The Dragon Raft

by Rory Barnes

  “What’s for tea?” Tony said.

  “Dunno,” Tessa said. “I haven’t thought about tea.”

  “Let’s get a pizza,” Billy said. “What’s your favourite, Wal?”

  “Good idea,” Tessa said. “But they’ll be expecting Wal at home.”

  That was true enough. They’d probably been expecting me at home for a while. Time had been slipping away. But suddenly the idea of going home didn’t appeal.

  “No, there’s no hurry,” I said. “They won’t expect me for a bit.”

  “Well you’d better give them a call,” Tessa said. “Hey, Tone, give Wal your mobile.”

  Tony handed me the phone. We hadn’t had the landline connected yet—so that was impossible. But Dad has a mobile of his own. The thing is, he’s usually out of credit. When that happens, he can answer it, but he can’t ring out. I just hoped he was out of credit now. I took the mobile, punched in Dad’s number and waited. He answered soon enough.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said. “It’s Wal. Look I’m having tea with Billy’s parents. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Come home immediately,” Dad said.

  I pushed Tony’s mobile against my ear, trying to smother the whole phone with my hand. I wanted to keep Dad’s end of the conversation totally private.

  “Yeah,” I said happily. “I knew you’d understand, Dad. Tell, Mum I’m sorry if she’s made too much food.”

  “Now! Walter. You are to come home now!”

  “OK, see you soon, Dad. Bye.” I rang off. My heart was racing, but I felt real good. I turned to Tessa. “Everything’s cool,” I said.

  “Good,” said Billy. “Let’s go eat.”

  * * * * * * *

  We bought the pizza in Salisbury and drove straight back to St Kilda with it in a box, with a coat over it to keep it warm. We didn’t go back to Billy’s place. We drove down to the water’s edge, near where the causeway runs out into Barker Inlet. We sat on a bench and watched the sun go down over the waters of Gulf St Vincent. Nobody said very much, just munched the pizza and licked their fingers. At the back of my mind I knew I was going to face a heavy scene when I got home. But I didn’t let that worry me. I felt happy. To tell the truth I felt happier than I had for a long time. And I decided that, yeah, I reckoned Billy was OK. I didn’t mind calling him my friend.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I got to know St Kilda pretty well. Sometimes I mucked about with Billy, sometimes I mucked around by myself. The village is just a bunch of fibro houses on a sandy spit of land. There is a pub and a community hall and a bait and tackle shop next to the marina. In some ways living in St Kilda is like living on an island. St Kilda isn’t really an island, of course, it’s connected to the mainland by the long straight road. But the salt evaporation pans to the east and the waters of Barker Inlet to the west, make it feel like we are surrounded by water. To the north and south there are mangrove swamps. The mangroves have a strange, muddy, closed-in feel to them. It’s a secret world. There is a board walk in the south mangroves that allows you to wander about without having to wade through the mud. And all through the mangroves are streams with clear pools. You can lie on the boardwalk and watch the little fish and crabs that live in the pools. Herons and egrets and other birds with long legs stalk around in the pools, spearing fish with their beaks.

  St Kilda also has an adventure park with a huge slippery dip that goes bucking and rolling down the side of a small hill. There are flying foxes and an old “wrecked” ship down by the mudflats. On weekends people come from miles around to play in the park and ride on the old fashioned trams that clank along the rails from the Tram Museum. But on weekdays, after school, the place is pretty much deserted, it belongs to the people who actually live in St Kilda.

  There are two causeways that run from the marina out to sea. There’s a boat channel in between them. The causeways are made of rocks and mud that has been dredged out of the channel. The channel has to be dredged every now and then because Barker Inlet is incredibly shallow. Even when a boat has got clear of the causeways it has to keep between a line of steel channel markers with lights on top. When the tide is out there are these huge mudflats on each side of the channel stretching so far out to sea that you can’t really tell where the mud finishes and the sea begins.

