Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  Later the Italian migrants build a new church out of stone, which the Catholic community pays for. All the Catholics help a bit with the work, but mostly the Maltese and the Italians. It takes more than a year to rebuild and it’s now called ‘St Stephen’s Church of the Flames’ and the baptismal font is placed in the very centre of the new church rather than in a corner like in the old one.

  The Italians also fixed up the Holy Virgin and carved a new crown and nose. They’ve done a really good job. With it back on the wall high up, you can’t tell it’s been damaged. They’ve added this wooden plinth that’s got flames carved around the edges at the Virgin Mary’s feet and they’ve painted them gold and now she’s called ‘The Virgin of the Flames’. Nancy says it makes you want to puke.

  There’s also two stained-glass windows, one on either side of the Virgin. One window shows eucalyptus trees on fire with Christ’s ascension up into heaven, you can see the three crosses on a hill through the flaming trees. Looking at it, little kids are bound to think that Christ was an Australian who went to heaven when he was caught up in a bushfire. The other window shows the baby Jesus lying in straw in a horse trough with a donkey in the corner. There’s a star up the top of the window shining down. The window isn’t big enough to show Joseph and Mary and the Three Wise Men, but I guess everyone knows they’re there from Sunday School.

  The gilt crucifix is not so lucky. If you look at it carefully and close one eye and squint, you can see it’s dented in the middle. That’s where the Virgin hit Jesus in the guts when she toppled into Merv O’Hare’s grave and not even the Italians have been able to restore Him perfectly.

  There’s a new brass plaque on the baptismal font that says:

  ‘The Font of the Flames’

  Yankalillee child, thou art born knowing Original Sin, condemned to the eternal flames, the furnace of Hell. Thou shalt be redeemed, by an all-forgiving Saviour and baptised in holy water, these blessed Tears of God.

  It just appeared there mysteriously one Sunday shortly after the new church was consecrated by the Bishop, a shiny brass plaque, properly drilled and screwed into the sandstone base which had been left blackened by the fire and is now known as ‘The Font of the Flames’.

  I reckon Catholics are their own worst enemy because soon enough the story gets about that the rainwater that fell into the baptismal font on the night of the fire is inexhaustible and the font never gets empty. So every new baby is now baptised in the original rainwater that everyone calls ‘The Tears of God’ from the great Yankalillee fire.

  What’s more, Father Crosby does nothing to contradict this. In fact, there’s no holding ‘The Priest of the Flames’ back and Nancy says, far from repenting, he’s a worse bloody hypocrite than before, if that’s possible.

  After the inquest, when the coroner finds John Crowe and Whacka Morrissey died by misadventure, there’s a memorial service held in the churchyard next to the burntout St Stephen’s. Sarah, with Templeton, Mike, Morrie and Sophie, come from Melbourne for the funeral. Almost the whole town turns out on the day, Catholics and Protestants, and they’ve rigged loudspeakers up on poles so everyone can hear the funeral service. The crowd is so big they spread to the Historic Park right along the gorge.

  The entire shire council is in attendance, the Bishop comes from Bendigo in a big black Buick and the Cardinal sends a message of condolence to both families and so does Premier Bolte. The deaths are even mentioned in the State Parliament. The bushfire brigades from all the surrounding districts including Wangaratta, Chiltern and Wodonga attend, almost a thousand men come dressed in their firefighting overalls.

  Both John Crowe and Whacka Morrissey were pretty ordinary blokes who, under normal circumstances, would have had a box and a few members of the family and friends, with a bunch or two of flowers at the graveside and that would be it. So it’s not a bad way to go with over three thousand people attending and a heap of wreaths you couldn’t pole-vault over.

  However, other than his wife Trish, John Crowe’s most important mourner is missing. Tommy’s been gone a week. Nobody says anything but lots of people know how close Tommy and John Crowe have been since they were kids, the only time they’ve been separated was during the war when John Crowe was sent to Darwin in the quartermaster-general’s outfit to dish out boots, shoelaces and socks for the use of, to the troops. He admitted to me once that it was a scam he’d worked out to avoid active service. ‘No point in getting your arse blown away by some harakiri Jap, is there, Mole? Wars come and go but I’ve only got the promise of three score and ten, don’t want to put that at risk, do I?’ Some of the folk at the service come up quietly to shake Nancy’s hand and wish her well.

