Anyway, Jeremy didn’t seem to need to do anything more to get ready. They had a ute I hadn’t seen before, as well as Homer’s, and they had a motorbike loaded on the back of each ute. So they were OK for transport.
Lee was outside. I stayed in the kitchen and got Jeremy a coffee. Pang appeared. She’d been down at the lagoon, talking to the ducks maybe. Knowing how quirky she was, she could have been running around the lagoon flapping her arms and quacking.
Gavin was still in hiding but she said she’d seen him in the big shed, fuelling the bikes. That’d be right. When a girl appears you go out to the shed and do a bit of work on the motorbikes.
I asked Jeremy how long he thought we’d need groups like Liberation. Suddenly he burst into this amazing speech about history. ‘You know, Ellie, when Churchill took over as prime minister of Britain in 1940 he realised one thing, which is that when you fight a war you have to fight it. You have to get out there. The Germans, the Nazis, knew that. They went through France at a hundred and twenty k’s an hour. The French were dug in waiting for them. They had all these great fortifications and they sat behind the walls ready to defend France, you know, and what did the Germans do? They just went around them. They went through the Ardennes Forest. Everyone thought it was too thick for the Germans so they didn’t put many defenders there, and the big panzer tanks ploughed straight through. They made their own roads. The French were still sitting behind the Maginot line waiting for the invasion, and by the time they woke up all they saw were the tail-lights of the tanks. France surrendered inside a couple of weeks. After that Hitler was sure Britain was finished too, it was just a formality. He’d knock them off in no time and that’d wrap up western Europe, pretty much.
Then Churchill took over. The first thing he had the Poms do was attack the French fleet and wipe it out, so the Germans couldn’t use the ships. It was like a declaration: “This war is still alive. Don’t write us off.” See what I mean? Churchill didn’t just put up a lot of walls and get people to sit behind them and wait for an invasion. He went out and attacked in every way he could. Sink the Bismarck, go after the Graf Spee, bomb Berlin, go here, there and everywhere.’
‘And that’s the way you think we should do it?’
‘That’s the only way to do it. Be tough neighbours. Have them scared of us instead of the other way round. Knock them around every time they think they’ve got an edge on us. Keep them off balance.’
‘I thought you were a calm and peaceful guy.’
‘I am. But it drives me crazy when people don’t learn from history. I love history. It tells you the answer to everything if people only take the trouble to read it. Being weak is as bad as being a bully. Chamberlain was weak, Hitler was a bully, Churchill was a bully.’
‘Who was Chamberlain?’
‘He was the British prime minister before Churchill. He wanted to believe Hitler wasn’t a threat so he let Hitler have Czechoslovakia. He thought that’d keep him happy.’
‘How can you give away a country that you don’t even own?’
‘Well, I don’t know the answer to that. I think he probably just said that he wouldn’t help Czechoslovakia, and the Czechs couldn’t beat Germany on their own, so they were pretty much rooted then.’
I wasn’t so sure about Jeremy’s philosophy but I was impressed by how much he knew. There’s something really attractive about people who know stuff. In a way it doesn’t matter whether it’s a science teacher or a chef on TV or an old shearer talking about the Tally Hi shearing pattern and why wide gear is no good.
Homer and Jess came back at high speed and then it was action action action. Within four minutes they were gone, leaving Pang, Gavin and me by ourselves. Suddenly I felt very funny. It was like the women and children being left behind while the others went off to war. It didn’t help that Jess was with them. Three guys and a girl. She shouldn’t be one of the tough ones, the fighters, the ones who get out there and take the risks. She didn’t have the experience. Officially she was going as a sort of back-up, because she didn’t know much about guns. But I knew how quickly that would change if they got into any hot situations. How would she handle it? She might jeopardise the whole thing. If she did she would jeopardise the lives of three of my friends.
