Peter’s agent had once taken him to two of Australia’s best sea-food restaurants, but tonight’s trout was the best fish Peter had ever eaten. He hadn’t told his brothers. He knew he should have.
‘No, I’m not awake Simon.’
Simon shuffled in his sleeping bag.
‘You remember when the old man used to belt us?’
‘Of course,’ Peter said impatiently.
The pair went silent for a while. Peter wondered if he might take the risk and tell Simon about his waking dream.
I belted you, heaps, yeah, and it was stupid. But I’d never have hurt you blokes with that knife! Never. And, anyway, there you are! Not stabbed or killed. Farting and breathing! The Famous Fishing Trip, hey?
Peter shut his father up by thinking of Dostoyevsky. When the author was a prisoner and a firing squad was ready to exe-cute him. How Dostoyevsky had been taken off death row at the last second. But that firing squad had followed him throughout his life. The deep and painful echo of shots that hadn’t been fired.
‘Pete?’
‘What?’
‘Sorry about the punch-up.’
‘Which one?’
‘You know.’
‘Yep. So am I.’
Peter thought he should definitely tell Simon about his waking dream. But his brother let off a huge fart.
‘Classy.’
‘Fuck off. Better out than in.’
‘I need to sleep. I’ll cook eggs in the morning,’ Peter yawned. ‘I’ll flop my cock in for the sausage.’
Silence. Simon thought, Fuck, he’s gunna get all shitty. This fishing trip’s a fuck up. And I can’t get anything right.
‘That’ll be useless,’ Peter said. ‘We’ve got to feed the three of us.’
Terry found himself the next afternoon walking around in circles. They’d finished fishing in their tinny and dragged it back to shore. There was mud all up the sides of it and Peter washed it down. Simon was impressed.
‘Nice job.’
‘Want me to do your bum?’
He and Simon got the campfire sorted and Terry went off on a bush walk. He clomped into the scrubby forest, the smell of wattle and eucalyptus making him think of work. He walked faster. He walked and half jogged, then walked again. Around and around, thinking about Tom, the bloke who’d got flamed in his dad’s abandoned FJ. Terry had set up the planned burn, he’d included the car on his ledger, but not its rightful owner. Terry couldn’t have saved him. No way. All the Parks Vic staff and CFA members said, Tez, he’d have listened to you, but Terry didn’t think they knew him very well. Because Tom’s death was on his own hands and Terry wasn’t having any of it. But at home in bed next to his wife’s gentle breathing, he couldn’t stop thinking that FJ on fire. And now it was getting into his days, his days off, and even his fishing trips.
He walked around and around.
Terry thought of Ron. And how he had never got the chance to take away even a bit of his old man’s pain. That useless joint he’d rolled for him. But at least, Dad, he thought, I stopped your other sons from bashing each other to death! Surely that’s a good effort?
Terry walked in tighter and tighter circles. In the long grass, into a clearing. He marched around until the sky went orange then violet. By the time he’d finished and headed back to the campsite, he’d left a pattern in the grass. If he’d turned to look from his vantage point, he’d have seen it looked like a poorly formed crop circle. If Simon had seen it, say from the top of a tree, he might have called it some kind of Pete-style art. If Peter had been in the same tree, he’d have held on tight to stop from falling in shock at the sight of the old man fishing.
On the last night of the Famous Fishing Trip, the brothers sat around a bonfire and had a cook up. Peter read a book on education. He’d decided to increase his teaching load. A little less painting, a little more secure income. That was being a better dad, wasn’t it? Simon piss-farted around, putting a stick in the fire that was grilling the sausages. Terry made sure the tin-foiled spuds got plenty of coals on them and baked up properly. Like Ron had n’t taught him but should have. He flipped one with some tongs, felt the potato’s guts, but it was still hard.
Remember when? Simon thought, but that’s where he stopped. Peter had said on the first night that they should try to forget the past. That sounded easy. And Simon had tried. He’d done his best. So he kept quiet now and watched the end of his twig burn.
At the start of the trip, Terry had wanted to tell Peter to stop acting like a big brother. Just for once. Just be a bloke, you know, like you should. The punch-up was ages ago and, one way or another, it probably needed to happen. But Peter had quickly laid off the big brother routine and they’d all been on their best behavior. So Terry hadn’t needed to keep the peace because they already had it. Which had left him alone with his thoughts and he was sick of them.
Peter smelt the sausages. Another good meal. Every bit of food had tasted delicious on this trip. He felt almost ready now to tell his brothers he’d seen Ron the other night. In a waking dream or whatever it was. But he checked himself. He’d sound like an idiot. He didn’t know, anyway, what seeing Ron was all about. All he knew was his hand still felt strangely warm from his father’s touch.
Peter thought of primary school and flowers down a laneway. His father’s hand on his all the way to school. One morning. One beautiful morning. He remembered Ron and Jules in the kitchen on other mornings, holding each other tight in their dressing gowns. Before their fighting started up and everything became what it was. Then Peter saw a light on the other side of the lake.
‘What’s that?’
Simon looked up from his burning stick.
‘Car?’
‘Don’t think so. Too bright.’
‘Might be a roo spotty,’ Terry said. His brothers nodded. Then the light hovered above the tree line. None of them joked. They sat still and the light shimmered. It looked like a kid’s night lamp. Blue then soft pink then blue again. Like it didn’t know if it was for a boy or a girl.
‘Let’s go and check it out,’ Peter almost whispered. Simon hissed through his teeth and shook his head. ‘Fuck off, Pete. Could be an army probe thing.’
‘Well, who’s the hard man?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘You said that already.’
‘You got the keys?’ Terry asked.
‘Quicker in the boat.’
