by Neil Grant
‘G’day, Mr Solace.’ At least he doesn’t call him Cord.
Cord ignores him, slamming the door of the ute. Rudra shuts his eyes and feels the flakes of rust rattling down inside the window cavity. Inside himself.
‘Tea,’ Cord says to Nayna, not looking at her. He gathers armfuls of paperwork and moves towards the house. Closing her book silently, she pushes out of the deckchair.
‘How’s the fishing?’ asks Maggs, like he’s got a death wish or something. Rudra grabs his wrist.
‘I’ll have it in my office,’ Cord says to Nayna. She follows him inside.
‘You’d better go,’ says Rudra to Maggs.
‘I think I’ll stick around.’
‘You’re an idiot.’
‘Maybe.’ Maggs goes to the kitchen, Rudra following like a gallows bird. ‘Can I help you with the tea, Nayna?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘I’ll help,’ he says.
Cord shuts his office door and the old house growls and settles.
Nayna makes the tea and carries it through to Cord on a metal tray. Rudra and Maggs stand quietly in the kitchen. The clock on the kitchen wall gets loud. Snik. Snik. Snik. Chopping time into bite-sized chunks, each one hanging in the air before being executed by the next.
‘You should go,’ says Rudra again.
‘I’m staying,’ says Maggs leaning back against the counter.
There is a sound of metal attacking timber. An alarm of sorts. It could be the tray falling to the floor, Rudra thinks; hopes. Then there is a quiet that he plummets into, a furious fist closing over him. It is not a peaceful absence of sound; it is a violent exorcism of the world.
‘We should check,’ whispers Maggs.
‘Wait.’
The door to Cord Solace’s office creaks open and Nayna appears. Rudra is struck by how dignified she looks as she walks towards the kitchen. She is carrying the tray – and on that tray Cord’s mug, now split in two. Wordlessly, Nayna steps on the bin pedal and disposes of the broken china.
2
IT’S DARK. DARKER THAN SQUID INK. Zero moon. A light breeze comes up from the bay, bringing with it oyster flesh and the scent of floodweed. Rudra can feel the worry high inside him, rising still, like bait in a craypot.
Today, he will work the boat, beside Cord, solemn as a priest. And those nets will rise from the sea full of treasure and promise, and the junk – the weed and the jelly blubber, the swimmer crabs – will fall back to the sea. He can picture it falling through the water in slow motion, the bubbles like strings of pearls.
He will pull the nets because that is what his father does, and his grandfather did, and his great-grandfather. All fishermen. Solace & Sons is stencilled in black on the crates they fill with fish – a wish-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
Rudra checks the time on his phone. It’s two hours until dawn. High tide two hours after that. He wishes he had a real clock, like in the kitchen, so he could hear time passing. He lies quietly on his back, feet splayed like a gorge, the sheet slung between. Hands keeping track of his breathing in the dark, knotted over his chest.
Now his dad is awake – his steps bold across the uneven boards of the kitchen, the old house shivering beneath him. The kettle neck finds the tap and the kettle finds the stove. Mugs and milk are found and placed. Then there’s a knock at the door and a stab of light.
‘Rudra, get up.’
He rolls onto his side and feigns sleep.
The door opens wider. Three steps to his bed. A rough hand on his shoulder. The tang of fish blood. ‘Wake up.’
Rudra keeps perfectly still, holding the whole world together with this tension. If he breathes, it will shatter. His dad returns to the kitchen. The kettle screams and is dragged from the heat. Rudra imagines the teabags crumping softly into mugs. The sound of water being measured onto them, followed quickly by milk.
When his mum makes tea, she boils loose leaves in a pot with sugar, sometimes a cinnamon stick and a few cardamom pods; the milk in there too. It rolls up like a storm swell, thick with bubbles, the froth clotting like cloud. Too sweet, his dad grumbles. Too sweet by half. But it reminds her of her beginnings.
The tea is dumped on his bedside table. The spillage pools on the timber and sucks the colour from the varnish. ‘You got ten minutes. Eat on the boat.’ Not a word wasted. Cord’s speech is always just a bunch of lonely phrases looking for something to bind them. People say Rudra’s can be the same. But he balances this with some of his mum’s long-windedness.
