‘I’m feeling good this morning,’ said Pender’s father. ‘I won’t need your help up the hill.’
Some mornings were like this. His father seemed to wake up with extra strength. It made them all feel happy when that happened—especially Billy-Bob, who would leap up and down when he saw Pender’s father set off by himself. He would bark wildly, falling backwards, then pick himself up again.
When they had finished their porridge, Pender helped his father make sandwiches with tomatoes and a very strong-smelling cheese. His father put one sandwich in his pocket and left the other on a plate on the kitchen table.
‘There’s your lunch, Pender,’ he said.
He headed out the door. Pender stood on the verandah, eating another apple. Streams of fog appeared as he breathed in and out. He watched Billy-Bob turn circles along the path beside his father all the way to the top to the hut. The flock of red hens came bobbing over from the henhouse, making nervous cries and pecking at the grass and the patches of wildflowers.
‘Hello, you silly chickens,’ said Pender.
He tossed them a bit of apple and they rushed forward in a frenzy. Pender watched the door of the hut on the hill close behind his father and Billy-Bob. He waited until the slender stream of smoke began to spurt out of the hut’s tiny chimney.
Remember to be a good man, he thought, and sat down on the back step.
He looked across to where the two black-and-white cows stood calmly chewing their cud, and the old white horse hung her head over the fence. The wide green meadows that sloped down towards the valley’s narrow river below the house were silvered with morning frost. In the early sunshine, the water shone like a piece of broken glass. As always, when he caught sight of the river, Pender felt a sudden surge of excitement.
‘That’s what I’ll do today,’ he decided. ‘I’ll go for a walk along the river.’
Of course, he had done this many times before, but there was always something new to discover. He went to his bedroom to find his jacket, then headed back outside. Although the sun was strong, the ground was very cold, and he had to stamp his feet to get warm. Ricky the cat, high on the roof, stretched out and looked down at him. The flock of hens followed him through the yard up to the gate and hovered around until he was gone from their sight.
A steep muddy slope led to the river and Pender half-slid slowly down it until he reached the bank. A walking path wound along the water through a mess of reeds, overhung by leaning trees and low branches of bright yellow wattle. Standing in the middle of the path, Pender looked up and down the glistening water. He listened to the frogs, the gurgling and croaking, and the almost noiseless splashes as they jumped in and out.
‘Which way?’ he wondered.
One way, he knew, led deeper into the valley. The other would take him towards the coast. There was no reason to go in one direction or the other, so he decided to close his eyes and spin around on one foot. When he opened his eyes, whichever way he was looking, that would be the direction he would walk. He opened his eyes.
‘There!’
He headed off on the path that took him deeper into the valley. He felt the smooth hardness of the round pebbles through the soles of his boots, and dampness seeped into his socks. He ducked the overhanging branches and tried not to tread in the wombat holes.
After a while, the river curved away and the pathway stretched out from the water’s edge and disappeared. Warm from walking, Pender took off his jacket and tied it around his waist.
‘Now where?’
In the distance, up above the riverbank, he could see what looked like a wall of trees, lines of tall gums reaching upwards. Their trunks were tightly bound to each other, thick with leaves and branches. Pender felt himself drawn towards them. Could there be something secret behind the woody wall that he might discover if he were brave enough?
He left the river behind him and began to make his way upwards. The wet grass slapped his legs and his calf muscles ached. As he came closer, the wall of bush no longer seemed like a wall. Now he could see large spaces between the trunks and he didn’t have to push his way in as it had seemed from a distance. It was almost as though the trees were moving aside to let him through, like curtains drawing back from a stage…
He stepped from the open sunshine into the green-grey half-darkness of the bush and stopped to catch his breath from the climb. The sun broke through the leaves above in thin glimpses, like light through high church windows. There were birds calling each other, high curling trills and low hoots. There was a rapid humming of insects, and a stirring of leaves in the light wind. Pender felt his thoughts becoming so quiet, as though the rest of the world had disappeared.
Then he felt something near him move. And suddenly—
The insects and the birds stopped singing.
Pender knew at once it was a gun. Nothing else sounds like a gunshot—so sudden, so crisp. So dangerous.
He heard the fluttering of hundreds of wings disappearing into a distant world through the leaves. He heard the pattering of tiny feet running, running. All the blood inside his body rushed around inside him like a whirlpool. Then he heard something fall, with a thump on the earth.
Pender waited and everything in the bush waited with him. Would there be another shot? He breathed in the smell of gum leaves and grass and wet earth. Then, just as suddenly as the sound of the shot
