Read Highways to a War for Free Online

Surrogate brothers was what we became—to my benefit more than his, as I had no brothers of my own—and we were probably closer, since siblings tend to fight, and we never did.
    There were only two Langfords left now: Cliff and Marcus. Old John Langford and his wife, Ingrid, had been dead for years. The gate of the property was still the same color: dried blood. The board was still fixed to the top rail, with the name Clare cut into it, picked out in black paint. It was one of the oldest hop farms in the Derwent Valley, and this minor valley took its name from it. It had been in the Langford family for over a hundred years, and I recalled Mike telling me it used convict labor, in the early days. But no one could ever tell me why the property was called Clare. Mike had the notion that this might have been the name of one of the pioneer women in the family; but I think he just made that up to satisfy my curiosity. History never much interested him.
    The house too looked unchanged. It was rambling, single-storied, and built of the ochre bricks that we know in Tasmania as “convict bricks,” since they were handmade by the early felons; it stood on a low rise about thirty yards from the road, its red-painted iron roof and tall chimneys half hidden by cedars and the line of oaks in the drive. The cedars, with which most of the early settlers screened their farmhouses, darkened Clare’s front rooms, I remembered, and added to an air of somber secrecy there. An odd, still atmosphere always hung about the place: a heaviness which I wasn’t able to fathom.
    Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the house was full of forbidden zones—most of them laid out by John Langford. I discovered this almost immediately, on my first, ten-year-old visit. One of these zones was the hop kiln.
     
     
    Come and see the hop kiln, Mike said.
    We crossed the farmyard from the house to approach a six-sided, medieval-looking tower of convict brick. I’d never seen a building quite like it. The steeple was of gray wooden shingles, topped by a structure like a dovecote, also six-sided, with wooden vents in it. The tower had only two small windows in each of the six sections, high up and low down, and was connected to a barnlike building, also built of the ochre brick. At ground level, in the tower, a series of big fireplaces led into tunnels: unlit, with old coal dust in them. I followed Mike inside.
    He led the way into the tower and up a steep wooden stairway to the upper story, and we emerged into a deserted chamber with a floor of sacking, filled with a single, overwhelming smell. It was sharp and piercingly pungent: half sweet, half sour; half enticing, half forbidding. When I exclaimed at it, Mike raised his high-arched brows in polite surprise.
    That’s from the hops, he said.
    I asked him what the fireplaces were for, and he looked at me with an expression of sleepy amusement; he had heavy white eyelids. They’re from the old days. They used to roast convicts in them, he said.
    I stared, not knowing whether to believe him or not. He winked, and I knew I’d been fooled. I would come to recognize this wink, which I’d find all the Langford brothers employed: a country wink, to be used on townies like me. Then he smiled; but his smile was without mockery or malice. No, he said, just bullshitting. This is where they dry the hops. He spoke softly, as though any loudness here would call down trouble. We’re not really supposed to come up here, he said. But I thought you’d like to see it.
    He wore old khaki overalls, and his yellow hair was shaggy and long for the holidays; yet he somehow appeared cleaner than other people. His eyes were wide-set, and his long face was fair-skinned: seen from certain angles it had an almost feminine prettiness. But this impression would vanish when you looked at him again, to be replaced by ordinary, even hard good looks, and his full lower lip projected in a way that warned you to be careful. I