The Day of the Fire

ROSIE

Vonny is not gonna get these off me again. She tried at the pool Saturday, started lacing one up in the tent. She’s so annoying. I cannot wait to see her. ‘Back after the fete,’ I say, kissing Dad on the cheek.

He’s stressed. This wedding malarkey is one huge pain in the arse at the best of times but it’s 205 degrees and all the guests are gonna end up in hospital, he reckons, not that he’d mind that happening to at least one of them. He’s been on the phone to the Country Fire Authority, who’ve reassured him, and to Stephen Oh, who doubles up as a paramedic during busy periods. Stephen says he’ll be on standby.

‘You’re catastrophising,’ I tell him, then give him a hug cos that’s what he needs when he feels like this. He’s a simple creature, Dad. He puts an enormous hat on my head, gives me fifty dollars, and tells me to bring home a box of the best chocolates I can find and that the rest of the change is for me.

‘They’ll melt,’ I tell him.

‘Buy frozen peas too? And get back before the afternoon heat, yeah? I want you all near me today.’

I put my headphones on, choose the playlist Vonny sent me, and off I pedal into the fan oven. 180

The Collins house is a fortress outside, and cool and welcoming inside. Some song about it being ‘time for a cool change’ is on. Vonny’s mother is whistling while she undertakes an OCD tea ritual. Old Mr Collins is watching The Love House in his bedroom with Nurse Jen, and Vonny is already eyeing my Doc Martens.

‘I’m not sure what to wear,’ she says.

Don’t do it, don’t do it, Rosie, I say to myself.

The pause works. She goes for runners and sticks with her dungarees.

‘This is good, Mum,’ she says, looking at an Invasion Day poster she made. ‘Is it for me? Can I take it to the fete?’

‘Sure,’ says her mother, resuming her whistling.

I take my boots off and carry them with me to the top of the ladder. I am not going to take my eyes off them even for one second. We get totally baked in the dinghy, but I don’t forget my resolve, and have my Docs on again when we decide to head into town. Perhaps I’m being paranoid. Perhaps Vonny has stopped wanting to steal my shoes. I leave my bike at Dante’s and we walk along Ryan’s Lane, an earphone a piece so we can listen to Vonny’s favourite new song, which I’m not getting, but maybe that’s just because I’ve never heard it before. I can’t sing along like she is. She’s dawdling too, she’s such a city slicker.

181Poor Mrs O’Leary, her Australia Day fete is a disaster. Even Tricia Gallagher only popped in for twenty minutes, she tells us. And she didn’t even bother to muster decent spinning-wheel prizes – some second hand three-for-two books and a boogie board, for goodness sakes, here. There were supposed to be rides on the oval but they all cancelled yesterday.

Mrs O’Leary has a tight shirt on and there are large sweat marks under her arms and on her stomach. I believe she might have fainted had she not sat down in time.

Henry Gallagher has set up a cold-flannel area on his Lion’s Club table. He dips one of his raggedy face-washers in a bowl of getting-warm water and then leans his head back and puts it on his forehead. There are drips coming down his face, but not for long. He’s not sure this event is safe, he’s saying. Even his hair is hot. His mind is mush. He’s wondering if they should pack up.

Henry won’t stop talking.

‘The country’s getting hotter and hotter. Have you seen the state of Lake Eildon? And what’s the bloody PM up to? At the MCG in an air-conditioned VIP booth, holding hands with a billionaire coal miner.’

‘I see you drank the Kool-Aid, mate,’ says Marti Ercolini. ‘Pack of death-cult hippies, what a load of … “I’m so scared, it’s Armageddon!” Have you forgotten that locust plague when we were nippers? Reckon I swallowed two hundred every time I went outside. But you were too scared to even come outside! What about the size of those hail stones at the swim meet in Castlemaine when we were in form four? Giant melons, they were. One of the buggers knocked Billy Fitzpatrick out just before he dived in for the four-hundred-metre backstroke.’

I can see it in Henry’s eyes. He’s really sick of listening to stupid people. So am I. 182

‘And now all those wussies are finding new names for fires,’ Marti is saying. ‘Superfire, Megablaze, The Monster! – as if this weather is something new. You remember the dust storm in eighty-three? Hazel McNamara died of asthma! And Cyclone Fucking Tracy, seventy-five, need I go on? Have you forgotten the summer when we had to drive to Lance Road to get water from the bore or else our kids would die of thirst? The year Billy Munro’s eggs came out of his chooks ready boiled?’

