He doesn’t want to be this. He doesn’t want to be this person. He doesn’t want children to scream when he comes in the door. He doesn’t want Delia, his own sister, to cower behind her friend at the sight of him. He will stop this now. He reaches his arm in front of him, holding the joint away from the can, but the darkness that had been creeping up from the base of his spine rushes over his head like a black hood, and he watches helplessly as his hand, getting further and further away from him, flings out sideways towards the petrol-soaked ground as he falls.
He feels a great rush of heat, and then nothing.
Robin
‘Shit!’
As he fainted, everything went into slow motion. I saw his hand with the cigarette falling closer and closer to the petrol in the grass. And then there was a sudden pool of fire, with Seth unconscious in the middle of it.
‘Shit!’
Delia screamed and ran towards him.
‘Delia, no!’ I yelled, but she ignored me.
I ran to the burnt-out four-wheel drive. I was hoping that if the jerry can had survived, perhaps the fire blanket had too. It wasn’t under the driver’s side. Passenger side? No.
‘Shit!’
From up on the road the curlew was crying. I looked under the charred back seat. Thank God.
Delia was trying to drag Seth backwards out of the flames. He was still unconscious and she was struggling with the dead weight. His shirt and hair had caught fire, and his legs were lying in the flames.
‘Roll him,’ I yelled, and his body came away from the fire as Delia pushed her own weight behind him. I chucked the blanket over him and lay on top of him and pressed myself against him until the flames on his body were out. We tried to pick him up, but he was too heavy.
‘Shit.’
I could see the fire creeping closer to the still-half-full can of petrol. I grabbed the blanket from over Seth and covered the fire closest to the can. I picked up the can and pulled it away. It sloshed and then my sleeve was wet.
I chucked the blanket down, blocking the main direction of the fire, hoping it would hold long enough as I ran back up to Andy’s ute, nearly rolling my ankles time after time. The curlew was screaming at the back of the ute, but I had no time to check on her as I rifled around behind the bench seat. ‘Come on, Andy, you’re a good country boy, aren’t you? Come on . . .’ A chemical fire extinguisher and another blanket. I grabbed both and ran back down the track, stumbling and falling all the way, pain shooting through my ankle.
Seth was still unconscious, and Delia was rolling him with all her strength away from the fire, which had doubled, tripled. I wrapped my arm in the new blanket and let off the extinguisher. A thick powder blanketed the edges of the fire and the flames there sputtered. I began to contain the fire inside the patch it had already burned. And then a gust of wind blew up and flames shot out the side unexpectedly. The petrol on my other sleeve caught. I screamed. The heat, the pain was excruciating. I dropped the extinguisher. I screamed and started to run blindly. The flame on my arm flared higher. Suddenly everything I’d been taught by my dad kicked in. Wind, oxygen, flame, heat. Suffocation. I came to my senses. I dropped and rolled and wrapped my arm in the fire blanket. The flame suffocated and died. I ran back and reached the extinguisher before it was swallowed by the fire. I let her rip, screaming at the fire, made angry by the pain in my arm, and by how afraid I was. I screamed and panted and cried. And then, when it was out, I stood staring at the mess for a long time, pointing the extinguisher at the fire with a shaking hand, waiting for any signs it was still alive.
Seth
Seth is lying on his side, his swollen eyelids purple curtains to the scene before him; he tries to focus on it, but his gaze swims, and the curtains close again. No-one knows where he is. He is dead. He has died in a fire. He feels glad. He doesn’t need to anticipate anything, or deal with anything, or feel responsible for anything or anyone, or to feel any hope, or fear, or disappointment, or grief, or shame. These thoughts flow along soothingly, like a river of warm milk. He gives up, floats on it.
But he can see light through the curtains, and the red blood pumping in their veins. They open slowly again, making a noise like skin rolling against skin. The stage is set: a sideways view of grass, trees, rocks, a Land Rover, an open patch at the edge of a clearing. The rocks are cardboard painted grey, the grass is painted on, he can see the brush strokes that made them. Cardboard trees frame the start of the track like an arch, and the backdrop canvas is painted to look like scrub receding uphill to a granite peak in the distance. A soundtrack of a girl crying plays continuously.
