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, grinning. ‘But I got sick of sitting there. Thought it was time for some exercise, now that I’ve recovered from that truck ride.’ He was grinning, very pleased with himself, but sweating. I rinsed a towel in the creek and wiped his face.
‘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 dinner.’
‘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.
‘It’s a bit difficult sitting down here,’ he said. ‘If you want to get rid of me, you’re the one who’ll have to go.’
‘Oh Lee, I don’t want to get rid of you. I don’t want to get rid of anyone. We all have to get on, living in this place the way we are, for God knows how long.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This place, Hell. It seems like Hell sometimes. Now for instance.’
I don’t know why I was talking the way I was. It was all happening too unexpectedly. It was a conversation I wasn’t ready for. I guess I like to be in control of things, and Lee had forced this on me at a time and a place that he’d chosen. I wished Corrie were there, so I could go and talk to her about it. Lee was so intense he scared me, but at the same time I felt something strong when he was around – I just didn’t know what it was. I was always very conscious when I was near him. My skin felt hotter, I’d be watching him out of the corner of my eye, directing my comments at him, noticing his reactions, listening more for his words than for anyone else’s. If he expressed an opinion I’d think about it more carefully, give it more weight than I would, say, Kevin’s or Chris’s. I used to think about him a lot in my sleeping bag at nights, and because I’d be thinking about him as I drifted into sleep I tended to dream about him. It got so that – this sounds stupid but it’s true – I associated him with my sleeping bag. When I looked at one I’d think of the other. That doesn’t necessarily mean I wanted him in my sleeping bag, but they had started to go together in my mind. I nearly smiled as I sat there, thinking about that, and wondering how he’d look if he could suddenly read my thoughts.
‘Do you still think about Steve a lot?’ he asked.
‘No, not Steve. Oh I mean I think about him in the same way I think about a lot of people, wondering if they’re all right and hoping they are, but I don’t think about him in the way you mean.’
‘Well if I haven’t offended you and you’re not with Steve any more, then where does that leave me?’ he asked, getting exasperated. ‘Do you just dislike me as a person?’
‘No,’ I said, horrified at that idea but getting a bit annoyed too, at the way he was trying to bully me into a relationship. Guys do that all the time. They want definite answers – as long as they’re the right answers – and they think if they keep at you long enough they’ll get them.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘sorry I can’t give you a list of my feelings about you, in point form and alphabetical order. But I just can’t. I’m all confused. That day in the haystack was no accident. It meant something. I’m still trying to figure out what.’
‘You say you don’t dislike me,’ he said slowly, like he was trying to figure it out. He was looking away from me and he was very nervous, but he was obviously leading up to an important question. ‘So that does mean you like me?’
‘Yes Lee, I like you very much. But right now you’re driving me crazy.’ It was funny how often I’d thought of us having this conversation, but now that we were having it I didn’t know if I was saying what I wanted to say.
‘I’ve noticed you looking at Homer kind of ... special since we’ve been up here. Have you got a thing for him?’
‘It’d be my business if I did.’
‘Cos I don’t think he’s right for you.’
‘Oh Lee, you’re so annoying today! Maybe you shouldn’t have tried walking on that leg. I honestly think it’s weakened your brain. Let’s blame it on that, or the weather or something, because you don’t own me and you don’t have any right to decide who’s right or wrong for me, and don’t you forget it.’ I stormed off in a hot passion to the other side of the clearing where Fi and Homer had been making a yard for the chooks. The chooks were in it, looking shocked, maybe because they’d heard me chucking my tantrum; more likely because they were wondering what the hell they were doing there.
Oh. ‘What the hell.’ I just made a joke.
I watched the chooks for a while, then cut across the clearing again to where the creek wandered back into thick bush and lost itself in a dark tunnel of undergrowth. I’d been thinking for a few days I might try to explore down there a bit, impossible and impassable though it seemed. This might be the time to do it. I could work off some anger and get my mind onto something else. Besides, it looked cool in there. I took my boots and socks off, stuffed the socks in the boots, and tied the boots round my neck. Then I bent over and tried to pretend I was a wombat, a water wombat. I’m the right shape for that, and it was the only way to get under all the vegetation. I was using the creek as a path, but there was a definite sensation of going along a tunnel. The greenery arched so low that it scraped my back even when I was almost kissing the water. It was cool – I doubt if the sun had penetrated the creepers for years – and I hoped I wouldn’t meet too many snakes.