Aunt Missy ran up the steps and ushered Elsie into Prosperous. Joey wandered onto the verandah, held the rails and looked out over the field as if he were watching the lit new year arrive over a town oval, exchanging fire over the theatre of the trenches.
Up at Southerly there were two police officers outside their car; the other officers were running in the chaos further out. Eddie was there outside Southerly. August could see the orange light flickering off his outline. She turned from him and stared into the flames off the crop as she followed Joey onto the deck. From there she could make out firemen holding a hose that sprayed a huge stream of water from the dam, the water looked white in the dark field. She saw a policeman tackle a silhouette to the ground. There were maybe thirty people running about. August looked for Mandy, but she couldn’t make out their faces. It reminded her of childhood, clutching sparklers in their little hands, running through the night air and innocent: everything in the past was backlit in her mind.
She stood close to Joey. He laughed; he looked strung out. She leant in to look at his eyes, dilated as dinner plates.
‘How was the nightclub?’ August asked.
‘Sick,’ he said, and she shook her head. They could see the protesters standing atop the machinery way out, those on the ground kept running from the cops. The knee-high flames were racing down the dry field quickly, west towards the feed sheds, about half a kilometre from Prosperous and the drill sites. The fire brigade would contain it there, August reckoned. It wouldn’t reach the house.
Joey looked the way he had looked into a campfire when they were young. Elated.
‘You never had a riot in gaol? Set your mattress on fire?’ August asked.
‘I never got involved, was pointless. At least this isn’t pointless. It’s cool. You ever been in a riot?’
‘I went to an anti-war protest in London. But it was calm from the back of the crowd.’ She thought about it – they were just numbers, the gentle, shuffling bulge of dissent at the end of a line. She moved inside the house where Elsie was weepy, and Mary was rapidly explaining, filling Aunt Missy in on the details. August hugged her nana tight and rubbed her back.
‘About four yesterday arvo the bulldozers started. They’ve got logs strapped across the front so they can clear a big sweep. I was here with Mum. Next thing, a bunch of protesters are out in the field, standing in front of the machines! Fucking mad!’ She added just as fast, ‘You wouldn’t get me out there in front of a bloody ten-tonne truck.’
‘How’d the fire start?’ August asked.
‘We were about to leave and the kids, kids they are, locked up the gates and said, “No-one in, no-one out.” I called the cops and Nicki.’
‘Why’d you call Aunt Nicki?’ August asked.
‘She deals with the mine, doesn’t she? So, then the cops come. The kids out there start filming stuff and chanting “Lock the gates. Lock the gates.” We locked the door and stayed inside waiting for the cops when this one dreadlocked fella threw a bottle of something on the field … We saw it! … Bugger lit it!’
August wasn’t listening properly. She was putting pieces together in her mind. She stood up, interrupted Aunt Mary. ‘Has anyone here seen the book that Poppy was writing, the dictionary, since we’ve been packing?’
‘No.’
‘Have you seen it at all?’ August whined.
‘No!’ Aunt Mary yelled. ‘I’m telling a story!’
‘Nana?’
‘I don’t know where it is. For God’s sake, August, the garden is on fire and you’re worried about a book?’
A policeman appeared and hesitated at the back door for a moment before he spoke. ‘All you lot need to get out now. Take your things, this place’ll go up like a tinderbox if the wind changes.’
The Aunties gathered the bags that Nana had prepared, everyone was yelling at each other with care as they left the steps of the verandah to the cars. August ran up to Eddie as he hosed the garden with tank water.
She could hear her aunts calling out ‘August!’ behind her, but ignored them, heading for Eddie. ‘Hey?’ August barked at him from a distance.
He watched her run towards him and bent the hose to stop the spray ‘Aww, Aug, please forgive me?’ He twisted forward a little towards the chaos as if in physical pain. ‘I didn’t mean to say those things, I promise you.’
August ignored it, she didn’t need to go over what he’d said. She had a more pressing question on her mind. ‘The other night – after the memorial – who put me to bed? Which of my aunties came upstairs?’
‘What?’
‘Which aunty?’
‘Don’t know her name.’
‘Black dress?’ August said, trying not to yell near the police.
‘Red shoes,’ he said.
‘Did you tell the local council about the artefacts?’
‘I’d just found them. Day before your pop passed, Aug – I promise!’
