Burnt September

By Nathan Best

Enjoying the freedom of the Northern Territory in the late 1950's, four friends explore the outback in a battered World War 2 American jeep. Stephen has a secret, something he has found, he wants his mates to come on his adventure and reveal his big surprise. What they find in the remote Australian bush will change their lives and friendship forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathan Best
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9798626172980

Nathan Best

Nathan Best is a 30 year veteran of the Royal Australian Air Force as a communicator. Deployed to the Middle East operations in Iraq and Kuwait as part of the Australian commitment to the War on Terror Nathan has gathered unique and credible experiences to add realism and authenticity to his writing. Nathan currently serves as a reservist with the Royal Australian Air Force’s Combat Survival Training School. Nathan holds a Master’s degree in Business and when not writing, works in the marine industry and calls Far Northern Queensland home with his partner and three dogs.

Book preview

Prologue

Late September greeted the morning sun as it tipped over the dark horizon of the Northern Territory. With a gentle touch it reached out and woke the burnt land, spreading warmth and light. The fires had finished their work in preparation for the approaching wet season. The red soil was scattered with ash and thirsty for rain. Only a thin wisp of cloud soared high in the air and gave no relief to the earth below. A parched calmness drifted over the trees and bushes as the first of the daylight animals opened their eyes and started their next cycle of survival. Crawling into their beds and burrows, the nocturnal wanderers hid themselves from the approaching sun. The bush was awash with the comings and goings of nature’s communities.

A rooster crowed at the sun and sent its lonely call out over the burnt land. Restlessly it paced around its enclosure and eyed the world. The only answer to its cry was from a dog, distant and bored. Around the rooster, hens scratched in the red earth and looked for their first meal of the day. With blithe arrogance the rooster strutted around the perimeter of his domain and looked for any threat to his harem. Light puffs of red dirt rose into the still air with each step he took. Ruffling his feathers, the rooster puffed up his chest at an imagined foe and so began his day. Johnny blinked his eyes slowly as he felt the sun touch his face through the window beside his bed. The light slowly began to creep across his room, exposing it to the new day. Groaning softly at the thought of being awake so early, Johnny closed his eyes and tried to find sleep again, but his mind snapped to attention, and he knew it was time to get up.

His black hair was stiff with sweat and his skin felt clammy and cool. With a wide yawn he caught up to his mind and admitted that he was awake. Johnny’s body shook as he stretched out his long, tanned arms and legs. Yawning again, he focused on the darkness of the ceiling and looked for the spiders that always made their webs above his head. No matter how often his mother cleaned the room, the spiders always found a home somewhere on the ceiling. Seeing none, Johnny turned his mind back to the fact that he was awake. Vaguely, he remembered that a noise had woken him up, but now the house was quiet. Not even the murmur of shifting floorboards stirred the air, like they usually did as the sun rose.

Sitting up, Johnny yawned, frowned, and turned to look at the door of his bedroom. Rolling upright he sat with his feet just touching the cool wooden floorboards and listened. The sensation beneath his bare feet was enough to convince him to be awake. Soon the heat of the day would tear away any coolness that the night had delivered. A few seconds passed. As the sun rose higher outside, more light poured into his room. There wasn’t anything to be seen through the open door.

Standing up into the steadily rising humidity, Johnny stopped breathing for a split second as a soft clumping sound came from the hallway outside his room. He knew the sound. Before he could move, Johnny heard the sound again, closer this time. He took a quiet and cautious step towards the door. Breaking the silence, the rooster crowed once more, calling to the day from its enclosure. Jolting rigid for a moment, Johnny felt like his heart was going to stop. He had not expected the rooster’s call, as he concentrated on the sound of something coming towards him along the hallway. Johnny stopped and listened, waiting to see the source of the mysterious, but familiar noise. A dim shadow slid across the tongue and groove boards of the opposite wall. Before Johnny could move, a huge dark shape appeared around the edge of the door and looked in at him. Johnny froze, held his breath, and watched the shadowy head that peered at him. The shape looked like a horned demon or maybe even Satan had come to pay a visit. Showing no fear, Johnny stood erect, and his body readied itself to fight or flee, adrenaline coursed through his veins.

