SHINE YOUR LIGHT ON ME

Damien first noticed her at church. He’d come in late, as usual, slipping into the half-space at the end of the pew next to his family. She was across the aisle and three places in, but he could see her well enough if he delayed kneeling to pray, and if he delayed getting up after he’d prayed. His dad gave him a disguised clip under the ear for dawdling, and he grinned when he saw that she’d noticed. The manner of gaining her attention had been established. He was an adept class clown.

School started again, and they were in the same class. Second-year high school. Though it was a district high school and went to Year Ten, Damien overheard her telling other girls that she would only be at the school for one year – her parents were sending her to a private school in the city. I couldn’t get in this year because it was too short notice, she explained, with just the right tone … my dad didn’t know he’d end up here. That opening speech brought her equal admiration and enmity according to the social split that had existed among the girls since the first grade. Damien knew that she was not in his league (he hated that expression) – and anyway, the up-themselves girls wouldn’t allow it now, no matter what she actually thought of him. The snob thing was a fortress that could not be breached.

They only let Damien mix with the ‘sluts’, as they called them – the bush pigs and the slags. They were much better than the snob girls anyway, you could talk to them and they’d listen to music or go out into the bush and even muck around a bit. But wherever a No Trespassing sign was put up, Damien wanted to tear it down. Gerry was the best of the bush pigs. She was a good laugh, and smart as well. The snobs really hated her. She didn’t get good marks because she read sci-fi books when she should have been doing school work, but she was real sarcastic and didn’t seem to care what the snob girls said to her. And she put so much black around her eyes everybody said she looked like a zombie. But Damien didn’t think that much about her, and she didn’t seem really interested in him. She laughed at his jokes in a strange way – an almost-laugh.

Damien did have some cred with the snobs – they enjoyed him making a fool of himself and getting told off by the teachers. They laughed. They laughed a lot. Stop clowning around, Damien, you clown. The double clown carried some weight. And he did his clowning with gusto and even, sometimes, with something like wit. He made fart noises, fell off his chair, and imitated the teacher’s mannerisms. He ensured he got suitably low grades to keep in with his own crew, and picked on the odd kid in a lower grade to show that he meant business. He feigned being fascinated with blood and gore, and kept his old man happy by going rabbiting and fox-shooting whenever the opportunity arose. He hated gutting rabbits and skinning foxes, but he was proficient at it and made all the right jokes about different parts of the anatomy when around his dad and other boys – though never around the women of the house.

At school, he’d slip stuff in to shock the snobs, but he had to choose his moment in case they excommunicated him. They liked to be shocked but only on their own terms, and exactly when the moment was right – usually when some failing of their own needed to be camouflaged, especially if it involved an embarrassment of their vanity. His triumphant moment in this department came when Celia De Plant and he were at the fish aquarium in the corner of the biology classroom, on an ‘in the room’ field trip. Celia let out a stinker, and when everyone turned around and started to laugh, she started to go red under her make-up. Damien, catching her horror out the corner of his eye, ‘fessed up and yelled, ‘Top that, Sir – I let that one out from the vault!’ It got him two weeks’ scab duty at lunchtimes, but also a secret thankyou in passing from Celia, who refused to look at him again for some time after that.

The new girl’s name was Bridget, and that seemed to matter. The snob girls pronounced it with an indulgent snarl. A nice snarl. They were very nice to her and she seemed to expect it. She was only so-so nice to them. She didn’t quite help them with their homework, though she was clearly miles ahead – by second-year high, fat neat handwriting and being able to add up weren’t enough to score good marks anymore – but she did lean over their pages and point out an error in algebra or grammar every now and again. In turn, they invited her to parties where older high-school boys could be found in a corner, comparing the attributes of each girl. Bridget joked, ‘You accessorise here?’

It almost shocked Damien to discover that no amount of clowning would elicit from Bridget more than a slight smile which might not really have been a smile at all. When he farted, she looked at him with contempt and moved away without even flapping her hands or generally displaying disgust, and when he got in trouble for a witticism, she gently yawned, while the other kids laughed and drummed on their desks. Damien, who’d never really been embarrassed before, was feeling an uneasy emotion creeping into the edges of his being and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

When it came to the long weekend, Damien’s dad insisted the boy go spotlighting with him.

Aw, Dad, I wanna watch Terminator on GWN tonight!

Tape it.

Yeah, but it’s not the same.

That makes no sense, mate, replied his dad. His dad wasn’t the kind of guy you could get around, so Damien kept the class clown stuff to a minimum around him. Brothers, sisters, Mum, cousins … okay. But not Dad. He was born without a funny bone.

It turned out this was no regular spotlighting expedition. It was the annual town fox hunt. Damien had never been before – too young. But his father felt it was time and the gun club turned a blind eye, which wasn’t surprising since Damien’s dad was president. The annual fox shoot was unpopular with the more genteel folk because they could hear the shooting – the shooters worked properties right up to the edge of town. As long as the bullet lands on private property and you have permission, and ‘shoot safely’, you can shoot where you want, was the declaration of the law.

