‘Yes, you do. I’ve told you about him enough times.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Well, when he landed in the sea and they opened up the hatch on his capsule, do you remember what he was doing?’
‘No,’ said Flynn, shaking his head.
‘He was eating an apple. He was sitting there at his flippin’ flight deck eating an apple.’
Flynn laughed and they both felt a little better for a while.
‘Tom?’
‘Yes?’
‘Why’d they send a chim-pan-zee into space?’
‘They wanted to see if something alive would be all right up there. Before they sent people. It wouldn’t be so bad if a chimpanzee got killed.’
‘Why not?’
‘They don’t understand things.’ Tom shrugged. ‘They wouldn’t get as scared too.’
‘Oh. Tom?’
‘Yes?’
‘Will Dad be mad at us?’
‘I suppose so. Probably.’
They walked for half an hour and Flynn kept grumbling about his stomach. Tom was suddenly dizzy in the head and he had to sit down for a moment to let it pass. Flynn squatted down next to him. He looked worried and then he began to cry again. He was dirty and his shirt was ripped down the front. Tom could see that he’d had a hard night as well, maybe harder than his own.
‘Don’t be a bloody baby, Flynn,’ said Tom, very softly, with no venom in his voice.
It took a long while for his brother’s tears to stop this time and as Tom waited for him the sun cleared the trees and bathed them in warm yellow light.
‘We’ll get home, Flynn. I promise we will. Come on, have a drink.’
‘You promise?’
‘Yep. I promise. Come on.’
Tom walked his little brother down to the creek and watched as he hung his head over the water and drank, on hands and knees, as though he’d been doing it that way all his life.
They spent half the morning walking back along the creek the way they had come. Tom scanned the banks for any sign of where they had come down from the road but he saw nothing he remembered. The sun was soon scorching into them and their stomachs growled without pause. At about mid-morning they came to a fork in the creek. Tom sat down, despairing, but tried to keep his disappointment from Flynn. He was almost certain he hadn’t passed a branch like this the night before. Maybe they’d missed the road altogether. There was nothing for it but to choose a fork of the creek and follow it down to where it must surely join up with the river. He thought about it for a few minutes, chewing his lip, then chose the right fork.
‘Come on,’ he said to Flynn as he started off. ‘Nearly there.’
All that morning they walked by bluegums, tallowwoods and brushboxes and then, in the middle of the afternoon, the country became much drier and the timber on either side changed to bloodwoods, ironbarks and grey gums, and the ferns and dark-leaved palms gave way to kangaroo grass and blackboys. Cockatoos screeched in the trees as they passed. When Flynn grew tired Tom piggybacked him until his arms ached and his legs trembled. Sometimes when the valley they were in straightened out he saw undulating olive bush stretching ahead as far as he could see. At one point they were quite high and he could make out small clearings in the bush and far ahead a column of pale smoke rising vertically into the cloudless sky. His spirits lifted and he shouted and small birds whirred between trees, startled by the alien noise. They headed for the smoke but never seemed to get any closer to it all that afternoon and then a breeze came and tugged it to and fro until it was indistinguishable against the blue of the sky. Flynn was too tired to notice and only too happy to lie down once again to sleep as darkness fell.
In the morning cryptic-eyed geckoes watched Tom wake and stretch his stiff body. He crawled to the water’s edge and drank and then he woke Flynn and made him go to the creek and drink as well. Apart from a handful of bitter-tasting berries they’d had nothing to eat since the publican’s wife at Jack’s Mountain had made them a sandwich and they were both light-headed and weak from hunger.
‘It’s a new day and we can make it,’ Tom whispered to himself.
He was still crouched by the creek when something caught his eye. A fat bluetongue lizard was spread out on a nearby rock, soaking up the morning sun. Tom wiped his mouth, then crawled back a dozen feet and began to search around for a weapon. He scrabbled around in the undergrowth until he found a good-sized stick and then he crept forward, the lizard in his sights. Flynn curled up on the ground and watched him.
‘What you doing?’ he said.
‘Shhh!’
He snuck up on the bluetongue with all the stealth he could muster. When the lizard looked like moving he froze, but when he was barely two yards away it was still in the same spot. He hefted the stick in his hand and wondered how he should attack. The decision was made for him when the lizard curled its body round suddenly to face him, then stuck out its tongue and hissed. Tom leapt up, bringing the stick clubbing down around the lizard – it hissing like a maniac and evading the blows somehow. Tom squeezed his eyes shut and, almost in tears, intensified the barrage until, finally, he felt the stick strike something softer than the rock. He opened his eyes. The bluetongue’s head was bloodied and its legs were doing a slow crawl but getting it nowhere. He sat down, panting and sick to the stomach, and waited for it to die.
He felt Flynn at his shoulder but barely had the strength to turn and look at him, but then he felt his little body slump against him. He turned. Flynn’s face was pale and his eyes were right up in his head – he’d fainted dead away. Tom took hold of his arms and pulled him over to the shade of a tree. He brought water from the creek in his cupped hands and wet Flynn’s cheeks and lips with it and when he started to come round he went back down to the lizard and wondered how he was going to get to the meat without a knife. A butcherbird lit on a rock in the creek and eyed the bluetongue’s carcass.
‘Shoo!’ said Tom, and waved his arm.
He hunted around for a rock with a sharp edge and when he’d found one he turned the bluetongue over onto its back – the scrape of its little claws against the rock making his skin crawl – and eyed the soft, pale belly. The skin was much tougher than it looked and he had to push down hard with the rock, so hard that a burst of evil-looking shit came squirting out from between the lizard’s hind legs. He gagged, turned, retched up the water he’d drunk that morning, and kept retching until nothing more would come. He wiped his mouth and looked down at the rock in his hand. It was streaked with the same dark blood that flecked his hands and forearms and that made him feel even sicker. When he could he looked back at the lizard lying on the rock. Then, in a fit of rage and frustration, he kicked it into the creek. Breathing hard, he turned and walked up to Flynn and grabbed him by the arm.
‘Come on, we’re going.’
They stumbled along for the rest of the morning, Tom holding Flynn’s hand, sometimes nearly dragging him along until, finally, he stopped, curled