  Father Crosby is in a new surplice that has these red and orange flames appliquéd on the back. He must have reckoned his chances of getting Nancy to embroider them weren’t good, because he’s got a dressmaker or someone to put on the flames. Nancy says it looks vulgar and is machine-stitched and in typical bad taste, but, after all, what can you expect from a Diocesan priest.

  All the same, I reckon she’s pretty insulted that he didn’t come to her and ask. They may be mortal enemies but that’s not the surplice’s fault. ‘A job worth doing is a job worth doing well,’ she says as her final bitter comment.

  I must say that the Priest of the Flames has prepared a nice sermon, which he concludes by saying, ‘John Crowe and William Sean Morrissey have gone straight to Heaven as they’ve already done their time in the terrible fires of Hell. I commend their immortal souls to Almighty God and ask Him to embrace them in His love everlasting.’ Then he stops and sort of looks into the distance:

  ‘May the road rise up to meet you

  May the wind be ever at your back

  May the sun shine warm upon your face

  May the rain fall soft upon your fields

  And until we meet again

  May God hold you in the palm of His hand.’

  I tell you what, there’s a few tears about, and not just the women.

  A big wake is held at the Shamrock by the Yankalillee and Eldorado firefighters together with the family and friends of both the deceased. Trish Crowe announces that she’s going back to look after her ailing mother in Shepparton. She says if Bozo’s willing to shoulder the debts in the business, she’ll be happy to sign John Crowe Transport over to him. Bozo thanks her and says he agrees to be responsible for the money owed and we won’t change the name of the company. He’ll always be proud to have been associated with John Crowe, who was the best business partner anyone could have had.

  Since coming back from the Rome Olympics, Bozo has been pretty confident with people. He’s still the same quiet person who doesn’t have any tabs on himself and is a real good bloke, but now he can handle himself in any company. I reckon he could meet the Queen or the Governor-General or even maybe Bob Menzies if he had to, and still look calm. I’m proud that I’m his brother, not because of what he’s done but because of who he is. It’s nice to know we’ve made a Bozo in our family.

  I forgot to say that I was pretty sore coming back from the forest where John Crowe and Whacka Morrissey died and so I didn’t go out to the lake to fetch little Ann’s bicycle. I doubt I could have walked the distance from home with the blisters on my feet. Next day, though, I made it and changed into my cossie behind some bulrushes. It took me ages to find the bike, even though I knew exactly where I’d landed coming down the hill. But when it and me were back on shore, I saw that all the paintwork had been damaged, blistered by the heat from the fire. The little bike was a mess. I wheeled it home because I was still too sore to ride it.

  That night I told Bozo my problem. As you know, he’s built several bikes. He comes out and has a look at it and says, ‘Leave it to me, Mole.’

  Anyway, a couple of days later he delivers it back. In the meantime I’m feeling pretty guilty, little Ann uses it to ride to school. Edie Park hasn’t
called, which is what I’ve been expecting. You know, ‘Fair go, Mole, Ann needs her bike!’ She’s got every right.

  Well, Bozo takes it down to the shire-council workshops where John Crowe used to work and explains everything to Macca McKenzie the depot foreman, the bloke who takes the rabbits I shoot for his greyhounds. Macca says he saw me crashing into the lake, she’ll be right, no worries. Next thing, the spraypainter at the workshops strips down the bike and sprays it a brilliant fire-engine red with shiny black mudguards. They take up a bit of a collection among the mechanics and truck drivers and they put on new tyres and brake pads and a light with a dynamo running off the back wheel. It never could have looked as good when it was brand new. Talk about posh! I’m that chuffed and owe Bozo and them at the depot heaps. From now on Macca McKenzie gets regular rabbits for his dogs.

  Bozo drives me out to Woolshed Park and you should have seen the little girl’s eyes when we unloaded her bike. She can’t believe what she’s seeing.

