A Constant Hum

by Alice Bishop

  I get Chinese food for me and Ed on Sundays: lettuce packages of pork and those thick noodles in sticky sauce—the type that sit warm and heavy in your belly. It’s nice to have some charity money in the bank, but it’s going fast. People were kind after the fires but it’s all a bit of a trend. No one thinks of you a few months after a big disaster. Anyway, takeaways aren’t cheap. And without a kitchen (or the bunny income) I’m on the back foot, good and proper. Gado gado; mushroom bake; fancy pizzas, the kind with pumpkin even: I always cooked for Melanie. She never came in the kitchen and wouldn’t touch anything that had meat. ‘I won’t eat anything with a face,’ she used to say, which made me feel bad about the rabbits—well, for a bit.

  ‘Slow as a wet weekend,’ Ed says. And it is around here. No one’s looking for a holiday in Eltham. It’s a halfway place, between bush and city. But I bring Ed a Macca’s coffee every day and we sit in reception, watching those depressing morning shows on the big TV. Sometimes we talk about love and I tell Ed about Melanie. How she used to draw all these little gum-leaves and waratahs on my letters. How she had a tattoo of wattle puffs behind her left ear. But then I have to stop myself. Ed has his story he needs to tell.

  Ed’s ex-wife, Brenda, had hair the colour of autumn leaves. She was poetry, Ed says. But he doesn’t say much else. Just that she’d never wanted to start up the motel. She wasn’t entrepreneurial-minded, sonny, like me, Ed says. He also says Brenda hated cleaning up the debris of people: you know, hair from the plugs and all the rest. I never really thought about that word, debris, until after the fire. Dig around in the ash of a house and you won’t find much. Just some old hotplate coils, a few bent belt buckles and bits of broken plate. Letters and photos, not that I had so many: all gone.

  Melanie always drew me pictures of things we’d never get around to doing. You know, us eating lemon tart in France and stuff like that. But I reckon if we’d made it to Paris she would have sat in our motel all day anyway. Drinking and thinking. I would have visited the Bastille for the history. The Eiffel Tower too. Just before the fires, and just after we broke up—good and proper—Melanie’s mum wrote me to say that Melanie spends her time (probably still drinking and thinking) at a halfway house now, the real kind. It was written curly, that letter. It smelt like perfume.

  Some people say I cheated on Melanie but I like to think I let her go. Like I said, she wouldn’t have done so good after the fires took the place. She’d have got PTSD, or whatever half the town has now. The bush isn’t for everyone, you know. The woman I kidded on Melanie with was the emotional kind too. Harder, though. She had sad blue eyes that looked right into your bones. We were down at the pub when it happened, a Saturday, just before that old place also burned up. You have to blame the other half as well. It takes two to tango, like they say.

  Melanie’s last letter had no gumleaves. She put little circle dots on every ‘i’ like usual, but wrote that she was sorry for being small—that it was why she couldn’t hold any alcohol. She went on and on about how she was gonna change and all. And that she was sorry for being too sensitive. She said she wasn’t allowed a phone where she was, but that I should write her back. I don’t really do letters anymore, though. It’s a political thing. Did you see how much the Australia Post CEO gets paid?

  I made a bookshelf for Ed the other week. ‘Son, you’re a carpenter at heart,’ he said. ‘A holy business,’ he said. He used to be religious, you see. There are no Bibles in the bedside drawers, though. Not like in the movies.

  Sometimes I wonder if Melanie tells people I’m a bad man. That’d kill me, ’cause I couldn’t count the number of times I cooked for her: fancy potato salad, vegetarian chicken fillets, spaghetti from scratch. The rabbits were good for her too; she loved the kits once they got big enough to hold. I never let her near the breeding shed, though, or the slaughter pens either; Melanie was too emotional for that. New Zealand white rabbits. There was actually a bit of money in them, as I said: especially when you chuck organic on the tag. But all that’s gone now. As I also already said.

  So, anyway, my hotel room can get a bit lonely. Especially late at night, when Ed’s up the other end of the block. It’s after my evenings with him that I get to thinking about Melanie. About those little waratahs she used to draw on all my letters. About her strong little hands on me. Yeah, I used to say things too, like about how we’d be together forever, and that Melanie could always count on me. And she can. I did what I had to do; old Ed says we cheat on our women ’cause we love them—’cause we have to set them free.

