Birdbrain (20 page)

Jyrki is explaining his parrot theory, and in a flash I realize that it applies not only to the lighter and the bootlace — the only items he brings up — but to my wombat bottle and the pepperoni, too, and a wave of embarrassment washes over me. I should have realized. Ages ago.

On top of that, I feel a very strong and real sense of guilt now that he no longer suspects me of everything. I haven’t done any of those things, but I know that I
could
have done them, that I might even have
wanted
to do them, and it’s written all over my face.

And, after all, I did do one thing.

‘This boot was hardly made for walking.’

‘Let’s use one of the guy-lines. Get the penknife, cut off a bit long enough. I’m sure we can make do with twenty centimetres less of the stuff. We’ll get more of it somewhere.’

Jyrki shakes his head.

‘You know how much this tent cost?’

‘Haven’t you got any emergency spares?’

Jyrki’s expression almost floors me.

‘Yeah, they’re with the spare pot, the spare sleeping-bag and the spare tent.’

That’s right. Weight-hysterics again. All Jyrki’s equipment is fundamentally indestructible and impossible to lose. Even his bootlaces are nylon-strengthened Cabelas, and because the pair of laces was relatively new a spare pair would have been nothing but pointless dead weight to carry around.

Just then Jyrki’s face almost lights up as he remembers something, and he takes his hiking pole and starts pulling the duct tape from around the side. His expression freezes when he sees how little of it is left.

I’ve taped along the seam of my trousers, both inside and out, so that it’ll hold together, and way past the end of the tear, too, just in case, and some of the tape might have been wasted.

Jyrki doesn’t say anything but stares at the span of tape in his fingers.

‘Hey. The gauze. We’ve got plenty of it left, and if you twist it tightly enough, it’ll be strong as twine. That should hold it for a while . ..’

Jyrki doesn’t go for it, presumably because it’s my idea. Instead he limps onwards like a martyr in his unlaced boot.

‘This’ll have to do.'

We look at one another, our rucksacks packed and propped by our feet, a single rice cake in our stomachs. Another eight-hour leg ahead of us. I attempt a faint smile. It's not the end of the world except, it is. I’m so exhausted that I’d like to collapse right here. I want to melt, let my bones, and my muscles disolve into the Tasmanian earth and sink beneath the cracked dry surface into the heaving black muds below. It would be quiet there. It would be dark.

Jyrki looks at me expectantly, impatiently.

Conrad whispers in my ear again.

The wilderness had taken him, loved him, embraced him,got into his veins, consumed his flash
,
and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation

I haul the rucksack on to my back. I can’t understand how it’s suddenly become so heavy, seeing as we seem to have been losing everything and using things up. At the spots where the frame touches my body, it feels at once sore and rough, as though my skin were hard and callused yet still grazed raw. It’s neither of these things. I’ve checked.

Of course. We have to cross the deep, rocky section of Watershed Brook along a thin fallen tree trunk covered in slippery lichen.

I’ve got knots in my stomach, and my head is spinning as I stagger along the trunk, first tiptoeing then lurching forwards and almost falling against the branch providing something to hold on to.

I almost hope I fall into the brook. I do hope I fall into the brook. I hope I sprain my ankle and have to lie down for two days. I hope, while I’m lying there, that a line of little roast potatoes marches into my mouth.

Just as I get to the other side I hear a sound.

It’s far away, but it’s getting closer all the time. At first I think it’s an insect buzzing frantically near by, but the sound is regular and seems to be getting louder too steadily.

Before long the drone is ear-splitting.

A helicopter.

Its sound is oppressively loud, and the upper branches of the eucalyptus trees shimmer as it hovers close above us before speeding off once again up into the sky.

‘They operate tourist flights around here, too, then,’ Jyrki scoffs and dives from the banks of the brook into what appears to be a hillside covered with impenetrable scrub.

It’s cloudy, strangely and miserably cloudy, and the sky is dim and grey.

There’s a bum lying beside the wall. True to form, his mug’s blue and ruddy, straggly stubble growing in patches, and his clothes are shitty. He’s out like a light, The winter sun was presumably shining on that spot a while ago; he’s deided to sit down, and now drink and exhaustion have finally got the better of him.

Liquorice Fish glances at the rest of us. He sticks his hand in his pocket, takes out a handful
of coins and counts them.

That’ll do, he says. One of yous
,
go the Shell station and
f
ill a litre-and-a-half Coke bottle with petrol. If anyone asks, say Dad’s testing his outboard motor.

Ante gives a nervy laugh, Ante-style. A giggle-chuckle.

I get the neck tingles again, hollower
;
itchier than ever. A hot-cold sensation
w
ashes from my stomach up to my head.

Who’s going? asks Liquorice Fish. Yous two stay here and make sure he don’t go anywhere before we’ve had our fun and games.