Damien knew most of the men who gathered at the shed on their farm, which was the epicentre of shooting in the district. A few of them with really expensive guns and clothes, bought for the occasion, were fathers of snob girls from school – though most were the fathers of rough boys or bush pigs. The rules of the shoot were spoken by Damien’s dad, then the utes and traytops, with spotlights cutting the dark, bristled off into the dark.

Jump in, son, said his dad, and Damien jumped in the cab. A bloke with a high-powered rifle was on the back along with a spotlighter. Damien’s dad had a bolt-action triple-two between them in the cab – the weapon he’d chosen for his son.

As they cut off a gravel road onto a sandy track that ran along where the farm bordered the outskirts of town, Damien’s father started telling that last year they’d had a protester or two – that his job would be to keep an eye out for them. Dad said it in his usual slow sarcastic way. That slowness meant trouble, Damien knew. Trouble for someone. On the one hand, it relieved him that his .222 rifle would probably go unused, but on the other hand, he really had no idea what his dad was talking about. Protester? What was that? Like those people who threw things at the cops on the telly news? He half wondered if his father planned to shoot them. His dad had a bad temper.

Damien managed to formulate a question. But how would they find us, Dad? And we’re on private property.

Maybe a little birdie will mention it.

Damien wondered suddenly if this was how kids felt when he annoyed them at school in order to top up the class humour quotient. Kind of sick and wondering where it was all going.

They bagged three foxes and a bunch of rabbits, but saw no other people. It was getting late when Damien was given a go on the spotlight, with his dad shooting. As the vehicle bumped and shuddered across the paddock, Damien could barely hold on. He kept bouncing up and landing just on his feet, the rifle barrel leaning on the bar across the back of the cabin. At the edge of the spotlight, he caught a glimpse of eyes – you always look for that glint.

There! There! yelled his father, as Damien swung the light around. In the distance, pinpricks of light, now lost in the spotlight.

Cut the light, Damien! Torches! Somebody’s out there, called his dad, banging on the roof to signal the driver to slow down. Hold the rifle, son. It’s got the safety on. Point it down.

Damien took the gun and his father swung the spotlight on two people, no, three, walking alongside the paddock, on the town side of the fence. And there she was: her, Bridget, and two older boys. Young men. His first feeling was jealousy.

What are you doing around here? snarled his dad into the flood of light swirling with darkness.

Going for a walk, mate … no law against it, is there?

As his father spat at the group, Damien felt sick to the stomach.

There’s a shoot going on and this is private property!

And this is public land and you’d better watch where you’re shooting – the bullet is not allowed to land outside your property.

Says who, you cheeky bastard?

Says the law, mate.

You better watch your lip or I’ll come over there and give you a hiding.

Then it will be a matter for the police.

The police around here won’t listen to any cheeky little bastard like you.

No, then they might listen to my law professor … mate.

Damien tugged at his dad’s shirt and said quietly, There aren’t any foxes here now, Dad, can’t we just go somewhere else? His dad knocked his arm away and jumped down off the tray, joining the men who were now out of the ute, which throbbed and pulsed in neutral, headlights and spotties blazing. Damien could smell dead fox and the men. The barbed wire between them glistened blue in the light. He tried not to look at Bridget but couldn’t help himself. She seemed really frightened, and hung back behind the boys. He could see a resemblance. Brothers. They looked smart. The men in his pack held their rifles across their chests in cradle position – nurturing, loving them. They approached the fence with long strides. Suddenly, Damien jumped in the driver’s seat, threw the ute into first, and did an almighty burnout. He screamed, Prison break! out the window, and did the best donut ever. He stalled the engine. Before he knew what had happened, his father was at the driver’s window and wresting the wheel from him with one hand, rifle in the other.

You’re for a hiding to nothing, son!

Damien surrendered entirely, defeated.

*

Back at school, just before first class, in front of all the cool girls, Bridget came up to him and said, I don’t like you, but you’ve got balls.

It sounded weird coming out of her mouth. He stared at her, embarrassed.

Did your dad give you a hiding like he said he would?

Nah, Dad wouldn’t do that … he wouldn’t have touched you either.

I think he wanted to shoot us …

Nah, he just wanted to scare you.

Why? We weren’t doing any harm to anyone.

You were there because of the fox shoot, though? I reckon you were there to stop it.

Just going for a walk, Damien, just going for a walk with my brothers. Coincidence.

He weighed up the satisfaction of her saying his name, against the likelihood that she was telling the truth. She wasn’t there to stop the hunt, to stand in front of the rifles, to offer herself up as sacrifice to save the fox …? To help a mother fox escape the hunt … to make its way back to the den to feed hungry whelps …?

He looked at Bridget and thought of Gerry. Strange, she had cried when her cat ate a poisoned bait and swore she’d fix the guy who was killing parrots with pickled wheat. She stood up for herself and she stood up for other things as well. She had opinions. He looked across at Gerry, sitting on the bench outside their form room. She was watching him and Bridget, and had her lip curled at one side. But her eyes were smiling at him. Gee, there’s always something going on in Gerry’s head, he thought. It didn’t pain him to stare at her. It was okay.

Damien slowly started to turn away from Bridget, and said nothing else. Bridget looked surprised. No joke, no clowning. Nothing. Walking into the classroom, he muttered to himself, Better the devil you know. Or maybe it was, Can’t see the wood for the trees … Either way, something had changed in his head.