  Tinderbox

  Leaving brings other things: a light-peppered sky over Elwood Beach, wine in pale-coral cans. ‘I feel so lucky,’ you say. Sandglass. Potato cakes. Bare toes. ‘I’ve felt alone, before this, for so long.’ And I fold into you, new—your clothes smelling like wool wash and something, already, like home. Whiskywarmed chest. Bone-humming glow.

  Woodwork

  My woodwork teacher is the only good one. He looks at me from behind those special protector glasses you have to wear and says: ‘Elliot. Mate. Do you need to splash some water on your face?’ My woodwork teacher, Mr Anuad, looks Indian but speaks proper Aussie, just like Mum and Dad. He wears Timberlands and keeps his hair all slicked back, like people in the boring old movies we have to watch sometimes in film class. ‘Elliot,’ Mr Anuad says again. ‘Water. Go get some, buddy, will ya? Splash it on your face.’

  Chris from Year 9 is who I get high with at school. He has the newest Nike Airs and a shaved head. I like him a lot. Especially ’cause he never—not ever—asks me about the fires. The other guys in my home group hassle me: You’re okay, brah, yeah? Your brothers, did they die quick? Your mum got out of the mental hospital yet? Did ya get a big Eastland voucher? One like she got—Sophie Claremont from Year 10? What’re ya gonna get?

  Everyone loves Sophie Claremont from Year 10. Sophie Claremont and her perfect clothes and body and pink-blond hair. She has this dumb art book too—full of drawings of birds and twigs. No one died in her family. Just Cinnamon, her horse. It breathed in too much smoke. I know this because the other girls in Year 10 made a big kind of like shrine for Cinnamon in one of the empty VCE lockers. There were photos, bad poems and even carrot cake (like horses are meant to eat anything but hay anyway). Sophie’s never said a word to me about the fires, my brothers—my mum too—but I know she knows what happened; everyone does.

  I go and splash water on my face like Mr Anuad tells me to. There are bits of dried, bunched-up chewing gum on the path that make me wonder what my brain looks like inside my head. I feel dizzy and something in my chest feels tight and quick, no matter how much water I drink. I remember how Dad always used to say, ‘Work’s busy, always—we’re flat out like a lizard drinking.’ Like, I think about a pointy little lizard tongue—how quick it’d be going. So quick.

  The garage Dad worked at was always quiet when I went there, though. Mum said Dad was a proper businessman. She used to say that one day I’d be old enough to understand. But I’m pretty old now. Thirteen. And even though I like Mr Anuad more than the other teachers, I reckon Mr Anuad probably wouldn’t like my dad.

  I don’t feel like going back to woodwork. Madison, my workstation partner, keeps talking about how her house nearly burned up too. ‘But it didn’t, though, hey?’ I keep saying, and she just looks at me like I am the worst person alive.

  ‘It got so close I have PTSD, for real,’ Madison adds. ‘You could see smoke on the hill near my house.’ Madison isn’t really that cool but all the half-popular girls treat her like she’s everything. I heard she has a boyfriend old enough to drive a car. He’s in Year 12. When I get a car I’m going to drive all the way to Queensland ’cause I reckon, one day, that’s where I’m gonna live. People look happy up there. It’s probably the beach.

  Chris and his new Nikes are over in the old bike shed like I guessed. When I walk up to him he smiles and it makes me feel okay for a second. ‘Got woodwork with Mr Anuad,’ I say. ‘Where’re you
meant to be?’

  ‘Got history, little brother,’ Chris answers. The white bits of his eyes are the colour of the powdery musk sticks they sell in the canteen. He tells me what they’re learning about Cambodia. About horrible things that happened once when everyone was trying to do good. ‘Have you heard of the Killing Fields yet?’ he asks, and I half-nod—not wanting to seem dumb. Chris talks about a lot then. Stuff I’m not sure I believe.

  Chris says he’s missing class on purpose, anyway, ’cause he’s already ahead of them. He’s been learning stuff on Wikipedia, all on his own. ‘Mr Hunt is a…’ he says and starts bending over with that quiet kind of laughing that gives you cramps. I’m not really sure what he’s laughing about, but I try to laugh too.

  ‘Bad stuff happened here too,’ I add, looking at my shoes: old New Balances. Dirty. Not that good anymore. I feel a bit blurry but need to get a bit higher. It’d be real good not to feel much at all.

