Penguin Books Australia

The yellow bus thundered down the last hill.

It had wheezed slowly to the low crest, but it was picking up speed on the down slope. Now it was charging into the valley like an old, battered knight on some heroic quest. The tyres kicked stones into the air, mudflaps slapped furiously, windows rattled. The bus rocked on its rasping springs, its loose bonnet shaking. An ancient rugby flag flogged the left mudguard in the wind. The bus skidded through a rushing stream across the road, hurling great sheets of water at the sun as it passed.

'There was a bit of a storm here last night,' the driver said to the single passenger, as he touched the brake, reluctantly.

The girl wasn't troubled by the erratic charge. She was used to it; she figured it was something to do with the rooster on the flag. Brushing her sandy hair from her glasses, she peered out of her cracked window. The paddocks' waterholes were brimming, some trees seemed to be leaning, and the cows were sloshing through deep mud on the flat.

'Was it bad, Keith?' the girl said, as she watched a calf nibbling frantically after a retreating cow.

'Here?' The driver opened his hand. 'Nothing special. The farmers must have been happy when the rain hit.'

Keith slowed as they moved toward a small wooden bridge crossing Snake Creek. In all the many times the girl had passed by she had never seen a single snake. The creek was usually a trickle, or a chain of puddles, but now it was surging around the poles, and the bridge looked like a tossed raft and this time she saw several small carpet snakes at the edge of the road. The driver nudged the bus over the bridge, but as they cleared it he shook his head.

'Hope it doesn't get worse.' Keith tapped the brakes and frowned. 'Catherine, can you see Mrs Garrows now?'

The girl lifted her head, as if about to look around the empty bus. She wasn't called that much now, not even by teachers at school. And never by Brena and her bunch. She was Cat, and that was that. She leaned to see beyond Keith's solid back. 'Oh . . .'

He pumped the brakes to get the water out and the bus gritted to a stop in front of a mail-box cut from a stringy-bark-gum stump. The door gasped open.

'She's not there, Catherine,' Keith said slowly.

Cat climbed down to the last step of the bus and looked around, past the stump, up the puddled track, through the paddocks on the lower slopes, into the shimmering bush to the towering blue-green mountain. There weren't many paddocks on those slopes and the mountain didn't seem to like them. The cobalt forest was surging down them as if to sweep the rickety fences aside. Above the trees the peak's dull blade was ripping into the heart of a grey cloud, bleeding it into the cold sky. The mountain was in a grim mood.

'She should be here,' Cat mumbled in doubt.

A quick wind swept across the trees, changing the leaves from dark to a flicker of brightness then back to dusk.

'Do you want to stay in the bus?'

'I don't know,' she shrugged in hopelessness. 'Maybe it would be best, Cat. You can phone your dad from town and work out what to do.'

'I suppose . . .' Cat suddenly smiled. 'I can see Gran!'

Keith frowned.

'There she is!' Cat pointed and shook her hand. 'High in the mountain. She is waving her hat or something at me.'

'You've got better eyes than mine.' Keith squinted at the mountain.

Cat looked sharply at Keith. For an instant he sounded like Brena and she began to crouch for the attacking line that would follow. But of course he wasn't Brena. She lifted her head. 'I can see all right over a distance.'

'Oh, yes, I can see a small white object up there.' Keith sucked his lip. 'But I don't know, Catherine . . .'

'Maybe Gran doesn't want to come down all the way. That steep track must be slippery after the rain.' Cat reached for her backpack and stepped out of the bus. 'Are you quite sure about this?' Keith looked worried.

'I'll be right, thanks, Keith. See you in a week.'

'Well, all right . . .' He gave her a weak smile and closed the bus door. The bus shuddered away.

Cat watched it go, then turned to the waving mountain. 'Coming, Gran!' she yelled, and waved back wildly.

'Of course,' she said to herself. 'She can't hear you, Lumpy.'

Cat closed her eyes and clicked her tongue, thinking: Oh, stop it. You have to bring Brena here, don't you? Gogglepuss, Stupid Cow. It's your mountain, leave her and her mob out of it.

She hefted her backpack on her shoulders then smiled as she adjusted it. She could remember the time when she went to visit Gran – and Gramp, it was that long ago – with a suitcase! Like climbing Everest carrying a boulder. She was lopsided for days.

She shrugged her shoulders, wiggled her hips and shuffled sideways a little until the balance of the weight settled on her back. 'All right, already, stop waving,' she muttered at the mountain. 'I'm coming, I'm coming, stop it.'

But she was surprised when the white patch stopped moving a few seconds later. 'Okay. I'll be there anytime.'

Mail, she thought, and headed to the stump. There was one envelope from Centrelink, wet and stained, but the date was recent. It was probably drenched by last night's storm. That meant that a few days ago Gran came down her mountain, all the way. But not today.

Cat reached across her shoulder and slipped the envelope under the backpack flap and started to walk. The first hundred metres is the easiest. Flat with a few stones and puddles, but beyond that is the slope. Almost the moment she stepped on the slope her calf muscles quivered, as if protesting in anticipation. 'Oh come on,' she muttered.

A cow at the top of its paddock bellowed at her. 'And you can also shut up. It's about time you got used to me. Stupid cow.' She winced. 'Well, at least you are one, hey?'

The cow stared at her, chewing in wonderment.

