewhere, the remains of him. We move around the outside of the fire, looking for anything recognisable, but everything is buried under the hot sheets of corrugated iron that used to be the roof. I think of the time I spent out here with Ray the winter after Mum died. He took me in, saved me, really, just in the way he went about things, slow and deliberate. He never lectured me, never told me what to do.

  Kas is behind me. She loops her arms around my waist, the point of her chin touching my back. Every now and again a spasm rocks her body.

  ‘Why does everyone I’m close to have to die?’ she says.

  I don’t have an answer for her. Willow presses against my side and the three us stand there, hardly wanting to acknowledge the way the heat of the fire warms our bodies.

  ‘What now?’ Kas asks.

  ‘We have to find somewhere to sleep. The shed’s the only protection we’ll get from the cold. You wait here with Wils and I’ll go and clean it up a bit.’

  Kas doesn’t answer, but she takes Willow by the hand and leads her to the other side of the fire. It’s eerily quiet when I get back to the shed. I start with Birch, the one outside. I don’t want to see his face so I hook the lantern on a nail and grab him by the legs. He’s heavier than I expected. His boots come loose in my hands so I pull them off and try to hold him around the ankles. Gradually I inch him around the back where the grass is longer. With one last heave I manage to roll him a little way down the hill and he comes to rest against a clump of weeds.

  Inside, I find Gauge lying awkwardly against a workbench. It looks as though he’s tried to prop himself up but his head hangs to the side and the whole front of his body, his shirt and his pants, is covered in blood. I can’t see the wound and I don’t want to. I have to drag him by the feet too, his head bumping along on the uneven floor. He’s not as heavy as Birch, and pretty soon they are both lying in the grass at the back of the shed. I think about checking their pulses but I don’t really care if they breathe their last breaths out here in the cold in the middle of the night.

  I whistle to Kas and Willow. They’ve made their way to the fence to pick up the sacks and they appear out of the dark. There’s a small hayloft in the shed that has some dry bales in it, so I break them open to make a bed. In all the adrenaline rush I’ve almost forgotten how hungry I am. Willow and I gut and skin the rabbit while Kas takes a shovel to get some hot coals from the fire. Before long, we’ve got our own fire going just inside the door of the shed and I’ve rigged a spit to cook the rabbit. No one says anything, but Kas looks back into the dark where Gauge was. I can’t read her expression in the flickering light of the fire. Fat drops into the flames and it spits and crackles.

  Kas finally speaks, her voice low and lonely. ‘Maybe this is what the world is now.’ She pokes at the fire with a stick. ‘Ramage, people like him, they know there’re no rules anymore, no one to stop them doing whatever they want.’ She breathes in deep, lifts her head and adds, ‘We have to be as cruel as them.’

  ‘Not everyone’s like the Wilders,’ I say. ‘What about Harry and Stella and the others in the valley? They’re like us.’

  ‘Some were. Not all of them.’

  I’d forgotten about Tusker.

  ‘Mum and Dad,’ Willow says, ‘I miss them so much.’

  Kas puts an arm around her shoulders. ‘I know, Wils. You’re lucky to have them.’ She stops there but I can see she wants to say more. Her eyes pierce the dark and shoot straight through me.

  ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘we don’t know if Ray was in the house. We’ve only got the Wilders’ word for it and I wouldn’t trust anything they say. He might’ve escaped.’

  Kas says nothing.

  ‘We’ll have a good look around in the morning. He could’ve taken off into the bush and waited for them to leave,’ I say.

  ‘First thing we have to do in the morning,’ Kas says, ‘is find Rose’s grave.’

  ‘And Yogi,’ Willow says. ‘Don’t forget about Yogi.’

  This brings a smile to Kas’s face and she looks out into the dark as if she might see him there.

  The rabbit is charred now so I pull it off the spit and cut it into pieces. It’s pretty raw on the inside but we are so hungry we hardly notice. All three of us lean into the fire, tearing the meat from the bone and chewing loudly. I give a piece to Rowdy. Kas breaks the bones open and sucks the marrow out, just like I remember Rose doing on the first night she arrived in Angowrie. That feels like a lifetime ago.

  Willow is the first to climb up into the hayloft. We’ve laid out the sleeping bags on the loose hay. Kas and I stay by the fire. She shifts around until she’s sitting next to me and after a while she lies down and rests her head in my lap. I touch her cheek and brush the hair away from her face.

  ‘You okay?’ I ask. Her body stiffens a little and her head rises slightly out of my lap.

  ‘Kinda,’ she says.

  ‘What happened in the shed?’

  She shakes her head and I see her lip quiver.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘It’s okay. He didn’t get near me. He didn’t even see the knife. It was all so quick.’ She lifts her hand and strokes my arm. ‘I should feel something. But I don’t. I don’t feel anything.’

  ‘You’re in shock.’

  ‘No, I mean I don’t feel bad about it. They were going to harm us. And they’ve already killed Ray, and one way or another Rose, too. They deserved it.’

  I look closely at her face. Her eyes burn.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been angry my whole life,’ she says. ‘Treated like shit for as long as I can remember. It’s turned me into someone I never thought I’d be.’

