by Joy Dettman
Never one to take chances, he returned to the house to arm himself with a loaded rifle, then unclipped the dogs’ chains.
‘Sic’em, Red. Sic’em, Rusty.’
The pair took off, not towards the back fence, but towards the road. He followed behind them, rifle at the ready.
His dogs had found something. They were yelping, pawing, peeing on a pile of rubbish some bastard had dumped near his front fence.
‘What is it, Joey?’ his wife called out the front door.
‘Rubbish-dumping bastards again,’ he called back.
Beer in a carton – four full bottles – and a larger cardboard carton beside it. The dogs weren’t interested in the beer. They were yelping at the larger carton.
‘Sit, you mad mongrels!’ he roared.
They sat, and he rolled the carton over, seeking a way in. There was something heavy in it. Someone had wasted a lot of tape in sealing it, then punched air holes through one side.
He thought pups, some useless bastard’s litter of unwanted mongrels, and yelled to his missus to bring him a sharp knife.
Joe Flanagan, his missus and their dogs found Tracy King curled into that cardboard carton, unconscious but breathing.
At eleven twenty-five, Joe ran through Gertrude’s orchard, bellowing like his bull.
*
Tracy was on her way to the Royal Children’s Hospital by air ambulance, Cara at her side, when at two thirty Jack Thompson drove Georgie home from Willama hospital, her wound numbed and closed by eight stitches, her mind numbed by two sudden-death painkillers a sister had fed to her. She was having trouble keeping her good eye open.
She weaved when she got out of the car, and Jack got his arm around her. He held her all the way to the kitchen, which was much as they’d left it three hours ago. Elsie was asleep on her chair, but still holding her fan of cards close to her chest.
‘Take her home,’ Georgie said.
‘We’re not leaving you down here by yourself,’ Jenny said.
‘Our chaps will be down here all night,’ Jack said.
Georgie didn’t wait for the outcome of the argument. Holding on to walls, she made her own way to her bedroom, where she kicked off her shoes, sat down to pull her jeans off, then fell onto rather than into bed.
Maybe she heard Elsie and Harry call their goodnights; maybe she heard Jack’s and Jim’s footsteps on the old kitchen’s concrete floor, heard them muttering when the sitting room door refused to open. Norman’s comfortable chairs were in there – his old leather couch had always made a reasonable bed. Door locked by Margot, to lock Teddy out. For a lot of years, she’d locked him in.
Georgie was dead to the world when the Ford’s motor started up, when Jen and Jim drove home to their own bed.
Red ute standing alone in Gertrude’s yard then, a slim moon sliding beneath a cloud, an owl whispering by on silent wings, a mouse squeaking, then gone, while Georgie’s subconscious attempted to sort out that crazy night in crazy dream.
She was lost in a labyrinth of tunnels beneath Charlie’s shop. Couldn’t find her way out and couldn’t turn back. The ground was falling in behind her. And Raelene, a five year old, screaming as she ran ahead through the labyrinth. Always running away, always hiding, but she had Georgie’s handbag and Cara’s address was in it, and Georgie needed that address. Without it, Cara was lost again.
‘Georgie.’
Someone wanted her. Not Raelene. She tried to call out. Couldn’t make her vocal cords work.
‘Georgie.’
Tunnel walls closing in, squeezing out the air. Glass breaking. Raelene could always find a way in, a way out.
Where had she found glass to break in that tunnel? She’d let in the light.
Had to open her eyes and find out where that light was coming from. Couldn’t open them. That doctor had sewn her lids down.
‘Georgie!’ Harry’s voice in the tunnel.
And Jack shining that light in her eyes again.
Not Jack. A stranger’s voice behind a roar of wind. ‘You’re on fire.’ Hands grabbing at her. Georgie didn’t like hands grabbing at her.
She rose up from the pillow, and her head kept on going to slam into the ceiling and shatter. Hands dragging her from the bed as bits and pieces of her head attempted to land back on her shoulders. Ghosts flying in the light – wispy smoke ghosts.
