The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone

by Felicity McLean

‘I can tell you about them, if you like,’ I went on. ‘They’re called Cadaver dogs. Not the big one – he’s a German shepherd like Mr Daniels’s dog, Samson. Do you know Mr Daniels’s dog, Samson? He lives with Mr Daniels in the house next door to the tennis courts, and whenever you hit the ball over the fence you’re not supposed to go and get it because Samson can bite, but once I saw Joel Evans sneak into Mr Daniels’s backyard and throw a whole heap of old balls back over the fence and Samson didn’t bite him once.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Though he might not have been in the yard that day,’ I conceded. ‘Samson, I mean,’ I added. ‘Joel Evans was there, all right. I saw him with my own eyes.’

  I had been walking towards the dark shape of Mr Avery as I spoke, stepping off the grassy ledge and onto the sand. I had things I had learned that I needed to tell him. Weeing would have to wait.

  ‘The Cadaver dogs are the little black and white ones,’ I explained. ‘Hey, did you get any?’ I inclined my head towards the river.

  ‘Any what?’

  ‘Any yabbies. Oh wait, you said you weren’t doing that, didn’t you. Did you say that? What are you doing down here then, Mr Avery? If you’re not catching yabbies . . . It stinks real bad, you know. Can’t you smell that? You’d be better off coming back when the tide’s a bit higher, that’s when it doesn’t pong so much. My cousins have got yabbies. Three of them. One each. They keep them in a tank and they’re called Nipper and Snap and Jean-Claw-Van-Dam. Vivian – that’s my cousin – she wanted to call one of them Twilight Sparkle but the boys both voted for Jean-Claw-Van-Dam and there are two of them and only one of Vivian, and so Jean-Claw-Van-Dam won. They didn’t catch them here, but. They didn’t catch them anywhere. My Uncle Steve got them from the pet shop near his office.’

  I had reached Mr Avery by now.

  ‘Geez, no wonder I couldn’t see you from up near the dunnies,’ I said. ‘It’s like night-time in here. Nice and cool but.’

  We stood in the darkness where the world was wet and viscid. And where it stank to high hell.

  ‘I think you’ll find yabbies like fresh water,’ he said eventually. ‘Have you done the vertebrate and invertebrate unit in Social Studies yet?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Yabbies are crustaceans,’ he said. ‘They don’t have a spine, and they prefer fresh water over tidal rivers like this one. I don’t think you’ll catch many around here.’

  ‘I’ve never had much luck,’ I admitted.

  ‘Do you know how to catch a yabbie, Tikka?’

  And I wanted to say then: Could you please stop saying my name? Or use my real one if you have to use anything? I toed the wet sand.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I said.

  ‘Meat,’ he replied. ‘Yabbies like meat. Anything with blood will do. We used to use sheep’s hearts as bait when we went yabbying.’

  I stared bug-eyed. ‘Sheep’s hearts? Like actual hearts from sheeps? That is gross.’

  ‘Singular. No “s”,’ he said absent-mindedly. ‘It’s gross but it works. Rockmelon too. You’ll find they like sweet things.’

  We both thought about that for a bit.

  ‘I used to go yabbying all the time in Lake Eucumbene with my brothers when we weren’t much older than you,’ he told me.

  ‘You had brothers?’

  This was a revelation even greater than the sheep’s hearts, and Mr Avery laughed.

  ‘Still do,’ he said. ‘In fact, I have a mum and everything. I might even be a human being, just like you, Tikka.’

  ‘What about a dad?’

  ‘A dad?’

  ‘Yeah. You got one of those, Mr Avery? You said a mum but not a dad. Haven’t you got one of those?’

  ‘I started out with one.’

  I wondered where Mr Avery’s dad had gone to, and why it made Mr Avery look so strange.

  ‘I could show you,’ he was saying then and I realised I’d stopped listening.

  ‘If that was something you wanted, I could show you how to catch a yabbie.’

  ‘But you said there were none,’ I said suspiciously. My legs itched and I was worried it might be sandflies. My bladder ached. I would have to go soon.

  ‘Oh, I mean I’d just show you how,’ he said. ‘We won’t catch any real yabbies. You won’t have anything to show your friends.’