  ‘We didn’t like to ask about the bike,’ Edie Park admits,

  ‘Not after what you did for us, Mole.’

  ‘I didn’t do nothing, Mrs Park,’ I protest.

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Tom Park says, ‘You stayed with my two girls, you’ll do me, Mole Maloney.’

  ‘We’ve put you in for a commendation. We wrote a letter to Philip Templeton,’ Edie Park adds.

  No point in telling her that’s the Protestant equivalent of spitting on your mother’s grave. She must have forgotten all the stuff in the Gazette about Murray Templeton and Sarah. Anyway, Tom Park comes back with a leg of lamb and says they’ve got most of their stock back in the general muster and he can’t thank me enough. No point in telling him that all I did was lie next to his wife and little daughter, wrapped in a wet blanket.

  Ten days go by and I’m back at school and to my astonishment, with Anna Dombrowski gone, I’m elected vice-prefect. It’s a big surprise because there’s lots better than me should have got the job. I’ve always been a bit of a loner and I’m not so sure I’m as happy as I’m supposed to be over the big honour.

  Nancy is over the moon. I think she thinks because I’m the one with male Maloney blood in me I could be a bit of a throwback, it being not very far to throw back. Nancy reckons that the Maloney women she’s met from the Irish-Australian tribe have been good to middling, it’s the men who turn out, one and all, to be absolute bastards. Even though I’m not Tommy’s son, I’m still a Maloney and the only Maloney male in this new generation. So maybe, going on past records, she’s a bit worried about how I’m going to end up.

  After two weeks, I’m getting worried. Tommy’s stayed away longer in the past but not a lot longer, and I’m concerned that he’s gone off somewhere and killed himself. We don’t talk about it among ourselves because it’s sort of an unspoken thing amongst us Maloneys that when Tommy’s gone walkabout, he just isn’t there and we all get on with our lives. So we behave as if everything’s normal, which we all know it isn’t. This isn’t like the other times, sooner or later we’re going to have to go to Big Jack Donovan and report him as a missing person. It’s funny that, Tommy’s been a missing person since he came back from the war.

  Then three weeks after the fire, he turns up on the Friday night.

  Now, Tommy Maloney isn’t what you’d call a handsome bloke, he’s not even an ugly-looking bloke, he’s a real hopeless mess. Now he seems to have lost at least a stone in weight, maybe more, which in Tommy’s case is bloody nigh impossible to speculate upon. He’s thin as a rake anyway and now he’s back to being the drover’s dog, all prick and ribs, Nancy told us about when he come out of the prisoner-of-war camp under the Japanese. His eyes are dark hollows sunk deep into his head and you can see the break in his jaw where the bone has knitted and grown crooked and his bad shoulder is jammed up near his left ear and against his neck. He makes Quasimodo look like Cary Grant.

  ‘Jesus!’ is all that Nancy says when he comes through the front door, ‘Look what the cat brought in!’ She sits him down in the kitchen and makes him a cup of milky tea with six spoons of sugar and fetches him a cigarette. Tommy never stinks when he gets back, but now he smells to high heaven, I doubt if he’s washed in the three weeks he’s been away and his hair is matted and wild, his skin is black from the fire, worse even than when he’s been on a binge down at the lake. Nancy hands him his cuppa tea and says, ‘Take it out the back and then when you’ve drank it, get going to the shower, Mole will bring you a towel and clean clothes. When you get back, I’ll cut your hair and give you some grub. You look a right mess, Tommy Maloney.’

  That’s the funny thing, Nancy still loves Tommy and you can see she’s happy to have him back. ‘We gave your mate a right proper funeral, you should’ve been there, you’d have been proud of this town for once.’

  ‘Funeral? What, you find something?’

  ‘No, it was a memorial service.’

  ‘That don’t count,’ Tommy says and takes his tea and goes out the back. I expect he’ll clean up and then go on a binge. For once he’s got a right, though from the looks of him, if he abuses his body much further, he’ll be joining John Crowe pretty soon.

