26

Kaydon listened to Marg’s lecture all the way home.

‘I see a lot of kids come through the cells, Kaydon, but I never thought you’d be one of them. Just because you’re a friend of the family, doesn’t mean I’m not going to come down on you when you go joy-riding in a stolen car. I’ll come down on you even harder.’

He didn’t try to argue or defend himself.

‘Shame young Dan’s stuffed up his education. He’s a bright kid.’

Kaydon was silent. He wondered how their friendship would pan out now. Would it be awkward? Part of him was relieved that Dan wouldn’t be coming back to Bentleigh with all his problems.

Easy come, easy go.

The other part of him would miss him like hell.

Friends stick solid. He’d meant it at the time. Did he still mean it now? He stared out the window and saw smoke on the horizon.

‘Grassfire,’ said Marg, finally ceasing her lecture. She peered out the front window of the car. ‘Hope it doesn’t get into the Pilliga again the way it did in oh-seven.’

‘Where’s it coming from, do you reckon?’ he asked.

‘Hard to tell. Might have been a lightning strike somewhere. Everything’s so dry, wouldn’t take much.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘I might have to drop you at the letterbox, go check it out,’ she said, reaching for her mobile phone, as she put on the brakes.

Kaydon stepped out into the hot morning. Despite the dry, the air felt strangely heavy. He thanked Marg for the lift and set off along the dirt road towards home. Sometimes he wished he lived in the suburbs, where people had five-metre-long driveways.

A feeling of dread hit him as he reached the homestead, desperate for a drink of water after walking five kilometres with the acrid taste of smoke in his throat. Only his father’s fourbie was in the driveway. No other cars.

The front door was locked.

‘Your father wants to see you in his office,’ said Jerry, from behind him.

Kaydon wiped the beading sweat off his brow with his sleeve and inhaled. ‘Okay,’ he said, knowing this would be a very different confrontation. This would be the real one.

At least Jerry would pretend he didn’t hear or see a thing. A man’s family was his own business and Jerry respected that.

The office adjoined the house and had an external door. Kaydon walked along the verandah, which was shaded by drooping grape vines, with leaves beginning to colour gold and red. He tried to breathe evenly as he knocked on the office door.

‘Come in.’

Kaydon’s pulse clicked up a gear as he twisted the doorhandle slowly and pushed the door open. His dad started on him.

‘You totally humiliated your mother and me in front of our new partners last night!’

‘Dad, I didn’t mean to.’

‘I’ve got the property mortgaged to the hilt with this guy and you spend the evening insulting him and sneaking around with the builder’s daughter?’ He snatched up a pile of mauve fabric and threw it at Kaydon’s feet. ‘You’ve put the entire place at risk! And your friend Dan made things even worse with his stupid punch-up.’

Kaydon knew better than to argue.

‘I put a small amount of faith in you, hoping you’ll man up, and you totally blow it. You’re still a boy, Kaydon. A stupid, immature boy!’

Pat lifted his fist and Kaydon flinched, but the blow didn’t come. His father seemed satisfied with intimidating him. ‘No horses. No polocrosse. You’re to have nothing to do with Dan any more. You work on the farm for the rest of the holidays. And don’t you dare go anywhere near Glenvale or that girl.’

The door slammed as his father left the room.

Kaydon stepped outside, feeling shaken.

‘You need to show your old man that he’s wrong about you.’ The voice was kind: Jerry.

‘Leave me alone.’

‘You need to stand up to him. Demand his respect. It’s the only language he speaks.’

Kaydon turned away from him and made his way back towards the front door.

‘Pat!’ His mother’s voice sounded panicked as she ran into the home yard. ‘Marg just rang. Aaron rolled his car. It’s on fire!’

Kaydon’s father appeared in the doorway of the tractor shed. ‘Where is he?’

‘Glenn Road. Marg got him out, but he’s hurt. The fire’s spreading!’

Pat ran for the LandCruiser and pulled the door open.

‘There’s an ambulance coming,’ said Bron as she climbed in the other side.