  ‘You want some more weed, then?’ Chris says, patting a bulge in his grey trackies. He always gets away with not wearing uniform. I’m not sure why. Some people say it’s because his dad gave his mum brain damage in a fight. Others in my class say it’s ’cause Chris has cancer, the kind that lives in your blood.

  Dylan Burrows, who’s also from Year 9, reckons that’s how Chris got his $220 shoes. He says the Make-a-Wish Foundation probably donated them—that Chris could ask to meet Kanye if he wanted to. Dylan Burrows said dying kids get a lot. I don’t believe any of that. My brothers are dead and they never got anything. Even my smaller one—who lived after the fires for twenty-seven hours. Both my brothers got nothing, not anything at all.

  ‘Elliot!’ Mr Anuad’s yelling voice is pretty deep. ‘You splashed that water on your face? What are you doing?’ He’s walking across the handball courts with a look that makes me feel bad. Some kids I don’t even recognise fully yell across the bitumen as they stroll by: Caught on a date, are ya, you two? Hey, bushfire kid—did you get to go on the news? Hey, Anuad, Mr Anuad, sir—you know they’re probably smoking weed?

  ‘Elliot,’ Mr Anuad says again. ‘Concentrate. Mate.’

  I think about my brothers then. About how scary the hospital smelt. I think about the edges of things I can’t really think about properly: where Mum is now, my bedroom, the photos at the funerals—how there were none, stuff like that.

  ‘Elliot,’ Mr Anuad says, much quieter now. ‘Do you want to come back in and use the bandsaw?’

  ‘Not really,’ I say, and I think I start crying or something. Not really bad crying but just a bit maybe. I don’t really cry that much. Chris from Year 9 has vanished but I didn’t see him go. I’m glad, though, ’cause I can’t stop and I even let out a weird sound. The sides of everything are really fuzzy but I can see Mr Anuad looking at me. I think he understands. I like Mr Anuad; I bet he has a nice house with a PlayStation and maybe a whole cupboard full of Nikes. Maybe I could live with him. But I won’t ask. Not just yet.

  ‘Elliot, mate,’ Mr Anuad says, and he puts his hand on my arm. ‘C’mon, bud, let’s head back in. You’re okay. You’re okay.’

  Coppering

  You remember mostly, three a.m.: they found our neighbours in clusters, mostly in amalgam fillings and tyre rims trickled into what looked like snowy earth—silvers, gunmetal greys and blacks so petrol-shiny you’d think of a currawong’s wing, of a bush pigeon’s neck, flecked. Some people were consoled, afterwards, by the thought that the neighbours left together, their air-conditioners whirring, their hearts hummingbird-humming as they ran. We were comforted, afterwards, that things ended for them together, holding each other under betadine- and copper-coloured smoke. Under a sky that’d once promised kinder things: maybe Vegemite toast on Sunday morning, maybe a weeknight, after-work kiss. The neighbours never hoped it would end up all shining like this. But you remember, mostly four a.m.: they found them in clusters, mostly—silvers, gunmetal greys and blacks so petrol-pretty you’d think of a currawong’s wing, of a bush pigeon’s neck, rainbow-flecked. Still: in the early morning, you remember this.

  Local Hero

  The ridge, once tree-covered, slips away in autumn rain. When walking the hillside—the one he had known as home—Eman is ankle deep in sooty mud. Just finished Year 12, he had been in the lounge room playing PlayStation the morning of that now-infamous afternoon. Eman had still been at the house at two p.m., when the power had gone out, and at 4.45, when the summer sky went dun-coloured, then quickly to black. When the sound of buffeting wind filled his ears, Eman went to run the bath—something he once saw someone do on the TV. You’re so lucky to have made it, his temporarily appointed, bored-looking DHS worker said later. Could’ve easily boiled up, bud. Just like a holiday lobster—a mud crab, mate—dropped straight in a pot.

  On the night Eman runs into The Stranger it has been only a month since the hillside flared. Newly exposed to wind, limbless trees creak and bow—leaning into each other before eventually falling to the ground. Almost six foot, Eman takes long steps over leftover bits of twisted tin and crumbled brick. He avoids the charred rabbit kits that had have flooded up from burnt-out burrows. He tries not to notice the left-behind car—its melted silvers. All four of its doors remain flung open, near where the neighbour’s place used to be. Eman knows that the stories will come if he stops for too long: thoughts of who left the vehicle, ignition still turning, when they knew its engine—stalling and beginning to melt—wouldn’t take them any further. And then the running. Eman knows it’s better to keep walking and stay distracted—to quickly follow the road that, despite it all, feels like home.

