Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

‘When your olds turned up after they’d disappeared, I showed them around the place a bit. Nice bloke, your old man was, terrified about your mummy being pregnant. That woulda bin you, I suppose?’

Frank got up. His legs were heavy. He stood at the fridge a moment letting his breath settle. He wanted to ask questions but he was scared his voice would wobble with the beat of his heart. He brought another beer for them both and when he sat down again Linus continued, ‘Plenty of people I knew had gone off to war, plenty. Plenty didn’t come back. Fuckin’ I bin in a war, I done that, I seen some bad things, we all did.’ Linus shrugged. ‘That’s war tho’, mate. Isn’it?’

Frank nodded.

‘Maybe it’s somethin’ to do with you Europeans, you haven’t seen much colour before an’ so when you seen the blood, it’s a shock? I dunno. But.’ Linus’s words hung in the air. Strange to be thought of as European.

‘Either way. One day, telegram man arrived, found no one in. No one in the next day or the next. Car in front of the house. Cold box cleaned out, shoes under the bed. There was a bunch of clothes on the beach and no more Mr and Mrs.’

‘They died in a car accident out at the turn-off. A road train.’

Linus looked at Frank, his eyes bright in the dark. ‘Nah, mate. Nah, they didn’t. You should talk to your old man about that. He’d know the story.’

‘He’s dead,’ said Frank without thinking. Dead was easier. A closed case.

Linus looked at him. ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that.’ A mosquito landed under Linus’s eye and he pressed his finger to it, rolled it against his cheekbone.

‘What did you talk about with my grandmother?’

‘Tole her about me. She wanted to know. We talked about the old people. Important to do that. You gotta know what you can ’bout ’em. See my dad’s mum was sent to the hospital islands. They reckoned she was a sick one, so what they did is they sent her there to die. ’Parently she might have been pregnant. Never come back any more.’ His voice changed, it sounded old. ‘Dad ’members she was taken off in chains, long string of black fellas all with bracelets round their necks. For their own good, y’understand. I don’t know if you know much about it over there. Anyways. You went, you didn’t come back any more.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Wasn’t you.’ Linus laughed. ‘Was it? ’N’way, my mum she was a white lady — that’s how come I wasn’t taken away. Got me reading and writing early on too. Helps a black fella, that.’ Frank nodded.

‘I member you too, you know. I remember the funeral.’

Frank moved his chair a little forward, then back again. ‘Funeral?’

‘Your mother’s. Sat up on those rocks and watched it.’ He pointed towards where the sea was, like they could both see it.

‘That’s weird, Linus. That makes me feel weird.’

‘It probably would.’

Frank squeezed his beer bottle.

‘Sad business,’ Linus carried on. ‘There’s a sad business in men being left alone.’ He inhaled to say more, but held it. A butcher-bird yodelled and Linus let the breath out. ‘Your mum seemed a lot like your grandmummy.’

‘My grandmother was my father’s mother. They weren’t blood relations.’

‘But they were both married to the same blood.’

‘Suppose. You reckon that makes a difference?’

Linus didn’t answer for a long time. The air had changed a little, it was thinner or cooler or something. More drink.

Linus spoke, with a voice from a long time ago, and the words sounded rehearsed, like he’d heard them or said them over and over way back. ‘Some fellas, they make the women lonely. Maybe it doesn’t apply to you, mate, but maybe that’s why you’re here all on your tod?’

It would be nice if Linus were gone, it occurred to Frank. The soles of his feet felt hot and uncomfortable on the wood of the veranda, as though he’d walked a long way barefoot. ‘How old were you when my grandparents came here?’

‘Old enough.’

There was a long pause, one which didn’t seem to have any effect on Linus, who stood and smoked and squinted as if the sun were still in the sky.

‘So what am I supposed to do with that?’ Frank asked finally.

