Читать книгу Playing Lady Gaga, Being Nan Pau - Steve Tolbert - Страница 16

Gretna, Tasmania.

The valley blazed, flames leaping up and coming his way fast.

Embers blew past. Fireballs landed, igniting the ground, searing his throat, sucking the breath from his lungs.

‘Stay with me!’ he screamed, coughing and slowing to let Ella catch up.

The air roared. The sky darkened. Smoke scratched at his eyes and clouded everything around him.

‘We’re almost there!’ he screamed again, barely able to hear himself. He could only guess where ‘there’ was before spotting the dam just metres away, the debris-filled water moving in wavelets away from him.

‘Just ahead!’ He stopped and turned. ‘Ella!’ He leaned into the wind and smoke, shielding his face with his hands.

Branches hit him, embers scorched his skin and clothes.

‘Ella!’

Spot fires were merging now; the heat like the air itself was on fire.

She knew where to go, didn’t she? She had to be there, lying mud-caked in the shallow end, frantic for him to arrive. Not in the middle: no, please not there! She could barely swim. He turned and ran.

Over the embankment and into the water he went, screaming her name.

The bottom sloped downwards. At chest-level he went under, but not for long. Short of breath, his face broke the surface. He sucked air and sank down again, images of Ella behind him, not behind him, of his Mum and Dad leaving for New Norfolk hours earlier, Dad’s ‘Back soon’, Mum’s ‘Want anything?’ joining his thumping heartbeat and the firestorm about to come over the top of him. More horror thoughts, of having to choose between being scalded in the water or getting out and being consumed in fire. He rose, breathed deeply and realised the water – bathtub warm – was not getting any hotter, the firestorm no louder. He lifted his eyes to the falling ash, the orange-grey sky. The wind had eased and changed direction. He stood up, his legs shaky and loose. Still smoke and a distant roar, yes, but otherwise just the sound of his gasps and the muck and water dripping off him.

‘Ella!’ He waded, dragging his arms through the water, imagining her floating face-down on the surface. Finally he climbed out, sandshoes squishing out water that hissed and steamed on the charred ground. The crackle of fire, sound of moving water, then from the dam a small, quavering voice – ‘Nick.’

***

The kettle whistled inside the house, went quiet.

‘Want anything, Nick?’

The words continually being asked of him, like he was too feeble to look after himself: two hours before the firestorm, driving to and from the Royal Hobart Hospital, and here on the front deck of his Aunt Jenny’s, one of the few places around Gretna spared by the fire. Want anything? Change ‘anything’ to ‘anyone’ and the answer could be tattooed across his forehead – Ella and John.

‘Nick, do ya want anything to eat or drink?’ his Aunt Jenny called out again, her shrill voice penetrating his bones.

Be good if you could keep your voice down to a shout, he thought to say, sitting there on the edge of the veranda, legs dangling. He shouted back, ‘No, thanks!’ Followed quietly by, ‘Commandant.’

Still the human megaphone jabbered away in there, as she had done since day one of ‘Operation Stay-With-Us-For-As-Long-As-You-Like’. Lately, she’d even started reminding him to wash his hands and brush his teeth, like he was still a pre-schooler too small to see over the wash basin. Next she’d be saying, ‘Bedtime. Be sure to go to the toilet before saying good night, Nicholas.’ Yeah, his mum was right. He should be bowled-over grateful to her and Uncle Pete (a shoo-in Order of Australia winner for unreal patience), and more importantly, show it. But beyond his barely-able-to-utter ‘Thanks’, he just couldn’t muster up the emotion, sincere voice and wooden hugs to convince everyone he really was grateful. ‘Still in shock,’ he’d overheard his mother say to his aunt one night. Yeah, too right I am, Mum, for more reasons than you think.

He looked out at the rosebushes bordering the entryway, then at two honeyeaters fighting over bottlebrush territory to his right. The old tortoiseshell cat appeared from nowhere and sat next to him, gazing in the direction of that bottlebrush, its tail curled around its feet. Black cockatoos flapped past and landed in the top of the red gums, the only ones this side of Gretna Central not torched, he reckoned. They screeched and tore away at the leaves and blossoms. At least birds had survived what pets and livestock hadn’t.

