Read the book: «Angel Rock»

ANGEL ROCK
DARREN WILLIAMS

Dedication

this one’s for S.A.M.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

2

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

3

27

28

29

30

31

32

Acknowledgment

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

1

The first real heat of summer had just steamed into Angel Rock in a welter of frayed tempers and sunburnt noses the afternoon Tom Ferry, almost thirteen years old and still simple-hearted, made his way down to Coop’s Universal from where the school bus had left him. The footpath was baking hot and the grass on either side of it full of bindi-eyes and no easier on his bare feet and his progress was punctuated by spells of hopping to recover from one or the other. When he reached the broad expanse of shade under the hotel verandah he dallied for a minute to let his feet cool down properly. He held up his hand and squinted out at the bright day. Fifty yards away the Universal’s awning gave the last respite before home. Faded signs – a sunset-orange Coke, an airy blue Bushell’s – hung down from it. The sun faded things, it was true, but it also grew them. It was growing him. He could really feel it. He didn’t feel quite like a boy any more – nothing like Flynn – and he liked the sensation; he liked his body growing, the muscles getting bigger on his bones, the ground getting further away.

He licked his lips and set out. Almost immediately the soles of his feet began to burn again. He ran, sucking in warm air through his rounded lips, laughing it out again, lifting his feet, trying to keep them off the concrete for as long as he could. The shop always seemed an age away on days like these, but he finally reached it and then had to stop and bend over and put his hands on his knees for a while to get his breath back. When he had it he went to the big old deepfreeze that sat just inside the shop’s doorway and opened up the lid. Four great half-moons of ice curved out from the sides of the cabinet and he leant over them and plunged his hands and head into the chilled air at its centre. He put his cheek down against the ice and breathed in and felt the cold travel right down into his chest. He laughed at the sensation and waved away the mist with his hands until he could see the box of ice blocks at the bottom of the freezer. He sucked in the sweet, cool smell of them – red ice around ice cream – before reaching down and pulling one out by the tail. He let down the freezer’s lid and then ran to the counter at the back of the shop.

‘Mrs Coop!’ he yelled. ‘Mrs Coop!’

There was no sign of the shopkeeper but in the silence after his yelling he could hear her out the back. The bright light from the open back door reached all the way up the hall and came to rest on the stool sitting in the doorway. She was almost always sitting there whenever Tom came in, fanning herself with a piece of old cardboard. Above her stool, high on the wall, was a dusty bank of brown Bakelite light switches and next to that the electricity meter and the fuse box, and next to that, hanging from a nail, calendar over expired calendar counting back from 1969. Over the counter a sticky mess of old flypaper, bejewelled with blowflies and wasps and beetles, swung gently in the breeze – a grisly record of long-gone summer days. At Tom’s feet, alongside the shelves, were the tracks of countless customers worn into the wood. He followed them while he waited for Mrs Coop to come in, tapping the coin in his hand against the shelves as he went. There was no one else in the shop and the lollies arranged on the counter in coloured boxes seemed to wink at him as he circled. He thought about taking some, gulping them down before Mrs Coop appeared, but his ears immediately began to burn and he had to think about other things to cool them. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smells of the shop. He imagined a calf walking down between the desks at school, collecting books in its dripping mouth, and he imagined his teacher, Mr May, pointing to the blackboard with a fishing rod instead of chalk, and then he saw the smooth neck of the girl who sat in front of him in class and he wondered, for the first time in his life, what a kiss might be like.

When he opened his eyes again the ice block in his hand was already beginning to melt. He was about to shout down the hall again when he heard the shopkeeper coming, saw her swaying from side to side because of her bad hip, heard her wheeze. A blue dress with pale yellow flowers covered her bulk and on her hip, like a freshly picked crop, was the basket full of laundry she’d just collected. The deep black line of her cleavage caught Tom’s eye and held it for a long second.

‘Hello, Mrs Coop,’ he said, lifting his chin.

‘Hello!’ she replied, blinking. ‘Who’s that then?’

‘Tom Ferry.’

‘Ah. Afternoon, Thomas. School’s out then?’

‘Yep.’

‘Plans for the weekend?’

‘Yep.’

‘Good boy! What can I do for you then?’

‘This,’ he said, holding up the ice block by its tip. ‘How much?’

‘Thirty-five cents.’

‘They’ve gone up!’

‘They have?’

Tom looked at the ice block despairingly, then at Mrs Coop. ‘But I haven’t got that much, and I can’t put it back because it’s melting already.’

Mrs Coop laughed at him and then made a waving movement with her hand that set the flesh on her arms wobbling.

‘Well, you’ll just have to owe it to me then,’ she said. ‘Or, better yet, when you’ve finished, you could pull up that grass that’s coming up at the front there and that’ll settle it, I reckon.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes. Now go on, get stuck into it before it’s just so much coloured water!’

‘All right. Thanks, Mrs Coop. Thanks very much.’

Tom turned to go but then he remembered something. ‘Oh, a pack of Marlboro too, please. For Henry. On his account.’

‘All right then.’

While Mrs Coop reached for the packet Tom stuck his head out of the doorway. There was grass a foot long coming up between the cracks in the concrete out the front of the shop, all the way from where the awning posts met the ground to where the shop and the footpath met.

‘Can I come back and do it tomorrow, Mrs Coop?’ Tom yelled into the shop.

‘Course you can,’ she answered from the gloom. ‘Go on now.’

‘All right. See you tomorrow.’

‘All right. Bye now.’

Tom ran down to where the street ended and the ferry ramp began. He sat down on one of the ramp posts and took a big bite out of the ice block but the cold made his forehead ache almost straight away. When the pain had passed he took smaller bites and caught the melting runoff in the cup of his hand. The ferry was on the far bank and he could see the old ferrymaster sitting in his cabin waiting for cars, the twisting streamers from his pipe vanishing into the breeze. Overhead, fat white clouds clippered across the sky and the wind began to pick up, rippling his shirt, cooling him and the day down. School was over for another week and another Apollo was on its way to the moon and that made even Angel Rock seem a more exciting place. Tomorrow, if it was still hot, he’d take Flynn swimming, or maybe fishing, then later, after dinner, they could lie outside on the grass and try to spot Apollo, or just imagine it soaring out there among the stars.

