by Justin D'Ath
‘I’m sorry, Rimu,’ she says, without really knowing what she’s apologising for. It has something to do with Fly, she thinks, and something to do with her brother. Rimu makes a gentle blowing noise, as if he understands. And perhaps he does understand. He and Zeelie have that special mind-to-mind connection that only competition horses and their riders develop with each other. It’s like telepathy, and a bit like love. She gives him a kiss.
When Zeelie checks Rimu’s water trough, it’s full nearly to the top. She presses down on the float, just to be sure, and a jet of water comes shooting out of the brass filler pipe at the far end. Good on you, Dad, she thinks. He asked her to check, but only to make her feel useful.
Dan the Pump Man has everything under control.
‘I think a bushfire might be coming, Rimu,’ Zeelie says, talking to animals again. ‘But don’t worry, Dad’s got a good fire plan.’
The hot wind pushes against her as she walks-not-runs back to the house. It blows her hat off twice. After the second time, Zeelie scrunches up the cloth hat and stuffs it into the back pocket of her shorts. Who needs sun protection anyway, when it’s so cloudy?
But those aren’t clouds, she remembers.
A bushfire is coming! It doesn’t seem real.
When Zeelie gets back to the house, the ladder is still where it was before but her father is no longer on it. She hears the radio in the garage and follows the noise there. Her father is crouched over a big motor-thingy on wheels that she has never seen before. It’s apple-red, shiny and looks brand new. The man on the radio is reading out a list of place names: Yabamac, Upper Plenty, Dry Creek Road. Zeelie’s heart beats fast as she waits to hear Flowerdale.
‘Can you hold this for me?’ her father interrupts.
She holds the greasy metal funnel while he pours pale liquid from a jerry can. Sharp fumes go up her nose. Zeelie twists her head away and sneezes.
‘Sorry,’ says her father. ‘Diesel.’
‘Isn’t that what Mum puts in the Rodeo?’
‘I hope so – otherwise she wouldn’t get very far.’
Zeelie isn’t in the mood for his jokes today. Nor does she want to be reminded that her mother is far away. She asks, ‘Is this some kind of pump?’
‘It’s a generator.’ Her father looks at it like it’s the most beautiful thing in the world; he’s nuts about machines. ‘It makes electricity.’
‘What for?’
‘In case the power goes off.’
‘Why would the power go off?’ asks Zeelie.
‘It sometimes happens when there’s a bushfire.’ Her father sets the jerry can down with a clunk on the concrete floor and swivels its hinged lid closed. ‘But don’t worry, kiddo,’ he says confidently, ‘that’s what this generator is for.’
Zeelie isn’t worried about the power going off. Who cares about electricity when there’s a bushfire coming?
For the first time today, she wishes she’d gone with her mother and Lachy.
‘Sweetie?’ says the voice of her father. ‘Sweetie, we’re finished. You don’t have to hold it there anymore.’
Gently he removes the funnel from Zeelie’s hand. It doesn’t look like her hand – she has to wiggle her fingers to make sure. None of this feels real; it’s like she’s having a dream. A bad dream.
The radio man is still reading out the names of places that are in danger. Zeelie nibbles her lower lip as she listens.
‘Have they said anything about Flowerdale yet, Dad?’
‘Not a thing.’ He straightens up and passes her the phone. ‘Take this inside. If Mum rings, tell her I want to talk to her.’
‘Why can’t we call her?’ asks Zeelie.
‘Because she forgot her phone,’ her father says.
‘But she called us before.’
‘From a payphone at the hospital.’
‘How could Mum forget her phone?’ Zeelie asks. ‘She always leaves it in her car when she’s home because there’s no mobile reception here.’
‘She didn’t take her car,’ says her father. ‘She took the Rodeo.’
Zeelie peers outside. Her mother’s little green Mazda hatchback is still in the carport. ‘Why did she take the Rodeo?’
‘Because her car is almost out of fuel,’ her father explains. ‘She wanted to get Lachy to hospital as quickly as possible. She didn’t want to have to stop and buy fuel along the way. You were there – you must have heard us talking about it.’
‘I was looking after Lachy,’ Zeelie reminds him coolly.
