After the Lights Go Out

by Lili Wilkinson

  ‘This morning he said he felt a bit dizzy.’ Mrs Kausler sinks down beside her husband and takes his hand in hers. ‘Then we were having a coffee and it was like he couldn’t remember how to speak anymore. He kept trying but he didn’t make any sense. Then he collapsed.’

  I look down at the spreading brown stain on the beige carpet, and the upturned mug. It has a Garfield cartoon on it.

  ‘He’s having a heart attack.’ It’s Mateo, right behind me.

  ‘But he has a pacemaker!’ Mrs Kausler is wringing her hands. ‘He’s had it for fifteen years!’

  Mateo looks sharply at me, but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Mateo’s right,’ I tell Mrs Kausler. ‘It really does seem like a heart attack. Maybe the pacemaker is malfunctioning.’

  Mateo drops onto his knees and reaches over to loosen Mr Kausler’s belt. ‘Is there a doctor?’ he asks me, over his shoulder.

  I nod like an idiot, and then realise that Mateo can’t see me. ‘Jim Willis,’ I say.

  ‘Run.’

  I turn and sprint out of the house. I hear Mateo asking Mrs Kausler more questions – did Mr Kausler take any medication? Is there any aspirin in the house? His voice is calm and reassuring. It’s as if he’s a whole new person.

  I run. Dr Willis’s surgery is only a few blocks away, but I know that every second could make a difference. The sun radiating off the pavement makes me feel like I’m running through fire. I suck hot air into my lungs and the feeling of it makes my own chest ache. What if I have a heart attack, right here on the streets of Jubilee?

  My footfalls seem loud in the silence. I skid around the corner of Waratah Way and Cockatoo Ridge Road and pelt past another row of fibro houses. I see a face peering out of a window and recognise it as Laurine Zubek, her mouth pinched with worry. Most of the houses look empty – kids away at boarding school, adults off at the mine or working in Matadale, or Christmas shopping in Garton. I pass Cam Fischer’s house, and remember kissing him at Lake Lincoln last summer, his mouth cold with Jim Beam and Coke. The curtains are closed and the garage door is down.

  I keep running.

  Mr Kausler claimed that his vanilla slice was the best in the state, and I agreed with him. It had the flakiest pastry, the creamiest custard, the shiniest icing. Mrs Kausler disapproved of the icing – they would argue about it regularly. She believed a vanilla slice should have only a light dusting of icing sugar on top. They ran a bake-off where the whole town got to sample both kinds, and we voted. Icing won by a landslide. I mean, who says no to icing?

  The clinic is an angular modern building clad in corrugated iron, built along with the Heart after flooding wiped out nearly everything east of Main Street three years ago. Jim Willis is the only permanent doctor, but there is a dentist, a midwife and an optician who come monthly. I hurl myself at the clinic door and ricochet backwards when it doesn’t open. I rattle it for a few seconds, my head spinning, before I see the A4 notice taped to the door.

  DOCTOR WILLIS IS ATTENDING A SEMINAR AT

  HANSBACH TODAY

  IN AN EMERGENCY, CALL 000

  Dad’s training didn’t prepare me for this. I don’t know how to fetch a doctor when there isn’t a doctor to be fetched.

  But I do know CPR.

  Mateo’s mum used to be a nurse so I’m sure he does too, but maybe I can help. My legs feel like jelly as I turn around and force myself to move, to run. Sweat pours down my burning face, and my hands are trembling. I feel sick and weak, but I keep thinking of the happy little dance Mr Kausler did when he won the vanilla slice bake-off, and how Mrs Kausler rolled her eyes so fondly at him, and I keep running.

  Mateo looks up as I burst in, and the hope on his face vanishes when he sees I’m not accompanied by a doctor. Mr Kausler is on the floor now, on his back, his eyes closed. There’s a box of aspirin next to him, and a half-empty glass of water. Mateo is kneeling over him, hands folded on his chest, pushing and counting under his breath.

  Mrs Kausler is kneeling beside him, crying quietly.

  ‘Can I help?’ I ask. ‘Do you need a break?’

  Mateo shakes his head, and drops of sweat fly from his brow.

