‘Do you think I could live with you? I wouldn’t be a problem.’
‘I couldn’t keep you, son. An ecologist’s salary ain’t that much. And what about school? It’s no life for a child.’
Shaun looked at his shoes. He tried not to think about the soles worn through or the blister that throbbed. He turned his attention to the trees. If he narrowed his vision it seemed that he and his uncle were deep in a forest instead of parked on the last patch of unburnt land.
THAT NIGHT Shaun curled up on the vinyl seat of the caravan wedged against a formica fold-out table, and listened to his uncle snoring. There was a strange smell in the place even with the windows wound right out; cooking smells trapped in the plastic flywire, unwashed clothes, detergents and foodware sharing a cupboard an arm’s length away.
In the morning he woke with pains in his legs, less from walking and more from his cramped position. The caravan rocked slightly and up the other end he heard his uncle turn over on the bed.
‘How’d you sleep?’
‘Good.’
‘What do you like for breakfast?’
‘I’ll have what you’re having.’
‘I was thinking, Shaun. You shouldn’t rely on me. You can stay a few days but there’s nothing here for you, mate.’
They both lay on their backs and stared at the low caravan ceiling.
‘Why don’t you stay here and build a new place?’
Chris didn’t answer immediately. He tried to imagine a new dwelling perched somewhere in the bush but the idea was quickly usurped by a vision of fire: the earth smouldering, ash swirling in flurries, the stink of devastation. Only those who’d lived through it could understand the consuming sense of annihilation that offered no restitution, no way back. Resurrection was a concept that belonged in the Bible.
‘I lived here because it was a beautiful part of the bush, Shaun. It’s gone now. The innocence of it, I mean; the purity – you know what I’m saying? All we have left is this sad little patch of what used to be.’
‘It’ll all grow back.’
‘Some of the vegetation will, but I’m talking about the whole scheme. I had typed lists of everything – lost those in the fire as well. Seven species of frog, 112 birds, lizards, butterflies – even lists of the insects. And the animals, of course.’
‘Did you have phascogales?’
‘You bet, and two species of antechinus, a marsupial mouse, gliders, echidnas. All dead now.’
‘New ones will come back.’
‘No, I don’t think so. They need old forest – they need an ecosystem. Ironic really. Here’s me, the ecologist, campaigning against controlled burns because of the devastation to wildlife, and now I’m burnt out.’
‘I think it can all come back. One day.’
‘Maybe, but not in my lifetime. And by then this whole area will be houses. We’re getting a new estate, they say. And those new homeowners won’t know or care about what used to be here.’
‘You’re going to give up then?’
‘Give up? No, I won’t give up trying to stop people burning the land – I’m an expert now; first-hand experience. But very likely it’s a lost cause. There’s so much fear.’ The boy heard a twig dropped onto the metal roof.
‘Let me tell you a story, Shaun. A few years before you were born, I went to visit a friend in Singapore, and because of my interest in birds and animals he took me up onto the highest hill right in the middle of the island. It’s a nature reserve now. As we walked up, he told me how wild tigers once roamed the forests right there – they even swam across the Straits to breed in the Singapore jungles. But in the 1830s when people arrived to cultivate the land, the tigers were shot in their hundreds, or trapped, or killed in pits with spikes.’ Chris paused and flicked an ant off the curtain. ‘They were in the way, you see.
‘In 1930, a hundred years later, one last tiger was seen still roaming around in the little bit of jungle that hadn’t been cleared. Know what they did? They shot it. And when my friend and I reached the top of that Singapore reserve, there in the middle of a clearing we came to a large glass case. And standing in the middle of that glass case was the stuffed tiger.’
Chris fell silent before clearing his throat.
‘Do you see my point, Shaun? We like tigers but we’re afraid of them. So what do we do? We put them in a glass case: fear isolated, pleasure assured. See it? Same with the bush. We want the enjoyment but not the fear. So we slow-burn a few rings around it, hoping to gain some control.’
