‘Connor, don’t use words like crap,’ said Mum.
‘I’m going to take Damon to see the fish,’ said Connor, and before I knew it he and Damon were at the top of the stairs looking back at me.
‘Were you spying on us?’
‘No.’
With an annoyed sigh Connor brushed past me. I followed them down the backyard to the tub.
‘Aren’t they cool?’ Connor was saying. ‘I got that one, the biggest one.’
‘So interesting,’ said Damon. ‘Hey, why don’t you go ask your mum if you can come over to my place?’
‘Okay,’ said Connor, and he ran off.
Damon squinted at me through his glasses. ‘All good?’
‘Yep,’ I said, with a shrug and a smile that was so fake it hurt my face. He didn’t reply, and the silence started to get to me so I said, ‘All good.’
‘You didn’t go to the swamp did you? Yesterday?’
‘What?’ I said, trying to look confused. ‘Nup.’
‘I thought I saw someone there, that’s all.’
‘Lots of kids go guppy fishing and stuff there. I didn’t go there,’ I lied.
Damon nodded slowly. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not. ‘Have you told anybody?’
‘No.’ I steeled myself. ‘But did you read the paper? The police are going door to door checking people.’
‘So? What are they going to do?’
I said, ‘Take our fingerprints?’
He scoffed.
I forged ahead. ‘I think we should take them back.’
‘You can’t. I’ve moved them.’
‘What? Why?’
‘They were too obvious where they were. Someone could’ve found them.’ He sounded like he knew what I’d been planning. ‘I put ’em somewhere way safer. I had some of the wine. It’s pretty good. I’ll give you some. Not yet, but. And you still can’t tell anyone. In fact we should pretend we don’t even know each other. Here he comes. What’s your name again?’ He said the last bit louder for Connor to hear.
‘Aaron,’ I said.
‘She said I can go,’ said Connor, ‘but you have to stay here, Aaron.’
‘Yeah, good. I don’t want that baby tagging along,’ said Damon, but he winked at me as he said it.
I went upstairs. Pete and Mum had disappeared somewhere. So I went down to Connor’s room and, ignoring the sign on the door, let myself in. It was dark, as usual. The Lord of the Rings was on his bed. It was Mum’s old copy, given to her by Dad when they were going out. It was so fat it was almost a cube. On the creased cardboard cover was a picture of two trees. Their branches intertwined, and little monsters were scurrying among their roots.
Connor had said I couldn’t read it because I wouldn’t understand it.
I opened it at random, looking for one of the battles, but mainly it was the hobbits walking around. Was there a battle near the start?
I tried again: ‘I am deeply grateful,’ said Frodo; ‘but I wish you would tell me plainly what the Black Riders are. If I take your advice I may not see Gandalf for a long while, and I ought to know what is the danger that pursues me.’
Something made me stop and look around. A silence was building in the room, like a machine had been turned off and might at any minute start up again. The curtains were gently moving, as if they were breathing in and out. I imagined someone hiding behind them and though I knew it wasn’t true I ran out, up to my room, and hid the book in my undies drawer.
After that I went back outside and found the soccer ball and began kicking it against the wall. Then I played out the Galactic Soccer Championship semifinal again, turning up the cheering of the crowd in my mind.
But as I dribbled the ball around the backyard, somehow I couldn’t get Planet Earth to gel. Their passes were too hard and they didn’t find their man, and Aaron Aaronson was the worst of the lot: he just could not score. Diego Chilly pulled one back, but when Mum called me up for lunch the score stood at 4–3, and the unthinkable had happened: Earth had been beaten, and Aaron Aaronson, for the first time in his brilliant career, had not been named Man of the Match.
12
PRISON
WIND WHIPPED THE branches of the mandarin trees in gusts, and with each gust a spray of rain shuddered the glass of my window and a sigh rose then sank to nothing. I dreamt I was in prison, and Mum was crying, which was the worst part—that and watching as she turned and left me in my cell. No more TV, no more soccer, just prison. No more fish and chips and ice cream. Just grey prison walls and barbwire, uniforms and rain, and porridge on trays. Like being stuck in class and knowing there’ll never be a bell. Next I dreamt I was with Gandalf and the hobbits, running from the orcs. In front of us a river, crashing rapids, someone yelling something in some language that might have been Elvish, ‘And now the fighting waxed furious on the fields of the Pelennor; and the din of arms rose upon high, with the crying of men and the neighing of horses.’
