After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

by Unknown

  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.

  18

  ‘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.

  When it finally fell quiet they heard the beats of the dustoff helicopter, but Clive was dead. The medics carried him on a stretcher, his face covered over. ‘Would’ve been dead straight off,’ one of them said, ‘went through the head pretty bad.’

  No one else had anything the matter with them and as the helicopter took off, spraying dirt beneath it, they were left with a black patch of ground that Clive had bled into. Pete shucked fresh dirt over it, a look of disgust on his face, his bottom lip poked out like a sulky child and he turned away from the rest of them with his hands on his hips. ‘And then there were five,’ he said and gave a little snort.

  The dead Cong they lined up neatly and searched, patting down the warm bodies, dipping into pockets and down sleeves. Leon gave the machine gun to Rod for the while, his hands raw from gripping it, he couldn’t look at the bastard thing.

  ‘Oi, oi, someone’s over there,’ Daniel called, pointing his gun towards a dark-stained wooden house.

  There was a face in the window, a boy, his mouth a black O. They had their guns ready and aimed at the door and Pete called, ‘C’mon out.’ There was no noise from inside, so he shouted ‘Out!’ his voice busting from him hoarse and angry. The front door opened slowly and an old man stepped out, a woman and a young boy right behind him. The woman held a baby. Cray looked at the floor.

  ‘Why haven’t you gone already?’ asked Pete, not to the family particularly. He sounded tired. ‘Better have a bit of a look in there, I reckon.’

  Leon took Clive’s rifle and went inside with Cray. He felt like a dry river, like all the commotion was gone and nothing could happen now. He wasn’t ready for it, he didn’t want it. Inside it was dark; there was a smell of incense and dust and cooking, a strange smell of life, nutty and sharp. The wooden roof creaked. Cray nodded at a trapdoor in the floor of the kitchen.

  Down through the trapdoor was stone silent, like all noise had been sucked out with a straw. Three chairs were turned over and a bag of rice was spilled across the table. There was a bad smell, a meal left to rot. Bowls were laid out on the table with spoons, they must’ve been getting ready to eat: so close to having a sit-down dinner, to sharing a normal talk, having a drink, maybe, and laughing. Eating out of a bowl, not out of a packet or your hands.

  The silence was split by a high whine and Leon heard himself clench. There was a low door he’d assumed was a cupboard, the only place to hide in the cellar. It was the kind of noise kids made, playing hide and seek, excited and needing a pee, trying to hold in the urge to shout, ‘Here I am! You fuckin’ didn’t see me but here I am!’ Cray moved towards the door, stepping gently like a ballet dancer. From the look on his face the smell was worse the closer he moved to the door.

  Leon’s lips felt like fish scales. ‘He’ll be armed,’ he whispered and Cray nodded. An inward count of three, and Leon trained on the door, then Cray raised his boot and kicked it open, firing into the space. A body twitched with the impact of bullets, a gun in his hand fell to the floor unfired, and Cray put his wrist up to his face and yelled. Leon thought for a terrible moment that he’d been shot in the face, but he carried on yelling and the smell hit him too.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ shouted Cray. ‘Fucking fucking crappy hell!’ He spat and turned away from the open door, his eyes streaming. The dead man had lost his foot and the flesh off his leg, but the bone remained. His torso teemed with small things that ate at him.

  ‘What is it?’ came a yell from above ground.

  ‘It’s all right – one dead Cong,’ Cray called back up.

  ‘Close the door,’ said Leon quietly, but it stayed open.

  ‘We should check in there,’ Cray said, breathing into his elbow.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Leon, because Cray had a son at home. Cray stepped aside uncomplaining as he pushed the door with the tips of his fingers. Maggots made the man’s chest move up and down. It’s just meat, it’s the same as rotten road kill, nothing unnatural about it, he thought and tried to keep his eyes above the level of the ma
n’s heaving chest. It was a wonder he’d been alive, still been able to hold a gun, even if he couldn’t fire it. A chain held him by his good ankle to an eyelet in the wall. The room was bare, a small table held a cup of water and propped against it a photograph of a woman and a child. The heads had been ripped off them, their identity kept a secret, but still they stood on the man’s table, like any bedside table in the world, a glass of water and a picture of your wife and child. All that was missing was a bedside lamp and a dog-eared novel. Empty boxes dotted the floor, a pair of pyjamas hung on the back of the door. That was it. He turned to leave, but even headless, he felt the horror of the man’s family as they looked down on him, maggoty and dead. He picked up the photograph and slid it into his pocket. ‘Clear,’ he said as he closed the door.