A few days earlier, he had stopped by their property and taken it all in. Like a huge incendiary bomb had been dropped. Not a sound. Concrete foundations, brick fireplace intact; otherwise the house and sheds just piles of charred rubble. Everything else blackened as well: the ground, outlying tree trunks, iron sheeting, animal carcasses (Sook’s and Moonshine’s?), mangled husks of John’s Suzuki and Dad’s tractor. No chooks, ducks, native hens. No fruit trees, boxing or play equipment, clotheslines, garden borders, fencing. He had wandered out to the far paddock and spotted his rabbit traps, one smothered in charcoaled rabbit, or something of similar size.

In his need for space, he’d taken to walking for hours over the blowtorched landscape, sifting through the remains, locating where things used to be. And sometimes during all that locating he’d turn in the direction of the river and his favourite fishing spot – his insides churning – and track the fire’s path.

That landscape, this deck, night television, his designated mattress, the odd ride into Hobart and back – the extent of his world now. So, want anything, Nick? Yeah. To wake up in his own bed, pull the curtains back and see Ella planting something in her garden, or on the swing instead of being house-bound or in hospital getting her bandages changed. Otherwise nothing. Just being left alone would be good, thank you, Commandant. No one’s arms around him, no one’s confiding words that had about as much chance of clearing his head of the fire as the Sky God dropping off a cloud and fronting up for his birthday.

The deck creaked behind him, the footsteps recognisable. Two sisters: his aunt the stomper, his mum the creeper. He switched his brain to autopilot.

‘You know what I’m looking forward to most?’

Yeah, he did. If his mum had a religion it was trees and plants and flowers. ‘What, Mum?’

‘Seeing the first new shoots and blossoms and watching the valley recover.’ She sat next to him in her King Gees and city-bought t-shirt, beaming her hundred-watt smile; though he didn’t look around to make sure, he just knew it was there. ‘And the valley will recover. Its people will see to it. Such a tight-knit community. Few places in the world where you can go out and leave your doors unlocked and the neighbours will bring in your washing if it rains.’ She was obviously having a good day.

‘Well that won’t be happening again anytime soon.’

‘But it will happen.’

Mum the smiler. Brother John and sister Ella, the inheritors of her smiler gene, as well as her ease around people. Not him. ‘You’re so like your father,’ newly-mets said to him on occasion; the newly-mets not bothering to add, ‘Your father the quiet one, the paddock-wanderer.’

But his dad talked. He just chose the people he talked to and his talking places – mostly Rotary meetings, or up at the hotel – carefully. He had strong opinions too. Often expressed to himself when watching the news or a current affairs program. Opinions on politicians: ‘Couldn’t hold two thoughts in their heads on the same day.’ Opinions on townie populations – their houses butted together, ghetto-blasters blaring, rat dogs barking, P-platers hurtling down the roads at Formula One speeds. And strongest of all, his opinions on ‘new’ technology. It challenged him, and he challenged the need for it. ‘Where’s all this technology taking us? Down the road to digital dementia …’ or ‘There was something I read recently about computer games and social networking amounting to conversation avoidance techniques that threaten to turn the next generation autistic.’

Dad wasn’t into change. Reckoned after serving in Vietnam he’d left Texas for Tassie – ‘the back of beyond and then some’ – because he’d heard nothing changed here. Thing was, he still hadn’t a clue Mum and the rest of the family were on Facebook and, when he was out, played computer games.

