Anchor Point (8 page)

‘Stuff's on special this week,' she would say, distressed by the knowledge that what she was contributing wasn't nearly enough. She watched Bruce pocket the cash, shrugging off his thanks.

‘You're good at this, love,' he said fondly, once. ‘Saving us a packet.'

Laura wondered idly where Kath got the funds. She'd never had money before. Had she? But Laura didn't really care. Her anger, once localised, had spread. There wasn't much she didn't blame Kath for – the money, one more unjust thing. It was only when Vik and Bruce were sleeping that Laura worked the bundle of cash from its shoebox beneath her bed. She held it, heavy as a strap across her palm. Chilled by darkness, Laura allowed herself to experience the full measure of her sorrow.

Finally, the money too stopped coming. Laura was unprepared for the surge of new grief that washed over her as the months went by without contact. Eventually the grief hardened into more anger, sharpening, and Laura was glad. Bills continued to arrive, shoes needed replacing, there was always something to buy for the farm. To watch Kath's money diminishing, though she couldn't freely spend what she wanted; she needed the anger to endure it.

More months passed. The palms of Laura's hands, like the surface of the land, were changing. Blisters rose like pearls of water, breaking, bleeding, running dry. Then the skin hardened – so much so that it started cracking as the weather grew cold. Blood and then pus marked the fissures in the tissue along the lifeline and along the one for love. The cracks took ages to heal, but she couldn't very well not use her hands. Fixing the ute's engine, covered in grease, head pounding through the fumes, she thought her skin might come right off.

‘If a lamb dies,' Bruce said in winter, ‘and its mother has bonded with it, she will keep looking for it. She'll just wander around and around and around, calling its name.'

They were walking the back paddock, newly populated with sheep. Laura exhaled. It was dusk. She had made rabbit stew that morning, could just about taste the gravy, thick with onion and parsley. Their kitchen, fragrant with steam.

Bruce was saying, ‘The sheep won't always know her lamb is dead. Her teats don't know either. They'll just keep filling up with milk, fat as bagpipes. Lor?'

‘Yes, Dad.' She sighed. ‘Listening.'

He gave her a long stare. They walked. Laura could feel the cold coming up through the soles of her boots. Storm clouds were blooming. The air was alive with moisture.

‘On the other hand,' Bruce went on, ‘if a sheep dies, her lamb is going to starve. Reckon it's bad news, either way.'

Laura felt a pain, like a stitch in her chest.

Bruce touched her cheek, something between a stroke and a pinch. ‘You'll be fine, love.' He clapped her on the shoulder. ‘You'll see.'

Most of the sheep were up on the exposed hillside, grazing in groups. There were a few lone animals, standing grey and solitary against the green of the downhill slope. Bruce carried the rifle slung across his back. Laura could hear bullets clinking like marbles in the pocket of his coat.

‘Lambs should be born face and legs first,' Bruce said. ‘See a tail coming out? You have to do something.'

Laura understood it then. These dumb animals – hundreds and hundreds of them – with their too-soft bodies, their heartbroken cries and blank little eyes, were relying on them, on her, for survival.

It had been the plan all along, of course. They had worked so hard to bring them into being: all those trees felled; hours spent stretching wire. But now that the animals were there, alive and bleating, it seemed a rash thing to have done.

‘Listen to me,' Bruce said. ‘You see a lamb in trouble, one leg coming out on its own, say, you can push it back in, rearrange it. Or you can try pulling that lamb out. But that's risky.' He worked his fingers under the collar of his coat. ‘Thing is, it's better to save one than have them both, you know, die.'

The first fat drops of rain fell as they crested the hill.

‘Uh oh. Here's another problem,' Bruce said. He turned to her. His eyes were full of rain. ‘Another thing to remember: a sheep'll lie down to have her lamb. But that rain's gonna soak into her wool, see. It'll get heavy. So heavy she might not be able to get back up.'

‘Couldn't we stand her up?'

