Burning Eddy (11 page)

‘You don’t have to die just yet, do you?’

She chuckled. ‘Nay, I don’t know when. Whenever.’

She stepped closer. ‘Will you do it for me? Play the music?’

‘
Ja
,’ I said.
Chop
,
chop
. Bits of dirt and root went flying.

She smiled and clapped her hands together. ‘Good! I’ll make a cup of coffee,’ she said, and turned to go inside. She paused and broke wind like the air escaping from a balloon stretched at the neck. It rattled on for a few seconds.
Breeeeet
.

She smiled, proudly. ‘You didn’t know I could play trumpet, hey,
schat
?’

I laughed loudly. I dropped the mattock and put my hand on my knee. I shook my head. ‘You’re very clever.’

‘Thank you, kind man,’ she said, and bowed. She shook with quiet laughter as she walked inside.

The next hit with the mattock severed the root. I pushed hard against the trunk and something cracked deep underground. I shoved it again and the dry branches above me rattled.
Crack
,
crack
. I rocked it back and forth, each time feeling roots pop and tear in the earth beneath my feet. Then the old tree let go and the root-ball sprang out of the ground, peppering my face with dirt. I wiped my eyes and spat. I thought — with a grin — that the best thing about working in people’s gardens is the delight that comes from being destructive and making the place look better at the same time. I thought about splitting wood when I got home — the perfect job when you feel like smashing something to pieces.

‘Coffee,’ Eddy sang, and kicked the back door open. She had two cups and a saucer with two windmill biscuits on it. I hurried over and took a cup from her.

‘Here, we’ll sit on the seat you’ve made,’ she said, jutting her chin at the trunk of the dead tree. It looked like the perfect seat for two, but as I sat down branches splintered and the seat dropped. I spilled coffee on my leg and jumped. I wiped it off with my dirty hand.

‘Is it safe?’ Eddy asked.

‘Hope so,’ I said, as she planted her bottom beside mine. She put the saucer on the ground between us.

She bounced up and down with a smile on her face. ‘
Ja
, good and strong.’

I sipped my coffee, burning my lip and tongue. My eyes watered. I panted quietly.

‘Luke said some kids were teasing you when the bus broke down near his place.’

My shoulders jumped.

Eddy was quiet for a moment. ‘Was it the boy who hurt your face? Michael?’

I grunted. ‘No, his girlfriend.’

‘A girl? It was a girl teasing you? What about?’

I showed her the scratching on the inside of my arm. ‘I wrote a girl’s name. She said I’d spelt it wrong.’

‘Ho? I can’t read it without my . . . Chan . . . what does it say?’

‘Chantelle.’

‘
Ja
? Nice name. Is she a nice girl?’

I shrugged and wriggled. A small branch broke. Eddy and I both sucked in a breath and laughed.

‘Is she your girlfriend?’ she asked.

‘Nah. Just a friend. Maybe not even that. Just someone I like.’

‘But you write her name so . . .’ she said, and I saw her upturned wrist as she held my arm. It was scarred. Two thick puckered lines of purple-white skin ran from her wrist almost to her elbow.

My mouth hung open and it wasn’t just the coffee. ‘Um, yeah. I wrote her name. I like her a lot.’

‘Does she know that?’

‘No. Well, I haven’t told her.’

Eddy nodded and sipped her coffee. ‘Perhaps you should tell her, Dan-ee-el.
Wie niet waagt, die niet wint.
You don’t dare, you don’t win.’

I lifted one shoulder. A branch cracked.

‘You have only a short time on this earth. Take risks. Not with your life, with your heart. You tell her you like
her and what’s the worst thing that could happen?
Ja
, she might say, “Nay, I don’t like you.” Poor thing. But that is life, too,
hoor
. Rejection is part of life too.’

I nodded.

‘But what if she says, “
Ja,
Dan-ee-el, I like you too”? Then the love gets bigger and bigger. You are both happier. The world is better.’

I sipped my coffee and looked at my boot. I tried to imagine myself talking to Chantelle like that and nearly choked. I’d rather talk to the plants. I stretched my legs out beside the root-ball. ‘What happened to your wrist?’

She twisted her arm and glanced at the scars. ‘That happened when I was a teenager. Long time ago.’

She rested her arm against her thigh so I couldn’t see the scars. She did it like she was used to hiding them. I thought about what she’d said about taking risks and wondered if it was all rubbish.

‘I tried to kill myself.’