  I glance at the clock on the wall. It’s quarter past twelve. I wait, and watch, and count along with Mateo. I hear the huff of air going in and out of Mr Kausler’s lungs, but he doesn’t respond in any way.

  Irrationally, I worry that he is lying on the spilled coffee, and that it might stain his shirt.

  I remember him telling Grace about sourdough, and how he gave her a bit of his prized starter to grow her own wild yeast.

  I offer again to take over from Mateo, but he grimly shakes his head and keeps pushing on Mr Kausler’s chest. He is soaked with sweat. I go into the kitchen and fill a glass with water. Jubilee’s water comes from Lake Lincoln – it gets pumped up into a raised tank, and then gravity-fed to the town, so supply won’t be affected by the blackout until the tank runs dry. I hold the glass to Mateo’s lips and he gulps it down.

  At one o’clock, Mrs Kausler puts her hand over Mateo’s. Mateo stops pushing. Mrs Kausler shakily gets to her feet.

  ‘I’d better call the clinic in Matadale,’ she says vaguely. ‘He’s got an appointment tomorrow with the podiatrist. He was going to get new orthotics.’

  She picks up the phone, but of course it’s dead. She stares at it for a while, frowning.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mateo says.

  Mrs Kausler opens her mouth to respond. ‘It’s okay,’ she says after a long pause. ‘You did your best.’

  ‘Is there someone nearby?’ I ask her. ‘Someone you can stay with?’

  She bites her lip, thinking. ‘My friend Jane Liddel?’

  I nod. I know Jane Liddel – she lives on Westview Road with her daughter Kate, who teaches at Jubilee’s tiny school. I offer to make Mrs Kausler a cup of tea, but she shakes her head.

  ‘Electric cooktop.’

  Mateo stands up and walks into the kitchen. I see his fists clench and unclench, but he doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to Mrs Kausler. ‘I’ll help you pack a bag.’

  I help her find a change of clothes and her nightie, then go into the bathroom to pack some toiletries. There are two toothbrushes in a cup by the sink. Two towels. Two different brands of soap. I swallow down a wave of emotion and shove things into the bag before I return to the living room.

  Mrs Kausler is kneeling beside her husband’s body, holding his hand.

  ‘We’ll stay with you until you’re ready to go,’ I tell her. ‘Take your time.’

  I head into the kitchen, where Mateo is pacing up and down the white tiled floor. He meets my eyes and I see grief and anger and frustration. I step forward and put my arms around him. His shoulders tremble. He smells like cherry Starburst and sweat and spilled coffee.

  He pulls away, gently. ‘Thanks.’

  We head back into the living room.

  ‘What…what’s going to happen to him?’ Mrs Kausler’s voice is small and high, like a child’s.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll sort it all out. Peter Wu will take care of it.’

  She nods, then leans forward and kisses Mr Kausler’s forehead. ‘I’m ready to go.’

  It’s only a few hundred metres to the Liddels’ house. Mrs Kausler walks slowly, hesitantly, but even so it only takes us ten minutes to get there. Kate Liddel answers the door when I knock, but she doesn’t unlock the screen door until I explain why we’re there. Her two kids are playing with a pile of Lego in the living room behind her. Kate gives Mrs Kausler a hug and calls for her mother, who immediately appears and sweeps Mrs Kausler away into the kitchen.

  ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ Kate asks me. ‘Did a camel eat through the mains cable again?’

  I tell her I don’t know, and it isn’t entirely a lie.

  Mateo and I say goodbye to Kate, who promises to look after Mrs Kausler, and to let Peter Wu know what’s happened.

  Mateo and I walk bac
k to our bikes on Main Street.

  ‘I’ve never seen someone die before,’ says Mateo.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘I kept thinking there must be something I was forgetting to do.’

  ‘You did everything you could,’ I say. ‘You were great.’

  ‘My mom made me do a first-aid course. She says you can never be too careful.’

  ‘My dad says that too.’

  And he was right. If he were here now, he’d tell me to go home and look after my sisters.

  He’d tell me to bug in.

  He’d tell me to keep our secrets, and stay out of trouble.

