Bill Rules (3 page)

Tom was true to his word. He pulled up at one of the State Park camp-sites and walked with Mat and Bill through the bush for about half an hour until Mat announced, ‘This is the spot.'

Bill had started to get excited about the expedition when, a few miles from the Park entrance, he'd seen towering rocky crests shining gold in the late afternoon sun. He was just as pleased with Mat's choice of place for setting up camp. They were halfway up one of the mountain crags. At the base of the cliff there was a rocky overhang. A secret spring dripped water onto the rock shelf below. This particular spot levelled
out and there was grass, wildflowers and twisted, wind-battered gum trees with white trunks leaning at different angles. Tom said they were Snow Gums.

‘Good one,' said Bill.

‘Right-o,' said Tom cheerfully. ‘I'll be back down the hill there, waiting to hear if you blow that whistle of yours. Good luck.'

Tom gave Mat and Bill a quick hug and then set off without looking back. Mat got started immediately with setting up camp. Soon they had their hootchie strung up between two trees. Under Mat's direction, they also gathered dry grass and bracken to make a mattress for the two friends to sleep on. Then it was time to eat. Bill asked if they should make a fire. Mat looked at the quickly setting sun and the shadows that were stretching across the land like long fingers, ‘Nope,' she said. ‘We won't have a fire tonight. After school all week and that drive, we won't have the energy for fire-making. We'll eat our dry stuff and make a fire tomorrow.'

Mat and Bill took the backpack and climbed to the top of the overhang. From here they looked over the trees, down to the valley, and across to a ripple of blue
mountains, one after the other, stretching to a horizon unmarked by a single human being. Mat issued the rations. They ate mixed dried fruit and nuts, then some chocolate, then some more chocolate, and then had a big drink of water from a flask. They followed this with a crunchy apple each. ‘This will be the last fresh food we eat,' said Mat. ‘Unless we can find some bush tucker tomorrow.'

‘Bush tucker?' asked Bill with a sinking heart.

‘Fruits that grow in the bush round here. Nan's shown me stuff, but you have to know.'

‘Know what?'

‘You might get poisoned if you don't know what you're eating,' said Mat.

Bill, now a whole year and a half older than he had been when he first met Mat, realised with alarm that Mat would probably expect him to unquestioningly eat whatever she told him to. He still had a lot of respect for Mat's knowledge but, in the case of bush food, he would have preferred to have Nan there to check with. After all, eating the snake had been done with Nan explaining all the dos and don'ts. Bill pictured himself eating something poisonous and lying
there writhing on the ground, miles from help. But before his imagination could make things worse, the sun suddenly dropped behind the mountains in the west.

‘Quick,' said Mat, ‘We'll need to climb down to our hootchie before it's pitch dark.'

Bill (with the backpack on) and Mat scrambled down to the flat area. They left their shoes and the backpack just near their shelter, then lay themselves down on their grassy mattress and covered themselves with their jackets. It grew cool very quickly. Bill listened to the sounds of the late evening. The ocean wave swish of wind in leaves. The lazy croak of a frog like an occasional yawn. The nervy high pitch of insects. In particular, Bill was fascinated by the bird calls; they sounded sleepy and slower, as if they were murmuring to each other the same way he and Mat did when they were having a sleep-over before floating off to dreams. The children murmured now, in fact:

‘I like this,' said Bill quietly.

‘Me, too,' said Mat.

‘They can't get you,' said Bill.

‘Who can't?'

‘Teachers and stuff. Like if you hadn't done your homework, they couldn't ring up or come round and make you. Not way out here.'

‘Yeah,' said Mat.

‘I wonder if my dad wishes he could go camping,' added Bill.

‘I reckon he might.'

‘He told us in one of his first letters that he was all squished up in that jail cell – no view out the window, just a table, a chair and a bed.'

‘A sort of coffin.'

‘Exactly. So I worry about him every day. Lots of times during the day. When I read a newspaper or see something on TV about jails, I get frightened for him. It's like there's a rock stuck in my heart and I can't get it unstuck 'til Dad is out of jail.'

‘Why are you
that
worried?'

‘You hear scary things about jail. Dangerous things.'

‘Would you want him to be here right now, with us?'

‘Yes, because I'd know he was safe and free. And no, because he'd spoil things somehow. He never thinks before he does something.'