‘Maybe,' Bruce said carefully. ‘But usually, a sheep goes down, she stays down. Crows'll peck out her eyes, and tongue.'

Laura flinched.

Bruce sighed. ‘While she's still alive.'

The sky was cobalt, and deepening. The gully ran between steep hills. Within it eucalypts still clung to the slope that rushed towards the creek. Ferns unfurled their lacy fingers in the gully; beneath them, the umbrellas of a thousand mushrooms grew in the rich, damp soil. ‘Shit,' Bruce said. He bolted, sliding in mud.

Laura tried to keep up, fell over. Her knees went into the wet earth. She pulled off her soaking gloves and shoved them in her pocket, fingers raw and pink. Bruce crouched down at water's edge. Laura's heart thundered, pounding up her throat. She skidded down the embankment. Rain fell, reverberating up from the ground through her feet.

It was a sheep. Laura drew a claggy breath. Bruce knelt at one end of the animal, where there were too many legs.

‘Hold this.' He pulled the rifle from his back. Laura took it in her arms.

His hand went into the animal easily. He bared his teeth. Icy water gushed over banks. Laura felt the cold soaking through her coat. Her teeth knocked together. The sheep was now entirely motionless but for her breath, coming hard and fast, wheezing underneath all that wool.

‘There's a torch in my pocket,' Bruce said. ‘Shine it here.'

Steam was rising from the place where the lamb's head emerged. Lightning spat across the valley. A group of kangaroos thumped through the trees, grey apparitions in a fine mist. Bruce squinted against the wash of water on his face. At last, the lamb slipped out trailing a purple rope. Bruce wiped a hand across its nose. The sheep was still, head pressed into the sodden ground. Streams of water ran across her face. Without the body of the lamb inside, she looked hollowed out. In contrast, the lamb was very much alive. It struggled, bleating.

Bruce said, ‘Hold him.'

Laura tasted eucalypt in the rain that rolled into her mouth. She put the rifle and Maglite on the ground and took the warm body, slippery with blood and mustard mucus, heavier than she expected. The lamb let out a cry, a small declaration of its presence in the world.

‘It's okay,' Laura whispered.

Bruce cut the purple cord with the knife he used on pumpkins. He removed his coat to wrap the lamb. Laura felt strangely incomplete without the animal in her arms. They trudged back up the hill, feeling their way to the top. How large a place looks when pitted against the small wedge of light from a torch.

Soon Laura was carrying a second, smaller lamb, pressed against her chest. The body of its mother was also left where it lay.

‘Bury them tomorrow,' Bruce said. ‘Get these babies home.'

Laura's lamb was wet, shivering. Between the legs of its dead mother had glistened something pink.

‘Her uterus. Happens sometimes,' Bruce said.

Laura couldn't bear the cracks in his voice, the dripping rain, the awful mewing of the lamb. She didn't know what Bruce meant by ‘uterus', and was glad.

They found a third lamb, alone and not long dead.

Laura cried out, ‘Where's his mother, Dad? Where's his mum?'

Ugliness ripped across Bruce's face, but he pointed across the paddock to where a small flock were huddled. Sheep seemed so sweet with their satiny muzzles and soft white wool, but the cruelty of the ewe, obliviously grazing while her lamb lay dead, was too much.

Laura shook. She did not drop her lamb as the ground rose up to catch her. It was too far to the house; her load was too heavy. Bruce stalked over. She looked into his face, blinking away rain. The membrane grown over the wound left by Kath was too thin. It would tear.

‘Get up, Lor.' Bruce would have pulled her, except he couldn't. Laura cowered against his yanking words. ‘Love, I know you're tired. Wet and cold. I know you're … sad.' He adjusted the lamb in his arms. ‘But if we don't get these lambs home, they'll die too. That's worse than anything you feel now.' When she didn't move, he started shouting, ‘For God's sake, get up, will you?'

