The Complete Stories by David Malouf

gunfire and the dogs went crashing through the broken water to where the big birds were tumbling over in the air and splashing into the shattered stillness of the lake, or dropping noiselessly into the reeds on the other bank.
    “Damn,” I shouted. “Damn. Damn!”
    “What happened?” Braden asked, when we stood waiting in a group for the dogs to bring in the last of the birds. “Why didn't you fire?”
    I shook my head, and Braden, taking in Stuart's look, must have seen enough, in his quick way, not to insist. The dogs were still coming in with big plump birds. There were many more of them than would go into the pot.
    “Good girl, Tilly,” he called, and the dog, diverted for a moment, gave herself a good shake and ran to his knee. He leaned down, roughly pulled her head to his thigh and ruffled her ears. The strong smell of her wet fur came to me.
    I spent the rest of the day stewing over my lost chance, exaggerating my angry disappointment and the number of birds I might have bagged, as a way of being so mad with Stuart that I did not have to ask myself what else I should feel. Braden and I spent the whole of the next morning with Matt Riley and Jem, but in the afternoon I came upon Stuart sitting on a big log a little way off from the camp, with a scrub-turkey at his feet. I stopped at a distance and spent a moment watching him. I thought he had not seen me.
    “Hi,” he said. I stepped out into the clearing. “What are you up to?”
    “Nothing much,” I told him.
    I settled on the log a little way away from him.
    “Listen, Stuart,” I began, after a bit.
    “Yair, I know,” he told me. “I'm sorry.”
    “No,” I said, "it's not about yesterday. You've got to stop all this, that's all. She won't change her mind. I know she won't. Not this time.”
    “Did she tell you that?”
    “No. Not in so many words. But she won't, I know she won't. Look, Stuart, you should leave me out of it, that's what I wanted to say. I don't know anything so I can't help you. You've got to stop.”
    “I see,” he said. “That's pretty plain. Thanks, Angus. No, I mean it,” he said, "you're right, I've been foolin’ myself. I can see that now.”
    “Look, Stuart—”
    “No, you're right, it was hopeless from the start. That's what you're telling me, isn't it? That I might as well just bloody cut my throat!”
    I leapt to my feet. “Shut up,” I told him “Just stop all this. Bloody shut up!”
    He was so shocked that he laughed outright.
    “Well,” he said after a moment, with bitter satisfaction. “Finally.”
    What did
that
mean? He gave me a look that made me see, briefly, something of the means he might have brought to bear on
her.
But shewas harder than I was. I knew the contempt she would have for a kind of appeal that she herself would never stoop to.
    I stood looking at him for a moment. I did not know what more I could say. I turned and walked away.
    “I thought you were on
my
side,” he called after me.
    I had heard this before, or an echo of it. I looked back briefly but did not stop.
    “I thought we were mates,” he called again. “Angus?”
    I kept walking.
    I did know what he was feeling, but he confused me. I wanted to be free of him, of his turmoil. The nakedness with which he paraded his feelings dismayed me. It removed all the grounds, I thought, on which I could react and offer him real sympathy. It violated the only code, as I saw it then, that offered us protection: tight-lipped understatement, endurance. What else could we rely on? What else could
I
rely on?
    I walked.
    The ground with its rough tussocks was swampy, unsteady underfoot, the foliage on the stunted trees sparse and darkly colourless, their trunks blotched with lichen. I had no idea where I was headed or how far I needed to go to escape my own unsettlement. Little lizards tumbled away from my boots or dropped from branches, dragonflies hung stopped on the air, then switched and darted, blazing out like struck matches where