Wilder Country

by Mark Smith

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, only half meaning it.

  ‘You did good, Finn.’

  ‘There’s something I need to know,’ I say, unable to look him in the eyes. ‘Was it me who…’

  ‘You want to know if you killed Wilson?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t think so. He had a wound to his arm, but a bullet hit him in front. That’s what killed him.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, unsure of how I feel about the news.

  When we’ve walked back to the sheds, he puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t dwell on it, son. It’s over.’

  Harry decides they’ll kill one of the cows and we’ll have a feast. The afternoon is spent cleaning out the houses. Any of the Wilders’ gear that’s not useful is piled up in the yard and burned. Stella and Harry pull the rugs up off the floor and air them in the afternoon sun. Then they scrub and clean everything, wiping away the stench of the men who’ve been living at their house. By evening, it looks as neat as it did when I first saw it. Willow cleans her own room, dragging dirty blankets outside and hanging them over the fences.

  Stella looks at her, shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘What have you done to my little girl, Finn?’ she asks, smiling.

  ‘She can hunt and shoot and fish as good as me,’ I say. ‘Skins a rabbit quick and clean, too.’

  Willow pretends not hear our conversation but she walks a little bit taller, her shoulders back. I wonder how she feels about having shot Rat with the arrow this morning, whether it’s playing on her mind. She doesn’t show it if it is.

  Kas spends the afternoon tending Rowdy. She’s made a bed for him on the floor of the washroom and cleaned the wounds again. Stella has given her some antiseptic cream for him. He’s breathing more easily and he lifts his head to drink. We won’t know how serious the damage is until he starts to heal and tries to walk. But that will be a while yet.

  The slaughtering of the cow takes place behind the shearing shed. I’ve seen enough blood for one day, so I leave that job to the others. By evening they’ve rigged up a spit across the coals of the fire in the yard. Great chunks of meat are skewered and we take it in turns to rotate them over the coals. Fat drops into the fire and the smell brings everyone out.

  There are four other farmers: three men—Steb, Vic and Sam—and a girl named Kate, who’d been kept separate from the other women. She looks healthier but I wonder what price she’s paid.

  Kas brings a boy over to meet me. James is the one who led her to the valley last autumn. He looks about thirteen or fourteen years old, scrawny, with a face full of pimples. He hides behind a mop of ginger hair, unable to look either of us in the eye.

  ‘They call me Bluey,’ he mumbles, shifting his bare feet in the dirt.

  ‘Course they do,’ I say, smiling.

  Kas is confused. ‘Why?’ she asks.

  ‘He’s got red hair.’

  ‘So much stuff I’m never going to understand,’ she says.

  When the meat is cut up and everyone has a full plate, Harry says grace. ‘Lord, thank you for delivering us from slavery. And thank you for Kas and Finn and for bringing Willow home safely.’

  ‘Amen,’ everyone replies in harmony. Except Kas, who looks down at her food and gently shakes her head.

  Chairs have been brought out from the houses and a long table set up. There are potatoes and pumpkin cooked in the coals and someone has found some lettuce and dandelion leaves for a rough salad. I barely remember the taste of meat like this, but my mind reels back to Saturday-night dinners when Mum would cook a roast. We were always careful to cut the fat off each slice but now I can’t wait to taste its crispy, charcoal flavour. The conversation falls away as we all eat. Every now and again someone burps or farts and everyone laughs, but mostly all I can hear is the chewing of meat and scraping of knives on plates.

  I’ve brought Rowdy out and put him on a blanket next to my chair. He can smell the meat and every instinct must be telling him to eat, but he lies with his face resting on his front paws. I try him with a small piece but he just licks it.

  Almost everyone goes back for seconds—and thirds—until we are all so full we can hardly move.

  There’s a feeling of spring in the evening air. It’s crisp but not biting like the winter nights have been. A crescent moon rises over the ridge to the east. It draws the attention of everyone at the table, their eyes lifting to the night sky as they think about living freely in the valley again. The first stars begin to show themselves.

  Jack breaks the silence. ‘What now, Harry? What about Ramage? The winter might’ve kept him in Longley but he’ll be back before too long.’