He pats her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m sure he’s going to be okay. Mum will call us when she can.’
It isn’t Lachy who Zeelie is worried about – he’s down in the city, totally safe from bushfires. She watches as her father removes a six-plug power board from the back of his work van and plugs one end into an electricity socket on the side of the generator. In case the power goes off.
‘Do you think the bushfire will come here, Dad?’
‘I hope not.’ He looks her in the eye. ‘But there’s nothing to worry about, sweetie, I’ve got it all under control.’
It reassures her to hear this. Her father has thought of everything. Zeelie didn’t even know that generators existed until five minutes ago.
But it’s weird – and a bit unsettling – that he keeps calling her sweetie.
‘It might be an idea to put the dogs out to pee,’ he calls after her as Zeelie leaves the garage.
Then he adds something about Mum’s new carpet that she doesn’t fully hear because of the wind.
And Zeelie says something back to him – but only in her mind – about dirty workboots.
Atticus seems quite happy to go outside, but Zeelie has to tell Holly three times before the gangly, white whippet reluctantly leaves her bed and slinks out into the heat, her head and tail drooping. An adult now, she’s becoming quite stubborn. Fly goes out, too, even though he probably doesn’t need to pee again after only 15 minutes inside. But he does his business with the others, all on different parts of the dusty lawn. When they have finished, both the whippets come trotting back to Zeelie, who’s waiting for them at the laundry door. Atticus ignores her when she calls him, or perhaps he doesn’t hear her – he’s quite deaf, and the wind is very noisy up in the treetops. Instead of coming back inside, the old golden retriever wanders off around the side of the house and disappears. Zeelie knows where he’s going: he has a favourite spot under the pine trees, where he can look through the fence and see the Bialettis’ house – his house – in the distance. Sometimes he lies there for hours at a time, head on his paws, just watching and waiting for his owners to come home. It’s really sad. But if Atticus wants to stay out in the heat, it’s his choice, Zeelie thinks. She follows the whippets inside and shuts the door.
After the 47 degree furnace outside, it’s like stepping into a refrigerator. Heavenly!
Zeelie changes her still-slightly-damp shorts for a clean pair. She spends the next three or four minutes in front of the big mirror in her parents’ ensuite, using her mother’s antique hairbrush – the one with the pretty New Zealand paua shell inlay – to get the worst of the knots out of her hair. Her hair is down to her waist now; it takes a lot to look after. What it really needs is a good wash and conditioning, but Zeelie might not hear the phone if she’s under the shower.
She hopes her mother will ring soon. She’s worried about her. Her father is worried, too. What a day for stupid Lachy to break his arm! We should all be together, Zeelie thinks. Stay and defend. Will it come to that? Will we really have to fight a bushfire? Just Dad and me?
Zeelie takes the phone through to the kitchen and sees the empty water jug still sitting on the bench where she left it earlier. She should have refilled it and put it back in the fridge. Well, it’s too late now. Zeelie fills a glass at the sink. The water from the big tank outside is so warm it’s almost like she’s used the hot tap. She drinks it anyway, then fills the glass again. 47 degrees, Zeelie thinks as she
slowly drinks down the second glass. That must be some kind of record. She looks at the phone for a moment, then picks it up and dials her mother’s number, just to hear her recorded voice.
And even though her mother won’t get to hear it until she gets home, Zeelie leaves her a message: ‘Hi Mum, it’s me. Everything is okay here, but we can see the smoke now. Dad said the actual fire is a long way away. He’s got hoses and sprinklers set up everywhere, and there’s this generator-thingy in case the power goes off. So we’re pretty well prepared if the fire does come. Which it won’t, of course, Mum, so don’t worry, okay?’
It’s only after she hangs up that Zeelie realises what she should have said. She says it now, or thinks it, in the same, almost telepathic way that she communicates with Rimu: I love you, Mum.
Zeelie picks up the phone again and tries her best friend Tahlia Tippet’s landline number. She gets the busy signal. Bummer. Then a thought pops into her head – Tahlia might be trying to ring her! They have done that before – phoned each other at exactly the same moment. Zeelie places the phone back in its cradle and stares at it, willing it to ring, but nothing happens. She presses redial: still busy. Someone at the Tippets’ could be using the internet. There’s no broadband in Flowerdale, only dial-up: when you use the internet, the phone line is busy. It’s like living in the last century.
