White Heat - Julie Hill
White Heat by Julie Hill was the First Place Winner of the 2023 Murrumbidgee Short Story Competition in the Open Category.
Her hair was red. Not the dull red forever requiring sunlight to give it substance and shine. It was the red borne fromcampfire flames dancing under the stars. That deep burning red that litters the embers. Full and glowing, even in the shadows.
The ladies in town loved her hair. It was always the same when someone new popped into Miss Barnstock’s house, complimenting and wishing her beautiful hair upon themselves. They would never ask if they could touch it, they would simply reach out to feel its warmth. Sometimes they would jump back, as if burned by the heat of its form. They would reach out a second time, tentatively, confused by their initial reaction, but never quite working up the courage to touch it again. Mostly though, they would simply walk away, allowing her to shrink back into her chores. Alone. As she liked it.
To the other kids, it was the hair of jokes and ridicule, of teasing and nicknames. Circus hair. She knew they were wrong, but no amount of adult craving for the overwhelming brilliance of her hair could counteract the merciless torment of her classmates. She was glad they couldn’t see her at that moment. A tousled untamed nest ran wild acrossher shoulders. She had tried to tone it down, but the heavy imprint of rich red earth, not washed from her hair in weeks,never seemed to dull its presence. It remained alight, a lantern in the distance to lead the men back to The Camp at the end of a long blistering day.
That day, sitting in the compound in a dusty green sundress sprinkled with crumbs, the dogs by her side, she knew she would forever love her hair of fire. Even when it was the colour of cold grey ashes. The colour of smoke. She was inching taller. Her hair growing longer. And eventually, on one predetermined day, Destiny would send her to the ocean to cool those burning embers in crystal clear blue waters. But the journey to a new love had to start somewhere. Destiny had marked that moment with an asterisk. The Asterisk. The moment it all changed.
..........
Home was simple. A corrugated tin shack settled on the edge of the outstation. To the east, ailing cattle yards cut unnatural white lines across the deep red compound, the elements peeling back the paint in an endless attempt to cultivate rust and reclaim the ore. To the west, nothing but horizon. If she shut her eyes tight, then opened them just a breath, she could see the flash of the windmill on the western verge of the plains before it melded quickly back into shimmering earth. The horizon was one long line, separating earth from sky, beyond which lay the thick hot scrub country.
Theirs was the only two bedroom at The Camp. Just right for the two of them. The tin was weather stained and sprinkled with rust. A poorly placed veranda ran along the western wall, a mistake made long before her time, the timbers almost worn through on the three little steps that were set into the dirt. The length was unusable for most of the
year, but someone in a previous lifetime must have climbed the triple threat, day in, day out, to take those planks down to splinters.
Some three winters back, she had helped her father build a new wider veranda against the southern wall. It was the last year they had seen proper rain. Not those silly little showers where you didn’t even get wet, as though you were somehow small enough to slip between the raindrops. It was the kind of rain that stayed for days. Raindrops that exploded into a dozen more drops as they hit the ground, running off the tin in streams and cutting miniature rivers into the rusty red earth. Between storms, they had tacked together scrap timbers and sheet iron, and by the end of the holidays, they could be found perched together on the new top step, drinking steaming black tea and laughing at Brown
Dog rolling in the thick sloppy mud.
Even at the height of summer she could settle into the little strip of southern shade afforded by the new-old tin roof and watch the western horizon, her tiny right shoulder nestled in the corrugate beneath her father's bedroom window. She would sip on a tall glass of icy ginger beer, her soft hazel eyes searching the distance for the flickering movements of golden manes or the glint of a shiny brass buckle, signalling that the working day was done. Beneath the boards the dogs would dig into the cool earth, searching for respite, their panting eventually turning to snoring as they settled down until the men sauntered back. If they could find a willing party, or Cook was feeling particularly generous, they might
score some scraps or even a second feed. Worth resting up to try their luck.
That day, the day her hair was a tousled untamed nest running wild across her shoulders, she went to settle into her little patch of shade far later than usual. She hadn’t planned it that way, but it had been a full day and the minutes had slipped away. The men had left long before sun-up, a routine well-worn on these dry hot summer days. She vaguely remembered hearing the horse gate clicking shut, and the morning whistle from her father signalling it was time to head out.