Anyone got a lighter?

I’ve got one, I pipe up and take it out of my pocket. Small and smooth and orange.

Every now and then the sound of the helicopter fades into the distance, then comes closer again. At least the small aeroplanes going backwards and forwards to and from Melaleuca only went past once a day. The magnificent Bathurst lagoon and the landscape around here must be popular with flight tourists in Hobart, but that chopper’s continual coming and going doesn’t exactly put you in the mood for hiking.

It’s like being in Switzerland. It was there that I once saw a flying cow. It must have been a piece of prime livestock, as they’d gone to the trouble of flying it around from A to B, attached to a long harness dangling beneath the belly of a helicopter, right there in the middle of all that relatively untouched Alpine scenery. I thanked my lucky stars Daisy didn’t shit herself with fright just as they were flying overhead.

The path leads us deeper into a secluded tangle of little ditches and gullies. Annoyingly, the helicopter seems to be clacking constantly right above the covering of branches where we’re walking. I’d love to get a look at the damned thing and give those gawping tourists the finger, but we always seem to be stuck in the middle of the thickest scrub in the world every time the chattering of the blades comes closer.

I point out that even if we were James Bond and his curvaceous sidekick, no matter how we tried there could be no better way of hiding from people looking for us from the air.

She doesn’t even snigger.

I tell her about the flying cow, but even that doesn’t trigger any reaction.

My left boot is flopping around. The broken pole is more trouble than it’s worth going uphill. I’ve never been so infuriatingly slow. At last we reach the shoulder of the nameless hill next to Davey Sugarloaf.

All I can do is take a deep breath.

Gustave
Doré.
That’s what I said to Bill back in the Grampians.

As we dive out of the bush and on to the ridge,
Doré
hits us right in the retina.

The sky is a sickening greyish-red.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

The sun, which we weren’t able to see properly in the morning as it rose from the south-east, obscured from where we were camped, now looks like an angry, cinnabar brown eye; like a long-buried bronze coin in the middle of the swirling, heaving sky.

There’s no longer any doubt about the smell of smoke; it hangs in the air, thick and bitter, and the whole horizon is shrouded in grey and black, more sinister and oppressive than any storm clouds, and along the lower edge of the cloud mass radiates a dirty orange glow.

My heart curls up like a dying insect.

Shit,
says Jyrki, more to himself than to me.

He pulls the map out of his shorts pocket.

He starts bombarding me with short sharp observations like a stenographer stuck on high-speed. The wind is blowing from the north-west; between us and the fire there is a wide river, a billabong and a range of hills.

‘Let's go back to Watershed,’ I say as I recall the clammy dampness and shade of the campsite, the lichen and the deep, cool brook. With all its moss and mosquitoes the place seemed like God’s very own sponge; you just couldn’t set it on fire, not even if you doused it in petrol first.

Jyrki shakes his head.

I remember how much he hates retracing his own footsteps, but I don’t say anything.

‘Our best shot is to try and reach River Crossing,’ he says. ‘It’s a proper river, and according to the map it’s wide and deep. Watershed’s only a brook. You really don’t want to be back at Watershed when all those trees catch fire.’

I recall Bill’s stories from the Grampians, and I swallow and nod, although every step towards the red-grey horizon makes me cough.

And now ... What’s that?

It’s floating down from the sky. It’s got a friend.

Thousands of friends.

It’s raining light, white flakes of ash.

My legs, which only a few days ago were like bouncy springs, feel stiff and only move when I tell them to, as I stagger after Jyrki down towards the plateau;

It’s raining, she says. She sounds relieved.

It’s true; it is raining.

First came the ash. Now there's a very, very hesitant drizzle of water.

The isolated droplets are almost as heavy as hailstones. When they hit my rucksack, they leave little white stains. Ash-hearts.

Forest fires do this sometimes. So much heat rushes up into the atmosphere that moisture eventually collects around the particles of ash creating small, localized showers, a caricature of rain.

She might have been right in suggesting we go back to Watershed. But now that the fire’s so close, I know the winds will push the blaze a damn sight faster uphill than downhill. And we’re going downhill. Not much, but still.

I try to force my legs to move faster, but I’m like a cripple in these boots. Filling my lungs with air is starting to get a bit difficult.

It’s almost dark, although it’s only two o’clock. I’ve had to take my sunglasses off. The drizzling or, rather, the splashing of the rain didn’t last long. Jyrki didn’t seem to be especially happy about the rain, and he hasn’t mentioned the fact that it’s stopped.

I hurry along the path, out of breath, stiff, but so briskly that Jyrki is sometimes left behind until he, in an irritable imploring voice, points this out, and I realize what it must be like trekking without a bootlace. The boot must be nothing more than a burden, a hindrance, as though someone had tied a dead weight to his foot.