But what Dad lacked in ATM and computer appreciation he made up for in farming and handyman skills, playing his big, recently replaced Gibson guitar and perfecting his flat-tray driving skills by taking his kids – four to the seat, Ella the designated ducker – into town for weekend sport. He was a big reader too – ‘A book with legs that man,’ he’d overheard his Aunt Gas-bag say. ‘Top of the valley’s Dean’s List in Paddock Reading.’ – using the local library service (though not through internet) or buying secondhand books and stowing them under his tractor seat. Next morning he’d head out in his ‘everydays’ – shirt, overalls, boots, bush hat, all specially chosen for their frayed and faded look – a thermos of coffee in one hand, a hidden pack of smokes and matches somewhere else. He might tighten or repair fencing in the ‘old bloke’s’ paddock for an hour or so, look towards the river, gaze at the sky and ground a while, before consulting his tractor library. He’d find a tree trunk to sit against, a secret fag to smoke, pour a coffee and read. Nick knew, but said nothing. His binoculars – strongest in the valley he reckoned – could spot a blowie lift its wings a hundred metres away.

‘During my pregnancies,’ his mum went on, ending her daydream interlude, ‘your father would drive me into town to see Doctor Healy and we’d come home and always find something on the stove: a casserole or a pot of soup simmering away. Or, at the back door, a side of lamb from old Mick over the back paddock.’

‘Low on maintenance, big on substance and tough as a two-dollar steak when she has to be,’ was how Nick’s dad described his mum, usually after a three-course meal and a couple of beers. That was about as wordy as he ever got about her, but it said a lot. They seemed good together: solid, never a sour word between them, at least when others were around. Didn’t socialise much past Gretna. Dad’s regular Rotary Club meeting in New Norfolk; a baking club one for Mum. Some Saturday nights an early parmigiana counter tea at the hotel where they might meet up with the rest of Gretna’s Rotary and baking set: the Rodens, Patels, Foxes, Godfreys, Woodruffs. Then it was back home in time for the last half of AFL footy or a DVD.

‘Later we’d get home from the maternity ward, my arms full of new life, and there’d be flowers and homemade scones and biscuits on the kitchen table. That night people would come around with more food and a bottle or two to wet the new head. Such warm, thoughtful people.’

Typical: Mum mouthing great long sentences in praise of the valley and its people.

Her of the power-of-friends and goodness-to-strangers school, as John put it, when he was home. ‘Yeah, good people, Mum.’ He recalled Ella asking her once how she’d met their dad.

‘Just met him, that’s all.’

‘Tell me.’

She’d chewed her lip a moment. ‘During uni holidays I worked at the hotel. He came in one afternoon and sat at the end of the bar.’

‘A stranger?’

‘A lonely-looking one, yes.’

‘And so you decided to give him some company?’

‘I suppose I did, older man that he was. I liked the look of him, the way he talked, though I had to do most of it at first. Anyway, he came back the next day, drank his beer, read a tattered book. Hardly country, I remember thinking then; wouldn’t know which end of a spade to dig with.’

‘And?’

‘And I was wrong on both counts. He stayed. So did I. He built his world around a family, paddock, fruit trees and sheep. Later on joined Rotary, started building things for other people . Always a book going though, like reading soothed some lingering sore inside him.’

‘And now?’ his mum continued, ‘Your aunt and uncle, us and no one else from the river to the main road.’

A familiar sick feeling rose up in his belly. As an encore, you moron, why not try shooting a plane out of the sky. ‘Yeah. No good, Mum.’ Memory-torture rode his brain again. One step too many while fishing and he’d been chest-deep in the river. Got out shivering and made a fire despite the total fire ban. No more than plate size, but big enough to mostly dry him out. Afterwards, he’d tossed handfuls of dirt on it. Just a few blackened branch ends left against the rocks, their middles burnt out, the tiniest wisp of smoke.

‘It could be worse, Mum,’ he said to fill the quiet. ‘We could be homeless.’

Smell of eucalypts and distant hops. Outlines of blue gums, fences, livestock and distant houses (all gone now) as he rode his gear-heavy bike from the river towards the main road.

Thing was, the wind had picked up. Strong enough to re-ignite sparks from a tiny fire?

That was the question he couldn’t stop asking himself. The answer: probably. With that wind at his back, getting over Paddy’s Hill had never been easier.

‘You’re right, Nick. We could be … You hungry?’ she asked.