  Eman spots a neighbour every kilometre or so—their semi-familiar face covered by hair or hat or shadow, standing on their blackened block with hand to hip. Your folks rebuilding too, hey? the more outgoing ones ask, post-dinner, maybe prebrekky, not really expecting an answer, although Eman smiles and nods. How are you coping, mate, then, hey? the man from the shipping container on the corner asks, his new Jack Russell growling at Eman from its owner’s feet. Back at school?

  Uni, yeah, Eman replies—not thinking of his engineering degree, deferred, but his parents somewhere in their rented station wagon, always driving up and down the suburban streets they’d had to temporarily call home: his mum looking up takeaway food on her phone and his dad—always bleary-eyed from crying—looking at the windows and saying the same thing over and over: How do these people live on top of each other, Christ.

  Just gotta get the paperwork approved, a few neighbours say. And Eman knows they’re probably waiting for building approvals as well. The VBA says thick windows certified to AS1530.4 standards are needed. Roof sprinklers, too. Eman knows of the melted globules of bedroom window the fire caused. The sheets of metal roofing that had twisted up like the chip-packet shrinkies they used to put in the oven on curriculum days, home alone.

  A month on from the fires, and just before The Stranger, Eman watches the Channel 7 weather woman—in her tight peach skirt, her white shirt—smile and report that the torrential rains falling over Melbourne’s charred north-east mark the official end of the year’s fire season. The deadliest one in Australia’s history, she adds cheerily. A newsreader follows the weather report to mention the increasing price of petrol, before briefly touching on a CBD climate-change rally, then—finally—to a longer piece about the surprising health dangers of e-cigarettes. I guess inhaling any kind of smoke into your lungs, kids—the presenter smiles, before nodding his smooth jaw—isn’t the best idea. Later that night, in his parents’ temporary Preston rental, Eman looks in the mirror at his new bottle-blond hair and thick dark eyebrows. He remembers the oven bursts of bathroom heat. The oxygen leaving the room.

  It’s the darker side of dusk when The Stranger’s high-pitched voice first drifts through gully-side bush. Eman is just one hundred metres from his car—a mustard-coloured Camry with beaded seat covers that Eman can’t yet work out how to take off.

  Mate, a voice calls. Mate?

  In the follow
ing silence Eman misses the usual comforting sounds of dusk—magpies settling in and currawongs gurgling, sometimes distant neighbours’ dogs barking, the echoing hum of semi-familiar voices, coming through the bush. But there are no trees anymore—mountain ash or grey gum, wattle or pine. There is no sound. Eman thinks of his little sister, Claire. Of the way she’d loved horse books and Rice Bubbles and talking about the world’s list of nearly extinct animals. She is in Grade 5 now—she was in Healesville at a friend’s place on the day of the fires—but is more frightened than anything at the idea of coming back to live on the ridge. Over dinner now she talks about the world warming up, not about panda bears—about floods and fires and hurricanes.

  You’re not from around here—are ya, mate? Not a local? The unfamiliar voice yells again.

  Eman doesn’t reply but turns his head to spot the shadow of The Stranger—approaching through suddenly unfamiliar landscape.

  I said, bud? the voice continues. You’re not having a sneaky rubberneck now, are ya?

  The new dog, a kelpie-cross with a skittish look in its eye, sometimes comes up to the ridge with Eman. It is zigzagging through the maze of ashy stumps, chasing some far-off scent, the night The Stranger and his high-pitched voice approaches Eman in roadside dark. Just before the man calls out again Eman shouts for the new pet: Oi, he says—a small effort to get a feeling of familiar comfort back, one he used to get with the old heeler, Blue. Oi, he says again, but his voice just echoes along the burnt-black ridge: Get back! Get back! Get back!

  Since the bushfire Eman often thinks back to a visit his primary school had from local fire volunteers. He remembers the demonstration of how the big red truck worked: toolbox, water tanker, hose. Eman got to colour in a picture of a koala in overalls, after all of Grade 2 had practised how to Stop, Drop and Roll! Eman had thought of those firemen and women as he waited in the bath. He tried to remember what he had been taught—but nothing seemed to fit. There was no space to lower himself. No red truck, its comforting lights coming in the bathroom window and across the bathroom walls—flashing red, flashing blue.