A haze of heat floated above the road. Sarah could smell the tar, heating, heating, ready to bubble beneath the hard-pressed surface. On the other side of the road she could see the grey vats of the Sulphide, half masked by smooth billows of smoke. There was a stretch of green behind the vats and buildings, rolling hills, like a little England. The big grey buildings of the sulphide works sat in a squat line, casting shadows across the tar. A blue van beeped at Sarah as she crossed the road, staring at the smoke curling up and meeting with the clouds. She jumped, stuck her fingers up in the air, thought about yelling ‘Piss-Off-Yobbo,’ but didn’t. Kept crossing the road instead, keeping her eyes on the cars. A green bus passed her.
The pack was heavy and bits on it dug into her back. She laid it down on the grass while she stood and looked up at the sulphide vat. If you fell into it, that vat, you would shrivel up in an instant. Like a slug with salt poured on you. Someone had once. Someone had fallen in, some bloke back sometime. Or maybe some kid had made up the story and she’d believed it. But imagine falling in there, shrivelling and burning up just like you’d never been anything, never taken any space. She wanted to try it, wanted to see.
There was a wire fence across the grass, in front of the big buildings that were like hangars, and way in front of the tubs of streaming acid. Barbed wire across the top. Sarah pressed her face into the wire mesh, so that bits of skin stuck through and she could feel the cold of the wire making marks on her cheeks. She pressed harder, wondering if the acid would work from the inside first. Up in the works, a siren sounded for smoke-o. They didn’t have weekends in there, inside that tin factory. Sarah pulled away from the fence, running her fingers over her face, feeling for marks from the fence. There were none, you wouldn’t see a thing.
And there was the grass, green as anything, and soft there under her feet while all the acid smoke puffed and puffed like something beautiful and safe. You could be tricked by these things, if you weren’t careful.
Sarah looked back at the Cockle Creek station sign, polished and new, glinting in the sun. Cockle Creek was like the space between things, it wasn’t even properly Boolaroo and Boolaroo was nowhere. She could see the ambulance station up ahead and walked towards it, trying to breathe nice and slow and easy. Her chest was tight, though, like someone had wrapped a bar around her. The fence of the sulphide works went on for ages, right past the ambulance station and up to the sign that said WELCOME TO BOOLAROO. Sarah had seen a thumb-sized book in a newsagency in the Cross once. It had a blue cover. Aboriginal Place Names of Australia. She’d looked up Boolaroo, hiding behind the magazine rack, her cheeks burning. Boolaroo: Place of Many Flies. She’d stolen the book and thrown it away, stuffed it into an over-full bin on Darlinghurst Road. Sarah leaned against the sign, and held her hand over her eyes like Steve McQueen, squinting into the sun.
Trees had grown up in front of the primary school, and a long red-brick building jutted out, masking the view. The sun was bouncing off the monkey bars. Sarah grabbed hard onto the straps of Zan’s pack and kept walking. How had she never noticed the smoke, the warm sulphur smell all around the place? And those hills, she’d never noticed them, not really. There was a road leading up, away from the primary school, away from the monkey bars and new red brick. The hills were smooth and green at the top of the street. Houses – brightly coloured weatherboard – lined both sides of the steep road. Sarah breathed in, breathed out, and leaned forward, trying to ease the weight of the pack. The sulphur smell, mixed with, what? – other smells, strong and musky – got fiercer further up. There was a big house to the left of where the road ended and the hill started. Weatherboard, but new, newer than the others anyway.
Sarah slipped the pack off her back and rubbed her shoulders. There was a low fence separating the hill from the road, low enough to step over, even if you were a kid. Sarah stepped over it, just looking, just because. Behind the big new house, about half-way up the hill, were three vats – taller and wider than the houses – in a neat line. Smoke was only coming out of one, but the smoke was dark purple. No guards, no barbed wire, nothing. Sarah wanted Zan to be there, for Zan to laugh or be angry, or anything. She’d write and tell her – about smoke pouring across the green hill and into the bright shiny houses – be better than telling her about Mal Sweet and his two girls. Nothing to tell about that anyway. Nothing Zan should know, nothing that would help. She climbed back over the fence, trying to hold her breath in. As if crap didn’t get into her lungs every day. She lived in Sydney, for flip’s sake.