I rubbed my eyes. Opened them. Sighed. The trees outside my window were still, the wild weather of the night before was just a memory. Grade eight was one day closer. And the rosary beads. The guilt hit me. It began at my fingertips and spread. It sat heavy on my chest, like some big thing. Maybe an orc. What did orcs look like? I pictured big round yellow eyes, grey skin, a fat stomach, long, clawed fingers. And one was squatting on my chest, and there was nothing I could do but try to pretend it wasn’t there.
The kitchen was deserted. As I climbed down the back stairs the loose planks shifted and bent under my weight. It was early; there was still dew on the grass. I crouched, yawning, by the rotten banana log and dug out a handful of worms. Then I made my way to the corner behind the chook pen, determined not to let any scaredy-catness put me off. But when I got there I found the way blocked—stretched in front of me, from the tip-most lemon leaf right to the wire of the chook pen, was a single thread of spider’s web.
Where was the spider? I studied the leaves on the lemon tree, and had a sudden horrible thought that every leaf had a spider crouching behind it, from grain-of-sand-sized babies to hand-sized grandmothers. But that was just nonsense, and to prove it to myself I turned over the nearest leaf.
No spider.
Get a grip, Aaron.
I crawled under the web, careful not to break it because of some superstition I’d picked up somewhere—but also because why piss off a spider for no reason? Then I dropped the first worm into the tub and watched it sink, shaking granules of dirt off as it went. Hurry up and eat it, fish, I thought, but there it was, resting on the bottom.
I blinked. There were no fish in the tub. Actually, there was one, the smallest one, hovering in the corner.
I turned around. Mudcod were dotted all over the yard as if they’d sprouted from the ground like mushrooms or fallen in a meteor shower. Some were flapping. Most were still. How hadn’t I noticed them before?
‘The fish are out!’ I yelled and I ran back to the house. ‘The fish are out!’
‘What?’ came Connor’s voice from his room, sounding like I’d woken him up.
‘The fish are out.’
‘What do you mean they’re out?’ He was at the foot of the stairs, with that expression that said you idiot on his face.
‘They’re out. They must’ve jumped out.’
Pete appeared on the top step. ‘Did you put a cover on ’em?’
‘No.’
‘Well that’s why, then. Come on, let’s put ’em back.’ ‘They’ll be dead,’ I said.
Pete was striding into the yard. ‘I’ve seen ’em survive for ages out of water. Watch where you stand, they can get along a fair way.’
Connor was poking a toe at one near the clothesline. ‘It moved!’ he shouted.
‘That’s ’cause it’s alive. Chuck him back in the tub,’ said Pete.
One near my feet had wiggled itself between two clumps of grass so only its tail was showing, it was coated in dirt and twigs and its slime had turned black and hard. But when I pi
cked it up it writhed sluggishly, and when I eased it into the tub it drifted to the bottom, then flicked its tail and swam about a bit looking totally fine.
With a fish in each hand and a lively one hugged to his chest, Pete broke the spider’s web without noticing it and in one motion he deposited all three fish in the tub. As they slapped the water Pete was already looking for more.
I found one that was overrun with ants, and one whose eyes had been plucked out by a bird.
‘Urrgh, that’s disgusting,’ said Mum who’d come down in her nightie, and was poking her toe at one. ‘This’d be easier if you mowed the grass once in a while.’ She made me pick up the live ones she found.
The most adventurous mudcod had made it halfway to the front gate. Pete later told me they travelled on dry land by using their fore-fins to shuffle along, just like the fish-looking things in the ‘evolutionary parade’ picture in our science book, who were the first creatures out of the primordial swamp, three or four stages before the chimps.
‘So how many’s that?’ asked Mum eventually.