He is packing his bag when Nayna comes to the door. She leans against the jamb, her hand covered by her thick plait. When she smiles, the darkness around her eyes makes Rudra want to look away.
‘You sure you want to?’ she whispers.
Rudra nods. Have to.
‘This summer only, okay?’
‘Dad wants it.’
‘I want to make sure you know it’s only temporary.’
‘Sure.’
He sorts through his half-empty bag so he doesn’t have to meet her stare.
‘I want more for you, Rudra.’
Dawn is unromantic, awkward and brutish; clambering over the top of the headland as they cross the pier, making the Norfolk Island pines look more like giants than they have ever been. Rudra’s dad is in front carrying a shoulder bag, a twenty-litre jerry can of diesel swinging at the end of his long arm. The deckhand, Wallace, is wheeling crates of ice. No one says a word for fear of cursing themselves. They’ve lost three days, what with the storm, the swell and the dodgy engine. At least now the water has cleared. They need a couple of good digs to make it through – to pay for the breakdowns and the diesel and to put food, other than fish, on the table.
They walk the pier, the occasional splash of ice hitting the concrete. When Rudra was little, the lower landings of the pier would terrify him. Spread like stingray wings on either side of the pier’s solid spine, they were made of pitch-covered sleepers. On the highest tides they were swamped and made horrifying sucking noises as waves rose and fell. Below lay teeth of the sharpest oyster shells, and dark shapes crossed back and forth in meaningful patterns. It was the gaps between the boards though, and their horrific possibility, that built Rudra’s fear. Crossing them, he would shake at the thought of falling; the water was different there, oily, dismal, rank with fish blood, swim bladders and purple spirals of gut.
Now, those spaces are so small it is hard to believe they ever got to him. Now, summer is here and year ten is done with, and year eleven pants across the great divide. This is his new dark space – this gap between, this summer – another fear altogether. Abstract nouns, he learnt in year eight, are things you cannot see or touch, but they are real. You need to believe in them because they belong to the world as much as boat and sea and sky. Words like I can’t and I must (failure and responsibility) which he learnt when he was just a child. How they cling to him now, feeding and growing. Some of these words are so thinned out he can barely voice them, but he can feel them alright. They are inside his bones, like electricity, charging his marrow and making his joints ache.
In the days when they shared a common life, his mum would take him down to the beach and there they would scrawl his fleeting fears below the tide-mark with a broken stick. She promised that the sea goddess would come and take them from him. And sure enough, when high tide had come and gone, his thin scratchings were erased and so was the fear.
Now he can’t be fooled so easily. Water can erase words but those feelings remain. Magic has left this world and now Google has an answer for everything. The tides are caused by the pull of the moon – gravitational forces, nothing more. The sea goddess is just another Instagram influencer or YouTube make-up artist.
‘Rudra, give Wallace a hand.’ His dad is on the tender. He has the top off the Evinrude and is going through the daily routine of coaxing it into life.
‘We need a new outboard,’ says Wallace, pulling a pouch of Champion Ruby from his pocket and expert
ly rolling himself a smoke.
‘We’ll need a new deckhand if you don’t shut it.’
Wallace tightens his lips over his rollie as he lowers the crates into the bottom of the tender. He knows better than to backchat – tried it on for size once and regretted the shit out of that little error. Had to swim home from halfway across the bay, midwinter swell, sharks deep down, chill water coursing out of the Hawkesbury.
The tender tosses a broad wake and gulls follow them out to Paper Tiger – the boat Rudra has known his whole life. She swaggers on her anchor, stern to the wind like an obstinate child. The tinnie nudges her gently. They climb on board and get her ready to go.