There was a big board in front of the new house, like in front of a church: SUNNYSIDE HOSTEL. It was two houses joined together really, Sarah could see that when she looked properly. Bloody hell, a hostel in the sunny grounds of the Sulphide Works Incorporated. Underneath the big letters, in smaller writing: HOME FOR THOSE IN NEED. Sarah wondered if she would count as one in need; one needing not to be in the house she was called to, one needing to be somewhere – anywhere – else. A wide verandah travelled round one side of the house; Sarah could see rocking chairs and even a hammock near the back. Long windows at the front, wide open, letting all that fresh smoke in. Even a little garden. Yellow flowers – marigolds or something – and waratah bushes. Sarah edged closer, right up to the flowers and leaned down, putting her nose deep into the yellow petals.
A door banged at the back of the house and she could hear footsteps shuffling along the verandah. The crumpled shape of a small man folded himself into a large cane rocking-chair. Sarah stepped back, grabbed the pack lying on the grass and heaved it onto her shoulders. The chair on the verandah rocked and a slurry song drifted up from it: ‘Amaaazing Grace, saved a wretch like meee.’ Sarah felt her stomach go tight and water begin to fill her mouth. A woman’s voice called through the window, ‘Orright Jack?’ and Jack creaked and wheezed and said Orright back. The woman’s voice sad, ‘Areya goin out visitin today, Jack?’ and Jack made a sound that could have been yes. The chair was in the shadows, but Sarah could see him now. Creased up like a pack of cigarettes and dropping bits of bread onto the ground. He coughed and started on ‘How Great Thou Art’.
She didn’t know why, but she was running. Feet tripping over rocks and themselves, the weight of the pack on her back making her run faster, almost falling down the street, down and back down to the main road, to the primary school with its yellow rooms and strange new brick. The whole of her face was tingling, and her throat was being squeezed tight.
The fence to the school was made of hard metal, with easy footholds on it. The school motto on a red shield was painted on a long banner flapping at the comer of what used to be the kindergarten. BOOLAROO PRIMARY SCHOOL: VERA VIRTUA VINCI NESQUIT – OUR TRUE WORTH SHALL NEVER DIE. Sarah’s head swirled with her stomach, everything mingling into one. The school had the over-quietness of Sundays, the absence of squeals and shouts and screams making the buildings echo. Sarah’s feet sounded loud on the cement path and louder on the wooden steps leading up to the headmaster’s office. She peered in through the small glass square on his door – a new name, unfamiliar; why did she think it would be the same? – and saw only another door.
Sarah felt too big for the buildings; everything was built for small bodies. She looked into the junior girls’ toilets, at the dollsized bowls and washbasins. Couldn’t imagine she’d ever been so small, so easily broken.
Water bubblers shone against the brick walls, Sarah had to kneel down to drink. The water didn’t ease the tight band around her throat. Speakers were stuck on high poles in the middle of the playground – black and megaphone-shaped. Sirens for going-home time instead of bells? There was a slight click in Sarah’s head, memory of roughness against her hands. She kept her hands in fists and pressed her teeth together as she walked around to the other side of the buildings. Still there, the wooden platform, the flagpole flying no flag, the bell. Painted blue, and rust showing through. No rope to ring it with. Sarah stared down at her hands, remembering. The sun burned behind her eyes and made her hands look red and bubbling. She could see blood rising up to the surface of her palms, could feel again, the rough, the scratching, the fierce red numbness of the rope on her hands, her hands on the rope. And rising, rising up, a tide from her stomach. The bunching up, the rush of saliva, the winding down of her head and the rush of vomit hurling up and through her mouth, shooting out and across the rostrum and landing in a splattered pile at the foot of the flagpole. Advance Australia Fair.
She rinsed her mouth at the junior girls’ bubblers and hung her head between her knees for a while. Closed her eyes. The air was getting cold on her arms and there were no more shadows on the ground when she lifted her head up and walked the rest of the main road to the police station and that house.