Lou jumped off the balcony, even though she was always being told by my mother not to do that. Babe and I ran around the long way. By the time we got there, Lou had thrown the stick on the grass in disgust. ‘Can’t feel a thing,’ she sniffed.
I picked up the stick. ‘It’s pure instinct,’ whispered my mother to me. ‘Just surrender yourself to the instinct.’
I shut my eyes and concentrated. I longed for something to happen. I’d always craved telepathic powers for myself like ‘The Tomorrow People’ on television. Water divining could be the first step in my development. Then I could advance to reading minds, Jamie’s in particular. Unfortunately the stick was lifeless in my hands. I handed it reluctantly to Babe who had been clamouring for it during my attempts to concentrate. As soon as she grasped the stick, it began to twitch. She stared at it in terror and disbelief, then began to cry. ‘Make it stop,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t like it, make it stop.’
Lou grabbed the stick off Babe, irritated that she could do something she couldn’t.
‘Junior,’ my mother called to my father. ‘Are you coming down here to dig up this spring I’ve found?’
‘No,’ came the reply from the Lazy-Boy Recliner Rocker chair.
‘This is a drought and we need more water.’
‘We don’t need a spring in the middle of our front lawn. If you want to be useful, go down to the ten-acre paddock and see if you can find a spring down there. It’s a helluva problem that there’s no stock water in there.’
‘I think a spring on the front lawn might be attractive.’
‘It’d turn into a bloody bog.’
Then the phone rang and he cursed it. Even from out on the lawn we could hear him muttering to himself as he went to answer it, how he was never left in peace on his afternoon off, how Grampy always rang purposefully just as the match was about to kick off. We all stood there, listening to him talk, trying to decipher if it was Grampy and wondering if my father would hang up on him again like he had the previous Saturday. We all heard his voice snap out of its gruffness into urgency. Then the phone was slammed down and my father ran out onto the balcony, his eyes wild, straining out at the horizon.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked my mother.
My father was intent on the hills opposite. He didn’t answer. I wasn’t concerned. I presumed he’d heard a bad weather forecast and was getting dramatic about his hay. But the next thing he did made me think again. He jumped off the balcony, just as Lou had a few minutes before. ‘Jack, what’s going on?’ asked my mother, concerned.
But he didn’t pause to explain. He was off and running towards the front fence. He hurdled it. I had never seen my father behave so athletically. ‘There’s a fire out in the hills behind Sampson’s,’ he called back at us over his shoulder.
We all turned to look in the direction of Sampson’s but the trees that ran up from the road hid the view. It was those trees my father ran towards. My mother began to clamber over the fence and that was the signal for us all to do the same and hurry after my father. I arrived last. I always did when something involved running. My parents, Lou and Babe all stood there by the fence, under the pine trees, silent and staring. Sure enough, smoke rose up from the hills. My father swore. ‘Buckets. We never have any damn buckets.’
Buckets were a subject of contention in our family. My father was always stealing my mother’s wash-house buckets and taking them down to the cowshed to calve a cow or perform some other equally bloody operation. Inevitably, the cow would stand on the bucket and break it, or my father would forget about it and just leave it there. My mother took to painting ‘return to wash-house’ on every bucket she bought. My father got the message and the buckets did come back eventually, usually splattered with shit and blood and the occasional afterbirth. My mother said she despaired of buckets. Sometimes I helped her hide them from him.
‘Why are there never any bloody buckets?’ my father demanded.
No one bothered to point out the obvious. He sighed. ‘Well, we’ll just have to take what we can. Reeb, pack some food, and something to drink. I could be out there for a while. Kids, run and grab as many sacks as you can find and soak them in water in the wash-house.’
Then my mother remembered the bucket over at the hut. ‘Billy-Boy, run over to Jamie’s hut and bring back the bucket I leave over there. It’ll be under the sink. And don’t touch anything else.’
