by Joss Hedley
‘Annie,’ he says. ‘You remember Rafe Bell. These his kids.’
The woman stops and turns. Her face is dry and peeling. Her lips disappear into a thirsty black maw.
‘Ya give ’em those Fantas?’
‘Sure, Annie. They’re Rafe Bell’s kids. They come a long way.’
‘I was savin’ those for an occasion.’
‘It is an occasion, Anne.’
The woman hurrumphs and turns her back. ‘Don’t give ’em any more,’ she says. ‘Don’t give ’em no food or nothin’.’
Joe looks apologetically at Colm and Lydia. ‘She’s got a broken heart,’ he says as they cross the brown yard. ‘All our kids and our grandkids. Left years ago. Gone north. Nothin’ for ’em here.’
‘How far north?’ asks Colm.
‘Said they’d go to Jillyback. Then we got a card from ’em about two years ago sayin’ they was further north of that in Elan Plains. Never heard of it but they reckoned it was gander there.’
He shows them into a small lean-to at the back of the shop. The two narrow beds are spread with threadbare coverlets. A sticky strip of paper black with flies hangs by the window. Colm and Lydia drop their packs with relief and offer to their tired bodies the bliss of rest. They eat a small fistful of sunflower seeds, drain the last of the Fantas and fade quickly away with the last of the day.
• • •
The room is still dark when Colm is disturbed from sleep by an insistent shaking. It is Lydia.
‘Colm,’ she whispers.
‘What?’
‘I want to go.’
Colm raises himself from the twist of rag that is his pillow and sees his sister fully dressed with her pack strapped firmly to her back.
‘What is it, Lyd?’ He is surprised by her sudden eagerness to leave, especially as it means they might miss their father. He touches her arm. It is icy.
‘You’re cold,’ he says, and moves to the far edge of his bed. ‘Get in.’
Lydia is resolute. ‘We’ve got to go, Colm,’ she insists, and begins to gather her brother’s things and fold them into his pack.
‘It’s the middle of night! Why can’t we leave in the morning?’
His sister says nothing, only hands him his shirt. Colm gets up and puts it on.
‘All right,’ he says, and wonders again at his softness towards her. He takes his pack from her, knots it firmly and slings it onto his back.
They make their way out quietly to the yard. Colm leaves a small pile of coins on the back doorstep and they pass through the side gate into the lane beyond.
They walk for an hour, maybe more, with Lydia in the lead. The moon’s pale light lies like a veil over the landscape. Fractured shadowy trees and boulders pattern their path. The plain stretches out before them, an endless sea of dark dust.
The land dips. Their feet slide in the soft sand and they find themselves in a dry shallow gorge. Even at night they can tell that this was once the bed for a creek, a little brown brook, a winding rivulet. It amazes Colm that something which no longer exists could have so many names. He has seen creeks – and lakes and rivers and tarns – only in books. Their father owned numerous such books, entire volumes devoted to a single river or lake long since dried up, or to great tracts of rainforest once teeming with wildlife, and lush vegetation now razed to the ground. Colm was always amazed when he looked at those pictures, amazed that his own country, now almost completely arid and bare, could have so recently sustained such life, such beauty. There were volumes, too, of cities: great cities humming with industry and invention, with culture and technology; cities that held within them small towns devoted to reading and learning, whose monolithic structures were filled with tomes on every extraordinary subject, from every distant part of the world; cities where plays were performed in huge shell-shaped constructions, where brilliant musicians played sonatas and concertos on instruments centuries old; and cities where the lights were always on, where there was never any darkness, where people rarely needed sleep. But all was changed now, Colm’s father had told him. The cities were empty and desolate, abandoned by their inhabitants in the quest for food. These great metropolitan centres were the domain now of the earth, which had sent up the brown vines that now shackled every building. It was hard to believe, Rafe Bell had said, that such dereliction and bleakness could once have been the home to wonder and invention.