  ‘None of that’s your fault, Kas. It’s all stuff you had no control over.’

  She hesitates and shifts her position a little. ‘You know you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  ‘What about Stan and Beth?’

  ‘They were okay, especially Stan. But when it came down to it, we were still their property.’

  ‘Rose didn’t say much about them but I got the idea she liked them.’

  ‘She and Beth were close. I did more work in the paddocks with Stan, riding the horses.’

  She’s rested her head back down into my lap. I’m so tired I can hardly move.

  ‘We need to sleep,’ I say.

  ‘I meant what I said. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me. When I’m with you I’m not just’—she hesitates a moment—‘not just a Siley.’

  I know what she’s saying but I was hoping she meant something more than that.

  We climb the ladder to the loft. Willow has spread herself across the middle of the straw so I lift her to one side and make room. Kas snuggles up against me and I listen to her steady breath. I lie awake thinking of what I will do if the time comes for me to protect the people I love. Will I be as fierce and brave as Kas or will it be like the time I had the chance to kill Ramage? Will I back away and leave the dirty work to someone else?

  The morning cold creeps into the shed. Outside, mist hovers just above the ground. Willow has rolled over during the night and she’s warm against my side. I feel for Kas but her s
leeping bag is empty. I need to piss so I slip out, pull my boots on without bothering with the laces and climb down the ladder. I walk around the side of the shed and piss against the corrugated iron wall. Looking up towards the remains of the house I spy Kas standing under a tree in the corner of the home paddock. Her back is turned and she’s looking down. I know what she’s found.

  I tie my laces, pull on a jumper and walk up the hill towards Kas. The wreck of the house still smoulders but it’s giving off less heat than it was last night. Kas is crouching down, with her hands resting on the mound in front of her. I stop a few paces behind her.

  ‘Rose?’

  She nods her head slowly.

  There’s no marking on the grave and the spring grass has crept up onto the raised bed.

  ‘I looked all around,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing else. This must be her.’

  I take a few steps forward and squat beside her.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got any tears left,’ she says.

  The morning sun breaks through the trees and steam rises off the paddock.

  ‘She was more than my sister. She was my whole family, all of it. Since we left Pakistan there’s only ever been the two of us and we had to be everybody to each other.’

  ‘When Rose came to Angowrie all she could talk about was you being out there on your own, how she needed to look after you,’ I say.

  ‘I have this memory, Finn, the earliest thing I can remember. I don’t know where it was but we were in a crowd, people pushing and shoving, trying to get through a gate with high fences either side of it. Everyone was bigger than us and all I could see were legs and boots and bags. Rose was holding my hand, pulling me through little gaps she made in the crowd. But someone stood on my foot and my hand slipped out of hers. She had these green plastic boots on and I could see her getting swept away from me. I kept moving but I was pressed harder and harder from every side. I couldn’t breathe. When I’d just got through the gate I felt a hand grab my arm and pull me to the side. It was Rose and she was angry. She slapped me across the face and told me never to do anything like that again, like it was my fault. But then she hugged me and when I looked at her she was crying. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said. Then there was gunfire and gas that made our eyes sting. That’s all I remember.’

  Kas wraps her arms around her knees and rocks back and forth. ‘She deserved so much more than this. Why couldn’t she find just a little bit of happiness?’

  ‘I saw her smile. She even cracked jokes and told me I was too skinny. Called me dog boy. I think she knew what happiness was.’

  Kas looks at me with sadness in her eyes.

  ‘And it doesn’t mean you can’t he happy,’ I say.

  She doesn’t answer but she stands up and hugs me.

  We turn then and walk back down the paddock. Willow is standing in the shed door, shading her eyes with one arm and waving with the other. Rowdy is beside her. Kas looks back up towards the grave. ‘We need to make something to put on it,’ she says. ‘To show where she is.’

  Breakfast is beans heated on the fire and some eggs. I’d forgotten about Ray’s chooks but Willow found two of them sitting on a nest in the hay. Rowdy lies in the sunshine crunching on the rabbit bones from last night.

  There was a billycan in the shed that must have belonged to the Wilders.

  ‘They hadn’t been here long, those two,’ Kas says. ‘There’s no bedding, no food, unless they lost it in the fire or stashed it somewhere else. We should have a look around.’

  ‘Did you find Yogi, Kas?’ Willow says.

  ‘No, I looked everywhere. I think he’s gone.’

  ‘But he’s alive?’

  ‘Maybe. He’s tough. We’ll probably find him out in the bush somewhere.’

  We pack up our belongings and take the Wilders’ billycan too. I can’t help looking behind the shed. Gauge and Birch are both exactly where I left them last night. We don’t have time to bury them, anyway.

  Kas leads us back up the paddock to the grave.

  ‘Wils, let’s collect some flowers,’ she says.

  ‘Do you want me to rig up something to mark the grave?’ I ask.

  She thinks about this for a few seconds then says, ‘I s’pose so. Maybe a pile of rocks?’