  Outside a few men smoked while the family huddled softly nearby, looking uncertain, the old man muttering low to the child, the woman holding the back of her baby’s head.

  ‘The guy was chained to the wall,’ he told Cray. ‘Must have done something.’

  ‘Old matey down there would have been too hurt to go with them. They get chained so they have to fight to the death.’

  He looked at the family. The man’s knuckles gripped white on the boy’s shoulders.

  ‘You need to leave,’ said Pete, turning to face the man. He pointed at the jungle with his gun. ‘Go on. Get.’ The man said something back, something angry, but the boy looked up at him, the face of a soft moon, and held on to the man’s finger tightly. The man shook his head and the woman made to go back into the house.

  ‘Nup,’ said Pete, pointing to the forest. ‘Go-On-Get-Going. Fuck off out of it!’ The woman made a pleading gesture. Pete shook his head. She waved her arm, pointing at the baby, and Pete shouted, ‘Get Away!’

  Leon pointed his gun at the woman. She looked stunned and the old man gently held her shoulder and turned them towards the jungle. He muttered something to her and she relented. The old man looked at him and he felt a jab in his guts like he’d swallowed a pen. I would never have shot, he thought, I would not ever have shot, it was just to move you along, but the cold maw of the thing told him he was not so sure.

  19

  A southerly blew at the marina and brought with it the sweet smell of tarry old fish. A few blokes had long sleeves on, and Bob had a scarf that he wound round his head so that it covered his nose and lips. ‘Can’t take the smell of that fuckin’ wind,’ he said with his palms on his temples.

  ‘Pretty changeable up here, eh?’ said Frank, wishing he’d brought something warm. The sun-white hairs on his arms stood up like cactus spines and he felt girly rubbing them down.

  ‘Yeah – we catch all the dud weather as it goes past.’

  Frank nodded as if this were well-known scientific fact.

  ‘You hear about Pokey?’ Bob looked at him with one eye, protecting the other from the wind with his hand.

  ‘Nup.’ Frank pulled on his gloves.

  ‘Some joker got him last night. Hurt him pretty bad if you want to know the truth. He ain’t talking, though.’ An engine started up, guttering and loud, and they had to shout over it.

  ‘Christ. He’s all right?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s around – probably shouldn’t be, but what you gonna do?’

  ‘Do we know who did it?’

  ‘Nup. He’s giving out that he’s gonna find who did it himself. Find ’em with a hook.’ Bob picked up his bag from the floor and pulled the scarf from his mouth. ‘You ask me though, mate, he’s just a scared old man. I wouldn’t mind finding the culprit meself with a shovel on my side.’

  Stuart passed by with an armful of thick orange rope. ‘Bastard of a thing, eh?’ he shouted, straining like he was carrying bricks not rope. Bob nodded, put his scarf back up and headed down the gangway. Stuart caught Frank’s eye and came close to him. ‘Be those black fellas again, I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said, low and soft. There was a smile in his voice and he gave Frank a wink as he walked away.

  At morning tea, Pokey came out of the foreman’s hut. The left side of his face was the deep swollen dark of black wine gums. Stripes of red showed the imprint of a fist on his cheekbone. His left eye was closed, but you could make out the blood-red line that was his eyeball. He walked with a limp, his good eye searching out the faces of his workers, daring anyone to say anything. Most people looked up and then got on with what they were doing, but the silence was heavy. Charlie watched Stuart with an empty look on his face and Stuart giggled.

  The ceremony was out in the long grasses by Redcliff. There were five or six cars all by the side of the road and smoke came up from the point, made the air thick and smell of burnt seawater and cloves. It had already started by the time he got down to the small assembly of people, and he was alarmed to see that at first glance they were all aboriginal and mostly young. They turned to look at him, then turned back to themselves, thin scarves round their foreheads. A young girl with hoop earrings and red paint in her eyebrows fanned a small fire, fed it with grasses and the smoke blew low over the lot of them. Two boys sang a song that could have been joyful, if their faces weren’t stretched in the way that they were, if their eyes didn’t stare, full and black. He stood a little way from them, feeling the marsh wet his boots, the sponge earth seeping. He spotted Linus sitting with his shirt off, white lines down the length of his nose. He smiled at Frank and Frank nodded.

