Watermark

by Joanna Atherfold Finn

  • • •

  We veer off the main road and shudder along a ribbed dirt track. June looks out over the scrub and slows down.

  ‘You need to go to the Ladies, Mimi?’ She makes it sound as though we are in a department store. ‘This is the best place to go.’

  I look out over the seared sweep of land and think of King Browns, my footsteps stirring their slumber. I tell her I’m okay; I’ll hold on. We travel till we reach a chain-mesh fence at the community’s entrance; a sign tells us all the things we can’t do.

  ‘My whole family in one car,’ June says. ‘Mum and Dad up the front. All us kids squabbling and squirming in the back. I can’t work out how all of us were in there.’ She shrugs. ‘Eight of us, Mimi. Where did we go?’ She drives with her arm out the window, and the red dust settles into the upholstery. Into our skin.

  The road peters out and June drags on the handbrake. We clamber out of the four-wheel drive. A motley bitzer shakes itself out of the russet dirt. Shakes its babies off its belly and they gambol behind. Its black engorged teats dangle like grubs. The dog rolls over and puts its tail between its legs. Toby pats his hands over its flank, beating it like a drum. The dog sheds dirt like a blackboard duster and Toby grins up at me. The pups dive over his legs and mouth his fingers with their wet gums and he grimaces at their needle teeth piercing his skin, but he doesn’t move away.

  June calls out. A man strides out across the parched grass. Behind him, a toddler with a shock of hair and onyx eyes hugs the door frame of a grey corrugated house.

  ‘June. What you doing?’ He tilts back his cowboy hat and holds his arms out wide. Across his skin, veins branch out like tributaries.

  ‘Getting you some fish,’ she says, ‘what the heck you think I’m doing? Having a tea party?’

  ‘For the family?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Manyja,’ he says.

  ‘Ha. Okay. Manyja. I’ll do my best. Hey, Mick, this is Mimi. Nagula Jarndu.’

  I look at her for an explanation, but she just grins and keeps talking.

  ‘From over east. Her son, Toby. They’ve come to live with us.’ June says this as though the whole arrangement has been carefully planned. As though I’m not just some drifter who’s been given an address by my well-meaning aunt.

  ‘Archie, ay?’ she says.

  Mick says nothing. Worries away at his stained fingernails. Nods. ‘Back with Dad,’ he says finally.

  ‘There’s better ways to spend time with Uncle. Uncle’s not in there. He’s down at the creek. Uncle’s down in the mangroves jiggling those muddies in the muck, hooking out the biggest ones for dinner.’

  ‘Get Tom to get Archie out. Get him to come back here. We’ll look after him.’

  ‘Tom’s got no say. Tom didn’t put him in there. He did that to himself. He’s been stalking Sister Louise, you know. Giving that poor old penguin the willies. If he wants to get closer to God, I’ll take him to church. He can join the choir. Do some holy swaying with all that charisma that the local girls go wild for.’

  June rocks around like she’s jiving and I try not to laugh. I look down at Toby; one of the pups has fallen asleep on his lap. Mick ploughs away at the dirt with his feet. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and pulls his hat down lower on his face.

  ‘You working, Mick?’

  ‘Dried up.’

  ‘Dried up like driftwood? Dried up like seaweed? You’d better get yourself wet again, Mick.’

  She looks past him to the girl at the door. ‘Where’s my cuddle, Miss?’ The child teeters across the yard and June takes her up in her arms. ‘I catch you some dinner, Miss Kira? Walgawalga?’

  She nuzzles in and swivels her hands up and down June’s back.

  ‘Come on then, Toby,’ June says. ‘You want that puppy?’

  ‘No, Toby,’ I say over her. ‘We don’t have anywhere to keep a dog. We can’t travel with a dog.’

  ‘Keep it at my place, Toby.’

  He looks up at me. ‘Can we?’

  ‘Sure,’ June says, ignoring the scowl I throw her way. ‘Every boy needs a pup. He’ll be ready in . . . ’ June crouches over and looks between the puppy’s hind legs. ‘I beg your pardon; she’ll be ready in a few weeks. She’s got to stay with her mum for a bit. You and me, we’ll come back and get her. You think of a name.’

