The phone rang.
I ran to it. It was Mum.
‘We’re at the hospital,’ she said. ‘The doctor’s seeing Connor, Pete’s on his way back now. I’m just ringing to check you’re okay.’
‘Is Connor all right?’
‘We dunno yet. I’m gunna stay tonight. Pete should be home soon. You should go to bed.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ she replied.
I went back to the lounge room and watched TV again.
Half an hour went by before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Pete was back. He came and stood in the lounge room, sopping, making a puddle at his feet.
‘Everything’s gunna be all right, mate,’ he said, picking up a towel that had been left on the floor and wiping his face and arms with it. Water soaked the mat and splattered the TV and the couch and the blanket on it. And I was still sitting watching him like he was a ghost, so sure had I been that neither he nor Mum nor Connor would ever come back.
I said, ‘The lights went out.’
‘Be the generator playing up again,’ he said and he switched off the TV. ‘Off to bed now, ay?’
And I went to bed, but I could not sleep, in fact I could not even close my eyes.
18
A CONFESSION
AN ORANGE GLOW was seeping through my eyelids. I fought it for a while, keeping my eyes shut tight. But it was no use. I was awake. I looked out the window; the sky was all white cloud. The rain had stopped.
I crept along the hall and saw that the roof wasn’t leaking anymore, but that the bucket Mum had put there was full and the puddle around it was soaking Connor’s mattress, which was leaning up against the wall.
Pete was smoking in the kitchen. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said, stubbing the cigarette in his coffee cup and flapping his hands at the smoke.
‘Have you heard how Connor is?’ I asked.
‘Nah, not yet,’ he replied. ‘You want some brekky?’
He made eggs on toast which we ate looking out at the yard. I kept yawning. The water seemed lower. And lifeless, somehow; just water. When I tried to picture the monster, all that came to me was a sense of unease, as if the night before had been shut behind a door down a long corridor up a flight of stairs in some part of my brain I hardly ever visited.
‘What are we going to do today?’ I asked.
Pete shrugged.
After breakfast he found a handline, threaded a bit of leftover steak onto the hook and cast it off the back stairs, landing the bait under the clothesline. I sat next to him for a while, but he didn’t get any bites.
‘Get us a beer while you’re up, would ya, mate?’
I got him one and then wandered back to my bedroom. The Lord of the Rings was on the top bunk. I opened it, skipped the foreword and the prologue, looked briefly at the maps, then started on page one:
‘When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence…’ I held it up by its spine, let the pages fan out. Looked at the last word on the last page, thinking, I’ll tell Connor I’ve read it and I’ll prove it by telling him the last word. But it was nothing special, and when I closed the book I immediately forgot it.
We had toast for lunch in front of the TV: ‘…reports of looting, though no arrests. Continued rain is restricting police attempts to locate a boy swept away in floodwater while apparently swimming with friends late last night. Police spokesman Sergeant Paul Landers has sent a warning to parents.’
Mr Landers, in police uniform and police hat, came on. ‘I can’t stress enough how important it is that people don’t let their kids go swimming in floodwaters. It’s just common sen—’
‘Your mum might be home soon,’ said Pete, talking over the TV. He coughed, and then stood up.
Sure enough Mum came home a little while later wearing a borrowed T-shirt and shorts. She had a strained smile on her face, and she looked at only the things she wanted to look at, and Pete wasn’t one of them. She knelt down and gave me a bear hug.
‘Are you being good for Peter?’ she asked and I said that I was.
‘I’ve just come to get some things,’ she said, to both of us, not directly to Pete.
‘How’s Connor?’ I asked.
‘They think he’s got pneumonia, probably from swimming in dirty water. And together with his asthma it’s knocked him around a fair bit. You don’t feel sick, do you, Aaron?’
I shook my head. ‘Can I visit him?’
‘Not yet. He’s still too sick. I’m going back up soon. I’ll probably come back later tonight. Peter might make you some tinned spaghetti on toast for dinner.’