He sat looking out across the river and soon forgot where he was, his mind enchanted by images of moon landings and rockets, astronauts and parachuting capsules. He wondered if the Apollo II patch he’d ordered from the Post would ever arrive. He sat, the ice block dripping onto the ground, until the sound of a commotion filtered through to him. He turned and looked back towards town. The bus from the high school in Laurence had just finished setting down a dozen hot and cranky kids in the main street and now, walking towards him through the rippling heat-waves rising up from the road, was Sonny Steele and his little mate Leonard. He groaned. From about the same spot – just past the bowsers of the Golden Fleece – he’d once seen Jack Webber swing an axe at his brother Joe as if Joe were a tree that needed felling. A summer afternoon just like this one. In the time it had taken him to run to where they faced each other the axe was in Joe – right in his side – though he was still walking, but wrong, like the man up the valley who had polio, and going for his brother with his fists up, the blood draining out of his face. Then Pop Mather, the local copper, had come running up the road and tackled Jack and smacked him one. Then he’d saved Joe’s life by jamming his shirt into his wound to keep in the blood. Henry said it was drink and women that had made them fight and he said neither was any good reason to put an axe in someone, especially family.

Tom remembered it as he watched the two older boys increase their pace and he wished wholeheartedly there was an axe handy now. He stood and started walking towards home, jamming the packet of Marlboros down inside the elastic of his shorts. He wouldn’t run – he knew there wasn’t much point.

When they caught up with him he stopped and turned to face them. Sonny and Leonard stopped too, both dripping with sweat, their mouths open like panting dogs. Sonny stared at him. Sonny had gone to the Catholic primary before high school. Tom thought he must have been like some of the boys in his own class who were always in trouble, who would never do as they were told, whose fathers had short-back-and-sides and wore their trousers up high, whose mothers were heavy and brown-armed and stiff in their floral frocks when they shopped on a Saturday morning. Sonny was one of those. He was nearly three years older than Tom; a foot taller and twice as broad. He had dark curly hair and a curiously flat and featureless face. One eye was dark brown and the other so pale it was almost no colour at all. Tom thought it might once have been blue but had since faded. Wall-eyed, Henry called him. He said his family was ignorant and not to bother with him but that was hard when Sonny kept bailing him up. He liked Indians and cover and ambushes and pretending to take scalps. This, however, was no ambush – nothing worthy of Indians – just a crude assault from behind. Tom gritted his teeth, a little twist of fear worming around in his stomach despite his contempt.

‘Look at this, a pimple eatin’ an ice block!’ started Sonny. ‘Look, Leonard, a big pimple with a mouth!’

Leonard giggled. ‘Yeah!’ he said, his idiot chorus to every joke or comment Sonny ever made. Leonard was so lean and freckled he wouldn’t have looked out of place in Africa with the leopards and hyenas.

‘What do you want?’ Tom asked, sighing.

Sonny raised his eyebrows, hung out a smirk, left it there until Tom’s irritation outgrew his nervousness. It was Friday afternoon, the world was changing and he along with it and it was unfair that he had to be standing here again, putting up with Sonny just as he’d always done.

‘Give us that, shit-for-brains!’ the big boy demanded suddenly, pointing to the ice block. Tom looked at it. There was hardly anything left on the stick and a fly was circling the remains like a tiny vulture.

‘Give us your damn ice block I said!’ Sonny repeated.

Tom shifted the ice block to his left hand and brought up his right fist and spat on the knuckles as he had seen movie men do and Henry once or twice.

‘You’ll have to take it off me,’ he said, and immediately there was a contraction of the world between him and Sonny, as though a vacuum had drawn them together, pushed everything else into the background. It had always been this way – a battle of flesh and wills – and Tom had never bothered to question it before.

The sounds of the world faded and soon he could hear only the blood roaring through his ears, the sky now nothing but a silent exhibition of blue and grey overhead. Sonny leapt at him and grabbed his wrist with one hand and twisted the ice block free with the other while Leonard nipped in and out like a cattle dog and pinched him – hard enough to leave little half-moons of broken skin. Then Sonny used his weight to push him backwards and he teetered, flailing his arms, until Leonard stuck his bony shin behind his knee and sent him sprawling.

‘Good, Leonard, good!’ Sonny shouted.

He sat down hard on Tom’s chest before he could squirm free and proceeded to eat the remains of the ice block. Tom struggled for breath and felt his face grow hot and sweat break out on his forehead. Leonard alternated between looking at Sonny for cues and giving Tom’s wrist Chinese burns.

‘You … fat … bastard … Steele!’ he managed to spit.

Sonny didn’t answer, but dribbled red-stained spittle across Tom’s face from his pursed lips.

‘Open his mouth, Len.’

Leonard tried, cautiously, but Tom bit his finger and he retreated, cursing. Tom tried to wriggle free from underneath Sonny, but when he failed miserably it occurred to him that he had other weapons he could use. He thought of a question, something to distract him. The question he came up with seemed straightforward and reasonable, and something he wouldn’t have minded having the answer to.

‘Why do you do this, Sonny?’ he spat, panting.

Sonny stared at him for a moment and then looked up and down the street. The time limit on his fun was fast running out. There were adults about who might spot him at any moment. He looked down at Tom again. He seemed to be giving the question serious consideration, but then he flipped Tom over onto his stomach and held his head down in the grass and gravel. He pushed harder and harder and when grit had worked its way into Tom’s eyes and nose, and tears were running down his face Sonny leant in close so his smooth, clammy face – lips edged in sticky red, teeth holed by brown decay – filled Tom’s field of vision like a noxious moon.

‘Because your father’s a drunk and your mother’s a rotten whore!’ he hissed, his face contorting.

Tom blinked, frozen for a moment by the malice in Sonny’s eyes, but then a car came rolling down the street and in a second Sonny and Leonard were up and away. Tom sat up and rubbed the gravel off his cheek and out of his hair. The old farmer driving by slowed his car to better see him there on the verge, then waved slowly when he saw he was none the worse for wear, just the victim of schoolboy rough-and-tumble. Tom nodded at him and the farmer lifted his finger off the steering wheel and straightened his head. When he’d passed, Tom looked down the road at the backs of Sonny and Leonard. Every so often Sonny would turn and glare at him and spit onto the road.