  ‘Maple,’ he says without pausing, as though he’s had the name ready all these years, just in case.

  ‘Maple. Sweet like maple,’ June says. ‘That’s a perfect name.’

  • • •

  We travel across the scrub until the ground dips and the landscape opens up. Distant smoke smudges a sky mirrored in the water. A rippled ribbon of tidal estuary claws at the low-tide sandbank. Mangroves flank the white mud and their bleached roots rise like a carpet of spines towards the light. The moon has forgotten to make way for the sun and they sit together in the sky. On the dry banks we set up a day camp. June rakes through the dusty coals of an old campfire and rebuilds it. She pulls a silver Zippo lighter out of her top pocket and flicks it over the twigs, blowing them till the flame takes hold.

  ‘The traditional way, Toby,’ she laughs. ‘It’ll be all ready for when we get back. We can watch it from where we fish. Watch the sky and know it’s still burning.’

  I lug eskies from the LandCruiser, drag them behind me like toboggans and pivot their bases into the shade of rutted tree limbs. We arrange faded camp chairs with hammocky centres so they face the water. June pulls a wide-brimmed hat down past her ears and doles out spearmint discs as though she’s giving us our holy bread. She lays out three pairs of wetsuit booties. We pull them on and our small feet swim in them. She packs apples and water bottles into a net bag, untethers some fishing line from one of the reels and threads it up with a new hook. She tosses a net over her shoulder like a swag and packs everything else into a bucket.

  We follow June down to the water, tripping over our feet. She trudges into the water and scans the current as though she’s reading it, then wades back to the shore. We trail her, squelching through the grit. She enters the water further along and the current moves faster against our legs, tugging at them. A school of bait fish flashes under the surface.

  ‘Here,’ June says, and sloshes back out again. She crouches down low on the sand and slinks along the shallows with the net draped over her arm. We crouch down too.

  ‘Are we hiding?’ Toby asks.

  ‘Yes, we’re hiding. Hiding from the fish,’ June says.

  The wind buffets the flow, and forms ripples. June flings the net out and it flails for a moment above the surface before hitting the water in a sphere of spray. She coils the rope. Pauses. Coils it more. Loops the edges of the net back in on its yoke and rests the tangle of bait fish on the shore. Precisely, she unthreads them and forms a line of gasping fish on the sand. She tips the bag of apples and drink bottles out of the bucket and scoops up some water.

  ‘Drop them in, Toby. Let them be happy for a bit.’

  He pinches their flapping bodies by their tails and drops them into the bucket like lucky coins in a well.

  • • •

  Further along the sandbank, June crouches down on her haunches and scoops out one of the fish. A cluster of mangroves on the bank opposite stains the water green. She angles her filleting knife and pierces the fish’s smooth pale skin, sliding the blade’s edge along the side of its spine and pulling back the flesh. She cuts off a neat fillet and slices it into strips, then threads a hook through the band of flesh like a buckle. The rest of the fish, its flank removed, keeps breathing, and Toby stares at it and then scoops it up and puts it back in the bucket. June pulls out some line. The hand reel spins around her hand and her shadow hovers on the water’s surface. She spins the line above her head like a lasso till it whistles and then casts it towards the bank. In the distance, the water breaks. June hands Toby the reel and slides her finger down the line with his.

  ‘Feel that, Toby? When it tugs you like that, y
ou’ve got to tug it back. You and the fish are in a tug-of-war. You going to win that tug-of-war, Toby?’

  He nods.

  ‘Wirdu, Toby,’ June says, holding her arms out wide. ‘You get me a big fella.’

  We stand in a row, our feet sinking in the sand. I watch Toby, his determined eyes, his finger resting on the line to feel the jolt of a bite. June casts my line too and then her own. We stand there for a long time. She reels in fish that flash through the water and skip onto the sand, and Toby and I reel in empty hooks.

  Then it happens. He is struggling with the line, dragging it in.

  ‘I’ve got one,’ he says to June, but she doesn’t meddle, she stands back and lets him tussle with it. ‘It’s big.’