She hugged me again, kissed me on the forehead and then was gone.
‘Might go do a bit more fishing,’ said Pete, and then he sat again on the top step and cast his line far out into the yard, right out to near the orange trees.
‘Can I go have a look round, Pete?’ I asked.
He looked up sharply, then laughed. ‘You serious?’
‘Honestly, I won’t be long. And I won’t go in past my knees.’
He turned back to his fishing. After a while he said, ‘What the hell. Can’t keep kids in cottonwool. Actually, know what?’ He threw down his line. ‘I might as well come with you.’
Sunlight reflected off the glassy water. It had shrunk from the yards opposite, and from the school oval, but it still covered the road.
There was a line of mud round our house that must have been the high-water mark. It was only a few centimetres below the top stair. Pete’s mug was gone from the gatepost. A couch had run aground in our driveway. Its cushions were missing and the springs and wooden frame were exposed.
Pete’s truck had a mud line near the top of the windscreen. He waded out to it and opened the door. Water dribbled out. He didn’t bother trying to start it.
‘Will you be able to fix it, Pete?’
‘I’ll tow it up to Robbo’s and have a look at it in a few days. I bloody knew this would happen, you know? So why didn’t I move the thing?’ He said this last question in a low voice, more to himself than me.
‘What if you can’t?’
He hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said, squinting up the road, ‘I might go do a spell on the trawlers. Be good to get out on the sea again. It’s good for you, I reckon, the sea. Gives you time to think about stuff.’
We followed the dotted white line that was just visible through the ankle-deep water in the centre of the road, heading away from the Shoe Street intersection. All the houses had junk around their front fences like milk cartons and babies’ bottles and plastic cups and esky lids. An old lady was pushing a broom across her veranda, making waves that fell with regular splashes into her front yard while her husband sat on the stairs and watched us go by. Above us flew a V of black-headed ibises.
At the intersection a breeze ruffled the surface of the water. Some of the last houses down the street to our left were single storey and had only their mud-coated roofs showing. We started back the way we’d come.
‘Tell me a story about the trawlers, Pete.’
‘Like what?’
‘What’s the weirdest thing you ever caught?’
He thought about it. ‘Have to be a port and starboard fish, I s’pose. Got it trolling deep one time. It’s basically just a little pineapple with fins. They call ’em port and starboard ’cause they reckon they’ve got one red light and one green one on ’em. Didn’t know what the hell it was. Had to look it up.’
We passed home, then turned into Shoe Street, which was still flooded all the way to Damon’s house. The witch’s house was half underwater. An uprooted tree was resting on her hedge, its branches were bent against her white walls and one had smashed through her front window. ‘Poor bastards,’ said Pete. ‘They spend their lives thinking about their car, house, mortgage, workin’ their guts out all the time, and then something like this happens. What’s the point?’
I said, ‘I
’m not gunna be like that.’
Pete shook his head. ‘You got plenty of time to worry about that stuff, mate. When you’re a bit older.’
I saw a seagull loop down and pluck at the surface of the water, and I thought about the rainfish. Where were they? Swimming down a muddy drain, or on the road, slipping between our ankles, or exploring the backyards along Shoe Street, swimming in and out of front gates. Or out to sea, pitching in unfamiliar currents.
‘I might head back,’ said Pete.
‘Can I visit my friend? He lives down this street?’ I pleaded.
Pete sighed. ‘Ten minutes, all right? I mean it.’
‘No worries, Pete.’
I sloshed through the street behind ours and found Byron on the front stairs of his place reading an Archie comic.
‘Byron,’ I called.
He gave a start and said, ‘Aaron. What are you up to?’ ‘Just looking round.’
He came off the stairs and we sloshed knee deep through his yard.
I said, ‘You got flooded pretty bad.’
‘Inside’s worse. We got mud all through everything.’