Kaydon raced after her and pulled at the doorhandle. It was locked. ‘Dad!’ he yelled, banging his fist on the car window. ‘Dad! Open up! I want to come too!’

The car roared away from him, leaving him choking on a cloud of dust. It tore out of the driveway and headed for the road.

Kaydon could have cried. Could have burst into huge angry sobs and punched and kicked everything in his path. Instead, he ran along the verandah and let himself into the kitchen where he could listen on the two-way, hurriedly flicking the thing on and tuning it to a local frequency.

He heard Marg’s voice crackle through the speaker. ‘We’re about six Ks down the road, Bron.’ Click.

‘Is he conscious?’ Click.

‘Yeah, he’s awake, but he’s got burns. He’s not a happy camper.’

‘Where’s Stacey?’

‘She’s with him. She’s not hurt.’

His father’s voice boomed through the speaker, distorted by the airwaves. ‘How big is the fire, Marg?’

‘It’s covering a few hectares, Pat, headed straight for Glenvale.’

Glenvale. The place was one huge pile of kindling. There was no fire-fighting equipment out there, and bugger-all water in the tanks; nothing but sheds full of diesel, fields of dry grass and overgrown scrub, rambling and choking all the way up to the buildings. The place hadn’t been slashed or grazed for years.

He raced out of the kitchen, grabbed his woollen jacket off the pegs by the front door, leaped off the verandah and sprinted for the cattle yards, where the ute and the water tank were. Bugger not going to Glenvale.

The keys were still in the old ute. Kaydon took the pulley, hurriedly lowered the thousand-litre water tank onto the tray and hooked up the pump. It seemed to take forever to fill with water. Meanwhile he scanned the horizon for smoke. Rolling clouds of grey swirled above the ridge of small hills between Rockleigh and Glenvale.

While the tank filled, he started the engine and tuned in the two-way. ‘Dad, I got the tank on the ute. I’m going out to Glenvale.’ Click.

He waited, but the only sound was the pump churning and spluttering and the slosh of water into the tank.

‘Dad, do you copy?’

‘Hello?’ Click. It was a girl’s voice.

‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s Stacey.’

‘This is Kaydon. Is Aaron okay?’

‘The ambulance is here.’ She was bawling. It couldn’t be good.

‘How bad is he?’

Another voice came over the airwaves. ‘Kaydon, it’s Mum. Aaron has second-degree burns on his back and his arm. Stacey’s going in the ambulance with him. Your dad and I will follow behind. We’ll meet Bev and Maurie at the hospital.’

Kaydon muttered a few curses under his breath. ‘Is anyone else hurt?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, tell Dad I’ve got a water tank on the ute, I’m going out to Glenvale.’

‘Your father told you not to go out there. The fireys are on the way.’

Screw Dad. The fireys would take way too long to get there. Kaydon slammed the receiver back on the hook. The tank was full. He switched the pump off, jumped back in the driver’s seat and took off across the paddocks. At a side gate he let himself onto the road and sped towards Glenvale.

Holly’s big brother stood in the home yard, wearing nothing but a pair of workboots and a pair of quick-dry surf shorts. He heaved an old couch out into the yard and the muscles on his back and shoulders rippled with the effort. He was an ox. Not someone Kaydon had the inclination to argue with. On the ground near him were several bags and suitcases. They were packing up to leave.

‘Is Holly around?’ Kaydon asked, leaning one elbow out the window. He couldn’t remember this guy’s name.

‘What do you want from Holly?’ the brother said without looking at him. He reached for more bags on the front steps and carried them out to the pile.

‘Brandon, isn’t it?’ he said, suddenly remembering. ‘There’s a fire coming. Just wanted to check she was okay.’

‘What do you care?’

‘Be good to know where she is if there’s a fire coming.’ His eyes flicked up the hill. ‘They move pretty quick around here.’

Brandon dumped the bags and then he came closer.

‘My sister has had enough heartache in the past six months to last her a lifetime. My whole family has. We haul our lives out here to a building job that doesn’t exist and now we’re told to leave. Holly doesn’t need any more stuffing around. She doesn’t need you to go rescue her.’

