The Dragon Raft

by Rory Barnes

  THE DRAGON RAFT

  RORY BARNES

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  THE DRAGON RAFT

  Copyright © 2010 by Rory Barnes

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  For Annie and the boyos

  and those old

  St Kilda afternoons

  CHAPTER ONE

  About an hour after dawn the raft began to break up. The storm had frayed the ropes holding the empty oil drums and now two of the ropes snapped completely. The drum they’d been holding floated away. We were one drum down, seven to go. I watched the escaped drum for half a minute but soon lost sight of it amongst the raging waves. The raft sank lower in the water. Not that this made much difference. All night the waves had been washing over the deck. At some point in the darkness the wind had ripped the sail from the mast and now there was nothing but a thin streamer of tarpaulin flapping and cracking like a gun. It didn’t matter, the force of the wind on the bare mast was enough to drive us along at a fair pace. In the dawn light I could make out the dark mass of the mainland to the east. The coast wasn’t that far away, but to get there I’d have to turn the raft side-on to the wind and waves: suicide. We were simply at the mercy of the gale and the tide. Luckily we were being driven south, straight towards Kangaroo Island. It was just a matter of hoping and praying that the raft didn’t totally fall apart before we got there.

  * * * * * * *

  The drunken yachtie stirred in the little cabin (if you could call the three-sided wooden crate a cabin). He pushed himself out onto the deck. He looked like a drowned dog, I don’t suppose I looked any better myself. I reckoned he wasn’t drunk anymore. He had been completely sozzled when I’d pulled him from the water in the middle of the night. Now he was probably just hung-over, wet, cold and hungry.

  “Hi,” I shouted above the wind.

  “G’day, kid,” he shouted back.

  The yachtie bumped himself across the deck to where I was sitting with the almost useless rudder in my hand. “Where are we?” he said.

  “I reckon we’re on course for Kangaroo Island,” I said.

  “Give me a go at steering,” he said. “You look stuffed.”

  “There’s not much steering to do,” I said. “We’ve just got to go where the wind takes us.”

  “The wind will take us south,” the yachtie said. “But as soon as we get level with Backstairs Passage the current will take us east.”

  “Hell,” I said. “We might miss the Island completely.”

  “If that happens, we’ll make for The Pages,” he said.

  “We’ll just go with the flow,” I said.

  * * * * * * *

  I’d never seen The Pages myself although I knew what they were. I’d looked at them on the map in the tackle and bait shop often enough. They were three rocks sticking up in the middle of Backstairs Passage. You couldn’t call them islands. They were just rocks, although the biggest one had a small lighthouse on it. We’d be safer on one of The Pages than on the raft, but only just. I untied the safety rope from around my waist and passed it to the yachtie.

  “You’d better anchor yourself,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, mate,” he said. “I’m not going to fall in the drink again.” And he took the rope and tied it round his waist. “Anyway,” he said, “what’s your name?”

  “Wal,” I said.

  “Jim,” he said. We shook hands.

  “Thanks for the rescue, Wal. Where’s your mate?”

  “What mate?” I said.

  “Last time I saw you sailing around on this thing, there was another kid with you. Red hair.”

  “That was Billy,” I said. “I reckon he’s home in bed.”

  “So, what were you doing—all by yourself—charging around the Gulf in the middle of the night on a damned raft?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “Tell you later.” And I crawled across the sopping deck to the “cabin”. I crawled into the crate and rested my head against the rough wood and fell asleep immediately.

  * * * * * * *

  The first time I saw Billy he was in the playground trying to do a slam dunk. I didn’t know his name at the time, he was just this kid who kept running up to the hoop, bouncing the ball as he went, and then jumping as high as he could, the ball in his right hand, his left hand reaching for the hoop. He didn’t even manage to touch the hoop, came nowhere near it. This was hardly surprising, the kid wasn’t very tall. After his last failed attempt he turned to me, a bit out of breath, and yelled, “Hey, Wal, come over here and give me a leg up.”