  ‘But if you come here like this —’ He didn’t move until I half-raised one arm in what we both took to be my consent, and then he stepped towards me.

  I faced the river in the useless hope we might see a yabbie. As if the wind might pick up and the water might part and there, before us, might appear a riot of brilliant blue bodies.

  But all that appeared was Mr Avery’s breath on my cheek. He stood behind me, leaning down to my level.

  ‘You need to feel the yabbie pull,’ he told me, and he mimed throwing a line into the water, testing its tension, and then he placed the invisible rod into my hands. He stayed like that, arms over my arms, hands encasing my hands, watching and waiting for the pull.

  He smelled foreign like the sausages in Wade Nevrakis’s parents’ deli. His arms were covered in dark hair – his whole body seemed to be because coils of it poked out of the tight ‘V’ of his shirt, as if reaching towards his beard. The hairs on his arms, however, weren’t the usual springy kind. They lay flat against his skin like fur. He noticed me looking at them and he tugged his shirtsleeves lower, trying to cover up the carpet on his arms.

  I couldn’t make sense of Mr Avery. This man with fur, this teacher with brothers.

  ‘There’s no pull,’ I said eventually.

  ‘No, no pull,’ he said dully.

  He released us from our imaginary hunt.

  ‘Everyone is probably wondering where I am,’ I said after a moment.

  ‘Do they know you’re down here?’ he said, and I was surprised by the urgency in his voice.

  ‘No?’ I said hesitantly. I would have given the right answer, if only I knew what it was. Just like I would have caught a yabbie if it were possible to do so.

  ‘Laura knows – I told her.’ It was only a half-lie. ‘But the others don’t know where I am.’

  As I said this I began gathering myself to go. The sun was directly overhead and in places it pierced the lid of the mangroves so that shards of sunlight lay on the sand in patches and made me think of those Cadaver dogs with their salt and pepper shag.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Mr Avery asked.

  I was moving now, picking my way back towards the oval.

  ‘Back to the others,’ I said over my shoulder.

  As I spoke I misstepped and my foot came down hard on a snapped-off mangrove skeleton sticking up out of the sand. The stump punctured my thong then went into my foot, piercing the skin near my arch.

  For an instant the branch became part of my foot. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Then I yanked my foot away and my thong snapped in two. Pop. The sound was almost comical.

  The rubber straps of my thong still clung to my foot, while the pink pearl base stayed impaled on the branch. I gasped in shock. At my thong. At my foot. At the stinging, which was fierce and blossoming across the underside of my foot.

  ‘Laura!’ I shouted in panic.

  Waves broke softly onto the sand to my right, pushing pine needles up the bank towards me.

  ‘Laura!’ I yelled again.

  I began lurching, stumbling towards the oval. Heading for the grass and sunshine. The straps of my thong, now unanchored, slipped off somewhere and were lost in the mangroves and muck.

  ‘Laura, help me!’

  I tripped coming up the bank near the oval and crawled along the spiky grass on my knees. Then I stood again and limped awkwardly on.

  ‘Laura!’ I shouted. ‘Laura!’

  Over at the playground my sister stood and stiffened, then she cupped her palms around her ears as if trying to keep hold of what she thought she had heard. She was still the first person I called for.

  ‘Laur-ra!’<
br />
  I raised my arm like I was stuck in a rip and not standing in a sea of dead grass. Laura saw me and screamed. She came barrelling towards me and I limped clumsily to her.

  In that same instant a group of searchers emerged from the scrub on the far side of the oval and began snaking their way towards the sheds. They were going to regroup and refuel. Make a cup of tea. Report on what it was they hadn’t found. For one awful moment it looked like they might collide, my sister and the searchers, but the tail of the group broke away at the last second, allowing Laura to run through the gap and continue across the oval towards me. I saw my parents in the group, though they hadn’t seen me, and I watched as they registered Laura’s panic. Mum wore her gardening hat, and the back side of it waved shyly to me as the wind flipped it up at the brim.

  ‘Mum!’ I shouted and I let out a sob.

  My parents whipped around as if spun by the breeze. They saw me, and Mum let out a cry.