He brushed the dust and grass off his clothes and walked home along the river, looking across at the water as he always did, just in case something interesting was floating by. When he reached his house after fifteen minutes or so he bent by the tap in the front yard and washed his face and rinsed out his mouth and spat a lot. He ran cold water over the places where Leonard had pinched him. Chicken bastard! he fumed, under his breath.

He went inside and set the pack of cigarettes on their end on the kitchen table. They were a little crushed but he knew that a bent cigarette was a smokeable cigarette so he didn’t worry about it too much – and at least Sonny hadn’t found them. He went and sat down in front of the television and had only been watching it for a few minutes when Mrs Clark from next door came over with Flynn.

‘Hello, Mrs Clark. Hey, Flynn.’

‘Hey,’ said Flynn.

‘Tom,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘Flynn’s been a good boy today. Haven’t you, Flynn?’

Flynn nodded. He was only four and not due to start school until the new year. After Mrs Clark left he promptly fell asleep on the couch with his mouth open. Tom set the fan in front of him and turned it on and then he went into their room and pulled his Junior Dictionary from the bookcase and went and sat out on the verandah in one of the busted cane chairs and opened up the book on his lap. He didn’t have a clue what whore really meant but the fact that Sonny had said it meant it couldn’t be anything good, and was probably some sort of disease or something, maybe something that killed you. He looked up the word in the dictionary, but, as he wasn’t sure how to spell it, struggled. There was hoar, which was to do with frost, and there was horology, but that was the art or science of making timepieces or of measuring time. Under the silent w’s there was only whole, which meant a whole lot of things, and who’re, a contraction of who are, which seemed close, but he was fairly certain Sonny had not meant his mother was a who are because that didn’t make sense. He put the dictionary down, locked his hands behind his head like Henry sometimes did and looked out across the river. The long reeds by the bank dipped in the breeze but apart from that nothing much else was moving. He sat and looked and his eyelids were just beginning to droop when he heard a car coming up the road from town. It was the Holden, with his mother at the wheel. He bent and picked up the dictionary and took it back to his room, a feeling of guilt flowing through him like it was one of the magazines Henry kept in the shed.

When she came up the stairs he was back sitting in the cane chair by the front door. She bent and kissed him on the cheek. He thought she looked very tired.

‘Where’s Flynn?’

‘Asleep.’

‘Good … listen. I have to go back to work in an hour or so. And I have to work tomorrow. When Henry comes home could you get his tea?’

Tom looked down at his toes and frowned at them. His mother put her hand on his head and stroked his hair.

‘I know. I’m sorry. But I have to go. We need the money. You know we do.’

He nodded. ‘Yep.’

‘Good boy. I bought some sausages. Just do some potatoes and some peas with them. Make sure Flynn eats his peas.’

‘Yep.’

‘All right. I’m going to have a shower now and change my clothes.’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘You’re a good boy, Tom. What would I do without you.’

He looked up at her. Sometimes just the smell of her was enough to make him feel better, but when she smiled the way she sometimes did – a little sad, yet laced with mischief – it made him remember how it was when it had just been the two of them; before Henry, and before Flynn. He liked to think she remembered those times too, at least once in a while.

He followed her inside the house and went and sat down beside his little brother. He listened as his mother moved around the house and watched as the fan lifted Flynn’s fine yellow hair and set it down again. After a while his mother came back and put her hand on his shoulder.

‘All right, Tom, bye now. Be good. Henry shouldn’t be long.’ Before she had finished the sentence there was a knock at the door, loud enough to wake Flynn.

‘Bloody hell,’ his mother muttered.

‘What?’ said Flynn, half opening his eyes.

Tom glanced at him. When he turned back to his mother she was already halfway up the hall.

‘Yes? Hello?’ he heard her say.

Flynn, sleepy-eyed, slipped off the couch and headed for the door. Tom followed him. There was a man standing on their verandah. Flynn stopped in his tracks and stared at him and Tom did the same. The man had thick, grey whiskers and long matted hair to his shoulders. His hands were large and brown, the nails yellow, a black semicircle of dirt at their ragged ends. Even though the afternoon was still very warm he wore a woollen jumper with slack, gaping holes, and a filthy tweed coat over that. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and he looked down at them with eyes dark as stones.

‘Any spare food, missus?’ he said. ‘I could eat a horse if one were spare.’

Flynn giggled. The man looked down at him and Flynn stopped.

‘I may have something,’ said Ellie Gunn, walking back towards the kitchen. Tom and his brother stayed where they were. The man looked from side to side as if watching out for something and then he looked down at them again.

‘What’s yer name then?’ he asked Flynn, in a voice rough as ironbark.

‘Flynn,’ said Flynn. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Ah … Billy,’ said the man, as if he didn’t have need of it very often. He nodded, said the name again, but softly this time: ‘Billy.’

Tom’s mother returned with something wrapped in foil and something in a brown paper bag. He could smell what was in the foil – cold chicken – and his mouth began to water.

‘This is all I’ve got handy, I’m afraid,’ said his mother, passing the man the food.

‘Bless you, missus,’ he said, taking it. He nodded to her, nodded to the boys, then turned and walked down the path and through the gate, closing it carefully behind him.

‘What was he, Mum?’ asked Flynn, after he’d walked away.

‘A tramp. A swaggie. That’s what he was.’ She picked up her son and swung him back and forth. ‘You be a good boy for your brother now and I’ll be here when you wake up.’

‘All right.’

Tom watched her walk out to the car and climb in, then reverse back out into the road. She just sat there for a few moments then, looking forward. Tom peered up the road but he couldn’t see the swaggie. His mother looked their way after a while and waved, then put the car into gear and moved off. Tom waved goodbye and walked out to the gate to watch her go. The car rolled away down the long straight then disappeared round the bend. He walked out onto the road and looked both ways but there was no sign of the tramp. He ran around to the side of the house and stopped at the corner and leant into the cool boards. There he was, walking diagonally across the cow paddock next to the house. As Tom watched, the man threw a chicken bone over his shoulder, and a few strides later he looked back towards the house. Tom ducked back and waited for what seemed like whole minutes before edging along the boards again and peeking around the corner. Too late. The man had gone. Up into the trees maybe.