Should she try Tahlia’s mobile?
Zeelie goes to the window. Her father is still in the shed. Stay there, she thinks. She isn’t allowed to call her friends’ mobiles from the landline. Nearly two years ago, when she and her family first moved here from Benalla, Zeelie phoned her left-behind friend Maya Talbot and they talked for three quarters of an hour. The phone bill was $90. After that, her parents made the no-calling-mobiles rule. But a rule like that doesn’t seem fair today, when a bushfire is coming and Zeelie can’t even get in touch with her mother.
She needs to talk to someone who isn’t her father.
Biting the inside of her cheek, Zeelie carefully presses in Tahlia’s number. There’s no mobile reception here in the foresty part of the valley where most of Flowerdale’s population live, but Tahlia’s house is at the top of Kangaroo Point Road and sometimes she gets a signal.
Not today, though.
Zeelie fiddles with the phone. It isn’t fair! she thinks. Dare she call Maya? By the time the next phone bill arrives, this will all be over and who cares what her parents say!
Then she has a better idea. She peeps out the window once more – all clear – and pushes ‘3’ on the speed dial menu. Three will put her through to Karani Taimana, Zeelie’s great-grandmother in New Zealand. Zeelie bites the inside of her cheek again as she listens to the series of musical tones that come at the start of an international call. But then, before Karani’s phone can ring even once, Zeelie thumbs the ‘end’ button and breaks the connection. Much as she would love to talk to her great-grandmother right now, it would be mean to tell her about the bushfire and how her granddaughter’s family in Australia might be (but probably aren’t) in danger. Karani Taimana is 102 years old – she might have a heart attack if she knew.
Zeelie’s own, not-quite-13-year-old, heart is beating much faster than normal as she worries about what’s going to happen.
Suddenly there’s another kind of beating: knock knock knock knock!
Someone is at the front door. Wiping her eyes, which are inexplicably damp, Zeelie hurries to see who it is. Both the whippets get there before her.
‘Sit!’ Zeelie tells them before she opens the door.
It’s Mr Holmes from down at the corner. He looks hot. His shiny bald head is pink and dotted with beads of sweat. Behind him, his little grey ute is parked in the turn-around section of Zeelie’s driveway. Its tray is loaded high with suitcases, plastic tubs and bulging red-and-blue storage bags. A filing cabinet stands upright behind the cabin with its drawers taped closed, and next to it is a set of golf clubs and one of those new flat-screen televisions partly wrapped in a pink blanket. Everything is tied down with cords and ropes and bungy straps. Max, the Holmes’s beautiful black German shepherd, pokes his head out through the open passenger window.
‘Is your dad home?’ Mr Holmes asks, without even saying hello.
Zeelie, who was about to say hello back, points around the corner of the house. ‘He’s in the shed.’
While she was distracted, naughty Fly has squeezed out past Zeelie’s legs and is trotting over to the ute to check out Max. Zeelie clicks the door closed in Holly’s face and goes after him. Now she notices the Holmes’s black four-wheel drive parked out on the service road next to their letterbox. Like the ute, the back of it is full of stuff, too. Bags, boxes and things wrapped in towels and bedsheets press against the inside of the windows. Two people sit in the front – Mrs Holmes and little red-haired Chloe, who is in the grade below Lachy at school. Mother and daughter both wave (they’re friendlier than Mr Holmes) and Zeelie waves back. She picks up Fly, thinks about patting Max but decides not to – silly Fly is growling at him – then carries the puppy around to the garage to find out why Mr Holmes is here.
‘Nobody has a clue what’s going on, Danny,’ Mr Holmes is saying when Zeelie arrives at the open garage door. Mr Holmes is the only person apart from Grandpa Royle who calls her father Danny. The two men became friends when Zeelie’s father fixed one of the Holmes’s pumps last year. ‘When you call the number they’re giving out on the radio,’ their visitor continues, ‘you just get a recorded message telling you to phone the emergency hotline. And when you call that, another recording tells you to call the first number.’
