Singo.
Carrying the knowing all these years. To be with Rose and know they had executed her son. Greg was rubbish but he was hers, the way Tony and Corin were his.
Not Lizzie. She wasn’t his. She was Laurie’s. He had taken Laurie’s child from her as Dance had taken Rose’s.
He could not bear the thoughts, went to the bathroom and found Birkerts’ sister’s tablets, two left. In time, he passed into a sleep of sad meaningless dreams.
He woke just before 7am, lay for a long time, not thinking about anything, overwhelmed by the world, by what was waiting for him. He noticed his hipbones. He had lost weight.
Rose’s treasure box. Do that first, he could not face her if something happened to it.
In the kitchen, the radio.
…wind shift that saved the evacuated towns of Puzzle Creek, Hunter Crossing, Selborne and Morpeth and many farm properties late yesterday has only provided a temporary respite. With the fires now largely out of control and extreme conditions again today, emergency services say the best hope is for a change in the weather…expected to continue…
In the car, he switched on his mobile. Dozens of messages.
Later. He would attend to them later.
On the freeway, heading for Rose’s house, the phone. He plugged in the hands-free.
‘Villani.’
‘Steve, it’s Luke, listen our chopper’s been up there and the bloke says Dad’s in dead strife, there’s no way out, the fucking wind is shifting and…’
‘He doesn’t need a way out,’ said Villani. ‘He’s got no use for a way out.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m going in the chopper. The bloke’ll put me down, he’s a fucking madman too.’
Luke Villani, the snotty, whining little boy, the smartarse teenager who had to be locked in his room, radio confiscated, to do his homework, who sucked up to Bob, who came running for protection every time Mark threatened him, whose highest ambition was to call horse races.
‘Talk to the doctor?’
‘Waiting for him to call back.’
‘Fucking lunatic idea this,’ said Villani. He could feel the snaretight wires in his neck, up into his skull. ‘I’m telling you not to.’
It was his duty to say it, his prerogative and his duty.
‘Can’t tell me what to do anymore,’ said Luke. ‘It’s my dad and my brother. I’m going.’
My brother.
No one had ever said it before. Villani had thought that no one would ever say it. It had not seemed sayable.
‘Where’s this fucking chopper?’ he said.
‘Essendon,’ said Luke. ‘Grenadair Air. Wirraway Road. Off the Tulla.’
‘Wait for me.’
‘Sarmajor,’ Luke said in Bob’s voice.
They were waiting on the blistering tarmac beside the shiny bird with its slim silver drooping wings: Mark and Luke and the pilot.
‘I reckon I can go to jail for this,’ said the pilot. He looked about twenty.
‘I know you can go to jail for this,’ said Villani.
THEY FLEW across the crawling city and its outskirts and over the low hills, flew over the small settlements and great expanses of trees, flew over dun, empty grazing land. They could see the smoke across the horizon, it stood a great height into the sky and above it the air was the cleanest, purest blue.
After a long while, from a long way, they saw the red edges of the fire, like blood leaking from under a soiled bandage.
The radio traffic was incessant, calm voices through the electronic crackle and spit.
‘Got to keep away from the fire choppers,’ said the pilot. ‘Go the long way around.’
‘Took your patient in,’ Villani said to Mark. ‘Kenny Hanlon.’
‘Not my patient,’ said Mark. ‘Don’t have any patients. I’m going to Africa next week. Darfur.’
‘Got bikies in Darfur? Got a Hellhound chapter?’
‘Fuck you,’ Mark said.
In time, they saw Selborne in the distance, they were coming at it from the south-west, and, beyond the hamlet in the direction of Bob’s, the world was alight, the road was a snaking avenue of trees burning orange, the air was dark.
‘Don’t reckon I’m going to jail,’ said the pilot, ordinary voice. ‘Reckon I’m going to die up here.’
‘Steady on, son,’ said Luke. ‘Just follow the road. Carrying the best cop, best doctor, best race-caller in the country. Don’t fuck it up.’
‘Dream team,’ said the pilot. ‘Help me, St Chris.’
Into the dark and frightening hills, they followed the flaming road, the chopper shivering, pushed up and down and sideways by the air currents, everything was adrift in the heat.
Suddenly, they were above the farm, the house, the sheds, the stable, the paddocks.
The forest. Untouched, whipping.
‘In the paddock, Black Hawk One,’ said Luke.
And then they were on the ground and Luke was patting the pilot, they scrambled out, the heat was frightening, breath-sucking, the terrible noise, the pilot shouted, ‘You bloody idiots.’
They ran and the chopper rose, showered them with particles of dirt and stone and dry vegetation.
At the fence, in the fearsome, scorching day, behind them Armageddon coming in fire and smoke with the sound of a million Cossack horsemen charging across a hard, hard plain, stood Bob and Gordie.
Bob spoke. They could barely hear him. ‘Don’t often get all three,’ he said. ‘What’s this in aid of?’
THROUGH THE dark day and into the late afternoon, in the furnace wind, sometimes unable to breathe or speak or hear one another, they fought to save the house and the buildings.
When they had lost all the battles, when the red-hot embers were coming like massive tracer fire, when the fireballs were exploding in air, Bob took the big chainsaw and, with a murderous screaming of metal against metal, sliced the top off the corrugated-iron rainwater tank.
Gordie propped a ladder against the tank wall and they climbed up it, threw themselves into the warm water, felt the slimy bottom beneath their feet, pushed through the heaviness to the wall furthest from the flames.
Bob came last. First he handed the dog to Gordie, then he climbed the ladder, slipped through between rungs, stayed underwater for a time, came up, hair plastered flat. He looked like a boy again.
They stood in the tank, shoulders touching, water to their chins, nothing left to say. This was the end of vanity and ambition. This was what it had come to, the five of them, all Bob’s boys here to die with the man himself, some instinct in them, some humming wire had pulled them back to death’s booming and roaring waiting room to die together in a rusty saw-toothed tub.
‘What about that Stand in the Day?’ said Luke.
‘Bloody ripper,’ said Bob. ‘Need more tips like that.’
They did not look at one another, ashes fell on them, drifted down and stuck to their faces, lay on the water, coated the face of the old yellow dog Bob was holding to his chest.
And, in the last moment, the howling wind stopped, a windless pause as if it were drawing breath. Then it came around as if sucked away to another place, came around and they could feel the change on their faces. The fire stood in its tracks, advanced no further, chewing on itself, there was no sustenance left for it, no oxygen, everything burnt.
They said nothing for a long time. They could not believe that this terrible thing had passed, that they would live. In the silence, they heard the fire chopper coming, it came from nowhere and hung its trunk over them and dropped a small dam of water on the house.
‘You never get the air strike when you need it,’ said Bob.
They pulled the ladder into the tank. Luke climbed it, they pushed it out and he rode it to the ground. Mark went first, then Gordie.
Villani said to Bob, ‘You next.’
Bob looked at him, shook his head. ‘Yes, boss,’ he said.
Without saying anything, Villani set off. The dog hesitated, followed, looking back for Bob. Bob came, they walked side by side, wet clothes, tank water steaming from them.