He walked down into the back yard and watched the trees a little longer and then he turned and went inside. Flynn was back on the couch with his thumb in his mouth, his eyes already closing. Tom went and sat down in the cane chair out front. He put his chin in his hand and before he knew it he was dreaming of his mother putting out washing on a long, long line.

When Tom woke the sunset was reflected in the eastern sky before him and a great cloud of birds was wheeling around over the river. Henry Gunn was walking up the path with the chainsaw resting on his shoulder, his clothes and boots coated with sawdust, his forehead pale where his hat kept the sun off. As he passed through the door he ruffled his stepson’s hair. Along the inside of his forearm Tom saw the long jagged scar where a chainsaw had kicked out of a tree once and caught him. The scars where the stitches had been were nearly an inch wide and looked as though someone had laced up the skin like a boot. Henry stopped just inside the doorway and asked him where his mother was. Tom told him and Henry scowled and headed for the bathroom.

Tom made tea while Henry washed away the stink and dirt of his day’s work. When the food was ready Tom piled up their three plates with sausages, mashed potatoes, peas. Henry came in and sat down and started to eat. He never made them say grace like their mother did. Tom and Flynn followed suit and tucked in. In between mouthfuls Henry said: ‘I need you for the snigging tomorrow, Tom. They’re closing off the coupe where I got all those good logs last week and Bloody John broke his arm today.’

Tom’s heart sank. Ordinarily he would have been interested in the details of a broken arm but not on a Friday, not when Henry wanted him to work on a Saturday.

‘What about Flynn?’ he spluttered, his mouth full.

‘What about him?’

‘Mum’s got to work tomorrow.’

‘Ah. Mrs Clark’ll have to look after ’im.’

Tom waited a few moments. ‘No, Mrs Clark can’t. She’s got to go to Laurence tomorrow.’

Henry threw his fork down on the table. ‘Blast!’ he shouted. Flynn jumped.

‘I’ll look after him,’ said Tom. ‘He could help me bag the sawdust.’

‘No, you’re helping me.’

Tom could feel his whole Saturday slipping away. ‘But what about Mr Riley?’

‘He can wait a day for his bloody sawdust can’t he!’

‘But –’

‘Christ Jesus, Tom, no more! I can’t afford to pay some bastard, and I need to get those bloody logs out!’

Tom didn’t say any more and they continued to eat in silence. He couldn’t think of any more cards to play, not without his mother there. Flynn started to giggle and spit mashed potato down the front of his shirt.

‘Flynn!’ shouted Tom. ‘What are you doing?’

‘He can come too,’ said Henry, chewing and staring at Flynn. ‘He’ll be all right in the cab.’

Tom looked from his stepfather to Flynn and back again, but he bit his lip and said no more. When they had eaten and the table was cleared Henry fetched the chainsaw from the front verandah and sat it on the table under the light. He fitted the sharpening jig to the arm and proceeded to put the edge back onto each tooth in the chain. Flynn settled on the couch in front of the television and put his thumb in his mouth as before.

‘Make sure Flynn has his bath before he goes to bed,’ Henry muttered, his mind on what he was doing.

‘Yep.’

As Tom washed the dishes he fumed and thought of Sonny Steele again. Another question began to form in his mind but this one had a much more dangerous shape than the one he’d asked Sonny. When he finished the dishes he turned round and watched Henry sharpen the blades for a while. Every so often Henry’s hand would slow down and his chin would dip and his eyelids droop and then he would catch himself and shake his head and continue. Tom felt a little light-headed, but then he took a deep breath, held it for three, asked his question straight after.

‘Henry?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘What’s a whore?’

Henry didn’t answer immediately but looked up at him sharply with his full attention, the chainsaw, the file in his hand forgotten.

‘Where’d you hear that?’

Tom gulped. He couldn’t lie to Henry when his eyes were like that, his voice so low and blunt.

‘Sonny.’

‘Steele? What – he call you that or something?’ Henry’s forehead rippled into deep furrows. Tom could see a few spots where he hadn’t rinsed the soap off properly.

‘No.’

‘Then why’d he say it?’

Tom didn’t answer.

‘Answer me, or so help me!’

‘I don’t know why he said it!’

‘Repeat to me – exactly – what the little cunt said. Exactly.’

Tom tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He felt a bit dizzy, and reckless, as if he were about to unleash something as furious and unstoppable as a storm from the tip of his tongue.

‘Mum,’ he whispered. ‘He said: your mother’s a whore. That’s what he said.’

He braced himself for a belting when Henry leapt up, but it didn’t come. The big man’s thighs caught the edge of the table and lifted it up and the chainsaw and the tools went banging and clattering to the floor. Henry didn’t even seem to notice. The storm Tom had unleashed, still smelling of soap and with his hair still damp, pulled his work boots back on and pounded out the front door. Tom watched him climb up into the truck and roar off down the road in a spray of gravel. He felt a cold flitter of fear down in his gut, even worse than the one he’d felt that afternoon – a flash of what might happen to anyone who got in Henry’s way maybe – but also the sure knowledge that this storm, as well as sweeping over Sonny, might well wheel round and break on him in turn.

2

‘Hey, Darcy! Darcy Steele! Goody-bloody-two-shoes! Show us your tits!’

The boys were much older than they, long-haired and pimply, and Grace Mather had been apprehensive when she’d first seen them appear, but Darcy just gave a breathy laugh and took in a lungful of air before responding.

‘Rack off, bastard arseholes!’ she shouted.

Grace nearly wet herself laughing, but it was nervous, wild laughter, more likely to end in dizziness than anything else. The boys stood by the side of the road for a while longer, one chopping at the long grass with a stick to make himself feel better, but then they walked on and disappeared down behind the Agricultural Hall.

‘They would have come for me if you hadn’t been here,’ said Darcy.

‘I didn’t stop them.’

‘Yes, you did. Pop’s your dad. That’s why they didn’t chase me. Because you’re here.’

Grace half shrugged, unconvinced. ‘Have they chased you before?’

‘Yeah. Heaps of times.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? What did you do?’

‘I run. I’m faster than them.’

‘Have they ever caught you?’

‘Once.’

‘What happened?’