  But Dad isn’t here, and I don’t want to go home.

  ‘I’ll take you,’ I say to Mateo. ‘To the mine.’

  I stride off down Westview Road towards Ana’s house, not looking back to see if Mateo is following. My hands are trembling. I’m breaking the rules. I should go home. But my mind is racing, calculating, figuring out how long it will take and what we’ll need.

  I can do it. I know I can get there. And then we’ll have answers.

  ‘But the cars aren’t working!’ Mateo shouts after me.

  I ignore him, and after a few seconds I hear footfalls as he runs to catch up.

  There won’t be anyone home at Ana’s place – she’s away at school. Her dad is at the mine. And I know her mum is in Perth visiting her sister, because she moved Panda’s annual checkup to next week. But it still feels weird walking down the driveway past their house without ringing the doorbell first. I keep expecting to hear the flywire bang and see Ana come pelting out, ready to head down to the lake or off to Simmone’s Café for ginger beer and vanilla slices.

  People don’t lock their garages in Jubilee – who’s going to break in? There’s nowhere for a thief to fence their loot, and there are never any strangers passing through. I haul the roller door open, and hear Mateo swear softly under his breath.

  Ana’s dad has spent the last ten years meticulously restoring a 1954 Holden ute. He’s done a full mechanical rebuild, with aircon and a digital radio, but all the engine parts and instruments are original. Nobody but him is allowed to drive it. Once a year he loads it onto a big trailer and takes it to a car collectors’ show in Matadale. The rest of the time it sits safely in the garage, all gleaming mint-green, cream and chrome. I don’t really care about cars, but even I think it’s beautiful.

  ‘Um, Pru? What are we doing here?’

  What I’m about to do is wrong on so many levels. Dad was right: driving without a licence is the least of my worries. What I’m about to do is grand theft auto. I could go to jail. And even if I don’t – I know Ana’s dad will never forgive me if I get so much as a scratch or a smudge on his precious Holden.

  I open the driver’s-side door and check the keys are in the ignition – they are. I toss my backpack in and then look around the garage for anything that might be useful. I throw two blue tarpaulins and a coil of rope into the tray of the ute, then grab a couple of empty plastic drums and toss them to Mateo.

  ‘There’s a water tank outside,’ I say. ‘Fill these up.’

  I head out of the garage to the house. The back door isn’t locked, so I let myself in. The house is musty, but I can still pick up the garlicky smell of Vicky’s moussaka and, underneath it, the faint familiar aroma of Ana’s perfume. I feel tears rise behind my eyes and bite the inside of my cheek. No crying.

  Crying is a waste of water and salt, Dad always says.

  I pause at the door to Ana’s room. It feels so wrong being here without her – a betrayal as deep as spying on her text messages or reading her diary. We only got to see each other a few times each year, but we made it count. I got away as often as Dad would let me, and as soon as we were together again, it would be like she never left.

  I open the door and am flooded with memories.

  All-night TV binges and YouTube spirals. Sitting next to her as she sobbed her way through a broken heart. Trying to stifle our giggles as her parents yelled at us to be quiet and go to sleep. Making brownies and eating so many we thought we’d explode.

  I want to flop down on Ana’s bed and hide under the covers.

  I think of Mr Kausler lying on his living-room floor, cold coffee seeping through his shirt.

  I couldn’t help him.

  I shouldn’t care, should I? I barely knew him. Dad would tell me I was being sentimental. That I wasn’t looking at the bigger picture.

  Family must come first.

  I know if I linger here, I might never leave, so I grab what I came in here for – Ana’s pink backpack, with its matching pink plastic water bottle – and head to the bathroom, where I take the largest bottle of sunscreen I can find.

  In the kitchen I ignore the fridge and open the pantry. I load up the backpack with chocolate biscuits, salted peanuts and pretzels. Nothing too hard to prepare. Nothing that will require water or heat. I grab a few wrinkly apples from the bowl on the kitchen bench, a newspaper that’s folded up on the table, and the crocheted knee-rug from the back of a rocking chair in the living room.

  I don’t pause on the threshold for one last look around. I don’t think about Ana, about where she is now or if she’s okay.

