The Party Line (23 page)

The dogs barked and snarled once more as Joy made her way to the car.

‘Audrey,’ she called out, one last time. ‘If you want help …’

The shrill dog whistle blew just once as Audrey walked into the house, her back turned to the dogs and the car. She didn’t falter in her step.

Hokey pokey dirt crackled under Ian’s boots as he trudged across the paddocks. No rain for weeks and now the earth — Earth — was dying from the outside in. There were fissures wide enough to catch a foot and twist an ankle.

Two days earlier, the water level in the troughs had dropped past the reach of the cattle. Ian watched helplessly as the cows craned forward, tongues frantically skimming the surface of the muddy residue from long-ago rains. But troughs on the neighbouring farms were full — Ian had seen cows drinking at them as he drove past. Jack Gilbert was the only farmer in the district with broken water pipes.

It was February and the farm was a desert and the cows were losing condition and down on production and Jack was nowhere to be found. Ian phoned once, twice, three times a day, desperate to resolve the water crisis. Each time, his call went unanswered, or Audrey had picked up. The result was much the same, either way.

Jack was away, Audrey said. His mother was sick and he’d gone to see her and, no, there was no number to reach him on. She didn’t know when he’d be back.

Ian tried to think up ways of topping up the water troughs while he waited for Jack to return. He filled the calf-feeder, then towed it out into the paddocks with the intention of somehow transferring the water to the trough. But the cows, dehydrated and desperate, sensed moisture and charged at the feeder, tipping it over. The lid slid off and the precious water disappeared into the dust, leaving nothing more than a shadow. Ian’s eyes prickled as he watched the cows tongue the dirt.

Ian tried phoning Jack again.

‘Yes,’ Audrey answered.

It was not a statement, nor was it a question. It was, Ian thought, just about the minimum a human being could say to anyone about anything.

‘Audrey, it’s Ian.’

‘Yes,’ she said again.

‘Is he back?’

‘No.’

‘Has he rung? Does he know how dry it is now?’

‘No.’

‘Jesus … how much longer, Audrey, do you think? Before you’ll hear from him?’

Ian heard Audrey sigh, and the breath catch in the back of her throat, as though she was about to say something. Then, it seemed, she stopped breathing altogether. Ian imagined Jack’s rough, filthy hands enclosing Audrey’s neck from behind her. Fingers locking, hands squeezing to form a bruise-black necklace.

‘Why don’t you take them down the back?’ The words were rasped rather than spoken.

‘Sorry … what was that?’

‘I said, take the cows down the back. Over the peat. They can drink at the river.’

‘It’s too dangerous. They’ll sink in it, end up cast. That’s what Jack said.’

‘Too dangerous in winter, but it’ll be okay now. It drains alright in summer, the peat tightens up. They’ll cross it safely and get to the river for water.’

Ian thought it through quickly. It made sense, and he had no other option.

‘Audrey?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jack’ll be alright about it? You know … he didn’t want the herd anywhere near that peat before. He reckoned he’d lose stock in there … it was the first fence I put up, when I arrived.’

Ian didn’t repeat what else Jack had said about losing stock on the peat. That if any cows died, the loss would come out of Ian’s wages.

‘I guess so,’ said Audrey. ‘I guess he’ll be alright about it. Bye now.’

The cows didn’t want to move. They huddled around the near-dry
trough, instinct tethering them to the last place they’d found water. Ian put Bounce around them, corralling them towards the race.

The sun beat at the back of his neck and his pulse thumped between his ears. Cicadas trilled their static, other massive insects swarmed low around his neck, drawn to his sweat. The cows lumbered along, stopping often until the yapping dog forced them forward again. But soon the pace quickened, the cows at the front leading the herd towards the peat. They smelled water.

The gates at the entrance to the peat were shut, the fence there solid. Ian whistled Bounce to the front. The dog raced ahead and turned to face the stampeding cows. Snarling, barking, he held them at bay while Ian pushed his way forward and quickly surveyed the land.

He slipped through the gate and walked onto the soil. It was firm under foot. He bent down and scooped a handful, letting the black stringy dirt fall through his fingers. He lifted it to his face. The smell was thick and rich and dank; centuries of river and farm detritus concentrated in a black, pungent mass.