‘They wanted to see my tits, my fanny. I said they could if they showed me their dicks.’

Grace looked at her friend, her eyes wide.

‘Did they?’

‘One did. The other was too chicken. But I ran away before it was my turn. Ha!’

‘What did it look like?’ Grace whispered.

Darcy screwed up her face and grinned. ‘Remember that time we helped the nurse with all the kindie boys?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, it was like that. Like a grub. A pink grub. But …’

‘But what?’

‘Bigger … and hairy!’

Darcy laughed along with Grace. When they stopped they were racked with giggles until Darcy shouted Come on! and took off up the road. Grace followed. She seemed to be doing a lot of following lately, but even though she was older than Darcy by a few months it didn’t really bother her. Every Saturday Darcy always wanted to be doing things, never wanted to just sit and talk like they’d used to, but there was less and less to do in Angel Rock that they hadn’t already done and Darcy was becoming more and more restless. Lately Grace had been reading books and telling Darcy things that might interest her to try and keep her happy. Saturday last she’d told her all about Huck Finn and his raft and now Darcy wanted to build her own and float away down the river just like him.

They walked along to the sawmill as they’d planned and ducked through the hole in the fence. No one worked there on Saturdays any more. Tom Ferry collected sawdust for the butcher there some weekends but there was no sign of him. They wandered around through the stacks of timber looking for material, toiling in the hot morning sun for an hour until they had a pallet, various other odds and ends of wood, four empty oil drums, bits and pieces of rope and a torn scrap of red cloth that the timbermen nailed to the end of logs when they were carried on the roads.

They tramped across the open paddock between the back of the sawmill and the riverbank carrying their finds, but when they came to the pallet they found that it was far too big for the hole in the fence no matter which way they tried it.

‘Goddamn it,’ said Darcy.

They sat and looked at the pallet and wiped the sweat off their foreheads with their sleeves.

‘It’s the best bit. We can’t leave it.’

‘I could get Pop to help us,’ said Grace.

‘You can’t ask him! He’d probably arrest us!’ Darcy laughed but Grace could barely raise a grin.

‘We’ll just have to try with what we’ve got,’ said Darcy.

They walked over to the river and gazed at the pile. It didn’t look like much of a raft. Darcy tried to tie one of the drums to a plank of wood but the rope was much too short.

‘Goddamn it!’ she said again, and pushed a drum down the bank. It splashed into the dark water and then floated away. The girls looked at one another for a moment and then, piece by piece, threw all the wood and the remaining drums into the river. When everything was gone they sat down and watched the line of flotsam drift away downstream.

‘Boats might hit them,’ said Darcy, a little wistfully, after a few minutes had passed.

Grace nodded. ‘Yeah. Boats might sink. We better go before someone sees.’

‘They might go all the way out to sea.’

‘Yeah. All the way to Sydney. Come on,’ said Grace, her heart beginning to pound.

‘What do you think it’s like there?’ asked Darcy, making no move.

‘Where?’

‘Sydney.’

‘I don’t know. Lots of buildings, lots of houses, lots of people.’

Darcy nodded. ‘I’m going there one day.’

‘That’s good. Now come on!’

Darcy shrugged, but then got to her feet and slapped the grass off her dress. They walked back up to the road but still saw no one. Along from the mill they stopped by the rail platform and drank from the tap down the side of the old stationmaster’s office, wetting their brows and washing the dust off their hands and arms. In the distance a train’s horn sounded. They climbed up onto the platform and sat down on an old luggage trolley and peered southwards. Before long they caught a glimpse of the train away down the valley, ploughing through the heat haze like a ship. Darcy stood up. Grace’s stomach rumbled and she looked at her watch.

‘Think I can beat it?’ said Darcy, shading her eyes with her hand.

‘What? The train?’

‘Yeah. To the tree.’

Grace looked up the tracks to the tree – maybe a hundred yards away – then back in the direction the train was coming, then up at Darcy. Standing there in the dust, barefoot, with her fingers splayed in the curve of her waist and her hip out, with the red log flag bunched in her other hand and the sun right behind her golden head, her best friend looked like she could do anything she put her mind to, and beat any train under the sun.

‘Ah … m-maybe,’ she answered, stammering. ‘If it slows around the bend.’

‘Pah!’

Darcy crouched and waited for the train, a sly grin not shifting from her mouth. The driver sounded the horn as the train approached. It came on, huge and metallic, belching diesel smoke, glinting in the sun. Grace took two steps back from the tracks and nearly called to her friend to take care. When the train reached her Darcy sprang away, racing away alongside the tracks, laughing and lifting the flag up over her head and waving it to and fro like a banner. The passengers in the train stared at her as they passed and then some boys opened a door to yell and whoop. As they did Darcy reached the tree and collapsed, laughing, in a heap on the grass, ruby-cheeked and with her hair clinging to her damp face and neck. Grace, catching her up, flopped down on her back beside her, breathing hard, the solid blue sky overhead brimming with little points of light that spun before her eyes. They lay there, giggling, until Darcy slapped Grace on the thigh.

‘Did I beat it?’

‘Yeah, you did!’

Darcy lifted up her arms and made fists of her hands.

‘Champion!’ she yelled, but a moment later she was on her feet again, pulling Grace up by the arm.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m too hot now. Let’s go for a swim!’

They walked down to the ferry, running the last stretch, jumping on just as the ramp was lifting. The ferrymaster growled at them. Darcy poked her tongue out at him. Grace thought she saw him grin but it was hard to tell through his beard. When the ferry reached the town side of the river they ducked the rail and ran up the street, up past the convent and the school, through the weedy paddock behind, past the old house with its huge ramparts of overgrown hedge and saplings growing up through the verandah, then through a fenced yard dotted with tobacco bushes and tall thistles, the scruffy pony in it taking only a few steps out from under the shade of a tree before they’d slipped through the fence on the other side and disappeared down through the bushes to the creek.

There was no one at the waterhole. Most kids swam in the river off the jetty or up at the dam. Grace didn’t like any place much, but the day was too hot to be fussy. Darcy pulled her dress over her head and kicked off her underpants. Grace looked around.

‘Don’t worry, nobody’s here.’

Grace nodded nervously and began to undress.