Then awake. The stink of smoke. The roar. The light. Granny’s old kitchen was burning. A fine breezeway when there was a breeze. A wind tunnel of fire tonight.
Jack’s nautilus shell. In Granny’s top dressing-table drawer.
Pulled away from grabbing hands, yanked the little top drawer free, then dived headfirst with it towards a torch beam. Hands shoving her from behind, more hands pulling her and Granny’s top drawer through the window.
Elsie was there, awake and screaming. Georgie’s bare feet walking on fallen chicken wire. Sharp chicken wire. Harry, drawing her forward. Mud beneath bare feet.
She had thirty pairs of shoes inside. She’d counted them two weeks ago. She had books in there, correspondence-college certificates, and she was clutching a drawer because Jack Thompson’s nautilus shell was in it.
Someone took the drawer from her hands. Elsie’s arms were around her, Elsie bawling. Harry’s arm around both of them. Pyjama-pants-clad Harry. Scrawny, bare-chested Harry.
And strangers. Two. More than two. One of them had dragged her out of bed. Now he was telling her to move further back.
Her ute was too close to the blaze. No keys to move it to safety. Keys burning in there, with her handbag, her shoes, her books and certificates. She’d been proud of those certificates. She’d paid thirty-five dollars for one of those textbooks. Her new jeans too.
Looked around, behind her, at the wood heap. Looked beneath the walnut tree. Broke away from Elsie’s arms to look for . . . to look for . . .
‘Margot!’ Georgie yelled over the roar of flames. ‘Margot!’
‘She’d locked the doors,’ Elsie howled. ‘She’s locked in there.’
‘We tried,’ Harry said. ‘We tried, Georgie.’
Open-mouthed, Georgie stared at Harry, well lit by the roaring fire. Stared at Elsie, knowing now why she was crying. Stepped back from them and back again, away from those tears, from the knowledge. Kept stepping back and back and back until her back was to the walnut tree and she could go no further.
Stood shaking in the demon light of the yard, shaking and staring at the shape of the burning rooms, at the flames that reached towards the stars. Stood shaking and staring, her hair glowing red in that demon light, her checked shirt barely reaching her thighs. Stood bare-legged, barefoot, mouth open, one eye open, watching Margot burn.
*
The fire truck came too late. Nothing the firefighters could do but stand well back and watch the roof of Gertrude’s bedroom fall. A yard full of watchers saw that cloud of sparks rise up to join the stars in the sky.
Joe Flanagan and his missus watched. Their dogs watched.
Smoke gets in your eyes. Jenny used to sing that song.
Smoke gets into an eye swollen shut, making it shed tears in sympathy with its mate. It had been a long time since Georgie had cried. She’d cried for Granny. She’d cried the day she’d swum away from Jack Thompson.
Fifty men, women and kids watched Margot burn, and saw Georgie Morrison cry.
ALL GONE
Barely a hint of dawn outside the window, the sky washed of colour, the city, unready yet to go about its new day, clinging to its blanketing mist.
Doves singing their monotonous coo-cooing song. Early risers, they owned Melbourne at dawn – shared it with the milkman, the paper boy – and that first tram, its aging bones groaning as it trundled by. Noisy old tram. It would wake this southern city to a new day Cara was not yet ready to face.
Still that same old night in Tracy’s ward, the night sisters busy adjusting the tubes and bottles connecting that tiny motionless body to tenuous life. Soon the day sisters wo
uld come and this long night would fade into yesterday. But not yet. Tracy wasn’t ready yet to become a part of yesterday. Nor was Cara ready for what the new day might bring.
Unmoving for hours, her bones mimicked those of the tram as she turned away from the window to again take her place on the chair beside the bed, to touch the tangle of dark curls, to brush a tiny hand with her index finger, backwards and forwards from fragile wrist to curled fingers, backwards and forwards.
Barely a shape of her beneath that sheet. Not enough of her. All of this long day Tracy had fought alone. A constant bustle of movement around her bed now, doctors fighting for her, nursing sisters.
And useless Mummy, with her useless arm and her useless tears.