‘Well, tonight he's not here. Look at those stars, instead.'

Although her body was still under the hootchie, Mat's head was now poking out. Bill wriggled further up to see. They lay on their backs and gazed for so long into the blue-black sky that it stopped being a flat canvas with painted lights, and turned into what it was – a three-dimensional universe, a great, deep, starry sea that flowed into forever.

‘Awesome,' said Bill after a long period of quietness.

Mat didn't reply. Instead, Bill could hear a gentle snuffling. Mat was asleep. Even with their makeshift grass mattress, Bill was too uncomfortable to sleep. He tried turning on his side, but his hip dug into the ground. He rolled onto his other side. No good. It was going to be a sleepless night.

Thoughts about his father slithered into Bill's mind like an inky shadow. The old sadness worked its way down into his throat and chest; it smothered him and made him breathless. What do you do when you're worried about someone and can't be there to help them?
You find someone to share your worries with
thought Bill.

Bill remembered his adopted great-uncle, Uncle George (Pam's uncle's best mate. Uncle Peter and Uncle George had fought up in New Guinea during World War Two.). Even after Peter died, Great-Uncle George (who had no family of his own) used to visit Bill's family quite a bit – until he died when Bill was about six years old. Bill's great-uncle had been so old (nearly ninety-one) that time had washed the colour from his eyes and his remaining four wisps of hair. His skin was like tissue paper – his hands and arms had tiny tears and purple-black bruises. Uncle George's voice was wobbly and high as if the voice box had reached its use-by-date. Although he was a bit smelly, Bill didn't mind. Everything smells when it's old – books, oranges, even whole houses. Great-Uncle George was tall and so skinny that his clothes hung loosely off him like a badly dressed scarecrow. When he sat, his knee bones looked like they would poke through his pants. He kept a supply of what he called ‘sweeties' in his pockets as special treats for Bill. Uncle George taught Bill to whistle. Bill also remembered the way his great-uncle (always an early riser as retired farmers usually are) would make everyone in
the family freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast. The world seemed safe when he was around.

If Bill couldn't get to sleep because he was scared of the dark or worried about something, Uncle George used to sit on the end of his bed to keep him company. His uncle would quietly ask the sort of questions about Bill's day that helped him name hurts and fears that a few minutes beforehand he could not find words to describe. Even by the naming, those black feelings shrank into something smaller, something you could pin on a wall, something you could fight. Uncle George would make a scooping motion with his big knuckled hands and hurl Bill's invisible weights skywards. ‘Catch!' he'd say.

‘Who'd you throw it to?' Bill would ask.

‘The Old Bloke upstairs' was Uncle George's usual answer.

‘True?'

‘Fair dinkum!' Uncle George would say.

Bill and his great-uncle would chuckle away in the dark. Then Uncle George would pat Bill's hand and
say, ‘Don't you be afraid, my boy. Thy sleep shall be sweet.' He'd been dead for years now. Bill was sad he couldn't remember more about Uncle George, but that bedtime ritual was a special memory.

Tonight, Bill pictured his dad lying on his narrow prison cell bed. He scooped up his dad and threw him high into the sky – like a beach ball being thrown at a shining, warm-hearted, summer sun. That worked for a few minutes, but a rocky bit under his hip stopped magical sleep from whisking Bill away.

Bill decided to create a story of how he'd like his life to be. He pictured Troy, his father, at home being helpful and hardworking. He saw him mending a broken chair and his mum smiling away in the kitchen. Then one of Troy's creepy mates turned up on the doorstep. In Bill's imagination, he took control of his father to make him do the honest thing – a bit like a puppeteer manoeuvres a puppet on a string. He got Troy to open the door, but firmly shake his head as if to say ‘no way' when the mate suggested some stupid, dishonest way to make some quick money. He made Troy shut the door, then come back and give Bill and his mum a big hug. But hoping like this didn't seem
enough; to make it happen, maybe you had to believe at the same time. Mid-thought, he felt himself drifting. He couldn't quite finish his story, but at least it had been good for helping him get to sleep.

The scream was the most terrible one Bill and Mat had ever heard in their lives. It sounded like a baby being killed. There it went again, echoing through the darkness. Bill put his arms round Mat. ‘Don't move,' he whispered, ‘I'm going to check this.'

