THE SWIMMERS

In the long, cool summer of 2105 the Alpine River overwhelmed its banks.

Illustrations: Stacy Gougoulis.

In the long, cool summer of 2105 the Alpine River overwhelmed its banks and floodwaters reached Greenpine and Bonnie Vale, where the wooden mountain cottages built to hold out winter snow gave little resistance to the torrent and collapsed into beaver dams of luxury rubble. Maggie Butler and her daughter and son-in-law and their six-year-old son Michael chased dry land up the mountainside with all the other evacuees. To Brookfield and the evacuation point at the Mike Foley Rec Centre, and then on to the Valley View Motel at Green Hollow when the river started to lap at Mike Foley, then finally to the tarp city at Winton when the deluge found Green Hollow. There they sat in the gloom, under their tents under the canvas awnings under the fog and the gunmetal sky, waiting for the water to recede.

While they waited the dam upstream at Bright reached its highest level since the early 21st century. It rose until it spilled over the edges of the emergency sluices and officials opened the release valves at the dam lip. Just too late. Jets of water, shooting from the valves over the valley, slowed to a trickle as a catastrophe of mud, ice and trees from the mountaintops slid raft-like into the sluices and the dam level rose again, rose too high, flowed freely over the top. The roads were cut off. Pelting rain turned away the helicopters. Volunteer brigades from the nearby towns nervously ventured out onto the shaking dam wall, eyes forward, not looking at the valley so god damned far below, and found that they were outmatched by the size of the debris. They fixed steel cable to the thirty metre long eucalypt trunks that pressed against the dam wall and stared in bewilderment as they failed to budge. The Federal Authority dropped five brand new Qizhongji X10ZS flying scaffolds in the water on the mountaintop. They floated downstream and rose roaring at the wall to clear the blockages with crane and saw. 

In the grey light their sophisticated instruments failed. Built for heavy duty, high altitude construction, the water and humidity destroyed sensors and gyroscopic engines. Eventually they all failed. The first to go was Wedgetail. Reduced to eyesight navigation, captain Hugh Elijah, a forty year veteran of the construction industry, found himself unable to cut cables as a slab of tangled tree trunks dragged it back down river. Listing badly, flying at a sharp angle, it crashed in slow motion into Kookaburra. They sank into the river and drifted towards the dam wall. Under heavy wind and rain Cockatoo took off too slowly from the water and crashed into the tree line. Sea Eagle’s engines failed and it made a controlled landing on the river, where its crew could do nothing but watch helplessly as it crumpled into Kookaburra and Wedgetail along the dam wall. In the rising panic as water rose higher against the wrecks of the three floating scaffolds, the Lyrebird disappeared into the fog, its radios dead. 

For four days metal and lumber creaked against the shuddering wall. Volunteer brigades on the riverbank tried fruitlessly to pull the wrecked scaffolds away. On the fifth day the aging concrete, laid in 1911, cracked and the dam collapsed. With an apocalyptic roar, eight billion litres of water spilled into the valley.

Along the natural depression mud and rubble tore away bushland and the hillside villages. In the valley the pastures and farmhouses vanished. Crops were washed away and the topsoil poisoned. The people in the valley who hadn’t evacuated had climbed onto their roofs when the wet came up, and there they sat awestruck as the wall of brown water like a tidal wave swept down the valley from the broken dam towards them.

After six weeks the water receded. Nine hundred people dead, four hundred houses destroyed. Three thousand dead sheep. Maggie Butler returned to the land in the valley where her house had been with six-year-old Michael. Two and a half acres of pure, stinking mud. Nothing remained of the house. The insurance company didn't cover flood. The government delivered her a pod house donated by a major real estate firm and she and Michael moved in and spent their days huddled around a little tablet computer watching news broadcasts for any mention of Michael's parents, who had volunteered for ad hoc search parties organised by the provisional emergency services in Winton and got lost in the fog. 

Michael was a sweet boy with a faint personality. In the morning and the late afternoon when the intense white sunshine had weakened to a milder yellow his grandmother let him out to play. He trudged around on the smooth brown plain, making an effort to play. Maggie watched him through the plastic pod windows. The energy to follow him down the steps was hard to marshal. He ran aimlessly, scooped careful spadefuls of mud into a plastic bucket, tipped them out. She watched him make small piles and then stand back and observe them silently. Once, with great effort, she popped the pod’s front hatch open and called “Well done, Michael,” but he couldn’t hear her. 