Laura struggled to her feet. What else was there to do but put one foot in front of the other, to put more space between them and the dead mothers, the big, rain-soaked paddocks? Bruce carried the dead lamb draped around his neck; Laura shuddered at the way its head hung down against his shoulder, knocking there as he walked. By the time they reached the house her thighs were chafed raw, and her little lamb was quiet.

Vik sat between Laura's legs in the bath. They did not usually bathe together in this way – in the position of racing canoeists, front against back. But that night, as Laura had drawn Vik's bath, teeth chattering, she'd felt some need for closeness. Vik seemed to be enjoying herself, happy in the corral made by Laura's skinny legs. She allowed Laura to soap her spine, to wash the conditioner from her hair.

‘Why'd you bring the dead one?'

Laura pushed Vik's head forward, ran the comb through. ‘I dunno.'

‘You
do
.'

Laura lay a cheek against Vik's back. ‘You hungry?'

‘Lor!'

Laura's tears, dammed by nothing more than exhaustion, welled and rolled fresh. She shifted her sister's hair over one shoulder so she could scrub between shoulderblades. ‘Well, we'll skin him.'

‘What?'

‘Dad said sheep will only feed their own babies.' Laura paused to steady her voice. ‘If that baby dies they don't have any lamb to feed, do they? But we've got two babies who have no mums. We'll put the dead lamb's skin on one of our lambs.'

‘But why?' Vik whispered hoarsely.

‘'Cause then our lamb will smell like the dead lamb, and the dead lamb's mother will think it's her baby, and she'll feed it.'

Vik pushed the rubber ducky under. ‘But, it's a lie!'

Laura stood up, lifting Vik out. She pulled the plug, watching the bathwater spiral away, tinged pink. With what?

‘You're bleeding,' Vik said quietly, standing on the bathmat, shivering. Laura looked down blankly at the rivulet of blood painting her inner thigh.

When she finally emerged from the bathroom wearing thick winter pyjamas, a wad of toilet paper pressed awkwardly between her legs, she found that a corner of the kitchen had been penned off. The lambs lay together, curled in straw. Vik crouched beside them, stroking their heads. Bruce sat drinking tea,
Trading Post
spread. He looked up as Laura came into the room, smiled.

‘Lots of trees down in the gully tonight,' he said. ‘Should save us a bit of work.' He rattled the paper, smoothing down the page. Laura couldn't tell from his tone if Vik had blabbed or not. She understood what had happened to her, knew vaguely what it meant: something about babies. Her teacher had told the girls in class to ask their mothers – it happened to them too.

Laura pulled out a chair and fell into it. Crossed her legs. She couldn't have stopped the tears if she wanted to. They rolled down silently. How exhausted she was. The lambs, the dishes, her father's plans. Even the warmth of the room, the tender way Vik touched the velvet ear of the sleeping animal, made her heart feel as though it were breaking. Blood was soaking through the toilet paper, her clothes. More washing. She longed for someone to put their arms around her, to take the weight of her head.

Bruce eyed her wet face, pushed the teapot towards her. ‘Fresh brewed, love,' he said. They sat in silence for a moment before he jerked his chin at the storm. ‘We'll get a bloody good bonfire out of this, if nothing else.'

Bushfire was spreading south
towards Kyree thanks to a man, a rabbit, an overfed ferret. The mean little animal, meant to force the rabbits out, ate them in the burrow and went to sleep instead. A fire was lit. It smoked the ferret out, alright.

‘No thought for conditions!' Bruce lamented, scratching the newly grey hair at his nape. ‘What was the bloke thinking? The turkey.'

It was dim outside, the sky silt-brown, thick with dust and smoke. Heat rose from the earth in waves.

‘We've gotta get ready,' Bruce went on, eyeing them over the rim of his morning brew. Vik turned a page in her Year Twelve maths book, tucked back her waist-length hair. Geometry, she had told Laura primly, was a Greek word that meant
earth measure
.

Bruce said, ‘Fire's through Braymead.'

