The Big Dry

by Tony Davis

  ‘Is it going to rain, Torgie? Is this what it feels like? And looks like?’

  ‘Yes … well, no.’ George’s skin was tingling. He could sense that a downpour was on the way, but he didn’t want to jinx it by saying so. ‘There have been clouds like this before,’ he finally told Beeper. ‘Black with dust, not rain. They just roll over the city and disappear.’

  Another clap of thunder shook the ground. Despite himself, George imagined fat, cool drops splashing on his face. The rain was about to fall when they had least expected it, just like his mother said.

  ‘Dad must have won,’ yelled Beeper. ‘Beaten the Drought Barons! When it rains, he can come home!’

  George could smell the water. Could sense it rushing down from high above, heading straight for his parched skin. The sky thundered again.

  ‘Please let this be the time,’ George chanted softly. He thought he felt a drop. He ran his hand across his cheek but there was nothing but dirt and sweat.

  ‘I’ll know what rain tastes like at last,’ said Beeper. ‘I’m going to drink it all up. Every drop of it.’

  The boys stood in the centre of the yard and waited. And waited. George picked up the tennis ball. It hadn’t been there when he was emptying the dust bucket a short while ago.

  It was their tennis ball. He recognised the brand name and the little rips along the seams. George looked up at Mr Carey’s house. There was no-one at the windows.

  He squeezed the tennis ball hard. Beeper bounced around, punching his hands. ‘When will the rain start, Torgie?’

  ‘I don’t know, Beeper.’ The thunder was becoming fainter as the dark mass above raced westwards towards the mountains. ‘If there’s any rain at all, I have a horrible feeling it’s evaporating in the heat before it gets to us.’

  The boys were still outside, watching the last of the clouds glide out of sight. The sky was back to its usual hazy pink. The boys slumped on the patio in sweaty silence. George half-expected to hear a mournful piano tune. But there was silence from Mr Carey’s. There had been since George’s late-night visit.

  George hacked up the grit from the back of his throat, then tossed the tennis ball across the yard. They didn’t speak for an hour or more.

  ‘Torgie,’ Beeper said at last, ‘will the government still let Dad come home soon even if it doesn’t rain?’

  George sighed. Then he turned, put his hands on his brother’s shoulders and said squarely to his face: ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before, Beeps. Dad doesn’t work for the government. It was a story. A stupid story. There aren’t really any …’

  George could see Beeper wasn’t paying any attention. He was listening to something in the distance.

  There was a final, distant clap of thunder. It dissolved into the sound of a loudspeaker announcement.

  ‘A severe sandblaster warning for the next few days,’ the echoing voice said. A truck was hauling itself up the hill. Its back wheels churned on the soft surface of the road; the engine spat and growled. ‘More severe sandblasters. The curfew has been extended …’

  George held his breath. Beeper too. They stared at each other as the truck neared the crest outside their house.

  The gears crunched, the revving eased. The amplified voice stopped halfway through a word. The engine ground to a halt. George searched frantically around the back yard. The back fence was too high to jump over, and the big side gate was locked shut. They had nowhere to go.

  The truck doors opened and slammed closed again. A few moments later, fists pounded on the front door of the house.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A man’s voice boomed through the front door. ‘I am a legally empowered Welfare Officer!’

  George’s heart stuttered as he stood up on the patio and looked down the hall. At least the security bar was in place.

  ‘We’re here to speak to the occupants,’ said a second voice. ‘Reports of a young one on his own.’

  ‘That girl must have done this,’ George whispered to Beeper. ‘To pay me back.’ His voice quaked.

  The thumping on the front door became louder. Beeper shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t.’ His words were thin, breathless. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. ‘I’ll run like lightning, Torgie.’

  ‘There’s nowhere to run to. You won’t get past them.’ George thought of the sword, of grabbing it and trying to fight his way out. But there were two men at the very least, and they might have guns. The important thing was to not open the door. Not for anyone!