  It was the first time anybody at the school had called me by my name. I was a bit startled. I supposed the guy must be in my class.

  I’d only started at the school that morning. After Mum had filled in all the forms and gone home, the deputy principal had walked me across the deserted playground to my new classroom and handed me over to Mr. Groves, my new class teacher. There’d been a maths lesson in progress. Mr. Groves had just introduced me to the class, shown me to my desk and gone on with the lesson. Mr. Groves had seemed a reasonable sort of teacher—he’d been able to explain stuff. I could understand what he was saying—always a help with a teacher. Then it was recess time. I’d gone out into the playground with everybody else and just wandered around by myself. I’m an old hand at new schools. This one was my seventh. It’s not that I get thrown out of them or anything—my family just keeps moving about. Anyway, I wandered around not talking to anybody until the guy I came to know as Billy asked me for a leg up.

  I walked over to him. He was a short kid with red hair and freckles. “I’m too short,” he said.

  “You can’t help that,” I said.

  “Give us a boost.”

  I put my hands together, lacing my fingers. Billy put one foot in my hands and jumped. To help him along I pulled upwards as hard as I could. Billy flew through the air, grabbed the hoop, slam dunked the ball and let out a yell of triumph. The ball bounced on the asphalt, I grabbed it. Billy hung in the air, swaying like a chimpanzee. He turned his head to me and said, “I’m Billy.”

  “G’day, Billy” I said.

  Billy got both hands on the hoop and went for a chin up. The hoop wasn’t quite up to the job, it started to bend slowly. Then something snapped with a loud crack and the hoop collapsed completely. Billy let go and dropped down to the ground. Some other kids came up and stood and looked. The hoop was now pointing almost straight down at the ground. Both of the little supporting struts had snapped where they had been welded onto the hoop. It was stuffed.

  “They shoulda made it stronger,” Billy said.

  “You’ll get into trouble,” some other kid said.

  “Tony’ll fix it,” Billy said. “He can fix anything.”

  “Here comes Mr. Groves,” some other kid said.

  As I’ve said, my first impression of Mr. Groves was of a reasonable guy. But the real test of a good teacher, if you ask me, is what happens when things go wrong. And the snapped basketball hoop was definitely a thing that had gone wrong. I’d only been in the school for an hour and already I’d help wreck something. I watched Mr. Groves approach. He walked over real slow. This wasn’t necessarily a good sign. What I’ve discovered is that real mean, uptight teachers, often do things real slow—drawing the process out. I looked at Mr. Groves’ face. He wasn’t giving anything away, he didn’t look angry, but he didn’t look real pleased either. He stood looking at the dead hoop.

  “So how did this happen?” he said.

  “Tony’ll fix it,” Billy said.

  “How did it happen, Billy?”

  “It must have been badly made,” Billy said. “Look at those welds. I don’t reckon t
he guy who made it knew how to weld properly.”

  “I assume this has something to do with you, Billy.”

  “I didn’t know it was so weak.”

  “It’s a basketball ring, Billy. It’s only meant to have balls thrown through it.”

  “You’ve gotta be able to slam dunk, Mr. Groves. You can’t play basketball properly without slam dunking. And if you’re a bit short you’ve gotta be able to grab the ring.”

  “This is a school, Billy. We just have normal school equipment here. We’re not Basketball Australia or something. How did you get up there? Climb the pole?”

  “Naw, jumped.”

  “Jumped? That high?”

  “Well...I had a bit of help.”

  “Who from?”

  “Wal.”

  Mr. Groves turned to me. “Well, well, young Walter Clarke. Morning recess isn’t even over and already you are a partner in crime.”

  I looked at Mr. Groves. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t going psycho either. I reckoned he was probably all right. I was about to apologize for my part in the action, when Billy said, “Tony’ll fix it, Mr. Groves. Tony’ll fix it so good it’ll never break again no matter who swings on it. It’ll be an improvement. I’ll get him to do the other one as well.”

  “This Tony,” Mr. Groves said. “He’s your step father, right?”