Her father wasn’t particularly good at whistling. Most days he was downright terrible. Today was one of those days. It had started as a joke. One dawn, feeling well rested and joyous with his place in the world, he had let loose a long and winding rendition, rather than the regular, boring, same-same every-day, short sharp whistle. That was the day “Tanner’s Tunes” came to stay. On the ride out, he would repeat the warble, over and over, until one of the men somehow pieced enough of the notes together to identify it correctly. She was sure that more often than not it was a lucky guess, and she was even more certain that each repetition took the tune further from its roots. But her father loved the game and the men loved the game, and so it was set in stone. Some evenings, on the back of an especially poor interpretation, the men would return to The Camp still hollering random song titles into the musty night air. These were the nights she loved the most. When they all returned with enough energy to fill the yard with laughter. When Old Tom would light the fire and she would lurk in the shadows watching them all, the flames hiding her with their sameness. They were also the times she missed more than any, when she was tucked up beneath the blue floral bedspread in Miss Barnstock’s sticky back room.
Ordinarily, she would loiter in bed only until the last of the men’s chatter was swept away by distance, but today she must have dozed. Not for long, as Cook was starting the lengthy journey to town early, and the first coughs of the old clunker rumbling through the yard jolted her awake. She looked out her bedroom window and it was still dark, but as
her eyes adjusted she could see the old water tank separating from the inky canvas and she knew it was the edge of dawn.
Usually, she would ride with Cook on town days. They would talk of brolgas and hawks and their favourite pie fillings and sometimes, when the wireless was working, they would sing along to old Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash numbers. Last trip they got lucky. The sky was clear and the wind blowing in their favour and, as they inched closer to town, they picked up the station playing songs straight out of that very year. The year she turned eleven. The Year of the Asterisk.
Tonight, Cook was staying in town and there were extra chores to get through. She knocked over the routines; fed the dogs, checked the water troughs, and swept the verandas. Even in those habitual tasks she was sluggish, the time lost this morning climbing exponentially so that by lunchtime, when she should have been lighting the wood stove for the bread, she was still brushing thick piles of dust from the window sills in the men’s quarters.
When she finally made it to the kitchen she was thankful Cook had laid out all the kindling ready for the thin red-tipped match. The woman on the box looked at her intently, those beautiful black fluttering eyelashes and neat scarlet trusses giving no hint as to what was coming. She tore off a crusty white chunk of yesterday's bread and looked out the
window. There were no chickens or roses or vegetable patches seeped in green. No lemon tree front and centre or choko vine over the back fence. Not like Mrs Barnstock’s garden at all.
The drought had settled in over the last few years and the once thriving kitchen garden was now little more than a neglected grouping of rectangular patches, a small faded rusty red wagon abandoned where butternuts once grew. She remembered the year Cook had successfully roped in some of the men to help lay out the bricks. The old blocks of clay
were blackened on one side from their dutiful years as a chimney. She was too small to be of much help, but she could still picture her father, his face streaked with sweaty black soot, standing back at the end of the day, admiring the new garden laid out like big city blocks and expounding the virtues of fresh vegetables pulled straight from the earth. She had loved that garden. But today the bricks looked lonely. Their blackened sides contrasted wildly with the red clay, dulled in the dry harsh heat. They too had been created by flames and, like her, came with their own shadows.
Cook had prepared cold meats for the evening meal and tomorrow’s lunch. The salads were mixed. All she had left to do was pull the bread out of the oven. But the timbers still had some heat and waste not want not and all that jazz. Buttercakes it would be. (And right there, in that very moment that she decided on the cakes, miles away, The Asterisk
was put in play.)
And so it came that she crossed the yards to settle into her little patch of shade far later than usual. Maybe if she hadn’t slept in, or if Cook hadn’t gone to town that day, or if she hadn’t decided to bake those damn buttercakes she knew the men liked so much, she might have seen it sooner. She might have had time to jump in the rusty old jeep, her large hazel
eyes peering just above the dash while working the distant peddles. She could have taken the road south towards town, the dogs clipped firmly in the tray. But Destiny had stepped in and given her an ultimatum. Time to show yourself, it said.
..........
Ten years had passed since she had first seen the flames working their way east across the plains. It would be another two before Destiny would let her leave The Camp. Before it would trust the world enough to look after her. Rightio, it would say, onto the next instalment. Off to the ocean. Five more and you can return, love by your side.
As she strolled across the compound she took herself back to The Moment, back to when she first saw the flames at the line where the earth meets the sky. Soon they would reach the endless desiccated grasses that would provide the perfect fodder for the blaze to sprint towards The Camp. The men had been caught west of the line. No way to beat the flames
home. Nothing to do but wait.
