by Ben Hobson
Praise for Ben Hobson’s first novel, To Become a Whale
‘A powerful tale of fathers and sons and all that can’t be spoken between them. The writing is honest, rich and clean, and it made me feel so much. Too many writers fuss things up, but Ben tells it simply, which is so affecting.’ Sofie Laguna, author of Miles Franklin-winning The Eye of the Sheep
‘Hobson takes us to the depths of cruelty to show us life. A boy tries to be a man, a man tries to be a father, and both struggle to navigate what it means to be men. A great study in masculinity.’ Willy Vlautin, author of Lean on Pete
‘A stunning literary debut in the tradition of Favel Parrett’s Past the Shallows and Tim Winton’s An Open Swimmer.’ Brisbane Times
‘A moving debut … If you’ve enjoyed the work of Tim Winton, Favel Parrett and Sonya Hartnett, you’ll enjoy To Become a Whale. Hobson’s voice sits comfortably alongside those terrific authors.’ Rohan Wilson, The Australian
First published in 2019
Copyright © Ben Hobson 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100
Email:[email protected]
Web:www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 176052 723 5
eISBN 978 1 76087 192 5
Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Cover design: Luke Causby/BlueCork
For Aunty Rose
If you’re reading this, and you don’t know who I’m talking about, you missed out.
CONTENTS
ONE: VERNON MOORE
TWO: CALEB MOORE
THREE: SIDNEY CAHILL
FOUR: SHARON WORNKIN
FIVE: SIDNEY CAHILL
SIX: VERNON MOORE
SEVEN: SIDNEY CAHILL
EIGHT: VERNON MOORE
NINE: SHARON WORNKIN
TEN: SIDNEY CAHILL
ELEVEN: VERNON MOORE
TWELVE: SHARON WORNKIN
THIRTEEN: SIDNEY CAHILL
FOURTEEN: VERNON MOORE
FIFTEEN: SHARON WORNKIN
SIXTEEN: VERNON MOORE
SEVENTEEN: SHARON WORNKIN
EIGHTEEN: PENELOPE MOORE
NINETEEN: SIDNEY CAHILL
TWENTY: VERNON MOORE
TWENTY-ONE: BRENDAN CAHILL
TWENTY-TWO: PENELOPE MOORE
TWENTY-THREE: VERNON MOORE
TWENTY-FOUR: SIDNEY CAHILL
TWENTY-FIVE: VERNON MOORE
TWENTY-SIX: CALEB MOORE
TWENTY-SEVEN: SHARON WORNKIN
TWENTY-EIGHT: CALEB MOORE
TWENTY-NINE: BRENDAN CAHILL
THIRTY: VERNON MOORE
THIRTY-ONE: SHARON WORNKIN
THIRTY-TWO: SIDNEY CAHILL
THIRTY-THREE: CALEB MOORE
THIRTY-FOUR: VERNON MOORE
THIRTY-FIVE: SHARON WORNKIN
THIRTY-SIX: VERNON MOORE
ONE
VERNON MOORE
The weight of a life, summed up in the suffering. Look at the bloody thing. Vernon had noticed the downed bird as he lowered himself into his chair, mug of tea in hand, and sat at a loss. He should get up. Though there wasn’t much could be done. One white wing, caked in muck, rose above its body. No seeing the orange beak. None of the elegance normally bestowed upon a pelican remained. It was muddy black and it was dying and that was all. Out on the mudflats of Port Napier. Behind it, Snake Island. The tide would drown it, though not for a while. Like it drowned everything eventually. With the polar ice caps melting it wouldn’t be long before all humanity was underwater. The sea was never full, would never stop eating. He’d be in it too, one day.