He had a fair point. And if Kaydon hadn’t noticed an alarming red glow behind that nearby hillside, he probably would have stuck around and negotiated. ‘See that? Better be sure she isn’t anywhere near it,’ he said, shoving the ute into gear and revving the engine.

Brandon’s eyes followed his and reality must have registered, because he swore. Loudly. ‘Eva went chasing after Holly. Holly went looking for Jake.’ His eyes started frantically scanning the horizon.

‘So they’re all out there?’

‘Ah, yeah.’

‘Jump in,’ said Kaydon.

Brandon squeezed into the front of the ute and pointed up the hill. He smelled of coconut and pineapple. Kaydon tried not to grimace as he shoved the ute into low range.

At the top of the hill, he looked out over the valley and saw the fire racing across the flat country. It was still half a kilometre away, but it was moving fast.

Then his heart nearly stopped. Penny trotted across the hillside, whinnying frantically, with her reins dangling around her front feet. ‘Eva!’

He drove along an old fenceline, calling for the old mare. She pricked her ears and cantered towards the ute. The grass was nearly shoulder-height in some places and he prayed there were no barbed wire fences lurking beneath.

He hopped out and caught her. ‘Can you ride?’ he asked Brandon.

‘Not like Holly,’ he said. ‘But, yeah, kind of.’

‘I’ll go hose the fire, try and slow it down a bit. You jump on Penny and go look for your family.’

Brandon surprised him by vaulting onto the horse the way a jockey would. He cantered off across the hillside bare-chested, looking like Fabio. Kaydon shook his head and jumped back in the ute.

Kaydon set off across the vast, flat paddock, headed for the fire. With the pump chugging, he held the hose out the window as he drove, waving jets of water over the edge of the fire, putting out one patch and then racing to another further away. The tank was dry. He would have to get to the dam and refill before he could do any more. He launched the ute into a higher gear and lurched across the bumpy land towards the triangle dam.

That’s when he saw Eva in the branch of a tree waving madly. The tree was growing out of a mound of rocks, too rough for the ute to drive over. He stopped and got out.

‘The pigs chased me,’ Eva sobbed. ‘They had big tusks and they wanted to eat me!’

‘It’s okay, Eva. I got you,’ he called out, hopping over the rocks to the base of the tree. He looked up. The trunk was broad and the lowest branches were well off the ground. ‘How did you even get up there?’ he marvelled.

As he looked for a handhold, an angry grunting noise sent a rush of adrenaline through his veins. From the corner of his eye, he saw an enormous sow with a business-like set of tusks rushing towards him. ‘Holy pork chops!’ Kaydon leapt onto the trunk of the tree, clamping his arms and legs around it. The sow butted the base and dragged her tusks over it with an irate squeal. Above him, Eva screamed.

Kaydon shimmied up to the nearest branch, swearing and cursing the whole way up. Eva made room for him before clutching him tightly.

‘I just wanted to play with the babies,’ said Eva. ‘They were so little and cute. I was going to keep one as a pet.’

Kaydon looked down at the sow, which was still grunting angrily. ‘I don’t think she was okay with that.’ Then he saw two boars, attracted by the commotion, in the long grass. ‘Great, now how are we gonna get down from here?’

The ute was a good thirty metres away. Across the valley, Kaydon could see many more animals racing ahead of the fire. Kangaroos and scrub cattle all made their way up the hillside. A wild dog slunk through the grass and birds circled overhead, swooping down into the fire-front and coming back up with mice in their claws.

Then something caught the corner of his eye.

‘Holly!’ Eva yelled.

She was completely covered in mud. If it weren’t for her blonde plait flapping down her back as she ran, he wouldn’t have even recognised her. ‘Holly!’ He madly waved his arms.

‘Watch out for the pigs,’ Eva screamed.

Holly looked up. ‘Eva! What are you doing up there?’

‘The pigs!’ Kaydon yelled. He pointed. ‘Go to the ute!’

Holly stopped and cupped her ear. She gave them a puzzled look. Kaydon and Eva both made crazy pig gestures and Holly’s face twisted with confusion. Then she saw one and her eyes widened in horror. She bolted to the ute.