The man seated opposite me is not the boy I fell in love with. Not anymore. The hands I’ve held are not those that rest in his lap now. Gone is the immaculately unmarked man I knew. The clean nails he so carefully scrubbed after a day in the gardens. Lines on palms I’ve traced a thousand times. These hands are stained black, grit pooling in the cuticles. At the edges of his singed sleeves, Dario’s skin is raw, pink and blistering. I can’t look away.
“Where are we going, Máma?” Violeta asks.
“I don’t know, hija. Grab hold of your little sister, please.”
Ava slides off the bench a little more with each bump of smoldering debris we run over. One of the soldiers reaches for her and Dario and I both leap to snatch her away. Dario pulls her close where she cuddles in. Those stained hands picks ash out of our daughter’s hair.
I meet the gaze of the soldier. I see that he is young. Far younger than he should be. He has warm eyes that crinkle in the corners like paper in flame. It’s all I can do to keep from weeping.
It’s already dark and passing the remains of homes in El Olivar, downed cables throw sparks like the blacksmith’s hammer off the horseshoe.
I dream of Mapuche country.
Of Chiloé.
Of the green clover carpet of the inlet.
The cool breeze blowing in off the lake.
1000 kilometres north, we’re choking on the ruins of Viña del Mar. Once the green lung of Chile, now only wet t-shirts tied over our mouths keep the grit from the bones of our people from our teeth, keep us from screaming. The back of the rickety truck has an open roof. Only four bars separate us from God. The four soldiers who found us keep their machine guns pointed to streets and I watch as families drag searing sheets of galvanised metal aside to dig in the embers for their loved ones.
Cremation on an urban scale.
Our lungs are black with it.
Smoke rises from the road, too hot to even walk on. There are no looters for the soldiers to shoot.
There is nothing left to steal. Over the smell of burning and the rattle of the truck over stones, our cell phones chime.
“A bit late, isn’t it?”
One of the soldiers shakes his head, waving his phone. The screen glows like the lit tip of a cigarette. The emergency alerts warning of the fire have arrived two hours after the fact.
“They don’t even have instructions. Where are people supposed to go?” I cry.
“Anywhere they can” the young soldier replies, looking at the floor.
Chile’s Andean mountains were raised by earthquake. So were we. We have a culture born of seismic events. Tsunami. Tremor. We know what to do, where to go. But megadrought? Wildfires? Even we Mapuche don’t have stories of fire on this scale.
No one was prepared.
How many had stayed in their homes praying the fires wouldn’t reach them?
How many, like us, didn’t know until the fire was already on top of them?
How many had stayed to defend their property, waiting for the looters that never came.
There had been arson attacks in los parques nacionales before. Every summer someone took liberties, waiting for the perfect combination of heat wave, wind and eucalyptus to clear land for the taking. But they had always been small fires, contained easily and largely unpunished. I never saw this coming, but Ma knew better.
◊ ◊ ◊
“But this is stealing, Ma.” I told her.
“No, what they have done to us is theft. This is preservation. This is how our culture, our people continue. This is how we honour the land. You and Dario are to keep this box safe. He knows how to care for them.”
Cultivating plants was Ma’s life’s work. While she packaged up heritage seeds and bright green seedlings with their transparent roots into damp cotton wool, I would unpack lunch for her and Dario. Every afternoon I’d bring the girls to run around and make sure Ma and Dario got something to eat. He’d been her apprentice since he was a teenager and I’d loved him as long as I could remember.
“Ma, these seeds are not ours to take!”
“Then whose are they, if not the caretakers of this place? Besides, I am not taking anything. I am only propagating more of what already exists here. What exists here because of me, I might add, after they wiped it all off the face of our land. Look here” she said.
I laid bread, ham and avocado out on the table.
“Look at this one,” she repeated. I moved to her desk. She pulled out a packet of seeds with one of her illustrations on the front. The leaves were rounded and forest green. Yellow flowers hung like bells from the stems.
“This one is Sophora Toromiro. This flower once blanketed all of Rapa Nui. Now?” She paused. The deep lines in Ma’s face spread out from her nose like leylines in bedrock and I felt her gaze in some deep, lost place inside myself that I didn’t like. I had seen that look on her face so many times. When I married my ex-husband. Then, when I left him and took my girls with me. Again when she found out about me and Dario sneaking down to the stream behind the gazebo while she thought he was working.
“This one,” she repeated, holding the packet out to me in her wrinkled hands. “It’s extinct now. You cannot find it anywhere on Rapa Nui. All that’s left of Sophora Toromiro exists here in this garden.” She had tears in her eyes then. Now I wear the shame of my indifference.