‘I wonder what will happen?’ he thinks.
There is a new sound in the soundtrack. A bird, calling, has been woven into the sound of the girl crying. A head of cardboard grass nods in the breeze, and becomes real. One of the cardboard cut-out trees shifts, and the painted leaves float off independently and flutter in the air. No. He resists. He doesn’t want things to become real. He was alright where he was. He can smell dry grass, petrol, smoke. The realness spreads to the whole tree: the bark roughens and insects begin to move about on the trunk. Pain creeps into his awareness. No, no, no. Reality is moving behind the set, returning it to hideous, complicated life.
He wills the curtains to shut again, but they won’t, they are curious, they are hopeful: they want him to see. Painfully, he moves his head slightly and can see where the soundtrack is coming from. His sister is sitting on the ground next to him, leaning over him. She is shaking him and crying. Robin sits with her back against a log and her head in her hand panting hard, her red hair falling down between her fingers. A fire extinguisher lies next to her on the ground, and one arm is cradled in her lap.
Delia’s face is sooty, with clean tracks over her cheeks from her tears. Someone is saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It is him. Delia lifts him, leans him against herself, half sitting.
Robin looks up. She has been crying too. But she looks fierce. She scrabbles through the dust over to him, cradling her arm. He tries to speak. His throat hurts. Robin hands Delia a bottle, and his sister puts it to his lips. Water, warm, but like a cooling balm spreads over the skin of his throat.
He tries to speak again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Flame,’ he says.
She looks up, surprised.
He manages to crackle out the words. ‘I took your photos.’
She holds his eyes. Eventually she says, ‘You don’t get to call me that. I’m Robin. I’m not Flame to you.’ She holds his eyes. ‘Yet.’
Delia cries hard onto his scalded shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Del,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
And salt tears sting the burnt skin around his eyes and Delia throws her arms around him. They fall back to the ground wrapped in each other. It hurts a lot, but he holds on tight.
Robin
So I drove. Of course I knew how to drive. In theory. I hadn’t really done all the gears and pedals before, but I didn’t think they’d be too much trouble. It’s amazing what adrenalin can do for a girl, and it’s amazing what driving a car when you’ve never done it before can do for a girl’s adrenalin. Andy would understand. Well, actually, maybe he wouldn’t. Let’s see: I had to borrow your car, Andy, because this guy I’ve never met, but who I have this . . . connection with went crazy and tried to set us all on fire, and ended up setting himself on fire, and his sister and I had to borrow your ute to take him to the hospital. And P.S. thanks for being one of those trusting guys who likes to leave their keys in the ignition, and thanks also for the driving lessons when I was a kid.
Concentrate, Robbie, you’ll be in so much more trouble if you hit something.
Delia was in the middle with the curlew cage on her lap. We’d put the curlew inside the cabin because it seemed really distressed when we got back up to the car – it was calling and calling, crying out like it had lost something, like it was grieving. It was awful, and it distressed Delia as much as Seth being all burnt up. Seth
was hunched in the passenger seat with his head resting on the window. He seemed to be going in and out of consciousness. So was the curlew. Delia had a tight grip on the cage on her lap. Her hands were white-knuckled. I said, ‘You’re scared. I’m driving, imagine how I feel.’ She gave a little breathy laugh at that, and caught the curlew cage as it started to slip. I went too fast around a corner, slammed on the brakes and stalled. I turned the key. We bunny-hopped up the road a little. Delia caught the curlew again and again as it shot off her lap with each bunny-hop.
I managed to get the car to a smooth and stunningly impressive forty k an hour. Anything faster felt like the car was driving me. Who was I kidding? The car was driving me.
We drove through Murramunda and out the other side without slowing down. I was heading to the shire hospital in the next town, ten minutes further down the road.
