For another half-hour, he pushed the machine. The dust he raised mingled with petrol fumes and stuck to his skin, a headache began. It was over thirty, wind gone, nothing stirring, a hot, dead world smelling of smoke. On the long east-west run, itching, dust in his eyes, sticking to his face, he could look at the blue-grey mountain, the treeless dark of the upper slope. It appeared close but it was an hour away, the country was deeply folded.
At noon, he throttled back, the motor stuttered, didn’t want to die. It was minutes before he could hear the silence. He walked to the tank, disturbing a pair of crested pigeons. They strutted off, offended. He washed his hands, splashed his face. When he opened his eyes, the world dimmed. You didn’t notice this in the city, you needed to be away from the smog for clouds to change the colour of the land, of your flesh.
‘Missed a bit down there,’ said Bob, pointing.
‘I didn’t actually drive up here to cut your grass,’ he said. ‘The phone rings out. What happened to the answering machine?’
‘Buggered,’ said Bob.
‘Well, get another one.’ He drank from the tap. The rainwater tasted ancient, of zinc nails held in the mouth.
Villani cleaned the mower, sprayed it with WD-40, pushed it into the garage. He went inside, washed his face and hands in the kitchen sink, made chicken sandwiches with mayonnaise and iceberg lettuce.
They ate in the kitchen, the dog under the table.
‘Bread’s tough,’ said Bob.
‘It’s expensive bread, handmade.’
‘They done you, mate.’
‘Mark been here?’
‘The doctor doesn’t need his old man.’ ‘Maybe he phones and no one answers.’
‘He doesn’t phone.’
‘Yeah? The phone doesn’t work. I’ll talk to him. The compost heap’s dead. No tomatoes in either.’
His father chewing, eyes on the ceiling. ‘Not growing anything, you don’t need compost.’
‘Not over yet, Dad. You’re still eating, I presume?’
Bob Villani said, ‘Gordie’s growing vegies for a fucking army, what’s the point me growing tomatoes?’
‘Fair enough. How’s he going?’
‘Gordie’s Gordie. Be here five minutes after Luke shows up.’
‘Doesn’t do that for me.’
‘Scared of you.’
‘Bullshit.’
Bob said nothing, took his plate to the sink.
‘Anyway he’s a boofhead,’ said Villani. ‘Always been one. Like his mother. Why you limping?’
‘Fell.’
‘How?’
‘No particular way.’
‘What, your hip?’
Bob turned. ‘You’re not the doctor, boy,’ he said, ‘you’re the fucking copper.’
Bob wasn’t going to look away. Villani put up his hands, they went outside.
‘Ibises,’ said Bob. ‘Never seen so many ibises. That’s a very bad sign.’
‘What happens when the fire gets here?’
Bob turned his head, the long, appraising, pitying look. ‘Fire’s not coming,’ he said. ‘Fire’s going where the wind says.’
‘Just got lucky the last time.’
‘That’s what I am. Mr Lucky.’
‘I hope so,’ Villani said. ‘I very much hope so. Let’s have a look at the trees.’
‘You go,’ said Bob. ‘I’ll wait for Lukie. Take the dog.’
Villani looked at the dog. It was studying the ground like an anteater waiting for food to appear.
‘Walk?’ he said.
The dog looked at him, alert, cheered, a sentry relieved at last. They walked across the bottom paddock, it had provided no horse feed this season, went through the gate to the big crescent of dam, stood on the edge. The dog wandered down the dry fissured side to an unhealthy yellow-green puddle, stepped in and lapped. The hole was carved before they began planting, a man came with a bulldozer on a truck, shifted tonnes of earth, rerouted a winter creek. For years, it was never empty, often it overflowed, its lip had to be raised.
Below them a forest, wide and deep and dark, big trees, more than thirty years old. Planted by hand, every last one, thousands of trees-alpine ash, mountain swamp gum, red stringybark, peppermints, mountain gum, spotted gum, snow gum, southern mahogany, sugar gum, silvertop ash. And the oaks, about four thousand, grown from acorns collected in two autumns from every russet Avenue of Honour Bob Villani drove down, from every botanical garden he passed. He stored the shiny amber capsules in brown-paper bags in their own fridge, place of origin and date, sometimes a species, written in pencil in his squat soldier’s report-writing hand.
In the spring, Villani helped him fence off a big rectangle behind the stables, rabbit-proof fence. They put the acorns in plastic pots, in a mixture of river sand and soil, a weekend just to do that. Villani was thirteen that year, already alone all week with Mark, making their breakfast and tea, sandwiches for school, washing clothes, ironing. He remembered the delight of the morning he saw tiny green oak tips had broken the soil, dozens and dozens, as if they had received some signal. He couldn’t wait for Bob to get home to show him.
‘What’s wrong with the others?’ said Bob. ‘Water them?’
The others emerged in the next weeks. All that summer, he watered the seedlings by hand, half a mug each from a bucket filled from the tanks.
On a Saturday morning in late summer they walked down to the bottom gate and across the road that went nowhere, stood at the gate opposite. Bob waved a hand. ‘Bought it,’ he said. ‘Hundred and ten acres.’
Villani looked at the overgrazed, barren, pitted sheep paddocks. ‘Why?’ he said.
‘A forest,’ Bob said. ‘Going to have our own forest.’
‘Right,’ said Villani. ‘A forest.’
That winter they dug the first holes, at least a thousand, left paths, clearings, Bob appeared to have a master plan in his head, never disclosed. They dug in icy winds and freezing rain, numb black hands, your cold skin tore, you only found out you had bled when you washed off the dirt. Towards spring that year and the next two, Saturdays and Sundays, eight hours a day, they created the forest. They planted the oak seedlings and the bought eucalypt seedlings through squares of old carpet underfelt, protected them with house-wrap cut from fifty-metre rolls, Bob got these things somewhere, perhaps fallen off the back of some other driver’s truck, like the plastic pots.
In the cold spring when it was done, when Bob said it was done, Villani was heading for sixteen, marginally shorter than his father.
Now he looked at what had once been a burrowed, bumpy landscape covered with little silver tents, then with hair-transplant plugs, and said to himself, ‘Looking good.’ The sight filled him with pleasure, with joy even.
He went around the dam, the dog came up, muddy-pawed, and they entered the shade by the path once wide as a street, now narrowed to a track. From the time the trees were head-high, every time he walked the forest he heard new bird calls, saw new groundcovers spreading, new plants sprung up, new droppings of different sizes and shapes, new burrowings, scrapings, scratchings, new holes, fallen feathers, drab ones and feathers that flashed sapphire, scarlet, blue, emerald, and soon there were tiny bones and spike-toothed skulls, signs of life and death and struggle among the arboreal mammals.
‘Lots of little buggers in there now,’ said Bob one day. ‘Echidnas, bandis, God knows where they come from.’
The walk took almost an hour. When they got back to the house, Villani said, ‘We should’ve done something about the understorey a long time ago. Well, got to go. Long day tomorrow.’
Bob raised a hand. ‘He’ll be here in a minute, hang on.’
‘See Luke some other time.’
‘Give him a chance. Don’t often get two of you here.’ He rose. ‘Come. Got two new horses.’
They walked along the horse paddock fence. The ten-year-old Cromwell had sensed they were coming, stood near the trough with his rough head over the wire.
‘Having a little rest, Crommie,’ said Bob. He fed the horse something, stroked his nose.