Being Here by Barry Jonsberg Page A

opened in a ghastly mime of horror or aggression. And then the sound of machine guns. The stench of burning powder. The earth pulled. And the bullets hit.
    The boy was at her side. Images tumbled slowly. Men falling in waves. An explosion to the left, then to the right. A soldier tripping over a headless corpse. A body, like a puppet, caught on barbed-wire, twitching. Air tore at her lungs. Blood. Everywhere blood. And bullets. Everywhere the mad whine of bullets.
    The girl stopped, put her hands over her ears, closed her eyes. She couldn’t hear the sound of her own screaming. The boy held her, rocked her. The world around them continued its descent into madness. And then, after an eternity, the other noises faded, died. Her screams pierced the silence. She opened her eyes.
    Nothing stirred within the barn.
    The girl dropped her hands to her sides, struggled to fight the panic. Slowly, her screams diminished, faded to silence. Her throat felt raw, violated. She turned her head, laid it on the boy’s chest. He stroked her hair and said nothing.
    The night passed. When day arrived, most of the girl had gone. In her place, a young woman lay among the scattered straws of wheat, the droppings of rodents and the slices of sun that picked out a faded stain on weathered wood.

    I open my eyes.
    Carla … Carly stares at me. She plucks at her lower lip. The red eye of the machine winks from my bedside table.
    â€˜Oh my God,’ she says. ‘That nightmare. That’s horrible.’ ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘I think you’ll find that’s the nature of nightmares, Carly.’
    She winces slightly, as if my words have nicked her. We stare at each other across our own no-man’s-land, like enemy soldiers.
    â€˜I guess the real question, Mrs C, is whose nightmare was it?’ she says.
    I wait. The girl is becoming interesting.
    â€˜I mean,’ she continues, ‘you’re trying to persuade me that somehow you lived an episode in your father’s life.’
    â€˜Am I? I thought I was telling you a story.’
    â€˜It could just be a nightmare, pure and simple.’
    â€˜True,’ I say. ‘But I checked. Much later. I found my father’s military history. He was there. A place called Fromelles in France.’
    â€˜That proves nothing,’ she says. Agitation makes the metal in her eyebrow wriggle like a worm.
    â€˜Proof?’ I wave my hand to dismiss the word. ‘Don’t worry about proof. The only important thing in a story is truth.’
    That makes her brow wrinkle further. The metal bar is beginning to annoy me.
    â€˜Fromelles,’ I continue. ‘From Hell. Appropriate, don’t you think? On 19 July 1916 two thousand Australian boys died in fewer than eight hours. I believe I saw a little of what my father witnessed. If you don’t, that’s your choice. But it explained so much to me. How could anyone get that experience out of their head? Unless – and what an irony this is – a bullet might be the only way of erasing it.’
    There is silence for a few moments. I take a glass of water from the bedside. I am pleased to note my hand does not shake as I raise it and drink. Carly’s brow remains folded in a frown. She drops her hands into her lap.
    â€˜Another question, Mrs C,’ she says. ‘Let’s say I accept your ‘truth’. You wanted to know your father’s story. But from what I can tell, you’d have been way better off not knowing it.’
    I place the glass carefully back on the cabinet and purse my lips, as if weighing her remark. I don’t need to. But pauses are useful sometimes. They can imbue a response with the cast of wisdom.
    â€˜What’s your view, Carly?’ I say. ‘Are you glad you heard that story?’
    She frowns again.
    â€˜Not sure “glad” is the right word. I mean, it’s pretty powerful …’
    â€˜And your life has been changed,