John Marsden - Circle of fight

‘But then what? We leave them wandering around the place to do what they want? I don’t want to go off to Havelock while these morons are running wherever they like on the property.’

‘We could call the cops in to round them up.’

‘Then we’ve got the same problem, that their mates will hear about it if they’re caught and Gavin could pay the price.’

It was such an urgent conversation and my brain wouldn’t work. I couldn’t think of a solution that would be perfect, and I only wanted perfection.

He said in that cold voice that can turn off sunshine and bring hail: ‘Well then, what we need is to kill them before they contact their base, so their friends never know what’s happened to them.’

It was more or less what we’d agreed back at the house, but somehow it sounded more chilling to hear it out here in the warm paddock, with the two men so close. They were real now, even if we knew nothing about them.

While I searched my mind for the right thing to say Lee suddenly stiffened. It was like a snake had bitten him or he had bull ants climbing his leg.

‘There they go,’ he said.

Sure enough the two men were haring across the paddock, going up the slight rise, heading for the boundary fence. I hadn’t expected that. They were probably low on ammo, but besides that, they might have been a bit spooked by having us chase them across the paddock. They could see that we were in a good position to attack them in their trees, and I suppose the relentlessness of our pursuit could be getting discombobulating. For all they knew we could have unlimited ammunition.

Without a word between us we did chase them. One thing that definitely happens in war situations is that you forget about the value of your life. I knew that feeling well by now. At those times someone in your head switches the brain right off. Yep, they walk up to that switch, the big one with the red warning sign saying Danger: do not touch, and they ignore the words and just pull the switch up and cut all the circuits. I charged across that field like I didn’t care whether I lived or died. And it wasn’t an illusion. I didn’t care. All sensible thoughts were gone, all memories were wiped clean, the future didn’t exist. At those times you can accept the possibility of your own death. When I see people who are grief-stricken because someone they know has died suddenly, I want to say this to them: ‘It’s not so bad for the people who die. When they see it coming and they’ve had no warning, they accept it. In the few moments that they have, they accept it. They give up everything, their obligations, their hopes, their fears, they give them all up without a fight. They tense their body and they take the blow and they don’t have room or time for anything else. They know it has to be and so all the fear leaves them. Believe me, I’ve seen enough people die. Believe me, I’ve been close to death enough times now. This is the way it is.’

The problem isn’t for them, it’s for the people left behind. They have time to think about it all. And they have imagination. I don’t think it’s always a good idea to have both time and imagination. Cos what you do then of course is go over and over what happened, reliving it a hundred or a thousand times, in slow motion, adding a soundtrack and an emotions track. The dead people can’t do that. They got it over and done with in a couple of seconds. You’re stuck with it for fifty years. Or more.

When I write all this down, it makes perfect sense. I just wish I could follow my own advice, especially when it comes to my parents and what happened to them. It’s easier with Robyn because I saw her face as it happened so I don’t have to rely on guesswork so much with her. I saw that acceptance in the second or two before she ceased to be.

So, there I was, sprinting across the paddock like a maniac, in the zone if you want to call it that, chasing two armed men who were just approaching the ridge and the fence line. To my left was Lee, who did his ‘drop to the knee and take a shot’ routine again, with no better result than the first time. I thought we might have a chance as they came up to the fence, no matter how good they were, as it was going to take them quite a few seconds to get through. I planned to take a couple of shots myself at that stage. But they were too professional for me. As they approached the summit one of them turned and raised his rifle, while the other started the struggle to get through the barbed wire. I dropped fast. I could see Lee doing the same. I flattened myself in the grass, shuffling to the right to get behind a little rise. The guy fired one shot but then nothing. I waited a few seconds more then lifted my head. The second soldier was getting through the fence while the first one covered him. They were pretty quick. Lee fired again, then he was on his feet and running forwards once more. He hadn’t hit anyone. But the way Lee ran straight up the hill, he must have been pretty sure that this guy at least didn’t have any ammo. I didn’t want to be outdone, so I got up too. I did the zigzags. The man put his rifle right to his shoulder as if he was going to fire, so we both dropped again. He didn’t shoot though. Lee might have been right. Now that I had a better shot at the two of them I lined up the one on the left and squeezed the trigger. At the very last moment, before I fired, he pulled away and disappeared. I was up again straightaway. The two of us ran the slope hard.

As we approached the fence they were a hundred metres in front of us. But at the same time I could see something lumbering into view from the right. What the hell? For a moment I actually thought it was a large vehicle. The police were here already? Had someone heard the shots and called them? I felt like an idiot when I realised what it was. Colin McCann had put his bull in this paddock. I hadn’t seen the bull for a couple of months. He was a magnificent creature, one of the best in the district. A horned Hereford, and you don’t get those so often these days, dark red, the size of a delivery van, with hindquarters that shouted power, and a proud head. Col never dehorned his bulls. He was a purist, I guess, and liked the natural look. Besides, it was a bloody business, cutting horns off, and the bulls hated it.

Everyone has their own opinion about horns, but my favourite approach was Tammie Murdoch’s, who put tennis balls on her goats’ horns, held with metres of duct tape. It made the goats look pretty funny, like aliens. Goats have a perpetually bewildered expression anyway, which kind of matched the tennis balls.

These days most bulls are reasonably placid, because they’ve been bred that way. Nearly every farmer I know sends aggressive bulls to the abattoir. In fact, even a bull that’s been well behaved for years gets turned into hamburger if he makes a move in the wrong direction. Either that or castrated, if he’s young enough to grow into a good steer. Then he might end up as steaks or sausages instead of hamburgers. This is a much better outcome for the animal, and fills him with pride and joy.

Anyway, the thing is, aggressive bulls are just not worth the risk. They are such massive creatures, killing machines on land that are as efficient as sharks or hippos or crocodiles in water. They weigh tonnes, they’re fast, and although they can’t turn on a five cent piece, they can turn on a five dollar note. And the thing is, you can never trust them. It’s the same with stallions. No matter how long you’ve known them, no matter how pleasant and polite they’ve been, they can go for you. Sometimes the reason is obvious, for example if you take a cow in heat out of the mob, then you can’t expect the bull to like you very much. But sometimes you can’t figure it, although a bull that’s been raised by hand is usually more dangerous, and on the other hand a bull that hasn’t had a lot of human contact is a risk. Horned bulls are more likely to be aggressive than poll bulls. And when they’re out in the paddock, bulls have a flight zone around them, and the size of it varies from beast to beast.