Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

‘I wouldn’t worry, mate,’ said Leon. ‘You’re enough woman for the both of us.’

Cray put down his drink and clutched at imaginary breasts on his chest. He made to push them up and let his tongue loll out of his mouth, reaching towards his imaginary lady nipples. Leon took a photograph. They laughed and left it alone.

In the morning the swimming pool was a solid block of blue like it had a lid to it. Leon watched his feet change colour as they went in. Things looked dead under pool water. He tried to imagine his parents sitting out on a beach somewhere, enjoying the sea spray, but he couldn’t. In his imagination they were like cardboard cut-outs, smiles drawn on. He’d have to get to them when he got back, that was clear. He shouldn’t have let her go alone, but truthfully he couldn’t quite bear the thought of the state of his mother. It had been like something was confirmed for her and she gave up in those few strange months; decided it was best to go and live with a man who stalked her in his sleep. She hadn’t mentioned anything in her postcards about Leon going off to Vietnam, but he could see it now, the wobble-eyed look he’d get, the tears and the fights. Like Rod’s mum, who couldn’t bear to acknowledge he still existed in case he stopped. He imagined what her face would look like if she had watched him kill that boy. If she had seen him slapped on the back and known that he was proud of it, and that something at the time had felt right about it.

No one was up. Cray had caught the dawn plane back home to see the bub and lovely Lena, who maybe fitted back into her flower-print dress by now. Something tickled the back of his neck and he slapped it hard, but his palm came away clean.

A woman dressed in white wheeled a trolley that rattled with glasses and knives and forks. The smell of breakfast from the kitchens was thick and rich and foreign. A strange bird flew overhead, a cross between a magpie and a parrot, with long red legs that trailed behind it and a thick orange beak. It should have been in the jungle. He missed the covering of the jungle canopy and the heavy understanding of his gun.

Later on, when people were lolling around thinking about their first drink of the day, Leon took himself off to explore. He walked along the beach where men slept in the sun or smoked, and he wet his feet in the sea, which was shallow and hot. He smoked a cigarette, something he had started to do more and more, whenever his hands felt useless, whenever they remembered the hard weight of his gun. It gave you time as well; if someone asked you a question, you could draw out the answer by lighting up or inhaling deeply and letting the smoke float out of you slowly. The bars on the seafront were open, and the roadside stalls were filling up with people getting bowlfuls of noodles and soup, and roasted meat. Some guy back at the compound had insisted he’d eaten the tail off a dog at one of these places, but the smell was good and it made Leon’s mouth water. The money he’d been given felt fat in his pocket, but he didn’t want to spend it on food or drink. He could drink until beer came out of the pores on his face, but he fancied having something he could hold in his hand and consider.

He could go to bed with one of those girls with the black hair all the way down to her tailbone, the tiny-waisted women who seemed to find all the dirty, tired men endlessly funny, and who seemed to want nothing more than to look you right in the face and listen, smiling and nodding, and then take you away somewhere where no one else could see. But Leon imagined the wide-awake night while she slept next to him. The too light impression she would leave in the bed. So he found himself in a stall that sold and engraved silver lighters, the ones you flicked open with a jerk of your hand. On the side of the stall were examples of what you could have: Australian flags, American flags, rude little stick figures fucking, slogans that read ‘Kill Them All, Let God Sort Them Out’, ‘36 Days Without a Solid Shat’, and then lighters that were just tallies with the name of provinces.

The shopkeeper smiled widely at Leon. ‘Zippo, Zippo!’ he said and Leon nodded, smiled back. ‘We can draw any kind sexy lady for you, we can do swearing, we can do skull and cross bones, any-bloody-thing for you!’

‘Thank you,’ said Leon and felt that actually he did want one. But he couldn’t think of what inscription he’d have, so he pointed to one from the wall that had writing all the way round it, ‘After the Earthquake, a Fire’, and paid for it and put it in his pocket, then went into a bar to get a drink.

Frank was feeling for eggs in the nest Mary had made, cunningly hidden in a large old flowerpot under the house, when he saw Bob’s car approaching. He had time to wash his hands and lift two beers from the fridge, relieved to see him after their last conversation, before he’d pulled up and unfolded out of his car. He drew breath to greet Bob, but stalled on the exhale when he saw his face. There was a brown-paper bruise under his eye and his nose was dark in the nostrils with old blood.

‘You right?’ Bob shook his head a little, stepped up and took the beer from Frank. Neither spoke as they opened their bottles. Bob drank deeply, breathing out through his open mouth afterwards. The hand holding the bottle shook and Bob lowered the arm to his side. A plume of smoke appeared on the horizon from the sugar factory and dispersed greyly into the sky.

‘They found Ian’s girl.’

‘She’s all right?’

‘Nup.’

He drank again.

‘Oh.’

A currawong flew blackly across the clearing. The sound of sheets snapping in the wind.

‘Jawbone. Up at Redcliff.’

‘Fuck’s sake.’ Frank pressed his fingers into his hairline. ‘Fuck’s sake.’

Bob nodded. ‘Just a jawbone. The teeth in there as well. They counted her fillings.’

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Bob pointed to his eye. ‘It’s Vick. If you were wondering. She went a cock-a-hoop.’ He touched his face, which peeled open in a smile and a forced laugh that looked dry and painful.

‘She okay?’

‘Nah. But that’s just the fuckin’ way sometimes. Sometimes people aren’t all right and that’s just how it is.’ Bob squinted into the sun, avoiding his eyes.

A long silence.

The Mackelly girl. Her jawbone.

‘Any ideas?’

‘Dud hitchhiker most likely. Probably just passing through. Usual.’

Frank let his head nod, squinted up at the sun with Bob. There was more silence, then more beer. They drank and when their bottles were empty they got more, and when it was all gone they just sat and waited for the end of the day.

He’d dreamt he was back in Canberra. It was dull. In the dream he woke up, got dressed, ate breakfast and left the flat for work. He walked along the street and it was hot. He thought about the things he had to do when he got in to work. He looked both ways before crossing the road. Then a bird singing shrilly in the night woke him, so that he jolted out of deep sleep and felt the air shooting hotly out of his nose.

The bird queried once more and was quiet.

Eucalyptus blanketed the room. He had the feeling that the trees were peering in through the windows, that they had uprooted and crept over to take a peek. The leaves of the banana tree on the roof were a gentle tap tap tap let me in .

The wind in the cane sounded as if grasses and roots were growing, cradling the shack like a bird’s nest, hugging the soft old wood of the place, creaking and splintering the walls. He thought about the feel of loose dirt on his shoulder blades, of the lick of breezes that could reach right up under the backs of his ears. He stretched out his feet and thought he could feel them take root, thought he could feel his toenails’ growth speed up; the hair on his head tangling and moving as it grew, lifting tiny bits of scalp and taking them with it.