iAshes out of Hell-- Part 1 of a 3 part fiction story

 I wrote this story a few years ago after the notorious Australian bushfires, which killed nearly 200 people.


                                                       Ashes out of Hell  (Part 1)

 “Mummy" sobbed Bobby, “I’m at Hell; I’m at the gates of Hell Please help me."

     The lonely ten-year-old’s sobs only reached the cave walls. Bobby cried quietly, traumatised, confused, and desperate for his mother.

                                                                         --0--

    Morosely, his mind wandered back over events two days earlier in the household of three run by his beloved mother and aunt.

  "We got no money Maisie; how we gonna pay the rent this arvy?" Sharon asked her older sister.

  "Aah, don't worry Shazzy, I bin thinkin’-- we'll take Bobby ‘n go up to the cave in the mountain for a coupla nights."

  "Bobby!" Maisie called taking control immediately, "Get ya pillow and sleepin’ bag, we’re goin’ on a picnic for a coupla nights up to the cave."

  "Why Auntie Maisie?'

  "Rent man comin', we gotta get outta the way for awhile."

    “Anyway," she added, "Yer mum an’ me gotta go to a meetin Sat’dy arvo’. Everybody meetin’ with the elders at the creek where our mob always gets together--tomorrer night, ya know? You'll be okay in the cave, eh?"

  "Sure auntie," Bobby kicked his schoolbag with the toe of his sneaker.

  Sharon Olonungooloo, Shaz to most of her friends, gave birth to Bobby when she was only 17. Now 27, she was still pretty and slim, with long shiny black hair, and though she considered herself drab and uninteresting, many of the tribe regarded her as beautiful. But they knew young Bob was her top priority in life and few would dare to challenge that.

  Unfortunately for Sharon, she grew up in a household heavily influenced by alcohol and violence,   and when she found herself pregnant and announced it to the man in question, she received a broken jaw for 'bein stupid'.
                                                           
  Angry and headstrong, she’d walked out and spent endless months sleeping rough, on park benches if she was near a town, on an old piece of cardboard under a tree, or in a dry drain if she was lucky.

  Her much older sister, Maisie, walked away from her secure job of cleaning rooms in the only motel in the small country town where she lived, to seek out the young eight-months-pregnant-Shaz. She determined to make a better life for the three of them, because, as she often told Sharon, "I shouldda
looked after ya better Shazzy, Ya was just a kid."

  They both doted on Bobby; he was the reason they got up and cooked breakfast every morning.

  Maisie was 38 now and plump around the middle; but strong, physically and mentally. She was the one who dug the garden; she was the one who mended the fence and didn't wait for the landlord to do it. She had an impatient 'get it done now' attitude to things, attributed superciliously by the rest of the family to her half-caste father. But, he'd been a notorious drunkard and because of her family experience, like Shaz, she had no tolerance of alcohol, calling it, 'the bloody booze.'

  In the hot western summers the sisters favoured shorts, singlet tops, and flip-flops, and in the incongruous winters, donned tracksuits and sand shoes for the bitter mornings.

  Maisie was an organiser and the boss-- a survivor; Sharon knew they'd be all right with Maisie.

  At school Bobby had his share of problems, as any black kid outnumbered by whites would have; but his tolerance and good humour won him many friends. After a while the bullies recognised that if they picked on Bobby, they picked on Bobby and his mates! When he visited his friends’ homes his politeness won their mothers over and Bobby was never short of a ride to sports practice.
                                                                     
                                                                        --0--

  Shazzy, Bob and Maisie threw their sleeping bags and pillows down on the cleanest part of the cave floor that they could find. They travelled light with a minimum of clothes and a minimum of food. Soon after dark they put their heads down and fell asleep; or at least the women fell asleep, breathing deeply. Bobby lay staring into the blackness, listening to the different sounds surrounding the cave.    He could hear a boobook owl in the distance; a gregarious willie-wagtail forgot it was night time, and crickets sounded deafeningly loud. He heard geckos, mating possums and a koala beating his chest. 

  But the heat was oppressive and Bobby missed the breeze that wafted in his window at home, and the colourful football-patterned curtain blowing over his bed

  Eventually, when tiredness overtook his lean little body, he slept, and they all woke when bright daylight filled the cave.

  Clambering over the rocks and following the little wallaby pad they knew about, they made their way between the trees down to a little water fall a hundred metres or so over behind the cave. Disappointingly, it was barely a trickle, but there was a little pool of water in a sandstone 'basin,' enough for a drink and a face wash. Bobby sat himself down on an old blackened rock near the water's edge, and leaned forward as he slurped water from his cupped hands. 

  Then they explored around the watercourse for the quandong fruit that grew there. A couple of slices of bread and some quandong flesh sufficed for breakfast.

  The women passed the day outside the cave with their backs against a rock, joking and gossiping. Bobby lazed with them, read his comics or lay on his back watching the clouds; or he rolled over and teased a beetle as it crawled labouriously over the bark and stick obstacles that he put in its way.

  At 5 o'clock the women set off for the meeting, Sharon protesting, "I shouldn't leave Bob here on his own Maisie, he'd be all right comin’ with us, wouldn't he?"
 
  "Them elders won't like it; he'll be okay, Shazzy."

  Then to Bobby she added, "You’re gonna be all right here, aren't ya, Bobby?"

  Still, Sharon worried about her beloved son, "Now don't you move outter this cave Bobby. Don't you leave here and go anywhere, will ya? We’ll be back in a coupla hours."

  Maisie backed her up, "Yeah, darlin,’ you stay put! You leave here and God gonna find ya and send ya t’hell!"
 
  As the two women set off Maisie called over her shoulder, laughing as she spoke, "Remember Bobby -- you don't wanna end up at the gates o’ hell!"

  "Orr Maisie!!" Sharon admonished, giving her sister a hit on the shoulder.
 
"Sure auntie,” Bobby called back, head down, turning away and kicking at a stone.

END OF PART 1