then held her head as Darcy set it against her shoulder. She cried for ten minutes or more, and when she was nearly through and just sobbing Grace tried to find out what the problem was. Darcy would only shake her head. Grace stroked her hair and then pulled her close and hugged her.
‘What is it?’ she asked again, but Darcy wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer her. Grace looked at her red eyes and her cheeks wet with tears. She lifted a strand of her damp hair and put it behind her ear. Darcy looked up at her with her sad, blue eyes then lifted her hands and put them on either side of Grace’s face. And then Grace felt her hot, wet mouth as she pressed her lips hard against her cheek. She pulled away and as she did she saw an odd look cross Darcy’s face, and she knew without a doubt that it was a reflection of her own dismay. She stood abruptly.
‘Gra—’
‘I have to go now. If you won’t tell me what’s wrong …’
Darcy bit her lip and said nothing. Finally, Grace had to turn and walk away, her head all confusion, her feelings in a spin. When she glanced over her shoulder her friend was sitting very still, watching her depart. Her face looked very pale in the dappled sunlight. Darcy gave a weak, hopeful smile and then waved, as if hoping with all her heart that she wouldn’t be the only one to do so. Grace hesitated, her brow furrowing, but then she lifted her hand and waved it feebly once or twice before turning for home.
Tom wiped his hands on his trousers and then jumped up and caught the hook swinging down from the truck’s jib hoist. Using his weight, he pulled the hook and the steel cable attached to it down and around the log while Henry watched from the truck’s cab and barked orders. He ducked down and jammed the hook under the log where there was a small gap between it and the ground and then he scrambled over the log and burrowed through the earth and leaves with his hand until he felt the hook and could pull it through. If the log was too heavy he’d grab the log-hook and hang off it and roll the log over the cable until the hook appeared. Sometimes Henry had to come and do it. When the cable was looped round the log Henry jabbed at the winch controls and the steel noose slithered and tightened round the log and lifted it off the ground. Tom thought that Henry was nearly always too quick with the winch and didn’t give him enough time to get clear. Sometimes he found himself on his backside in the dirt, having dodged the log, holding his hand where the rope had grazed it, or splinters had gone in. He didn’t understand the need for all the hurry, always wringing the truck’s neck. He could see how Bloody John had broken his arm – it would be easy enough to get it caught either in the loop or under a rolling log, but Henry expected him to be quick, to use his head, and he wasn’t going to let him or the job get the better of him.
Flynn stood on the truck’s seat and watched him out the rear window. He sometimes shouted to him, calling out Hey! or something similar when he slipped over, but other than that he kept still in the seat. He’d already learnt to keep right out of Henry’s way. The window was about the same shape as a movie screen but Flynn’s fingers were hanging out of this one, unrestrained by the rules of coloured film and light, and Henry’s scarred arm and big hand came right out to work the winch. The last time they’d gone to the movies in Laurence the woman hadn’t let him and Flynn in because of their bare feet and they’d had to sit for an hour and a half, staring at their tickets, distraught, until their mother returned, and then she’d gone to the woman and given her one hell of a blast. He smiled at the memory, but then put it from his head in case it distracted him.
‘Wait there,’ ordered Henry. Tom, surprised, watched the truck disappear down the track, Flynn’s face a pale oval in the window, to where they’d taken the other logs, to where the jinker would pick them up later. He wondered whether Wait there was Henry’s way of saying he’d done a good job and he should have a break, or that he was completely useless. He sat down under a tree to wait, suddenly feeling a little lonely.
Henry had been gone a long time the night before. Tom had given up waiting for him. He’d gone and lain on his bed, listening to the world outside the house, but had fallen asleep, and only later been woken by the sound of the truck returning, Henry’s steady footsteps through the house, all the energy drained away, all the fury. Whatever had happened, whatever he’d said or done at the Steeles’, he didn’t say. Then, outside in the night, a real storm had brewed, just the faint sound of thunder at first, slowly moving closer, becoming louder, until the house was shuddering, until he’d worried about his mother having to come home through it. The lightning had flashed through the window and then the rain, great sheets of it, had come crashing down on the roof for half an hour, maybe three-quarters, and then it had gone, waltzing away down the valley, leaving the drains gurgling and the air cool and clean. He’d heard the floorboards creak as Henry walked out to the verandah. He’d pictured him standing out there on the step in his singlet, watching the storm go, maybe smoking one of the bent Marlboros. In the last flickers of light through the window he’d seen Flynn in his bed across the room, his mouth a dark O in his face, oblivious to it all.
There’d been no black eyes in the morning light, no grazes on Henry’s knuckles which hadn’t been there before, but there had been silence and an understanding on Tom’s part that he should not mention anything to do with the night before, especially not in front of his mother, whom he hadn’t even heard come home. Tom hadn’t even dreamt of it.
When Henry returned he jumped down from the truck and proceeded to build a little fire of twigs and bark to boil the billy on. A breeze picked up and blew the firesmoke away through the trees. When the tea was made he opened a tin of biscuits and passed two each to Tom and Flynn. Tom went and sat with his back against the cool trunk of a young bluegum and watched Flynn mess about chasing big red bull ants with a stick. He daydreamed about taking off his shoes and putting his feet in cool creek water. Henry had made both of them wear their school shoes to stop splinters. Tom hardly ever wore his except on special occasions and they were black and shiny and stiff and made his feet feel clumsy and heavy. They hurt his heels but it was worse for Flynn – he’d never worn his. Henry said that that was all the more reason Flynn should wear them in before he started school. Tom tried to tell him that hardly anyone wore shoes there but Henry hadn’t seemed to hear him.
‘Be careful with those bloody things, Flynn,’ Tom said when Henry went behind a tree to piss. ‘Don’t get bit!’
‘I won’t,’ said Flynn, spitting crumbs.
Henry set the transistor radio on the ground when he came back and they listened to a few songs and then the pips sounded and the news came on. The newsreader read out something about birth dates for the conscription. Tom listened and, to his alarm, heard his own – the same day and month, but a different year.
‘That’s my birthday!’
‘What?’
‘He just said my birthday!’
‘You’re too young.’
‘For what?’
‘To fight.’
‘What if I was old enough?’
Henry shrugged. ‘You’d have to go,’ he said.
‘What if I didn’t want to go?’
Henry looked at him as though he were surprised he could speak. ‘You’d have to.’
‘But what if I have to go one day? What if the war’s still going when I’m old enough?’
‘Well … you’d have to go. If I had anything to say about it. If your country needs you, you have to go.’
Henry flicked away the leafy tea at the bottom of his cup and then looked at Tom as though one or two more questions might be all right. Tom was about to ask another question when Henry suddenly looked up and shouted at Flynn to be careful. Tom looked over at his brother. He didn’t seem in any immediate danger.
‘Come on,’ said Henry, gruffly, after a silence.
When they