Vik made a neat annotation in the margin of the text. A triangle made of sums. ‘I'm missing school – you'd better write me a note or something at least, Lor.'

Laura snorted. ‘Whole bloody district's on high alert, dickhead.
Teachers
won't even be there today.'

Vik straightened. She made a show of suppressing a weary sigh, rolling shoulders. ‘Don't be crude.'

‘Girls!' Bruce said. ‘Lay off, for Pete's sake.'

Laura pushed back from the table, rattling plates. She muttered, ‘Wanker,' in Vik's direction because it felt good, sometimes, to pretend that they were normal sisters. Truth was, Laura didn't know what she was to Vik, could tell Vik didn't know either. What with all the curfews she'd enforced, the meals she'd cooked, homework supervised, Laura sometimes felt decades older, another generation. Other times, when Vik said something particularly insightful – she was good at impersonations, did a great one of Bruce – Laura would find herself roaring with laughter on Vik's bed, literally almost pissing her pants. A part of her would see the way they looked then, as though from a distance. Two young women, laughing themselves sick.

Bruce turned to peer out the window. Grey clouds amassed, dark as wet concrete, smoke from trees and homes. He drummed fingernails. In the top paddock, a group of sheep clustered together, huddled in the shade of a lone sugar gum. Laura fought the sudden impulse to touch Bruce's forearm, to take away the heavy things he carried on his back. She fitted the bucket in the sink and dropped the breakfast dishes in. Bruce nodded approvingly.

When she was dressed, the kitchen clean and breakfast cleared away, Laura carried the cold dishwater outside. The air was hot as buggery. For a moment she thought that it was raining – then she realised it was raining ash. Vik was lounging on the verandah, cradling a book. Laura was forced to lurch over her sister's bare brown legs, the bucket on her hip like a child. Vik didn't look up. Bruce came around the side of the house with the hose. He appraised Laura with a small smile, then frowned at Vik. ‘You dressed?'

Vik dragged her eyes from the page to observe her midriff top and cut-off jeans. She pushed her glasses up her nose, sniffing. Laura tried valiantly to concentrate on the work at hand, pouring precious water onto plants.

‘What's it look like?' Vik said.

‘Pity's sake!' Laura couldn't help herself. ‘Grow up, Vik.' She heard how her voice was aged by exasperation. Exhausted mothers used that same tone down the Kyree shops all the time. She hated the sound of it in her mouth.

Vik's face flushed. She got to her feet, muttering about nags.

‘Three hundred houses, love,' Bruce cut in evenly. ‘Gone.' He pointedly worked the hose. Laura turned away. It hurt too much to see his lined face.

Vik snapped her book shut. ‘Fine.'

‘The goggles are …'

‘I
know
, Dad. We've only been over it ten thousand times.'

‘Wear your boots.'

Laura focused hard on the oily greywater. Teenagers. The screen door whacked shut, vibrating the house. Alone in the blistering yard, Laura and Bruce shared a look.

The fire never arrived.

‘Ripper!' Bruce shouted, raising a fist in salute when the CFA wailed past.

But the next day dawned hotter. Laura was up early and went out into the dark in bare feet. At first the sunrise was a line of flame on the horizon, light of red-hot embers. The birds were mostly quiet, smothered by oppressive heat; what magpie song there was came to Laura as though through water, muffled.

Bruce was still asleep, so Laura sat down on the front step and lit a smoke, inhaling deeply and often, trying to get the job done. She stared out over the rough fire line Bruce had ploughed the day before in the paddock beyond the house. A bushfire through grass would still ‘go like the clappers', even without trees to burn, he'd said. Laura wanted to believe that the line, a wound in the earth, would prevent the flames from coming too close. But she knew that in order to work, the line had to be connected to a safe place, an anchor point, somewhere fireproof. An escape.