‘Fair dinkum?’
‘Yep. Bedrooms and everything. I was lying in bed and could reach down and put my hand in the water. Everyone’s at my cousin’s place. Just Gran and me stayed here last night. All our stuff’s all wet. TV’s buggered. Come on, I’ll show you.’
We went up the back stairs. Inside the house smelled like mud and wet cardboard. There were puddles in the hallway. Their lounge-room carpet was caked with mud. The TV was on a chair.
‘Full on,’ was all I could think to say.
‘Yep. I’m going over to my cousin’s place this arvo till it’s all cleaned up.’
In the kitchen an old lady was crouched on the floor scraping mud from the lino with a bit of cardboard.
‘This is my gran,’ said Byron, ‘This is Aaron. He lives over the back fence.’
She paused where she was and said, ‘How’d you go at your place?’
‘Our yard got flooded but our house didn’t, except for my brother’s room. Your place is really bad.’
She said, ‘Yep. There’s people down the street who got it worse though. Old Mr Ambrum slept on his roof last night. It’ll take a while for everything to dry out. When the water goes down we’ll have to air things out. Lots of work to do yet.’ She went back to scraping the mud.
Byron said, ‘Aaron’s the one who was asking about the rainfish.’
She stopped and sat up. Her flowery dress was dirty with mud, she had sweat on her forehead. She said, ‘I know people call them mudcod. That’s all right. My old mum always called them rainfish.’
‘Told ya,’ said Byron.
I said, ‘Why do they call them rainfish?’
She hesitated. ‘There’s a story, they say. Don’t catch them fish ’cause they’ll bring rainstorms and floods and bad things. That’s why in the old days people didn’t ever eat them.’
I said, ‘Do you think the flood happened because we caught them?’
Byron said, ‘Nah, it’s not your fault,’ and Gran said, ‘Nah, it’s the rainy season. Usually not this rainy but it always rains this time of year. Them fish are bad for you to eat, that’s all, make you sick. That’s what they reckon anyway. That’s why there’s stories about them. Make you leave them alone. You emptied out your cupboard, Byron?’
He hadn’t.
‘Well get in and do it. Go on,’ his gran said.
She started scraping again, and Byron said he should go and do his room but he came out on the stairs with me.
I said, ‘My brother’s sick. He’s in the hospital.’
‘That’s no good,’ said Byron, and I kind of felt silly because I hadn’t meant to say it, it just came out.
‘Anyway, see you later,’ I said, and walked back. Probably they’re right, I thought to myself. Probably the rainfish had nothing to do with anything. Just me over-imagining, as usual.
When I got home Pete was on the back stairs fishing. He still hadn’t got any bites.
He cooked tinned spaghetti on toast for dinner, which we ate in front of the TV. The news was on. It was about the flood and the missing boy. They said his name was Ross Caulderson, which was Coldy’s real name, and all at once I saw how it must have been, how they would have been doing some crazy stunt, the sort of adventurous thing people like Damon and Stevie Harmison liked doing—something tinged with danger. Things like jumping off bridges and stealing stuff and other things that scared the hell out of me. Weird to say, but even though Coldy was missing I felt a tiny bit jealous of him.
I said to Pete, ‘I know that boy. He lives just down the road.’
‘Yeah?’ said Pete, ‘That’s no good.’
I felt bad. I even tried to squeeze out some tears, but none came. Instead I kept thinking, Thank God it’s not Mum or Pete or Connor who’s missing. Or me.
After the news we watched Neighbours. A girl shoplifted some earrings from a clothes shop, walked right out with them, and she let out a sigh of relief just as the security guard slapped a hand onto her shoulder. I jumped; Pete didn’t react. The security guard called the police while the shoplifter rang her brother, crying, and told him what had happened. The ads came on.
‘You remember when someone broke into the church?’ I said to Pete. ‘And took the rosary beads?’
Pete nodded, still watching the TV.
