‘Of course, Finn. You just get up here straight away.’
‘Okay, I’ll see you soon. Bye.’
‘All right, darling. See you soon,’ said Sonia. And with that Finn hung up.
That afternoon, Chris lent Finn his car so he could get up to his parents’ home. Pulling into the driveway he felt nervousness combined with a sudden pang of homesickness.
As he was parking in the driveway, Sonia came out the front door followed by Tom. ‘Finn!’ she yelled. ‘Come here, my boy.’ With her arms stretched wide, her caftan making her look almost as though she had bat wings, she pulled him in for a hug, squeezing him tightly.
‘I’ve missed you so much, young man. Look at you! You look so fit and healthy — except for that haircut.’ She wrinkled her nose with distaste.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ Finn replied, smiling like a teenager.
‘Come here, son’, said Tom, pulling him in for an even bigger bear-hug. ‘Missed you, mate. Glad to see you made it through training in one piece.’
‘Thanks, Dad. It’s great to see you guys, too.’
‘Come on then, let’s go inside. I want to hear all about it,’ said Sonia.
They had so many questions for him. He did his best to answer them. Tom seemed genuinely interested in what Finn had to say. Gone was the anger and bitterness when he had left for training. He seemed to have done a 180 and was supporting Finn in what he was doing. Finn had to congratulate his mum — she sure knew how to play his father.
Later that afternoon while Sonia was out of the room, Tom leaned over to Finn. ‘Look mate,’ he said, his forehead creasing with regret, ‘I’m really sorry about the way I behaved when you left… ’
‘Dad, stop, you really don’t need to apologise, I… ’
‘No, son. Just listen for a moment. I’m sorry for what I said and how I reacted. You’re a man now and you can make your own decisions. And I honestly do admire you for what you are doing. You feel like you need to do this, and you’re doing it. It takes courage to make a decision like that. I see that now, mate. I didn’t before. I just saw you going off to be cannon fodder out in the bush.’
Finn had listened intently, touched by the words of his dad. He’d never heard him talk about anything with so much emotion. It felt awkward.
‘Dad, I could still wind up cannon fodder,’ said Finn with a smirk. ‘Seriously though, I think the new strategy is going to be much better. General Stephens knows what he’s doing. We’re being trained in tactical, guerrilla warfare. We won’t be doing the all-out, head-on assault that we saw in the beginning. It’ll be different from now on, trust me.’
‘I hope so, Finn — for your sake and the sake of the country, because no one else seems to care if it goes down the drain.’
‘Dad, don’t think for a minute that there aren’t people ready to fight. There are thousands of soldiers being trained just on the other side of the Blue Mountains. God knows how many more camps there are scattered around the rest of the country.’
Tom stared at Finn blankly before forcing an imitation of a smile and slapped his big hand on his son’s knee.
‘Son, I just want you to know that I support what you’re doing and I’m sorry for the way I reacted. Now, we’re out of beer, so I’m going to pop down to the bottle-o.’
Finn watched his father stand up and walk towards the door. ‘Okay, Dad. Thanks.’
The two weeks of leave flew by. Finn split his time between his parents’ house on the Northern Beaches and Chris’s parents’ place in the Eastern Suburbs. Life was good. The weather was cooler but the sharp, clear days were a welcome relief from the hot, sweltering training of the last few months.
Finn and Chris had numerous nights out, and had quickly discovered that telling the girls that Finn was heading out to fight the Chinese worked a treat.
But Finn also noticed a new tension between him and Chris. Late one afternoon the pair stepped into the Golden Sheaf in Double Bay. The bar was quiet and it was cold outside as the sun dropped, so the warm, inviting bar was a welcome sanctuary. As usual, Finn had positioned himself at a spot on the bar where he had a good view of the room, with an eye on the entrance. He did it without thinking — it had become his second nature. He’d also found himself scanning every new space he entered, as though assessing it for possible threats. When they were on their third beer, Chris, out of nowhere and in total seriousness, said, ‘Mate, you’ve changed. I can’t explain exactly how, but you seem different, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know. You’re telling the story, not me,’ replied Finn.
‘Don’t be a twat, mate. You have changed — you’re more serious. It’s like a control thing. You’re not letting go of yourself like you used to.’
‘Dude, of course I’ve fucking changed. I’ve just had three months of bollockings and physical and mental torture. I’ve learnt how to kill a person 20 different ways for chrissakes,’ snapped Finn — more aggressively than he had intended.
‘Yeah, I get that mate. I was just making an observation,’ said Chris.
Sitting there at the bar it dawned on Finn that he had changed — and a lot more than he was showing Chris or anyone else. He was now a trained killer and, in all likelihood, that’s exactly what he would be doing. There was an edge, or hardness, to Finn now that he never knew he had.
‘I’m going to have to go out there soon,’ Finn said, pointing to the west, ‘and in all likelihood kill someone, or be killed myself. I’m not looking for anyone to be impressed, but mate, you gotta understand that I’m scared and I’m a little, well, angry too.’
‘Angry about what, dude?’ quizzed Chris.
‘Angry that I’m going out there to fight while so many others sit around doing fuck-all. That’s what I’m angry about,’ replied Finn, staring into his half-full beer bottle.
‘I see, so it’s “fuck you Chris, stay at home with your mum and dad and masturbate yourself to sleep every night while I, Finn Hunt, go save Australia,” is that what you’re saying? Fuck you, mate.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that, and you know it.’
‘Yeah, right. But that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’ said Chris, now getting fired up.
Finn had gone too far to back down now. ‘Dude, why don’t you join up and fight then? How can you be happy letting people lose their lives for you while you do literally nothing?’
‘“Fight”? You call what the army did up north “fighting”? In case you missed it on BBCNN, they were fucking slaughtered. Dude, what’s the point of fighting against a force like that? You’re just going to be target practice for the enemy.’
Feeling suddenly sober, Finn looked at Chris. ‘What’s the point of living if you never put anything on the line? Your life is as safe as a toddler’s. How does that feel?’
‘That’s not the point,’ Chris responded, visibly stung, ‘You’re fighting for nothing. We don’t need the mines to carry on with a good life. What we need is to focus on rebuilding Australia’s economy. Instead of you tossers running around playing with your guns, we should be putting our minds to the task of getting things back on track.’
‘You’re a fucking idiot, Chris. Do you really think that the Chinese will stop at a few mines in the outback? Think about it: we’re now their bitches. Whatever we create in the future will be taken away from us as soon as the Chinese want it, because that’s what bullies do. Me? I don’t want to live my life as somebody’s bitch and I don’t want my future children growing up like that either.’
Fuming, the two sat facing each other at the bar. The bartender, overhearing them as their voices became louder, had quietly gone out the back. The rest of the bar was empty and quiet.
‘You’re the fucking idiot if you think that going out there to fight is going to make any difference,’ Chris growled through clenched teeth. ‘You’ll be killed — and for what? Some shitty red earth and a load of iron ore — I mean, who gives a fuck?’