I held my breath. A yellow robin dropped out of an apricot tree and landed on the top of my boot. I felt the tiny vibration through my toes. It froze, peering at the soil in the hole.

Eddy nudged me and smiled. ‘The nature boy,’ she whispered.

With a sharp flutter of wings the bird disappeared into the hole. It flew into the apricot tree again with a beakful of curl grub. I looked at Eddy’s wrist.

‘During the war I was raped by an American soldier. I felt so dirty. So horrible. So useless. I tried to kill myself.’

‘It didn’t work?’ I asked, and immediately felt the blood colouring my neck and face.

Eddy giggled. ‘Nay. My mother found me covered in blood in mine bedroom. She bandaged me on the arm and helped me to a doctor. She kept telling me again and again, “It’s not your fault that you were raped. It’s not your fault.”
Ja
, and it wasn’t . . . that man was a monster. I never saw him again. So many times I wanted to find him and kill him. But then the war was over and I forgot about that man. I got married and we shifted to Australia. Kasper and I could never have children. We tried for a long time. Twenty years passed. One day Kasper brought home a friend that he worked with. An American man, a man I’d never met before, but with the same voice as the other man and the same big belly and cigarettes. He came to the farm to visit and I was sitting having a cup of coffee with him when suddenly I wanted to kill him. Tear his eyes out. I had to run outside.’

Eddy’s arms swung about like the American was in front of her. Spit flew from her mouth. She slopped her coffee. The tree seat cracked.

‘Steady, Eddy,’ she said to herself as she wiped the coffee from her apron. ‘I stood in the paddock in the rain and asked the heavens, “Why?” and I didn’t get an answer. I remembered my mother saying, “It’s not your fault.” Nay, and it wasn’t Kasper’s friend’s fault either. Some things like that take forever to heal. I forgave that man who raped me then in the paddock. What he did to me was horrible but to hate a man was to invite hate into my life. So I shouted, “I forgive you, I forgive you” with the rain wet in my hair.’

She chuckled. ‘Kasper thought I was crazy.’

I shook my head. Some part of me agreed with Kasper. Maybe she was crazy. Just a little bit.

‘Kasper was a loving man. Even when I am telling him about when Ziggy was caught in a rabbit trap and about the miracle of him healing, he would smile and say, “
Ja
? That’s good darling, amazing. What’s for dinner?” Even when we are so close, still he could not believe me. That is when I knew that these things were
mine
experiments. He would have his own.’

She sipped her coffee and nodded her head. ‘There is once when he could have died from fright. I almost laughed at him. He would never have forgiven me. We had a toilet outside at the farm. No flush. No light. And at the back of the toilet was a big concrete water tank with no lid. One night I am having a pee and the light comes through the door and I am thinking it is a car coming up the driveway. Oh, we have visitors. But I am looking and the light is coming from behind me. From the water tank.’

Eddy stood up and patted the front of her apron. ‘I am wiping so, and I look out. There is a light like the setting sun coming from the tank. So bright and orange.’

She shielded her eyes from the imaginary glare. ‘A rolling band of orange fire. It sat there above the water tank and I could see that it was coming from a kind of machine. A UFO. I am not frightened. Not at all. This is not a monster. Friendly. It felt friendly. I went inside to tell Kasper and bring him out to see. He took one look, swore, then dragged me inside. “Quick, under the table,” he says to me. “But . . . but . . .” I say, and he is stuffing my head
down and closing all the curtains. He crawled under the table with me and he was praying. Never been to church in his life and he was praying. “Dear Mother Mary, Joseph, Jesus, Jesus save us, Got.” I had to bite mine tongue so I don’t laugh. In the morning, the water tank was almost empty and Kasper didn’t want to talk about it. Never a word. He was terrified.’

On the way home that night in Tina’s ute, I realised that I didn’t have to talk to Eddy about Dad. I knew what she would say. ‘Go to him. You must talk with him,
hoor
. Find out what he has done so bad.’ And I’d thought, Yeah, could go and see Dad, but I knew I wouldn’t. Too easy to find excuses. How would I get there? I’m only a kid; jails aren’t good places for kids to hang out. I don’t even know where he is.

There was an echidna on the edge of our driveway. It curled into a ball as I walked past and started digging itself into the gravelly soil. I stopped and watched it and thought about going to get Toby. The house was quiet. I thought about it and the strangest thing struck me — Dad was like an echidna. Dad’s spikes weren’t cream tipped with black and he didn’t eat too many ants, but he certainly buried himself in his shed at the first sign of danger. I’d rather hug an echidna.