‘Do?’ Linus turned round to look at him like he’d forgotten he was there. ‘I dunno, mate, you do what you want. Like I said, I’m no spiritualist. I’m just an’ old bloke, an I thought you might like a chew of advice. Give this place a bit of acknowledgement, mate. Just a bit of respect or understanding or something — that’s all you need. If you’re waking up at night with the ground coming alive and trying to eat you or whatever.’

Frank felt the breath coming in cold, going out hot. Felt like he’d been hit with a thick stick.

‘This place has been through a lot since I’ve been alive, an’ it went through a lot before I was alive an’ it’ll go through a lot after I am dead and you are dead and your kids are dead. So understand that and it won’t get at you so much.’ He crushed out his cigarette under his boot, bent down, picked it up and put it in his shirt pocket. ‘An’ careful of them bushfires too, son, they’ll get right up your arse.’ He chuckled and sashayed over to his truck. ‘Anyway, haroo, ta for the beer. I might see you at the dead girl’s thing,’ he said before turning on the engine. A cassette belted out ‘Addicted to Love’ at full volume and Linus’s tail-lights showed the dust settling in the night air.

Frank stayed and watched until there was nothing left to see.

‘Just about the size of a good cantaloupe,’ said Cray, holding his hands so they made a boxy shape.

Leon nodded. ‘Sounds like a good-sized kid.’

‘Yep.’

‘Good with the wife?’

‘Better than good, mate. Tears at your guts to come back here, though.’

As they walked into the village people looked at them, but no one ran. Maybe they were scared to run, could be they didn’t know if they should be scared or not. Leon didn’t know if they should be scared or not. His palms sweated on the gun. A few children followed the section at a distance, others disappeared inside their houses and came out with members of their families.

‘We need you all to leave,’ Pete said loudly. ‘We need to clear the village, please.’ He said it in French and in Vietnamese, reading from a piece of laminated cardboard, sounding each time like a bloke who lived on a sheep farm in Victoria. Nobody moved. Pete read the French phrase again. ‘Vamoose,’ he said. ‘Scram.’

He fired a few times into the air. Leon saw the face of a young man open in shock, his eyes showed white round their black centres. People started to run, then, to grab at each other and flee towards the cover of the forest.

‘That’s the way,’ said Pete quietly.

Clive fell over, just fell over, and everyone stood a moment and looked at him, wondering what the bugger was doing tripping up when they were all trying to look serious. Then the fire started and Leon felt the blood inside him thump as he dropped behind an incinerator and made his gun ready. He heard Pete shouting into his radio for medics, ‘Three-one, three-one, contact. Do you acknowledge, over. Dustoff needed urgently, repeat, dustoff for one cas, looking bad, not moving.’

He heard Daniel shout ‘They’re in the trees!’ and aimed round the side of the incinerator bin and saw a group of blokes running like buggery towards the trees. He fired and a few bodies in black fell at the edge of the village; others, not in black, died with their arms flung out as they swam the air. His tracers drew a line across the forest and black birds rose from the trees as smoke. He’d thought that when he finished firing there would be nothing, only the squall sound of birds, but when he stopped the fire really began. Hidden by the trees, the noise started up thick and it was clear there was more than one machine gunner in there. He took more ammunition, shook to reload, shook the gun because it had jammed, shook it more, then thought everyone would kill him. The bastard thing was jammed like it’d never known a thing about shooting. He leant behind an outbuilding and shook it, twisted it, rattled it, prayed for it to open up, give forth fire. Tears on his face, he felt the teeth of a terrible thing on the back of his neck, breathing through its nose on him, in, out, hot, pant. The single rounds of the rifles barely made it through the sound of the automatics firing from the trees. He gave it a hard smash on the ground and the thing went off between his legs, digging a burrow in the dirt next to his ankle. He brought a hand up to his eyes and gave himself a couple of seconds to breathe, before turning and firing that force field up into the trees again. Cray looked at him and closed his eyes. The air was shredded.