  Kas and Willow slip through the fence and start to pick the wildflowers growing along the edge of the bush while I look for some rocks. By the time I’ve collected enough for a small cairn, Kas and Willow have woven their flowers into a wreath. The rocks look pretty rough but I figure Rose wouldn’t mind. Willow rests the wreath against them.

  ‘Should we say some sort of prayer?’ I say.

  ‘Who to?’ Kas says. There’s anger in her voice. ‘How could any god allow this to happen?’

  She kneels down and presses her cheek flat on the grave and whispers something too low to hear. Her mother’s ring falls out of her shirt. She kisses it, then takes the loop of leather from around her neck and pushes the ring between the rocks, into the soft dirt. Then, she picks up her sack and starts to walk back towards the other corner of the paddock.

  It doesn’t feel right not to say something.

  ‘Rest in peace, Rose,’ is all I can think of. When I turn to Willow she’s got her palms clasped in front of her chest and her eyes closed.

  ‘Amen,’ she says.

  ‘Amen,’ I say.

  Once we’re back in the trees we follow the track up towards the main road, Kas walking ahead of Willow and me, with Rowdy behind, sniffing the ground as he goes. When we reach the road, Kas stops and waits for us to catch up.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ she asks, sitting on the trunk of an uprooted wattle.

  ‘Nothing’s changed as far as I can see,’ I say. ‘We head towards Pinchgut and take the track to the logging coup at the top of the ridge.’

  ‘I’m worried there might be more Wilders,’ Kas says, looking along the road. ‘It doesn’t make sense, them not having any supplies with them, the house still burning. It’s all too recent.’

  ‘They might have been loners,’ I say, ‘or maybe a scouting party for Ramage.’

  ‘They’d never have got through the storms. More likely they’ve been down here the whole winter.’

  ‘So, you reckon they’d been living in Ray’s house?’ I don’t want to think about what Ray might have been through.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘The fire could have been an accident then—all their supplies could have been inside the house when it burned.’

  ‘I dunno, Finn, I’m guessing. But the other thing that doesn’t make sense is Yogi. I know horses—they stay where there’s feed, and there was plenty in Ray’s paddocks. I think he was led away.’

  Willow has been sitting quietly and listening. ‘What about Ray?’ she says.

  I see where she’s going. ‘If it was an accident, if it happened so fast they didn’t have time to get their gear out, it’s pretty unlikely they’d have tied Ray up.’

  ‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Kas says.

  We don’t want to think about Ray being trapped in the fire. If he wasn’t there when the house burned, he could be alive.

  ‘I reckon we should chance using the road,’ Kas says. ‘If we get a move on, we can make it to Pinchgut tonight. We’ll have a better idea of what’s going on once we see whether the junction’s guarded or not.’

  Without another word, we pick up our sacks and start to walk. Rowdy races ahead, darting into the bush when he picks up the scent of an animal he might chase, then bouncing back out to check on us.

  We walk out in the open, weaving our way through the debris on the road, alert to any sound. When we reach the intersection where we have to head north, it’s tempting to turn back for Angowrie, to the comfort of home. But the ambush at Ray’s has shown us how vulnerable we are. Ramage wouldn’t think twice about killing me and taking Kas. We have to take the initiative. If nothing else, he won’t be expecting us to be coming north towards him. Maybe, just maybe, w
e can catch him off guard and that might give us the chance to find Hope.

  The day passes slowly. The road north is worse than the coast road. Every turn reveals another tree blocking our way, another stretch of asphalt lifted and moved by rain and, in one section, a length of fence ripped out of the ground, gate and all, and strung across the road. It’s a continuous obstacle course and it wears us down. It’s late afternoon by the time we start to rise into the foothills leading to Pinchgut. We’re exhausted but we want to get as far as we can before nightfall. The trees on the side of the road are taller now, meaning we’re moving into the denser forest, and the air is cooler. All conversation has dropped away. Willow has fallen behind Kas and me and even Rowdy has lost interest in what the bush might be hiding.

  I’m so tired, I think at first I might be imagining it, but I’m sure I can smell smoke. We’re too far from the fires the Wilders lit on the ridge. Kas has noticed it too. We stop and wait for Willow to catch up and then we drop back into the cover of the bush. The wind is from the north so the fire must be ahead of us.

  ‘I’ll check it out,’ I say. ‘Wait here.’

  Willow eases herself down into the thick grass and Kas holds Rowdy by the collar so he doesn’t follow me.

  There’s a curve in the road about fifty metres ahead and I’m pretty sure the smoke is coming from beyond it. The road rises just before the bend and then drops between two small embankments. I climb up on the left side and make my way through the bush until I’m past the bend. There are still patches of snow on the ground. I crawl to the edge of the embankment and look over. To the side of the road is a small campfire. Two tall, thin figures stand in front of it with their hands reaching out to the flames. There is something odd about them, not their size, but the way they stand. I can’t figure it out. They could be Wilders but they’re not like any I’ve seen before. The smell of cooking meat reaches me now and I make out the carcass of a kangaroo or wallaby, hanging from a tree. I watch for a few more minutes then retreat to Kas and Willow.

  Kas springs to her feet. ‘What is it?’ she says.