  ‘Mum!’ I wailed as they ran towards me. ‘Mum! I busted my thong!’

  The wind blew off the mangroves in gusts and carried my words away.

  ‘You what?’ said my sister.

  She was only a few metres away from me now and her eyes narrowed and she slowed her pace.

  ‘Your thong?’

  She was out of breath and the words ran together so that they came out of her mouth as: ‘You’re-wrong.’

  They all arrived then. Even Mr Avery, climbing up and out of the mangrove shadows with my pink thong flap laid out on one palm.

  ‘Tikka! What happened? Where have you been?’ Mum rushed over. ‘Where’s Laura? I thought she was looking after you? Laura? Why weren’t you looking after Tikka?’

  My sister opened her mouth to speak, then frowned and pointed past my shoulder to Mr Avery.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Pearly pink rubber now hung from his finger. One neat fingernail of his index finger poked through the hole in the thong.

  Snakey, snakey on your back. Which finger did that?

  ‘My thong,’ I said. ‘I told you I busted it.’

  ‘I need to wee,’ I added urgently to Mum. I was standing on one leg, holding my injured foot in the air.

  ‘What happened to your foot?’ she said.

  ‘Why have you got Tikka’s thong?’ Dad asked Mr Avery.

  ‘We were looking for yabbies. My foot is really hurting, you know. Do you think I’ll need crutches?’ I added hopefully.

  One of the SES volunteers stepped away from the group and walked over to me. She knelt down in front of my foot.

  ‘Can I see?’ she asked. ‘What went in there?’

  ‘Mangrove stump.’

  ‘Ouch,’ said the lady. She inspected my foot gently. ‘Looks like a clean cut. No bits left behind.’

  ‘Yabbies?’ Dad said mystified. ‘You won’t find any yabbies in there.’

  Mr Avery’s face was ashen.

  ‘We didn’t. There was no pull,’ I confirmed. ‘But we were using an invisible rod.’

  Dad looked at Mr Avery but Mr Avery was super-interested, just at that second, in the piece of dead grass that his toe could flatten and then resurrect with a single flick of his foot.

  ‘An invisible what?’ Dad said.

  He made a move in the direction of Mr Avery and Mr Avery saw him coming and started talking real fast.

  ‘I was explaining to Tikka about vertebrates and invertebrates, from the unit the kids do in Social Studies. I was explaining that yabbies are crustaceans and that they prefer fresh water, not tidal rivers like this, and that I didn’t think she’d catch many yabbies around here.

  ‘Still, she wanted to give it a go so I was showing her the right way to cast a rod,’ he said.

  I frowned at that last bit because it wasn’t exactly true.

  Only nobody saw me because I had my nose to my foot where I was supervising the blood that oozed out.

  ‘But you don’t catch yabbies with a rod,’ Dad said looking baffled.

  ‘I might need crutches,’ I suggested again.

  The SES lady squatted down and tucked her arm underneath mine.

  ‘Lean on me,’ she said. ‘We’d better take you over to first aid and fix you up a bit.’

  ‘Can I go to the toilet first?’ I asked shyly.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Toilet first.’

  Then she turned to the rest of the searchers: ‘Can I get a hand on the other side?’

  Mum looked up from where she’d been interrogating Laura and she called out to my dad. She sounded panicky.

  ‘Graham. Go.’

  Mr Avery and Dad were still talking, but at the sound of his name, and the tone of Mum’s voice, Dad put his hand up and stopped Mr Avery midsentence.

  ‘We all are, mate,’ he said curtly to Mr Avery, then he walked over and stood beside me.

  ‘Now, where are we carrying you to, Tik?’ he asked.

  ‘“We all are” what, Dad?’ I said.

  ‘If you stand there.’ The SES lady directed him to a spot on my left-hand side.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘“We all are” what?’ I said again.

  ‘And you put your arms underneath, we’ll do a chair lift like this . . .’ They put their arms beneath me and gripped each other around the wrists so that they formed a cradle to carry me. I slung my arms around their shoulders for support.

  ‘On the count of three we’re going to lift,’ she instructed. ‘We’re headed for the first-aid station —’

  ‘But first the toilet,’ I interrupted.

  ‘But first the toilet,’ she agreed.