‘Not really.’ When they still had a house, that question would come through his crack-open bedroom doorway, the opening she insisted on so the room stayed fresh, like his bedroom would turn into a sewage works if – shock, horror, ‘Don’t know how that happened,’ – his door had actually spent a minute or two closed. No closed-door nag time since the fire though: no nag time at all. He could wear different­-coloured socks, walk around in crotch-less underdaks with wax oozing out of his ears, snot out of his nose, and she’d just smile and look at him as though he’d stepped out of a Myer catalogue.

It was like she’d taken a knock to the head since the fire. Like now, she stared a lot, often at the most ordinary things: the kitchen sink, baking trays, fly-over birds that disappeared or the trees across the road.

He gave her another look: her elbows propped on her knees, chin in her hands, wavy salt-and-pepper hair running down her back. ‘You’re wrinkling well,’ John would say, stirring her. So well, she was still a target for strange men’s eyes. He’d noticed a few eyeing her off in New Norfolk recently and the few times they’d gone into Hobart together. Imagine, a bloke’s own mother getting that sort of attention, especially while the bloke’s walking along beside her. Unbelievable.

The screen door at the back slammed. 7HO radio went on: News on the hour. He listened, just nodding when his mum started on about whatever. Something on the radio about an opposition censure motion in State Parliament, a renewed proposal for a Mount Wellington chairlift, then – ‘Fire Service authorities investigating the Derwent Valley fire are focusing their investigation on the Meadowbank Campground area …’

His fishing spot wasn’t quite there, but still …

Someone messed with the volume.

‘Jenny,’ Uncle Pete called out.

‘I’m in the laundry.’

Seconds later came Aunt Jenny’s kookaburra laugh.

The radio volume went back up: something about government subsidies for drought-stricken farmers, followed by the traffic report, sport and ‘twenty-two degrees in the city’, then more of Hobart’s Top 40. Hard for him to care now which new group had made the cut.

His mum leaned closer, picking something off the back of his t-shirt. She rubbed the back of her hand over his arm then across his cheek. ‘Your burns have healed well.’

‘My burns aren’t the concern.’

She patted his hand. He took it back. ‘I lost them, Mum: Ella, Sook, Moonshine. Me: the one supposedly there to look after them.’ The repeat button again, like watching Harvey Norman ads on TV.

‘I still remember your grandpop’s mad terrier, Shooter, sniffing through our veggie patch once and latching onto the tail of a tiger snake and shaking it violently back and forth. Your grandpop running over with a spade and screaming, “Drop it, drop it, ya little mongrel!” Of course when Shooter did, the snake reared up and was about to sink its fangs when your grandpop took the spade to it. It all happened so fast. From dog sniff to decapitation in a matter of seconds. Later your grandpop said to me, “Fear can either paralyse you, Alice, or help you to move faster.” It’s obvious to everyone how you responded during the fire. Just like your grandpop did that day. Remember, Nick, Ella’s alive. Her burns will heal. She can feel, think, see, hear and talk because of you. A graft or two will take care of the rest.’

Ella – like Mum and John – so positive, full of ideas. Loving French at school. With plans to buy a beret and go to Paris, maybe study the language there, maybe teach English there, maybe this, maybe that, maybe everything.

Doors opened and closed inside then the house noises fell away again.

‘Canberra rang while you were out walking,’ she said.

Nick jerked his head around. ‘What did they say?’

‘He still hasn’t returned.’

A crow glided over. He watched it until it disappeared. ‘You know, Mum, I even miss him going gorilla on me in the mornings, scratching his ribs, grabbing my ears and handing me a banana.’

‘No malice in it. Just big doses of brotherly love.’

Not quite how he’d read it. But he wouldn’t be going on about it because an idea was forming – one that for the moment replaced his shame. ‘Ban Thai Guesthouse, isn’t it, Mum?’

‘Last we heard.’

‘Mae Sot, on the border with Burma?’ He said this from habit. They both knew where John had gone. It had been drilled into them.

‘Last we heard.’

‘I read in my social psychology book once that it’s normal for teenagers to get down on themselves, and when they do they often fantasise about being someone else, or living somewhere else, or both.’

‘While performing great heroic deeds no doubt.’

‘Yeah, that too.’

She watched him. ‘Like who and where for instance?’