This time Connor and I were in agreement: ‘Twenty alive ones and six dead ones.’
‘And there were thirty-three before,’ added Connor.
I said, ‘Where are the others?’
‘They’ll turn up in the next day or so, when they start to smell,’ said Pete. He disappeared under the house then came back holding three metal grills, which he placed over the bathtub.
‘That oughta stop their little game,’ he said.
Mum patted him on the back. ‘Just in the nick of time,’ she said.
Mum was at the stove cooking bacon and eggs while Pete was telling me and Connor about the time he’d upset a bucketful of mudcrabs that were as big as heads in a room full of drunk people, and everyone was barefoot and they were all screaming and jumping on chairs and tables, when from downstairs we heard Gran call, ‘Are you home, Tracey?’
We looked at each other—Gran never came over.
‘Careful, Gran,’ called Mum, as we listened to the clunk of Gran’s shoes on the bed planks. ‘If she falls through it’s your bloody fault,’ Mum told Pete as she rushed out of the room to put her dressing gown on.
‘Well,’ said Gran, puffing, at the back door. She was wearing her green church dress and her high heels. She noticed Pete, who had retreated to the stove to turn off the bacon and eggs and she gave him a concerned smile like she thought he might be sick. ‘Oh! Hello there,’ she said. ‘We haven’t met. I’m Irene, the boys’ grandmother.’
Mum returned just in time to say, ‘This is Peter, Gran. My partner. I’ve been meaning to bring him round to your place.’
‘Good to meet you, Gran,’ said Pete from behind Mum. He reached over her and shook Gran’s hand.
Suddenly the kitchen felt small.
‘Well I’m pleased to meet you, Peter, and I hope I haven’t come at a bad time.’
‘No, Gran. You want a cuppa?’ said Mum.
She did, so Pete put the kettle on while Gran smoothed Connor’s and my hair like we were pet mice. ‘Oh, it’s good to see you boys, feels like a lifetime since I saw you pair,’ she said. ‘And you’re not a local boy, are you, Peter. Are you planning to stay in Fingleton long?’
‘Yep. Love it up this way. Love me fishing ’n’ that,’ he said.
‘And have you been following this business at the church?’ Gran sipped her tea and looked at me. ‘I’ve never seen Father Lockhart in such a state. He stays in his room. I’ve been told he doesn’t even come out to eat; the ladies put his tea on the floor outside his bedroom door. They say that when they go past sometimes they hear him sobbing. It’s just too tragic. Because his father gave him those beads. And he hasn’t given any instructions about the flowers for the Start of Term Mass. We’re having to make it up as we go along.’
‘It’s kids,’ said Mum, and Gran said, ‘I don’t doubt it,’ and Mum said, ‘Well it was kids. It said it in the paper.’
‘I don’t doubt it one minute.’ Gran took another sip of her tea. ‘Did I mention I need the car back? I’m going out to Rockhampton for a week to visit Beryl and the boys.’
‘That’ll be nice,’ Mum said, but her smile said the opposite.
‘Yes, always nice in that part of the world.’ Gran sipped her tea and so did Mum.
Pete finished whatever he’d been doing at the sink and sat down with us, scraping his chair.
‘Yes, it’ll be good to see them,’ said Gran. Then she moved her chair a little towards Mum and leaned in. And in a low whisper that we weren’t supposed to hear but we all heard, she said, ‘You know, I think Roger’s there now. Hopefully I’ll get to see him,’ and she looked at Mum like she expected her to be happy about it.
Roger was Dad. Mum kept her mouth shut at the mention of his name. She’d never said it, but Connor and I knew that talking about him at our house was off limits.
Back at her normal volume Gran said, ‘He’s working as a chef. He always had a knack for cooking. If you could have tried even his bacon and eggs, Peter. He just put so much of himself into it. Sounds to me like he’s getting himself together again quite nicely. Did you boys get a chance to do a picture for him?’
I hadn’t. Connor said he’d started one.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Gran, ‘How about you write him a little letter now?’
‘Is he actually gunna call?’ said Mum. ‘This year?’