Shaun tuned in to his uncle’s voice; it sounded strained and he wondered whether it was really directed at him.
‘Fires are like cyclones and earthquakes, Shaun. It’s a sad fact of life that we’ll always have them. And they’ll come through on the worst of days, even across bald paddocks. There are many ways we can improve our response to bushfires, but a burnt patch in advance is next to useless. It’s just a bit of futility designed by committees who have no real connection to the bush.’ He was suddenly reminded of Shaun’s dilemma.
‘You probably don’t need to hear all this stuff, do you, son?’
‘I don’t mind. I hate fire.’
‘Of course you do.’
The pair lay perfectly still and Shaun registered the distant drone of a helicopter passing somewhere to the south. Chris thought of his brother – Shaun’s father – and Sharon. Why wasn’t there a better word in the dictionary than tragedy. The best they could do was add an adjective: appalling. None of it came close; none of it matched the nightmare at all.
There were many things Chris could not tell his young nephew. How his parents must have suffered. It was suffering that first put him in opposition to controlled burns. He’d read an article in the Quarterly Essay about laboratory experiments on animals. In Canada, psychologists had developed a ‘grimace scale’ measuring levels of pain in sentient creatures. Mice were subjected to horrific torture: their tails were dipped in hot water, nerves were damaged; they were cauterized and injected with acids. People objected and they had a right to be outraged by these conscious acts of cruelty.
But Chris knew that one of the worst agonies was being burned alive. He recalled setting fire to some old timber piled over a rabbit burrow. The agonising squeals haunted him still. If some wayward adolescent deliberately set fire to a live animal, that abomination would make headlines on the evening news – yet people were doing it all the time. Slow burns in forests subjected thousands of sentient creatures to insufferable torture unimagined in any laboratory.
He thought again of poor Morris and his sister-in-law Sharon. He could only hope that things had happened as the officials said: that smoke inhalation overcame them before the flames, the lesser of two atrocities. But how could he talk to Shaun about any of it?
‘You … you think about your mum and dad?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You … okay about it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘There was nothing anyone could do, Shaun. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.’
Shaun lay on his back in the caravan and gazed at the open roof-vent. Gumnuts rested on the flywire. Chris sighed, his mind returning to his own predicament.
‘We can’t blame people for what they do, Shaun. But all that burning off, making way for more people, means that one day there’ll be no such thing as biodiversity. We’ll have a monoculture: humans mostly, and little patches of green which are supposed to represent the natural world, like that reserve in Singapore.’
‘Nature can’t disappear.’
‘In some ways I think it already has, Shaun. It’s slowly disappearing from people’s lives. Most people wouldn’t even know what a phascogale is. Other things are more important now.’
‘Do you think people are happy, then?’ He thought of Elton and Jess and Mr Warner.
‘Ha! You’re a good kid, Shaun, but you’re asking the wrong person about happiness.’
ARMAN HAD a moment of déjà vu. He opened the front door to see the preci
se arrangement he’d observed the day before.
‘Arman Khan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Khan is your surname?’
‘No, both first names. I have not accepted my father’s name. Please come in, come in. Benton is not here today. He has gone. I do not know where.’
‘That’s all right. We’ll track him. Thanks for calling us. We have evidence of some pretty unsavoury internet activity, just as you said. He has a history in the UK. We have a warrant, of course. We’d like to take some photographs and fingerprints – and seize Hattersley’s computer.’
As soon as they left, Arman went to his upstairs window and watched the vehicles turn out onto the main street. An abiding sense of melancholy rolled in. Poor Benton, such a gentleman yet so contaminated. It was right to call the police; sleepless nights had told him so and already he was feeling better. He silently mouthed an old saying: What you put in your soup comes out on your spoon. He’d seen how that proverb worked and he’d acted accordingly. He felt liberated, at ease at last, and the police had said they’d soon take the man into custody. But where was he?