Slowly, more light crawled into the room through the open window and fell onto the shadow’s face. Looking at Johnny through big, brown eyes was his pet water buffalo, Claire. She watched him, a sloppy smile on her face as she tried to step into his bedroom. Her coat was naturally grey but was almost red with dust and Johnny could smell her sweat and animal scent from where he stood. The smell wrinkled his nose as it began to ooze into his room. Claire only just fitted into the short, narrow hallway that led to his room, her thick shoulders and rump always bumped and smashed things as she tried to navigate through the house. As Claire stepped forwards, her wide black horns smashed against the doorframe. How she had managed to get them through the hallway was a constant mystery to Johnny, but she did. Claire always managed to work out a way to get into the house but could never figure out how to get her horns though the door to Johnny’s room. Backing up, Claire’s hooves clumped on the wooden floorboards, loud enough to wake the dead. She walked forwards again, determined to get into the room. Snorting softly, she eyed Johnny and tried to smile at him. Worry creased his face. What if his parents heard her? What if his mother was already awake and making her way out of bed? That was something Johnny did not want to deal with so early in the morning. There was nothing worse than when his mother was angry and raging at him for something Claire had done. It seemed she never hung around long enough to take any of the blame.

Johnny rushed over to Claire and grabbed her horns to stop them hitting the doorframe again. Instantly her long, wet tongue slapped happily against his bare thigh, and he jerked in surprise. He listened expectantly for the sound of his parents waking up. To his relief he heard nothing. Johnny knew that his mother would have a fit and he hoped his father would just smile knowingly and try to avoid any conflict. He loved both of his parents, but that would not stop them punishing him for letting Claire into the house, even though she had worked out how to do it all by herself. Quickly, he turned his attention to getting Claire out of the house and back to her paddock. Forcing Claire gently out of the room, Johnny nodded his head so she would know to back up along the hallway. Ever since his father had found her as a young calf, she had wanted to live inside with the family. When she had been young and small, she was occasionally allowed into the house. Much to his mother’s disgust, Johnny had mostly been the culprit who let her in. She hated Claire’s muddy hooves and bumping horns messing up her clean and neat home. As he guided her down the hallway and quietly past his parent’s bedroom. Johnny winced at each heavy clump of her hooves and the trail of dried mud that Claire had trekked into the house. He would have to clean that up quickly or he would be in for it. At best he would be in for a lecture from his mother and at worst, she would pull out the long, thin willow branch she kept for just such an occasion. After he had been punished, Claire would be banished to the dusty back paddock once again. Claire calmly reversed into the kitchen, missed the table by an inch, and then stopped as her rear reached the back door of the house. Frowning, Johnny nodded for her to keep moving and gently pushed harder on her horns. A lop-sided grin and a quick lick of his right leg showed that Claire was very happy to stay where she was. A quiet creaking of the floorboards behind him sent a thrill of panic through Johnny and he snapped his head to look back up the hallway.

For a full second silence returned to the house and then the dark figure of his father appeared in the door of his parent’s room. Calmly he looked at Johnny and Claire. For an instant Johnny thought he saw a look of amusement cross his father’s face. Johnny was almost an exact copy of his father, when he had been his age. The years had given his father’s lean frame a small paunch of a belly and had lined his face, but his hair was still as black as night. Rubbing his face absently to clear the sleep from his mind, Johnny’s father walked quietly into the kitchen and regarded the scene before him. A small, bemused grin spread over his mouth. Before Johnny could speak, his father placed his right index finger to his lips and signalled for quiet. He didn’t want Johnny’s mother to wake up and see Claire in the kitchen either. He walked over to Johnny and ruffled his hair. A stubborn look had spread over Claire’s face. She was going nowhere under her own power and the set of her shoulders showed it. Laying his hands between Claire’s horns, Johnny’s father tried to push her through the doorway. Instantly she dropped her rump to the floorboards with a loud thump and set her face in determination. Frowning threateningly at her, his father looked at Johnny and then back down the hallway. Johnny’s mother hadn’t woken yet. They still had time. Stepping back, his father watched Claire and tried to work out what to do with the stubborn water buffalo that had taken root in their kitchen.