Laura looked around, taking in the crackling paddocks, rolling as far as the eye could see. Did such a place exist? She had a bad feeling. It was in the too-still air; in the acridity flattening the hairs of her nose; in her muscles, humming with tension. When she tasted the filter she ground out the smoke and, standing, shook herself off. There wasn't time to luxuriate in funny feelings – to worry. The toilet was flushing; Bruce was stirring. The day was about to begin.

They celebrated their luck over breakfast. As she whisked pancake batter, half listening to Vik's inane chatter into the phone – one of her boring high-school friends – Laura did not dismiss the misfortune of those who would soon be picking through rubble. She knew the difference between a home and a smoldering foundation, and took neither lightly. But like everyone in Kyree who had been threatened and escaped, Laura was not above gratitude of a base kind that made her hands tremble on the wooden spoon. Thinking of it – of the kitchen, of their sheep and chooks, of every dish and tool and blade of grass that made up her entire world:
You might have been destroyed
.

In a dark corner of her mind was another thought, one she pushed down even as it surfaced. That having the lot go up might be good. She savoured a thrilling little twinge of relief as she imagined the house razed – the terrible freedom it would bring. It was the same feeling she sometimes got when she climbed up on the roof to clean gutters, overcome with the sense that she might suddenly, unexpectedly, jump.

But Bruce came into the kitchen, whistling. He paused at the big window and stood rocking on his heels, looking out over paddocks flecked with sheep. Laura saw the way his shoulders eased. The smile on his face, so content. She knew he would never walk away from the place.

Wind picked up around lunchtime, gusting brown across the valley, made visible in dust. An hour later they heard the Kyree fire trucks hurtle past, howling.

‘Spot fires, I expect,' Bruce said. ‘Understandable in this bloody weather. They'll put them out soon enough.'

He tried to smile, but Laura knew him. Year after year working so closely together, they each read the scent of the other's emotions like dogs.

‘Sure, Dad,' she said. ‘Might go and have a stickybeak, though. See if Joe wants to come.'

‘Was wonderin' when he'd be back. Seems those unis have more holidays than we've had hot dinners!'

She reached up to brush dirt from the collar of Bruce's work shirt. He surprised her by clapping his hand over hers. She knew what he hoped. That one day soon he would get some good news.

Laura could just about picture the scene as he dreamed it: her and Joseph, side-by-side on the couch, scrubbed and stiff in their best clothes. The ring would be plain but solid, like her. Joseph would rest his palm on her knee. Beer would be poured into glasses for the toasts since it was, after all, a special occasion. Then one day, if Bruce was lucky, there would be grandchildren, golden-skinned. Laura had tried to tell him it wasn't like that between her and Joseph. They were just close friends, she said. But the way Joseph looked at her sometimes undermined the conviction of her words. It made her uncomfortable to acknowledge it, so she didn't. The two of them had certainly never discussed what he felt. Instead, Joseph's feelings fizzed in the space between their two bodies; an invisible force, like static.

‘Joseph and Laura, sitting in a tree!' Vik had crowed just once, before Laura's knuckles shut her up. ‘K-I-S-S-I-N-G!'

Laura left Bruce to service the tractor on his own and took the ute to check out the fire. She drove down to the postboxes and pulled over to wait for Joseph, radio up, hanging out the window, cigarette dangling. The wind carried the smell of destruction, soot-heavy, acrid. The sky hung low, yellowed by heat and smoke. She heard Joseph before she saw him, his trail bike groaning as it worked against the wind.

‘Hey, loser!' she called.

‘Hey, dickwad,' Joseph said, wheeling his bike onto the verge, letting it drop onto its side, pocketing the keys. He swung himself up into the cab of the ute. Laura admired the play of light across his lovely burnished skin. He pinched the ciggie from her fingers and took a drag, as if it had been a matter of hours, rather than months, since they'd last seen each other.

