Gifts

"I've a terrible gift for Christmas", James told her, last time he was in town, glass in hand and red-cheeked from the cold. She paid half an eye to him, half attention to the screen blaring the latest disasters, and shook her head. The locket sat cold in his pocket, and he waited for her to turn her eyes back to him.

Keep it”, she said, “what good is it now?” She poured her glass full up again and sipped. “Why do you keep on? What good are presents to the dead?” He had no answer, and they sat in silence. Finished, stood up, hazy balance against the rail.

“Barbara”, he said finally, “What do you want me to tell him?”

“Get out,” she said. “Stop torturing me with remembering that he’s not dead yet, and that there’s nothing for him”.

Weeks later now, and a red day at dawn, the rising sun eats the dark and the windows are lit with dust and grease in the mounting scream of the clock alarm. Rolling over, he checks his screen- new alerts for the morning same as every day, and no help coming.

Up out of bed, cold feels like the heat kicked off again, the bright panels on the roof dying cell by cell as the months go on. They weren’t built for this, he thinks, but you could say that about everything.

Flip the breakers, slow popping and clicking of the ducts and the numbing rush of the heat, flooding out from the dusty vents and filling the room with smoky dry warm air, til sudden pop- the breaker flips again. Turning on the oven and leaving it propped a little open, coffee is gurgling in the old drip machine. February days, cold light creeping over the treeline across the field. We’ll miss the cold soon enough, he thought.

Idle time this red morning, memories of fire and bad days past. ‘We were beset by dragons’, he thinks to himself, remembering fire wreathing over the hillside, smoke like thick fingered death rolling through the bush and the roar of the choppers and the blaze together drowning the shouts of men as we ran down the dune to the ash-strewn beach. Grey faces sucking wind, hands on knees, orange light and a pale red sun setting over the wind-flat bay.

Fire all the time now. “It's in the ground” the company man had said, “There’s no stopping it.”

“How long?” he’d asked, strumming a beat with his fingers against the hood as they talked.

“If I could tell you that,” the man said, and spit angrily at the dirt.

They’d spoken a while more, the ration drops would keep coming for a bit. The company man shook hands at the end, embarrassed and angry at his own useless mission. “I don’t know why they send me out here,” he’d said. “Visiting these damn places.”

“Well thanks anyway”, James replied, mindless courtesy from another life, “appreciate the effort.”

The truck drove on back up the drive, slow and empty of help, dust clouds raising from the wheels as it rolled from sight. James kicked idly at the dead dirt. Soon, the roots, the earth, all fire, and creeping slow across the fields–still way up north, but coming steady as soldier’s pay. The car's been packed for weeks, locked tight in the carport, there's been people around. Barbara can't be helped, he thinks, and Sam knows we can't take her. He knows that. Redlight on the fire road, flares in the ashfall, dry rains are all they'll be from now on. She spent the Christmas money and that was all we could spare.

No word from her since, and the time’s skipped ahead madly towards the end. Fire come down and nowhere to go. The screens give us a month, but what have they ever known rightly? The dry grass crunches beneath his boots, he’ll want to go out in the afternoon, clearing the firebreaks, no point, but it’s a thing to do, and there aren’t many of those left. Supply drop just before yesterday and it should take them through to the end. He’s jammed the car full, and it will have to last on the drive towards the mountains.

“It’ll stay cooler up there”, he tells Sam, “for a while, and there’ll be more people.” Sam nods and goes back to his screen. They both know the mountains are too low, and the sky too thin, and the heat will be there soon, following like a homeward pacing hound. He doesn’t tell Sam that the people will be as sharp and hot as the fires, and that they’re safer here alone at the empty farm, because the earth isn’t the only thing that’s gone to madly burning.

Ahh, but they used to burn fires in the evening here too, looking out over the ridge, bay beneath, wine in big globes of glass, poured too high and lazy with the sparks floating. Arguments and shouting, empty promises and plans. Now he's cleared the fields, and set breaks, but if the winds are right there's nothing to be done anyway. Sam's room set inward like all the kid’s rooms now, the air outside slow murder on the lungs. If slow mattered anymore.

In the shower, cold water quick clean and out to the kitchen again, nurse the coffee.

Pizza rations for breakfast, shared with Sam grumbling in his blanket. Another long empty day waiting for the long empty end. They walked the fields again towards sunset, then climbed the ridgeline, James boosting Sam up the dry rocks. The town lay long way beneath them, red clouds low and smoky over the bay as they sat, patiently unwrapping ration bars and trading sips from the water bottle.

“Do you think she’s in town still?” Sam asked.

“I’m sure she is,” he replied. “She’s safer there. I’m sure there’ll be a boat sometime.”

Sam said nothing, and they sat watching the light drain out from the sky. Finally, James stood up and gathered the wrappers and the trash. Old habits. They climbed down the ridge, and walked quickly through the fields. The last light was full of far-away murder screams and crashing noises like cymbals through the forest. James gripped Sam’s hand and they hurried along back to the house.

Sam in bed now, and James sitting up on the deck, short glass of the last whisky empty on the rail. Strange thoughts at night when you miss the car noise off the bay from the expressway and even the quiet trees sound like an empty threat. The locket spun in the dark, glinting heart, reflections off the lights from the far ridges. Firesign only 80 miles now. How long? he wondered again, pointless planning, but he’d always been a planner. He left the locket hanging from the post, spinning in the sandpaper wind. Back inside, locked up and alarms on, he lay on the couch, ready for rest that wasn’t coming. They’d leave the locket and the house, gifts for someone with hope in a hopeless year. Empty arguments from days past floated through his spinning mind. All the wasted time.

Windbursts thrumming deep notes against the house and the windows shook. The screen blared disaster and he finally slept.