He knew the place was super-hot, the dry season now; that there was a medical clinic for Burmese refugees and lots of refugee camps nearby. He answered quickly, ‘As a missing-brother finder in Mae Sot, Thailand.’

No surprise she lost her smile, her reply almost instant. ‘You’re in fantasyland, Nicholas James Stanish, if you think that’s going to happen. You need to finish growing up first. A good thing school is starting again next week. It’ll get your mind squarely back on reality.’

Nick thought of Basher Bates – self-proclaimed Derwent Valley Thug-of-the-Year – and his rat pack retards moving out from behind the demountable, chest-bumping and shoving each other, cracking up. They’d flicked away their smokes and headed his way, stooped, heads hooded, hands buried in bag-trouser pockets, their brains too small to go anywhere on their own. ‘Some butt ends for ya ta suck on back there, dickhead,’ one had shouted at him as he’d leant back against the fence trying hard to look relaxed.

‘Enjoy your breakfasts, did ya?’

Basher’s second in command: ‘Fuck off.’

The pack had chimed in – same words, same volume – front to back in order of rank. All except the Thug-of-the-Year striding out in front of everyone else, like he was leading a parade, pleased with how the morning was progressing. If thuggery were a school subject he’d have earned a scholarship to university by now.

Hardly the reality Nick was looking forward to, another year of avoiding those drongo drop-kicks; along with the consequences of setting the Derwent Valley alight: coppers, fire investigation authorities, a magistrate, the Ashley Youth Detention Centre. ‘What about the reality of not having a place of our own anymore, of not hearing from John for … for how long?’

‘Four weeks, three days.’

‘Yeah, that long. Someone has to go up there and find out what’s happened to him, Mum.’ He looked beseechingly at her. ‘You and Dad can’t. You’ve got too much going on here. So that leaves me. This is what I want, Mum – not to go back to school just yet, but to go up and find John, or at least try to.’

‘Whoa.’ She raised her hands as if to stop him from leaving that moment. ‘Nicholas James, the last thing this family needs right now is another son gone missing.’

‘Hardly missing, Mum. There’re internet cafes up there and I’ll have my laptop, so I’ll keep in contact – promise. And it makes sense for me to go. And it’s not like the school will go into mourning over my absence. Geez, Mum, the teachers will celebrate. It’ll be like Christmas holidays all over again.’

‘Don’t exaggerate. You just weren’t at your best last term.’

‘But I will be this term after I get back. I’ll really slog, Mum, and catch up on all my missed schoolwork.’ In Ashley? ‘I will – promise.’

‘The answer’s no.’

For reasons he obviously couldn’t explain to her, he was desperate to get away, either to Mae Sot or somewhere, anywhere. ‘What do you mean no?’ Despite saying this, he understood her stunned look. But why shouldn’t he go up there? He was old enough – just. ‘I’ve got the money, and it’s not like I’m asking you to let me climb Mount Everest or go sailing solo around the world. I’ve travelled. I’ve got a passport. I’ve been to Bali, Melbourne, the Gold Coast. I can do Thailand too, no worries – I know I can, I know it. Please let me go.’

She jumped up as if bull-ant bitten. ‘No way,’ she answered, escaping back into the house.

A minute or so later his dad came out and sat down, big hands gripping his knees. He scanned the trees, that drifty ‘You care for the land and it’ll care for you’ look on his face.

‘Your mother mentioned you’re keen to go find your brother,’ he said finally.

‘Yeah, Dad, I am.’

‘I read an article last weekend in The Mercury that pretty well summed up my view on travelling anywhere north of Hobart.’

Nick prepared himself for the ‘Mum’s totally right’ lecture.

‘It went on about how travel is mostly about eating and drinking and waiting in great long lines worrying about being late somewhere or losing things or getting sick. I reckon I could’ve written the article. Point is, there’ll be nothing like a tropical paradise waiting for you up there in John-country. You know that, don’t ya?’

Stunned, Nick stared at his father’s face. ‘Yeah, Dad, I do.’

‘Then we’d better work out what we’re going to say to your mother.’