4
The Night (I)

I had a squatter in the bungalow. A stray cat with ginger tiger rings had taken to turning up on my deck. Sometimes when I came home from the university I found him waiting for me, bathing in a pool of sunshine or licking his wrists and washing his pink nose with his paws. He chose to go without a collar and you could tell he was awful proud of that.

What I like about cats is they couldn’t give a damn whether you are there or not – although this fellow wasn’t averse to the odd tickle behind the ears when the fancy took him. My da used to say that if you call a dog, he comes; but a cat takes a message and gets back to you!

After a few days we became friendly and the little moggy would hop through an open window and march right into the living room, bold as brass, tail sticking up like a car aerial. Then he’d rub against my legs until I relented and forked some food into a bowl. When he purred in thankfulness, I felt insanely grateful for the favour. I named that pussy Finnegan, to remind myself of home.

It was Finnegan who kept me awake the night the boy arrived. The cat was restless, prowling around the bungalow . . . or maybe I was restless myself. It was awful hot, and out in the night the crickets crackled like static.

Sometime in the wee hours I gave up trying to sleep. I switched on the bedside light, picked up a copy of Scientific American and got absorbed in a great little article about the development of computers. The fellow was arguing that within a few decades, every home would have their own computer, which they’d use for everything from ordering shopping, to communicating with friends, to educating the kids. There’d be telephones with moving pictures too. What a world that would be!

That was when I noticed the rumbling. I felt the bed vibrate slightly and it crossed my mind that it might be a small earthquake – not unknown in this part of the world. I got up and walked to the front room in my pyjamas. Under my bare feet I felt the floorboards tremble beneath the carpet. It was an unsettling sensation.

There was an unpleasant buzzing sound in the room and I realized it was the windows rattling in their frames. I pulled back the curtain a little and peered into the night, where ragged clouds dragged at a lemon-slice moon. Then a strange thing happened: my front yard and Dead River Farm became bright with wavering spotlights. A convoy of vehicles was approaching along the track.

The rumbling grew louder and I could make out ten or more slow-moving vehicles. It made me shudder to my bones. I stood well out of sight and counted four large motorbikes, several station wagons, a garage tow truck, two or three hefty customized four-wheel drives with giant tyres, spotlights and grilles on their fenders. I even noticed a couple of police patrol cars.

What were they doing out there? Where were they going?

As they trundled by, I caught glimpses of a crew of heavily built White men, some with caps over eyes, or bandanas and thick muscled necks. I saw beards and tattoos and the occasional flicker of studs and rings and chains. For one terrifying moment I thought those visitors were heading for my door . . . but they kept on rolling, up a steep path by the side of Dead River Farm and into the fields above.

For the rest of the night I lay sleepless, my ears scanning the night. I heard occasional shouts and revving engines far away in the fields, and it was almost light before those vehicles returned, the same way they had come, rumbling slowly past my door.

Being a rational fellow, I searched for some explanation for what a group of men would be doing in the dead of night. A hunting party perhaps? Or maybe they played poker or brewed moonshine together?

Whatever it was, it was not conducive to sleep.