  Tommy comes back from his shower and Nancy has a kitchen chair out the back and an old towel and she’s got the barber’s clippers out. ‘Christ Almighty!’ she exclaims, you’ve got nits, where have you been?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Tommy says. He’s always like this for the first few hours he gets back and talks in sentences of one or two words, possibly because he hasn’t talked to a single soul for three weeks and has temporarily lost the knack of conversation.

  ‘I can do two things,’ Nancy suggests, ‘blast you with DDT powder every day for the next week and comb out the lice, or I can shave it all off. Make up yer mind, handsome.’

  ‘Shave,’ Tommy says, ‘DDT’s fucking up nature, hair won’t grow back.’ It’s a long sentence for him under these circumstances.

  ‘Tommy Maloney, you’ll not use that word in this house,’ Nancy remonstrates, but she’s got a bit of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

  With all his hair shaved off, he looks even worse. While he was taking a shower, I walked into the shed out back to bring him his clean clothes. He was soaping his face and I could see he was all ribs with his gut sunk right in so you could see the lumps in his spine through the skin. His legs and arms were like sticks and his donger looked the only normal part. He’s gunna die soon, was all I could think.

  At the end of the first week, though, Tommy’s looking a bit better, not great, but compared to before, there’s a human being in there somewhere and, more importantly, he’s still sober, he hasn’t touched a drop. He also goes out with us on the garbage run, picking up his fair share of rubbish bins. To look at him, you’d say he couldn’t pick up his knife and fork, yet he’ll heft a full bin into the back of the Diamond T, which is now doing the garbage run again, with the other truck, the Fargo, doing contract work for the shire council.

  Funny thing that, the council sell us the Fargo because they think it’s clapped out, then they hire it back to do the work it did before they sold it and pay us for the privilege. Bozo says it’s economics, don’t have to pay a driver and maintain his vehicle and then there’s all the hidden costs the government says you have to pay, like payroll tax and all that sort of stuff.

  We’re in a bit of trouble. Bozo hasn’t got John Crowe to keep the vehicles on the road any more and they’re not exactly new, the lot of them. Even though the two trucks are in good nick they’re old, and the VW Kombi, because it was put back together after a bad prang, has constant problems. Without John Crowe to maintain them, it’s an expense we’ve never allowed for. Then there’s the missing ute, the one John Crowe was driving in the fire that got disappeared by the Red Steer. The insurance said it was not covered for natural disaster, which is flood, fire and earthquake, so they’re not paying out. It and the K
ombi are the backbone of the freight-delivery business we’re building up. There’s more money in small parcels to the towns in the district than bulk cartage in the big trucks and Bozo’s dead worried because he has to have a ute to cope with the business we’re getting.

  We’re in a real pickle, when I suddenly think of Michael Mooney, the Collins Street cocky Tommy took into our team for the fire. For a while, when we were fighting the fire out at Hopeless Dig, Tommy said I must look after him. He turned out to be a decent sort of a bloke and did what I told him. He could have easily thought I was just a kid but he tried hard and obeyed my instructions and didn’t whine or slack off even though he was puffing furiously after a while.

  Mr Mooney works in Melbourne during the week and comes up to his property on the weekends. So the next Saturday I get on Bozo’s bicycle and go out to this big property he’s bought about six miles out of town. He comes out to see me and is really nice and we sit on the verandah and he asks me if I’d like a beer. Neither Bozo nor me drink because there’s enough of that going on in our family history anyway. So he has the cook bring out tea and scones with cream and homemade strawberry jam, which are nearly as good as the ones Mrs Barrington-Stone’s cook makes.

  I tell him about the insurance and he asks what company. I’ve brought all the papers to show him. To cut a long story short, I leave the insurance policy with him and on the following Monday he phones from Melbourne and says there’ll be a cheque in the mail. Talk about pulling strings! Sure enough, two days later, the cheque from the insurance company for the full amount arrives and with it a letter that says it’s nice to do business with us and they’d like to continue the relationship. Nancy says, ‘Just goes to show, it’s not what you know, but who you know.’ She says I showed real initiative and looks pleased that I’m showing signs of not being a male Maloney throwback.