To some extent his life had always been separate from hers. She'd been to his house in Kyree just a handful of times in all the years that they'd been friends. She found it overwhelming, filled to bursting with people she knew only vaguely, seen around town. Did they all live there? Hard to tell. How so many people could get by in one tiny unit was hard to conceive. There was always something on the stove, the reek of hot oil. Men spilled out onto the verandah with beers and smokes. Women with kids in their laps called to one another from room to room without getting up. Laughter, tears, swearing, smoke. Kids tumbled around barefoot, carrying slingshots and knives, and no one seemed to care. A fire was always burning in the yard.

Joseph's family had a way that seemed loose and loud, somehow fun compared to the tense little family Laura held together with sponge and broom. But Joseph practically lived at the farm some summers. He seemed to enjoy the space, the quiet, time alone with Laura. Other people just didn't fit into the tight little world they inhabited. Their friendship was a closely private thing, exclusive, sustained by what they could build between them, truly coming alive only when they were alone together in this place, on the farm.

Joseph rarely talked about his life at the city university. But then, they'd never sat around gasbagging; they'd always done things: yabbying, fishing, climbing trees. Later they rode dirt bikes, built forts. When Laura left school early they'd met on weekends to drink Donald's beer on the banks of the creek. The last few years, whenever Joseph came back, they went on long walks with the rifles, shooting more rabbits than they could eat.

‘Bad day,' Joseph said as they drove towards Bindara.

Laura nodded, grimly gripping the wheel, weight of the wind shifting the ute on the road.

They had only gone a short distance when Joseph shouted, ‘Holy shit!'

Laura looked where he pointed. A line of crimson flame was rising over the crest of a distant hill. Burning storeys high, licking the sky, starving. More than spot fires, the land was alight. She slammed the brakes. Crunching through gears, she turned the ute around. The fire inhaled, breathing forward.

‘How long?' Laura said. Her teeth were chattering with adrenaline. Vik's face filled her mind.

‘An hour, maybe?' Joseph sounded uncertain.

The ute was flying, dragging a cape of dust. Laura felt every bump of the corrugated road in her jaw. She took the corner without slowing, careening onto the verge. A postbox exploded with a clap. Joseph held himself in his seat, both hands on the dash. Hunched over the wheel, Laura sensed the immense heat at their backs.

Joseph was out of the ute before Laura pulled on the brake. He hit the ground running, sprinting towards the house, shouting, ‘Fire's coming!'

Laura swung the ute around and parked, aiming back down the drive. A small concession. When she stepped from the cab her legs buckled, but despite her slamming heart and the sweat in her eyes, every element of the yard slowly came into focus, painfully sharp.

A hundred metres away, Bruce was walking out of the shed when he caught sight of Joseph. He lifted a hand in greeting and left it there, half cocked, as Joseph screamed across the yard. Laura watched the message register on Bruce's face, spanner spiralling to the ground.

Dark clouds continued to advance towards the house. Soot-black, broiling. Silence fell over crisp paddocks. Bruce raced across them, opening gates for the sheep. Laura knew that when the front came through they wouldn't be able to protect the animals. The sheep would just have to work it out for themselves. Smoke hung across the paddocks like fog. Panicked, the sheep were crying.

‘Power's out!' Vik called, white-faced, filling buckets at the gravity-fed tank.

Laura swore. That was it. The pump was useless. Hoses dry. She berated herself. Why hadn't she just coughed up for a generator?

‘Keep going,' she said, unable to resist giving instruction, though Vik was working hard enough to sweat.

Joseph took the beanie and goggles she shoved into his hands. Living in town, his family wouldn't be under the same kind of threat, and Laura didn't need to ask if he was staying. He was already going for the ladder leaning up against the shed. ‘Gutters!' he shouted over his shoulder.

Laura didn't wait to hear if he had more to say. Burning sticks and leaves, blazing rain, began hailing down. All over the yard, small fires ignited. She looked wildly from Vik – wrapped in wool, holding a small plastic bucket – to Bruce, legs spread, squared-up to the flame. Laura grabbed one of the hessian sacks they'd set to soaking. Coughing, she thwacked it down.