  Dad’s right – there’s no time for sentimentality.

  I head back to the garage and dump everything into the tray of the ute. Mateo struggles in with the second plastic drum. His shirt is wet where the water has spilled out over the top, outlining his chest in a way that I can’t help but notice is rather appealing. He hauls the drum up onto the tray, and looks at me expectantly.

  ‘Get in,’ I say.

  ‘Stop. What’s going on?’

  I don’t answer him. Not because I’m trying to be a bitch or a hard-arse, but because if I do I might start thinking it through, and if I start thinking it through then I’m going to chicken out and go home. Home means Blythe and Grace, who will be worried about me. Home means the Paddock. Home means sealing myself up in what may very well end up being my tomb.

  I should go home. But I can’t.

  Not yet.

  I swing myself up into the driver’s seat, and click on the seatbelt. The car smells like leather and polish. Mateo scrambles in next to me.

  ‘Did you hear me, before?’ he asks. ‘None of the cars are working. I think—’

  I turn the key in the ignition. The engine turns over, but it doesn’t catch. I try again. Nothing. I pump the accelerator a few times. Still nothing.

  I pause for a moment. I don’t want to flood the engine. It can’t be the battery, because the engine is turning over. I cast my eyes over the dashboard, and focus on a chrome knob.

  The choke.

  I’ve never driven a car with a manual choke before, but Dad’s told me about them. I pull the knob towards myself, take a deep breath, and turn the key once more.

  The Holden roars to life, rattling and vibrating. I glance over at Mateo. I’m not ready for questions. I don’t know how to tell him that I’m pretty sure everything that contains a microchip has been fried, including most cars made after 1975. I’m not sure what to tell him, or how much to tell him. I can’t tell him everything, because then he’ll want to know how I know.

  Family must come first.

  Mateo raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t speak as he clicks his own seatbelt on. I shift the car into reverse and carefully back it out of the garage and down the driveway, swinging around onto Cockatoo Ridge Road. I haven’t had much experience driving a manual car, and the Holden stalls as I put it into first and try to pull forward. I take a deep breath and restart the engine. The gearbox crunches as I move from first to second, but we’re moving at last. I ease the choke back in, take a left and drive down Main Street. People emerge when they hear the rumble of the ute, and a small crowd gathers as I wind the window down, maybe ten or fifteen people.

  I see Georgie Nowak, the town mechanic, standing off to the side, with her son, Paddy, standing next to her. Paddy is eleven – one of the older kid
s in town. Next year he’ll probably head off to boarding school with the others. Georgie’s belly is slightly rounded, and I shudder. This is not a good time to be pregnant. Her husband, Jack, is a mechanic too, but he works at Hansbach on the graders and haul trucks. Georgie eyes Mr Vassili’s Holden, like she’s figuring out why it’s working when none of the other cars will.

  ‘I’m going up to Hansbach,’ I tell them.

  I pause, waiting for someone to point out that perhaps an adult should be going. That perhaps two unlicensed teenagers aren’t the best choice for the job. That perhaps I shouldn’t be stealing George Vassili’s car.

  But everyone seems scared and quiet. They’re glad that someone is taking charge, even if it’s only me.

  ‘Is it terrorists?’ asks Simmone Bratton, and I see her eyes dart momentarily to Mateo, who mutters something under his breath.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Simmone,’ says Barri Taylor with a snort. ‘Terrorists aren’t gonna attack a shithole like Jubilee, are they?’

  I see Keller in the crowd, still looking neat and fresh. He strides over to me.

  ‘You want me to come with you?’ he says.

  I shake my head, and Keller eyeballs Mateo in the passenger seat.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘His mum’s out at the mine. She’s the one doing the seminar.’

  Keller’s eyes narrow slightly, and I can see what he’s thinking – a foreigner comes to town, and all of a sudden we’re in a disaster movie.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ he says firmly.

  There’s nothing I want more than to floor the accelerator and fang it out of town, leaving Keller to eat my dust. But I need a favour.

  ‘Can you ride out to our house?’ I ask. ‘Let the twins know where I’m going?’