Ian whistled Bounce once more, the dog advanced on the cows, forcing them aside far enough for Ian to open the gate. He stood back as the herd stampeded towards the silky sludge of the river.

He thought, at first, that the spirals were dust clouds, stirred up by the frantic cattle. But long after the last of the cows reached the riverside, the tiny plumes remained. Ian walked across the expanse of the peat. He blinked, shook his head, wondering whether the heat was playing tricks with his eyesight. He thought he was heading to where he’d seen the first grey drift, but when he turned around, they were behind him. They were everywhere.

Bounce panted beside him as he bent down and touched the ground. He pressed the palm of his hand hard against the earth. Heat. Not just the heat of summer, a greater warmth than that. Somewhere, below the surface of the field, a fire burned.

A grey wisp escaped from under his feet. Stepping back, he scraped at the crack in the dirt. Smoke seeped through the gaping hole. Ian bent even lower, so his face was touching the ground. He sniffed hard,
remembering a hangi he’d been to years ago. It was something like that, the smell.

Bounce growled and lay flat to the ground, his ears and tail low. Ian looked across the peat bog, then to the sky. Hawks circled above him, diving every now and then to pick at the ground. Ian bent down again and pulled apart the grass. Dead insects, cicadas and crickets. Burnt to a crisp in the ovens beneath him. The heat, coming at him from both the vicious sun and the dirt under his feet, was all of a sudden unbearable.

The cows had drunk their fill at the water’s edge and were grazing the hot contours of the peat. Somehow — at some recent time, who knew when — the water table had dropped low enough for a peat fire to start on the edge of Jack Gilbert’s farm. Jack had told him about the risk of peat fire, how important it was to take care not to set the surface grass alight in summer. How quickly the inflammable peat could ignite. A peat fire could burn slowly underground for days, weeks, then suddenly force its way back to the surface and engulf the tinder-dry pastures bordering the peatlands. Everyone knew how hard it was to put out a peat fire, once it took hold.

Bounce was now further along the bank, drinking from the river. Ian walked to the water’s edge and looked back at the peat bog. From that angle, he saw that the fire — or at least, the smoke — had not spread too far. The area to the left, the part bordering the Jackson farm next door, did not appear to be burning.

He ran up the bank, onto the bog land at the left. He lay down on the ground and pressed his body against the earth. It was warm, but the warmth was that of land baking in the sun, not from within. The fire was confined to Jack Gilbert’s farm. For now. He whistled the dog. The cows, still grazing, ignored his barks until he started snapping close to their legs. Slowly they began to move back towards the gateway to the race.

Who to ring? Jack, obviously, except he’d disappeared. Audrey? Another conversation with her was a waste of time.

It was Gabrielle’s first day at high school, but there she was, in the doorway of her bedroom.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

Where did she get that uniform? Had he sorted that out?

‘Why aren’t you at school?’

‘First day is a half-day for turds. I told you that, remember? Anyway, what’s wrong?’

‘The back of the farm, there’s a fire down there.’

‘Ring Nickie’s dad. He’ll help. He’ll know what to do. I’ll do it.’ Gabrielle was already at the telephone.

‘Six two C please. And Mrs Shanks. Can you spread the word? There’s a fire on Jack Gilbert’s farm. Down the back … where, exactly, Ian?’

Ian blinked. ‘Towards the river, the peat’s on fire.’

‘Right down the river. It’s a peat fire, Mrs Shanks. That bastard Jack Gilbert’s disappeared and Dad needs help.’

Ian had no idea what Mrs Shanks said, but Gabrielle rolled her eyes. ‘Listen,’ she said into the receiver, ‘do what you do best and put the word out. And I need Eugene Walker. Now. Please.’

Gabrielle waited, then passed the receiver to Ian. ‘Here you go.’

An hour later, Ian led the procession of trucks and tractors towards the fire. His ute was heavy in the rear with the weight of the water tank on the back axle; he felt the engine straining under the load. Another weight sat hard across his shoulders; the barely contained anger of farmers fearful of the fire.

They had loaded the water at the cowshed, the high-pressure hose the quickest option for filling the tanks. Ian’s hands shook as he’d worked the hose and deflected rapid-fire questions from the other men.

