by Justin D'Ath
But her mother still hasn’t phoned and Zeelie can’t get hold of Tahlia, no matter how many times she calls both numbers. There isn’t anybody else at her new high school who she knows well enough yet just to call up for no reason (and she doesn’t have their phone numbers anyway), and her only other actual friend from Flowerdale Primary School, Emma Little, moved to Sydney after they finished Year 6 last year. Zeelie even tried calling Millie Crawford from pony club, who isn’t really what you would call a friend but is someone who loves horses (and isn’t her father), but Millie’s phone just rings out.
Suddenly – fzzzzzt! – the television goes dark. And so does everything else: the lounge room, the kitchen just through the doorway, the whole house. The lights have gone off. And with all the curtains and blinds closed to keep the heat out, the house suddenly feels like a big, dim cave. It’s gone quiet, too. Even the air conditioner has stopped. All Zeelie can hear is the howling wind outside.
It takes her a few moments to understand what has happened. And when she does understand, a rash of goosebumps prickles the skin all up and down Zeelie’s arms and legs. The power has gone off, just like her father said it might.
Zeelie hasn’t moved yet. She and Fly are sitting in a nest of cushions on the floor in front of the dead television. The useless phone lies on the carpet beside her. Carefully Zeelie lifts the puppy off her lap and rises to her feet. Her right thigh has pins and needles. Rubbing it, she limps through to the kitchen in the semi-darkness, places the phone back in its cradle and raises the blind above the sink.
‘Wowsers!’ she gasps.
It’s not just dark inside, it’s dark outside as well. Well, not totally dark – a weird brown gloom has settled over everything. It looks like night is falling, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon.
So creepy!
There’s movement out there. Here comes Zeelie’s father, walking across the lawn towards the house in the weird brown twilight.
It’s a relief to see him.
As he approaches, her father unwinds a long orange power cord behind him. It snakes back across the lawn, past the horse trailer and into the garage. There’s another power cord, a thin grey one, looped over her father’s shoulder. Zeelie loses sight of him as he disappears behind the rainwater tank. Then she hears the creak and bang of the laundry door. Moments later, her father comes bustling along the passage in his big boots, still paying out the orange cord behind him. But he doesn’t make it all the way to the kitchen – the cord is not long enough. Stopping just short of the doorway, he stoops and plugs the grey power cord from his shoulder into the socket on the end of the orange one.
‘The power went off,’ Zeelie tells him.
‘When?’
‘About two minutes ago.’
‘My timing is perfect then,’ says her father, reassuring Zeelie with his cheerfulness. Stepping around Fly, he drops the half-uncoiled grey power cord on the tiles in the middle of the kitchen floor. ‘Can you give me a bit of room please, Zeels? I need to move the fridge.’
Zeelie picks up Fly so he won’t be in the way, either. She watches as her father wraps his strong arms around their shiny new two-door refrigerator and wiggles it slowly out of its tight space between the stove and the pantry. Then he gets down on his hands and knees, reaches into the gap beside the half-sideways fridge and unplugs something from the wall behind it.
‘Can you get me the extension cord, Zeels?’ he says over his shoulder.
She fetches the end and he connects it. Somewhere at the back of the fridge, an electric motor purrs into life.
‘Voila!’ says her father (which Zeelie knows is French, and means something like ‘Tada!’) and opens the fridge door. Even though the rest of the house is in darkness, a strip of light shines brightly from inside.
Her father closes the fridge door and gives Zeelie a big, cheesy smile. ‘See. All those years in the boy scouts didn’t totally go to waste.’
Was he ever in the boy scouts? If he was, it’s the first Zeelie has heard of it. But she’s proud of him. And suddenly she feels safe again.
He won’t let anything bad happen to them.
‘Can you make the TV work, too?’ she asks.
‘Better not,’ says her father. Going to the sink, he turns on the cold tap. Zeelie hears a faint hum from outside as the house pump starts up. A moment later there’s a silver stream of water flowing into the sink. Her father turns off the tap and gives her a smile – not a big, cheesy smile, just a little one this time. ‘Let’s keep the power usage to a minimum, Zeels,’ he says. ‘I’m not quite sure how much juice those pumps are going to need.’
