After a few rounds of darts, Nev left in her silver pickup truck and Reg’s brother arrived.
Local news came on the television. She muted it. Her dad and uncle talked politics while older orphaned rock wallabies and pademelons hopped around the fenced garden. They would be ready to release into the wild soon. The rescue had a system to reintroduce them into the wild gradually, involving progressively larger pens in the yard.
Reg voted with the Green party. He read all the political news articles, knew all the voting histories of the state and local candidates on Aboriginal issues as well as the Environment. She voted for whoever he supported.
A news anchor holding a microphone stood in front of a brick building with a shallow-pitched red metal roof. Behind him rose a cloud of black smoke. Burning tires? The building or something in the courtyard behind it must be on fire.
Ronnie reached for the clicker, turned the sound on.
Prisoners at the Youth Detention Centre down near Townsville were rioting. The campus was on lockdown. An unknown number of the kids had escaped their cells. The news station broadcasted footage from a helicopter circling the facility.
Ronnie felt sick.
Reg stood behind her. Her uncle looked at her, then back at the news.
Someone could get badly burnt, or asphyxiated by smoke if they were trapped in a cell or a wing of a burning building on lockdown.
The kids must be scared. The guards must be scared. Adrenaline on both sides. Staff worked there, cooks in the kitchen, janitors, nurses, women volunteered there as counselors or teachers.
Was anyone trapped inside?
Hopefully the standoff de-escalated before anyone got hurt.
“Reg, turn it off,” Blaise said.
If he did, Ronnie would turn it back on.
It was May, autumn, Second Term in the school year. Was the fire near the library? Would all of the books be ruined? Or was the fire near the dormitories? Was it in the male or female dormitory?
Men in black uniforms pointed machine guns at the doors and windows. She hoped people who complained Queensland was “soft on youth crime” were watching this shit. They must be satisfied to know that their tax dollars were paying for grownups to point loaded guns at kids.
Reg went outside on the patio to take a phone call.
Blaise stood watching from the kitchen. “We don’t have to watch this. It’s upsetting Brum.”
News anchors repeated old information but didn’t say anything new.
“I have to see what’s happening inside.” She needed facts, details, not random people’s conjectures about what might be going on behind locked doors.
“This will be on the news all day,” Blaise warned.
Ronnie’s phone vibrated. Call from Mikey. She answered, leaning forward and gingerly sliding to the edge of the couch. “Mate.”
“Mate. Are you watching this?” Mikey was an auto mechanic in Townsville.
“Unfortunately. Are you all right? How’s Jesse?”
On Mikey’s end of the line an engine revved. “We’re all right, other than the landlord situation.” Mikey was still looking for an apartment in a safe neighborhood with a landlord who didn’t hate her. “How about you and Rainbow?”
She and Mikey didn’t get together as often as they should, but when they did they bonded over their kids. Ronnie was one of the lucky ones from juvie who hadn’t been nailed for anything since they let her out. She credited that entirely to her dad.
“She’s good, I think. I’ve been better. I’m at my dad’s. Have you heard anything about what’s happening inside?”
“No, I wish. I was going to ask you. Looks heaps bad. I feel gross.”
“Me too.” She figured out how to stand up from the couch and took the phone outside.
“Have you found out if you need a character witness for the hearing?” Mikey asked.