  ‘What did you say to Mr Avery, Dad?’ I wanted to know. ‘What was he telling you?’

  ‘Which one’s the first-aid station again?’ Dad asked.

  ‘At the far shed. Can you see it? The one at the back. That’s it.’

  They fumbled for a moment trying to get my weight even, while everyone stood and watched. Mr Avery was off to one side, looking like he wanted to help but also that he shouldn’t offer.

  ‘What did you mean “We all are”?’ I asked Dad again. ‘What did Mr Avery say?’

  I wondered if he’d been telling Dad that I’d asked him about his family, about his parents, about the fact he had brothers. That wasn’t rude, was it? Sometimes I said things I shouldn’t, though I never knew it at the time. And I did ask a lot of questions.

  But Dad said he couldn’t remember and that it wasn’t important. And also: how was it possible I was so heavy?

  ‘What are your bones made of, Tikka? Cast iron?’ he said.

  ‘We’ll walk with you,’ Mum told the SES lady, ‘in case you need a hand.’

  She wasn’t about to let me out of her sight. Though I’m not sure what she thought she and Laura might do to help. I only had two sides and they were already being held.

  ‘Thanks,’ the lady said.

  And Mr Avery said nothing, just stood very still. Apart from his foot, which was still teasing the grass.

  * * *

  It wasn’t until years later that I learned Dad did remember his conversation with Mr Avery that day. He remembered it and he relayed it word for word to the police, who filed it with the rest of their evidence.

  The suspect claimed he was ‘distressed’ and ‘couldn’t think straight’.

  That’s what the police report said.

  ‘“Distressed” is a strong word. That’s how he described his state of mind?’ the interviewing cop asked Dad.

  ‘That’s what he said,’ Dad confirmed.

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘That’s right. What did you say to him in reply?’

  Dad sighed and rubbed his thumb and his forefinger along the bridge of his nose. ‘I told him we all were. Who isn’t gutted about those girls?’

  * * *

  That day by the mangroves, when Dad and the SES lady held me and my foot suspended in the air between them, when the searcher
s stood on the oval watching as if waiting for the umpire’s whistle, a Cadaver dog came wandering over to see what was happening.

  The dog snuffled at the steel-capped boots of one of the searchers and then he nosed the grass for a moment. Bits of his fur were wet with sweat and they lay slick against his hot body.

  ‘Thommo’s dog,’ someone commented.

  The dog glanced up at his owner’s name. Then he paused and staggered sideways and his back legs collapsed in a way that almost looked playful.

  ‘What the hell —’ someone started saying.

  The dog sat in the dirt looking astonished. His eyes were open and his pupils were dilated. The black centres almost swallowed the surrounding blue. He looked at his legs and he yawned in panic. Then his front paws scrabbled at the dirt as if he was trying to drag himself forward, trying to outrun some ghost. A series of tiny yellow bubbles trickled out from between his teeth, then he lurched forward and slammed his nose in the dust.

  ‘Jesus Christ. He’s dead!’ said the man with the steel-capped boots, and he slid his toe out from under the dog’s hot belly in horror.

  Dad and the SES lady thudded me down.

  ‘He’s crook all right,’ said someone else.

  ‘Crook? He’s bloody dead!’ the first man said and he wiped the cap of his boot on the back of his leg.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well he’s not alive!’

  ‘Holy shit. What do we do?’

  ‘Snake got him, you reckon?’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Is there a vet anywhere? Or a doctor’ll do. Anyone here a doctor?’

  ‘Look at the way his snout’s swelling up. You’re right – he’s gone and kissed a snake.’

  Everyone peered at the dog.

  It was Alligator. The bouncy one; the one I’d seen earlier in the week. The one whose salt-and-pepper body had squirmed and wriggled while I told the cop everything I knew about crocs. The one who’d quivered and spun just by my right knee. Now he lay dead in the dirt. His body convulsed a couple of times. Small, sharp jerks like he meant to do it.

  ‘Jesus, what do we do?’ someone else said.

  ‘Better get Thommo. Wait till he sees this.’

  * * *

  Later, after I’d been to the toilet and after I’d been to the first-aid station, I asked Dad what it felt like to die.