Juice? Zeelie wonders. He probably means electricity. She asks, ‘Is the fire coming?’
‘I don’t know, sweetie.’ He raises his eyebrows at her. ‘Any news from Mum and Lachy?’
‘She hasn’t called.’
They both look at the phone. But something seems different, and Zeelie realises what it is – the little red light on the base unit isn’t glowing. Her father notices too.
‘Oops,’ he says. ‘Forgot about that.’
He goes down the passage and disappears into the study. When he comes back, he has yet another power cord – a short white one this time – and a double-adapter wall socket. He unplugs the fridge for a moment, attaches the double-adapter to the power cord from the generator outside, then connects everything back together. The fridge hums back into life and the little red light on the phone winks on. Yay! thinks Zeelie. But when he lifts the handset to his ear, her father frowns.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.
‘There’s no dial tone.’
‘Is it plugged in properly?’
‘The light’s on.’ Her father presses a button on the hand piece and listens again. ‘Nothing doing,’ he says.
Zeelie wets her lips – they feel very dry. If the landline isn’t working, they have no connection to the outside world. Her mother can’t ring them.
She asks, ‘Is it because the power went off?’
Her father replaces the handset in its base. ‘The phone service and the power supply aren’t connected,’ he says. ‘They come in on different lines. Who knows what might have happened – the tree that fell across the powerlines could have hit the phone lines, too.’
Zeelie pictures a flaming tree falling across some wires. ‘How do you know it was a tree?’
‘I’m just guessing,’ says her father. ‘But it’s no big deal, sweetie – your mum will work out what’s going on.’
Will she? Zeelie wonders.
What if her mother and Lachy were driving past the flaming tree at the very moment it fell? ‘I’m scared, Dad.’
‘I know.’ He comes over and ruffles the fur on Fly’s neck. Zeelie almost wishes it was her hair he was ruffling. Up close, her father smells of sweat, diesel fuel and something else – wood smoke? ‘But there’s nothing to worry about,’ he continues. ‘We’re going to be all right.’
Zeelie tries hard to believe him. But it’s difficult. The air conditioner has only been off for ten minutes, and already the house is becoming warm and stuffy.
‘I wish Mum was here.’
‘She might be on her way,’ her father says. ‘Who knows, she could turn up at any moment.’
They both turn and stare in the direction of the front door. It rattles and creaks in the wind.
‘If she does,’ says Zeelie, trying to block out the image of the falling tree, ‘she’ll be cross about your boots.’
Her father grins. ‘I’d better get back outside then. How was Rimu when you checked on him?’
‘He seemed okay. His trough was full.’
‘That’s good,’ says her father, sounding distracted. Even though he said he was going back outside, he still hasn’t moved. ‘But I was thinking, sweetie: it’s so hot out there that you might like to give his blanket a good soaking in the trough, then put it on him wet, just to cool him down a bit.’
Zeelie nods. It’s quite a g
ood idea. ‘I’ll go and do it now.’
‘Thanks,’ says her father, as if Rimu is his horse, not Zeelie’s. ‘Come straight back when you’re finished – there are a couple of other things I’d like you to do.’
It takes longer than last time to reach Rimu’s paddock. Zeelie doesn’t run. The big double-layer horse blanket is awkward to carry, with all its dangling leather straps and clinking metal buckles. And the air is so hot that Zeelie is boiling by the time she gets there. Bending over the low concrete trough, she splashes water on her head and neck, then closes her eyes and dips her face right in. Who cares if the water smells like a fishpond? Who cares if she recently spent five minutes combing her hair? When it’s 47 degrees, a lot of things that would normally worry Zeelie no longer seem important.
There are different things to worry about now, things that really do matter: life-and-death things.
Zeelie can smell smoke. When she looks up, the sky seems almost low enough to touch. From ridge-top to ridge-top, a swirling brown mass of smoke rolls down the valley like an upside-down river in flood. Occasionally there’s a break in the flow, and Zeelie glimpses the sun, distant and copper-coloured, like a coin at the bottom of a very deep wishing well.