  ‘I instruct you to let us in,’ yelled the first voice. ‘We have the right to force entry.’

  George grasped Beeper’s hand. ‘We have to hide!’

  There was more pounding and more yelling. ‘If this door isn’t opened,’ a man said, ‘we’ll fetch tools and do it ourselves.’

  George dragged Beeper through the day room and into the hallway, where the thumping on the door was painfully loud. He pulled the towel from under their bedroom door, grabbed the door handle and pushed.

  More dirt had fallen through the hole in the ceiling, blocking the door. George moved his shoulder lower and shoved. The door scraped open just enough for him to squeeze through and pull Beeper along behind. He prayed the noise was drowned out by the racket the men were making.

  The bedroom was filled with a fog of dirt, drifting in and out of the roof cavity. Beeper took one breath and doubled over in a fit of coughing. George slapped his hand across his brother’s mouth.

  ‘We need our dust masks!’ George whispered. ‘They’re on the bed in Dad’s room.’

  Beeper grabbed his brother’s sleeve and swallowed hard. ‘No Torgie, please. Don’t go out. They’re going to knock the door down.’ One of the men smashed against the front door with something heavy, but the door held.

  ‘In the wardrobe?’ gasped Beeper.

  ‘No, it’s the first place they’ll search.’ George slammed the bedroom door shut. He kicked dirt and rubble up against it to make it harder to open.

  The men fired up some sort of machine. It hammered against the front door, making the house shake, and brought a new torrent of dust and dirt from the hole in the ceiling. Exposed electrical wires dangled from the darkness.

  The machine stopped with a shudder. ‘It won’t open,’ the man with the deeper voice shouted.

  The metal security bar had done its work, for the moment. But a different machine started up. Some sort of powered drill or saw.

  George stood next to the wardrobe and stared up into the ceiling. ‘Beeper! Up there.’

  Beeper shook his head but George locked the fingers of both hands together to create a step for him to climb onto. ‘Hurry!’ George hissed.

  Beeper put his foot on George’s hands and allowed himself to be hoisted up until he could lift his knee over the top edge of the wardrobe. He reached out to the back and pulled himself up, scattering muck all over George.

  Beeper knelt on top of the wardrobe. The ripped edge of the hole in the ceiling was only centimetres above his head. He trembled so violently the wardrobe doors rattled.

  George spat out dirt. ‘Get in the roof,’ he said over the noise of the machine. ‘Now!’

  Beeper’s face was pinched with fear, but he reached his hands into the darkness and grabbed at something. A few seconds later his legs disappeared through the jagged hole.

  ‘Stay on the big wooden supports. The joists. Not on the bits in between, you’ll fall through the plaster. And leave room for me.’ George scurried up the side of the wardrobe, terrified his weight would make it topple over. He reached the top just as the front door of the house crashed open.

  The machine ground to a halt. Feet pounded into the front rooms. George crouched on top of the wardrobe. It swayed beneath him. He breathed as shallowly as he could. If he coughed now, he’d be caught. Then the men would force him to say where Beeper was.

  George reached up into the roof, clutching at one of the joists. A man was now thumping on the door below, rattling the handle an
d trying to shove it open. The rubble that George had stamped against it was stopping it from moving.

  ‘You try the back rooms, John,’ the man called out. ‘I’ll break into this one.’

  George tried to hoist himself up but his feet wouldn’t leave the wardrobe. Climbing into the roof was even more frightening than climbing onto it.

  ‘Come on, Torgie,’ Beeper whispered from the darkness. ‘Please.’

  George lunged upwards and dragged himself over the edge of the hole, scratching his legs on the torn plaster, groping to find another joist. There was a crash and a new cloud of dust as the bedroom door flew off its hinges. The door landed in the middle of the room. A man lurched in, coughing.

  ‘No-one back here, Tim,’ hollered the man in the day room. ‘But I found us a nice big tin of meat and veg in someone’s backpack.’