‘When did it start?’

‘How far has it spread?’

‘How deep is it?’

‘Where’s Jack?’

‘I don’t know.’ He said it over and over. I don’t know. Instead of pushing him for more answers, the men stood silently and waited their turn with the hose. Ian kept his head down, but the invisible current of scorn pulsed through him.

Relief surged as he parked the ute in the paddock nearest the peat. The fire didn’t seem to have spread any further — not at the surface, though who knew what was happening underground. The other men joined him at the fence line. In silence, they absorbed the eerie view.

‘It’s peat all the way along the river,’ Eugene said. He was at Ian’s side. ‘Every farm with river access has peatland, all the way to the sea.’

‘We’d better get started then,’ one of the others said. ‘Try and put the bastard out.’

Ian swallowed, cleared his throat.

‘I thought … rather than waste the water trying to put the whole thing out, we should just try to contain it.’

Ian turned around, met the eyes of each man, one after the other. ‘What I’m saying is, the fire’s already got a hold of Jack’s land. So if we dig deep trenches on the boundaries, and fill them with water, we’ll have firebreaks. We might stop it spreading to your place.’ Ian looked at Tony Jackson and then at Robbie Lind. ‘And, on the other side, yours.’

Eugene coughed, took off his hat and scratched his head. He put the hat back on. ‘We can do the fourth boundary too, Ian. The river’s a natural boundary, and then there are the two either side. But we need to firebreak where the peat meets your — Jack’s — paddocks.’

It was quiet. Ian listened for the cicadas but heard nothing. He remembered the burnt carapaces of the insects spread across the peatland.

‘We’ll do Jack’s place last. Only if there’s enough water left. Only when we’re sure everyone else is safe,’ he said.

The sun was vicious and every shovel of steaming dirt sent another hot blast skyward. But the digging was easy. The peat was dense and soft and the men were heartened at the speed at which they reached clay.

Ian kept his head down and his shovel moving. Something had changed; no words spoken, but he could feel it — an imperceptible shift in the mood of these men, his neighbours. A recalibration of their assessment of who he was, the sort of man he might be.

‘Bloody good on you, Ian.’

The voice belonged to Hans Janssen. Ian kept digging, without looking up.

‘Wouldn’t want to be in your boots but.’ Another man, in front of him. ‘When Gilbert gets back. From wherever the fuck he’s disappeared to.’

The digging continued. Ian shrugged. ‘Well, he’s not here, so I had to make the call.’

‘He wouldn’t have made this call, saving everyone else’s pasture but his own.’

It took hours to dig the trenches. The men backed their vehicles close and emptied the gallons of water into them. Eugene and Hans talked quietly, then paced the ground between the pasture edge and the flow of the river.

‘I reckon we should dig channels between the river and pasture, let the river water flood the peat,’ said Eugene. ‘Just to be sure.’

Ian understood what that meant. Flooding might help douse the fire, but when the rain eventually came and the river swelled, the peat buffer between pasture and the river would be lost.

‘Makes sense to me,’ Ian said.

It was four o’clock. The sharemilkers left first, heading home to milk. Ian knew his cows were waiting, too. The others packed up slowly then stood back to survey the work.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Eugene. ‘You know what I think?’

Ian shrugged. Flies were sticking to his skin and the heat made conversation exhausting.

‘I think that this would be the most care and attention Jack Gilbert’s land has ever seen. You’ve no idea how the fire started?’

Ian shook his head. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been down here. I brought the herd down to the river for water and the place was smoking when I got here.’

‘They can start on their own, the fires. Underground, I mean. But more likely it was a spark. Or something,’ said Eugene.

‘Don’t know. I really don’t know. Like I say, today’s the first time I’ve been down here.’

Ian looked around the remaining men, then stepped forward and shook each of them by the hand.

‘I appreciate this. What you’ve done. All of you.’

He didn’t expect any sort of reply, nor did he receive one. The men nodded and grunted and climbed in their trucks and utes and on their tractors and drove away.

The smell of the fire clung to his skin long after he finished milking and showered. It was in his hair and up his nose. He wondered whether he was imagining it, smelling the memory of the day rather than the day itself. But Gabrielle screwed up her face when she joined him in the kitchen before dinner.