  The sand is up past Toby’s ankles, and his twiggy legs angle back to fight against the drag of the line. He is hauling it in as though he has a net full of fish. A flare of silver churns and the water roils towards us. The fish rises up and flaps onto the sand in front of him. It’s a fine-looking fish. Its dorsal fin is webbed between its spines like a bat wing and its forehead dips. Its scales glimmer and its tail fans out like a yellow-dipped paintbrush. The fish claps the ground with its body and gasps at the air.

  He turns to us, looking proud and stunned in equal measure.

  ‘Big fella,’ June smiles. ‘Good for dinner.’

  ‘He’s a good one,’ Toby says.

  ‘He is a good one.’

  ‘Can I let him go back in the water again?’

  June’s eyes widen. ‘Really? This isn’t just a good one, this is a great one. A barramundi. I’ll cook him up for you, make his skin nice and crispy. I’ll give you his eyes.’

  Toby slides his fingers over the fish’s gleaming body, and June sighs and pulls the hook from its grey lips. He rests his hand under its belly and bends down at the water’s edge.

  ‘Swirl him in slowly, Toby,’ June says. ‘Now let him go. Let him go and he’ll turn into a girl.’

  Toby turns his face and gives June a ‘pull the other one’ smirk.

  ‘They do, you know,’ she says.

  His brows furrow, a look usually reserved for me. June puts her face close to mine and puffs out her cheeks with mock frustration as he squats, his hair splintered with sweat, and the fish twists through the shallows.

  ‘There goes dinner. May as well line up with Tom at Chinatown Coles,’ she says.

  • • •

  June tips flour and salt into a plastic bowl and sifts it with her fingers. She rifles through her esky and pulls out a can of beer, cracking it open and taking a sip.

  ‘One for the cook,’ she says, screwing up her face and offering me a sip. I shake my head and she glugs the rest into the bowl.

  The fire smoulders. The sky is entwined with the sea. June kneads away at the mixture, folding it over and pounding it, scraping the flour from the sides of the bowl and working it into the centre.

  ‘Dust that bench for me, Toby,’ she says, pointing to a flat rock. I watch as the whole flour bag is upended in one enthusiastic sweep. June’s eyes widen but she doesn’t say anything. Toby swirls his fingers through the flour and June pummels the dough with her fist. ‘Now we scoop him up and we roll him out.’

  She forms a flattened round, smoothing off the edges with her palms, and then she drops the damper into a charcoaled camp oven. ‘In he goes,’ June grins.

  The breeze blows smoke into Toby’s face and he rubs his eyes. June shovels the camp oven into the coals and ladles smoking embers onto the lid. I make the tea, scooping tea leaves into a billy and pouring in the rest of my bottled water. June settles the billy onto the coals with a stick.

  While we wait, we wander down to the mangroves. We dodge their spiny roots and huddle together in the damp, our feet sinking into the oozing sludge. June waggles a metal hook into the dark voids of the cavernous root system.

  ‘We’ll hook a muddie, Toby. We’ll have to have muddies for dinner instead of that lovely barra. He’s hiding in there,’ she says, poking around the undergrowth. ‘You watch your tootsies. If he comes out, he’s going to be angry.’

  June drags the hook out and with it a lone claw. It is smooth, like a polished gem, its grey–green shell the colour of a bush tick. In profile the claw looks like the head of a prehistoric creature with a curved beak and mouldering teeth. Toby turns it over in his hands and then holds it over his big toe and forces its jaws together. June looks at her empty hook, disheartened.

  ‘Archie should be here. He’s an expert. We’ll bring him next time. We’ll all come together.’

  She looks up at the sky and tells us that lunch is ready. At the campfire, she pulls out the damper. It is the colour of golden syrup, cracked on its surface like a land in drought. I pour out the tea into chipped enamelware mugs. June breaks open the damper and tears off two chunks, one for Toby and one for me. She scoops on some butter and it soaks through the bread that is warm in our hands. I watch Toby devour it.

  ‘Things taste so much better out of a fire,’ I tell her. The sun is hot on our backs but there’s a light wind coming up from the water. I feel something close to happiness. ‘Are you having some?’ I ask.

  ‘Not me, Mimi.’ She laughs and pulls an assortment of containers from her esky. ‘These are great,’ she says, slapping a wholemeal wrap on her knees and piling it up with black olives, salami and cheese. ‘You have your damper.’

  We eat all of it while June surveys the fish that she caught for Mick.