Fishing is partly about invisible lines, Rudra knows, carving bays and the river into different grounds – places you can go, places you can’t. Closures, they’re called, and they stop boats as surely as a sandbar. Fisheries’ patrols enforce the lines when maps are ignored or forgotten. There’s one line drawn across the mouth of the Hawkesbury – argued and won some years back by the fishermen down at Brooklyn to stop boats running twin gear down the river. Paper Tiger only runs single gear – one net and boards. There are places that she cannot go though, spots like Pittwater, Brisbane Water, Cowan and Berowra, held aside for things like recreational fishing and oyster leases. Cord often complains about the unfairness of the setup – how the government favours weekend anglers over those trying to eke a living from the water.
Rudra hopes that today they’ll fish the Hawkesbury. There is something comforting about being nestled between two banks. Plus, the river is sheltered from the ocean swell and there is no need to put the ‘birds’ (the black, gull-winged stabilisers) into the water to stop seasickness.
But they turn left as they motor out of Brisk Bay, heading towards Lion Island.
‘Why’re we heading for the sea?’ Rudra asks Wallace.
‘The fresh, mate,’ replies Wallace. ‘It’s pushing the prawns into the bay.’
Rudra has been around enough fishing slang to know the ‘fresh’ is the flood of freshwater pushing from the estuary after the storm. He curses it as they break from the bay but is soon busy with Wallace, filling the icebox beneath the sorting table and scouring seagull shit from the deck. They work rhythmically, the sea rolling under them. The first tinge of light creeps into the sky and Lion Island looms like the predator it is.
The island has always held some fear for Rudra. Something about its shape beckons and repulses depending on the angle and time of day. The place is a nesting ground for fairy penguins and muttonbirds, their burrows nestled among the banksia and bitou bush. It is protected, and park rangers swing by every now and then to check no one has landed on the tempting crescent of beach. It’s well known that sharks prowl off the point, rubbing out the dark smudges of penguins as they pass overhead.
‘You know why your dad wants you out here?’ says Wallace.
Rudra winces. He knows Wallace’s days on the boat are numbered. His dad talks about him as if he is just another expense. And Rudra is free labour no matter how you look at it. You don’t pay family, Cord has always said.
Wallace clamps his hand on Rudra’s forearm. ‘Don’t worry, mate. No hard feelings, eh.’
‘I don’t really want to be on the boat.’
‘Don’t let the old man hear you say that.’
‘I know nothing about fishing. He never told me anything until now. Guess he hoped some miracle would deliver him a better son.’
‘Let me tell you something about fishing and me. I been on and off boats since I was little. I’m infected with it and it’s some bad disease, let me tell you. On the days I’m not fishing I’m still thinking of it. Dream about it too.’
Wallace clenches and unclenches his fists; just to bring warmth back into his hands, Rudra thinks.
‘I only work by the grace of Cord Solace. When he’s sick or there’s too many prawns or squid for him to handle on his own.’ He looks Rudra squarely in the eyes. ‘I love this boat. Even though I know she isn’t mine and never can be.’
‘You should get your own, Wallace.’
‘Need cash. Got none.’ He straightens his back and tucks a pre-done rollie into his mouth, then sparks it up and blows a plume of smoke over Rudra’s head. ‘So it’s down to me today, to educate you about this fishing lark.’
Rudra should know about fishing. It should be in his blood. He looks down into the water, gone crystal clear, the night’s darkness still clinging to some spots.
‘School prawns,’ Wallace begins, ‘is what we’re after. Their eggs are dropped at sea and go through a cycle – turning at special times into altogether new things. You got those posters in school, Rudra, where monkeys slowly turn into humans? Prawns are like that – one lifetime – five different animals. Like them Russian dolls with all those other dolls perched inside, just busting to get out.
‘When the prawns are still little, they get the signal that winter is coming and they should head to the Hawkesbury. This is a place they’ve never seen, Rudra, but up the Hawkesbury they go – into the shallows and deeps, over sunken logs and oyster leases.
‘They sit out the winter in the river and then, when the time is right, they get another signal. When they get a dark moon, they begin to migrate from the Hawkesbury back to sea. Their little heads are buzzing with the pull of it. They need the deep waters to mature-up and get ready to spawn. But they don’t know that yet, all they got is this burning need to go. So they swim, they crawl and they gush backwards out of the Hawkesbury.