I couldn’t decide how much of my emptiness was personal. Off went these three boys and maybe none of them would come back. Off went these three boys with Jess, one of the best looking girls at Wirrawee High School. I realised I was angry at being in a war situation again, mad at Homer and Lee for jumping into it, and furious at Jess for cutting across my tracks. I also realised that if it had not been for Gavin I probably would have signed up for Liberation and gone. Even allowing for Gavin maybe I should have gone. But the thought of Gavin without me was not good. I was all he had. If I got knocked off, Gavin’s best chance then would be to move into the dog pen with Marmie. I needed Homer and Lee, and of course Jeremy, to stay alive for a very long time to come, but Gavin needed me to stay alive for at least ten years. Funny, by then he’d be older than I was now.
Speaking of Gavin, it was time to round him up and organise the evening before it got any darker. At least looking after him and Pang would keep my mind off the danger that the other four were approaching. I called Pang. But just as she answered from the spare room, where she’d be sleeping, the phone rang.
It shocked me, because I wasn’t expecting it. I jumped, and then grabbed it, thinking, completely irrationally, that it might be Homer or Lee. It was Bronte, inviting herself to visit. She was only a couple of k’s away and calling on her mobile. Her mum had said she’d drop her off at my place and she could get the bus back to school tomorrow.
To be honest, even though I liked Bronte a lot, I thought I had enough on my plate already, but I could hardly say no when she was so close.
Pang was waiting in the doorway. ‘Let’s go find Gavin,’ I said. ‘There’s a friend of mine coming over, so we’d better think about some dinner.’
As we crossed the yard she took my hand. Funny how that little hand in mine made me feel all protective. Gavin wasn’t really one for hand-holding. It made me think, not for the first time, that it would be nice to have a sister. To have had a sister. I could never have a sister now. I would always be an only child.
I know some people would say I was irresponsible in the way I looked after Gavin. I know there are people in the Wirrawee district who are saying it right now, although of course they are the ones who have the least idea of what we do and the way we live. The most ironic thing that had happened to me in the last twelve months was that I had been put under a court-appointed guardian after my parents died, but the legal system that did that to me completely ignored Gavin. That was fine by me, and anyway, my guardians didn’t interfere much with my life except to bring around casseroles and give advice on farming. When your guardians are Homer’s parents and they’ve kind of been your guardians all your life, nothing has to change much. But it’s a bit strange when you think about it.
So, just to give people who think I’m irresponsible a bit of evidence they can use, I’ll say it straight out: I lost Gavin that evening. He wasn’t in the big shed. He wasn’t in any of the little sheds, not even the woodshed. He wasn’t in the woolshed or in the dog pens or over with the chooks. None of this might have mattered too much on a normal day. I mean, we were meant to be red-hot on security these days and taking multiple precautions every time we brushed our teeth or went on a picnic, but of course the truth was that most days there were moments or minutes or even hours when we forgot or made a mistake or simply thought, ‘Stuff it, can’t hide under the bed all day every day.’
This day though was different. There was such an atmosphere of tension that I couldn’t imagine even Gavin ignoring it and going off on his own into the paddocks. Not only that, but he wouldn’t want to be away from the action. Where there was Homer and Lee, there would be Gavin. Sure Pang’s arrival might have thrown him off balance, but not this far off balance. I c
ursed myself for not being more aware of him earlier, of thinking it was OK for Gavin to be missing when Homer and the other three set off.
I couldn’t hide my anxiety from Pang as I walked faster, searching a wider and wider area. She became silent, trotting beside me to keep up. I appreciated that she didn’t chatter any more. She seemed so different to Lee in every other way that I was almost surprised to find that she had the same sensitivity as her brother.
Running now, I went back to the big machinery shed. I looked more carefully. First thing I noticed was what I three-quarters expected to see. The motorbike was missing, the Yamaha that was Gavin’s favourite. I remembered Pang telling me how she’d seen Gavin fuelling motorbikes and I asked her which bikes. Where was he doing it? Did he say anything? How was he looking?
‘He didn’t take any notice of me.’
‘Did he know you were there?’
‘Oh yes, he glanced at me, but just looked away. He wasn’t very friendly. It was like he didn’t want me to be there. I thought, “Well, if you don’t want to be friends, that’s OK,” so I left.’