6
ON THE THIRD morning Shaun woke and turned over on the vinyl seat. He had discovered a novel way to stretch out: he could lie on his back and put his calf muscles up on the fold-out table beside him. He could hold that position for an hour or so, before curling up once more until sleep came. It was the sound of kookaburras that had woken him. A good sign. They called again. How foolish that people thought kookaburras laughed. Their call at daybreak and sunset was very serious indeed. It informed others that on this new day their territory was still occupied and that they had no intention of leaving. Would his Uncle Chris heed the message?
Shaun listened for him but no movement came and all at once he realised he was alone. He sat up and looked towards his uncle’s empty bed. He noticed a pad on the table with a written message: Morning young man. Your Aunty comes today so I have gone to pick up a few things.
Shaun lay down and drew up his knees. He thought about his uncle’s lost faith. The relentless march of progress had eclipsed his dreams and he could see no way past it. He was an ecologist, assigning for himself a role to save the green world, and he had stood up for nature. But the progressive world had savaged him for doing so; for daring to oppose it. It was progress that had caused the fire.
He began to think of his own role in the scheme of things. What exactly was it? He tried to picture a future: a house, a home, a school, a set of friends, a family. Nothing came to mind. Instead, he saw his parents collecting eggs, splitting wood, peeling buckets of apples in the laundry. Why weren’t they still there in the house right now, telling him to feed the chooks, finish his homework? Why couldn’t he just squeeze his eyes tight and make it right, put it all back the way it was? He fought back the vision of two wooden boxes passing through black velvet curtains. And then he saw his kookaburras in a tall tree. He called and one flew to his forearm. There were no words but the message was clear. All that time he’d spent with them, offering worms that they took to the nest to fledge the young that also became his friends. Now it was their turn to help him. In the blink of an eye he became one of them. Others arrived, a whole family. Shaun knew that a collective of kookaburras was indeed a family – a dominant male and female, the others their offspring who year after year supported the group, warding off intruders, taking turns at the nest, looking after each other.
And suddenly it was time to go. A kind of exuberance unknown in the human world overtook them all and as one entity, all took flight. Shaun’s heart lifted with them and wingtip to wingtip they soared, far out over the tree-tops, across a wide green valley. Far below Shaun saw a tiny dot; it was the farmer he’d seen on the motorbike herding the cow. The man turned his face up to them but like all birds they ignored him. Very soon they came to a dark forest and tall stands of mighty Manna Gums, a place that Shaun knew was oblivious to the two-legged creatures living far away in houses, frail organisms struggling with the ordinary concept of life and consistently getting it so wrong.
Shaun splashed his face in the caravan sink, rinsing away the salt of his nightly tears. He dressed and stood beside the table, studying his uncle’s note. He took up the pen and wrote under it: Dear Uncle Chris. I guess I should be going too. Thanks for taking care of me. Love Shaun. He pushed a few clothes into his backpack. He picked up his thick exercise book, bent and dog-eared, swelling at the fore-edge from regular handling, and dropped it into the box of old newspapers. He wouldn’t be needing it now, it belonged in the past. He pulled a plastic packet of Weet-Bix out of its box and put it in his bag. He tore the box itself into strips, folded them flat and pressed them into his shoes. From his pockets he produced fifty-seven dollars exactly; he was well equipped to face the world. He felt good.
At the caravan door, he stepped down into the sunlight and took his bearings. He shouldered his backpack and set off across the blackened paddocks, out towards a future of real substance: his own.
ELTON IN THE BACK seat looked out through the windscreen, dazed by the strobing white lines. An insect hit the glass and spattered yellow. Elton grimaced and tried to imagine what sort of creature would harbour such vile fluids. He was not unhappy that he was required to go – he felt no obligation, no guilt – but where Shaun had once been, a space remained and it troubled him. It was an empty space, a void without air or energy, as though a regularly used icon on his desktop had abruptly vanished. And Jess wanted to go as well so it had to be right. He tapped his knuckles against the side window. His mother had banned all digital media in the car, what were they going to do for two hours?