‘I wish …’ Zeelie whispers, but she gets no further.
There are just too many things to wish for.
Rimu comes over to see what she’s doing. She pats him, glad of his company, then she stands aside and watches while the horse takes a long, long drink from the trough. As the water level goes down around the edges, more water comes trickling in through the pipe. The power might be off, but the pumps are still working because of her father’s new generator. He wasn’t boasting to Mr Holmes – he is totally organised!
When Rimu has finished drinking, Zeelie bunches up his blanket and immerses it in the trough. She has to push down hard to get all the trapped air out. There are big bulges like balloons under the canvas that she works carefully towards the edges. Water sloshes over the rim of the trough and her sneakers fill up. But that doesn’t matter – today, wet is good.
Once it’s soaked through, the big dripping horse blanket is almost too heavy to lift. And getting it on Rimu isn’t easy. He doesn’t understand what Zeelie is trying to do and keeps moving away from her. She should have brought his halter. Dumping the squelchy blanket on the ground, she takes a handful of Rimu’s mane and leads him over to his stable. It isn’t really a stable, it’s just an old open-fronted hay shed that belonged to the people who lived here when it was a farm, but it’s a place where Rimu can shelter on cold nights or when it rains. There’s a stall at one end that Zeelie’s father built, with two boards that slide across to act as a gate. She shuts Rimu in and goes to fetch his blanket.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ she says to him a short time later, when the dripping blanket is securely strapped in place.
Sliding the boards back, Zeelie stands aside and sets Rimu free. The big dripping stallion trots out of his stall, snorting and kicking up his back legs to show he doesn’t like what she’s made him wear. But he must feel cooler, Zeelie thinks. She certainly does – half the water from his blanket has ended up on her! She laughs and gives Rimu a kiss, then hurries back towards the house.
Her father said he has another job for her to do.
4
FIREFIGHTER!
‘Fill the bath?’ Zeelie makes her eyebrows crumple towards each other. ‘Why?’
‘It’s just a precaution,’ says her father. He’s setting up a line of sprinklers under the pine trees between their place and Bialettis’. ‘I want to have plenty of water stored up, just in case.’
In case of what? Zeelie is afraid to ask.
She looks at the radio sitting in the wheelbarrow next to a spare sprinkler, a garden rake and her father’s big insulated water flask. ‘Have they said where the fire is?’
‘It sounds like there’s more than one,’ he tells her. ‘Half the state seems to be on fire alert. But there have been no warnings for here, so far.’
A flock of cockatoos comes screeching low over the pine trees. Their feathers are so white that the big noisy parrots almost glow against the roiling brown sky above them. Zeelie sends them a silent message: Keep going! You’re lucky you can fly.
Lots of creatures aren’t so lucky: koalas, kangaroos, wombats, people’s sheep and cattle. Horses.
Zeelie shivers. ‘Mum will be worried.’
‘She knows I’ll look after things,’ says her father.
‘And me.’
‘That goes without saying,’ he says. ‘You, most all.’
Zeelie rolls her eyes. ‘I meant I’ll look after things, too, Dad – I can help.’
‘Of course you can, kiddo. Thanks.’ He shoots her a smile. ‘So you can start by filling the bath. And fill both the laundry troughs too, while you’re at it. Make sure all the plugs are pushed in good and tight, so the water can’t drain out.’
She starts turning away, but he isn’t finished yet.
‘After that I’d like you to change into jeans and something with long sleeves,’ he tells her. ‘Then come back out here and give me a hand.’
Only now does Zeelie notice that her father has changed his own clothes since she last saw him. He’s wearing a long-sleeved winter shirt, his green ‘Pump Man’ overalls, and a different, heavier pair of boots. No wonder his face is so red.
Zeelie’s face looks a bit red, too, as she studies herself in the bathroom mirror while she waits for the bath to fill. She wrinkles her nose and pokes out her lower lip, practising what her mother used to call her Little Miss Impatience Look. But even her mother would be running out of patience right now. Has a bath ever, in the whole history of humanity, taken this long to fill up? It would almost be quicker to run back and forth from the creek with one of her father’s buckets.