  ‘Tonight’s not the time to be making decisions,’ Harry says. ‘We’re all tired and it’ll take us a while to get back on our feet. But we can’t leave it too long. We need to prepare to defend the valley. And we have to get more crops in the ground as soon as we can.’

  I look around the table and see the mix of concern and exhaustion on every face. Me, Kas and Willow are the fittest of all of them, even though we’ve had a tough winter ourselves. But at least everyone has a full belly and they’ll be able to sleep in their own beds tonight.

  For a while I sit next to Harry and he tells me what it was like being held prisoner. ‘They had no idea about farming,’ he says. ‘Lazy bunch of bastards.’

  There’s something I want to ask him. ‘Where did all the weapons come from, Harry? When Ramage and his men came looking for Rose in Angowrie all they had were sticks and knives. Now they’ve got rifles.’

  ‘Fenton bragged about it all winter. They found a bloke holed up out past Simpson. He was a doomsdayer, planning for the end of the world. Turns out he wasn’t far wrong. Anyway, he had enough weapons to fight a small war. That’s where they got them. They’ll run out of ammo eventually but for now it makes them more dangerous than ever. At least we’ve got some of their rifles, though I dunno if that’s a good thing or not.’

  Steb, Vic and Sam volunteer to guard the valley entrance for the night. They walk off into the dark with rifles over their shoulders and a couple of small bags of leftover meat. Everybody else drifts off to their homes until it’s just Kas and me left sitting in the warm glow of the fire.

  ‘You okay? she asks.

  All afternoon I’ve been trying not to think about what happened. I’ve kept myself busy because I’m afraid of feeling the metal of Fenton’s gun pressing on the back of my head again. ‘I thought I was going to die.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ she whispers.

  ‘I was scared shitless.’

  ‘We all were.’

  ‘You didn’t show it. How do you do that?’

  Kas stares into the coals. ‘I don’t know.’ She bunches her hair in her hands and pulls it back off her face. ‘Something broke inside me when Rose died. I’ve got nothing to lose.’

  ‘You’ve got me to lose.’

  ‘You know what I think?’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not made for happiness. Even when it’s all around me I don’t know how to be part of it.’

  ‘I’ve seen you happy.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At the rock pools, that day with Willow.’

  She thinks about this. ‘It didn’t last did it? That was the day before Rose died.’

  ‘Just because something bad happens doesn’t mean that’s it forever.’

  ‘Bad things have been happening all my life.’

  I’m not sure I have an answer to that. For all the shit that’s happened to me in the last three winters, I had thirteen years of love, of being normal. Kas never had any of that.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘It’s the way it is; the way I am.’

  ‘But you can change.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe. Right now though, I’m so tired.’

  She stands and holds her hand out to me. This is the confusing bit—she keeps pushing me away, but here she is reaching out again.

  Inside the hous
e she opens the door to Willow’s room, then turns to look at me. ‘Goodnight,’ she whispers.

  Lying on my bed, my body aches for sleep but my mind is racing. Today was tough, but if we stick to our plans there’s only going to be more of the same. It’s so real now, different from sitting at the kitchen table at home and talking about it happening some time in the future. The future is now and it scares me to death.

  Out in the kitchen there’s a clatter of plates and cutlery—the sounds of a family getting started on the day. I stumble out to find Harry, Willow and Kas sitting at the table and Stella standing at the stove with a steaming pile of pancakes.

  ‘They’re pretty basic, just flour and water and a couple of eggs, but they’ll fill us up,’ Stella says. She brings the plate to the table and we all link hands. Even Kas joins in.

  ‘Lord, bless this food and keep us from privation,’ Harry says.

  We are about to start on the pancakes when Willow says, ‘Wait!’ She jumps out of her seat, opens one of the kitchen cupboards, sticks her head in, rummages about and emerges holding a jar.

  ‘Remember when we made plum jam last year?’ she says to Stella. ‘I hid this one for when we ran out.’

  We barely talk as we hoe in.

  After we’ve played rock, paper, scissors for the last one, we sit back and enjoy the satisfaction of a full stomach. It’s a rare feeling.

