Rainfish

by Andrew Paterson

  After a while I went into the kitchen to tell Mum that I wasn’t feeling very well so it wouldn’t look so weird if I spent all day inside. Bernie was at his spot at the table next to the louvre windows and Mum was reading a magazine. They were both drinking beer.

  ‘Here’s Aaron,’ said Mum.

  ‘Here’s the big fella,’ said Bernie. ‘High school this year, ay? How’s your holidays going?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Mum, I don’t feel very well.’

  ‘Have some cough syrup,’ she replied and then she turned to Bernie. ‘You know, they haven’t done a thing all holidays except sit around and watch TV. I should send them round to the old people’s home or something. Or get them to do some chores around here.’

  I got the cough syrup bottle from the cupboard and poured myself a medicine cup of the sweet dark red syrup, then sat at the table and sipped it while they talked.

  ‘My holidays I used to work on me neighbours’ farm. Got two bucks an hour,’ said Bernie, and Mum said, ‘I’m too much of a softie.’

  Bernie shook his head, smirked in a they’ve-got-it-easy way and took a sip of beer. Bernie usually came round on Fridays after work, stomped up our back stairs, put a six-pack of beer in the fridge and his feet up on one of our kitchen chairs. And he stayed like that till Mum shooed him out around dinner time. His hair was curly and his beard neatly trimmed, and he was so big he made Mum and Connor and me look like midgets.

  He said, ‘Had a good arvo at Gary’s. You should’ve come, Trace. You missed out.’

  Mum pulled a face. ‘I’ve got no desire to sit around watching them get pissed. I like Heather, but Gary gives me the shits with all his carry-on. Time he grew up, I reckon.’

  ‘So you were at Pete’s place, were ya?’ Bernie said slyly. ‘You know he goes down the RSL with Mungo and them.’

  ‘Who’s Pete?’ I asked Mum, but she just said, ‘A friend,’ and shook her head at Bernie, who changed the subject by saying, ‘You know Fay’s leaving on Tuesday.’

  They gossiped a bit about Fay. Then Bernie finished his beer, stood up, stretched and gave Mum a hug (which was unusual). Then he shook my hand and went downstairs, and we heard his Harley rev out through the gate.

  After Bernie left, Mum threw down her magazine and said, ‘I’m sick of getting a lift all the time. Go get Connor and we’ll go to Gran’s and borrow the car.’

  I coughed. ‘Can I stay home?’ I said. ‘The cough syrup didn’t do anything.’

  She glanced at me over her shoulder. ‘You’re fine. Get your shoes on.’

  Gran’s house was three blocks away. You could walk to most places in Fingleton, the crappest town in Far North Queensland, a part of Australia no one ever thought about except when the occasional cyclone came and blew everything to bits. It was built on a river only one turn from the sea, and it had a bunch of butchers and bakers and pubs, plus a picture theatre (at which I’d seen ET, The Empire Strikes Back and Annie) and a shop that sold crystals and dreamcatchers and incense, and, further out, a scout hut and a BMX track. Fingleton didn’t have traffic lights or a McDonalds. Around it was mostly sugarcane and banana farms, and rainforest-covered mountains. A hundred years ago it’d all been rainforest but the farmers had cut most of it down, except for one or two forgotten patches.

  I followed Mum and Connor along the footpath, my head down. I felt like people were watching me from every window. Flat, dried toads dotted the road. The sun bore down on us. There was no breeze—if you didn’t count the panther’s breath on my neck as it followed close behind me.

  Gran’s house was on stilts like ours, but she had pink flamingos in her front yard and a pink bougainvillea whose thorns attacked your face and arms as you walked up her front stairs.

  Gran answered the door in her dirty-at-the-knees garden pants, a T-shirt and her puppy-dog slippers. She was sweat-free: she said she was immune to the heat because she’d lived in the Far North all her life—before there were fans, even.

  She said, ‘It feels like a lifetime since I saw you boys,’ and she kissed Connor on his sweaty forehead but did an air kiss for me.

  Obviously I didn’t want a kiss, but it seemed odd.

  ‘We can’t stay, Gran,’ said Mum. ‘I was wondering if we could borrow the Mini. I want to look at some houses.’

  But Gran had got behind us and she was sweeping us in, saying, ‘I’ll get you a cuppa and the boys can have a bikkie.’

