Metal Fish, Falling Snow

by Cath Moore

  This is where Joni went that time he disappeared. He studies that old collection of buttons in the boat, colours faded from many days in the sun. Curls his finger round a wisp of his brown golden hair and hums to himself.

  I’m looking far off down the channel and out to the open sea. Maman, aide-moi, reviens à moi. Où es-tu?

  Is the water still playing tricks, or will it deliver us home? I feel the sadness sweep along those bony branches still clinging to the boat. But they know it’s time to let go. A new journey is coming.

  27 Our secret caper

  I don’t tell William about that morning later when the dawn breaks and everything clears away. He would have a heart attack, ’cause he’s always saying kids and water do not mix. We are quiet as can be sneaking back inside the house. Didn’t matter, William was still snoring in the exact same position.

  I make Joni Coco Pops because they are for special occasions and we are celebrating, even though no one else knows why.

  I need a scheme. I sit and write with Joni’s coloured pencils. Stick it in an envelope from William’s writing desk to make it more professional and run to the letterbox out front. Sometimes you have to lose something to get back what you love, and I don’t even think about William getting hurt all over again.

  When Aunty Cecilia comes to get Joni, I’ve already read it in my head a thousand times but I pretend it’s all a big surprise when she brings it in and smiles knowingly at me.

  ‘Baboo, you got a letter!’

  ‘For goodness sake, if that’s the gas company again…’

  She hands it to William who frowns when he doesn’t recognise the handwriting. Fumbles with the envelope and now everyone’s looking at him.

  To whom it may concern,

  Joni would like to go to the fish and chip shop every Tuesday when William plays his phone chess with Ruben. He asked me to accompany him so I can place the order, eat at the kiosk and walk back home with him. He does not have a Tuesday treat at the moment and is bored of watching the fairy video. I am very safe with roads and know how to poke dangerous strangers in the eyes with two fingers. And anyway they mostly have bad teeth so I will look out for rotten smiles.

  Yours in good faith,

  Dylan Freeman.

  I rub my eyes because all this asking, waiting and worrying is making me feel tired.

  ‘You know that path well, eh?’ says Aunty Cecilia.

  I nod and say you can see my footprints in the ground I’ve gone up and down so often. And William’s smiling at the letter but having a conversation with himself in his head.

  ‘It’s just that Joni’s only little and…’

  Here we go. It’s always just that something. It’s never just yes-what-a-top-idea-good-on-you-for-suggesting-it-in-the-first-place.

  But then Aunty Cecilia says how lovely it is that I want to have some quality time with Joni. That I’m like his deedee—his big sister.

  William nods like he’s agreed all along. My heart is racing because I can’t believe I’ve got away with it. And if there is a heaven I hope God still lets me in because it was only a half-lie. I will be spending extra top-quality time with Joni even if the fish and chip shop is a red herring. Maybe a John Dory as well.

  Finally next Tuesday rolls around and Operation Rowboat is about to begin. An ‘Operation’ like the police storming Terry Brankett’s house for illegal green plants or that woman down on Hanerking Crescent who sold all her dead husband’s leftover cancer pills to people who weren’t even sick.

  William clears his throat and flicks through his wallet, gives me a $10-note and says, ‘Only juice, nothing fizzy.’ Little does he know the night before I made us Vegemite sandwiches and a little snaplock bag of barbecue shapes (which Woolworths finally has in stock). Not so many that he might suspect something, but just enough to take the edge off when we need more fuel. He straps a watch onto my wrist. ‘It’s a digital, yeah?’ he says. Like I should be glad it wasn’t the old-style time that I learnt in grade three. Mon Dieu! He gives us fifteen minutes to walk there, half an hour to eat and fifteen to come back. I’ll have to work quick, but with Joni by my side anything is possible.

  We do go down to the shops but straight past Ye Olde Fish & Chippery and into Mitre 10 where I buy a sample tin of green paint that was half-price ’cause they’re not selling that colour anymore. The man goes into the storeroom and comes back with some old paintbrushes he says we can have. For free! Mum used to say one way or another everything had a price tag. But there are no strings attached here; I checked the bag twice before we left.