Henry seems as keen as I am to move the conversation on. ‘These bloody fans aren’t making any difference.’

Mr Ercolini is suggesting they close at 2.00 pm, before the heat sets in, and that they take turns going to the supermarket in the meantime. ‘It’s the only air-conditioned public place in town,’ he’s saying. ‘The freezer section will be mobbed with people pretending to need frozen peas.’ Mr Ercolini says he wants to man the CFA stall for a while at least, especially on a day like today, and here’s Pete Gallagher arriving with his Ash Mountain Football Club paraphernalia – ‘Pete!’

The carnival isn’t over, not yet. The people are mustering.

Mrs O’Leary will man the Ash Mountain Bottlers stand and is willing to give a fifty-percent discount for those who buy more than three bottles of any flavour including orange. She will also charge one dollar to hose people down for fifteen seconds under the awning out front, all proceeds going to a new town statue, as the one of Bert is a disgrace. Luckily, Pete Gallagher has not heard her say this.

Stephen Oh’s arriving any minute, Mr Ercolini is saying. He’s bringing the freezer from the servo, stuffed full.

Another prize could be getting a minute over the freezer, says Pete.

Or a free Sunny Boy, says Henry Gallagher.

Not likely, says Pete. 183

They’ve been discontinued anyway, says Mr Ercolini, Glugs and Raz’s, can you believe it? What are we s’posed to do without our pyramids of ice?

Vonny has nabbed a table and is busy setting up her Invasion Day stuff, which includes her mouth, one poster and Spotify.

‘Sharing information,’ she explains to the Lions and the Footballers and the leader of the County Women’s Association, all of whom are more than happy to help. Her stand, they all decide, should be between Pete’s footy stand and Henry’s Lion stand. That way, if anyone gives her hassle, they’ll have Pete and Henry to contend with.

I’m not the only person who loves Vonny.

Mrs O’Leary just gave her a bitter lemon on the house. I’m a little huffy, period might be coming, or it could be this heat. I would love a bitter lemon for free. A sip would be good, even.

People start coming in, mostly because it’s so horribly hot where they came from and they are all disappointed that it’s even hotter here, that this is real.

A lot of people are going for Mrs Verity O’Leary’s fifteen-second hosing, which is coming from the Gallagher dam, Mrs O’Leary explains, no need to tell. I reckon there may be need for antibiotics.

There are now twenty-one people in the hall, most in one item of clothing only, their grooming out the window for the day. At least half are at Vonny’s stand because she is telling them stories that make it cooler. There’s a song coming out of her phone, has been since she set up the table, a kind of lullaby, she explains. Every now and again she makes a sneezing noise and people laugh and some of them start to do it too, like Sister Mary Margaret, who’s drunk, and Ned 184and Luca and Maz and Ciara, and even Pete Gallagher from the footy stand.

Choo!

I go outside for a reduced-price, fifteen-second hose and realise Mrs O’Leary has not considered the wet-T-shirt implications of her game. There are two dickhead boarders across the road. One has a Hugh Grant flop of hair and blubbering shoulders to match. The other is kicking random things, like the cigarette bin outside The Red Lion, which he has broken and does not care about because he is now looking at my nipples. ‘Mountain Tits!’

‘These are for women only,’ I yell, and they scramble. But it doesn’t feel good to have shocked Mrs O’Leary with two, or three, things at once.

I’m not bleeding, so there’s no excuse for my mood.

Vonny is talking to a kid from my school and she doesn’t look annoyed or even bored. I’m hungry, I eventually realise, so walk over and say, ‘You want something from Ryan’s?’

She wants a vegan salad box.

I tell her there are no vegan salad boxes at Ryan’s.

She tells me she wants a roll and salad then, or a banana. This is Craig, she says.

I know, I say, Craig is the class arsehole, then I leave, stopping outside to pay Mrs O’Leary full price for a thirty-second hosing.

Ryan’s is closed, and the supermarket is mobbed. There has just been some kind of incident in the world-foods section. Mrs Ercolini is on the floor under the rigatoni. The manager, Mohammed, is telling everyone to choose another aisle, so I do.

At the till, Giang tells me Mrs Ercolini isn’t dead, it’s just her ice cream melted and she slipped. I take my change and 185am about to open my backpack when I realise Vonny’s brother is next in line.

‘Hi Dante,’ I say, packing my chocolates and my peas and Vonny’s banana into my backpack.