  A few thin rays of light filtered into the roof cavity at the front of the house where the iron sheet had been damaged. George’s eyes adjusted to the dimness. Beeper was crouched on the next roof joist with his T-shirt pulled over his nose and mouth. George pulled his shirt up in the same way. His pulse thumped in his ears. Gritty saliva was building up. He wanted to spit it out, but he couldn’t.

  ‘I’ll check this room when the dust clears, John,’ the man below spluttered. ‘If the rest of the ceiling doesn’t fall on me.’

  George inched sideways along a joist, working his way further from the hole, deeper into the darkness. Beeper copied, silently sliding along his joist. Their paths were soon blocked by the uprights supporting the roof. They had to stop. Beeper’s shoulders heaved as he struggled not to cough.

  Through the smashed ceiling, George could see the waist and legs of the man below. He hoped it was too dark in the roof for the man to see him.

  The man’s blue uniform was old and saggy. His hands were large and red. When he squatted down to clear his throat, his head was visible, but his face was hidden by the peak of his cap. He stood on top of the broken door, then stamped across to the wardrobe.

  The man pulled at the wardrobe handles but the doors wouldn’t open because of the rubble and dirt around the base. He put the end of his hammer into the side and tore one of the doors off its hinges. This raised a new billow of dust. After a while the man bent over and stuck his head inside the wardrobe.

  The second man marched into the room, carrying what appeared to be a small black tube in his right hand. A beam of light suddenly cut through the darkness of the roof space. It swung wildly at first, then steadied. George felt his stomach muscles clench. The torchlight advanced in a slow arc across the underside of the roof, heading towards where Beeper was crouching. Beeper tried to shrink himself into a tiny ball. George held his breath.

  The shaft of light silently moved through the dusty air. Any second now it would hit the side of Beeper’s head.

  George could only watch, wait, pray, despair. That’s it. We’re caught, he thought to himself. At that exact moment, the beam of light swerved and disappeared.

  ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ It was a new voice. A girl’s voice. Emily’s voice.

  The legs in George’s line of sight turned towards the doorway.

  ‘Who are you?’ the first man barked.

  ‘Get out of this room. Can’t you see the ceiling’s falling in?’ she snapped. She sounded short of breath. ‘Mum, Mum, you home? Out, both of you. Out!’

  ‘You mind your tongue, young woman,’ said the second man. ‘We have a right to enter. We heard someone in the house. There was a report of a child …’

  ‘Get your facts right. Just me and my mum living here these days. Am I a toddler? And what are you doing with our tin of food? Give it here. You’re a disgrace.’

  She walked into the centre of the bedroom and started waving her arms. ‘Get out of here, now!’

  The men left the room, slowly, with Emily following. George heard them move down the hallway towards the front door.

  ‘Apologise!’ she yelled. ‘And don’t you dare come back bothering me and my mum.’

  ‘Now, listen, Miss,’ one man yelled back, ‘we are completely within our rights …’

  ‘Aren’t you people good for anything,’ she interrupted, ‘other than wrecking houses and stealing food? Look what you’ve done to our front door!’

  ‘I’m warning you, young lady.’

  There was more yelling as the three moved out into the front yard. Truck doors were opened. The shouting continued. The truck doors were slammed and everything went quiet.

  They’ve arrested her, George decided. He and Beeper would be next.

  More silence outside. George gripped his throat and held his mouth shut, desperately trying to stifle a cough.

  The front door slammed, then bounced loudly off the door frame. Someone was back in the house.

  Footsteps moved up the hall. George’s knees were shaking. He closed his eyes. He was too scared to open them again as the footsteps arrived in the bedroom and stopped directly beneath the hole in the plaster.

  ‘You can climb down now, kiddos. They’re not coming back.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The boys shuffled along the joists, spitting and gasping for air as they lowered themselves onto the wardrobe. They dropped onto the rubble that covered the floor.