‘You’re getting boobs now,’ Darcy said, nodding her head towards Grace’s chest and making her blush. ‘It’s about time.’

‘Mum says I’m a late bloomer.’

‘Blooming late, that’s all!’

Grace blushed.

‘You’ll have to wear a bra then.’

‘I don’t like them.’

‘Me neither. Who needs ’em.’

Darcy turned and climbed down the bank and slipped into the water. Grace left her underpants on and followed. In under the trees the water was cool and her skin rippled into goosebumps and her teeth chattered for a few moments as she lowered herself into the water. She soon forgot about her half-naked state and began to paddle around the pool and enjoy the sensation of the water against her skin, how good it felt compared to the hot and sticky air.

After swimming around the pool a few times Darcy clambered up the far bank and jumped off an overhanging rock into the water, the sound of the splash loud under the leafy canopy.

‘Come on! You try!’ she called to Grace after she’d surfaced.

Grace resisted, but after a campaign of pleading from Darcy she relented and climbed the bank. She stood on the rock for a minute, her arms crossed over her chest, and gathered her nerve. When she jumped she felt the much cooler water in the depths of the hole with her toes and she shivered again when she broke the surface. They took turns jumping until Darcy pointed to the branch of a tree hanging out over the water.

‘I’m going to climb up there and jump off,’ she said.

‘Don’t be dumb! It’s too high!’

‘No, it’s not. I’ve seen it done.’

Grace watched as Darcy climbed the tree and then wriggled forward along the overhanging limb, her muddy legs hanging down on either side.

‘Be careful!’ Grace called. ‘Maybe the water isn’t deep enough!’

‘Bulldust!’

Darcy manoeuvred herself around the branch and lowered herself down. She swung for a moment or two by her arms and then let go. Grace put her hand over her mouth and held her breath as Darcy’s body seemed to just hang in the air for a moment before scything down into the water and making a great splash, the wave from it nearly swamping Grace where she knelt in the shallows.

‘See?’ spluttered Darcy, when her head broke the surface.

‘You can be a real dill sometimes, Darcy Steele,’ said Grace, shaking her head.

Darcy pulled herself up out onto the bank and sat and shook the water from her hair. Grace followed and sat down beside her.

‘Want a smoke?’ said Darcy, after a while.

Before Grace could answer she went over to her clothes and rummaged through them, returning with a crumpled pair of cigarettes and a box of matches. She put one in her mouth and lit it, handed it to Grace, then lit the other. Grace put the cigarette to her lips and breathed in while Darcy watched, her face wreathed in smoke.

‘Good! You’re a natural!’

They sat and smoked until Grace began to feel a little sick. Darcy didn’t say anything for a long time. Grace was about to ask her what was wrong when they both heard a sound away through the trees.

‘What was that?’ whispered Grace. The cigarette fell from her fingers onto the ground, forgotten. Darcy stood and peered across the water at the bushes on the bank. Grace crossed her arms over her chest and began to slide over to where her dress lay. She heard the sound again but this time it was much clearer. There was a strangled laugh, and then a fierce admonition.

‘It’s my brother,’ Darcy whispered. ‘It’s Sonny.’

She bent and scooped up a handful of mud from the bank and then stepped down into the water and flung it towards the far bank. She threw more, her cigarette poised in the fingers of her left hand, until there was a squeal from the bushes. Sonny and Leonard broke from their cover and crashed through the undergrowth like pademelons. Grace saw Leonard gawping at Darcy’s bare breasts and at the dark triangle under her belly.

‘I’m telling!’ Sonny squawked.

‘Haven’t done nothin’!’ Darcy shouted back. ‘I’ll tell on you!’

She bent and dug in the bank for more ammunition then glanced over at Grace.

‘Come on! Aren’t you going to help?’

‘I can’t!’

Darcy shrugged and kept flinging mud, even after Sonny and Leonard were well out of range. After a few final sallies she came and stood near Grace and picked up her dress and pulled it over her head.

‘They’re always doing things like that,’ she said, pulling on her underpants. Grace felt even sicker.

‘Why didn’t you cover yourself up?’

Darcy looked surprised by the question. She seemed to think about it for a moment and then gave a little shrug.

‘I don’t care,’ she said.

She walked down into the water and washed the worst of the mud from her arms and legs and it dawned on Grace then that she really didn’t – didn’t care that Sonny had seen, didn’t care that Leonard had. She came back up the bank and sat down, pulling her legs up to her chin. Neither said anything for a minute or so, as if the clothes had somehow changed them.

‘I should go,’ Grace said, eventually. ‘My mum’ll have lunch ready. You can come if you want.’

‘No. I’ll stay here.’

‘I’ll come back later then.’

Darcy nodded.

‘Remember you have to come and try on your dress,’ said Grace, as she stood.

‘Yeah. I remember.’

Grace waited. She felt awkward and didn’t know quite why. Darcy was staring at the water and throwing twigs into it.

‘I’ll see you then,’ said Grace.

‘Yeah. See ya,’ Darcy whispered.

A shadow fell across her friend’s face then and her head lowered and she began to cry. Grace went to her and put an arm round her, then held her head as Darcy set it against her shoulder. She cried for ten minutes or more, and when she was nearly through and just sobbing Grace tried to find out what the problem was. Darcy would only shake her head. Grace stroked her hair and then pulled her close and hugged her.

‘What is it?’ she asked again, but Darcy wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer her. Grace looked at her red eyes and her cheeks wet with tears. She lifted a strand of her damp hair and put it behind her ear. Darcy looked up at her with her sad, blue eyes then lifted her hands and put them on either side of Grace’s face. And then Grace felt her hot, wet mouth as she pressed her lips hard against her cheek. She pulled away and as she did she saw an odd look cross Darcy’s face, and she knew without a doubt that it was a reflection of her own dismay. She stood abruptly.

‘Gra—’

‘I have to go now. If you won’t tell me what’s wrong …’

Darcy bit her lip and said nothing. Finally, Grace had to turn and walk away, her head all confusion, her feelings in a spin. When she glanced over her shoulder her friend was sitting very still, watching her depart. Her face looked very pale in the dappled sunlight. Darcy gave a weak, hopeful smile and then waved, as if hoping with all her heart that she wouldn’t be the only one to do so. Grace hesitated, her brow furrowing, but then she lifted her hand and waved it feebly once or twice before turning for home.