  Through the smoke he saw a white face, Vicky, her hair tied at the nape of her neck, covering her ears and trailing round her throat. In the heat of the gully she wore an oversize oilskin coat. Frank caught her eye and she slipped through the smoke round the edge of the gathering. They stood next to each other, and he could feel the heat of her and smell the wax of her coat. She stretched out her little finger and all at once she was holding his hand, and it was hot and wet, and she squeezed so that the bones of his fingers ached.

  ‘Where’s everybody else?’ he whispered.

  ‘Who?’ she said, not whispering, but no one looked up.

  ‘I thought there’d be others.’ It felt silly his being there – he hadn’t even known the girl, hadn’t met her father. ‘What about Bob?’ She shook her head but didn’t offer anything else. He stayed quiet, feeling the strange hand in his and wondering what it was supposed to mean. A girl sang a song from a movie. Celine Dion. A kid, about seventeen, his thick hair shaped into a short fin, gold chains round his neck, sat alone cross-legged close to where the smoke blew thickest.

  ‘That’s Johno, Joyce’s boyfriend,’ Vicky said in his ear. The boy’s jaw was hard set and he blinked a lot in the smoke. His fingers pressed at each other. A dark orange scarf shone against the matt skin of his face. The boy stared at the two of them and there was something bad about the way he did it. Then he got up and made off into the long grass, and Frank wanted to leave too. Linus gave him a look and he wondered what he was thinking about the two of them holding hands. Crickets cracked all around them. The ground seeped under Frank’s weight, the water stained brown from the tea trees. He tugged on Vicky’s arm and she looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there. She didn’t resist when he steered her back towards the path, when he took them down the route to the beach, razor grass slicing at their shins. ‘Where’s everyone else?’ he asked again, once they were out of earshot, just the occasional high voice and the smell of smoke on the breeze.

  ‘Who else would you expect to come? Those are just her friends.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  Vicky looked at him but didn’t answer. She turned her head to look up the beach. The sky was pinking. She sat down in the dry sand close to the grass. He sat down too and took his boots off. She buried her feet, letting the loose white sand run through her fingers and watched as she did the same to his feet. He felt a sort of sickness about what could happen next – her strong legs, the width of her hips.

  ‘That poor boy,’ Vicky said, ‘they had him in for questioning. God only knows what they did to him.’

&nbs
p; ‘The boyfriend – they think he did it?’

  ‘He didn’t do it. The one that did is most likely a million miles away by now.’ The sea pulled at the sand and spat it out again.

  ‘But do they think Johno did it?’

  ‘They?’ Her voice was faraway and flat, like the questions didn’t mean that much to her.

  ‘I suppose he wouldn’t be around if they thought he’d done it.’ Vicky didn’t answer, not even a shrug. They sat in the quiet until the sun was setting and a large, smooth, black piece of petrified driftwood that had long ago washed up and planted itself on the sand cast its shadow long and dark up the beach.

  ‘Couple of days ago Ian Mackelly went to have a talk to Johno. Took along some of the marina boys. Bob went.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They went to his house – place he lives with his parents and his grandfather. Little kids there too. They didn’t take along anything but they rolled up their sleeves. Bob said they really just wanted to talk.’ Vicky smiled and shook her head like she couldn’t even believe the fact.

  ‘Well, maybe that is all they wanted to do.’

  Vicky looked at him. ‘You don’t have kids.’ She pushed the balls of her hands into her eyes and there was a small wet noise from them.

  ‘They asked for Johno to come out and he didn’t, so they stayed there all night. Four of them, big men, waiting with their flaming shirtsleeves rolled up.’

  ‘I can’t believe they would’ve hurt him, Vick. Bob wouldn’t let it happen.’

  ‘It’s like I said. You don’t have kids.’

  The waves were quiet, the birds didn’t sing, and ghost crabs scattered on the surface and disappeared into their holes. The wind must have shifted because smoke came down and threaded slowly out to sea. It blew in through their hair and Vicky sniffed. ‘No spirit sticking to me,’ she said.