‘And that’s where we come in. Us with our nets and our boats. That’s the gold we’re after. That’s what pays for this boat and the food in our bellies.’ Wallace takes a drag of his smoke and blows two rings into the clear air, one through the other like it’s a target.
Cord’s voice explodes out of the cabin: ‘Shoot that net away!’ And they get busy feeding the net over the back of the boat. The winch brakes are released and the otterboards drop from the gallows into the sea. That sea, like so much trapped sky, and them clattering over it. Once underwater, the boards spread the net like a greedy mouth, guiding it towards the bottom. Wallace waits until he knows there is enough wire out for the net to be on the bottom. He gives it a little distance – watching the angle made by the wire against the surface of the sea – and then locks the winch off.
‘Your dad’ll set the boat to two and a half knots now,’ he says. ‘Any faster and we’ll miss the prawns. Any slower and the net will mud-up like buggery.’
‘What’s happening down there?’ asks Rudra.
‘Those prawns are hiding in the sand. That’s where the tickler chain comes in. Remember it hanging under the bottom lip of the net? It’s going to work now, grubbing the prawns from the sand.’ Wallace points at the water, under it. ‘See them? See them?’ Rudra does not see them. ‘You see them, alright. You picture them huffing back with quick flicks of their tails. But too slow for the net. It swallows them up like a greedy bastard.’
They trawl out in a nice clean line, away from the shark net and the closure from Green Point, at Pearl Beach, over to Little Box Head. A tight turn and back again, towards Green Point; Cord’s eyes on the plotter screen, tracking the shot. Rudra and Wallace waiting. Three digs around – that first shot an hour of hoping, with their path on Cord’s screen winding like a cyclone eye.
Then they winch the net. It comes up slowly, with Rudra holding his breath.
‘With those storms,’ says Wallace, ‘there’ll likely be a lot of kelp.’
The winch drags the net to the end of the gallows, and when the otterboards rise from the depths Rudra grabs the lazy-line. Its other end is attached to the cod-end: their bag of gold. The net is winched higher on the gallows and they grapple the cod-end onto the sorting table.
‘You can do the honours, mate,’ says Wallace, and Rudra pulls at the drawstring, the knot releasing the cod-end like a purse. There is a bit of weed with the catch, but it looks big enough to kick the morning off nicely. They
go to work, tossing the weed into the water. Soon they are left with a good pile of prawns on the table, flipping and turning in the warm morning. Wallace smiles. ‘Nice dig,’ he says and, as he shoots the net again, Rudra begins to sort them for size, washing them and slipping them into the slurry of ice and salt water. By the time this is done the next haul is ready to be brought in.
They do three more shots that morning, before the tide changes. The sun climbs into the cloudless sky and Broken Bay fills with pleasure boats. The ferry to and from Palm Beach skips past every half-hour. People appear on the beach – joggers and their dogs, early morning swimmers.
The shots are decent, mostly free of kelp. After the last dig of the day, a massive forty kilos of golden school prawns sit on the sorting table, the light glinting off their backs.
They break back into Brisk Bay not much after midday, the icebox jammed with prawns. While the rest of Patonga were sleeping, they were making money. They moor Paper Tiger and trundle their iced prawns to Cord’s old ute. ‘I reckon this lot’s worth the trip into Sydney,’ says Wallace. ‘If they’re the only prawns on the market floor tomorrow morning, we’ll make a killing. I’ll run them in with Rudra if you want.’
‘Rudra can help me on the boat,’ says Cord. ‘Reckon it’ll be another big day tomorrow. More like this and we’ll be back on top.’
Rudra is nervous about being on the boat alone with his father. With Wallace around, he has an ally. Without him, Rudra feels as if he has had the shell ripped from him and he is horribly exposed to Cord’s quick temper.
3
THE NEXT DAY, AS IT TURNS OUT, is not a big day – at least not in a fishing sense. Paper Tiger’s motor vomits oil into the bay and Cord, knuckles skinned and greasy, sets to work fixing it once again. Prawns go uncaught, bills will not be paid.
In the evening, Rudra is in his bedroom when he hears the sound of his dad’s voice, one notch above normal, through the thin walls.