It was perfect. Jamie had driven off while we were all out on the front lawn. I ran with all my might over to his hut. I went straight to the sink and opened the cupboard beneath it. No bucket. I scanned the room. Checked under the bed. It was nowhere to be seen. I wandered about the room, looking for anything different or new, took a good long look at the photo of Jamie and Belinda and was about to leave when I noticed Jamie’s clothes, the shirt and jeans he’d been wearing the day before, lying discarded on the floor. I picked them up and went through the pockets. I was looking for any clues as to what he might have been doing the night before. But I found nothing unusual. If anything they were just a bit dirtier and smellier than usual. There was a distinctive smell about the shirt. I picked it up and gave it a serious sniff. There was that familiar Jamie smell but there was also something else. It smelled like smoke. I clasped it to my face and inhaled. It was definitely smoke. But it didn’t smell like the cigarettes Jamie sometimes smoked. It was more like the incense my mother burnt occasionally and my father complained about. Jamie had been burning something with a fragrance. Perfumed letters from Belinda? Maybe it truly was over.
I felt delighted by the thoroughness of my investigation. Not that it explained anything but a clue was a clue even if it was an enigma. I almost felt like confiding in Lou but that was a fleeting thought. I would never share any secrets about Jamie with her. She would find a way to use it to her own advantage. Carefully I rearranged his clothes on the floor and stepped outside.
I walked briskly back over to the house. Lou and Babe were in the wash-house. Lou was explaining to Babe how the sacks she was soaking in the sink would be used to beat back the burning tussock. ‘I’m going to ask Uncle Jack to take me to help,’ she declared and Babe’s eyes shone with admiration.
Then Lou noticed me standing in the doorway. ‘Here, help Babe carry these down to the truck,’ she commanded as if she was Mervyn Hammer and in charge of the whole firefighting operation.
I said nothing. I had half-expected her to question me as to why I’d been so long. Babe and I carried one dripping sack at a time down to the truck and heaved them onto the back. By the time we’d lugged them all down we were as wet as the sacks. Then my father charged out of the house, dripping wet as well. He had stepped under the shower fully clothed. We all stared at him. ‘Just a precaution,’ he grinned.
Lou changed her mind and didn’t ask to be taken along after all.
My mother appeared in the back doorway and thrust a packet of sandwiches, a thermos and a bottle of lemonade at my father. She stood there, shrouded by the dangling plastic fly-screen, watching as we walked my father down to the truck. ‘If you’re not back by dinnertime, I’ll bring some more food out to you,’ she called after him.
‘Okay,’ said my father, waving.
He climbed in behind the wheel and started the truck, grinning at our serious faces. He reversed and then ripped straight into second gear and was off down the drive, a trail of water from the sacks staining the gravel as he went. We all stood there for a while, staring at that trail. Finally Lou said, ‘Let’s go and see if it’s got any worse,’ and bounded off.
Babe and I followed. For most of that afternoon, we sat out by the trees, watching the smoke rise up from the hills behind Sampson’s. It was spellbinding. Once we saw some flames shoot up into the air, startling us all out of our trance. ‘I hope Daddy’s alright,’ murmured Babe.
Occasionally, my mother drifted out to watch for a while and offered the news she’d heard from talking on the phone: that there were over fifty men fighting the fire an
d two tractors with ploughs trying to dig wide fire breaks in the difficult tussock land. When the sun began to sink lower in the sky, becoming lost in the smoke’s haze, my mother hurried back inside to start cooking some dinner to take to the men. The smoke was beginning to choke up the sky. We could smell the ash in the air. The firefighters didn’t seem to be making much of an impression.
There was the most magnificent sunset that night, the smoke fuelling its glory. The hills and clouds were stained a fiery orange. When the sun vanished from view, the hills continued to glow orange. In horror we realised they were alive with flames. We ran inside screaming to tell my mother. She was standing by the front door, the telephone still in her hand, staring into space. Our appearance snapped her back to reality and she hung up the telephone. She nodded distractedly when we told her what we’d seen. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Now, Aunt Evelyn and I are taking some dinner out to the men. We may have to stay out there and help. Okay?’
We all nodded. ‘Your dinner’s ready now. Serve it up for me will you Billy-Boy. And go to bed if we’re not home by nine o’clock.’