That didn’t prove anything. Gavin probably would have treated Pang that way at any time. Standing in the area where he’d done the fuelling – the area where we normally service the bikes – I looked around quickly. And I did notice something. The door at the back of the shed was open. Only by a metre, at the most, which is why I didn’t notice it before. I went over there. A cold breeze wafted through it. Pang slipped ahead of me and went outside as I looked at the gap. ‘Just enough room for a little kid on a Yammie,’ I thought.
‘Look here, Ellie,’ Pang said. ‘That’s from a motorbike, isn’t it?’
She was pointing to the ground. In the mud were the tracks of bike wheels. Pang was onto it. For a Thai-Vietnamese-Australian she would have made a pretty good Aboriginal tracker.
I heard a car and guessed it would be Bronte. Before going back to the house to meet her I ran with Pang along the road at the back of the machinery shed. The motorbike tracks were clear enough in the winter mud and wet grass. They were heading straight for the gate that led to the paddock that led to the lagoon that led to the next paddock that led to another paddock that led to the track that if you followed it all the way led to the border. This didn’t prove Gavin had set off for the border but it sure as hell suggested that he wasn’t thinking about his homework or making a sandwich or watching TV.
Panting hard now, from fear more than physical effort, I ran back through the shed to the other side of the building. Between the shed and the house was Bronte. Her mother’s car was already heading down the driveway. For a moment I thought of trying to call her mum back but then realised we had to deal with this on our own, for now anyway. I grabbed Bronte by the hand and tried to explain things to her. There was a problem though. I didn’t know how much she knew. But she was a smart girl, Bronte. I had the feeling she’d always know more than I expected.
Whoa, whoa, wait a sec, Ellie, surely he wouldn’t go off like that. What do you think, that he wants to be with the others? To be with Homer?’
‘No! Well, yes, but it’s not just that. He thinks they’re going off to have a look at the . . . well, to be honest, the other side of the border. And if Gavin thinks there’s any fighting going on, he’ll be there. He’s mad about it. Has been ever since the war.’
‘But Ellie, he’s only–’
‘Oh forget that. You know how adults love saying they’ve got an inner child? Well, Gavin’s got an inner adult.’
‘So tell me exactly what you think he might have done.’
I had to pause and work that out. What was I exactly expecting?
Carefully I said, ‘I think he’s most likely going to wait for them a long way down the track, and either join them there or, more likely, follow them right over the border and then pop up and say, “Here I am,” at a point where there won’t be anything they can do about it. If they see him too early they’ll send him back. With Jess maybe. He’s smart enough to figure that out.’
‘OK, so what are your options?’
I was impressed by Bronte, not for the first time. Even standing there I was thinking, ‘Gosh, she is just who I need at this moment.’ She didn’t ask any unnecessary questions. In fact she didn’t seem too surprised to hear what had been going on. I guess she was well aware how crazy people like Homer were, and she’d probably heard a few rumours. Not for the first time I wondered if she was a member of Liberation herself.
‘Well, to follow him, I guess. Or to stay here and do nothing. I don’t think that’s much of an option. But I’ve also got Pang to look after.’
‘I don’t need looking after,’ Pang said. ‘I look after the other kids all the time at home when Lee’s out.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘When he’s out chasing girls.’
‘Chasing girls?’ I was distracted for a moment and had to shake my head to get my thoughts back together.
‘I can look after Pang,’ Bronte said. ‘Or I can take her to Homer’s. I’m sure she’d be fine there. They’re your guardians, aren’t they?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. Already I was clearing my mind of the Pang Problem. I’ve noticed before how the brain doesn’t keep what it doesn’t need. If Bronte was going to take care of Pang I could erase Pang from my memory for now and concentrate on more important things. It sounds a bit brutal but I suppose it’s the way the brain keeps you functioning efficiently. In Year 9 I’d memorised heaps of stuff about the Myall Lakes Massacre and the Protector guy in Tasmania, but straight after the test all I could remember was the Protector’s name. Robinson.
