The Sky So Heavy

choice.

I went back inside and slugged the axe into the dining suite; splinters scattered across the sisal carpet. It took a long time. I didn’t have the strength to finish the job, I would have to come back and do the rest. I loaded the wood into the boot along with the coffee table – our last remaining piece of wooden furniture. Shame I couldn’t burn the plasma and the iPod dock and our computers. They were of no use to us. Maybe they could be brewed into a fine soup with lots of salt if things got desperate. If things got desperate. Ha.

Max was beginning to rally. There was colour in his face again. I gathered up our bedding and stuffed it into garbage bags. I could hear my mum telling me that I’d fit more in the bags if I folded the blankets.

‘Where are we going?’ Max asked.

‘Up the road. Arnold’s place.’

‘Who’s Arnold?’

‘Guy from school. He has food. It makes more sense for us to band together.’

I picked up the last doona. Beneath it was Pooh and Tigger Fly Kites. Max and I stared at the book.

‘Do you think she’s okay?’ Max whispered.

‘I don’t know.’ I took the bag out to the car, then came back for Max. I wanted him to lean on me as we went to the car but he wouldn’t.

Just like the handbook said, I made sure my passenger and I were both wearing our seatbelts. Then I checked and adjusted my seat position and mirrors. The view out the back window was pretty much obscured by the coffee table. There was nothing I could do about this so I carried on. I started the ignition, put my foot on the brake and put the car into drive. As I let the handbrake off and eased my foot off the brake, I turned the wheel toward the nature strip on the left-hand side of the road and the car crept forward. We hit the lip of the guttering and I pressed the accelerator a fraction, the car let out a high-pitched whine of protest and the back tyres spun on the ice. I tried again and the car nosed up the kerb and onto the nature strip. I drove it gently forward and straightened the wheel so we were parallel with the road. I began driving up the hill slowly. We made it about fifteen metres until the back tyres began to skid again and we started to slide backward ever so slightly.

‘Shit, shit, shit.’ I smacked the wheel. ‘C’mon, c’mon.’ The car whined its refusal. Why did Mum and Dad have to pick a house at the bottom of a bloody hill? Why? I pressed the accelerator again. And backward we went. I put on the handbrake and turned to Max. ‘Okay, you’re going to have to drive. I’ll push.’ His eyes bulged. I got out of the car.

‘I’ll talk you through it, yeah?’

Max got in the driver’s seat. ‘Which one’s the accelerator?’

‘The one on the right. Put your seatbelt on.’

I went to the back of the car and braced myself against it with my full body weight.

‘Okay, put your foot on the brake, on the left, put it into drive, take the handbrake off and gently press the accelerator as you take your foot off the brake.’

The car whined and the tyres flung snow into the air. I pushed and pushed with everything I had, which admittedly wasn’t all that much. It wasn’t working. All I was doing was preventing the car from sliding backward and even that was questionable.

‘Okay, okay, stop. Put the handbrake on.’ I turned and leaned on the back of the car taking a minute to get my breath.

‘Okay new plan.’ I opened the driver’s door. Max got out and went back to the passenger seat. I got in and reversed the car onto the road again, so it was pointing down the hill.

‘Ready?’

‘Hell yes.’

I took the handbrake off and floored it. We sped down the hill and the end of the cul-de-sac came rushing toward us, Max was gripping either side of his seat. The end. Don’t brake don’t brake don’t brake. I spun the wheel to the right and pulled the handbrake on, just like I had seen Matt Damon do. The rear of the car slid out and we were in a cloud of grey, I let the handbrake off and the car launched toward the nature strip, up over the kerb, I turned right just a fraction and the back slid out again and we were facing back up the hill. I pressed down on the accelerator and the engine sang like it quite liked that and using the momentum we roared up the nature strip, through azalea bushes and over at least three tiny Buddha statues. The car kept singing and somehow we gained traction and bounced over people’s lawns and driveways. Max let out a whoop as we bounded up the hill. As we got to the top I let the car slow. Max was laughing. We got to the corner and I eased the car gently around, sticking to the nature strip. The car bunted over the grass until we got to Arnold’s place.

‘Man, next time you have to let me have a go,’ said Max.

‘Yeah right.’

I opened the boot of the car and Arnold came out of the house. He stood looking at the car, frowning.

‘How did you get it up the hill?’

I shrugged but I couldn’t stop grinning.

‘Why didn’t you just put chains on?’

‘Don’t have any, only been to the snow once.’

‘But, Fin, you can use anything, rope, whatever, you just wrap it round the tyres.’ Max laughed. I opened my mouth to reply but nothing came out. Arnold took two bags from the boot and went inside. Despite the laughing, Max still looked pale.

‘Go inside,’ I told him.

‘You are such a tool.’

‘Go sit down.’ I led Max up the front steps. Arnold stood and held the door open for us. ‘Max, this is Arnold. Arnold, this is my brother, Max.’

Arnold nodded to Max. ‘Call me Noll,’ he said. I dumped a garbage bag of clothes in the living room and wondered if I was allowed to call him Noll too.

We drank tea and sat on the mattress Arnold had dragged out in front of the fire for Max. I would take the couch. After eating another can of food, Max fell asleep.

‘So,’ said Noll. ‘Mr Starvos’ shop.’

‘Yeah. He said he was keeping everything in the storeroom.’

‘There’s no guarantee there will be anything left.’

‘No. But I don’t see a whole lot of other options.’

‘It means stealing food that we have no right to.’

‘I know. We wouldn’t take it all.’

‘Have you thought about how we would do it?’

Twenty-two

I would have to do it very quickly. One shot only. I would have to use enough force to get it right the first time. The hammer was in the front pocket of my hoodie and both my hands were shoved in there, too. I wore my hood low over my eyes. I remember seeing a news story on television about how some Neighbourhood Watch groups in London were calling for hoodies to be banned because they provided instant disguise for vandals and hooligans. Did this mean I had become a thug? Lokey would be proud. I put my head down and strode quickly down the street. I neared the corner and rehearsed the action over and over again in my mind, feeling a bit soft for being so nervous. I walked past the supermarket windows, I rounded the corner and as I did I took the hammer from my pocket and rammed it through the pane of glass next to the deadlock on the door. The sound was beautiful, like a peal of bells cracking through the silent streetscape. I put the hammer back in my pocket, put my head down and ran, the soles of my shoes smacking the snow-covered bitumen. I ran all the way around the block until I came back to Noll’s house.

Much later, Max went for a walk past the shop. The narrow strip of shattered glass next to the front door