The house was too quiet. I felt uneasy as I walked to the kitchen door. The car had moved. The P76 wasn’t where it had been parked that morning. It was closer to the house. I reached for the handle on the flywire door and it burst
open in my face. It was Dad. His jaw was covered in grey stubble. His teeth were bared. He shoved me with both hands and I slammed into the car. Fell to my hands and knees.

‘What are you doing going through my stuff?’

He kicked me in the guts. If I had been a football I would have flown fifty metres. I’m not a football. The air rushed from me in a wheeze. Something from my guts was forced into my mouth. Bitter like vomit.

‘My friggin’ birds . . . you little shit.’

Boot.

‘No!’ Mum squealed. I looked up and saw that she had him by the hair. She dragged him away from me. He barked in pain and grabbed her arm.

‘Stop it!’ she shouted. ‘Leave him alone.’

Dad belted her across the face with his closed hand. The force of it bounced her off the wall and into the door. She slumped to her knees, held her mouth and sobbed.

Dad panted like a racehorse.

Toby was in the doorway, shaking, with his hands over his ears. Kat came running from her room.

Dad grabbed at the pack on my back. My body tensed. He dragged me away from the car, opened the door and climbed in. The engine cranked but wouldn’t start. He stopped and swore, then tried again. The car spluttered to life. The wheels spun and coughed gravel against my leg. I listened without breathing as the car revved down the drive and onto the road. It skidded, then powered into the distance.

It hurt to breathe. I spat at the ground. The bitterness
in my mouth was the colour of coffee. Probably was coffee. I looked up to see Kat’s wet face. She held her hand over her mouth and her whole body sobbed. Tobe still had his hands over his ears. He looked at me, at Kat, at Mum — his eyes darting wildly.

‘Dan, are you okay?’ he shouted.

I nodded and sat up slowly. My guts hurt. My ears were ringing. There were tears there, bulging behind my eyes. I drew little breaths and held the tears back. I blinked hard and looked at Mum. She smiled in defiance and her body straightened.

‘C’mon,’ she said with one hand on her cheek and the other braced against the wall. She stood up. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

We camped at Graham and Tina’s place that night. Not far from home but far enough. Mum phoned the police and they drove out from Milara to interview her. One of the cops said they were already looking for Dad. They needed to ask him some more questions.

I wished my life was still as simple as Toby’s. He’d probably seen everything — Dad belting Mum and shoving me around, kicking me — but by the time the last rays of orange sunlight were highlighting the dust in our neighbour’s lounge room, he was squealing and laughing and playing with the emu chick. They’d named it ‘Chook’ and Toby called its name over and over until Tina put it in its box.

Tobe drank too much of Tina’s homemade lemon cordial and when he eventually snuggled into the sleeping-bag on the mattress beside mine, his stomach glugged and
slopped like a hot-water bottle. I hoped he wouldn’t wet the bed.

I gave Kat the letter from Jake. I didn’t remember it until after I’d crawled into bed and Toby breathed a little-kid-in-sleeping-bliss sigh. I felt Eddy’s tape, and the letter was scrunched up with it. I fished them both from the pocket of my shorts and put the tape safely on the hearth near my head. I wriggled close to Kat’s mattress. I whispered that I had a letter from Jake. She sat up and snatched it from me.

‘When did he . . .? Where did you . . .? Oh God, thank you,’ she said, and grabbed me by my pyjama top and kissed me noisily on the cheek. My sister kissed me. Totally, totally gross. Kat got up and went to the toilet. She flicked the light on and stood in the doorway. I wiped my face and smiled as I slipped under my doona. Lucky bitch.

I could smell smoke when I woke. Pre-dawn gloom. I shook and fought with my doona. It took a few frantic moments for me to recognise where I was. The smoke made my blood race and I scrambled to the door in the half-light. My stomach grabbed painfully and I cried out.

It wasn’t just a hint of smoke; thick and visible clouds were blowing in on a gusting northerly wind. I couldn’t see any flames, couldn’t hear the crackling, but I could taste it in the air. The phone rang and I jumped. I didn’t know whether to answer it or not.

Tina burst from her bedroom, pulling a silk robe across her naked shoulders — the breathless panic of someone who knew a bushfire was devouring the countryside not far from her home. She didn’t see me standing in the doorway. She didn’t see me grab for the doorframe as
waves of feeling nearly knocked me off my feet. The open-mouthed surprise of seeing a naked woman move. An angle of dark hair, the curve and bounce of her body.

