Fire Breath

Short Story: First Published in Offshoots, Geneva, 2010.

Victoria, Australia, 2009.

The telly had nagged all week about fire danger, so Jim looked relieved when the electricity grid went down and the box stopped ranting at them. “They been crying wolf all summer long,” he muttered. Rosie wasn’t so sure; they were surrounded by clogged bush, the wind had a hot tongue at its back and each night the sunsets got smokier, but Jim said he knew better. Since Rosie had been knocked up he seemed to know better about everything.

When the wind changed she had an intuition - it was coming. Jim refused to drive her all the way into town on the basis of hocus-pocus female feelings; there was no way he was leaving the animals. He told her the dog would get into the chicken coop and try to kill the chickens, and besides, there was no hurry – the radio said the fire was miles away and she wasn’t even eight months gone. Her rage rose with the thermometer. When it reached 40 degrees she picked up her night bag, told him she was catching a bus and marched off the property. Dolce was on her way to a funeral so picked her up on the council road. All the way to the hospital Dolce consoled Rosie that all men were the same when it came to animals, even on days this moody when any blind freddy would want to run. Rosie stared out the window at the wind making its own weather.

 Dolce dropped her at Emergency, where Rosie waited six hours, chewing antacid tablets and reading trashy magazines, until her waters splashed onto the waiting room floor and they admitted her.

Rosie squinted. It felt like every three seconds the fluorescent lights barked at her, but Rosie wasn’t her sensible self because pain kept ripping up her spine and going away again. Each time it came like the hated wind –hot, silent and twisting every vertebrate off its hinges. Rosie bared her teeth as each contraction grabbed her spine. In between the nurses came, to poke and prod and tell her she was opening ever so slowly, then went away again, leaving her alone under the noisy lights. Rosie hung onto the steel sides of the hospital bed with her fists, determined to ride through it.

 Jim felt the wind turn. It soured and raced up the gully from the north and, as it traveled, it tore at the topsoil and threw dust at his face. He wrapped the damp towel, already steaming, around his mouth. Dust, smoke and ash fell on the roof as he stuffed the sheets saved for the new baby into the down pipes then filled the gutters with tank water. Below, inside the car, the chickens flew around, their wings whacking the steering wheel and feathers falling onto the photo albums. He’d get them out of here, but not before saving the house. Bluey whimpered but Jim wouldn’t put him in the car because the dog would rip the chicken’s heads off, so Bluey circled the house and yapped up at Jim, nagging him to hurry. Sticky flames licked at the base of the gully. “Shut up Bluey” Jim roared. He roared again. He couldn’t hear himself. All he heard was a wicked maelstrom advance up the hill. He looked up - the sun exploded into Armageddon.

He stared up at the combustible gums, trees known to explode on impact, and then looked down at the littered scrub, where ember bullets shot black and red across the property. The phone lines were down, the power was cut and he’d dropped his mobile somewhere between the house and the chook shed. Jim was alone and no-one was coming to save him. He grabbed the dog, jumped in the car and looked through the smoke sheets into the funnel of his driveway. Either side was guarded by hungry fire. Above the road long flames united, hugging each other like long lost siblings and beyond them had to be hell or earth, because Jim knew this place would never feel like heaven again. Behind him the house exploded into a fireball and snarled up the path. The dog thrashed and flailed around the back seat. The chickens screamed and clawed at the seats but there was no time to separate the animals. Jim gripped the steering wheel, determined to ride through it.

The storm circled and settled right at her spine, right in his eyes. It closed in, aiming for the wet flesh it wanted to take as its own - sweet juicy meat it could suck dry.

 Rosie didn’t open her eyes. She fumbled for a hand, but there was only steel.

Jim, blinded by smoke, pressed his foot on the accelerator. His boots melted and slipped.

There was a prick in their souls; the wind tunneled into their being; the blood, the veins, and marrow of man and woman. He gripped the steering wheel. She gripped the bed. They held on for dear precious and slim life; then pushed into the red, hot fear.

 With two hands the nurse snatched the baby from the mother’s open wound, muttering under her experienced breath, “Please kid, breathe, breathe” Rosie watched the nurse place the mask over the face of her bloodied and blue child. Rosie spluttered, and coughed. Panic whisked away her words and prayers. From behind a wall, the oxygen tank moved a mechanical storm into the tiny throat, through the pin-thin windpipe and down into the lungs of the newborn.

Out in the bush, in the confines of a car, a loved and loyal life drew its last stubborn breath, and was cremated by a red wind.

The nurse smiled and turned to the mother as the baby hollered like death was on her tail.

Rosie looked up at the shadow, dropping ash onto the lino. “Jim,” she called, her voice watery. Jim stood in the door, ash and blood siphoning down his arms and across the floor. Bloodstains stalked him across the white lino as he slid towards Rosie, stared at his daughter and burst into tears.

 He had left the animals in the car and ran towards the gateway of hell, his boots dissolving under his feet. He catapulted himself towards the fire then he felt a miraculous wind change push him clean over the other side and onto burnt earth. Turning back, like Lot’s wife, he watched the pyre car, and wished for a different kind of loyalty.

“We lost the house.” Reminders of fire seared up his shins. “And I couldn’t get Bluey out of the car. He was guarding the chickens,” he gravel whispered. He took the raw baby in his dirty arms and collapsed onto the bed. Nurses pressed alarm buttons and doctors flew through the door to poke his charcoal feet, torn pink by the long walk. Man and woman cried as sweet, safe air circled them.