‘What is that animal doing in here!’ screeched Johnny’s mother. Her voice shouted from near the kitchen table. Her sleep-ruffled hair was a red tassel around her head. If she had not worn the billowing, angry look on her face, she would have been comical to look at. Sleep puffed her glazed eyes and they locked unwavering onto the three in front of her. Flicking her eyes to look at the muddy floor, her anger rose. The sound of his mother’s shout so close to him sent Johnny leaping to his left and he crashed against a cupboard full of dishes, fear grabbing his heart. Equally shocked, his father dropped to his knees and fell to the floor, rolling away from his son. In his fright he had fallen into the army training, which had kept him alive when he had fought the North Koreans, and then the Chinese, in the Korean War.

With a bellow of surprise and fear, Claire reared to her feet and tried desperately to escape out of the house and away from Johnny’s mother. Thrashing her head to the left as she turned, Claire smashed one of her horns through the small window beside the door. Glass flew across the kitchen and the crashing sound only added to her panic. As her rump pushed out of the doorway, she fell down the stairs and dragged with her all of the potted plants that lined the short flight of six steps. Crashing to the ground Claire let out a thundering bellow and scrabbled to her feet. For a second, she balefully stared up at Johnny before turning around and sprinting away towards the back of the small farm they owned.

‘Damn it Jean!’ shouted Johnny’s father from the far corner of the kitchen where he was trying to get to his feet. His legs seemed to be made of jelly.

‘David! Don’t curse in front of our son,’ returned his mother. She stood glaring at Johnny with her hands on her hips.

‘I didn’t know she was inside, Mum. I tried to get her out, but you scared her,’ said Johnny, his heart still hammering.

‘Now it’s my fault is it! Claire’s not allowed inside Johnny. She stays in the back paddock for the next week until you learn to behave,’ said his mother.

‘Mum!’ exclaimed Johnny.

‘Don’t argue, or you’ll be out there with her,’ she continued.

‘Jean, that’s a bit harsh,’ injected his father, coming to his son’s defence. Instantly he regretted opening his mouth, he would be catching hell long after Johnny was let off the hook.

‘Enough! I’ve got to get you both breakfast. The good Lord knows neither of you are capable. After that, Johnny do your chores and then your schoolwork,’ said Johnny’s mother.

‘Mum, it’s the holidays,’ he replied, exasperated his mother had forgotten.

‘Well, that gives you more time to do your chores properly this time, not like you do every other day.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ sighed Johnny. He had caught a warning look from his father that said giving in was a quicker and less painful option. He looked back out of the door and saw that Claire had almost made her escape to the back paddock already.

‘And your first job is cleaning up Claire’s mess. My plants! Look what she’s done to the plants, and my window. Johnny! That animal is not to come back out of that paddock, you hear me, never! Now go and clean the stink off you and get ready for breakfast. David, you do the same. Now get out of my sight until I have your food ready.’ She fixed them both with an evil stare and poured as much anger into her eyes as she could. Maybe she could scare them both into being behaving like normal people, she thought. There was a lingering doubt in the back of her mind that she could never get her boys to be exactly what she wanted them to be. Possibly a prayer to the Lord and maybe, just maybe, they could be saved.

‘Yes,’ chorused father and son together. Both left for the bathroom, eager to get away from the fuming woman in the kitchen and the piercing look she was giving them. As they came together Johnny’s father smiled at his son and gave him a friendly push, which Johnny returned and like two-year-olds they made their way out of the kitchen.

Chapter One

The spring of 1959 was leaving Johnny in its wake, and he felt it slipping away in his bones. At 16 years and three days of age, he knew that he would have to grow up soon. The days of wandering around caring about himself and the fun he could find, would be over. As he worked at mucking out the chicken enclosure beneath the window to his room, he sighed and looked up at the clear, blue sky above him. The humidity was rising steadily, and it was a sure sign the wet was on the way. This time next month the heavens would open and spill torrents of rain for five months and then stop for the return of the dry.

At the sound of someone turning into the farm’s driveway, Johnny looked up to see a mad figure riding a bicycle recklessly towards the house. Johnny recognised the streaming red hair flying from the rider’s head.  Stephen Calloway was the madman that owned the bicycle and Johnny was not surprised to see