A single, distant gunshot cracks through the air, followed by another and another. Colm and Lydia turn and scrabble back across the creek bed, press their bodies against the vertical earth of the bank and peer over the plain towards Nurrengar. It is clear at once that the shots have come from there. As they watch, structure after structure is set alight, the dry wooden huts overwhelmed at once by flames. In no time, the entire town is a low orange blaze, brilliant and seething against the blackness of sky.
The moon slips slowly into its bed. The children grow stiff from clinging to the earth, from taking their weight upon their hands. Colm’s eyeballs ache from watching the fire. When he closes his eyes the flame is there still, burning red against the black backs of his eyelids.
The blaze dies down and the town smoulders to ash. Colm and Lydia turn from the scene in silence, cross the creek bed and climb up the other side. The stars above them blink and flicker and one by one go out. The sky lightens, first to silver then to a soft powdery blue. How is it, Colm wonders, that the sky seems the same? That it bears not a hint of the pain of the land? That it looks as though it was born for the first time this very day? But then he gets a whiff of the smoke on the air and he looks again at the crumbled town behind them and sees the sky there stained grey and suffering.
‘How did you know we should leave, Lydia?’ Colm asks his sister.
Lydia shrugs. ‘Don’t know. Just did.’
‘Did you know there would be a raid?’
‘No. Only that we had to go.’
The coolness of the night passes with the gradual spreading of the sun’s rays. Lydia is walking more slowly now. Colm thinks she might need a rest, so they stop in the shade of a rock and take a mouthful of bread and the last of their brown brackish water. They feel foolish but say nothing to the other of how it was that they left Nurrengar without first finding water and filling their bottles. Clearly there must have been some water in the town somewhere but there is no option now of returning.
Another thought plays on Colm’s mind but he cannot bear to give words to it. He thinks of the raid on their farm in the hills and then of the raid on the town. Surely it was a dreadful coincidence that twice in so short a time they were in such a situation. He lets it lie, he thinks no further, but knows that he must think soon. For the moment, though, he stands and takes Lydia’s hand and they walk again, quickly, quietly, under the melting sky.
They stop when the heat weighs upon them, when the ground flares up beneath them. There is no water left in their bottles and the next town is still a long way away. They are used to being thirsty – it is the primary physical state they have known since birth – but never before have they survived on so little, with the prospect of relief so remote.
They sleep, though Colm wonders if this is wise. He tries to stay awake, to keep alert and on watch, but heat and exhaustion are stronger and he gives himself up to them. He dreams. Bright white light and heat make their way into his slumber now as always. Thirst and an edge of hunger. The farm with its watchtower and sturdy wire fences. Billowing smoke and walls of fire. His father and the dog.
He wakes, his head dark and throbbing. The sun has crept around and they are no longer in shade. He curses himself and nudges Lydia. She blinks at her brother with swollen red eyes and follows him to a small dapple beneath a gum tree. Green shoots sprout from its blackened trunk.
There has been a bushfire, they realise. The tree is one of several of its kind, each of which bears the marks of a blaze. The children’s hands when they draw them from the trunk come away black with the rasp of charcoal. They pluck a piece o
f the bright green shoot and suck at its stem for moisture. The ache in Colm’s head thickens.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Can’t stop yet. They might not be too far behind.’
Lydia looks at him, bewildered.
‘Who?’
Colm blinks and stumbles, sees in the open his secret fear.
‘The raiders,’ he says. But that is all. He does not go any further.
The sun sears a path in the dirt and it is this that they follow. Their lips harden and chafe, their tongues stick like parched sponges to the roof of their mouths. They are silent. Words, they know, will dry them out further. They walk on.
The sun lowers. Ahead, some distance away, a flash of silver light breaks the monotony of the plain. The children are anxious, wary, yet inquisitive. They walk slowly, waiting for the evening to descend that they may be hidden in its lengths. But still the sun lives and again they see the flash of light, a little closer now and sharper.
‘What is it?’ Lydia asks. Colm is unsure and walks with caution. Soon, though, the brightness of the day makes way for a more gentle covering and they proceed with a little more courage through the gathering greyness.
They stop about fifty metres from where they think the light came from. They haven’t seen it since the sun went down so cannot be sure. They peer into the gloom. There is movement, slow and shuffled, and a human form.