  Sunlight sweltered through the the curtains in her lounge room and shone off her Elvis Presley paintings, which she’d done herself. Gran had judged three Elvis-lookalike competitions, and even though she was thin and stooped she still did rock-n-roll dancing every Sunday afternoon with the Elvis Dancers.

  She led us to the kitchen, which thankfully had louvres and so there was a breeze, and she sat us at the table with a plate of Anzac biscuits. The radio was on the local station with DJ Mike the Mike, who played lots of Elvis. Mum hated him.

  Mum let Gran pour her a tea.

  ‘Your father got your letters,’ said Gran.

  My dad left when I was five and I hadn’t seen him since. He never called us. Sometimes he wrote letters that Gran gave us, and she got us to write replies, which she sent to him. That’s just the way it was.

  ‘He’s in Mount Isa at the moment,’ said Gran, then caught herself, like she hadn’t meant to say it. She glanced at Mum.

  ‘That’s not that far is it?’ I asked, to say something, so Connor wouldn’t say, Hey, Aaron, you’re being quiet.

  ‘It’s like a day’s drive,’ said Connor.

  ‘Anyway, he loved the letters and asked me to give you these,’ said Gran, and she handed us each a double-ended pencil. Connor got blue and red; I got green and yellow.

  Mum bit her lip—she hated Dad’s presents.

  Gran said, ‘You can use them to draw your Dad a picture, and we can post them with the next letters. Why don’t you send the boys round with them when they’re finished, Trace?’

  ‘Sure, Gran, I’ll send them round,’ said Mum. She was gulping her tea.

  ‘Now,’ said Gran, ‘Did I ever tell you boys about the time your dad played in the schoolboys’ final?’

  Gran had an unspoken rule—if we wanted the car we had to listen to a story.

  ‘Your dad was in the first team and he was only in grade ten. I said to the coach, “He’s too small,” and the coach said—’

  ‘You told us, Gran,’ said Connor through a mouthful of Anzac biscuit. Gran looked a bit put out till Mum said, ‘Why don’t you tell us about the old days when you lived out on the farm? There were Aboriginal people living on the property, weren’t there?’

  Gran looked thoughtful. ‘When my dad was a boy there were. A family lived on the riverbank. They used to catch fish and swap them for bread. They used to leave the fish on the back stairs.’

  ‘Do you know any Dreamtime stories?’ I asked.

  The Dreamtime was a long time ago when everything got made; we’d learnt about it at school.

  ‘I do remember a story—about rainfish,’ said Gran.

  I said, ‘I know that one.’

  ‘Now, how did it go?’ She sipped her tea. ‘A long time ago,’ she began, ‘in the Dreamtime,’ she added, ‘a little Aboriginal boy caught a fish, and the fish said, “I am the king of fish, the magical rainfish, and if you let me go, I’ll give you three wishes.” And so the boy said, “I want a castle all of gold,” and whoosh, there was a castle, with many towers all of gold, and flags of gold thread, and a moat of liquid gold. And then he said, “I want to be king of all the world,” and whoosh, a crown appeared on his head so large it was all he could do to keep it from falling off. And then for his last wish the boy said, “I want to be king of all the things there are, including the rivers and the sea and the sky and the stars,” and then the rainfish got angry and said, “You greedy boy, now you get nothing,” and then the crown and the castle disappeared and he was left with just his own silly self. Let that be a lesson to
you boys—don’t be too greedy!’ she finished with satisfaction.

  ‘Why was the fish called the rainfish?’ asked Connor.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Gran. ‘It was a while ago I heard that story…’

  ‘That’s wrong, Gran,’ I said, because I knew the proper rainfish story, but as usual no one paid me any attention.

  Mum had taken a finishing slug of her tea and was about to stand up when Gran said, ‘And what about that business at the church?’

  I bit down hard on my tongue. The panther purred in an I-told-you-so way.

  ‘What business at the church?’ said Mum.

  ‘Haven’t you seen the paper? Here, have a look.’ Gran pulled the Fingleton Gazette from her bag, thumbed through it then passed it to Connor, saying, ‘Read it out, dear.’

  Connor lay the paper on the table and read:

  Police Round-up. Church Broken Into

  The Saint Rita’s Church vestry was broken into on Friday and ransacked. A number of items were stolen, including a string of gold rosary beads. Father Terry Lockhart said the beads had significant sentimental value: they were a gift from his late father. Police have examined the scene. Anyone with information please call Crime Stoppers.