  When we get to the mangroves I can’t remember where to go and no matter which way we walk the boat is nowhere. Maybe it’s been stolen. Or taken by someone who actually owned it. Maybe this is all over before it’s begun. I get real hot, can feel my heart booming through my rib cage. It isn’t just the boat. It’s the idea that I might have to stay with William forever and that is a very long time to be with anyone who is stranger kin. Besides, where will Mum go if I can’t get her to Paris?

  I feel hot tears slipping down my cheeks.

  ‘And now?’ Joni says with his eyes, lost like a dog waiting outside a supermarket sure his owner is never coming back.

  I just shake my head because I have no idea. Joni walks back the way we’ve come. And I’m glad to be following. He knows that if we just go a little further down the first path we will see the bend before the river, before the fallen tree before the boat.

  And here we are.

  I tell Joni he is my child labourer, that this is a special job only small and nimble hands can complete. First we have to pull the gnarly branches off the boat. They’re all twisted in and around it, holding on for dear life. It’s dead weight and gotta go.

  Joni’s pretty useless. He collects all the branches I pull off and puts them in a pile. Like we’re gonna build a campfire later or something. And then I have to push the boat as far as I can out of the wet mud. Joni just points in the direction I should be pushing and shakes his head when I fall over and get my knees and hands all dirty.

  I glare at him. ‘Pull your weight,’ I want to say.

  And then we paint in silence. All you can hear is the tap of a brush on the rim of the paint tin and the swish of bristles on wood. It’s like meditation. Stroke right, left, right, left again. Lets your mind wander any which way it pleases. Parfait.

  •

  The next Tuesday I wake up with a hard gut. A knot of worry strangling excited butterflies that make me feel so full the only thing I eat for breakfast are the leftover Rice Bubbles from the bottom of Joni’s bowl. I’m worried the boat will be gone and excited it might still be there. It isn’t mine and maybe that would be a strike against me with the man upstairs, but that is a chance I am willing to take. I walk extra fast because I wanna know one way or another. Phew. I breathe a big sigh of relief when we round the corner. I see Joni’s pile of campfire branches first and then the boat, just as we’d left it. I don’t need to tell Joni what to do. He hands me a paintbrush and gets going.

  I smile. This kid’s all right.

  As soon as one Tuesday comes and goes I am counting down to the next. Joni is too. Sometimes it’s lonely being small and even though he doesn’t know what the secret is all about he understands we are sharing something. Knowing that makes him feel a little bigger. I heard on Oprah that you have to visualise your dreams if you want them to ‘arrive in your reality’. Even though she was on TV, Oprah looked straight at me when she said that. Like she knew where I was going and that painting a boat pea green with your mute cousin was a good place to start. I will send Oprah a postcard from Paris once we get there. I think she’d like that.

  •

  People say that the best time of day is in the morning before the world has really woken up and I have to agree. I am glad William has given me the digital watch because I can set it to 5 am every Tuesday morning and make our sandwiches fresh. One time I made us banana and peanut butter and then another ti
me grated carrot and cream cheese but we did not like that. It tasted too raw. Once I even took some chicken drumsticks left over from dinner the night before. William worried he was getting geriatric, thinking food was there when it wasn’t.

  ‘Sometimes I have a snack at night,’ I said, just to throw him off.

  We’ve been lucky with the weather, real lucky. Hot but not harsh with a breeze to take the edge off while we paint. I can hum Joni’s little melody off by heart now. And once in a while I catch him whispering to Augie Belle like he is keeping him up to date on our progress.

  On our lunchbreaks we throw the crusts into the trees because our hair is already curly. We sit with our feet over the edge of the boat, looking at the speckled sun that peeks through the mangrove branches. Hear the waves tumble in and out with the tide, far down out of sight. Augie Belle propped up on the tip of the boat keeping watch for us.