‘Fuck. Right. Off! What if it shoots at us? We’ll drown.’
‘What do you think it is, Simon? An alien? It’s probably a weather balloon or something,’ Peter said, but hoped it wasn’t.
It was Simon’s boat but he refused to skipper; he didn’t want to be the one who led them into trouble. Peter and Terry’s wives—not to mention Jules—would give him hell for getting his idiot brothers into the shit. So Peter shunted the tinny stead-ily across the glassy lake. Until the engine stopped.
‘Thank Christ,’ Simon said. ‘Now let’s go back.’
‘What did I do to it?’ Peter said, embarrassed. Terry flipped the cap and looked inside the motor.
‘Plenty of juice,’ Terry said. He checked around the rest of the engine. ‘Nothing wrong with it.’
Simon took off his beanie.
‘It’s that fucken light, that’s what did it! Now we’re all fucked.’ The light disappeared and the brothers shivered even though it hadn’t got any colder. There was no wind, not a breath. They were all quiet and Ron wanted to scream at them.
I’m in the boat with you, idiots! Look, here I am!
Ron pulled at the coat or whatever it was he was wearing. But his sons just sat and looked at each other.
Terry thought suddenly of a night he’d dreamt Ron was hanging on a cross. Simon thought about how he’d seen skeleton bodies in a paddock, all with Ron’s head on them. And with his cold hand, Peter felt his warm one.
But none of them said a word.
And then it came up in all of them, Ron included, it came up like wind
that gets a bonfire’s flames roaring. They were three little boys at a kitchen table and Ron looking out from a pink and blue mist. The lake was a massive tear drop that their tinny was floating in. Ron could see all the eels and trout beneath it, bright as day. His boys had no idea the goldmine they were sitting on in the dark. The pink and blue light on the tree line darted so quickly Simon fell back in surprise. Into the water, and he dragged Terry down with him. The boat rocked, Peter fell in too and the eels and trout scattered.
‘We’re drowning,’ Simon spluttered as they panicked and tangled up in each others’ limbs. Then they realised they were in three-feet of water.
‘What a bunch of idiots,’ Simon laughed.
They all stood and laughed together. Big and hearty, across the lake, into the bush, all through the district. Laughed loud enough to wake the dead and get them up and dancing.
Their laughter was an almighty howl in Ron’s ears. And he was gone, out of there and out of the mist, thank Christ or the Devil or Mars. He didn’t see his three soaking sons push their boat ashore and give each other the quickest of embraces. But they did it. Ron didn’t see it, but he felt it with them. Like a bite. Like a bite on the end of a great fishing line being reeled in forever.
Acknowledgements
A family of sorts has come together to make this book a reality. I want to thank Anna Solding and MidnightSun Publishing for having the courage to bring it into the world, Tony Birch for barracking for me and my work for many years, and Jo Bowers, Hannah, Hugo and Ryland Mitchell for living with me through the writing of this book, and so much more. A big thanks to Carol and Bob too.
Many other people have believed in me and my work, and helped me get this project into book form. Thanks to my PhD supervisors over the journey: Lucy Sussex, Damien Barlow, David Tacey and Catherine Padmore. Thank you Helen Garner for your indefatigable support and encouragement, and to Chris Flynn for your early enthusiasm for what We. Are. Family. could be. Thanks Kevin Brophy for being a stalwart in defence, and Paul Wiegard for sailing all kinds of choppy waters (especially those off Fairhaven Beach). Thanks to Chris Grierson for comments on an early draft, and Harriet McKnight and Lynette Washington for your careful editing of separate drafts of this manuscript. A big thanks to Rebekah Clarkson for being a cheer squad leader for works of fiction that refuse easy definition and challenge comfortable sensibilities.
Thanks also to my students of the past decade, many of whom have been my teachers.
Sections of We. Are. Family. have been published, in different forms, as stories in the following journals:
1. The Stevensons—published as ‘A Mansion on the Hill’, New Australian Stories 2006 (Scribe) and short-listed in the 2007 Hal Porter Short Story Prize;
6. Peter and Ron Stevenson—as ‘Sighting’ in The Sleepers Almanac No. 8, 2013;
7. Terry Stevenson—as ‘Stick With What You Know’ in Meanjin, No. 2, Winter, 2009;
9. Trevor Randall—as ‘The Guard’ in Readings and Writings: Forty Years in Books (Readings Books), 2009 and winner of the 2005 Eastern Regional Libraries National Short Story Competi-tion as ‘Safety Agenda Item 3A’; and
12. Terry Stevenson—as ‘The Long Way’ in Overland 203, Winter, 2011.
Thanks to all the editors and judges.
Paul Mitchell’s wry and moving considerations of society’s undercurrents chronicle an unsettlingly recognisable Australia. His three poetry collections have received national prizes and wide acclaim, and his short story collection Dodging the Bull was included in the 2008 The Age Summer Read program. He is also a playwright, screenwriter and essayist. Mitchell’s varied oeuvre explores the beauty in the seemingly mundane, the troubled history of Australian masculinity, and finds spirituality in the murky depths of life. He has continued this exploration with his sensitive and rugged first novel, We. Are. Family.
MidnightSun Publishing
We are a small, independent publisher based in Adelaide, South Australia. Since publishing our first novel, Anna Solding’s The Hum of Concrete in 2012, MidnightSun has gone from strength to strength.
We create books that are beautifully produced, unusual, sexy, funny and poignant. Books that challenge, excite, enrage and overwhelm. When readers tell us they have lost themselves in our stories, we rejoice in a job well done.
MidnightSun Publishing aims to reach new readers every year by consistently publishing excellent books. Welcome to the family!
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We. Are. Family. Page 21