  ‘There’s a meeting this morning in the community hall, if you want to come,’ Harry says, looking to Kas and me. ‘You’ll have a say, I promise you.’

  ‘No fights?’ I ask Harry, trying to keep the smile from my face.

  ‘No fights,’ he says.

  ‘What about ear-biting?’

  Kas punches me hard on the arm. ‘Smart-arse,’ she says.

  The meeting room looks different from last time. All the windows are open and the space is flooded with light. The chairs are still in the same arrangement, with an inner and outer circle. The first thing we do is move them to form one big circle.

  Slowly, everyone emerges from the other houses and the room fills. Steb sits down and tells us Vic and Sam will stay out at the valley entrance until they’re relieved by the next watch. Simmo and Rachel walk through the door, holding hands. Jack enters on his own and sits next to Simmo.

  Harry begins with a short prayer, and then gets straight to the point. ‘We have to discuss what we do from here. We know we have to be prepared to defend the valley when the time comes but we need to regain our strength after the winter before we can hope to win any sort of fight. For the time being, Ramage has no way of knowing what’s happened. We need to make sure it stays that way.’

  Simmo’s voice is deep, considered. ‘We have to keep the prisoners here, make sure they don’t escape,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t like imprisoning anyone,’ Harry says, ‘but we’ve got no choice.’

  ‘They had no qualms about imprisoning us,’ Rachel says.

  Harry thinks for few seconds before replying. ‘As much as I hate what they did to us, those three were just following orders. Ramage calls the shots.’

  Kas has been sitting quietly, shifting her feet on the wooden floor. ‘How much do you reckon they know about Longley, about who’s been coming and going from there?’ she says.

  ‘Dillon and Ricardo have been here since the first day the Wilders appeared in the valley but Douglas arrived later, just before the winter set in properly. It’s a fair bet he came from Longley,’ Harry says.

  ‘Why is that important?’ Rachel asks.

  Kas looks around the circle and I know she’s trying to work out how much to tell them.

  Stella reaches over and touches Kas’s arm. ‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘You can trust us. Whatever you want to do, we’ll support you.’

  Kas is still uncertain so I decide to speak up. ‘You all know Ramage has Rose’s baby. We’re going to find her and bring her home. We promised Rose before she died.’

  I can hear the intake of breath around the room.

  ‘You mean you’re going to Longley?’ Simmo says, shaking his head. ‘That’s suicide, Finn. Stupid talk. You were lucky these last couple of days. You had the element of surprise on your side. I’m glad you came, but don’t kid yourself you’re any match for Ramage. He’s got twenty men back in Longley, maybe more by now. You won’t stand a chance.’

  ‘I know you think it’s stupid, all of you,’ I say, looking around the circle again, ‘but we’re going anyway, Kas and me. You can help us or not. It’s up to you.’

  Stella doesn’t hesitate. ‘Tell us what you need,’ she says.

  ‘We need to talk to Douglas.’

  ‘Harry?’ Stella says. He and Jack stride out of the room. While they’re gone Kas shifts a little closer to me.

  Douglas looks like a scared animal. His hands are tied behind his back and his eyes dart around the room. Harry and Jack walk either side of him, almost lifting him off the ground with their grip on his arms. They pull an empty chair into the middle of the circle and push him into it. He cowers like he’s expecting to be hit.

  Harry sits next to us and says, ‘Tell us the truth, Douglas, and I promise no harm will come to you.’

  He nods but he’s shit-scared.

  ‘Were you in Longley at the start of the winter?’ Harry begins.

  ‘Y-yeah,’ he says.

  ‘Ramage was there?’

  ‘I s-seen him a couple of t-times, yeah.’

  ‘You know about the baby he brought back with him?’

  Kas sits forward, straining to hear Douglas. His voice is nervous and whiny.

  ‘Everyone knew about the b-baby. F-fuckin’ thing never stopped c-crying.’

  Kas is on her feet. Harry holds his hand up to her and nods. ‘It’s okay,’ he says.

  But Kas can’t contain herself. ‘Where’s the baby, now?’ she demands. ‘Where’s Hope?’