“It sounds like he’s depressed,” the online counselor told Maggie after a quiet session with the limp little boy. What should I do about it, she wanted to shout. That much was plainly obvious. He sat quiet and still in his bunk until she prompted him to play, and then he complied obediently. It made her heart ache to see him try. He tried to make something out of nothing because he could tell that she wanted him to. After he’d played in the mud for a while he’d look back to the caravan, notice her, her morose expression, and come skipping back inside to try with a manic and obviously fake smile on his tiny face to cheer her up. Inevitably he tracked in the stinking brown slime on his blue shark gumboots. Maggie cleaned it up with a little dustpan and brush. 

Weeks passed. Michael got thin. He’d always been thin, but as each dull brown day came and went and he politely neglected meals his rib cage started to cast shadows against his yellowing skin. How could Maggie make him eat? She didn’t want to.

He became obsessed with her. It was sweet, at times. Early in the morning and late at night. Other times she hated it. He would hold Maggie’s face and stroke it and say “Hello, my beautiful. Hello my angel.” He’d take her curling and callused feet in his hands and whisper “I love you, I love you, I love you” to them and kiss them until Maggie jerked them away angrily. For God’s sake, Michael. It’s not appropriate. 

After a while his ability to do things without her just withered away. He woke up each morning and began watching her. 

Then one afternoon a flood recovery taskforce donation drop arrived. Maggie unpacked beans, vitamins, a battery pack, a new torch, flares and a set of yellowing melamine plates decorated with stars and holly. Michael sat gaping at the plates. As she placed them in the cupboard he sat looking at her slack-jawed, twitching, so fascinated she nearly laughed and would have if it wouldn’t have hurt his feelings. Ten minutes later he worked up the nerve to ask if he could have one for himself. Well, OK, she told him. This one can be yours. She passed him one that was smaller than the others. Nearly a saucer. With trembling hands and tears in his eyes he took it to his bed and sat turning it over in his hands, catching the weak yellow light streaming through the window.

The next morning he took it outside and set it on an upturned box and with cautious and unpracticed hands began to make mud shapes. People, dogs (Maggie assumed), a tree, a hut. He placed them on the plate to dry and sat looking rapturously at his creations. It was not easy to play with such crude and crumbling toys but he persisted, muttering under his breath as he did so.

He played for hours. The next day, too, and the next. Maggie felt an unexpected and immense sense of relief to have his eyes off her. The next day he pestered Maggie to play with him and she magnanimously agreed to but when she sat down and picked up one of the brittle characters her hands shook and it broke. She felt so terrible she snapped at him that he needed to figure out how to entertain himself. Later inside, crying, she asked him to forgive her for being sharp with him. OK, he said, wide-eyed and anxious. 

When the flood recovery liaison called for a halting and unhelpful progress report Maggie asked for some toys for the lad. Donations are drying up, they told her. Sorry. Maggie put on her boots and took Michael by the arm and they slogged it half a k through the mud to the McCains on the next property. 

The McCains were a family of five on whom fortune had smiled before the flood. In the aftermath they’d been just as lucky. The taskforce had blessed them with two large pod houses, a solar array and an air conditioner. They’d somehow procured a marquee that they’d arranged the pods around and hung a tarpaulin over the middle - a fair allotment for a family of that size, an official had told Maggie, and a damn inadequate definition of fair it was, although Maggie did not say this. What Maggie said was, And what happens if my daughter and her husband come home? We won’t have space for them. And the flood recovery official had said, Well, and shrugged, and said, Let’s review your case if that happens. And they’d left without explaining what Maggie was supposed to do with a bright six year old boy who had no books to read and no toys outside of an old plate to play with and no mother or father and practically nothing but the shitty tablet computer that came with the pod house while the McCains’ kids had a pet and all the diversions they could require and no damn loss to do their best to cope with. 

As they approached the McCains’ front door Michael looked up to Maggie. Why are we going to see the McCains? He asked. Mum and dad say they’re unfriendly.

It’s different, now, sweetheart, Maggie told him. We’re all in this together. The McCains are our friends now.

At the McCains’ place Maggie knocked on the side of a camper and Brian McCain emerged from the circle. A big man in blue jeans and a nice plaid shirt. What can I do for you, Maggie? He boomed. He had round cheeks and deep-set eyes.

It’s for Michael, Maggie told him falteringly. He’s got nothing to play with. I wondered if you might have any old toys we might borrow for a while? Or some books? Anything you could spare.