“Can’t you see?” she pleaded. “There is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by being prepared.”
“Prepared for what, Ma? What do you think is going to happen?”
“These fires every summer” she said. “They’re not what you think. I’ve seen this before. They want the land. They want the highway, and they’ll get it. Just wait.”
“You’re paranoid, Ma. No one’s coming for the botanic gardens” I said. “This place is protected.”
“You have no idea what they are capable of.”
I didn’t have the energy for another rant about the plight of our people, her disdain for authority, the government, the dictadura, capitalism. I waited for it to wash over me, but the lecture never came.
“You think just like them,” she said, fanning out her arm to signify everyone who isn’t us, and somehow, that was worse.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Look at all these fucking houses” the eldest of the soldiers says. He must be in his seventies. He’s higher in rank judging by the badges and stripes on his lapels, made fat from the blood of his people.
“These are fire breaks, you know” he tells his captive unit, making his assessment of what are now only the soot of state housing.
“This area is where the fires would have burned out if none of this was here” he continues.
“Why would anyone live here, then?” the young soldier asks.
“We live anywhere we can” I reply.
◊ ◊ ◊
The only clue that something was wrong was the sudden smell of smoke, fragrant, like campfire. Dario was in the back paddock working on the fence while I washed dishes, the girls arguing over a cookie behind my in the kitchen.
“Fire! Everywhere!” he yelled.
“We have to go. Now!”
Pulling the girls by their tiny hands, we ran through the front door toward the road. On both sides, the hills were burning. The orange glow of the light I’d caught dancing along the kitchen walls had not been the sunset, but the approach of the fire front.
I had not experienced the war. I was just a child when the junta was in power. But as the very air burned it was like someone was bombing the trees, blowing their tops off like the heads of dandelions when you make a wish. We needed to get to Camino el Olivar, the road crossing ours, leading to and from the botanic gardens. We needed to get to water. Then I remembered.
“Dario!” I screamed. “The box!”
I looked back at the house to see the flames already licking at the back room, Dario already sprinting towards it. Ava dug her little heels into my waist as I squeezed her into me. Violeta buried her face in my shirt and cried.
“Dario! Hurry!”
Behind me a loud mechanical roar caught my attention and I whipped around to see a military truck bolting down the dirt track that lead away into the gardens.
“Help us!” I screamed.
The truck barely slowed to a stop, and I threw the girls in without thinking.
“Quick, get in!” They shouted as I looked for Dario.
As the girls clambered in, Dario was at my side handing me the box to stuff in my bag. He doubled over, heaving smoke and vomit into the dirt.
“Did you get them all?” I begged Dario. He nodded, catching his breath.
“Even the roots?”
“Even the roots.”
We half fell into the truck and as the girls made space on the bench for us I turn my pleading to the soldiers.
“We have to get my mother! Please!”
“Where is she?” the eldest replied.
“She works in the gardens.”
The younger soldiers looked at their boots.
“We’ve just come from there. There’s… There’s nothing left.”
◊ ◊ ◊
After sleeping on hard cots in the refuge centre, the plush of the old bus seats feels like a luxury. Ava sleeps stretched across my lap and I watch dreams dance across her fluttering eyelids. Violeta presses her face to the window and watches the other buses fill.
The small screen at the front of the bus rattles off the same numbers, the same updates, over and over under the same tired red, scrolling bolded headline:
VALPARAISO ARSON ATTACK
135 dead.
375 still missing.
36,000 displaced.
Four fire fronts lit simultaneously in 30 minutes.
Ten total fire fronts combined over 24 hours.
43,000 hectares gone.
Jardin botanico nacional closed indefinitely after its complete destruction and the death of its caretaker and two visitors. They had been found together, my mother and the young couple, huddled in the small stream, boiled alive. We were one of the fortunate families who had a body to cremate.
In between the numbers, the other big headline. A new highway will be developed to make travel between the north and south of Chile much more accessible, bringing more tourism and money to the region.
Dario sits across the aisle, reaching his wrapped hand to take mine. His burns are beginning to heal but the bandages keep me from being able to feel his skin on mine. His other hand rests on the box on the seat beside him, guarding the seeds, Sophora Toromiro, and Ma’s ashes.
The driver announces our departure as the engine roars into life. The airconditioning bursts cool air into the cabin and the sudden change of temperature settles me as the bus reverses out of the lot.
“Mama, where are we going?” Violeta asks.
“Chiloé,” I reply.
“Where’s that?”
“It’s home, hija. We’re going home.”
Haylee Read is a fiction writer and poet whose work explores cultural memory. She holds a Master of Arts in Literature and Writing from Deakin University.