‘Well that was me and another bloke.’
Neighbours came back on. A policeman showed up. He knew the girl.
Pete sipped his beer. ‘Where are they now?’
‘The other bloke’s got them. He’s the one who actually took them. I wanted to take them back but he wouldn’t let me.’
‘Tricky,’ said Pete.
Neighbours ended and the theme song started. Pete looked at me and smiled apologetically. ‘Leave it with me, mate. Let me think about it. I’ll come up with a plan of action for ya.’
‘Thanks, Pete.’
I went to bed. After a while I heard Mum come home. I heard her voice and Pete’s voice. They started arguing again. I tried not to listen but it was hard. I pictured them standing by the kitchen table. And if I walked out there, what then? Would they stop? Mum was screaming now. Something in Pete’s tone was egging her on, urging her to get louder. Neither of them cared, they were saying exactly what they wanted, getting it all out. I shut my eyes and blocked my ears and made snoring noises, and tried to fool myself that I was already asleep.
19
THE START OF TERM MASS
FATHER LOCKHART SAID, ‘Please stand for the Gospel according to Luke,’ and the congregation—a whole churchful including us high school kids and the primary school kids and the teachers and some parents—all stood up. I was careful not to be first or last. Father had been scanning our faces since mass had started and so I’d kept my head in my hymn book or down low as if I was suddenly deeply interested in the graffiti scratched on the pew in front of me.
By then the skies had cleared, and the floodwaters had receded leaving scattered puddles, which then wasted to nothing. The council had collected the couch from our driveway along with all the tree branches and assorted junk from the roads, and the traffic had returned. Connor was home from hospital, and together we’d scraped the mud from his room and he’d moved back in. We walked to school together as we had before, except now I was at the high school too.
During the flood recovery the Fingleton Gazette was full of warnings about fallen electricity lines, and pet lost-and-founds and timetables for the council rubbish collections and other flood stories. Then normality returned and so did the interest in criminals like ‘Local Man’, who’d smashed his neighbour’s mower with a sledgehammer, and good old reliable ‘Local Youth’, who’d been throwing rocks at streetlights. The rosary-beads thieves had been pushed aside for the flood reports and now seemed to have been forgotten.
I was only four rows from the front at the Start of Term Mass and right in
the middle of the pew, and I was feeling pretty exposed. The church was loud with whispering and scrapes and coughs.
On the first day back at school everyone in my class had a flood story. ‘It was up to here in my backyard.’ ‘That’s nothing, in my backyard it was up to here.’ But most of those kids lived on the other side of town and had got hardly any water, and they were jealous of the one or two kids who had really been flooded. Not many of them knew more about the floods than me—apart from Coldy, that is.
A girl in Connor’s class had just finished the second reading. To get to the microphone she’d had to step past a blown-up school photo of Coldy—one of those ones where they make you put your fists on your knees and say ‘monkeys’—which had been leant against a chair in front of the altar, with his name and we will remember you written under it. The church didn’t have flowers or banners because of what had happened to Coldy, and there was a special reading, which was just a big speech about how nice he’d been and how hard it was for his friends in this sad hour, and how we should all support them if they looked like they were upset. Lots of kids turned in their seats towards Stevie Harmison, Coldy’s self-appointed best friend, who stared straight ahead like if he did anything else he would burst into tears. He’d been with Coldy when he went missing. ‘We were all swimming, it was dark, he was behind us, we turned around and he was gone,’ was the explanation he gave. But I remembered Damon’s story about his gang, the Evil Deads, who used to go out at night, and I wondered what they’d really been doing. People had spent days looking for Coldy, but they’d found no trace of him.
Damon hadn’t ended up coming to our school after all. In fact, his family had moved out. I knew this because Connor had walked past Damon’s place and seen that it was all closed up. Later I overheard Stevie Harmison saying that Damon’s grandmother in Townsville had taken the family back.
Rainfish Page 15