‘Rosie! Hey, have you seen the big V?’

‘Yeah, she’s at the fete,’ I tell him.

‘Changing the world?’

‘The fete at least.’

‘Is my mum there too?’

‘No, she’s at home, I think.’

Dante unties his ugly mutt and decides to walk back to the fete with me. I’m wanting so much from this encounter that I have gone silent. I want to know if I’m worthy. I want to know him – at least enough to be more comfortable than this. And I want to know all about Vonny, like, are there girls in the city who like her the way I do? I just bet there are lots.

By the time I have had a lengthy conversation in my mind, there is no time left. We have reached the convent hall. In my absence, the prizes have happened, and everyone is leaving and Mrs O’Leary is suggesting the committee pack up tomorrow and Dante is whispering something to Vonny.

He’s wanting her help with an errand, she says. She doesn’t say anything about me helping too, and neither does he.

‘I’ve gotta go,’ I say, giving Vonny a hard hug.

‘I’ll call you,’ she says, but I bet she doesn’t. I bet I spend the rest of the week checking. I should know better than to fall for a city girl.

At the monument, I stop and put the frozen peas on my face, and on my chest, and on my arms and legs. They get warm and squidgy really fast. It’s better inside the monument, so I sit on the spiral stairs a while and check messages, Instagram, Facebook, Skype… 186

It’s too hot to walk right now. I climb to the top and look around Ash Mountain. While the heat is eerie, like I am in another world, I recognise my town: the ostrich farm, McBean’s Hill, the main street in the valley, the Gallagher farm and the Gallagher dam and the water tank. It’s so beautiful here.

The chocolates are dripping out of my backpack, shit.

That’s right, I have change! I put one dollar in the telescope and scan the town for Vonny, eventually locating her granddad’s four-wheel-drive opposite the church. It costs me another dollar to see that she and Dante and Garibaldi are sitting in the front seat, watching a bride and groom getting their photos taken on the steps of St Michael’s. Must be someone they know.

If only there wasn’t a scorching two-kilometre walk before I’m sitting at the kitchen table with Dad and the girls, skulling a big, icy orange juice.

My money runs out when I’m looking at Ryan’s Lane and I remember my bike. I left it at Dante’s water tank. That’s halfway, one kilometre. I can make it to his place no bother, I tell myself, then I’ll be at the kitchen table in no time. I want lots of ice. I ring Dad to tell him.

‘That’s great honey, wedding party’s arriving after photos but I’ll be ducking in and out all night. Love you.’

‘You too,’ I say, promising to put on the hat he made me bring, and not lying.

It’s a public holiday, so there are at least three cars out the front of each Shitbox, plus a boat every now and then. I’m starting to wonder about knocking on a random commuter’s door and asking for a glass of water, but I don’t know anyone in there, and they don’t know me. It’s another 200 metres to Dante’s. I’m reconsidering the glass of water decision when my phone goes off. 187

It’s Vonny, on video. She’s in the four-wheel-drive. ‘Sorry about running off. Dante wanted to check out his dad, he’s the groom.’ She points her camera at St Michael’s. Women in hats and men in suits stand around confetti clumps, smiling at the sweaty bride and groom. A kilted bagpiper is squealing at everyone.

‘Have I got a neck?’ Dante is asking Vonny. He’s sitting beside her, looking at himself in the rear-view mirror, his dog on his lap.

‘Sometimes,’ Vonny says to him. ‘Where are you?’ Vonny asks me.

‘Almost at the water tank.’ I show her the ground ahead. ‘I’m imagining water. I’m starting to see things, mirages.’

Vonny is pointing the camera at Dante, who is now out of the car.

‘Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’ he’s asking Vonny.

Vonny gets out and I see the sky on her screen and hear her say: ‘Oh my God.’

Instead of lifting the brim of my hat, I watch Vonny. She keeps filming as she runs to the doors of St Michael’s, yelling at people to get inside. But the doors are locked. She tells them to take cover, to find somewhere safe, and she tries to stop them but most of them head towards their cars.

The groom with no neck is still at the gates, yelling at Dante to stop causing trouble. What the hell does he think he’s doing? There’s a struggle. Dante punches the groom in the nose.

The town siren goes off and I stop looking at Vonny’s screen. I lift my hat and look at the sky ahead of me.

‘Rosie, take cover,’ I hear Vonny say. ‘Take cover, find somewhere safe. Gotta go, I need to ring Triple Zero.’