Grab Bag

The app goes from Advice to Watch and Act at 2:14 and I'm already in the car with the engine running, which tells you what kind of week it's been. Watch and Act means the fire's coming your way and you should be doing whatever your plan says. My plan says leave. I made that decision in June, in a cool room with a cup of tea, and I made it precisely so I wouldn't have to make it now, with the sky the colour of a bruise and the wind pushing the gums around like they've done something wrong. Bag's on the passenger seat. It's been packed since November. Passport, insurance folder, the hard drive with the photos, a change of clothes, two litres of water, Dad's watch. Toby's in the back with his head between the seats, panting, because he knows. He always knows about an hour before the app. I go back in for one thing. One. I told myself I wouldn't and I do. It's the painting from the hall, the one my sister did of the creek, and it's too big for the bag and I put it flat in the boot on top of the water and I'm out again in ninety seconds. The road out is already busy. Not panicked, just busy, everyone doing the same thing at the same slightly-too-fast speed. Trailers. Horse floats. A man on a motorbike with a cat carrier bungeed to the back and the cat's face in the little window looking exactly as furious as you'd expect. At the intersection with the highway there's a CFA truck and a woman in yellow waving us left, away from the town, and I roll the window down to ask and the heat that comes in makes me roll it straight back up. "Left," she shouts. "All left. Highway's closed past Marchmont." Left it is. I don't know if the house is going to be there. That's the plain fact of it. I've spent nine years in it and the last four cutting back the scrub and clearing the gutters and putting in the sprinklers and the tank, and all of that improves the odds and none of it decides them. The fire decides.

There's a thing people say, that you find out what matters when you have four minutes. I don't think that's true. I think you find out what you can carry. What matters is the creek, and the trees I planted, and the way the light comes across the paddock at six in the evening in autumn, and I can't get any of that into a Coles bag. What I've got is a hard drive and a dog and a painting of the creek by someone who loved it too. Toby's stopped panting. He's lying down. The traffic's moving. In the mirror the smoke has gone from grey to brown to something with orange in it that I don't look at for long. The relief centre's a basketball stadium in the next town. There'll be a trestle table and a form and a woman with a clipboard and a lot of people who look exactly like I feel. There'll be a spot on the floor for the dog. There'll be an update at six and another at ten. My phone buzzes. It's my sister. "You out?" "Out. Got the painting." A long pause. Then: "you absolute idiot. good."