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 cursed 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.