Someone had given her a wad of tissues. Who? Where? She didn’t know. Tissues always reminded her of Myrtle and her eternal handkerchiefs.
Watch over her, Mummy–
‘Mummy?’
Thought she’d heard that word. Looked at the still form in the bed.
Then he was beside her, holding on tight to Bunny Long-ears and to the nursing sister who had brought him to this room.
‘Be careful of Mummy’s arm,’ she warned him.
A mother needs two arms to hold. Cara would be X-rayed tomorrow, but for now, in this hiatus of time, one arm was enough to hold her boy.
And later, when more tears had been mopped by soggy tissues, when raggedy old Bunny Long Ears lay beside his sister, Robin asked that honest question which only a child dared to ask.
‘Will Tracy die like Nanny?’
‘She stayed alive all day for us, and all by herself, Robbie. Now she’s got so many people helping her to stay alive. And she’s got us too, and Bunny Long-ears.’
‘Why has she got those things on her for?’
A nursing sister told him what all of those things were for. She told him that they were giving his little sister some special strong air to breath and a big drink of water because she hadn’t had a drink all day and was very thirsty.
And later. ‘Did your arm get broken?’
‘It’s just sore, Robbie. Did Papa come with you?’
‘Uncle John made him go to bed,’ Robin said.
‘Why didn’t he make you go to bed?’
‘I did . . . but . . . but I woke up all the time.’
‘Did Uncle John drive you in?’
‘He can’t drive our toy car. He said for me to just come.’
‘Who drove the car?’
‘The man that you said . . . that you said it was his car.’
She rose from her chair. ‘Where is he?’
‘He said he would wait for me . . . in . . . where the nurse’s telephone is.’
‘Sit here, Robbie. Hold her hand very, very gently and tell her that you’re waiting for her to wake up so she can play with you.’
‘She can’t hear me when she’s asleep.’
‘Tell her that Bunny Long-ears is waiting too,’ Cara said. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’
*
He was where Robin had said he’d be. She saw his back, his long, jean-clad legs, his hair, greying. He turned to her footsteps, and she spoke his name. He spoke her name.
They stood separately, but face to face.
‘He needed to see that his sister had been found,’ Morrie said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Your arm,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
Standing in the long corridor, the night staff leaving, the day staff arriving, Cara’s eyes followed one arrival to Tracy’s door.
She had to go back, but there were words that needed to be said, words that must come from her.
The wrong time. The wrong place, but when would there be a right time and place?
‘Nothing matters, Morrie. Only they matter. Only keeping them safe.’
‘Is she safe?’
‘They don’t know. There’s nothing of her and those murdering bastards drugged her.’ She looked at the door. ‘I have to go to her.’
‘I’ll wait,’ he said.
She took two steps towards that door, then turned and offered him her one functioning hand, and he took it and held it between his own. No hand now to mop the sudden rush of tears, she lifted her chin so gravity might stem their flow.
‘I can’t . . .’ she said. ‘I can’t . . . I don’t want to wait alone, Morrie.’
*
Barely a breath of breeze disturbed the air in Woody Creek, barely a bird sang his early-morning song.
The hens had left their perches but the rooster, afraid to disturb the silence of Gertrude’s acres, sought the house of yesterday, stalking there, high-stepping onto fallen chicken wire, high-stepping back.
The small water tank lay on its side, the last of its water leaked away in the night. The iron chimney lay flat on its back beside the big tank, still clinging precariously to its heavy load. Its stand was blackened and still smouldering. It might support the tank for another day.
Nothing remained of the house. Wisps of smoke, that was all, wisps rising from the blackened rubble to become lost in the mist of new morning.
A wasteland. Blackened corrugated iron lay where it had fallen. Gertrude’s iron-framed bed, always black, was blanketed that morning by distorted roofing iron. Ash where her floor had been, where her walls had been, where her climbing rose had been. Grey-white ash.
The brick chimney, built by a master bricklayer from Albania, stood lonely, blackened too – other than its topmost bricks. As the sun crept up above that hump of trees to the east, those bricks glowed ember red.