  One afternoon, after we’d been living in St Kilda for a few months, I wandered out along one of the causeways, right to the end. I said G’day to a couple of old guys who were fishing in the channel. They said something back in their own language—they looked Chinese to me, but I don’t know, they could have been from anywhere. There’s a rusty old beacon with a light on top at the end of the causeway. I sat with my back to the beacon and looked at the mud. It was low tide and the mudflats glistened in the sun. Like I say, it’s hard to tell where the mud finishes and the real water begins, but that day it was even hard to say where the water finished and the sky began. There was no horizon. The whole world was a strange upside down silver-grey bowl. I sat for a bit feeling happy. I don’t always feel happy, but I did that afternoon.

  As I was walking back down the causeway I noticed that the tide had washed in an empty forty-four gallon oil drum. It must have been floating around in the sea for a while: it was covered with seaweed and little shells. The drum was lying in the mud close to where I stood. I took off my shoes, hitched up my jeans and waded out to it. I rolled the drum back across the mud and down the causeway to home. Most of the seaweed and shells got rubbed off by the rolling. So the drum was looking a bit cleaner when I finally trundled it into our drive. Mum appeared in the front door.

  “What on earth is that, Wal?” she said.

  “It’s an oil drum,” I said.

  “What do you want a dirty old drum for?”

  “I reckon it might be useful,” I said.

  “It’s no use at all,” Mum said. But I didn’t reply. I wasn’t ready to say why I thought the drum would be useful. “Just get rid of it before your father comes home,” Mum said, looking anxious. “He’ll have a fit. It’s filthy. So are you.”

  I didn’t get rid of it. I rolled it round to Billy’s house. Billy and I found a place for it amongst Tony’s stuff. It fitted in real well, it looked like it had always been there. Then we took Jumper for a walk. We ended up on top of the little hill in the adventure playground. The giant slippery dip goes down the side of the hill. Jumper wanted to go down the slippery dip even more than Billy and I did. It’s his favourite pastime but he won’t go down without a human companion. He jumped up and down, barking.

  “Wait up, Jumper,” Billy said. “We’ll go down in a minute.”

  Billy and I like to hang around at the top of the little hill; you get a real good view. You can see past Torrens Island and Outer Harbour to Gulf St Vincent.

  “Say you sailed down the Gulf,” I said. “And went round to the other side of Kangaroo Island, then there’d be nothing between you and the ice.”

  “What ice?” Billy said.

  “Antarctica,” I said. “You know, icebergs, penguins. The South Pole.”

  “It’s melting,” Billy said. “Global warming.”

  “It would be nice to see it before it melts,” I said.

  “Sure, sure,” Billy said. “We’ll get some rich guy to lend us his yacht. We’ll zip down to Antarctica next weekend.”

  “I reckon it’s about four thousand kilometres,” I said.

  “Yikes,” Billy said. “In that case, we’d better wait for a long weekend.”

  “It would be nice though....”

  “You’re always dreaming of escape, aren’t you, Wal?”

  “What do you mean, escape?” I said. “Escape from what?”

  “You tell me,” Billy said.

  But I didn’t want to tell Billy—although I reckoned he could guess anyway. It was true that I spent hours and hours dreaming that I’d escaped from my parents. But, I told myself, that’s got nothing to do with anybody else. I picked up Jumper and said, “Right oh, Jump mate. We�
�re off.”

  I went hurtling down the slippery dip, over the bumps and dips, with my arms round Jumper who barked like a mad thing. At the bottom, where the slippery dip flattens out, I got spun round so that we were going sideways when we hit the sand. Jumper and I rolled in the sand and then we both stood and watched Billy come sliding down: a wild, little red haired guy shouting at the top of his voice. I wondered how long we would know each other, Billy and I. I wondered how long it would be before my parents shifted again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I began drawing plans of rafts. I drew them when I was meant to be doing my homework. I drew them at school when no one was watching. The empty drum I’d found on the mudflat was a start, but I reckoned I’d need about eight drums altogether. In my plans I had two rows of four drums in a wooden frame. They could be tied down with rope or wire. In some of the plans I added a mast, a square sail, a rudder and a sort of cabin. In my mind I could see my raft riding the waves, nosing among the pack ice, surging through a break in a coral reef. She floated quietly in the clear green waters of a tropical lagoon.