  “Err...I suppose you could call him that,” Billy said. “Me and Mum live with him.”

  “And he’s a bit of a handyman?”

  “Handyman! Jeeze, he’s a bit more than just a handyman. Tony’s got everything. Welding machine, two lathes, drill press, band saw, radial arm saw, circular saw, angle grinder, portable generator, oxy....”

  “All right, all right, Billy. I’ll tell you what. You get this fixed by Friday home time, and we won’t say any more about it.”

  “You can count on me, Mr. Groves.”

  “I hope I can, Billy. I hope I can.”

  “I’ll need to unbolt the hoop, so I can take it home to Tony. What we need is a shifting spanner. Or maybe an ordinary spanner if it’s the right size. I reckon those bolts are twenty millimetres. You wouldn’t have a twenty mill spanner would you, Mr. Groves?”

  “No, Billy, I don’t think so. Not on me. Not at the moment.” Mr. Groves patted his pockets as if he was just checking to make sure. “No, I don’t have one.”

  “Well somebody must. What about Mr. Winchester?”

  “What about Mr. Winchester?”

  “He’s got a real good tool kit in the boot of his car. I saw it when I was putting the sports stuff in there last Wednesday. I’ll go to the staff room and ask him.”

  * * * * * * *

  By lunchtime Billy had organized a spanner and a step ladder. He tried to get me to help him carry the step ladder from a shed at the back of the oval to the basketball court. I was the first kid he turned to. “Come and give me a hand with this, Wal.”

  As I say, I’ve heaps of experience of new schools. One of the things you learn from moving about so much is this: the kids who are real keen to make friends with you the first day you appear, often aren’t the kids you want to make friends with yourself. That’s a bit harsh, but it’s true. I suppose it’s because the loser kids, the isolates, the lonely kids, can’t make friends with the rest of the mob, so when they see a new guy looking lonely and hanging around with no one to talk to, they move in. They’re like piranha fish. You’ve got to be careful for those first few days at a new school—you’ve got to suss things out. It’s better to wander around by yourself, even if you do feel a bit miserable, than to end up with some loser who suddenly wants to be your best friend. I learned this the hard way. At a couple of the schools I went to, I spent the first term trying to get rid of the kids who had latched onto me in the first couple of days. So when Billy asked me to help him with the ladder, I said, “No, sorry, mate, I’ve got someone I need to talk to.”

  It was bulldust, of course, I didn’t have anybody I needed to talk to. I wandered away. I sat on a bench under a gum tree and watched Billy from a distance. He got some other kid to give him a hand with the ladder, and it didn’t take them very long to unbolt the hoop. Other guys stood around laughing and making comments. Billy seemed to be enjoying himself and the guy who was helping him looked happy to be helping. As I watched, the pair of them laughed at something one of the watchers had said. I couldn’t catch the words. Perhaps I should have been the guy lending a hand, but, as I say, you’ve got to be careful.

  CHAPTER TWO

  At home time I got my bike out of the rack and set off without talking to anyone. That morning, when Mum had driven me to school with my bike sticking out of the boot, I’d memorized the route. It wasn’t all that difficult. Crossing Port Wakefield Road was the only real problem, after that there was long straight ride to St Kilda and our new house.

  I don’t mind a long bike ride home from school. I reckon school ought to be at least half an hour from where you live. Going home, you are just cycling along. You are all alone with your thoughts. It’s...I don’t know...it’s a sort of buffer. It’s a bit of time out between the demands of school and the demands of home. And this was the first time I’d ridden this route, so I was quite happy just taking in all the new sights. The road to St Kilda ran between fields of vegetables, although sometimes the vegetables were being grown in these long plastic tunnels. They looked a bit daggy, the tunnels. Some of them were tattered and not too new. Beside the road was a rusting piece of machinery, it looked like something you’d use to dig ditches with. I reckon it had been sitting there for ten years, maybe twenty. There was a sign painted on it: For Sale. The paint had almost completely flaked off. I cycled past a place with the words St Kilda Rose Farm on a large shed. I’d never thought of roses as being things you farmed—but heck, if the flower shops will buy them from you, why not farm them? The day was reasonably warm, the sky was blue, I thought I could smell the sea already. I won’t say I was happy, but I was quite content.