He’d heard somewhere, no telling where or when with his age, that pelicans were once revered creatures, that people had believed that a mother bird, to avoid her young starving, would strike at her own breast and feed them from her wounds. That she’d give her blood, her life, that they might continue on. Vernon chortled into his tea, splashing some onto his trouser leg. He brushed at it, angered. Bloody superstitious nonsense. Probably something he’d overheard that history teacher in the staffroom yammering on about. Old bloke. Long dead by now, surely. What had his name been? Couldn’t bloody ever shut up. He’d be talking to the worms in his coffin now he was dead. About pelicans and bloody that bloke who was killed by his enemies with a poker shoved in his arse like he was turned on a spit—the king?—and who knows what else.
He watched the bird as it choked in air but the wing above, the flag, never dropped. He finished his tea and still it waved. He sighed, went inside to the kitchen and found the key to his toolshed. Gumbooted, he strode across his meagre back lawn and unlocked the shed and put the padlock and key on a terracotta pot beside the door. He surveyed the shed. The shotgun on the back shelf and the box of shells nearby. Not sure about that. He handled the axe in the corner and decided.
He climbed down the stone embankment skirting their property and entered the mud. It sucked immediately at his gumboots and he struggled with each step to pull them free without leaving them behind and dunking his socks in the slop. During high tide the water would slosh right up to their back garden, covering where he stood, but now, with the tide out, there was just this muddy expanse. Soldier crabs jutted from their burrows and scooted back inside as he came near. And seaweed, big brown ropes of it, almost everywhere he walked. He had the axe resting over his shoulder.
As he reached the pelican he saw the cause of its suffering. From its proud beak protruded a small bit of plastic, the type used to carry a six-pack. Vernon sat down on his haunches. The eyes of the bird were alarmed but the wing had finally fallen. Perhaps the creature had only desired another with which to share its death. The smell of brine so strong. Vernon attempted a tug on the plastic but it was so embedded he feared pulling up the guts with it.
He was angered at his lack of forethought. No real way of swinging the axe out here. It’d sink into the muddy sand and wouldn’t lop the head off at all and simply cause the bird further pain. He didn’t want to have to swing the axe twice, hacking at the neck like he was splitting wood. Should’ve brought the gun.
He moved the pelican’s head so the neck was vulnerable. The poor bird couldn’t struggle if it wanted to. The surrendered wing rose once again and fell back. He raised the axe and, well-practised, swung it down. It hit the neck and immediately the head was off. The axe sank into the muck up to the handle. Blood gushed from the bird’s neck as he pulled it free. The wing again fluttered. The eyes twitched open and shut. Vernon leaned down and from some instinct put his hand over the bird’s eyes. The body stopped heaving.
He knew he’d done well but doubted the goodness of it. He stood, knees covered in a mix of gore and mud, and groaned.
Under his garden tap he washed the axe head clean, massaging it with his fingers, making sure not even a speck of muck remained to corrode it over time. He replaced it in the shed and padlocked the door. Then he resumed his seat, gazing out at the carcass of the bird. From this distance, the separation of head and body difficult to see. Maybe he’d done well.
Penelope arrived home. He heard her clomping throug
h the house, dumping her handbag on the dining-room table, getting the kettle on. No lights on Snake Island yet. Rarely were nowadays. Kids had no sense of adventure. Nobody camped out there anymore.
‘How was bowls?’ he asked when she came out.
‘Yeah, you know,’ she said. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘Just sitting,’ he said, and nodded towards the pelican out on the flats. By now the tide had started to turn and there was water all around it. ‘Had to kill a pelican.’
‘Why?’
‘It was dying out there. Choking on a plastic thing, from a six-pack.’
She leaned against the doorframe. ‘It’s the nineties. Haven’t people seen the ads about littering?’ She shifted her weight. ‘So, did you shoot it?’
‘I didn’t shoot it. I used the axe.’
‘And you’re just going to leave it out there?’
He looked at it again, surrounded by the now floating seaweed.
‘Well, what do you think, sweetheart?’ he said.
‘It’ll attract sharks, won’t it?’
He laughed at this. Looked at her for the first time. She was dressed in her bowling whites, sweating through her blouse. Nothing comical in her expression.