‘Hello,’ she croaked into the receiver. ‘Yep, just a minute . . .’

She put the phone on the table and let herself into the spare room where Mum was sleeping. Mum came to the phone in her nightie. Tina slipped back into her bedroom and closed the door.

‘Hello?’ Mum said, and rubbed her eyes. She winced and looked at her hand. ‘Yes . . . um, no. Okay. Thank you for calling.’

Tina burst from the room again, this time clothed except for socks. She turned the lounge-room light on and spoke to Mum.

‘Get the kids up. There’s a fire.’

Kat was stirring. Tobe’s sleeping-bag was dark and wet in the middle. Mum looked at the beds.

‘Dan?’ she called.

I let go of the doorframe. ‘I’m right here.’

‘Get dressed quickly. Get Katrina going.’

We piled into the ute. Graham, Tina, Mum and Toby, stinking of piddle, in the front, Kat and me on the back. Tina drove like Graham. Kat’s knuckles were white as she held the rail. My side ached on the bumps. If I breathed deeply it felt like someone was spiking me with a nail. I pulled up my shirt and could see a rough circle of blue-black on my ribs about the size of a saucer.

We travelled two kilometres or more and the smoke still billowed and swirled around us. It was no longer the
sweet-smelling smoke of a fire in the bush, it stunk like the tip. Plastic, rubber and paint burning. It was hard to breathe. Up ahead I saw the flashing lights of a firetruck parked in the middle of the road. Tina hooted the horn and a fireman jumped and ran to the car. His face and yellow overalls were scribbled with charcoal. Sweat trails had cut lines in the muck and ash on his jaw.

‘G’day, Tina,’ he said through the window. ‘I was just coming down to get you guys. Saved me a trip. Everyone okay?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Tina said.

I saw Mum through the back window. She touched her face with the tips of her fingers. I could see the shadow of a bruise on her cheek. She was okay.

‘Are you all right?’ Tina asked.

‘Yeah, I’m all right,’ he said, and leaned on the door. ‘Bit knackered but I’ll survive. The worst of it’s under control now. There are five units up at Jack’s place. They’ve back-burnt some of the paddocks. If the wind doesn’t change, your place will be fine. Can’t say the same for the Lanes’ house though.’

I heard Tina swear. ‘Are Penny and Peta okay?’

‘Yeah. They’re staying at my place in Henning. We lost their house.’

Tina swore again and signed to Graham.

‘What, totalled?’ she asked.

‘Burnt to the ground. Didn’t stand a chance. The fire was lit on the ridge at about two o’clock this morning. When the wind came up it blasted across the creek and into the Lanes’ front paddock. They were lucky to get out.
Smoke alarm went off inside the house and woke Penny up. Bloody lucky.’

‘The fire was lit?’

‘Yeah.’ The fireman stood up and put his hand on his hip.

‘Catch the bastard?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Thank Christ,’ Tina moaned. She signed to Graham. He sat forward and looked at the fireman.

‘Anyone we know?’ Tina asked.

The fireman grunted. ‘Ah, yeah. Could say that.’ He rubbed the side of his face. ‘We’ll be needing a new fire captain.’

‘Wha—?’

‘None other than the illustrious John Fisher.’

We spent the morning cleaning up on the Lanes’ place. I was given a knapsack with a hose attached. The handle on the end of the hose worked like a bike pump and allowed me to spray a jet of water onto any glowing bits of timber or tufts of grass. Graham and Tina had knapsacks too, and we worked our way systematically up the scorched hill. Mum and Kat followed along with big-bladed fire rakes. Toby carried a wet hessian bag. With others from Henning we made sure the place was safe. If the wind changed, no hungry new fires would spring to life.

The wind died down at about midday and word came through on the truck radio that Jack’s place had been saved and the fire front had been extinguished. The cheer echoed across the valley.

I was picking my way up an eroded gully, finding tendrils of smoke and spraying them,
sizzle
,
paf
with my knapsack, pumping the nozzle and making clouds of ash that stung in my nose. I’d almost run out of water when I spotted the wall of a dam. I kicked through blackened grass as I climbed the wall, hoping like anything that the dam would contain enough water to fill my knapsack and save me the long walk back to the firetruck.