  Police have examined the scene!

  I shuddered.

  ‘What kind of monster would steal from a church?’ said Mum.

  I looked down at my hands; they’d gone white.

  ‘The mafia,’ said Connor.

  ‘Maureen said Father Lockhart is taking stress leave,’ said Gran, ‘He’s writing to the bishop. But don’t say anything to anyone. I don’t think he’ll be back in time for the Start of Term Mass.’

  ‘It’d be kids,’ said Mum. ‘Some people let their kids run wild like stray dogs.’

  I took another biscuit and chewed at it.

  Connor was watching me. He knew, I could tell. He always seemed to know what I was thinking.

  Mum stood up. ‘Say thank you, boys.’

  We said thank you. Gran’s smile seemed to tighten when she swung it in my direction, and again I missed out on a kiss. What was going on?

  We rushed down the back stairs to Gran’s Mini, doors thumping, engine revving, and finally we had the car back. I’d missed the car smell, the grainy radio, the straining at the seatbelt to hear Mum and Connor’s front-seat conversation. But with the story in the paper churning in my mind, this time I was only half-listening.

  ‘Mount Isa’s about a day’s drive away, right?’ said Connor.

  We were idling in front of a house for sale, a red brick one with a trampoline in the front yard.

  ‘Mount bloody Isa,’ said Mum, ‘is in the middle of the bloody country. You drive about fourteen hours on the straightest, most boring road in the world, no towns or trees or anything—just desert. And if your car breaks down you’re dead: only a few cars come along every week. And if you survive the drive you get to a crappy town with a big factory in the middle spewing poison all over everyone giving them cancer and brain damage.’ After a bit she added, ‘Anyway, he might not be there. Then you’d look silly, wandering around Mount Isa saying, “Isn’t this nice.”’

  ‘Yeah, all right, I get it,’ said Connor.

  We bought fish and chips, and then drove with them to the beach at the river mouth and sat on the sand and ate them, and we watched the water roll out with the tide and the sun sink in a sky of pink and purple.

  Mum began in an offhand way. ‘You know Peter? My friend that I’ve mentioned?’

  It was getting darker and I couldn’t see her face, only her silhouette. Peter? I’d definitely heard the name.

  ‘You mean the one you’ve mentioned like a hundred times?’ said Connor.

  ‘Well, I just thought I’d tell you, actually, that he’s a special friend of mine. So I thought it might be a good thing if you two met him. So we’re all going out to dinner tomorrow night.’

  ‘Where to?’ asked Connor.

  ‘Mario’s.’

  ‘What sort of food is that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s Italian, you idiot,’ said Connor.

  ‘Connor,’ sighed Mum.

  ‘But it’s like the most Italian name there is.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Mum.

  We threw the leftover chips into the water. Then in the dark we stumbled up the beach to Gran’s Mini, the only car under the single streetlight in the sandy carpark.

  Back at home we watched The A-Team, but I wasn’t paying attention. I’d just remembered that Gran had a blue cardigan just like the one the lady in the church was wearing when we’d taken the rosary beads. The black panther, next to me on the couch, sniggered and shook its head: ‘Great job, Aaron. Terrific. So smart. You’re going down, mate. You’re going down.

  4

  DETECTIVE CONNOR

  THE MORNING AFTER we’d been to Gran’s I crept to the kitchen with the intention of slamming down my breakfast and then skulking back to my room. But there Connor was at the table drinking coffee. (He had it white with three sugars, and he didn’t particularly like it, in my opinion, but he thought it made him look grown-up.) ‘Aaron,’ he said. ‘Just the man. Get some Weetbix and take a chair.’

  When I sat down he said, ‘You know that church thing?’

  ‘Ummm,’ I said, trying to sound as if I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Someone broke into the church. Remember?’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s right.’

  He looked at me like I couldn’t have been a bigger idiot even if I’d been wearing a helmet made from a watermelon. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I don’t reckon it was the mafia anymore.’

  I took a nonchalant spoonful of Weetbix, swallowed it, and said, ‘So who do you think it was?’

  ‘I’ve got some ideas. My main one is that it was a kid.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘How would you know?’