Cat turned away, saw her image in a wide puddle and pulled a face. Sandy hair was held back with a black elastic band, the glinting glasses were a little lopsided, the shiny nose sat in her face like a cherry in a bun. And the rest of her was short and chunky. Mum said she had solid bones, but Brena and her pack of girls said she was lumpy.

She walked into the puddle, destroying the image. But Brena and her Pack stayed with her as she slogged slowly from the paddocks to the tree line. The Pack was made up of five girls hanging on to Brena. Others tried to join them but they were knocked back. Something to do with 'not enough class'. Up the slope Cat couldn't really visualise the faces of the Pack. But if they were a blur, Brena was as clear as the mountain.

She would toss her blonde hair as she laughed and those green eyes always seemed to be caught in surprise. But of course she was never surprised. The Pack thought that she could be a TV star, even in Hollywood, but she wouldn't hear of it. She was going to be a lawyer, a QC. The Pack thought that she could do anything, and giggled around Cat when Brena showed how she would save Cat when the police charged her for frightening dogs in the streets. The Pack giggled a lot.

Brena was going to Hawaii for the hols and she felt sorry for a person who had to go up to a cold bush mountain with a grandmother alone in an old house. The Pack loved that. The Stupid Cow with the Crazy Woman in the Mud Hut.

Cat pulled a face, thinking: You asked for that. You opened your mouth about the mountain once and they never forgot. And they are always there. Always. They're there at the beach, in the movies, in the shops, all over the school like a rash and even in your dreams. Then they found out you were learning to play the piano. Don't know how they knew, but they did, so it's the Phantom of the School ground, the Plinker of the Lockers, pass the earplugs – they never let go . . .

Cat glanced up and sighed a little.

Would be all right if Gramp was up there. He listened and sometimes he helped a little bit, but he's not there. No, he is still there; it's just that he can't talk. Gran tries to listen, but doesn't see the trouble. She hears the words, the Gogglepuss, the Stupid Cow, the Plinker of the Lockers, and just shrugs and suggests walk away or push them away. Gran doesn't understand your trouble with the Pack – she catches snakes in her kitchen and throws them out the door. She thinks that is the way to fix everything – but Gramp had a captain as bad as Brena when he was a seaman. The captain ran his rusty freighter like it was his castle, with him and his mates drunk most of the time and the rest of the crew were nothing else but bodies put to grinding work and abuse. Gramp always listened to you and understood.

But he's gone.

But, but, Brena and her Pack are not here. You have to carry a backpack up the mountain but you don't have to carry Brena's Pack too. You can forget them.

All right, you are climbing up the Mud Hut Trail. And that Mud Hut Trail is marked on the map. The old maps actually show the Mud Hut. Not many people can say their house has been given a name on a map. And that mountain up there? Okay, on the map it is Mount Foster, but Foster was some lord in England. He never saw his mountain let alone climbed it. But you went up there with Dad, Gran and Gramp once. For a day you stumbled across icy streams, pulled your aching legs over cracked boulders and through brittle brush to touch the moon. Gramp renamed the mountain because you made it. Up there it's not Mount Foster, it's Cat Mountain.

That is one thing Brena's Pack don't know about. That is special.

Cat smiled slowly as the tang of damp blue-gum washed the image of the girls from her mind. She could feel her leg muscles stretching out as she pushed up the trail and remembered her first time on it – on Dad's shoulders. Now that was the way to move! With Mum feeding you chocolate and drinks and you dropping some of it on Dad's balding head.

Cat stopped for a second and blew into her cheeks, thinking: Now, where's that cooling wind?

But it was better when your legs had grown. Then Gramp would try to show you everything on his mountain – the Green Waterfall, the Crystal Pool, the Tree-Fern Forest, the Birch Forest, the Alpine Plateau, the Thunderbolt Cave. It was his mountain. He could name it and everything on it anything he wanted. On his mountain he was a leathery superman, indestructible, laughing into the trees, singing softly over the campfire embers.

Cat pressed her head against the backpack to see Gran's white hat, just resting. She's not too far away and she's waiting. I'll be there soon, Gran. Any minute . . .

Gramp has gone, but she hasn't. And neither have the lorikeets, bush wallabies, currawongs, and the wombat that lives under Gramp's work shed. No, Brena, you can have Hawaii's towering waves and rumbling volcanoes. The Stupid Cow and the Crazy Woman on their mountain are just fine.

Cat looked up at Gran's hat and slowly frowned.

There is something wrong . . .

'Gran?' The hat wasn't moving.

Cat hurried up the last fifty metres of the slope, panting heavily. And then she stopped in the middle of the Mud Hut Trail, her head sagging.

A light breeze was curling down the mountain, causing the leaves in a gully to shimmer, nudging a cluster of bushes, swaying the long grass and lifting that white hat. But it wasn't a hat now. It was nothing more than an old dishtowel caught up with a thorn bush. It could have been ripped from a clothesline in last night's storm.

Cat moved toward the dishtowel and touched it with her fingertips, as if she needed to know that it was real. She thought Brena had got it right.

'Stupid Cow!' she growled.

She turned to the valley, to see the brown patterns of the distant cows, the paddock fences marching across the cropped grass, a wandering creek and the lonely road disappearing over a hill. There was no bus now; there was nobody in the valley at all.

Hey, Stupid, she thought. What are you going to do now?