The dam did have water in it. I shrugged my knapsack off and saw something floating on the other side. Something dead. I screamed as the memory that had been so tightly locked away in my mind began playing. I couldn’t stop it. In the breath of that scream, I saw it all again. The kids hunting skinks amongst the sun-hot rocks. Me and Chris Gemmel. Chris smiling at me, telling me it was time for a swim in the dam. Me agreeing, then spotting a fat stripy skink vanish into a crevice between two football-sized rocks. Chris’s gumboots flapping against his bare legs as he ran to the dam. The squeal of delight. The splash. Me rolling the rock aside only to see the stripy tail slink just out of reach. Moving more rocks, and more. Finally holding the cool lizard in my hand and running to show my friend. My friend floating, face-down, hair like weed. The muddy water around him without a ripple. His body still.

I knew I should save him, drag his body from the water, but that boy with the lizard had turned to stone. I couldn’t move. I remember thinking that in order to save him I’d have to lose the lizard. Back then the boy couldn’t make a sound. I’d stared at the lizard, watching the glossy scales behind its front leg puff and flatten as it breathed.

The stone boy now crumpled. Years later, on the edge of a different dam, the spell was broken. ‘Nooooo.’

In my blackened clothes I plowed into the dam. A
whoosh
of spray. I was quickly out of my depth, teeth bared and swimming hard. I grabbed the body and dragged it ashore. Cradled the head with the purple tongue and the ashen eyes. The limp body of a baby goat. I held it to my chest and cried. A mournful wail for the dead. Tears for Chris, for Dad, for my whole mixed-up life.

Tina and Graham ran around the wall of the dam and I cried. Mum and Kat and Tobe arrived beside me and I cried. Mum cradled my head, my sister patted my back, my brother stroked my arm and I cried. Filled up the dam with my tears.

I cried until there was nothing left but aching ribs, a runny nose and shaky sobs. I put the goat kid down and washed my hands and face in the dam. The fire must have panicked it. Probably ran around in the smoke bleating madly until it stumbled into the water. Poor critter.

Someone got a shovel and we buried it beside the dam in funeral quiet. I almost laughed when one of the firemen crossed himself. It was a goat for Godsake!

I told Mum that I’d walk home. She pointed down the hill to where the ute was parked, shrugged and nodded. Toby wanted to come with me and I told him I’d race him back. He could go home via the road and I’d walk through the bush. Kat took his hand and he started dragging her down the hill.

‘C’mon, Katty. We’re going to win, aren’t we?’

Kat chuckled and stumbled behind him.

Mum looked at me for a long time. ‘Be careful.’

‘Always,’ I said, and turned my squelching boots east, down the hill, towards the cool green of the rainforest that bordered the edge of Penny Lane’s blackened property.

I sat in the heavy shade of a gnarled old myrtle beech. The canopy above me was alive with scrub wrens and treecreepers. I dug my fingers into the cool humus beside me. I shook my head. Ten minutes’ walk up the hill would put me in the middle of a dead black moonscape. Sitting against that huge tree, I could taste the life in the air. I filled my lungs over and over and thought about how symbolic my day had been. It was like a poem about me. Going from a charred place to somewhere green. From old ghosts to sitting in the shade of a tree that may be ten times older than any person who has ever lived. And still growing strong. I felt like someone had taken a fire hose to my insides. It was red and tender in there but it sure was clean. Hope. I felt hope.

My shorts were almost dry. The insides of my pockets were still wet. Eddy’s tape! I jumped to my feet and frantically turned my pockets inside out. I remembered I’d left it at Tina’s place and let out a rush of air like a punctured tyre. I realised then that I wouldn’t let her down. I’d be there at her funeral to play the tape while they burnt her body.

The bracken in the shadow of the big tree was parted by a track. It was pockmarked with the tread pattern of dirt bikes. Yeah, I thought, dirt bikes are one way to get around. I walked.

I found a pocketknife on my way home. Red. Swiss
Army. Would have been a great find except there was a name engraved on the biggest blade, ‘M Fisher’.

Mum and Kat and Tobe had shifted back home. I could see Toby’s sleeping-bag hanging on the clothesline. I found them in the lounge room watching a game show on a crackly black-and-white TV they’d borrowed from Graham and Tina. The phone call that morning, the one that had shaken Tina’s house awake, had been the police. They’d found Dad. They were going to keep him until his trial. Mum didn’t take her eyes off the telly as she told me and although I heard what she said — that Dad wasn’t going to be home that night or any time soon — I still lay awake half the night, listening.