3

Tom wiped his hands on his trousers and then jumped up and caught the hook swinging down from the truck’s jib hoist. Using his weight, he pulled the hook and the steel cable attached to it down and around the log while Henry watched from the truck’s cab and barked orders. He ducked down and jammed the hook under the log where there was a small gap between it and the ground and then he scrambled over the log and burrowed through the earth and leaves with his hand until he felt the hook and could pull it through. If the log was too heavy he’d grab the log-hook and hang off it and roll the log over the cable until the hook appeared. Sometimes Henry had to come and do it. When the cable was looped round the log Henry jabbed at the winch controls and the steel noose slithered and tightened round the log and lifted it off the ground. Tom thought that Henry was nearly always too quick with the winch and didn’t give him enough time to get clear. Sometimes he found himself on his backside in the dirt, having dodged the log, holding his hand where the rope had grazed it, or splinters had gone in. He didn’t understand the need for all the hurry, always wringing the truck’s neck. He could see how Bloody John had broken his arm – it would be easy enough to get it caught either in the loop or under a rolling log, but Henry expected him to be quick, to use his head, and he wasn’t going to let him or the job get the better of him.

Flynn stood on the truck’s seat and watched him out the rear window. He sometimes shouted to him, calling out Hey! or something similar when he slipped over, but other than that he kept still in the seat. He’d already learnt to keep right out of Henry’s way. The window was about the same shape as a movie screen but Flynn’s fingers were hanging out of this one, unrestrained by the rules of coloured film and light, and Henry’s scarred arm and big hand came right out to work the winch. The last time they’d gone to the movies in Laurence the woman hadn’t let him and Flynn in because of their bare feet and they’d had to sit for an hour and a half, staring at their tickets, distraught, until their mother returned, and then she’d gone to the woman and given her one hell of a blast. He smiled at the memory, but then put it from his head in case it distracted him.

‘Wait there,’ ordered Henry. Tom, surprised, watched the truck disappear down the track, Flynn’s face a pale oval in the window, to where they’d taken the other logs, to where the jinker would pick them up later. He wondered whether Wait there was Henry’s way of saying he’d done a good job and he should have a break, or that he was completely useless. He sat down under a tree to wait, suddenly feeling a little lonely.

Henry had been gone a long time the night before. Tom had given up waiting for him. He’d gone and lain on his bed, listening to the world outside the house, but had fallen asleep, and only later been woken by the sound of the truck returning, Henry’s steady footsteps through the house, all the energy drained away, all the fury. Whatever had happened, whatever he’d said or done at the Steeles’, he didn’t say. Then, outside in the night, a real storm had brewed, just the faint sound of thunder at first, slowly moving closer, becoming louder, until the house was shuddering, until he’d worried about his mother having to come home through it. The lightning had flashed through the window and then the rain, great sheets of it, had come crashing down on the roof for half an hour, maybe three-quarters, and then it had gone, waltzing away down the valley, leaving the drains gurgling and the air cool and clean. He’d heard the floorboards creak as Henry walked out to the verandah. He’d pictured him standing out there on the step in his singlet, watching the storm go, maybe smoking one of the bent Marlboros. In the last flickers of light through the window he’d seen Flynn in his bed across the room, his mouth a dark O in his face, oblivious to it all.

There’d been no black eyes in the morning light, no grazes on Henry’s knuckles which hadn’t been there before, but there had been silence and an understanding on Tom’s part that he should not mention anything to do with the night before, especially not in front of his mother, whom he hadn’t even heard come home. Tom hadn’t even dreamt of it.

When Henry returned he jumped down from the truck and proceeded to build a little fire of twigs and bark to boil the billy on. A breeze picked up and blew the firesmoke away through the trees. When the tea was made he opened a tin of biscuits and passed two each to Tom and Flynn. Tom went and sat with his back against the cool trunk of a young bluegum and watched Flynn mess about chasing big red bull ants with a stick. He daydreamed about taking off his shoes and putting his feet in cool creek water. Henry had made both of them wear their school shoes to stop splinters. Tom hardly ever wore his except on special occasions and they were black and shiny and stiff and made his feet feel clumsy and heavy. They hurt his heels but it was worse for Flynn – he’d never worn his. Henry said that that was all the more reason Flynn should wear them in before he started school. Tom tried to tell him that hardly anyone wore shoes there but Henry hadn’t seemed to hear him.

‘Be careful with those bloody things, Flynn,’ Tom said when Henry went behind a tree to piss. ‘Don’t get bit!’

‘I won’t,’ said Flynn, spitting crumbs.

Henry set the transistor radio on the ground when he came back and they listened to a few songs and then the pips sounded and the news came on. The newsreader read out something about birth dates for the conscription. Tom listened and, to his alarm, heard his own – the same day and month, but a different year.

‘That’s my birthday!’

‘What?’

‘He just said my birthday!’

‘You’re too young.’

‘For what?’

‘To fight.’

‘What if I was old enough?’

Henry shrugged. ‘You’d have to go,’ he said.

‘What if I didn’t want to go?’

Henry looked at him as though he were surprised he could speak. ‘You’d have to.’

‘But what if I have to go one day? What if the war’s still going when I’m old enough?’

‘Well … you’d have to go. If I had anything to say about it. If your country needs you, you have to go.’

Henry flicked away the leafy tea at the bottom of his cup and then looked at Tom as though one or two more questions might be all right. Tom was about to ask another question when Henry suddenly looked up and shouted at Flynn to be careful. Tom looked over at his brother. He didn’t seem in any immediate danger.

‘Come on,’ said Henry, gruffly, after a silence.

When they returned to work Henry felled some more trees that had caught his eye, that he couldn’t bear to leave. All Tom had to do was keep out of the way and paint the end of the log with Henry’s mark and clear the branches from around the log as Henry lopped them so the truck could get in. They kept working until lunch time and then Henry drove them down to where other gangs were having their lunch in a large cleared area where the forest had been stripped back to the bare earth and the smouldering stumps of felled trees sent light-blue smoke into the air. The men squatted near the fires cooking meat, making tea, and smoking. Tom liked being around the timbermen and listening to their filthy speech and their eerie tales of headless convicts and moans and cries in the bush in the dead of night. They smelt of tobacco, grease and tree sap and sometimes told stories of themselves or other men and their battles with giant trees, the breaking of arms, legs, necks and backs. They spoke of women as though they were trees and trees as though they were women until Tom couldn’t tell one smooth limb from another, and they nearly always had grazes on their arms and legs and nearly always gaps in their grins or bright white false teeth. The older men wore braces over their work shirts or singlets and took no cheek from the youngsters.