Both men stare at Zeelie’s father’s radio, as if it will tell them another number to ring. Zeelie’s father asks, ‘Has there been any mention of Flowerdale?’
‘Not that I’ve heard,’ says Mr Holmes. ‘Heidi and I have been listening all day. But you don’t have to be Einstein to work out the fire’s heading this way.’ He turns and peers out through the open garage door, looking right past Zeelie and Fly as if they aren’t there. ‘Those pine trees must be a bit of a worry, Danny. They’re pretty close to your house.’
Zeelie’s father doesn’t seem to notice her, either. ‘They’re on the neighbours’ property,’ he says. ‘Angelo and Jenny Bialetti – you must know them? Nice people, but a bit soft on the green issues. If I had my way, I’d have cut down every one of those trees the first week we moved here.’
‘Bit late now,’ Mr Holmes says, with a shake of his pink, bald head.
‘Don’t I know it,’ Zeelie’s father agrees. ‘I spent the last hour cleaning pine needles out of my gutters.’
‘Have you filled them with water?’
‘The gutters? No, not yet. But it’s on my list. I’m waiting till I can actually smell the smoke before I do that.’
‘You’re a brave man, Danny.’
‘Not brave,’ Zeelie’s father says modestly (but she can tell he’s pleased to be called brave), ‘just organised.’
The other man shuffles his feet. ‘Good for you. But Heidi and I aren’t waiting round to face the music. We’ve got Chloe to think of.’
Zeelie’s father, who should have her to think of, just nods. ‘We’re pretty well prepared here. I’ve got sprinklers set up all over the place. And we’re never going to run out of water, thanks to the creek.’
‘Unless the power drops out,’ says Chloe’s father.
Zeelie’s father points at his shiny, new generator. ‘I’m ready for that, too.’
‘You certainly have thought of everything,’ Mr Holmes says.
‘Truth be told,’ admits Zeelie’s father, ‘I only picked it up a couple of days ago, when they started warning us about this heatwave. And it turned out that nearly everyone else must have had the same idea. I had to drive all the way out to Dandenong to find this little beauty. You’re looking at the last generator for sale anywhere in Melbourne.’
Both men stand admiring it for a few moments.
‘You did well,’ Mr Holmes says f
inally.
‘Thanks, Brett. And I appreciate your stopping by – very neighbourly of you. Where are you headed?’
‘To Heidi’s brother’s place, up near Winton. That’s if the roads stay open.’
‘You’ll be right,’ Zeelie’s father says in his confident, fire-plan voice. ‘And you’re doing the responsible thing – there’s no sense staying if your family aren’t one hundred per cent behind you.’
Zeelie wishes she had the courage to talk now. Instead, she remains silent as the two men shake hands and Mr Holmes wishes her father good luck.
And then, for the first time since she answered his knock at the front door, their visitor looks directly at Zeelie. ‘What about you, doll?’ he asks. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with us? I reckon we could squeeze you in with Chloe and the missus – if you don’t feel like hanging round, fighting bushfires with your dad, that is.’
Zeelie shrugs and gives a fake little laugh. She isn’t sure whether the invitation is genuine or some sort of private joke between the two men. Both of them are smiling at her. She absolutely does not want to stay and fight the bushfire. But she can’t leave her dad on his own.
And she can’t leave Rimu and the dogs.
‘I’m good,’ she says, stroking Fly between his soft, velvety ears. She has worked out how to hold him now without being scratched. And she doesn’t care that her father can see her breaking one of Lachy’s stupid rules.
‘Our fire plan is to stay and defend,’ she tells Mr Holmes.
3
LIFE-AND-DEATH THINGS
Zeelie watches TV for a while. An old black-and-white movie is showing. It’s about an adult princess who’s run away or something (Zeelie missed the start) and is hanging out with an American reporter who’s pretending he doesn’t know who she is. They’re in a place that looks like Paris or one of those other big old European cities, but where everyone speaks English. It’s quite a good movie, even though it’s ancient, and the actor playing the princess is totally gorgeous. But the TV station keeps interrupting the program with bushfire warnings. Zeelie hits the mute button every time. She’s watching TV so she doesn’t have to think about bushfires, thank you very much. And anyway, her father has everything under control.