The Sky So Heavy

It’s funny how without something as simple as electricity it was completely useless – just a gaping, blank stare of black. Without electricity our house was a box of useless bits of moulded plastic and wiring.

I wanted to tell him what I meant. I wanted to tell him what I knew about Dad, but that would mean destroying the picture he had of Dad. I couldn’t do it. I knew too much what it felt like to realise your father wasn’t the hero you thought he was. I knew it meant your childhood was over.

I learned that if I could keep my thoughts about Dad focused on the afternoon when I found the letter from Mum, I could almost stem my anxiety about his absence. My anger formed a nice protective cushion. If I let it slide to the other things – those days when he would carry me up the hill on his back or my memory of him slipping me fifty-dollar notes under the table during childhood games of Monopoly – worry would fester in my gut and even though I was so, so hungry, I couldn’t eat.

Mr White shoved him away, provoking something inside that was curled up and lying dormant until that moment. I threw a punch. I missed. Mr White shoved me into the wall and I shoved him back.

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 cut in front of him. ‘I don’t think we want to do that. We’ll just hang onto what we’ve got.’ The thought of some system – a plan, someone making decisions somewhere – was comforting. But something had changed in me. Maybe it was the way my whole world had closed down, had become simpler. I was sharper somehow. Instincts were kicking in and I was running with them.

I thought of that cop in our kitchen trying to get our food. We were different to him, weren’t we? I had Max to worry about. Starvos would have heaps of stuff in there. Heaps. More than enough.

It’s what I already know and what I have avoided in my head ever since we came up with this plan. Trying to save yourself and your family isn’t crazy. People will try to hold on when their world starts to tilt, they will grab onto whatever is in reach. Doesn’t matter if it means throwing punches at your neighbour or pointing a gun at someone’s head.

‘Hey, hey. You remember those bad bushfires in Victoria? Black Saturday? I read a story about a guy and his wife who were stranded in the fire. No way out. They had three little kids with them and they all hid with wet blankets over them in this gap between a brick wall and a water tank. The guy said the fear, the panic, was like a heavy medicine ball that he and his wife passed between them – when one panicked the other one would be calm and rational. They survived by taking it in turns. I can hold the ball for you, Max. I’ve got it. I’ve got you.’

‘What are we going to do, Fin?’

I have no answer.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

His voice hardens. ‘You said we would find her.’

‘I said we could try.’

‘You said it would be okay.’ He hurls the words at me. ‘You don’t know anything.’

‘Max . . .’

‘You’re useless! You don’t know anything!’ He shoves me against the wall, catching me by surprise.

‘Max, just calm down.’

‘You calm down!’ He pummels me with his fists. I try to take hold of his arms, manage to get him in a bear hug.

‘Max, calm down.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘We’ll break in and we can stay, wait till she comes back.’

‘What if she doesn’t?’

‘It’s all we can do.’

We drift along the streets past houses and a crippled petrol station, shops and a school. The night sky is a void, no light, no stars. We are lost to the universe. We can’t see out. I wonder if anyone can see in.

I have one of those moments when my affection for him is so fierce, it is frightening. Somewhere inside I think I should be doing the opposite, I should be trying to let go – trying to let go of him, of everyone, so when the end comes the blow won’t be as hard. But how do you do that?

I hadn’t imagined this calculated surrender. In all those hours spent wondering how the powers that be could do this to people, their own people, I never imagined her as being complicit in it all.

Above us, the light is trying to push its way into the sky. It is still thick with grey, but it seems higher than it was before. The landscape unfurls on either side of the road, acres and acres of gently undulating scrub, broken only by large clusters of eucalypts. The greens and browns of the vegetation are less vivid than I have seen before and the gumtrees don’t look as strong as they were, as if the colour from their leaves has bled into the sky. But they are still standing, still reaching up. Waiting.