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The rest of us, back in Hell, would do pretty much what Homer had suggested – smuggle in more supplies, establish Hell as a proper base, organise food rationing, and suss out new hiding places.
Strangely enough I was quite elated at the thought of the next couple of days. It was partly that I was scared of going back into town, so it was a relief to get a reprieve from that. It was partly too that Kevin would be away for a few days, as he was getting on my nerves a bit. But mainly it was the interesting combinations that were possible among the people who were left. There were Homer and Lee, both of whom I had strong and strange feelings for, but made more complicated by Homer’s obvious attraction to Fi. It was an attraction he still seemed too shy to do much about, although he was more confident with her now. There was Fi, who lately had lost her cool and become nervous and tongue-tied when she was near Homer, despite the fact that it was still hard to believe she could like him – well, like him in that kind of way. There was Lee, who kept looking at me with his possum eyes, as though his wounded leg was the only thing stopping him from leaping up and grabbing me. I was a little afraid of the depth of feeling in those beautiful eyes.
I felt guilty even thinking about love while our world was in such chaos, and especially when my parents were going through this terrible thing. It was the steers at the abattoirs all over again. But my heart was making its own rules and refusing to be controlled by my conscience. I let it run wild, thinking of all the fascinating possibilities.
Chapter Fourteen
Monday morning a dark river of aircraft flowed overhead for an hour or more. Not ours unfortunately. I’d never seen so many aircraft. They looked like big fat transport planes and they weren’t being molested by anyone, though a half-hour later six of our Air Force jets whistled past on the same route. We waved to them, optimistically.
We’d been back to my place, very early, and brought up another load: more food, tools, clothing, toiletries, bedding, and a few odds and ends that we’d forgotten before, like barbecue tools, Tupperware, a clock and, I’m embarrassed to say, hot-water bottles. Robyn had asked for a Bible. I knew we had one somewhere and I found it eventually, dusted it off and added it to the collection.
It was tricky, because we couldn’t take so much stuff that it would be obvious to patrols that someone was on the loose. So we went on to the Grubers, about a k away, and helped ourselves to a lot more food. I also picked up a collection of seeds and seedlings from Mr Gruber’s potting shed. I was starting to think like Homer and plan for the long term.
The last things we got were half a dozen chooks – our best layers – some pellets, fencing wire and star pickets. As dawn broke we rattled on up the track, the chooks murmuring curiously to each other in the back. I’d let Homer drive this time, figuring he needed the practice. To amuse Fi I closed my eyes, picked up the Bible, opened it at random, pointed to a spot, opened my eyes and read the verse, saying at the same time, ‘Through my psychic finger I will find a sentence that applies to us’. The one I’d picked was this: ‘I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.’
‘Golly,’ said Fi. ‘I thought the Bible was meant to be full of love and forgiveness and all that stuff.’
I kept reading. ‘“Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men; preserve me from violent men, who plan evil things in their heart, and stir up wars continually”.’
The others were really impressed. So was I, but I wasn’t going to let on to them. ‘See, I told you,’ I said. ‘I do have a psychic finger.’
‘Try another one,’ Homer said. But I wasn’t going to throw my reputation away that easily.
‘No, you’ve heard the words of wisdom,’ I said. ‘That’s all for today.’
Fi grabbed the Bible and tried the same ritual. The first time she got a blank section of page at the end of one of the chapters. The second time she read, ‘“Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the province of Babylon”.’
‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to have the psychic finger.’
‘Maybe the one you read would make Robyn feel better about gu
‘Mmm, I’ve marked the page. I’ll show her when they get back.’ No one mentioned the possibility that they might not get back. That’s the way people always are I think. They figure if they say something bad they might magically make it happen. I don’t think words are that powerful.
We reached the top, hid the Landie, and took the chooks and whatever else we could carry into Hell. We’d have to wait until dark to get the other stuff. It was too dangerous being up on Tailor’s Stitch with daylight coming on, and so many aircraft around. And it was shaping up to be a scorcher. Even down in Hell, where it was normally cool, the air was getting furnace hot. But to my surprise we found Lee leaning against a tree at the opposite end of the clearing to where we’d left him. ‘Hooley dooley!’ I said. ‘You’ve risen from the dead.’
‘I should have chosen a cooler morning,’ he said, gri
‘Are you sure you should be doing this?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘It felt right.’
I remembered how quite often when our animals got sick or injured they’d get themselves into a hole somewhere – under the shearing shed was a popular place for the dogs – and they’d stay there for days and days, until they either died or came out fresh and cured and wagging their tails. Maybe Lee was the same. He’d kept pretty still since he’d been shot, lying among the rocks, thinking his quiet thoughts. He wasn’t yet wagging his tail, but the energy was returning to his face.
‘The day you can sprint from one end of this clearing to the other,’ I said, ‘we’ll chop off a chook’s head and have a chicken di
‘Robyn can cut the stitches out when she gets back from Wirrawee,’ he said. ‘They’ve been in long enough.’ I helped him to a shady place near the creek, where we could sit together in a damp dark basin of rock, probably the coolest spot in Hell that day.
‘Ellie,’ he said. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. That day back at your place, in the haystack, when you came over to where I was lying, and you laid down and we ...’
‘All right, all right,’ I interrupted. ‘I know what we did.’
‘I thought you might have forgotten.’
‘What, do you think I do that kind of stuff so often I can’t remember? It wasn’t exactly an everyday event for me you know.’
‘Well you haven’t looked at me once since then. You’ve hardly even spoken to me.’
‘I was pretty out of it for a few days. I just slept and slept.’
‘Yes, but since then.’
‘Since then?’ I sighed. ‘Since then I’ve been confused. I don’t know what I think.’
‘Will you ever know what you think?’
‘If I could answer that I’d probably know everything.’
‘Have I said something to upset you? Or done something?’
‘No, no. It’s just me. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, so I do things and I don’t always mean what I think I mean. Do you know what I mean?’ I asked, hopefully, because I wasn’t sure myself.
‘So you’re saying it didn’t mean anything?’
‘I don’t know. It meant something, at the time, and it means something now, but I don’t know if it means what you seem to want it to mean. Why don’t we just say I was being a slut, and leave it at that.’
He looked really hurt and I was sorry I’d said that. I hadn’t even meant it.