For almost two hours they drove without talking. Katie had pressed her face in the seat, sobbing, and Sam was turned towards the window, tears blurring his eyes, watching the sun slowly lift into the sky. Jon was gone. And just as Sam’s house had appeared larger and more alien the day his father had left, so too did the car. The night before it had seemed so crowded and lively; now it was cavernous. Emptier. Looser. Since they’d hit the pothole, the rattling sound had returned to the engine. It was soft, almost unnoticeable, but Sam could tell it was building, and as they continued on with the ventilation fans turned down and the radio off, it was the only sound they could hear beside his sister’s strangled gasps.
As the shadows shrank towards the horizon, Sam could see in their place expanses of scorched fences and blackened trees. They were driving towards an area already charred by bushfire and he could still smell the melted tar beneath their wheels. He had no idea where they were. A half-destroyed sign said something about Dundas Nature Reserve, but he had no way to tell if they were in it, or near it, or had already passed through. The landscape all around reminded him of a documentary he’d seen once about an erupted volcano that had swept a village away, leaving nothing but charcoal and dust. Smoke was darkening the air above them, and all around, spotting the fields, he could see lumps that were probably once animals, smouldering, the same colour as the ground.
He remembered the first afternoon of the trip, and Dettie dragging them out onto the road to stare down at the dead kangaroo. He remembered what she’d said about it. That it had given up. Given in. Surrendered to death. But as he looked out at these animals, their smouldering husks, torched into the dirt, Sam knew they couldn’t have fought to stay alive—even if they’d wanted to. They didn’t slink off to death. It came for them. He could only imagine what it must have been like. Trapped behind their wire fences. Pacing the locked gates desperately. The flames chewing up the ground. Gushing over them. The bleating and shrieking as they cowered, engulfed by the blaze.
The seatbelt fixed him in place, constricting his chest. The heat muddled his head. He felt the quilt—the quilt Dettie had made for him months ago—tucked tightly around his legs. It strained across his knees, stretching out the stitching on its dozens of embroidered squares.
In one square, a tiny knotted figure that Dettie had intended to represent him was flying, its arms spread wide among the birds. Sam stared down at it: a silhouette in the sky. Just like all the other cheery, impossible scenes she had painstakingly crafted. That she had tried desperately to will into being. But he was a sheep. Sweating into his wool as the grass blades ignited under his feet. The birds were overhead as they scattered, soaring to freedom.
For a moment he wasn’t sure if he was awake or still dreaming.