  Once when we were coming back I found a really long brown and white feather stuck in a tree branch. I wondered if the hoatzin was leaving his own trail for me to find. Then again, I’m no ornithologist. Even though I did know there was a James Bond born in 1900 who knew all about birds from the Caribbean, and that the spy man in the movies was named after him. I learnt that from Sale of the Century. I wonder if the hoatzin is on strike, because I haven’t seen him in my dreams for a long time. He helped bring me to the boat and I should’ve listened to what else he had to say. Maybe he figures I’m not black enough to know all the stories that lie under my skin.

  I still fear someone will come and collect what’s theirs. It definitely could happen ’cause as I said before surprises are mostly not nice. And what about Mum—now I’d found the boat (or at least a boat), where was she? I don’t know enough to understand what the spirit world is like. Maybe there’s a lot of traffic or paperwork so you can’t always be with your loved ones on Earth. But a sign would be nice.

  Couple of days later Pat sends me a photo of Mum’s gravestone. Got a good deal on the granite from Dave, the letter says, but I don’t think talking about money and dead people is right. The engraving says: ‘Juliet Lanfore. A wonderful mother to Dylan.’ I stare at my name for the longest time. Some person must have sat in a workshop and carved it into that stone. You can’t rub carvings out so my name will keep me there forever with Mum’s name in a long row of other headstones. Where are all those dead people now? Are they all going back to their fatherlands and motherlands across the sea?

  ‘I’m your real girl,’ I tell Joni and he nods that little head of his for so long I have to tell him to stop.

  But one week later a cloud floats into the sky and hovers over my head. For so long I’d waited for that blackness in William and Aunty Cecilia to spill out of them, maybe seep out from my own skin too. I’d been waiting for the next volcano to erupt, screaming and shouting and smashing of things that were precious and could not be replaced. But it hasn’t come. Sure, William and Aunty Cecilia argued, teased, rubbed each other the wrong way, but it turns out their skin is just a colour, not a feeling. Not a bad one at least.

  Now I am the one who feels bad, untruthful with them all especially Joni, ’cause he can’t come with me when I leave.

  I am doing the same cowardly thing Pat has done to me. Leave someone behind. But until I get in that boat and take Mum back I will feel half-finished and undone with no marrow in my bones or spine in my back. Can’t stand straight like that.

  28 The night sea with its black heart

  Everything you’re too scared to ask for ends up swirling around in your dreams. Then you see just how strong those invisible ties to other people are. That hoatzin bird finally returns one night, picks those ties up in his claws and tugs so hard I am lifted into the sky. Then I’m looking down at the ground, following his shadow as he flies over the earth. We travel so fast I can hardly breathe; the cold air hurts my lungs. But then I see the hand of Beyen welcoming me home once more. ‘Come closer,’ it beckons. Sit inside and feel the warm, hard metal against your back.

  Everything feels strange and distant now. Those ties around my legs and arms are hurting so he lets me go. ‘See for yourself,’ he says. As I fall, the ground comes up towards me until everything goes black. The hoatzin’s taken me inside Pat’s memory bank. I see his hand sweep across a desk, sends his boss’s papers flying into the air, before he storms out. I see Pat grab money from a kid busking on Watson Street, right out of his violin case. Just to feed those stupid machines ’cause his wallet is lined with onionskin. Not a single cent within. No fridge anymore, just an esky holding a sixpack of Coopers pale ale. His head pounds, thinking, ‘What have I got left to sell? What can go?’ Keeps drinking until the numbness takes hold. Before I can see anything else I’m wrenched up into the air by the hoatzin. I watch those ties leading back to Pat rip away from his ankles, arms and neck. They leave burn marks dark like red wine. He looks up at me.

  ‘Wait!’ we both cry, but I am travelling again through the night sky.

  When I wake, my pillow is wet with tears. I’ve thought about the hoatzin enough for him to come back to me to see that I’m sorry for doubting him. But, oh, what sorrow! I’ve never heard Pat wail so loud, all alone and empty the way he was. Now the tears falling are mine because I cut those ties, deleted all his messages trying to tell me how sad he was. I run into William’s room and my words are all covered in snot but I have to let him know.