  “So where’s the keel?” Billy asked suddenly, leaning on my shoulder during a maths lesson.

  “She doesn’t need a keel,” I said.

  “You can’t sail side-on to the wind without a keel,” he said.

  “Are you two discussing fractions?” Mr. Groves asked from up the front.

  “Yeah, no worries, Mr. Groves,” Billy said. “I’m explaining denominators to Wal.”

  “Just make sure you are,” Mr. Groves said.

  Billy was right, of course. My raft did need a keel, but I didn’t want anybody else designing her. She was mine, she existed in my imagination. When she nosed into tropical lagoons there was only me on the deck, shading my eyes against the glare. I was barefoot, the ends of my jeans were frayed and there was a ragged straw hat on my head.

  “Let’s build it,” Billy said suddenly as we were cycling home.

  “Build what?” I said, although I knew what he was talking about.

  “Your raft. With a bit of help from Tony we can build it.”

  “Her,” I said, “All boats are her.”

  “Well, let’s build her,” Billy said. “We could mosey around the mangroves. Go over to Torrens Island and look for dolphins in the Port River.”

  “I was thinking of pack ice,” I said, “or coral lagoons. The Whitsunday Islands.”

  “Yeah, right, sure,” Billy said, rolling his eyes and looking at the sky. “We’ll sail her right round the world non-stop. But we ought to go on a few shake-down cruises first, check out the mangroves, see how it—sorry, she—handles. We can build her in my back yard. We’ll just have to shift a bit of Tony’s stuff to make room. Tony won’t mind.”

  “Look, she’s mine,” I said.

  “Yeah, she’s yours,” Billy said. “But she’s only in your head. We’re talking fantasy here, Wal: drawings on scraps of paper, stuff you dream about up the back of the class. Cut me in on the deal and she’ll become real. The pair of us can make her. We’ll get the drums, all eight of them. You’ve already got one. We’ll scrounge the timber, launch the tub and sail in her.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “There’s nothing to think about,” Billy said. “You want to build her, and so do I. Shake on the deal.” Billy offered me his hand across the space between our two bikes. It would have been a bit mean not to have shaken the guy’s hand. So I did. Our bikes wobbled a bit.

  “I’m just shaking your hand because you’re my mate,” I said. “I’ll think about the raft.”

  “Yeah, do that, Wal. Have a real good think.”

  * * * * * * *

  When I got home Dad was there, sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. He was meant to be at work. I felt that awful sinking feeling. All the muscles in my stomach went tight. I reckoned they’d “let him go”.

  “You’re home early,” I said.

  “Conveyor broke down,” Dad said. “Nothing for us to do.”

  I felt the muscles in my stomach relax. They hadn’t let him go. He’d be back at work as soon as they fixed the conveyor, whatever that was. I went to my room and changed my clothes. The awful sinking feeling had been a bit of a shock. I knew it so well, but I hadn’t felt it for some time. It had been a sort of reminder. I went for a walk. I walked out along the causeway. I walked out to the very end and sat with my back against the beacon and looked at the waters of Gulf St Vincent. As usual they were calm. Barker Inlet is miles from the open sea and the wild waves of the Southern Ocean.

  I thought about the old fly-speckled map on the wall of the bait and tackle shop. Sometimes Billy and I would go in there and buy an ice cream. I’d look at the map. As I’d said to Billy the day I’d found the drum, to get to the Southern Ocean you’d need to get past Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island almost blocks the entrance to Gulf St Vincent, but you could slip round by the Backstairs Passage to the east, or the Investigator Strait to the west. And then you could sail south. Could you sail south! There is nothing to stop you, nothing to get in the way, no land, no islands. There is nothing until you hit the pack ice, until you hit Antarctica. Four thousand kilometres of endless waves marching across a stormy sea. I’d look at the map and I could see those waves, I could hear the moaning of the wind.

