Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

Then I saw it.

The sky.

Fat cones of dense smoke spiraled into thin trails. Layers of hazy orange overlapping gray fingers stretching out from the horizon.

Then I felt it. The heat. I winced. The land was on fire!

A bushfire!

A big one!

Standing on top of the hill, I saw another in a quick series of searing images that I knew at once would never leave my mind. I saw the fire split. One half raced toward my parents’ house, the other to the prison.

I don’t know what possessed me as I watched that fire encircle my town- but I became convinced that it was within my power to rescue at least part of my family. I knew that I probably couldn’t help Terry, and that he die violently and unpleasantly in the prison my father helped build just so cleanly rounded off the issue, my choice was clear. I would go and try to save my mother, even though she had just tried to kill me, and my father, even though he had not.

The bushfire season had started early that year. Soaring temperatures and strong winds saw to it that small fires had sprung up along the periphery of northwestern New South Wales throughout the summer. It takes only one sudden gust of searing wind to fan the isolated fires, pushing them rapidly into raging uncontrollable infernos. That’s how it always happens. The Fire had some shifty strategies up its flaming sleeve: It threw embers into the air. The embers were then couriered by winds to a destination a few miles ahead, with the intention of starting fresh fires, so by the time the main Fire caught up, its child was already raging and taking lives. The Fire was no dummy. It evolved like crazy.

Smoke crept over the town in an opaque cloud. I ran toward my parents’ house, passing fallen trees, poles, and power lines. Flames crept along both sides of the road. Smoke licked my face. Visibility was zero. I didn’t slow down.

The fallen trees made the road impassable. I took a path through the bush. I couldn’t see the sky; a thick curtain of smoke had been drawn over it. All around me was a sound, a crackle, like someone was jumping on old newspapers. Burning debris blew across the tops of trees. It was impossible to know which way to go. I went on anyway until I heard a voice call out, “Stop!”

I stopped. Where was the voice coming from? It was hard to tell if it was from far away or inside my own head.

“Go left,” the voice said. “Left!”

Normally, demanding voices who don’t introduce themselves would have had me go the other way, but I felt this voice had my best interests at heart. Terry was dead, I just knew it, and the voice was his, his last words to me on his way to the other world.

I went left, and as I did, I saw the right-hand path consumed by flames.

Around the next bend I came across a group of men shooting water into the trees. They held swollen wild pythons that jutted from the bellies of two firetrucks and wore wet rags over their mouths. I wanted one. Then I thought: There’s almost no situation you can get yourself into when you don’t want what the other guy has.

“Martin!” a voice called.

“Don’t go that way!” another shouted.

“My mum and dad are in there!” I shouted back, and as I ran on, I thought I heard someone call out, “Say hello for me!”

I saw the fire jumping a dry creek bed. I passed the flaming carcass of a sheep. I had to slow down. The smoke had thickened to a gray wall; it was suddenly impossible to tell where the flames were. My lungs seared. I knew if I didn’t get a whiff of air soon, this was the end. I gagged and vomited smoke. There were carrots in it.

When I reached my street, a jagged wall of flame blocked the entrance. Through it I could make out a group of people standing on the other side. The wall of fire stood like fortress gates. I squinted against the intense glare as yellow-black smoke billowed over the people.

“Have you seen my parents?” I shouted.

“Who are you?”

“Martin Dean!”

“Marty!” I thought I heard my mother’s voice. It was hard to tell. The fire swallowed words. Then the air grew very still.

“The wind!” someone screamed. They froze. They were all waiting to see which direction the fire would run next. A flame whirling up behind them, standing tall, was ready to pounce. I felt like a man about to be guillotined hoping that his head could be stuck back on later. A hot breeze touched my face.

Before I could scream, the flames leapt on top of me. In a split second my head was on fire. And then, just as quickly, the wind changed direction and the flames leapt away toward the group of people. This time it kept going.

Though the fire was gone, my eyes and my lungs were filled with smoke and my hair was in flames. I wailed at the pain of it. I tore the clothes off my body, threw myself on the ground, and rubbed my head in the dirt. It took a few seconds to extinguish myself, and by then the fire had devoured an ear and scorched my lips. Through puffed-up eyelids I could see the flaming hurricane sweep over the group of people, my parents included, and devour them. Naked and burned, I dragged myself to my knees and screamed in a helpless, frenzied rage.

Most of the prisoners had made it out, except those in solitary confinement. They were blocked in on the lower level of the prison, and there wasn’t time to save them.

As I suspected, Terry was gone.

While small fires still burned away from the town, the media wasted no time in making a big deal of Terry Dean’s perishing in the prison. He was nothing but a pile of ashes. After the police photographers had taken photos of the cell, I went in. The bones were there too. But all the good stuff was in the ash. With a broom, a pan, and a small cardboard box, I scooped up my brother. It wasn’t easy. Some of Terry’s ashes mingled with the ashes of the wooden bunk beds. Poor Terry. You couldn’t distinguish him from a bed. That’s just sad.

I left the bones. Let the state bury them. I took the rest. Like I said, all the good stuff was in the ash.

Outside the prison, black cinders whirled crazily in the air, climbed into the sky, and when the wind died down settled on the ground and on the cars and on the journalists. Red-hot sparks lay on the hot bitumen. I looked at the smoking black acres of burned grassland and the parched hills. Everywhere was smoldering ashes. Every house was filthy with ash and burned debris. Every smell was acrid. Every color eerie.

Mother dead. Father dead. Brother dead. Harry dead. Caroline gone. Lionel gone. Town gone. Oath gone too; the sacred bond finally broken.

Free.

A man was heard to be barbecuing a steak on the embers of his own home. Reporters were all crowded around him. They thought it was hilarious. I suppose it was.

A brief thunderstorm came. A group of survivors standing in the remains of town were talking about the origin of the fire. What had started it this time? I had just assumed it was arsonists. It’s nearly always arsonists. What is it with these fucking arsonists? I supposed they are less likely to be malignant smudges of evil than just dumb and bored: a deadly combination. And whatever happens in their upbringing, they emerge from adolescence with no sense of empathy whatsoever. These dumb, bored, unempathetic people are all around us. We can’t trust anyone to behave himself. We always have to be on the lookout. Here’s the case-winning example: it doesn’t happen every day, but every now and again, people shit in public swimming pools. That just says it all to me.

But no, the survivors were saying, this time it wasn’t arsonists.

It was the observatory.

My blood turned cold.

I moved closer. This is what I heard:

Over the years, the novelty of the observatory had worn off; the whole thing had gone to seed, left to ruin up there on the hill, abandoned to nature. The roof of the observatory lifted on a hinge. Someone had left it open. The lens had concentrated the summer sun’s rays into a hot beam of light and ignited the structure, the wind came in to do her bit, and we ended with this current catastrophe.