I ran back into the shed, started up the four-wheel Polaris and moved it to the bowser. ‘Can you fuel it?’ I asked Bronte. She just nodded. I went back into the house and got some warm clothes, for both me and Gavin. I was pretty sure Gavin wouldn’t have thought of practicalities like that in his mad rush towards the action. I grabbed a couple of bananas, three hardboiled eggs and an apple, and filled my jacket pockets with biscuits. I shoved all the other bits and pieces into a backpack and then got the rifle and the ammo. My heart sank when I opened the gun safe, because one of the shotguns was missing. Bloody Gavin was way out of line. He had survived for so long that he thought he was invincible. I suppose the more people succeed, the more confident they become and the higher they stretch. But I knew something that Gavin was too young to understand. That the higher you stretch the closer you get to the crash. If you keep going higher forever you end up as a God. That’s not an option for most people, including Gavin and me. The time to take great risks is at the start, when you’ve got little to lose and you haven’t used up your luck. The time to get supercareful is when you’ve done brilliantly. Every success brings you nearer to the failure. For Gavin’s sake I had to hope and pray he had one more success, one more crop of luck still to be harvested.
Bronte had fuelled the Polaris, checked the oil, cleaned the headlight glass and, most amazingly of all, tied a full water bottle to the luggage rack at the front. I thanked her, said goodbye to her and Pang, and blasted out of the yard at maximum revs, wondering if I’d ever see either of them again.
CHAPTER 5
BASICALLY I TOOK the fastest route I knew to Rawson Road, or, like Lee said, what we used to call Rawson Road. I stopped three times, when I got into muddy sections of the track, to see if I could figure out what was going on. And the third time, about two k’s past the border, I did get a beautifully clear picture of what had happened. It was like reading a story. The two utes were hidden behind a tree. In some places the track was better than the last time I’d come this way, but in most places it was starting to degenerate, and you could see where Homer and the others had swung off the road and parked. Up ahead was a rocky section that would have tested the utes beyond their limits. There was a whole chopped-up area behind the utes with footprints and motorbike tyre marks, where the four of them had obviously gotten on the bikes and ridden away. And although it took me three or four minutes, three or four minute
s I couldn’t afford, eventually I found the marks of a third motorbike. They were on the left-hand side, away from the other two, which went down the middle. The same as I’d seen back at the machinery shed with Pang: a chunky tread but with bigger spaces between the chunks than the other bikes. It had made a lighter impact in the mud, as though it had less weight on it, and like the others it was fresh.
I ran a couple of hundred metres back towards my place, looking for more evidence. I needed to know whether Gavin had joined up with them or not. Near a huge gum tree, in another long stretch of soft ground, I saw where his tracks had left the road. I followed them and lost them almost straight away, but when I went to the gum tree I found where he had hidden. There were a couple of oil spots and part of a Fruit Tingles wrapper. I reminded myself to have a look at the bike sometime in the impossible future to see how much oil it was losing. My guess was that he had hidden somewhere further back, waited for the utes to pass him, and then followed. While they abandoned the utes he waited behind this tree then continued to follow. He was too close to home to let them know he was there. If they realised he was dogging their steps they would still send him back.
I set off again. I knew I was a long way behind but there was nothing I could do about that. I rode into darkness. The daylight failed fast. At least it seemed to get a bit warmer as the wind dropped away. At the first crossroads I went left. I had a feeling this road was called Sutherland’s but I wasn’t certain. It didn’t matter much, as I was pretty sure of my general direction.
I was trying to plan my strategy for when I got to Rawson Road. The whole idea of planning for something so out of my control was dumb but I suppose all planning is dumb in a way. Seeing you can’t predict the future, and seeing you can’t control other people, not to mention vehicles, animals, falling trees, the weather and your own self most of the time, planning has got to be . . . what? A kind of insurance policy. A way of trying to make yourself feel OK, because you can pretend you do have control of your life and the world around you. This is very reassuring when you’re heading into dangerous and horrible situations.