Gran looked taken aback by Mum’s tone. With a little smile she said, ‘Well he’s been depressed, Tracey, as you know. It’s a medical condition. He’s working his way through things. I’ll give the letters to him in person.’
‘Why bother?’ said Mum.
Gran folded her hands in her lap as if she’d won some sort of point.
Mum snorted, put her hands on the table and pushed herself up and left the kitchen.
Pete watched her go. The bedroom door slammed.
Gran was rummaging in her handbag. She took out a note pad and ripped two sheets from it, took out two pens and passed them to us. ‘Go on, boys,’ she said. ‘Just write a little something for your dad. Whatever you want. I promise I won’t read them. Peter, we might leave them to it for a bit, hey?’
She made her way to the back stairs and Pete followed. They stopped halfway down. I tapped the pen on my bottom lip. Connor had his head down and was writing already, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what Gran had said about Father Lockhart. What if he stopped being a priest because he’d lost faith in humanity, and he hitchhiked to Townsville wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and checked into a seedy hotel and started fighting and swearing and became an alcoholic?
And then there was the Start of Term Mass, which in Fingleton was the fourth most important mass behind Christmas, Easter Sunday and Good Friday. Gran and her Catholic Ladies Group friends got in and mopped the church, arranged flowers, stitched banners saying ‘Glory be’, which they hung from the pillars, and then for the Mass they sat in the front row and turned around and glared at latecomers. Behind them sat the whole school including the teachers and even the tuckshop ladies. It was compulsory. Once Mum had crept in the back in her work clothes and stayed for a few minutes. That night she’d scoffed at it all, especially when the Catholic Ladies Group stood up just before the priest said, ‘Please stand.’ And she made me and Connor promise not to be taken in by it, and reminded us we only went there because it was the only decent school in town, and that we’d only been baptised to keep Gran happy and that she was going to look into having it reversed.
The Start of Term Mass always included Holy Communion—Father would put the wafer into each person’s cupped hands, one by one. He’d see me right up close. And the Start of Term Mass was in the first week back at school. Only days away.
I heard Gran say to Pete, ‘So that truck out the front is yours, is it Peter? I mean, do you own it outright?’
Pete agreed that it was his and that he owned it outright.
My page was still blank. It wa
s easy for Connor. Connor was older when Dad had left but I was little, so I didn’t remember much about him. There was him singing along to the radio while we drove—that had been in our first car, an old white Holden. And there were the things in the house that still had his smell—or was that just my imagination? And the pictures: him holding me when I was a baby, beaming behind his moustache like he couldn’t believe it; him leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, smiling at the camera like the picture of a star in TV Week whose show I’d never seen.
And the letter he’d written me at Christmas in neat, strangely girly writing:
Dear Aaron. Hope you’re having a wonderful Christmas. Your gran tells me you’ve been a good boy. That’s the way, mate. Thinking about you and can’t wait to see you. Love, your Dad.
Gran told Pete, ‘You mustn’t mind Tracey. She’s a wonderful girl but she can get a bit stroppy. You have to tread on eggshells when it comes to certain subjects.’
‘Gran, I don’t know what to say,’ I called out.
‘Tell him what you’ve been up to. And say I love you.’
Dear Dad, How are you? I am fine, I wrote.
Once Mum had been preaching the evils of getting drunk and had mentioned the time Dad got drunk and someone broke his jaw, and she had to go get him from outside the pub.
‘Don’t you love the word “partner”?’ said Gran to Pete. ‘But it’s good to see Tracey with a nice fella for a change, I must say. Of course what she does is her own business. After all, I’m not her mother. I’m the boys’ father’s mother.’
I wrote: We went fishing and I caught lots of fish. It is holidays here. I went with my friend to the church.
‘Finished,’ said Connor.
I looked down at what I’d written in astonishment and leaned so far forward on my chair that I nearly fell off. Connor was rereading the Fingleton Gazette, while outside Gran and Pete had gone quiet. The urge to write and we stole some rosary beads was overwhelming. Common sense told me not to. Obviously—Gran might see it. But she’d promised she wasn’t going to read the letters.
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