Delia drew back the cover from the curlew’s cage. It sat quietly, watching us, panting. Quietly watching was not really a good sign. I’d have been happier if it had still been crying or struggling, or trying to get away. Baby Magpie Mo was feisty as all hell the minute we rescued him from under that tree. Barely a true feather on him but he knew himself well enough to know he was worth defending, and he knew how to do it too, with a good peck at a human’s fingers. And the panting was a very bad sign. This curlew had lost its lively spark. Maybe it was losing its life.
‘Hold on, little one,’ I said, ‘we’ll get to you.’
But there was Seth to consider. The burn on his face looked nasty. And that wasn’t the only thing that had my foot pressing hard on the pedal. That brief moment in the clearing, when the curlew started crying and it was suddenly clear that Seth was with me, somehow inside with me, connected, and I knew that he had been with me before, company in my worst moments – in that brief moment we connected, I was suddenly there with him too. I felt what it was like to be him. I felt who he was. And he wasn’t tough, he wasn’t dangerous. He was more scared than anyone I’ve ever known – but so scared that he was beyond feeling it somehow. Like life was so bloody overwhelming that he couldn’t even feel scared about it. And it was obvious to me that he was on a threshold, he was right up against some awful edge: one little nudge and he would go over.
As we came into the big town I had to turn corners and change gears a couple of times. Trust Andy to have a ute with a manual gearshift. He wouldn’t want to have anything as soft or convenient as an automatic. We jolted and Seth groaned.
‘Hold on, Seth, we’re here. We’re here, okay?’
I took a right too fast and clipped the kerb and the tyres screeched, but we were at the hospital, and I managed to pull up on the grass outside the emergency entrance.
I left Delia with Seth and ran through the big glass doors to the emergency reception desk where I babbled incoherently and then ran back outside. They must have understood something of what I said, because when I reached the ute where Delia was leaning in and struggling to undo Seth’s seatbelt, the hospital staff were right behind me with a stretcher and blankets, and in the blink of an eye they had Seth out of the car and were wheeling him away from us and inside.
‘Come on, Del,’ I said, following them towards the hospital doors. ‘Bring the curlew, we’ll call Dad.’
Delia stood where she was and cleared her throat. ‘I don’t think he wants me around.’
‘What? No way.’
‘He . . . he went far away from me.’
‘Oh yeah, like I’m sure it was you he was trying to get away from.’
Delia ducked her head, her funny little gesture, but on her face I thought I caught a glimmer of, well, of reassurance anyway. I hugged her. It came out of nowhere – I’m not a hugger, really not, but there was something about this girl . . . and that hug reminded me sharply of the fact that I had burned my arm rather badly and should probably follow Seth inside and have someone have a look at it.
‘Come on,’ I said, and we carried the curlew and walked across the grass through the hospital doors.
Delia
Delia’s vigil begins the minute Robin and Seth are taken separately to be treated, and she is left alone in the waiting room with the curlew. It feels important to stay still, to stay silent. She feels as taut as a fully drawn bowstring; any loud vibration might set something off. She doesn’t know what. Something bad.
She holds the cage on her knees and looks at the curlew. The bird is clearly weak; she rests her beak against the bottom of the cage, and every time Delia moves, even slightly, she startles and wobbles her head up.
Robin’s bewildered-looking dad comes to pick up the curlew and Robin with her newly bandaged arm. And after Robin and her dad have left to take the curlew to the wildlife hospital nearby, promising to come back later and take her back to their farmhouse, Delia is allowed into the ward to sit by Seth’s bed and keep her vigil there.
Seth is unconscious. A doctor told her the painkillers were making him sleep, and that he would be okay. She tries to believe it. She checks the chart at the end of his bed, checking the times there against the time kept by the plastic ticking of the clock on the wall, anticipating the medical staff, growing anxious if they seem to be away for a long time. A nurse arrives, glances at Seth’s IV, writes a time on the chart, smiles at Delia, and leaves the room.