  ‘Not much of a catch today. Not enough to feed the family.’

  I lean forward and peer in too. The fish have dull skins now and their bodies are rigid; some are wide-mouthed as though surprised. The red filaments of their gills fan out from deep gashes. I think of Toby’s quivering barramundi, pleased that he released it.

  ‘That’d have to be enough for one family,’ I say. ‘Enough for a week.’

  June shakes her head at me. ‘The whole family,’ she says.

  • • •

  The fan vibrates over the upbeat soundtrack of a movie. June loves comedies, the cornier and more predictable the better. Tom has gone to bed, his back sore from leaning over his work desk, and Toby is asleep in the granny flat.

  ‘Tea, Mimi?’ June asks, standing behind the island bench, tongs and pans dangling above her from a copper pot rack.

  ‘I never say no to a tea.’

  ‘Toast?’

  ‘Sure.’ I flick through the local paper, scanning the vacancies, the usual list of maintenance workers and healthcare staff. On the floor next to my chair are some fresh towels, a bar of soap and a scented candle.

  June cuts the toast into triangles and piles it up on a plate.

  ‘Never much in the paper,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll take you downtown and we’ll have a meeting with Sister Louise.’

  ‘Ha. Somehow I doubt the nuns will have me.’

  She throws me a look that I can’t read and brings over two cups of steaming peppermint tea with the plate of toast balanced on top. I arrange the dishes on the table.

  ‘Sister Louise works at the university. We’ll enrol you in teaching.’

  June speaks in such an assured way that for a moment I almost believe her. I picture myself riding my bike to the local school. Children calling me Miss. Sticking charts of words onto walls. Arranging cushions in a claw-footed bath to make a special reading nook.

  ‘I didn’t even finish high school.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ll write them a letter,’ June says buoyantly.

  I blow the steam off my tea and watch the stained water ripple. ‘I’m not sure it works like that.’

  ‘You don’t want to study, Mimi? Nothing left for you to learn?’ June yawns and stretches her arms out behind her like a cormorant drying its wings. ‘Well, I’ll take my cup of tea to bed then, if you know so much.’

  A gecko scales the glass window in the kitchen. Outside, the wind-torn leaves of the banana tree brush against the side of the house
. Don’t go, I say to her in my head. She doesn’t, and I wonder for a moment if I said the words out loud. I run my finger down the weave of the tablecloth and I think of all the places Toby and I have lived. The rundown caravan parks and the cheap one-bedroom units. The grimy kitchens with melamine peeling off the benches and exhaust fans clogged with the dust of other people’s lives.

  ‘I just need to sort myself out. Toby turns twelve in a couple of weeks. I mean . . . the poor kid. He should have a party. He doesn’t know any boys. He doesn’t have any friends.’

  June leans forward, cups her drink between her hands and holds my gaze. My feet are restless under the table.

  ‘How many do you want?’ she asks.

  ‘How many what?’

  ‘How many friends. I can get you thirty. Maybe forty. Will that be enough?’

  ‘What, you’ll just collect them, will you? You’ll just go door-knocking and pick up some random kids? Some pretend friends?’ It’s the first time I’ve ever raised my voice at her.

  ‘No, Mimi, I don’t need to do that. I’ll just collect the ones I know.’ June chews her lip and looks out the window. ‘So, what are you going to do about Toby’s dad?’

  There it is. Straight out. The question I’ve been running from for years. The question my own family won’t ask me, worried I’ll run even further.

  ‘What am I going to do? I’m not going to do anything.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘You know Archie hasn’t got a dad anymore. That’s why he’s bending off his rails.’

  ‘His name was Harrison. Harry. There, I’ve said it. Anyway, I thought Archie’s problem was puberty. That’s what you told Tom.’

  ‘Don’t be smart with me, Mimi. I know you’re a smart girl, but don’t be smart with me.’

  ‘June, I don’t know what you know, what Aunty Grace has told you, but you don’t get to have something . . . someone you didn’t want in the first place.’

  ‘Mimi, you can’t know you want someone if you don’t know they exist.’

  June says this in such a slow, considered way that it sounds reasonable, perhaps even feasible. She stands up then and goes over to her paperwork, which is stacked high with fluorescent stickers separating the sections.