August ran back down to Prosperous. Elsie and the Aunties were still pushing the bags into the boot and back seat. Joey was standing on the verandah watching the field. August grabbed his arm. ‘Where’s Aunt Nicki now?’
‘Home probably.’
‘Drive me there?’
‘It’s one a.m., idiot.’
‘Alright, time to clear out. All valuables are in my car,’ Aunt Mary directed.
Elsie pointed August to Joey’s car. ‘August, you go with Joe – there’s no space.’
‘I’ll go with Joey,’ August said, looking at Joey for confirmation but he was looking back to the fire. ‘We’ll leave soon, yeah?’ August reached out to him, tugged on his sleeve. ‘We go together, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ he said vaguely, and turned to the women.
‘You just both leave when the cops tell you to, leave soon, okay?’ Aunt Missy warned, pointing at the two of them. ‘Joe! Snap out of it!’ He nodded.
August gave Elsie a quick hug before Aunt Missy and Aunt Mary hustled her into the car. They cradled bags on their laps, while August helped heave the doors shut. When the car left, Joey said he’d take August to Aunt Missy’s and to grab what she needed.
‘And to visit Aunt Nicki on the way?’ August asked as they walked back to the house.
‘Alright, we can stop there – but tell me why?’
‘I’ll tell you in the car …’ August climbed the stairs to get her belongings from the attic. She grabbed her passport, threw it in her duffel bag and dumped the box’s contents into another filled to the brim with Jedda’s and her childhood things. She heaved the box and duffel bag and stumbled, upright, down the stairs.
Joey stood in the kitchen and reached out to help with the box.
A sudden white light flashed and lit up the interior of the house like a camera flash and a boom shuddered through the field.
They ducked, August dropped the box.
August could feel scorching heat, her skin dried and felt as if every particle of moisture drew from her pores, eaten by the dry air. They heard the pop, pop, pop of tin, that sounded like ricocheted gunshots. They stayed on the lino floor of the kitchen. After a few seconds they braved the kitchen window. Silhouettes of tin sheets peeled into the sky from the shed, and then they heard the beams crashing into the cackling, sparking fire. They watched the quick disappearing act of the shed as it collapsed, spewing flames.
August grabbed the box and the contents and together they fled outside.
‘I’m driving!’ August yelled over the whining burn of tin and oil. ‘Get off the ecstasy, Joey.’
‘Eat a fucking hamburger!’ he yelled back, entranced by the now-raging fire and stumbling to the car with the keys outstretched ahead of him. August took them from him.
She drove steadily as Joe directed her to Aunt Nicki’s place. She pulled up at the curb. It wasn’t much for a council worker: a simple brick house, it couldn’t have had more than two bedrooms. It was in the nice part of town, though, Minties area. August banged on the aluminium screen door; it shook in the frame. As she waited she turned to Joe in the car, he shook his head behind the wound-up window, lowered himself further into the seat. A light came on in the house, a head peeked through the curtain, then the rattle of a lock and chain.
Aunt Nicki popped her head through the gap in the door wearily.
‘Aunty, have you seen the dictionary Poppy was writing?’ August asked.
‘What?’
‘Did you bribe them with the dictionary? Did you say you’d make the Gondis claim Native Title if they didn’t give you some money? Or have you just kept it?’
‘Aug, it’s the middle of the night!’
‘I need to read what Poppy wrote please, Aunty. Please.’
Nicki narrowed her eyes, but her body had taken the blow. ‘I kept it to protect the family, my love.’
‘I promise you, Aunty, I’m so ruined – there’s nothing to protect anymore.’ August said, holding her chest, sincere.
‘It’s in the council office. Tomorrow we get it, okay? Goodnight, niece.’
She closed the door. Rattled the chain. Flicked off the light before August could tell her that Prosperous was aflame, that tomorrow wasn’t good enough. She flung herself back into the Mazda.
‘She’s been hiding it. I need to see it, Joey.’ August said as she drove out of the street.
‘What?’
She didn’t know where to start.
‘Poppy’s book he was writing. It might save the farm. I gotta read it now.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In the council office.’
She slowed at a corner, turned, sped up again.
‘I wanna see it now, sick of waiting forever!’ August yelled, and in that moment she felt devastated by all the years she’d wasted. August pushed the gear into fourth. Joey tightened the strap of his seatbelt.
‘I’m not doing anything illegal – I’m still on probation, cousin.’
August accelerated into the main street heading towards the council offices. She reassured him, exalted, ‘Gondis are born on probation, Joey.’