‘You’re not serious?’
‘Won’t it?’
‘It won’t attract bloody sharks.’
‘You shouldn’t just leave it, though. It’s not proper.’
‘No sharks down here anyway.’
‘Yeah, there are. Old Paulie Westbrook caught one just the other day.’
‘Oh, bullshit. Who said that?’
‘Margie said. And watch your mouth.’
‘Where, at bowls?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Paulie wouldn’t’ve caught anything. Would’ve just said he did.’
‘No, she said she saw it.’
‘Lot of rubbish,’ he said, and added a laugh for good measure. ‘Where’d he say he caught it?’
‘I don’t know where. Nearby.’
He grunted. ‘Paulie couldn’t catch a cold without a jumper on.’
‘So clever,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘You should’ve taken up comedy. Missed your calling in life teaching woodwork.’
He stood. Brushed at his muddied knees. ‘Maybe out to sea there’s gummies. But nothing comes down here. And who gives a damn anyway? They’re not going to jump the rock wall and have a snap at you, are they?’
‘Vernie …’ she said.
She’d taken on that tone she had. He’d learned it well over the years. And knew, also, that were he to argue he’d be faced with her silence the remainder of the week. She had a way of needling him with it he couldn’t shrug off. Probably because he should listen to her more often, and felt guilty for ignoring her.
Before he could respond, though, she re-entered the house. He heard the sound of the kettle being poured. He shouted, ‘I’m not going out there and picking up that bird’s corpse out of some strange sense of fear my wife has for sharks. It’s not going to happen.’
She came back outside. ‘Vernie. Come on. You can’t just leave it.’
‘I can.’
Soon, though, with the two of them seated beside one another, neither saying a word, and Pen sipping her tea without having made him any, he stood, grumbling, and gumbooted his feet. He unlocked the shed again and took from the wall his shovel. A slight, hurried anger in his actions, plain as day beneath his wife’s gaze, he knew. The way he slammed the shed door. He saw within her eyes the hint of a smile as he climbed down the rock wall. Hard to tell if she was simply pleased he was doing what she’d asked, or if she found satisfaction in the power she held over him.
He splashed out to the bird. The briny smell had strengthened. The pelican’s head had been washed away from the torso. He scanned the water for it but caught no sight of it. Absurdly, his wife’s fear of sharks started to creep into him, so he was quick to lever the carcass onto his shovel and carry it stretched out before him back to the house. The weight of it difficult to carry in such a manner. It pinched between his shoulder blades. Too bloody old for this nonsense. He swore a bit as he walked towards his wife, lifting his gumboots out of the mud with stubborn determination. He stopped cursing as he neared her and offered her a forced smile. It made her smile in return all the same.
There was a patch of lawn at the rear of the garden that had always struggled to keep green grass, so he sat the headless bird there and started to dig. The work wasn’t difficult but even so, his back grew sorer. Was a time this type of work had been easy. Now he resented the constant fight his body seemed to give the simplest task. Gardening, for any length of time. Bowling. Used to be he would have joined his wife for a game. Now his knees weren’t up to the stress. His body at war with his spirit. Should have died in the bloody war, for all the good it’s done me, he thought. Like Weymouth.
You old fool with your self-pity. He stopped his shovelling for a moment and in the low and dying light he looked at his wife, who was watching him. She raised her empty teacup in a gesture of unity. He remembered her in her youth as he watched her in the now. It was she that kept him going. He’d done that right, at least. Married the right woman. How long had it been since he’d thought that?
Soon the bird was in its hole. As he shovelled the dirt back in he heard a car on their driveway and his wife went in to greet the visitor. Strange to have one this time of evening. He was a sweaty, aching mess. Returning to the back porch, shovel washed and replaced in the shed, he collapsed onto his chair and stared with satisfaction at his job, and breathed happily.
The visitor rounded the corner and said, ‘You need a beer, mate?’