She started to walk back into the kitchen, then suddenly she stopped and turned back towards us. ‘By the way, have any of you seen Roy Schluter today?’
I must have blushed. I felt myself growing hot. Lou and Babe were saying no and somehow I shook my head as well. My mother’s eyes seemed to be fixed on me. ‘Why?’ asked Lou.
‘He’s missing. His mother hasn’t seen him since lunch time and she’s starting to get worried that he’s gone up to look at the fire.’
‘He’s always wandering off,’ said Lou. ‘We’ve seen him before roaming round on a Saturday, haven’t we Billy?’
I mumbled a yes but my mother wasn’t paying attention. She’d hurried back into the kitchen and was putting some last-minute things into a big carton. ‘Lou, can you take this down to the car for me? And Billy, serve dinner up before it gets cold.’
Lou seized the carton and my mother followed her out the door. I served dinner but none of us felt much like eating it. Afterwards even the television couldn’t distract us. Lou kept running out to the trees every quarter of an hour to check on the fire. On her third mission she came running back inside, shrieking that there was a car coming up the drive. ‘Is it Daddy? Is it Daddy?’ squealed Babe.
‘It’s driving too fast to be Uncle Jack,’ said Lou.
I knew it must be Jamie. I ran outside to check. It was him. ‘There’s some dinner going if you want it,’ I yelled.
‘Okay,’ he called back.
I went back inside. It was odd that he was back so early on a Saturday night. ‘Have you come home to help fight the fire?’ I asked when he strolled into the kitchen.
‘What fire?’
I couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed the flames, smelled the smoke in the air. I was speechless.
‘Where’s this dinner then?’
I took it to him and he seized his cutlery, ploughing into the food. He was behaving very oddly. I wondered if he was drunk. ‘Are you going to fight the fire too Jamie?’ Babe asked.
‘Nah,’ he said, his mouth full of mashed potato.
‘Even Aunt Evelyn’s gone to fight it,’ Babe said in awe.
‘Well I’m sure she’ll have it under control in no time,’ he said with a laugh that sounded vaguely mocking.
He had to be drunk. He wasn’t himself. I took Babe away from him, back into the lounge room to watch television. ‘Why won’t he go and help?’ Babe whispered fiercely.
I didn’t know what to say. ‘Because … he wants to stay here and look after us. In case we get scared.’
With that Babe did begin to get scared and started to cry. ‘What if Mummy and Daddy don’t come back?’
I had to get Lou, her hero, to come and calm her down. Jamie was slumped at the table, legs stretched out, the plate scraped clean in front of him. ‘Do you want to come and take a look at the fire?’ I suggested.
Jamie got to his feet, a little unsteadily. ‘Nah. Maybe later. I’ll just go and see if there’s any rabbits about.’
My face must have shown my disbelief. A sheepish look stole across his face and he stared at the floor for a moment. When he looked up again, he had that endearing grin stretched across his face. ‘Then I’ll come back inside and we can have that game of cards you’ve been after.’
Jamie winked at me and wandered out the door. I started stacking up the plates, keeping an eye out the window to see where he went. Lou darted back into the kitchen. ‘Do you reckon he’s had a fight with Belinda?’ she said.
I didn’t want to discuss Jamie with Lou. I shrugged.
‘He was acting weird,’ she persisted.
Beyond Lou, out the window, I could see Jamie walking briskly over to the woolshed. I watched him until he disappeared out of sight. I decided to follow him. It was something I’d often considered doing, yet never actually dared to. That night was different. I relished the risk involved. Maybe it was the excitement of the day. The threat of the fire. Something had gotten into me. My confidence was high and it was a cinch to get away from Lou. I offered to do the dishes by myself if she’d keep Babe distracted. She agreed immediately.
