‘Matt,’ he says.
‘You’re the guy from the checkpoint,’ Lucy says.
‘I, um, talked to Matt a bit when I went back that night,’ I explain. I wait for Matt to offer some information about why he’s here, but he says nothing, just sits with his hands kneading at the handle of his pack.
‘Did they move you from border patrol?’ I venture.
‘Yeah. ’Bout two weeks or so ago. Maybe.’
‘Right.’ We all wait. He offers nothing more.
‘Well, you can stay here, son,’ says Alan. ‘If you want to.’
‘Thank you.’
I don’t know if he’s safe. But he gave me the gun back that night and he didn’t squeal on me and Noll at the ration line. He knows things, army things, survival things. He will be useful.
When we turn in for the night, Matt stays awake, knees drawn up to his chin. When I wake in the morning he is in the same position as if he hasn’t moved all night.
In the morning we sit around our fire and talk, although Matt never says anything. Lucy gives him a bowl of rice but he doesn’t eat it and gives it to me instead. Afterwards, Noll, Max, Lucy and I wash our clothes in buckets of icy water and hang them on a line strung between our car and another. Rosa has pegs that she lends to us. I am stretching out the wet slop of my T-shirts when Matt comes up to me, hands stuffed in his pockets.
‘Fin, I was… I just wanna see if…’ He speaks as though he is about to divulge a state secret.
‘Yeah?’
‘I have to get out of this uniform.’ His eyes roam around the camp and he rubs his palm over the stubble on his scalp. ‘You got any spare clothes?’
Between Max, Noll and I we manage to pull together enough clothes to keep him warm. Max has a spare beanie that he gives Matt, the red and white Swannies one. Lucy is the first to get an almost-smile out of him when she jokes she has some woolly tights he can wear too if he wants.
Matt strips off his uniform and pulls on the clothes we have given him. He carries his uniform over to the fire.
‘Wait!’
He visibly jumps at my voice.
‘Don’t burn it. Give it here, I’ll keep it.’
There is an afternoon soccer match. Matt doesn’t play but sits with Alan, watching from the sidelines. The rest of the people in the car park are noticeably wary of him and the rest of us. But no one says he has to leave. Maybe they all want him where they can see him.
Afterwards we sit around, waiting out the time before the evening meal. Lucy asks Matt if he knows where his family is. Matt just shakes his head.
‘We’ve been trying to find Fin’s mother,’ she tells him. ‘We think she might be able to help us, she works for the government. Disaster response management, isn’t it, Fin?’
Matt’s face changes. It’s a look of subdued anguish. He swallows, glances at me. ‘You want to find her?’
It’s a strange question.
‘Yeah, of course.’
He nods that absent sort of head bob of his, like a nervous tic.
‘I think she’s at Town Hall. But I can’t get in,’ I tell him.
‘Knew a guy who was workin’ in there. Good guy, my corporal. He was a good guy, yeah. A real good guy.’ Matt’s eyes are far away. He draws his knees to his chin. ‘But workin’ in there? It screwed him up. Me, I just follow orders, don’t have to make decisions… the really shitty decisions. That’s what screws you up.’
That night I am shocked from my sleep by a yell. I sit up and, for a moment, I think I am at home in my bedroom, until the cold finds my cheeks and arms. There is another yell and in the smoulder of the fire I can make out the scrambling shadow of two figures entangled.
‘Get your hands behind your head!’ It’s Matt. He’s kneeling on someone’s back as they flail against the concrete.
‘Matt? What the hell?’
He doesn’t answer me.
‘Get off me ya psycho!’ the pinned man yells.
‘Matt! What are you doing?’
He looks at me and there is a blankness in his face – a vacancy – almost as if he is actually asleep. The guy beneath him takes the opportunity to scramble to his feet, but Matt snaps back into action and grabs him by the back of his hair.
‘Matt, I know that guy, he’s from here. He’s one of us.’
Matt looks at me, then back to the guy.
‘Let him go, man.’
Matt’s eyes go from unfocused to panicked and he releases his grip, jumping back from the guy. I try to help the guy to his feet, but he shrugs me away.
‘I’m sorry, mate, it was a mistake, he didn’t mean it.’ It’s like I’m apologising for my disobedient rottweiler.
The guy points at Matt. ‘You… you’re a bloody psycho.’
Matt doesn’t speak. The guy gives him a final glare and lopes away, rubbing at the back of his head.
‘What the hell was that about?’
Matt raises his eyes to mine and he looks confused, dumbfounded. He shakes his head. Alan is now beside us.
‘You need to go to sleep, mate.’ He speaks to Matt gently as if he is a startled horse.
‘I can’t.’
‘Well, sit down. Sit here next to Fin.’ Alan guides him to the mattress. ‘I’ve got something that will help you.’
‘No, no. I don’t want drugs.’
‘Now you listen to me, son,’ Alan says. ‘You need to get some sleep otherwise you’re going to lose your mind. Got it? Sit down here, next to Fin. You’re okay, you’re safe. No one’s gonna hurt you, mate.’
Alan goes to his things and rummages around. He comes back with a small plastic bottle. He shakes some pills into his palm and hands them to Matt.
I sit with Alan, neither of us is able to get back to sleep. Alan polishes his boots on a sheet of newspaper, says he may as well make use of the time. He has a flat round tin of Dubbin and he works the oily cream into the leather with a grey rag. I can see in his face that he has lost weight.
‘Smell that?’ he says, pointing to the boot polish. ‘I smell that and I’m home. Lived out on the land my whole life, used to avoid the city like the plague. Now look at me.’ He shakes his head. ‘You know, it’s funny because back in the fifties and sixties everyone worried about this business, about nuclear war. The Russians were going to nuke us at any minute. And then it all went away. I wonder if we got complacent. My mother was a wise old stick. You know what she used to say to me? She used to say, Alan, never underestimate the human race’s ability to bugger things up… Much like your mate Noll was saying.’ He nods toward Matt, asleep, curled into a tight ball. ‘Don’t reckon I slept for a month after I got back from Vietnam.’
‘You were in the war?’
‘Oh, yeah. Seen things I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. And I was barely eighteen, just a lad, like this fella. I hate to say it, but if you make it out of this, you’ll never be the same.’
Thirty-seven