Hot day on the horizon.
A long, hot day.
*
For an hour or two, Harry Hall had tried to sleep on Lenny’s donated bed; its mattress felt padded with bricks.
Elsie was sleeping. She’d been a howling mess when they’d put her to bed. He lay beside her until seven, then rose to stretch the kinks from his lanky frame. He could place his palms flat on the ceiling of Teddy’s bungalow – a solid-enough ceiling. Its floors didn’t creak as he crept out to the kitchen-cum-sitting room.
They hadn’t planned to move in until after Christmas, but no way could he have left Else down there last night.
He’d parked his ute out the front. Walked out to it. Not a soul moving on the street. Woody Creek never woke early, and half of the town had been down at Gertrude’s a few hours ago. He drove through the sleeping town, listing in his mind what he had to fetch in from the old place. His mattress topped the list.
His wasn’t the first car down there. He backed into his driveway, then stood a while looking across the paddock to where a bunch of strangers moved between the brick chimney and leaning tank, stringing cop tape.
He rolled a smoke, stuck it behind his ear, then went inside to retrieve the worn-out mattress he’d never had any trouble sleeping on. He gathered up an armful of clothing, a few items from the kitchen. There was still a lot to move. He unplugged the television and loaded it, then filled a carton with the contents of the cutlery drawers, packed half a dozen plates and mugs into it, and the contents of the old fridge. He’d never packed up a house before; hadn’t had much to pack up before this house. The carton rattled, but he carried it intact to his ute, then lit his smoke and walked across the paddock. A stranger asked him his business.
Harry pointed with his fag back towards his house. ‘My chooks lay more eggs when they’re fed, mate.’
The bloke looked as if he’d like to turn him back, but didn’t, and Harry went about the business of feeding the chooks. Had to fetch fresh water for them from his own tank, couldn’t get near Georgie’s. Unless someone propped it up soon, it would topple on their cop-beribboned site.
Chooks had no respect for the strangers. The chicken-wire fence, which for years had kept them in their own backyard, was no barrier now. They walked and pecked where they would, while Harry raided their nests. Only fifteen eggs. Elsie would have found more. She knew their nesting places.
Eggs in the feed basin, he did a circuit of the blackened site, looking at the old iron chimney, the bane of his life for a lot of years. The stove had settled upright. The refrigerator hadn’t. Buckled, blackened, it lay on its face.
He’d been racking his brains for the reason for that fire. Near dawn, he’d settled on faulty wiring. From day one there’d been a problem with the switch or ceiling fixture in Gertrude’s old kitchen. Globes had never glowed long there.
He glanced at two blokes scraping ash in about the right place to have been Margot’s bedroom, and the thought of how that girl had died raised goose bumps on his arms. He’d tried to get to her. His singed hair and eyebrows were testament to that. As was his singed forearm. Hadn’t noticed that last night. Noticed the blisters in bed this morning, and they’d raised memories of his old dad’s hand. He’d come home singed one night, way, way back when a neighbour’s house had burnt, and two little kids Harry had played with had been burnt in it.
Back in those days, folk had buried their dead and moved on with what they’d managed to save. These days, there were experts to work out the hows and the whys of fire; how those who had died in it had died. Not that it altered one damn thing – other than maybe for the insurance companies. And when had insurance money brought back the dead?
Gertrude had never trusted electricity, had never wanted it. If she was out there somewhere, she’d be blaming those wires. Every light in the house had been switched on last night, inside and out. The wires must have overheated; they’d probably been smouldering when he and Elsie had gone home to bed. He should have smelt them smouldering.
Thank Christ we got Georgie out. Thank Christ for that much, he thought.
*
Georgie lay on her back in the room Lorna Hooper had for years named her own, an eastern room. Her face was turned to the window, her one good eye watching the shadow on the veranda grow as the sun rose higher.
She could hear Jen and Jim in the kitchen speaking in whispers, could smell toast toasting. They’d slept for two or three hours before Harry and Georgie had woken them with the news. They hadn’t gone back to bed.