‘Father?’ breathes Lydia softly. But they know it is not. Their father is a tall, lean and muscular man. The person before them is shorter, thick across the girth and with solid, meaty limbs.
‘Joe!’ shouts Colm. For Joe it is, Joe from Joe’s Emporium in Nurrengar, proud Tidy Town entrant 2027. They fly across the salt bush and leap jubilantly over the spinifex. Joe stands at the shout and nods and smiles as the children approach.
‘Whaddaya know,’ he says, and whistles in his long, slow way. ‘Who’da guessed? Thought you kids were gonners in the lean-to.’ And he grins and shakes his head and ruffles his hand through Colm’s hair.
‘We saw a light,’ said Lydia, panting. ‘What was it, Joe?’
Joe turns and points to a small truck parked nearby. ‘Could be Sheila,’ he said. ‘Could be the sun on ’er windows when I opened the door. Could be.’
‘Probably was, Joe,’ said Colm, sitting and taking the bottle of water the man was holding out to him. ‘What are you doing out here anyway?’
‘On my way to Elan Plains, I reckon. Find the kids and grandkids. Raid last night. Lost everything. No one’s left, I reckon. Not Annie.’ He is quiet and looks down at his feet. ‘Lucky,’ he continues. ‘Packed Sheila last night thinkin’ I would go fossickin’ past Midgin first thing. So she’s got a bit of juice in ’er. Reckon we can get a fair way before we run out.’
‘Could we come with you for a while, Joe?’ asks Colm. ‘We’ve got a bit of money. We could pay.’
Joe looks bewildered. ‘Course, young fella,’ he says. ‘Think I’d leave you out here?’ He snorts. ‘You’re your father’s son all right.’
‘What do you mean?’ asks Colm.
Joe furrows his brow. ‘Too honest for your own good,’ he says. He looks at Colm a moment longer then shifts his gaze to Lydia. ‘Wanna gimme a hand with the tucker, Miss Bell?’ he asks. ‘Let’s see if we can’t slap together a bit of a feed.’
The two pad across the cooling dust to the truck. Colm squats down beside his pack and begins to unload it properly for the first time since they left the farm. He holds each item thoughtfully in his hands, feeling its weight, remembering its past, wondering about its future. One by one he places the items carefully on the ground until he has emptied his pack completely, until he can see before him everything that he has in his life and everything upon which his life will now be built.
CHAPTER
3
They leave their campsite early, while the cold earth is still in the company of darkness. The three of them sit together in the front seat of Joe’s truck as Sheila rattles over the sleeping plain leaving great blooms of dark dust in her wake. The children cling to the dash, to the door handle, to the edge of the seat, to stop the feeling that their organs are being thrown about inside them.
Colm hasn’t been in a vehicle for years, not since the days when they’d drive into Nurrengar for supplies. Lydia can hardly remember.
‘Dad had an old truck, older than Sheila,’ he says.
‘Musta been pretty old,’ chuckles Joe. ‘Sheila’s no filly.’
‘What colour was it?’ asks Lydia.
‘Hard to tell. It was always dirty. Pretty rusty, too. Kind of brownish, I think.’
‘What happened to it?’
Colm looks at his sister. She’s tough, he thinks. She has to be. But she’s still pretty young. He pushes a strand of yellow hair behind her ear and wonders how much she knows. How much she remembers of their mother.
All he says, though, is, ‘Landslide. Took out the truck. And the road.’
Lydia nods, her eyes distant and dreamy. Colm thinks she looks tired. He puts his arm around her and she nestles into the circle of skin. Her eyelids droop. Her breath is even and measured.
‘How far is Elan Plains, Joe?’ asks the boy when he is sure his sister is sleeping.
‘Few hundred clicks, I s’pose. Dunno exactly.’
‘Have you heard of a place called Wonding? On the far north coast of Queensland?’
‘Wonding. Is it a big place?’
‘No, it’s pretty small.’ He pulls out the map from his pack and unfolds it. ‘Here,’ he says, and points to a small black dot on the page. ‘Father told us to head to Wonding if we got separated. It’s where his sister lives.’
