Bill pulled again on the cigarette. ‘Misunderstanding.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Between Tobe and Beatrice McKeown. Or her brother Greg. Or Mrs McKeown. Not sure. The three of them convinced him to take a dive through the platter table.’

Beneath them, Toby had quietened. Bill tilted his neck back and gave his smoke to the stars. Ned shifted his weight, put his hands in and out of his pockets. More people had spilled out of the party. He could hear crunching gravel and muttered anger, getting closer. He looked over and saw a group of young men coming towards them. Bottles in hands, lurches in their strides. The first one stopped before Bill. Ned couldn’t see him well in the darkness, but from the hulk of his shoulders he could tell it was Greg McKeown. The McKeowns bred merinos, and the shearing and tossing of wool had shaped Greg into a rectangular lump. Ned had never spoken to him. Knew him only from the bus, from school, from watching him mash opposition football players into frosted grass as Toby paraded the oval’s flanks.

He crossed his arms, planted his feet. ‘Where’s your brother?’

Bill kept staring upwards. Kept blowing smoke. ‘Having a lie down.’

‘Where?’

Now Bill looked down, straightened his gaze. Let his eyes harden on the face in front of him. ‘Mars.’

Ned felt his pulse fly. Greg held Bill’s stare. He snorted. Rolled his shoulders. Swore at him, swore at Ned, then turned and stalked off, swigging from his bottle. His companions followed. Ned felt adrenaline leak out of him. After they were back inside the shed he looked around at the vehicle they were sitting on.

‘Whose car is this?’

Bill sucked on his cigarette. Took it from his mouth, held the smoke deep.

Ned heard the broken music start back up. ‘Dad says it’s time to come home.’

‘Dad’s probably right.’ But Bill didn’t get off the trunk. He kept pulling a glow into the cigarette. Kept blowing long, slow clouds of smoke into the ink-dark sky.

As Ned remembered that night from his position on the porch, boatless and miserable and more alone than he’d felt all summer, he was jarred by a realisation: that party had been a fortnight before Bill’s eighteenth birthday. He had known he was about to enlist. As they sat together on the boot that was caging their brother, not speaking, smoke filling the night between them, Bill had been aware of what lay before him. Had known he wasn’t far from gone.

~