By the time Gran was satisfied we had enough wood, there were some hot embers. She scooped them up with the shovel and put them in the pit she’d dug. Then she said, “Now be a love and bring me the Esky.”
I wasn’t really speaking to her at this point, and I felt silly, asking “What’s this” and “What’s that” all the time, so I went to the back of the ute. I’d no idea what an Esky was, but I soon guessed, because what do you put food in if it’s going to be shone on by the sun all day? One of those cold-box things, right? And sure enough there was one. It was dead heavy. I couldn’t get it over the side of the ute so then I noticed there was a kind of catch on the ends of the ute-back. When I slid them, the back fell down with a crash. After that I could drag the Esky off and lug it back to the fire.
Gran opened it and inside were six packages wrapped in foil, along with some milk and tins of Coke. She laid the packets on top of the red embers, then she shovelled more embers on top. The whole thing glowed like an electric stove-plate. She covered the red place with earth and then she got out a thermos and we had some coffee. It was still warm, and sweet. I never drink coffee at home but I drank a big tin mugful.
“That’s your pannikin,” she said. “I’m giving you that. You can even put it on the fire if you want to heat it up.” But I just drank it as it was. The pannikin was pretty, sort of mottled red, and I didn’t want the bottom to get burnt, if it was my present. I reckoned I’d earned it, being brave about the snakes and that, and collecting lots of wood.
Then Gran said, “What’s that blood on your arm?” Later I wished I’d said, “Oh, nothing, it’s just where a dingo bit me,” but I just muttered it was a scratch from a sharp bit of wood. She looked at the cut and said, “Well, a whingeing pom would’ve whinged about that, so good on you.” She squeezed it and said, “Good, there’s no splinters left in there.” Then she got out a jar and started smearing something on the cut.
“What are you putting on it?”
“Honey.”
“Honey!”
“Sure. Didn’t you know honey’s an antibiotic?”
“Why do I need an antibiotic?”
“Because that’s mulga wood and if you get it stuck in your flesh, it’s poisonous.”
My mouth fell open – again. Poisonous wood? Was there anything safe in this place?
The food took quite a while to cook in the embers. At last a really good smell started to come out of the ground. By the time Gran dug the food out I was like dying of hunger. She’d got two plastic chairs off the ute, and a little folding table, two plastic plates, and knives and forks. And some butter and salt. Gran dusted the ashes off the foil and opened the packets. Inside were big chicken legs, baked potatoes, and cobs of sweet corn. We didn’t bother about the knives and forks in the end, we just ate with our fingers by firelight. It tasted well delicious. I drank Coke and she drank beer. Then she stood up and stretched and said, “Right. Bed.”
She made me close the Esky and pack all the stuff away in a box. I thought I’d better burn the chicken bones in case they brought the dingoes. The fire was dying down. Nearly all my wood was gone. I said, “Who’s going to keep the fire going?”
She said, “Well it’s no use looking at Glendine. She’s going to make big Zs.”
I said, “But if we don’t, the dingoes’ll come!”
She said, “You’re an easy mark, Stacey. There’s no dingoes around here. Now help me with my bed.”
I didn’t say anything. I helped her lift a rusty old iron bed with fold-back legs and a mattress off the back of the ute, and she set it up. It wasn’t far off the ground… There was another mattress left on the floor of the ute for me. Then she untied two bundles.
“Here’s your swag,” she said. A swag turned out to be a sleeping bag. She had a pillow for me, too. She made up her own bed with another swag. I said, “I need to go to the loo.” I know I sounded sulky. I couldn’t believe it about the dingoes, that she’d do that just to make me get out and help.
She picked up the shovel and the torch. “Go ahead,” she said. “Over there, by those trees. Keep downwind, ha ha.”
I stared at the shovel, thinking what it meant. I had to dig a hole, and— No. It was too gross. Though how else? We were a million miles from anywhere. It looked to me like even the trees were about a hundred miles away from the little circle of firelight where the ute was. Where Gran was.
“Was it true about the snakes?” I said.
“Lovie, would I lie to you? Of course there are snakes in the outback. Just keep shining the torch and stay where the ground’s open. Oh, here’s some dunny paper. Be sure to bury it, too. Now go on and do what you have to do.”
Grandpa used to say, “Needs must, when the devil drives.” So I did it. I managed somehow. But the walk there into the darkness was the worst thing I’d ever done, even worse than when our diving teacher made us dive into the school pool over her arm the first time.
I was beginning to change my mind about Gran being the greatest. That’s putting it nicely.
When I ran back to the ute, she was lying on her swag on her bed fast asleep. She hadn’t even undressed. I noticed she’d left her boots on one of the plastic chairs. I rinsed my hands and face with water from the bottle, swilled out my mouth, set the other chair against the back of the ute and climbed up. I didn’t know whether to undress or what, but my night things were all in my case, so I just dropped my boots over the side and lay down on my swag just as I was. There was a bit of a breeze which made it not so hot. I wished the back of the ute wasn’t down, I’d’ve felt safer with it up. I struggled with it a bit in the dark but I couldn’t lift it. If I’d let myself, I could’ve easily imagined dingoes sniffing me, or… But I fell asleep straight away.
In the night I woke up. It was light that woke me. It’d been completely dark but now there was a pale light all over everything. I lifted myself on my elbows to look and there was the moon, or half of it, just a bit above the horizon but already lighting up the bush and us and everything. There were spooky tree-shapes all around the clearing where we were. I noticed the silence. Total. No birds or anything. It’s never, ever that quiet in London.
I lay back down and looked at the sky. Stars! You couldn’t just say there were stars, like it was something ordinary. I’d never seen anything like those stars in my life. Billions – and that’s no exaggeration. The more you looked at the bright ones, the more tiny little faint ones you could see in between. There didn’t seem to be an inch of sky without any. Right overhead there was a thicker path of them. It stretched from one side to the other, like someone had splashed some milk. Suddenly I realised that must be the Milky Way. I’d heard of it but I’d somehow never thought it was real – I thought it was, like, something in Star Trek.
There was something so scary about that bigness. I couldn’t look at it for long. I had to shut my eyes and pretend it wasn’t there because I just