  ‘He’s not safe, he’s not safe!’ is all I can say. I get William to phone Pat but a lady’s voice says the number has been disconnected. DISCONNECTED! From what, to where? He needs a divine water intervention. I told William, but he didn’t understand why Pat couldn’t just turn on his own tap and pour himself a glass. People who are down and out don’t know what they need. That’s the whole point of intervening.

  ‘We’re here, and he’s there.’ William points to the map on the wall, demonstrating how inconvenient the whole situation is. Time and geography are not on our side, so William starts walking his own thoughts around the room, scratching his head. Makes a phone call and another, writes a name down and calls another number twice before someone called Sean picks up. A lot of shoulder shrugging and head shaking later, William says it’s all happening. Sean’s sister-in-law’s brother is a taxi driver in Wilcott, which is the nearest town to Beyen. He’ll drive over to Pat’s house with four glasses and a bottle of water from the IGA on the corner of Bray and Kiness Street. He’ll put those glasses down on the doorstep and fill them all with water while I pray the magic into each and every glass.

  I squish my eyes so tightly I think they might pop out the back of my head. We’re not home and hosed yet. What if Pat knocks the glasses over when he gets back from the pub, one too many beers in his belly and not enough sense in his head? Then all those ties that had let me see the state he was in would be severed for good. I wait that night, watch William’s old videos of Magnum PI and Knightrider that are in the cupboard under the TV. At 10.29 pm the phone rings. I roll myself out of the beanbag and run down the hallway. In my head I play a worse-case scenario: ‘This is the police. Do you know a Pat O’Brien?’

  But as soon as I pick up the phone I know it’s him.

  ‘Thought for a minute you’d come back.’

  I reckon Pat could see my smile down the telephone line. He’d put those water glasses in each corner of the living room. Filled them to the top and drank the rest for good measure. My heart was beating fast when I told Pat what I’d seen. Him messing up Ray’s office and stealing that busker boy’s money just to play the pokies some more.

  For the longest time there was silence and I thought the line must have gone dead.

  ‘I’m…I tried to pay that kid back but his dad clobbered me one. Dylan, how can you know those things?’

  I didn’t have an answer Pat would understand so I told him I was tired and had to go to bed.

  People can feel snow coming when their bones begin to ache, or they get headaches before a storm blows over. Something is stirring in
me too ’cause my fingers have pins and needles. Feels like the nerves have been cut but can’t stop tingling. No matter how many weather forecasts they make, sometimes it all changes and it’s too late to battle down the hatches. A sunshower can turn into a windstorm or a rumbling cloud collides with another and lets loose with a furious downpour pelting the earth with golf-ball hailstones. The only difference between humans and nature is malice. That is cruelty and wickedness rolled up into a fancy word. Nature does what it does not to please or punish, just to be true to itself. Humans use words to be cruel and hands to hurt. Because we are fearful in a way that nature will never understand. And even if no one feels the stirring but me there is something coming that can not be stopped or changed.

  But talk about timing. On the night of the preChristmas barbeque, for goodness sakes. Aunty Cecilia wanted to cancel because Micky Roberts the weather guy, whose shaggy hair makes him look like a dog with low brain power, said a storm front was sweeping across from the west, driving through winds at more than 100 kilometres an hour.

  ‘What about all those sausages? I went bulk!’ William was cranky that the meat might go off just because of a little breeze. ‘Might not even happen. That Roberts guy doesn’t look like he’s firing on all cylinders,’ he says, trying to convince Aunty Cecilia.

  ‘Some of them are already on their way,’ says Jules.

  This party is almost entirely made up of Jules’s family, who were flying in for Christmas. They all live somewhere else, not as far as Beyen but far enough to pack a bag and get on a plane.

  None of this feels right. Having lots of people in a small space with meat, flies and wind is never a good idea. And okay sure, they’re all related to Joni, but they’ll only ever be strangers-in-law to me. I should say that at this point William had bought me a new dress from Target’s summer range and it wasn’t even on special. It is metallic blue with puffy shoulders, a dress like Tina would have worn on Young Talent Time. I did want to ‘rock da frock’, like William said I should.