  So I wasn’t very pleased when someone behind me yelled, “Hey, Wal. Wait up!” I turned my head. Billy, of course, Billy cranking it in my direction. He was carrying the broken basketball ring. He had it round his neck like some huge necklace, like something a savage might wear. There was nothing I could do, so I slowed down and let him catch up.

  “Do you live in St Kilda?” he said as soon as he was peddling along beside me.

  “Moved in yesterday,” I said.

  “Gee. Great!” Billy said. “It’s about time I had some local friends.”

  I didn’t say anything in reply. This didn’t seem to worry Billy.

  “We’ve lived in St Kilda since me and Mum moved in with Tony,” he said. “Tony’s lived in St Kilda for ages. He’s got so much stuff, he’ll never shift.”

  There was a bit of silence. I thought I’d better say something. So I said, “My family shifts all the time. I’ve no idea how long we’ll stay here.”

  “You want to stay and stay,” Billy said. “St Kilda’s real good. The tops. Does your mum keep giving fellas the boot? Is that why you keep shifting?”

  “Wha...?”

  “My mum doesn’t take crap from anybody,” Billy said. “If things don’t work out for Mum, she gives the guy the boot—quick as a flash, out he goes. She won’t take any argy bargy, especially from the guy she’s shacked up with. That’s why I’ve had so many step dads. But she’s picked a winner this time. Tony’s just great.”

  “I hope she keeps him,” I said.

  “Yeah, so do I,” Billy said. “But you can never tell with my mum....”

  I looked sideways at Billy, he rolled his eyes and looked up at the sky, making like he was exasperated with his mum’s behaviour. The basketball ring bounced up and down on his chest.

  We pedalled in silence for a while. I was a bit surprised by the silence. I’d figured Billy for a motor mouth, someone who just couldn’t shut up. But for five minutes he said nothing at all. We crossed a bridge over a long straight co
ncrete canal. There were ducks swimming in the water, each one producing a v-shaped wake. Then Billy said, “You’ll like my mum. Her name’s Tessa. She had me when she was sixteen.”

  This was something we had in common. My mum was sixteen when I was born. Dad was seventeen. But I don’t, as a rule, talk about my parents—so I didn’t say anything.

  Billy said, “There was one guy, his name was Luigi. He was real nice, used to play the guitar and tell real funny stories. He used to do the rounds. You know, the Centrelink offices. Job search, disability pension, carer’s allowance, that sort of thing. Luigi used to travel miles. Different name at each Centrelink. Different addresses—used his mates’ addresses. Collected heaps of dough. I thought maybe Luigi was going to be permanent. I thought maybe Mum wouldn’t give him the boot. And she didn’t. I’ll say this: Mum did not give Luigi the boot.”

  “So what happened?” I said.

  “Oh the cops got him,” Billy said. “Fraud. Obtaining money by deception. Identity theft. False declarations... that sort of thing. By the time he got out of jail we’d moved in with Tony.”

  Fraud, identity theft and false declarations all sounded pretty tame to me. The time my dad got six months was because of aggravated assault. But that’s something I don’t talk about either. So again I didn’t say anything.

  There was a bit more silence, and then we were cycling between two sheets of water. Where the water touched the land there was a ragged line of dirty salt. Birds with long legs were wading along the shore. “It’s a weird landscape,” I said to Billy. “It’s...you know...harsh, but interesting.”

  “Salt evaporation pans,” Billy said. “They let the sea water in, and then the sun dries it up. Then they scrape up the salt with bulldozers.”

  I pointed at the basketball ring. “And you reckon Tony can fix that?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Billy said. “He could fix it. But I reckon it would be better if he made a completely new one. Two new ones—we want one down the other end of the court as well.”

  “Why?” I said. “The other one’s perfectly OK.”