Thankfully the terrain is fairly flat for once, but in excruciatingly typical fashion the path to Old Port Davey Track is covered in thigh-height, overgrown scrub, and all the while I know with aching, exhausted clarity that we should stop and eat or drink something but that we can’t because there’s chaos and turmoil behind the hills, and the air is thick, so very thick, and I can’t even suggest having a break although I’m starting to feel faint.

This is how humans function. This is precisely how humans function. You know what lies behind the horizon, but you have to carry on in the same direction because that’s what you’ve been doing, that’s what you’ve decided, and changing direction or turning back would be a sign of giving in, of letting go of everything you’ve achieved so far.

You keep going, fast, although you know only too well what lies ahead.

First I feel the wind.

The wind is so strong that it makes my shorts flap erratically, and it’s hot as a dragon’s breath.

I stop. I can see the fear in her eyes.

I hear a low growl.

Then a sound, followed by a thick ragged crack that can’t be anything else but.. .

A eucalyptus tree bursting with the sheer profuseness of its sap.

I see the first flicker of flames from behind the hills.

She’s already dropped her guard once before. How can I protect her from the roaring, blistering wall of flames rising up behind the horizon?

For the first time I realize how important she’s become to me. That, and how and why I’ve brought her here, right into the heart of darkness.

Oh God, this is it.

The sound isn’t dissimilar from that of the tide. It’s surprisingly similar, in fact; growling, shoving the world out of its way, filling your eardrums with its terrifying roar. It’s a beast that’ll devour everything in its path.

It’ll close the sky. Just like that. You’ll see it happen right before your eyes. In a flash.

It’ll close the earth.

It’ll churn out a suffocating darkness and suck the oxygen from the air in heaving gulps.

It’s a world that was begging to be set alight.

And at that moment I catch sight of something I should never have seen.

The horror! The horror!

From the ridge, a herd of wallabies dashes towards me, hysterical mothers with joeys in their pouches. I catch sight of their little ears as they flash past, and in the chaotic hurricane of life forms I see a wombat galloping clumsily onwards. The wombat, the animal I’ve never seen save for its charming poo and that I’ve always wanted to see in the wild — No! We weren’t supposed to meet like this — it hurtles past me, almost toppling me, big and stocky, and with claws that could easily kill a large dog ...

A thud. Another.

Birds are falling from the sky like enormous, dark hailstones.

Now I can see the flames.

All my limbs lose their ability to move. I stare up at the ridge as though a taut, painful thread were running from my eyes and holding my gaze fast.

Still holding the map, Jyrki tears the rucksack from my back, throws it to the ground, pushes me off the path and shouts, ‘Run, run!’ But bloody hell —
he’s
still carrying his own rucksack. And my stiff log-legs stagger onwards, we’re running, and I keep tripping over tussocks and brushwood, and somewhere behind us a dizzying, crackling wall is coming closer, so close that I can already feel the heat, and with every hysterical hiccupping breath I haul my lungs full of something hot and stinging and —

I feel a sharp shove in my back, my feet leave the ground and my mouth is suddenly full of mud. I’m lying in a tiny narrow brook so shallow that my stomach barely gets wet. I can just feel my clothes soaking up the pathetic dribble of water at the bottom, of the brook when an eighty-kilo weight lands on my back. Eighty kilos and a rucksack, walloping the air from my lungs. Again the taste of mud; the Tasmanian spring water sluices against my chin and the sudden change in temperature makes my teeth wince.

‘Jyrki.’

‘Try and breath just above the surface of the water. Take a piece of cloth, soak it. The fumes’ll be around us any minute.’

‘Jyrki, get into the water!’

‘Too shallow. The rucksack’ll protect me.’

Jyrki presses me down towards the bottom of the brook; save for my back, my clothes are already heavy with the water, and Jyrki’s arms refuse to do anything but force me further towards the protecting dampness.

‘Jyrki, I’m —’

‘Shh!’

Shh what? I think in spite of it all. Can’t I say before we die that nobody else would ever have thrown themselves on top of me to protect me with the only body they’ll ever own? And just then I hear what he must have heard above the roar, and a moment later the weight is lifted from my back, arbitrarily bruising the small of my back and the insides of my knees as it rises, and for half a second I raise my eyes from the mud.

Jyrki is standing behind me, a frantic silhouette, the wall of fire a couple of hundred metres off, coughing and waving his long, lanky arms in the air.

Now I too hear the rattling of the helicopter.

The helicopter.

The registration book.

We wrote down our names and our route back in Melaleuca.

I have to hold my head down, because the fumes are already so thick, and suddenly I feel a rush of air, someone hauling me upwards, and now I realize, finally, that this is it.