Claire Zorn - The Sky So Heavy

I watched Lokey do about five runs down our steep front lawn, each time bailing at the last moment before he hit our house. Then he threw his board in the back of the car and gave me a wave, off to find bigger slopes. The car fish-tailed as he took off up the hill.

I bummed around for a bit, had four slices of bread with jam for breakfast, did some drawing and tried to ignore the worry that was sitting in my gut. Max didn’t come out of his room till after lunch. He pretended it was because he was really pissed off but I think he probably just fell asleep. We meandered through the afternoon, waiting, but not sure what for. It’s amazing how slowly time goes when you have no electricity. Several times I reached for the TV controller, forgetting we had no power. Kara had given Dad a plasma for his birthday. (She said she had bought him a plasma as if she used her own money.) It’s funny how without something as simple as electricity it was completely useless – just a gaping, blank stare of black. Without electricity our house was a box of useless bits of moulded plastic and wiring. I was tempted to listen to my iPod, but figured the power could be down for ages. I wanted to save the batteries.

I thought about Lucy.

By five it was dark and any heat in the house had leached out. I put on an extra jumper and two pairs of socks, found an old Dolphin torch in the garage and set it up on the dining table as a lamp. It turned out Kara’s scented candles were useful after all. I lit a few in the kitchen and lounge room and pretty soon the place smelt sickly sweet with vanilla. Max and I played cards and listened for the sound of a car in the driveway.

Around six-thirty I got us some dinner, leftovers that were in the fridge: chickpea curry, cold sausages, slices of cheese. At least the cold would stop it from going off.

‘This sucks,’ said Max as he picked up a sausage, dunked it in tomato sauce and bit the end.

‘I know.’

‘Where’s Dad, Fin?’ There was a waver in his voice.

I swallowed. ‘They’re probably staying at Kara’s mum’s.’

‘But you don’t know, do you?’

‘No, Max. I don’t know.’

‘What if he’s dead?’

‘He’s not dead, Max. Why would he be dead?’

‘Radiation poisoning.’

‘Too soon, takes a while for radiation to kill a person.’

Max’s eyes widened.

‘I’m kidding, Max. He won’t have radiation poisoning.’

‘But you said…’

‘Look, I know, but… Max, look at me.’

He turned his face to me. He has one of those faces that never really grows up. Big rosy cheeks and eyebrows that tilt up slightly in the centre, giving him an expression of permanent bemusement. At twelve he looked pretty much the same as he did when he was three and I reckon he won’t have changed much by the time he’s thirty.

‘Max,’ I said. ‘I need you to stay with me, man. Whatever happens. We can do it but we have to do it together.’

‘Do what?’ His lip quivered.

‘See this out. Can you do that for me, Maximum? Trust me. Okay?’

He nodded soberly. The torch threw a stark pool of white light onto the wall, like a spotlight. Max and I ate the rest of our dinner in silence.

When morning came the sky was like a shadow. It had snowed again, more this time, the same colour as the sky. There were cars missing from driveways, cars that hadn’t returned from the night before. That made me feel a bit better, it meant the roads must have been closed. Dad wasn’t the only one who hadn’t come home. I imagined him in a community hall somewhere drinking weak tea and eating Milk Arrowroot biscuits.

Max was quiet and didn’t ask about going outside. We spent most of the day playing cards or Trivial Pursuit. I told him to pretend we were camping. We had tomato and cheese sandwiches for lunch. We even ate Kara’s tahini and hummus. When evening came around again I lit some candles and put the torch on. We ate more sandwiches for dinner. (I wanted to use the perishable food first.) After dinner Max read comics and I worked on my drawings. I drew Starvos at the store, counting the money in the till with a cigarette behind his ear.

Days passed. Still, long days. Time bled into itself. Snow started falling during the day as well as at night. I didn’t see any cars drive past. We didn’t have any dry firewood because we’d hardly used the fire that winter, it had been too mild. Now the cold settled into the house, filling it out. We started to wear more layers of clothing and the cold was made worse because there was nothing much to do, nothing to keep us warm. The boredom and waiting hung over us and made us snap at each other. Most of the time we were quiet, though. There was nothing to say. We ate to punctuate the time. The living-room window with its view of the street became our television. Occasionally a neighbour would walk past. I saw Mr and Mrs White from two doors up walking their labradors.

My mind whirred with useless imagined scenarios: Dad decomposing on the side of the highway having crashed his car; Lokey slowly dying of radiation poisoning; Lucy starving to death because I didn’t encourage her to buy more food; My mother… who knew what had happened to her. I couldn’t even form a picture of her to worry about. How were we supposed to know if ‘things changed’ and she was coming for us? How long were we supposed to wait? And how was she planning on getting here with the roads iced over? Was she going to borrow an army truck? Fly a chopper? The only way I could quieten the endless worry was to draw. I drew Dad in the car. I drew my mother in a chopper. I drew Lucy.

One afternoon, about four days in, Mrs White came to our front door. It was pathetically exciting to have a visitor. Max was asleep on the couch and I half wanted to wake him up so he wouldn’t miss out. When I opened the door Mrs White’s dogs whined and strained on their leashes, pawing my legs and nosing my feet.

‘Oh boys! Stop it! Heel!’ she said in a voice that was less than authoritative. They panted and looked up at me with big lolling grins.

‘Hello Fin. Is your dad here?’ Mrs White asked, craning to look past me into the house. She had a kind of plump homeliness about her that made me think of freshly baked Anzac biscuits. You could practically smell the golden syrup.

‘No. He’s not.’

‘No?! Where is he?’

‘Um, I don’t really know. I haven’t seen him since Wednesday.’ I almost choked up when I said that.

‘Wednesday! My goodness! You should have come around, Fin. I had no idea. I thought I saw him come home from work on Wednesday night?’

‘Yeah, he and, um, Kara went out again that night. They didn’t come back, probably because of the roads. I hoped they would be back by now but I guess it’s just got colder – more icy.’

‘Oh my goodness, Fin. You poor love. You know he’s probably perfectly safe, they’ve got no way of clearing the roads, I suppose. It’s not like we’re used to dealing with snow down here!’ She laughed but her eyes darted around nervously. ‘I was just calling in to see if you’d had any luck with the internet, if you’d managed to get any news. It’s like we’ve fallen into a black hole.’ She laughed again and shook her head. One of the dogs yawned and put its head on her foot. ‘It’s just awful, isn’t it? But I suppose they’ll sort it out soon enough, get the electricity back up. I just want to know how long this cold’s going to stick around. You know we’ve got our daughter’s wedding next month, we thought it’d be a lovely spring wedding.’ She motioned out to the street. ‘But instead we’ve got the next ice age!’

‘Yeah, sorry, no luck with the net.’

‘Oh dear. Have you got enough food, love? We’re always well stocked up, you let me know if you need anything.’