She had run with a pace spawned from fear and determination. Straight to the kitchen garden. Grabbed the small faded rusty red wagon. Filled it with bricks.
The wheels were seized but the wagon dragged surprisingly, almost miraculously well, across the hard dry earth. She started with the western boundary of The Camp. One by one she lined the bricks up, careful to face their blackened sides towards the line of flames. Another load and another load and another load. Over and over, a mammoth task, until
a long circular train of sooty clay blocks surrounded The Camp. Sentinels standing guard, awaiting the impending fight.
The wind was bringing the heat in fast and there they stood, side by side, their renewed purpose giving them a depth of colour not seen in years.
The fire had died out as it hit the line of old chimney bricks. Not a building, a fence post or a speck of powdery red dust in The Camp was touched. When the men finally made it home, they found her calm and crossed-legged in the middle of the yard, buttercake crumbs dotting her dusty green sundress. The dogs were lying asleep beside her, a long thin dirty rope threaded through each of their collars, its tattered end looped loosely around her waist, keeping them all close. In that moment the men knew she was their shield. Their very own goddess of the hearth. She was their protector, their guardian, working from the shadows. From the dark side of the bricks.
For the next twelve years, the men would protect her and preserve her secret, working to Destiny’s timetable. She didn’t go back to Miss Barnstock’s that next year, or any year after that. The fire had scrubbed out the last remnants of drought. Come autumn, the skies would open, the dust turn to mud, and small pockets of green would spread quickly to
consume the landscape. She stayed by Cooks' side those first few years. They created paths and garden beds and planted tiny brown seeds. Nothing could compare to fresh vegetables pulled straight from the earth, her father had said. Right outside the kitchen window, a lemon tree, leaves a shiny verdant green. Together they prepared the meals, singing along
to the old Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash songs on the new kitchen wireless. Eventually, she started riding out with the men, finally joining “Tanner’s Tunes”. The scarred red bricks still encircling The Camp.
Still to come, two years from now, the men would all pitch in and gift her a shiny white two-door with a silver tray, in the glove box a small envelope from her father with just enough to get her to the coast. To the cooling blue waters. And so she would leave, her hair washed and tamed, a glowing red plait running the length of her spine. In the rearview
mirror, she would see the men, carefully packing the old clay bricks onto a pallet. One by one. It would be time to let go.
..........
The men still don’t know how the blaze had started. Perhaps one of them had inattentively flicked his tobacco stub into the dry grasses after stopping for smoko; billy tea, an Anzac bickie and a roll-your-own. Maybe an old boot heel was worn down and hadn’t ground the smouldering stub into the earth with the vigour required. Or a bitty sparkle from the
billy tea coals stayed behind in the dirt, only surfacing with the breeze once the men had put it out and moved on. Only she knew it was none of these. She knew exactly how the fire started, where the first tiny twirls of smoke lifted from the ground. Slowly building up in the leaf litter. Every time she closed her eyes the scenes clicked over, one by one, a view-master disc cycling through the moments.
There she was. Scene One. Packing her most precious belongings into the little chocolate leather suitcase opened on her bed. Her father in the background, tanned arms hanging by his side, his silver barber’s scissors clasped firmly in his huge left hand, his right resting on his shirt pocket, closest to his heart. The smile on his face at odds with the sadness in his eyes. Next. Miss Barnstock’s back room. The one with the blue floral bedspread and the air that never seemed to thin out. A large window, framed with faded yellow cotton curtains, looking out into the magnificent garden. Click. Her timepiece, Miss Barnstock’s lemon tree, front and centre. There she was, watching for the flower buds and awaiting the teeny yellow citrus to spring forth from within. The first sign that holidays were coming and soon, oh so soon, she would be home. The Camp.
Click. Click. Summer holidays. Looking out the kitchen window. Thinking about making those buttercakes that the men liked so much. The red-headed lady on the little box of matches still giving nothing away. A slow steady click and there it is. The moment, the scene with no number, just an asterisk. The Asterisk. Her father, a crisp pile of leaf litter beneath his dusty leather boots, tugging a simple blue handkerchief from his top pocket to wipe the sweat from his smooth broad forehead. The laughter lines around his eyes etched deeper after that morning's hilarious attempt at “Tanner’s Tunes”. And floating down to simmer amongst the leaf fall, unseen by all but her, the little lock of ember red hair he carried in the pocket closest to his heart.