‘Too right I do.’
‘You got some?’
‘In the fridge.’
William Kelly returned with a stubby in each hand. He handed one to Vernon, in the stubby cooler Vernon had owned for years, then sat down in Penelope’s chair. He gave a knowing look.
‘What’s she got you doing then?’
‘Had to bury a dead pelican in the garden. Over there.’ He motioned with his head. ‘For fear of sharks.’
‘No sharks’d swim up here.’
‘I told her that.’
‘You look an unholy mess.’
‘I know.’
‘Mmm,’ Kelly said. He leaned forward, looked into the now knee-deep water, took a gulp of beer. ‘You take your boat out much?’ He gestured in the direction of Snake Island.
‘No. Not really. Not for a bit. Haven’t needed it.’
‘Haven’t needed the refuge?’
‘Nah, mate. Nothing that bad has happened to me for going on a year now. Life’s peachy.’
Kelly looked at the shed. ‘How about the little one behind there?’
‘With the oars?’ Vernon grunted. ‘Too old for that stupidity now.’
‘You’re right about that,’ Kelly said, and added, ‘I remember going out there with you when we were kids. What, fifty years ago?’
‘Took Pen out there once. She hated it. Never took her again.’
‘Don’t get why you love it so much.’
‘It’s just dependable, I suppose. Always there. And everybody else seems to hate going out there, makes it easier to be alone.’ He shifted, uncomfortable with where the conversation was heading. Then, ‘Been a while since you come out here.’
‘I know. I’m sorry about that. I might not look it but I feel like you look on the inside. Just a hell of a month, you know?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. A few funerals. Warren Bonner died. You remember him?’
‘I knew him.’
‘He served, too. You know that?’
‘Always thought he was an arsehole.’
‘Well. He was a bit.’
Vernon cleared his throat. The water now an inky black. The moon reflected. ‘You ever think about it?’
‘Dying?’
‘The war.’
‘I think about the war, sure. I think about dying more,
though.’
Vernon remembered he’d thought of Weymouth earlier, but didn’t want to bring him up. Didn’t want to ever talk about him again, really. So he said, ‘What do you think about?’
‘I don’t know. What it’ll be like. Just, slipping away. How the Earth will function without me and how that’s strange, you know? Stuff like that.’
‘No doubts now you’re so old about God and all that?’
Kelly laughed. ‘Crummy line of work I got myself into if I doubted God.’
‘How many times we had this discussion now?’
‘Been having it a long time.’
‘Just circling the same spot out of habit like a dog getting to bed?’
Kelly shrugged. Didn’t offer a response.
Vernon said, ‘So what did you come out here for then?’
Kelly looked at the newly covered hole in the earth and then down at his lap. He said, ‘Saw your boy today.’
Vernon clenched his fist. He joined his friend in looking at the grave. Eventually he said, ‘And?’
‘He’s not looking good, mate.’
‘What do you mean he’s not looking good?’
‘You know how we take the choir out to the prison and sing a few carols round Christmas? Thought we’d do likewise for Easter this year, with a few hymns. So we went and sang. I kept an eye out for him but didn’t see him. And some of the guards told me he wasn’t good when I asked. So I went looking for him while we were on a break. They had him in the hospital bit.’
Vernon didn’t move an inch.
‘Well,’ continued Kelly, ‘he was banged up. Pretty bad. Had a dark bruise around his throat, like he’d been choked. Or tried hanging himself.’
‘He deserves what he gets.’
Agony. Saying it. What he’d told himself he had to believe. Why he hadn’t been out there to see his boy. Or help him. This was him helping, wasn’t it? This discipline, this punishment. Let his son feel the weight of his crime. The pelican in the story letting those kids of hers grow up not being able to fend for themselves. Weakness. Molly-coddling. What would happen when she was dead, when they’d taken too much from her? They’d struggle, they’d die. His son would learn. His son would come good out of this. Such a rotten mess, though, the whole thing.