  I shrugged. ‘Just don’t reckon it was a kid, that’s all.’ I thought about it some more and then I said, ‘Kids don’t do that sort of stuff.’

  ‘That’s primary-school thinking, Aaron. You’ve got to get out of that.’ He took a sip of coffee. ‘See, in detective work you can’t just rule out a whole group of people like that. You’ve got to be scientific. When you start a case everyone’s a suspect. Like in “Guess Who”. You’ve played that, right?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You use evidence to rule people out, and then the last person not ruled out is the killer, or the thief, or whatever. I read a book about detectives a few weeks ago. Which was good timing, ’cause I’ve decided to take on the case of the rosary-beads thief.’

  I nodded—somehow I’d known he was going to. It was typical of him. And it was also typical that he’d just read a book about detectives. Connor was a lunchtime library kid. He was always reading, the bigger the book the better. He’d read more than his teacher, who he hated because she’d given him a B for one of his stories. He could even read Elvish, and sometimes he wrote in his diary in a mixture of Elvish Runes and Egyptian hieroglyphics.

  Connor and I had the same hair and we both had freckles (not freckles like Damon’s: ours weren’t orange splotches, they were small dark-brown dots). But Connor was taller than me, and he wore reading glasses, but only when he was reading; he was self-conscious about them.

  He was skinny. Mum said he’d been skinny ever since he was a baby. He’d been born blue, and after that he was in a humidicrib for a long time. He had asthma, and sometimes when he had an attack we’d all go up to the hospital. Usually Sister Osgood would be on in Emergency—she’s Mum’s friend—and she’d say, ‘Have you come to stay in your holiday room again, Connor?’ Actually it was just a normal kids’ hospital room, with a cardboard plane mobile hanging from the ceiling, a greying beanbag on the floor and a Connect Four set with half the pieces missing.

  Once Connor’d had to go by ambulance to intensive care in a bigger hospital. Having asthma meant he got loads of sympathy and he had an excuse for not
being good at sport, whereas I had no excuses. For brothers we really didn’t have much in common.

  ‘First thing I’m going to do is make a list of suspects. There’s a detective who solves all his cases without getting out of bed, just by using deduction. His butler gets the evidence for him. If I need you to get anything for me I’ll call out,’ he said and he went back down to his room.

  I spent the morning in front of the TV worrying about how Connor’s investigation was getting on. Connor had the kind of weird mind that sometimes saw things before other people, though at other times he’d miss things that were right in front of his face. I wouldn’t be surprised if he worked out it was me. When I turned the TV off, the face I saw reflected in the dark screen looked like it was straight from a ‘wanted for murder’ poster.

  When Connor came out to the kitchen at lunchtime I was waiting for him. ‘Did you solve it?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet.’ He got the peanut butter from the cupboard and the bread from the freezer and started making a sandwich. ‘I’ve made a list of suspects,’ he said. ‘But I think I need to go check out the scene of the crime. You can come if you want.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  I watched from the front veranda as he set off along our street, with his schoolbag on his back. Why did he need his bag? I wondered. Did he have his magnifying glass in it (the one from his stamp collector’s kit)? Some rope to tie the thief up with? A muesli bar? Did he take the list of suspects with him? I wondered. Probably he took it. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he left it in his room. It was worth a look. I raced down the back stairs.

  Something was different about the ‘Connor’s Room—Keep Out’ sign. There it was: he’d added ‘Aaron’ after ‘Keep Out’. Like that was going to do anything.

  Even though I’d just seen him leave, out of habit, or maybe superstition, I knocked. Then I gently pushed the door open.

  Inside, it was dark, and musty from the pile of towels and dirty clothes next to his bed. There was a Star Wars poster on the wall and luminous stars stuck on the black-painted ceiling. On his desk was his old homework book, open. I was careful not to touch it so I wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. The page was divided into two columns, labelled ‘Possibles’ and ‘Probables’. Under ‘Probables’, from top to bottom, was: Stevie Harmison, state school kids, Mafia, devil worshippers, criminal gangs. The entries under ‘Possibles’ filled the column, and some were written sideways in the margin. I was shocked to see my name was there, but then I felt a bit better to see Connor’s was there too, though that had been crossed out. Also making the list was ‘Priest (inside job)’, and ‘Mrs Melchiori’s son’, and some names I didn’t recognise, and almost every kid in Connor’s class. Damon’s name was there too.