Once she’d gone back into the lounge room, I sneaked out the front door, and started running towards the woolshed, congratulating myself on my deviousness. My sense of triumph quickly waned. The evening was so menacingly dark. There was a full moon but it gave out only a ghastly glow, smudged by the smoke in the air. The dogs howled as I passed near their kennels. I hoped Jamie would put their outburst down to the moon. When I drew near the woolshed, I stopped and hid by the trees, listening for any sign of him. I must’ve waited there several minutes, before I heard him. He began to whistle, then sing a few lines of some song. He was no David Cassidy. I crept forward, following the sound of his tune, eerie in the gloom of the night. There were a couple of fences I had to negotiate as silently as possible.
As I approached the woolshed, I realised he wasn’t actually inside, but was doing something out behind it. Cautiously, I approached the corner of the shed and peered around. There was a light emanating from the old long-drop toilet, glowing through the cracks between the weather boards. I knew it must be a torch. That toilet was primitive. There was no light. No flush. No one had used that toilet in years. Even the shearers for whom it was intended, shunned it. Last time I’d looked inside there were thistles growing up out of where you were supposed to sit.
What could Jamie possibly be doing? The only thing I could think of was that he had a stash of dirty magazines in there. But even that seemed unlikely. It would be an unnecessarily awkward hiding place. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t using the toilet conventionally. Suddenly Jamie backed out of the toilet, his face revealed in the light of his torch, frowning in concentration. Hastily I stepped back around the corner of the shed. I heard the door of the toilet thud shut and then Jamie’s footsteps retreating, his boots thumping on first one and then the second wooden fence as he heaved himself over. Satisfied that he was on his way back to the house, I crept forward to investigate.
The moon seemed sicker and dimmer than ever. I had to edge forward carefully. Behind the woolshed was the parking spot for various farm implements but despite my caution I tripped over a set of harrows. Getting back to my feet, I didn’t feel so sure of myself. I began to wish I’d brought Lou along with me. Once I stood in front of the toilet, I began to feel downright scared. Anything could be inside. I cursed myself for not bringing a torch. Finally I crept away, feeling a coward but telling myself I’d return in the morning.
I was about to climb over the first fence when suddenly I had a change of heart. I tore back to the toilet, yanked the door open but kept on running away, too scared of what might possibly emerge to even glance inside. I only stopped running when I reached the safety of the shed. I pressed myself against the corrugated iron wall, panting, my senses all frantically alert. Everything was still. Nothing stirred from within the
toilet. I waited a full minute, and then reassured I tentatively approached it, slowly drawing closer and closer until my toes brushed up against its crude foundations.
It seemed that the thistles had completely claimed the toilet. It was full of them. Then I noticed my mother’s bucket on the floor. I picked it up. It was half full of water. I stood there hopelessly looking from the bucket to the thistles. It made no sense. The wind lifted, banging the door back against the side wall. Perhaps the wind also stirred the smoke clogging the atmosphere for as I peered into the toilet I seemed to be able to see a little better. I could make out a silhouette of the plants against the back whitewashed wall. They weren’t thistles. I stretched out my fingers gingerly to check. There were no prickles. These plants had rough crinkled leaves. The dogs barked again. It meant Jamie was nearing the house. I slammed the door shut and began to run. I was disappointed. I had expected to find something forbidden. It seemed all I’d stumbled upon was some sort of dreary agricultural experiment.
Jamie was standing by the front door as I approached the house. It gave me a terrible start for a moment. Had he realised I’d followed him? Was he waiting to confront me? But as I got closer, I recognised his posture. He was using the telephone, calling Belinda. I felt a flare of jealousy which helped me march past him with more confidence. ‘Just been checkin’ on the fire,’ I said, as I ducked to get under the telephone cord that barred the door.
‘It’s okay. I’ve finished,’ said Jamie, replacing the phone. ‘No answer.’
He followed me back into the kitchen. Immediately, Lou bolted out of the lounge room. ‘Where’ve you two been?’ she demanded.
‘Just out to look at the fire,’ I said.
I waited for Jamie to explain his absence but he said nothing. Instead he began stacking plates in the sink.
‘You’ve been gone a while,’ Lou persisted.
I shrugged. Lou continued to frown at both of us suspiciously. ‘Well don’t think I’m going to help with the dishes,’ she finally said and flounced back into the lounge.