  Douglas’s lip curls up and he snarls, ‘W-wouldn’t you l-like to know?’

  Kas is ready to leap at him; I can feel it. I pull her back into her chair.

  But Jack reacts as well. He squats in front of Douglas, grabs him by his shirt and pulls him in close. ‘You need to think about something, you dumb prick. Yesterday I buried four of your mates. And you know what I felt when I shovelled the dirt onto their shitty bodies?’ He leaves the sentence hanging.

  Douglas’s whole body shakes.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jack says. ‘That’s what I felt. So if you think I’ll hesitate to dig another hole next to them, think again. Now,’ he says straightening Douglas in his chair, ‘Kas asked you a question and if you don’t answer it I’m going to get my spade and start digging.’

  ‘B-but you said…’ he pleads to Harry.

  ‘I said, if you tell the truth, you won’t be harmed.’

  Douglas shrinks in front of us. All the defiance leaves his body and he starts to whimper.

  Jack’s in his face again. ‘Should I get my spade, then?’

  ‘N-no,’ Douglas mumbles. He wipes his nose with his shirt, leaving a trail of snot on the sleeve. ‘A f-few days before I left,’ he says, ‘the b-baby disappeared from the f-feedstore. The M-monahan woman, Bridget, sh-she took it.’

  Kas is on her feet again, pacing up and down in front of him. ‘You mean she stole her?’

  ‘N-no. Ramage. He t-told her to t-take it.’

  ‘Take her where?’ Kas says.

  ‘I d-dunno. He never said.’

  ‘Swan’s Marsh?’

  ‘I d-dunno. Maybe.’

  As Douglas is marched out of the room, I pull him aside. He cocks his chin at me and curls his lip but Robbo stands behind him and wrenches an arm up his back until he squeals.

  ‘Did you hear anything about a raiding party down on the coast, maybe before winter?’ I ask. ‘A friend’s house was burnt down. His name was Ray.’

  ‘I h-heard n-nothin’ about that. N-no one t-turned up at L-longley, that’s for sure.’

  Stella, Harry, Willow, Kas and I walk back to
the house. The sun shines brightly and white pollen, like little threads of cotton, drifts through on the wind.

  Inside, we sit down and help ourselves to leftover meat from last night.

  ‘You reckon Douglas is telling the truth about Hope?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s a Wilder: couldn’t lie straight in bed,’ Harry says.

  Kas pushes her plate away. ‘We have to go to Swan’s Marsh and see if Hope’s there. It kinda makes sense, Bridget Monahan looking after her.’

  ‘But would he let Hope out of his sight?’ Stella asks.

  ‘Who knows,’ Kas says. ‘Douglas said Bridget and Hope disappeared. Ramage would’ve kept them close if he wanted them in Longley.’

  Stella is watching Kas closely. Something is ticking over in her brain; I can see it. ‘Suppose,’ she says, ‘suppose you were able to find Hope and steal her back. How old would she be now, three months?’

  ‘Closer to four,’ I say.

  ‘So,’ Stella continues, choosing her words carefully, ‘how are you two going to look after a four-month-old?’

  It’s something that’s been eating at me since Kas told me about her plan, way back before the winter. What do babies that young even eat? How would we keep her healthy?

  But Kas sees where Stella’s going with this. ‘We’d work it out, wouldn’t we, Finn,’ she says, defiant and looking to me for support.

  But I want to hear Stella out. ‘What are you thinking?’ I ask.

  ‘Bring her here,’ she says. ‘Let us look after her. You could stay too if you wanted. Become part of the community.’

  A crooked smile crosses Kas’s lips. ‘I’m a Siley, remember, and Hope will be one, too.’

  Stella reaches across the table and tries to take Kas’s arm, but Kas pulls it away and squeezes her hands between her knees.

  ‘You’re not a Siley to us, Kas. You and Hope would be safe here,’ Stella says. ‘She would grow up surrounded by people who care for her.’

  Kas squeezes her hands tighter. I’m sure she sees the sense in Stella’s plan but it means letting go of control again.

  ‘Think of the baby, Kas,’ Stella pleads, her hands still reaching across the table.