Free Currawalli Street by Christopher Morgan Page B

down cathedrals and orphanages as readily as brothels and sly grog shanties.
    It is not the first time that Johnny has heard of a bushfire chasing a person or a group of people. It is a tale of horror that he remembers being told around the kitchen table at the farm. Then, when Johnny was a boy, his father took him in the middle of the night to a lonely crossroads in the deep blue-gum forest. They travelled for two hours to get there and stopped in the undergrowth back from the road. Johnny smelled smoke. It was summer. The horses were uneasy. Suddenly there was the sound of hooves on the road coming quickly towards them. A rider tucked into his mount galloped past. Johnny glimpsed the look of terror on the rider and horse. The sweat from the horse glistened in the moonlight. Johnny and his father waited until the sound of the hooves had disappeared, then they wheeled about and galloped in a diagonal direction back towards home. Johnny saw out of the corner of his eye the red glow that they were riding across the face of.
    They had ridden out of the path of the fire and slowed down. Still they did no talking until they had unhitched the gate to the house paddock.
    Johnny asked his father, ‘So who was that? He looked scared.’
    â€˜That man was chosen by the fire. It is the worst thing that can happen to a human being. He has been riding for over a week. The fire is catching him. It will consume him.’
    â€˜Could we not have helped him?’
    â€˜No. There is nothing anybody can do. The fire has selected him and nothing is able to stand in its way. We could do nothing.’
    â€˜Why did the fire pick him?’ asked Johnny.
    â€˜No one knows why. Every man hopes it is never him. That man we saw tonight is a dead man.’
    â€˜That’s why we went to see him?’
    Johnny’s father looked down at his boots before he spoke. It was something Johnny had never seen him do before. When he lifted his head, he looked fully into Johnny’s eyes. ‘We went because it is something, I hope, you will never forget all your life. You will remember the look on his face, the sound of the hooves, the smell of the smoke, the strange light. If you do forget, then I’m afraid your life is not worth living. Not that you will know.’
    For a few years, Johnny didn’t understand what his father meant by this. But when he did understand, it made the sort of sense that he had come to expect from a man who had seen the powerful drama of midnight thunderstorms brewing, the beauty of soft running rivers, the sudden excitement of hundreds of kangaroos hopping over the crest of a hill, the views of miles and miles of gum trees, as an unremarkable matter of course.
    His father added, ‘Of course, the horse will throw him soon. Its own survival instincts will take over from any control that man may have over it. The fire won’t come after it.’
    â€˜Will it be alright?’
    â€˜Yes, we’ll go and find it in a few days. It will be somewhere close, probably down in the gully near where we were.’
    â€˜How did you know that he would be riding along that road? How did you know that the fire would be chasing him?’ Johnny persisted.
    â€˜I just knew. I don’t know how. You live in this land long enough, strange things start to come into your head. You’ll find that out,’ his father said quietly.
    Johnny sees again that man’s face from long ago as he watches the older rider talk to him now, eyes darting from side to side. They are not the furtive looks of a man expecting danger but the exhausted glances of a man expecting death. There is resignation in his voice, only a hint of it, but Johnny can tell that he has almost given up.
    Johnny asks, ‘Is the fire after you?’ Their horses move in a very subtle, fluid dance.
    The man looks at him, evidently finding some comfort in knowing that Johnny understands what is happening. ‘I don’t know for