  Billy was right, of course. I could never build the raft myself, but with his help and Tony’s help, she’d be real. I’d feel her beneath my bare feet, sailing the seas.

  The next day at school, I said. “OK, let’s shake on it.”

  Billy and I shook hands again. The deal was done. My raft would become a reality.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At school I made friends with Johnno, Carl and Sally. Along with Billy, that made a total of five friends. This was more friends than I’d had for some time. Only me and Billy lived in St Kilda, but sometimes the others would turn up on their bikes at weekends. We hooned around in the adventure playground, played kick to kick on a bit of grass near the gas pipeline, wandered out along the causeway, explored along the edges of the mangroves. It turned out that Johnno and Sally were twins. They don’t look much like each other, you’d never guess they were twins. Sally is skinny and has freckles and brown hair in a pony tail. She’s got bands on her teeth. She laughs a lot. Johnno is a big guy with black hair and three earrings in one ear. He’s more serious than Sally. They get on real well with each other. I’d never come across a brother and sister who did things together, but these two did. Maybe being the same age helps, I dunno.

  One Sunday afternoon all six of us were sitting on the sea wall, dangling our legs, just chilling. It was a calm, hazy sort of day, a do-nothing day, just right for chilling. There were a lot of birds wading about near the shore, squabbling with each other every now and then. About once every five minutes they’d suddenly take off in a flock. They’d fly round in a circle and land exactly where they had started from with a series of little splashes, like somebody had thrown a handful of gravel. We were all happy to leave the action to the birds. No one said very much, it wasn’t a talking sort of day. But then Carl stood up, to get a better view of something.

  “What’s that?” he said, pointing.

  We all looked. About two hundred metres from where we sat something was floating in the water. Some large sea birds were pulling it apart. They were screeching and clawing and pecking. Whatever it was, it was big enough for the birds to land on: a little floating island.

  “I reckon it’s a fish,” Johnno said.

  “Damn big fish,” Sally said.

  “Dead dog, maybe,” I said.

  “Oh, yuk,” Sally said.

  “Things get old and die,” I said. “Including dogs.”

  “It’s a dolphin,” Billy said. “A bottle nose dolphin. You can see its nose.”

  “It’s not big enough for a dolphin,” Carl said. “Dolphins are huge.”

  “It’s a small dolphin.”

  “What do you mean? A small dolp
hin?” Carl said.

  “It’s a young dolphin,” Billy said. “A baby dolphin.”

  “So how come it’s dead?”

  “How am I meant to know?”

  “Maybe it ate too many plastic bags,” Sally said.

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Dolphins don’t eat plastic bags.”

  “There’s all sorts of rubbish floating about in the water,” Sally said. “Lots of it is plastic. Fish eat it. Birds eat it. Dolphins eat it. Fairy penguins eat it. That and toxic chemicals.”

  “You sound like some sort of expert,” I said.

  “Yeah. Did a project at school.”

  We all sat quietly for a few minutes. The seabirds continued pecking at the dolphin, if that’s what it was.

  “We ought to do an autopsy,” Johnno said.

  “Get real.”

  “Oh yuk.”

  “No, I’m serious,” Johnno said. “Someone ought to wade out there and pull it in. Then we could cut it open and see if it has any plastic bags inside. See if what Sally says is true.”

  “What about toxic chemicals,” I said. “You can’t just see them. You have to do tests.”

  “Anyway, we don’t have a knife,” Billy said.

  No one said any more about the dolphin, although we watched the birds for another five minutes. Then we wandered back towards the bait and tackle shop to get ice creams. Then we all strolled over to the boat ramp and watched some guys cranking a boat onto a trailer.

  “Catch much?” Carl said to one of the guys. You can always start a conversation with people who have been out fishing by asking that question.

  “Heaps,” said the guy. “Loads of whiting, a pile of tommies.” Then he laughed and said, “Under size, the lot of them. We had to thrown them all back.”

  “Bummer,” Carl said.

  “Nice out on the water, but,” said the guy and unscrewed the bungs at the back of the boat. Bilge water poured onto the ramp.