Jess slumped into the other corner, gazing out but seeing nothing. That little bastard. Why did he just piss off like that? He wasn’t exactly normal, but which little kids are? Then again, she didn’t really know any others – except when she herself was a child. But that hardly counted: she’d hated them all just as they hated her. In fact, all kids hated all the other kids in one way or another, she believed. Even ‘best friends’ was a concept open to review, dependent on other alliances and the fluctuations of emotions such as envy and desire. For Jess, childhood was about competition and comparisons; in looks, dress, mannerism, the shape and size of a pencil-case. Hers never seemed quite right.
Twenty minutes out of town, she managed to engage Elton in conversation. Cars were perfect for it: small, hermetically sealed capsules from which there was no escape. Caught between states, neither here nor there, one could do little else but talk – or message on Facebook. Jess snatched Elton’s iPhone.
‘Hey!’
‘No digital media, your mum said.’ She leaned forward. ‘Adele, Elton’s on the net.’ She passed his mobile through to the front seat and Elton folded his arms.
‘What now, Jessica?’
‘Don’t call me Jessica.’ She leaned towards him. ‘You’ll never get any sex that way.’
‘Excuse me?’ Her mother tightened her grip on the wheel. ‘Did I hear you correctly?’
‘We’re just talking sex, Mum.’
‘Is that all you think about?’ Elton said.
‘I never think about it.’ She gazed out the side window. ‘Tell you what: what’s your favourite thing, Elton?’
‘What?’
‘Your favourite thing. The thing you like the most?’
‘My iPhone.’
‘What else?’
Elton slumped into the corner and thumbed his seat-belt. ‘My friends.’
‘Online friends.’
‘Yes.’
‘What about me. Am I your friend?’ Elton had to think about it. ‘Sometimes. When you’re not angry.’
‘I’m not angry.’ She leaned forward. ‘Hey Mum, am I angry?’
‘Yes, Jess. Most of the time.’
She fell back on the cloth seat. ‘Well, it’s better than being scared. Scared of people, scared of places … scared to like anyone.’
‘What if I don’t want to like anyone?�
�
Jess sighed dramatically. ‘I mightn’t want to like anyone either but at least I’m not scared of it.’
The women in the front seat were tuning in. How could they respond? What useful remark could be offered? Stef was pleased to have taken the initiative to drive. She thought about the odd relationship she was forming with the woman beside her – the object of Simon’s convoluted desires. Dr David Frieberg came to mind and Stef saw herself next to him, lying naked on his vintage, chenille bedspread. Do you really believe humanity is in crisis? she had asked him. Yes I do, he’d replied. Humanity is like a big organism. If it had a doctor, that specialist would issue a dire warning: change your behaviour or you won’t have long to live. Stef, the artist, had considered his comment carefully. Throughout history soothsayers had predicted a dire end, usually linked to some moral or religious belief. But this was the 21st century and she knew Frieberg’s claim had its basis in science. Could self-indulgence really bring society undone? What about you, she’d said to him that night. You’re not really dying at, all are you. Yes, he’d replied, but not the way I might have suggested. I’m dying of disillusionment.
Perhaps they all were, Stef thought now. She flapped down the sun-visor as they swung towards the glare. Was that the real cause of our ailments?
Her attention returned to the woman next to her. ‘Do you like what you do, Adele; your career?’
Adele thought carefully. ‘Yes, I suppose so. I enjoy the nightlife, being placed in new and different situations. And I like meeting interesting people.’ She reflected on her own words. ‘Though if I’m going to continue, there’ll be one omission: men in relationships.’ But as soon as her words were out, it suddenly occurred to her that if that category was omitted, she might not have a career at all.
Stef tried not to think about what might have transpired between the woman and her husband, though the idea hardly troubled her; sex never seemed that precious. The central concern was trustworthiness and that issue remained entirely with Simon.
The Colour of the Night Page 21