Cripes, Maggie, Brian said, looking around and back into the circled campers where the muffled sounds of Julie McCain cooking and watching television could be heard. Past him Maggie could see the ground was covered in reeds to make it dry. A bicycle sat unattended. A white IKEA bookcase sat under an awning with toy cars and trucks crammed into it. We didn’t take much with us when we evacuated. My lot only have a few bits and pieces themselves.

Is there nothing you might have? Maggie asked incredulously. He’s nothing to do, Brian. I can’t bear to see him sad. 

Julie would kill me, said Brian McCain. Sorry, Maggie.

Maggie stamped her foot in sudden fury and Michael grabbed her dress with fright. You’re a selfish prick and you always have been, Brian. Now fuck off. 

Brian stared at her calmly. You’re on my property, Maggie, he said.

Maggie took Michael’s hand and marched him back into the mud, hands trembling with fury. She could feel the boy’s quick step beside her, trying to please, as always, scurrying to match her pace, but she had no interest in looking at him and maybe bursting into tears. She stomped towards their van, cutting across the mud plain instead of walking out to the road where the ooze only just covered the tarmac. Here, it reached Maggie’s ankles and she angrily forced her old legs through. 

As they neared the caravan they stopped. A breeze had picked up, blowing towards them the sound of laughter. 

Maggie and Michael turned and squinted. Fifty metres off, down a gentle slope that had hidden it from their house, Maddie McCain and her twin brothers Leo and Coby were playing and swimming in a pool of water. 

It was the McCains’ pond. Before the flood it had been covered with lilypads and lotus flowers, decorative stones, little fake Chinese lanterns. Concrete frogs in straw hats who were fishing. That kind of thing. Themed gnomes. Whatever chintzy garbage the hardware store sold. And full of tadpoles and fish. Now it was empty of life and surrounded, as everything else was, by soft mud. But as they trudged towards it, Maggie and Michael saw that in the centre the water was still clear. Silt had settled to the bottom and, in the overwhelming brown of the everywhere mud, the water was wonderfully clean. 

The McCain children had stopped playing and gathered at the far side of the pool. They looked warily at Maggie and Michael. 

Hello, Maggie said. Are you alright?

Yes. Just swimming.

Is it safe? Mud can be dangerous.

It’s OK, Maddie said. We can walk on the bottom. It’s nice in the water.

But it tastes gross if it goes in your mouth, Leo piped up.

Granny, Michael said softly. Can I swim too?

Oh, great idea, Michael, Maggie snapped. Why shouldn’t we take a terrible risk for nothing. Yes, swim in the filthy waterhole. I'll be waiting here to pull you out of the mud when you drown. 

Later, Maggie lay awake. She was entitled to be a little hard on the boy, after all. Even though she hated to see him so upset. Living as they did on a dangerous mud plain that was, when Maggie looked out the window, as inhospitable as Mars. And being, as he was, the fresh recipient of more than his fair share of trauma, with his mother and father missing but almost certainly long dead, since they'd disappeared when the floodwaters lapped at the mountaintop and now here they were in the valley with no water around and still no Matt or Jill and not even any call from the flood recovery liaison that they had a fresh lead, if that was the kind of thing they called to say. And with Maggie at a limit for the number of children she could farewell, with Jill's older brother Angus six years gone after his fire truck got surrounded by bushfire. And when it got down to brass tacks Maggie had to admit that he, the lad, was, let's face it, the last little nail holding it all together for her, and if he was to wander off the trail and disappear like his parents then the whole shebang would come clattering down like a pile of logs. Not that she would say that to him. That would be a lot to pile on any six year old, let alone this one. But to Maggie it was a fact necessary to look in the eye. If she had to be strict with the boy to keep body and soul together then that's what she would be. And there were worse things you could do to a child.

She fell asleep in the booth seat in the caravan and dreamt of another deluge that tumbled through the valley to scrub the earth clean. Shining green fields sprouting life in its wake.

When she awoke the sun was out and she was alone. The caravan door was open and the heat poured in. She stumbled outside, shaking with panic. She circled the caravan. Michael could not be seen. She squinted frantically at the featureless brown landscape. In the distance was the McCains’ pool. Maggie staggered towards it, stumbling, hollering garbled half-pleas, until she got close enough to see a little shape in the water, a shape wearing Michael’s shorts, and then she ran, battery acid in her legs, screaming as she never had before. And then she was at the lapping edge and Michael was lifting his face from the water, pink from sunburn and smiling with joyful exertion, greeting her, holding his small arms out bashfully in hopes of forgiveness for his tiny little happiness.

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Many thanks to my friend Stacy Gougoulis for his wonderful illustrations that accompany this story. Follow him on Instagram.