Joe clicks his tongue. ‘Well, you got a long trip ahead of you.’
A spread of small hills slowly emerges on the dim horizon. Slowly, so slowly, that Colm realises he has been looking at them for some time before actually seeing them. The road is a straight line towards the southernmost end.
‘You were lucky up in Hirrup’s Range, I reckon,’ says Joe.
‘Yeah, we were.’
‘Those hills, they kept the raiders away a long time.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But your dad, too. He would’ve kept ’em away. With all those gadgets of his.’
Colm nodded, bit his lip. ‘Do you reckon he’s gander, Joe?’
‘Course,’ says Joe. ‘Don’t you worry, son. He’s too smart not to be.’
Lydia shifts and sighs. Colm braces his arm more firmly around her, feels the heaviness of her sleeping form against his side. The darkness gives way slowly to the encroaching light. The black earth becomes grey, becomes red.
They drive through the morning, the landscape slithering beside them. The sun burns above them, burns into them. Colm makes his sister put on her long-sleeved shirt despite her sleepy protests that she is already too hot. Joe’s bald head turns pink and sweats.
It is late afternoon. The range of small hills is directly before them. ‘Be on the lookout for any signs of a town, or petrol,’ Joe says. The children nod and rub their eyes. Colm’s eyelids feel puffy. He wishes he could put cool patches of wet cloth on them but there is little water left. He can hear it sloshing around in the jerry can behind them. He wishes he could drink a tiny bit more but knows that he must wait for Joe.
The truck snakes through the crumbling hills. The brown slopes are thirsty and dry. On the right they pass a cattle grid leading to a private road. Joe shifts gear as the road begins to climb.
They heave up the hill, round a corner and find themselves at the top looking over to the other side. A dry riverbed crosses the plain below, irritated at its elbow by a cluster of tired buildings. The three of them get out to stretch their legs.
‘Midgin,’ says Joe. He is leaning against Sheila’s bonnet, his eyes squinting in the last of the sun, his head dry now but still pink. ‘Reckon we might find somewhere to kip. Get some supplies.’
Colm looks at the town with uncertainty. It has an empty look, hollow
. It seems almost dead. He wonders if there is anyone there at all. But then, he thinks, Nurrengar didn’t look much better and they found Joe and beds and cans of Fanta there. He stands on his toes and reaches his hands high into the air, stretches to the very tips of his fingers so that his sleeping muscles wake and breathe again.
‘Let’s get goin’ then,’ says Joe after a minute, and climbs back into the truck.
Colm shakes himself and calls out to Lydia. She is standing a little away from the truck, her eyes fixed on the town below.
‘Lyd,’ calls Colm. ‘We’re going.’
He sees her flinch, but she doesn’t move, doesn’t turn.
‘Come on,’ he calls again. ‘You’ll get left behind.’
Still she stands motionless. Colm trots over to her and shakes her shoulder. ‘Lyd,’ he says. ‘Joe’s waiting.’
His sister doesn’t answer at first, then speaks in a strong, firm voice.
‘We mustn’t go there, Colm.’
Colm drops his hand from her shoulder. ‘Why not?’ he asks, impatient, exasperated. He can hear Joe turning Sheila’s motor over. But then he remembers the events of two nights ago and softens. He makes his way back to the truck.
‘Joe,’ he says through the cabin window. ‘We didn’t die in the lean-to in Nurrengar because Lydia knew something was going to happen and made us leave. She’s saying the same thing now. She doesn’t want us to go down to Midgin.’
He feels foolish, embarrassed. Maybe the other night was a coincidence and this is a stupid mistake, he thinks. He has no way of telling.
Joe looks puzzled. His mouth is turned down and his forehead is furrowed. Colm thinks he sees sweat breaking out on his pink pate again.
‘Right,’ says Joe. He turns off the engine and drums his thick fingers on the steering wheel. ‘You know we’re just about outta juice, and there’s only enough water for a few more hours. If we don’t go into Midgin, what are we gunna do about supplies?’
Colm shuffles and scuffs under Joe’s gaze. He doesn’t know what to say.