He wandered around for a while in the cold ashes and charred earth. ‘The surface is fine and powdery,’ he whispered to himself. ‘I can see footprints of my boots … in the fine sandy particles.’

Henry called his name after a while and directed him to a fire and told him to watch out for Flynn and fry up some eggs. Henry strode over to the largest group of men – a Commission gang – and squatted amongst them. He plucked a cigarette from his pocket and straightened it out with his fingers and then lit it.

Tom got the pan, eggs and bread from the truck and set to work. It was hot in the sun after the shade of the trees and the sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes and as he wiped it away with his forearm he grew more irritated. He saw Flynn wandering around the uprooted bole of a huge tree.

‘Go and sit in the shade!’ Tom shouted to him.

Flynn came over, trailing a stick through the dust. Tom could tell he was irritable as well. They’d both had to get up before the sun for the early start.

‘Watch me cook,’ he said, but this did not seem to excite Flynn much. Tom looked at his brother. He felt sorry for him and then that turned into a fierce surge of protectiveness that rolled up from his gut and swamped everything else.

‘Maybe tomorrow we can go fishing,’ he said, his voice sounding weak and strangled, as though Sonny was pinning him down again.

Flynn’s face lit up. ‘Yeah? Can we?’

‘Yep.’

‘Where?’

‘In the river. Where else, knucklehead?’

‘Will Dad let us?’

‘He’ll be asleep in the morning. We’ll go then. We’ll leave him a bloody note!’

Flynn giggled and seemed to cheer up a little and soon he was singing to himself and crawling around in the dirt under the truck to see what he could find.

The last time Henry had taken them fishing it had rained. It’s not too heavy, not really rain at all, he’d said. Tom had followed him into the paddock, through the barbed wire, his legs wet from the long, water-loaded grass, his mother behind them in the car with Flynn becoming smaller and smaller. He remembered that his mother had smoked a cigarette that day. The car was a black Holden Special and the smoke had curled out through the chromed window frame. Henry had a wicker fishing creel that hung at his waist from two old leather belts that he’d stitched together with oiled string. In their back yard at home Tom remembered Flynn, only two or three, standing in the basket and holding on to its greasy rim. Tom had carried the short bamboo pole Henry had made for him, an old Alvey reel attached to the bamboo with wire and window putty, and on his head he’d worn a battered old oilskin hat that had leaked cold rain down the back of his neck. He’d looked back before they’d reached the dark curve of trees at the far end of the paddock and seen his mother following at last, her head bowed, her bare feet white against the grass, she and Flynn just small dark shapes against the expanse of grass and trees, connected at the hands, arms like rigging between them, his mother helping Flynn, who’d still been mastering walking, over the rough ground. Flynn had had no hat at all and his thin hair when they’d caught up had been flat against his scalp and his little shirt wet. The river when they’d reached it had been dark, fast-flowing and overhung with willow. He remembered the sound of the water rippling through tree roots and black rocks. Henry had sworn that it was a special spot, shown to him by his own father, but they had not caught anything that day, and they had never been back.

After five minutes or so the eggs were nearly cooked. He looked over to where Henry was sitting. He was still talking. Tom called to him but he made no move. He peered at the eggs through the smoke that was suddenly wafting towards him. It got into his eyes and made them water and sting. He lifted the pan and saw that the eggs were exactly how Henry liked them; any longer and they would go hard and rubbery, the way he hated them. He looked around for Flynn but couldn’t see him. He swore under his breath – Bloody shit – and put the pan in the shade of the truck and then he walked over to Henry and tapped him on the shoulder, acutely aware of the clunky black shoes on his feet. Henry looked at him from the corner of his eye but made no move to come. Tom fidgeted and swore some more but this time silently and to himself. One or two of the other men looked up at him and then back to Henry, who was listening intently to an old-timer going on and on about something. Tom’s ears grew hot with frustration and embarrassment. Finally he turned away, shouting The bloody eggs are ready! just before he did. When he glanced back some of the men were grinning at him, turning their heads from him to Henry like dogs waiting for a stick to be thrown. He walked back to the truck, the sun burning his already hot neck. He heard Henry’s boots crunching through the dirt behind him, and then the soft padding sound they made through the ash.

‘Where’s Flynn?’ he demanded, when he’d caught up.

Tom jumped. He looked around but couldn’t see him. He looked under the truck but Flynn wasn’t there either. Just then they both heard a little boy’s moan coming from the far side of the truck. It was Flynn. He’d taken off his shoes and he was holding his arm with his other hand. His feet and arms were both covered in the crumbly dirt of the clearing. Henry reached him and took hold of his arm and brushed away the dirt. He asked him what the matter was but Flynn could only cry, his tears leaving trails down his dusty cheeks.

‘He’s burnt his arm,’ said Henry. ‘He’s gone too near one of these fires and tripped over into some ashes or something. Bloody hell, Tom! I told you to fucking look after him!’

Tom, stunned, opened his mouth to defend himself, but, before he could, Henry shot out his arm and caught him across the ear and the side of the head with his open palm. His ear rang for a moment and then he heard Flynn’s crying rise and rise until it was a high-pitched squeal. He saw Henry almost throw Flynn up into the truck and then he heard an order to fetch the pan. The blood was right up in his ears and his cheek was on fire under his hand. He heard laughing and he turned. The men – all the men – were watching. Some were laughing, their shoulders and bellies shaking. They were all looking at him, laughing at him. He picked up the pan and threw the eggs into the fire and then walked to the truck with his head down. Flynn was still bawling. His anger at all of them grew. His brother was burnt. That was nothing to laugh at – there was nothing funny about it. He felt like throwing the pan at their stupid faces, but, instead, he climbed up into the cab, tossed the pan on the floor, and slammed shut the door.