in front of the ear. He went off – screaming, spittle showering my face, his fist landed in the hollow of my stomach. He’d had more practice then I had. I’d only been in a fight once before, in year five with Jason Esbit and it had involved mainly inaccurate kicking. I wasn’t expecting my next fight to be with Mr White from number seventeen.
‘We don’t have your firewood!’ yelled Max. All this was happening to the soundtrack of Zadie’s high-pitched wail, like a siren or a very urgent ice-cream van. I yelled and pushed my hands into Mr White’s face, not a classic fighting move, but effective. Hell, if I’d had a handbag I would have hit him over the head with it. He slapped my hands away from his face.
‘We’re burning furniture,’ Max yelled. ‘Not your wood.’
Mr White’s head snapped to the fireplace.
‘It’s the chairs from outside. Not your bloody wood.’
He dropped his hands to his knees, leaning forward. His back heaved with his breathing. Max picked up Zadie. Mr White straightened up. He looked back and forth between us, jaw rigid.
‘It’s the chairs from outside. We didn’t nick your wood,’ I repeated quietly.
He didn’t say anything, just turned and walked out the back door, the way he had come in.
Fifteen
Zadie grew quiet. In the afternoon she vomited all over the Transformers doona.
Another day passed. Max sat next to Zadie and read her books.
Water was okay but our supply of food was getting low.
I had never seen such stillness. There was not even the movement of shadow as the day passed. There were no shadows. I wondered where the birds had gone. I wondered if they were dead from the cold. Where do birds go to die? Do they drop from the sky while they are flying – their hearts stopping dead like my gran’s when she was at church, halfway up the aisle to get communion?
Now there is movement, lots of it. Mainly the movement of my head, my cheek slamming into the brickwork. I imagine how the scene would look from behind us, I see the arch of the torchlight up the brick walls. I see the white pressure marks from his fingers in my neck. There is spittle in my ear and I have had no practise at fighting since last time. I’m not really doing a whole lot of fighting anyway, you don’t, when there’s a gun pressed into your skull. And now things seem to slow down. I feel a creeping warmth up the back of my neck. A comfortable warmth nestling in the base of my skull. I close my eyes.
Sixteen
Two cans of tomato soup, a handful of sultanas and a cup of rice left. Two and a half litres of water though. That was a plus.
Still no Mick.
Zadie vomited again, twice. She was quiet and slept a lot. We fed her soup from a teaspoon and did not talk about what was happening to her.
Mum had said not to go into the city, but I couldn’t imagine that everyone there had been left for as long as us without more rations. The thought that we might have been abandoned was beginning to follow me around and I couldn’t shake it. If Mum was still there she would have a plan. Leaving would mean letting go of the hope that Dad would come back for us.
If we were to go we would need a car. Either way we would need more food.
I decided to go for a walk, see if I could track down more food. I wasn’t naive enough to believe that someone would just hand food over without anything in exchange. My eyes roamed the living room for something I could trade. They landed on Dad’s liquor cabinet. I selected three bottles of whisky and placed them carefully in a plastic grocery bag.
When I finally prepared to go, as I looked at Max and told him that I would be back, I thought about what the air would feel like outside on the street, what the space would feel like. I remembered going on holidays to the Great Barrier Reef, riding out on the clear sea in a boat with Mum and Dad and Max. My diving mask fogging up again and again as we waited to plunge into the blue. (‘Don’t breathe through your nose, matey,’ Dad had to keep reminding me.) The expectation of it was an ache in my stomach. The space, above and below. It was freeing, that endless space. But at the same time intensely threatening, like the grey that seemed to now stretch on forever.
The asphalt was smothered in snow, unbroken by footprints or tyre tracks. I kept to the side of the road where there was grass beneath the snow – better traction. I didn’t want my palms skinned by the ice if I lost my footing. My feet sunk into the grey. I climbed the hill and felt like I was climbing into the sky.
When I reached the bus stop at the top of the hill I stopped. The cold was brutal, sharp in my lungs. I started to cry. I let myself because I couldn’t cry in front of Max. I cried for the year sevens that scrambled to get on the bus. I cried for Lucy and my school and Lokey and Mr Effrez. I had never felt the merciless roll of time like I did then. The pull of it, always in one direction. No going back. I wanted to fall onto my knees and howl but I knew that I would do that and then I’d stand up again and I’d have to keep going and nothing would be any different. But I did let myself cry. I didn’t bother to wipe the tears away, I let them go. I imagined that the moment they hit the cold ground, their warmth would melt the snow for just a fraction of a second before they became part of it.
I looked up the road toward the highway, the route my bus used to take to school, the way out. The red bricks of some of the houses stood out stubbornly against the cover of grey. I made my way past Starvos’ shop. Posters advertising Cornettos and Pura milk and a scratch and match Coca-Cola competition popped colour. Above the shop the blinds were drawn across the windows of Starvos’ flat.
There was no plan. I didn’t know where I was going, I guess I thought I’d just keep walking until I saw somebody else, someone who might give me some food. I trudged, eyes searching the blank facade of each house. And then I saw it, further up the street. Someone closing the roller door of their garage. Walking up their path, opening the front door.
‘Wait!’ I ran toward the house. ‘Wait!’
Of course they heard me. There was no other sound. The figure looked over his shoulder. I jogged toward him, up the driveway.
It was Arnold Wong.
I stopped. ‘Hey,’ I said quietly.
Arnold Wong didn’t say anything. He looked at me. In his left hand was one of those green enviro bags. Whatever was in it looked heavy.
‘Um, I’m Fin,’ I said slowly.
‘I know who you are.’
‘Okay, cool, it’s just I wasn’t sure if… okay.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Can I talk to you for a second?’
The look on his face served to highlight the fact that I was already talking to him whether he liked it or not.
‘I live just down the street, round the corner, down the hill, Bellbird… um, look, do you know where I can find some food? We’re out. It’s just my brother and me. And our neighbour’s little girl.’
He looked at me, expressionless. ‘Come inside,’ he said. He went through the front door and left it open behind him. I took off my shoes and went inside.
The warmth met me as soon as I entered the hall. There was a living room on the right. It had thick brown
