Jack glanced at me and at the book I still held, and tightened his grip on the gearstick. Eventually, I closed the covers, although I kept the book in my hands, of course. I wished I’d taken it without him noticing. This was how my collection had grown, born from my pressing desire to be close to another person.

7

Moneta | Goddess of Memory, Protector of Funds, Mother of the Muses

Moneta was an instructor who could be invoked, including when performers needed to remember poetry. Her name was taken from a word meaning to teach and warn, and gives us the word money.

Jack paused beside a burned-out letterbox. A man in a long-sleeved flannel shirt ran out, waving with his hat for us to stop. I recognised him. Henry Dawes. His grandchildren Noah and Ashley were at my school. Henry’s yard was littered with tiny black winged bodies.

‘Stay in the ute,’ Jack said to me.

How could birds die like that? A nightmare image came to my mind: flame fingers reaching skywards at a flock in formation – incinerated bodies dropping. I recalled collective nouns I’d taught his grandson. A chattering of cockatoos. A pandemonium of parrots. A murder of crows. What had this incinerated aviary been? There was no way to know.

‘You took your time.’ Henry slammed his hat back down on his head. ‘I been donating to the CFA for bloody years but had to defend me place all by me bloody self. And now you’re about to drive right past.’

Jack cleared his throat. ‘Tankers are spread pretty thin.’

Henry crossed his arms. ‘I been trying to reach you since yesterday.’

‘You haven’t heard the news?’

‘News? We’ve got no power. No time. Been busy trying to save me house. On me own.’

‘Other areas got it pretty bad. I’m here to check you’re okay.’

‘Pretty bad? What do you mean? Casualties? Deaths?’

‘Reports are still coming in. We really don’t know.’

‘Like Black Saturday?’

Jack shrugged. Henry sucked in his breath. ‘Don’t know? Bloody government. Does nothing about climate change. Leaves us to deal with the heat while they carry on like coal matters more than farming.’

Jack let his silence offer details about his own thoughts. ‘I’ve got water in the tray,’ he said, after a while. ‘If you need some.’

‘Not just here?’ Henry asked. ‘Other parts of Victoria too?’

Jack helped him lift several large bottles of water. ‘And New South Wales. I’ll be back later with more supplies. Unless you want to go into town?’

‘Not me. Me car’s out of action.’ It was an understatement. What was left of his car rested in a mound of resolidified metal. ‘S’pose I’m staying right here. People dead. Like Black Saturday. Hell.’

Jack returned to the ute, shaking his head. He turned the engine on and his radio whispered back to life with Brock Shepherd’s morning show. We drove on, delivering water and food when people came out for it. ‘Thousands of people are newly homeless,’ Brock Shepherd said.