  She didn’t wait for them. By the time they shuffled into the day room, she was already back sitting at the kitchen servery. She sat awkwardly, as if her neck and shoulders were hurting. The left side of her face was swollen. The skin around one eye was puffy and yellow.

  George leaned against a stool, still coughing and spitting. ‘What happened to you?’ he eventually said.

  Her bag was on the servery. She began to unpack it. One tin of food after another. ‘House’s a bit of a mess,’ she said.

  Beeper didn’t look at the food. ‘Why is your face all bulgy?’ he asked.

  ‘The cost of living, Beeps. Happened last night.’ She shifted her weight on the stool with a scowl of pain. ‘By the way, remember how your brother was saying I couldn’t protect you?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have found us up there,’ George said. Lamely.

  ‘Yes, they would have, kiddo. There’s big money in it.’

  George had to cross his arms to stop his hands shaking. ‘I thought you’d put us in …’

  She pushed the dirt from the servery with her forearm and put George’s open backpack to one side. She lined up her food. Tins of tomatoes. Potatoes. Lychees. Creamed corn. Two blue tins with a picture of a big red fish on the label and writing in a script George had never seen before. Tinned peanuts. The tin she had snatched back from the Welfare Officer: Braised Steak with Farm Fresh Vegetables.

  Beeper climbed onto a stool and stared.

  ‘What will you be eating?’ she asked.

  ‘Wait, Beeper. How do we know she didn’t put us in … or that she didn’t just tell them to come back later when she’s gone … or something?’ As the words came out of his mouth, George grasped just how confused his thinking was, how little sense he was making.

  ‘You’ll have to be taking my word for it.’ She leaned across the servery to where the boys’ plates and mugs were lying next to George’s upturned backpack. ‘But I’m the last person who’d be helping Welfare.’

  ‘They pay a reward,’ George said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I hate what they do. It’s just a business.’ She banged three plastic plates together to clean the dust off them. ‘Make their money selling kids to the wet countries … to couples who don’t have them, or’ — her voice filled with menace — ‘to people who need children to work. Come on, George, you must know that.’

  George glanced at Beeper and back at her. ‘Those men,’ he said, changing the subject as quickly as possible, ‘nearly arrested you for talking to them like that.’

  She popped open a small tin of New Potatoes. ‘I’ve become pretty smart about what to be saying, and who to be saying it to. Getting tough’s been the only way to survive.’


  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Beeper.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ George said. ‘Do you steal the food?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, mimicking George. She smiled but her lips were crooked because of her swollen cheek. ‘Let’s just say some people are doing very well out of this mess. For the rest of us, there’s no shame in doing whatever it takes to get by.’

  George went to the kitchen and spat in the sink. His head was spiralling. ‘Why did you come back? To have another go at making a team?’

  She paused, lifted one of the tins of fish and popped the lid. ‘No. I came back so I could be saying goodbye properly, before moving on to try my luck somewhere else. Mainly to Beeper. But to you too, George. Just as well I did.’

  George poured the clearest water he could find into his and Beeper’s white mugs as she divided the fish and potatoes onto plates. She was bruised and filthy. Exhausted. George looked down at the two mugs. Then he went to the cupboard, fetched Dad’s blue mug and filled it as well.

  ‘When I saw the van sitting out front,’ she said as she pushed two plates along the servery, ‘I ran all the way up the hill.’

  George passed around the water, giving Emily a white mug. He drank from the blue one. He still felt jittery. ‘I don’t know why you … how you … I just don’t know what to believe about anything.’

  ‘Don’t know what to believe?’ she replied. ‘Secret agents, Drought Barons … Try listening to yourself some time, George.’

  ‘I tried to talk to Beeper about that.’

  ‘About what?’ Beeper said, with his mouth full of potatoes. ‘Talk so I can understand.’

  Emily sipped her water. ‘I’m not saying I blame you for telling stories, George. You never know what might turn out to be true.’ She paused to swallow some fish. ‘And if you don’t have dreams, well, it’s just the same as giving in.’