‘Don't go,' Mat ordered, ‘There's a killer out there. Blow the whistle for Tom.'

‘If we blow the whistle, whoever it is will know for sure where we are.'

A third time, the blood-curdling, human scream ripped through the night. The sound was coming
from somewhere to their right, down in the thicker bush. The rough track down to Tom's campsite was to their left.

‘Maybe it's a possum,' said Bill quietly.

‘Possums snarl and growl; they don't scream like little children,' said Mat.

Bill knew Mat was right. Possums often had violent fights inside the roof above his bedroom. They bashed and thumped and sounded like giant, hoarse wildcats.

‘Could be a Bunyip, though,' whispered Mat.

‘A what?'

‘A Bunyip. Nan says they live in swamps; they're the size of a calf, very dark fur, bull-dog face, tusks, flippery feet – and dangerous.'

‘You're having me on,' Bill whispered back. ‘That'd be an Aboriginal fairy-tale.'

‘Wish it was,' said Mat, ‘but William Buckley knew it was real.'

Yet another scream ripped through the night. There was no time for Bill to find out who this Buckley guy was, or why he should be believed. Bunyip or human murderer, the children's shelter would give their whereabouts away.

‘Let's move out of the hootchie to the rock shelf,' said Bill.

In the protection of the overhang, the children squeezed themselves into the back crevice – as far away from the edge as possible. The rock under them was painfully hard, but Bill and Mat knew there would be no sleeping anyway. Their eyes peered into the darkness; their ears strained to hear any danger. An owl gave a couple of graveyard hoots and then there was silence. Bill was trying to detect the tiniest noise when Mat suddenly grabbed his arm.

‘Footsteps,' she whispered.

Sure enough, Bill heard a quiet crunching of leaves and the sharp snapping of twigs ... The steps were coming closer and closer – slow and determined. Mat clung so close to him that he could feel the pounding of her heart against his side. Rage welled up in him. He and Mat still had their lives to live. How dare this evil person or creature steal their future. That was what murder was, a terrible type of stealing. Bill crouched, put one arm around Mat and, with his free hand, felt around him on the rock shelf. Just as he heard the sounds getting louder, his fingers found
what he was looking for – a piece of loose rock, small enough to hold, big and jagged enough to use as a weapon of defence.

A dark figure now appeared on the small grassy plateau. Whenever he thought back to this moment, what he recalled was seeing something that looked like an illustration of Death. The figure was hooded. The hood fell over his face, like an olden-days hangman. It was the Grim Reaper coming to get them.

Bill's heart was throwing itself about in his chest. He watched as the figure paused at the hootchie and stooped down to see who was inside. Bill, still crouching, quietly manoeuvred himself in front of Mat. At the very least, he would put up enough of a fight to give Matty a chance to run. He shifted his weight to give himself more leverage with the hand that held the rock. The hooded figure stood up. ‘Mat! Bill! Where are you?'

Bill let out a sigh and breathed deep.

‘Hell, Tom! You scared the heck out of us,' cried Matty.

‘I almost bashed you with this rock,' said Bill.

The two children clambered out from their hiding place.

‘I had to check on you. That koala was carrying on a treat. Heard one first time I was camping as a kid. Nearly wet myself thinking someone was getting murdered,' explained Tom.

Relief swept through Bill and Mat. But Mat's pride came first. ‘Well, thank you for your concern,' she said primly, ‘but do you realise you've broken the rule?'

‘Ahh,' said Tom. ‘The two kilometre no-go rule.'

‘Yes, that one,' said Mat.

Bill smiled to himself. Matty seemed to have forgotten that it was she who had wanted Bill to blow the emergency whistle. He stepped up to Tom and gave him a hug. ‘Thanks, Tom.' That's all he said, but man-to-man, they both knew Bill meant a whole lot more, like –
Oh, boy, I was scared and I had to be brave, but I sure am glad you were around to sort that out.

‘Well, I'd better scurry back to my solitary confinement before that bossy sister of mine tells me off again. Night folks!' And with that, Tom disappeared down the hill.

‘Happy dreams, big bro!' called Mat.

All the excitement had worked on both the children;
they had to make little toilet expeditions into the undergrowth. Then they returned to their hootchie and fell into such a deep sleep that the sun was high in the sky when they woke the next day.