Seth’s eyes twitch open to a narrow slit. Delia watches, waiting for him to wake up on his own, not wanting to shock him. He is watching her through the slit, but strangely, intensely, like he isn’t awake yet, like he is dreaming about pain. She waits and eventually sees his face relax, and his eyes close again. A tear slides silently from the corner of his eye and onto the pillow, carrying a trace of blood and staining the white linen pink.
Delia breaks her silence. ‘I want something else for us, Seth.’ The bowstring twangs inside her.
He startles, opens his eyes again, wider this time, and looks past her for a moment. Then, almost imperceptibly, he shifts his gaze onto her. It focuses and she sees he knows who she is. His voice barely works. He says, ‘I forgot your birthday.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Fifteen.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Seth’s eyes close. Delia waits until they open again and then she repeats herself. ‘Seth, we deserve something else. I want something else for us.’
Seth’s cracked lips press together and then his cracked words make their way out. ‘So do I.’
Delia sits up straighter. ‘So let’s go get it.’
He nods faintly and reaches out a weak finger for her to shake.
resilience and
regeneration
Wednesday night
Robin
I had on Mum’s big dressing gown. Dad had retrieved one of the storage boxes from the shed because my clothes were a bit charred and when we got home I had nothing to change into. Mum’s dressing gown was a huge fluffy one, all soft and bulky around the back of my neck. I felt all safely wrapped up, but vulnerable too, like it was okay to be made of a soft, squishy, breakable human body if you could wrap yourself up in a big fluffy dressing gown. Feeling safe enough to feel vulnerable is a really good combination of feelings.
I felt great, in fact.
Delia was outside in her dad’s car where it sat in the dark driveway, retrieved by Dad and Andy from where Seth had left it on the fire track. All of Selina’s documents were in it, strewn about, and Delia wanted to put them back in order, and so for a moment I had Dad and Mo and Pen-dog all to myself.
Penny was lying at my feet and Mo was perched on my hand. He seemed to appreciate having his home back, and his people, and his dog, not those raucous Dooley dogs. My hand was resting on the armrest of the armchair, my fingers poking out of the end of an enormous wad of bandages around my burnt arm. Mo was perched with his claws around one finger, and he was feeling along the edges of the other fingers by taking them in his beak one at a time, and inching his way up and down, squeezing as he went. It tickled. He tried lifting one, but it
would only go so far. Apparently satisfied with the health of my fingers, he settled into his position, resting down on his legs and nestling his head into his feathered shoulders. His upside-down eyelid flicked up over his eye and down again, a strange grey-silver sheen to the skin. This was his sleep: seconds snatched and then he’d look alert, and then snatch some more.
In my other hand was a hot cup of tea Dad had made me, and the warm smell of potatoes roasting in the oven for dinner drifted about under my nose with the steam from my tea. Everything felt right.
Dad was sitting at the computer, doing lots of internet searches about curlews and habitats. Apparently our curlew’s prognosis was good, and Dad was trying to convince the wildlife vet and the local ranger to release it in the corner of our paddock because that was where the other curlew had been seen; that meant that Dad had to make sure that the habitat could meet all sorts of standards and he was looking more than a little stressed about it.
I’d already told Delia about the curlew down at the creek here, and that it had the same leg-tags as our curlew. And as we’d peeled the potatoes together on the porch earlier, we’d finally talked about it all, about how our city curlew – mine, hers and Seth’s – took it into its head to fly over a hundred kilometres to look for the three of us. And about how this one of the pair must have just hung around here. And she’d smiled at me – one of those little smirks you do when you know someone shares your secret – and then she said, ‘They’ll be reunited.’ And she laughed when I said, ‘And hopefully they’ll make some really cute curlew babies.’
Dad was furrowing his brow at the screen. ‘The easy part will be moving the sheep to the top paddock,’ he said. ‘That’s no problem – done. And then we can regenerate the whole bottom paddock, all the way from the back dam down to the creek, to make that whole area a five-star curlew resort. But there’s just no instruction manual for that; I have no idea where to start. And I’ll need a fair bit of help doing it, too.’
As Stars Fall Page 21