When finally it’s time to turn off the tap, Zeelie lets out a loud whoop of relief. Her cry brings both whippets running in from the laundry. While Fly gets a pat and a tummy rub, Holly jumps up against the side of the bath and takes a drink from the brimming water. Zeelie, laughing, lets her. Today there are no rules. And no wonder the dogs are thirsty, she thinks. The house is so hot and airless it’s almost hard to breathe. She wonders how hot it will be when the fire comes.
Zeelie knows now that the fire will come.
When both the laundry troughs are full – another test of her patience – Zeelie pads down to her bedroom to change her clothes. Pulling up the blind for more light, she gasps and takes an involuntary step backwards as her father goes hurrying past, no more than a metre away, carrying a big coil of hose. It looks wild out there. Dead leaves and pine needles tick against the glass, dust swirls everywhere like smoke. It’s so thick that Zeelie can only just make out the dim outlines of the trees down by the creek. The hills behind them have disappeared completely.
Her heart skips. It is smoke!
Quickly Zeelie changes into a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved top, then she sits on the edge of her bed to pull on her second-best pair of riding boots.
Who cares about the stupid carpet? Just come home, Mum. Please!
Holly and Fly follow Zeelie outside. She leaves them to do their dog business and runs to find her father.
‘That shirt’s no good,’ is the first thing he says.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ she demands, hurt and angry.
‘It’s too thin.’ He pinches a bit of sleeve between a grubby thumb and forefinger, rubbing it back and forth – and probably leaving a stain that will never come out. ‘And it’s synthetic.’
‘So?’
His expression softens. ‘Sweetie, I’m only thinking of your welfare. Synthetics don’t stop the heat; they can even melt and catch fire. Could you put on something made of cotton or wool, something thicker – perhaps a windcheater or a jersey?’
Part of Zeelie wants to argue. It’s 47 degrees, for heaven’s sake, and he wants her to dress up like it’s the middle of a New Zealand winter!
(And nobody in Australia says jersey, Dad.) But Zeelie’s scared. Her heart is whumping in her chest. She tries to calm herself with the thought that her father knows what he’s doing. He would have cleared out like the Holmes family – wouldn’t he? – if he and Zeelie were in any real danger. So she goes back inside, swaps the synthetic top for a light cotton shirt and puts on her oldest riding jacket. It’s a bit tight around her chest, and her wrists poke out way past the cuffs, but she doesn’t want to get dirt (or, worst-case scenario, soot) on anything good. Anyway, who’s going to see her, apart from her father, the whippets and Atticus?
Uh-oh! Zeelie goes to the window. Where is Atticus?
She realises she hasn’t seen him since he wandered off around the side of the house about two hours ago. At the time Zeelie assumed he was headed for his favourite spot under the pine trees. But when she was around there just now, talking to her father, she didn’t notice him.
Holly and Fly have followed Zeelie back inside; she shuts them in and goes looking for her father. He’s on the roof this time. He has dragged one of his hoses up there.
‘Have you seen Atti?’ she asks.
Instead of answering, her father calls down to her, something about a tap.
‘What?’ she shouts.
His radio sits on the ground at the foot of the ladder. He has the volume turned up so loud that Zeelie can barely hear him. And he can’t hear her either, obviously. She finds the ‘on/off’ button and presses it. That’s better. With the radio off, she can hear a motor somewhere – it must be the generator in the garage – and the eerie howl of the wind in the pine trees.
‘Can you turn the tap on a bit more please, sweetie?’ shouts her father.
Zeelie follows the hose around the corner to the back of the house. The hose is clipped onto one of two brass taps that deliver water from the creek pump. Next to the taps is a power outlet. Normally the underground cable that powers the creek pump is plugged into this outlet. Today her father has unplugged this cable and joined it to an orange extension cord like the one connected to the fridge inside. The orange cord runs back across the lawn to the garage. Zeelie doesn’t really understand how all this is supposed to work, but she turns the brass tap all the way on like her father told her, then hurries back to the foot of the ladder.