Tim Winton - The Turning

Well, can you stay here while I go? he asked. We can’t carry him. His legs are buggered and without a stretcher we’ll be dragging him under the scrub by his arms. Marie, we’ve gotta get some other people up here.

Oh, please, I can’t.

She began to cry. He felt a flush of anger.

Don’t leave me here. Please.

Lang considered his handkerchief but was delivered once again when she fished out her own. He squatted beside the climber whose name he’d already forgotten and smoothed the twigs and grit from his blond beard. The fellow’s fingernails were torn and he stank of sweat. Why couldn’t you have stayed home today, sport? he thought. Why couldn’t you have stuck to the track and let me be?

Marie, he asked as soft and warmly as he could. Can you do something for me? Can you yell?

Yes, said the girl, mopping at her eyes.

Get up on the rock and give it your best. Big loud voice.

Lang hunkered beside the bloke while the girl shrieked and squawked and coo-eed into the fog. He felt sick now and needy. He patted the bottle flat inside his tunic. He thought about the chances of taking a slug while the girl was occupied and more or less out of view. He eased the thing out and looked at it a moment. A rush of heat came to his face. The need, the shame, the awful fact of it glinting in the meagre light. God Almighty, what was he thinking? With a journalist an arm’s-length away. In a community this small. It was five kinds of suicide he was courting, as if this whole search and rescue wasn’t cock-up enough. Printed or whispered, news of Senior Constable Lang and his work-hour brandy on the mountain would be a fire nobody could put out.

The girl bellowed on and on, her voice breaking tearfully. He turned the bottle in his hands. He thought of shoving the thing into the hiker’s fancy jacket. But it went too much against the grain. It felt like planting evidence, like falsifying the record. He’d made a mess of things these past months but he’d not fallen that far. Even looking at the booze caused his throat to tighten. He flung it uphill so hard he saw stars.

What was that? said the girl. I heard something.

A rock, he murmured. I chucked a rock.

Oh.

You see anything?

No.

Give it a few more minutes.

Lang knew they were here for the night now but he felt better for ditching the brandy. He listened to the girl’s voice burn and then break and when it was dark he called her down. They sat in silence for a while until he began to shiver.

Maybe you should put your coat back on, she murmured.

Best keep him warm, said Lang.

But you’re wet.

Can’t get any wetter then.

In the long quiet that ensued, rain dripped from foliage overhead and small creatures rustled unseen around them. A car horn sounded three times. Macklin was calling the stragglers in. Lang clicked the transmit button on the walkie-talkie. He tried spelling out his name in Morse but made a meal of it. He settled for a group of three clicks every few minutes.

The hurt climber began to mutter.

I have a banana, said the girl. You want half?

You have it, said Lang.

I can only eat half.

It’ll keep you warm, he said.

I’m not cold, she said. Just. . scared.

They’ll find us. We might be here a while but they’ll find us eventually.

This is my first week. I’m no good at this.

Well, he said kindly, you got the story.

Hell, I’m in the story now.

Yeah, we’re both in it now.

What about him? Will he be alright?

I don’t know. There’s nothing we can do.

I can’t bear it — we’ve found him but we can’t help.

Exactly.

She noticed the resignation in his voice. She even seemed to bristle a little.

You sound like you’re used to it, she said.

You never get used to it.

The climber began to murmur and whimper. Lang kept the man’s head as still as he could.

I hate this, said the girl.

Lang levered himself upright and his leg burned with pins and needles. He scrambled up the small stone plinth to see what he could make out in the valley below. The fog was complete. He couldn’t see any lights but for a moment he thought he heard the faint thrum of an engine, a generator maybe.

He got down. The cold was right in him now. The climber was motionless but breathing. Lang thought of the long, bitter night ahead of them.

I honestly thought I was tougher than this, said the girl.

You’re doing fine, he said.

You start with these ideas about yourself.

Yep.

You wouldn’t know.

Tell you a story, he said.

If you like.

Coupla months back I got called out to a prang. Farmkid was riding his trailbike behind the school bus. That awful twisty stretch through the karri forest. He’s muckin around for the benefit of the girls at the back window. Fun and games, you know. Then suddenly he’s at his place and just swerves away, pulls out from behind the bus into the path of a car coming the other way. I was pretty close when I got the call. Had twelve kids looking on while we waited for the ambulance. Just kneeling with him. Waiting.

I heard about this.

I tell you, it was a long time to wait. You’re in uniform. People expect you to do something. But you can only wait. He was conscious, you know. I was talking to him. He knew why we were waiting. There wasn’t a mark on him.

That’s enough, she said. Don’t tell me any more.

Died in my arms.

Stop.

And then I had to walk up the hill and tell his parents.

Lang let her blow her nose.

Got a boy like that myself, he said. He’s a good kid.

Sorry. I thought I was tougher than this.

You’ll be fine, he said. He felt all warm, like he’d just had a quick slug. He felt good.

The girl blew her nose. Lang caught his breath a little. Such talk made him lightheaded. It was hard to pull back. He had an urge to keep going, to explain himself, to blurt out everything he’d been stewing over all year; he could already taste the relief of it — Christ, he needed to, he was burning up with it — but even as he steeled himself and tried to think where to start, the girl began to cry. She lunged across the climber and grabbed him by the sleeve of his tunic and he saw just how close he’d come to total disaster.

She was too young, too rattled. You couldn’t put your life into the hands of someone like this. Jesus, she was a kid, a cadet they’d sent out for a lost dog story. What the hell had he been thinking? And what, in the end, could he give her that would stack up? Hunches, irregularities, misgivings from a cop who wasn’t a team player, an officer considered flaky and unreliable. They’d boil him alive.

You believe in God? she whispered.

Wish I didn’t.

That’s a strange thing to say.

Lang said nothing. A kind of cold anger sank through him at the thought that he’d almost gushed everything to this child. He wished he hadn’t passed up half the banana, that he hadn’t chucked the brandy when he so badly needed it now.

I said that’s a strange thing to say, she said.

Why don’t you try and sleep?

I can’t.

We should keep warm, said Lang. Let’s lie either side of him and pull my poncho over all of us.

If you like.

She seemed reluctant to let go his tunic, even more reluctant to lie beside the injured man. He could hear the talk in the crib room now: Lang cosied up on the hill with the fresh little chick from the paper.

Where’s your camera? he asked before they arranged themselves.

Here, she said fishing in her jacket.

Leave it out, he said. I’ve got an idea.

He couldn’t see her face in the dark but she seemed hesitant about handing over the camera. He sensed her loss of confidence in him and it stung. He tucked the thing as far into his tunic as he could and lay back with the hiker beneath the partial cover of his dripping poncho.