The River Baptists

by Belinda Castles

  She sat down to work at the dining table. Her study was now the baby’s room. She had it all ready. If she kept working she could just ignore Christmas until it was over. Maybe she could churn out a chapter or two tonight and take the next few days off, get some rest, buy some things for the baby in the sales. After staring at the screen for ten minutes while her blood rushed in her ears, she tried to focus on the story, such as it was. She was fed basic plot-lines, which she liked; it freed her from the burden of trying to make things credible. Still, a reality survival show that turned into an on-camera orgy? Please. She decided she’d leave it for now, see if she could get some old Survivor series on tape. That’s it, she thought. Can’t work. Must research first.

  She closed down the file and looked out at the river. It was quiet out there now and black, moonless. She kept the blinds up and the lights off, the only light the glow from the laptop, so she could see out but not be seen. Good house for that, set well back from the jetty, behind the wide low branches of the jacaranda. She heard the low insect noise of a tinny. Emerging from the lights of the island was a single beam growing steadily clearer and larger. It seemed after a moment as though it was headed right for her jetty. James, she couldn’t help thinking. Then the light turned south towards the other end of the strip. She shook her head. She couldn’t even imagine his face; he was just a body to want, to keep her warm, to carry her baby when it grew bigger. He wasn’t hers, never had been. She didn’t even like him. She wondered if Billie really did.

  She took the coffee pot and her mug out to the kitchen to do the dishes. Through the tiny window above the sink she could see nothing at first. Then as she plunged coffee mugs and the small plates she used for her endless snacks of toast, fruit, nuts, in the hot soapy water she could make out the scrub on the bank moving in a slight breeze. She thought about the River Baptists. She’d never seen people so blissful, except perhaps in nightclubs when their pills were coming on. It was strange to her, and she couldn’t get it out of her head. She had no experience of such things. She wandered back out to the living room to check for stray plates and cups. She thought she heard a noise, had to stand still to be sure, to stop the creaking of the boards beneath her feet. There it was—a faint tapping at the other end of the house. A twig on glass? A blind next to an open window? Was it the baby’s room? She didn’t want to go, but it was her job now, to check noises, to secure her home, to always be ready for what was required of her. No Dad, no James. No Billie.

  The crib was made up with crisp cotton sheets. Rose held her breath, glanced only briefly at it, not wanting to jinx anything by hoping too hard. In a world of sudden, random catastrophe: be safe.

  The tree encroached across the verandah at this end of the house. She should cut it before it broke a window in a storm. But there was so little breeze tonight. She couldn’t see far beyond the window in the dull glow of the lamp on the drawers, but she could see enough to know it was not the tree tapping the window. And now she was in here, she knew it was not in this room. She stood still, forced herself to look out the window, beyond the verandah. Nothing, the lights of the island, a houseboat, the blinking green marker.

  Now it was at the other end of the house. She padded slowly along the dark corridor towards the living room. At the corner she stopped, peered around the wall at the glass sliding doors that ran all the way along the front of the room. She stood there for a full minute in the dark. Water buffeting the boat gently against the jetty. A train crossing the bridge. She waited, heart thudding, for its noise to disappear inside the tunnel. Walked softly across the room and checked the doors were locked. Though how you could protect yourself with all this glass, she didn’t know.

  There it was at the kitchen window. A little scratch and then two light taps. She span around sharply. Ran into the little alcove. Leaned over the bench and pressed her nose to the glass. Ferns, the rotting shed. Then two big round eyes peering from the trunk of the angophora. A possum. She breathed again, but slowly picked up the bread knife from the bench.

  There was a loud rap at the door. ‘Bloody hell!’ she gasped and turned back to face the front of the house. She could make out Danny—scruffy blue T-shirt, hair beginning to curl in spite of his haircut—from the computer’s light. She was at the door in four long strides.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she snapped as she slid back the door.

  He stepped backwards towards the far edge of the verandah, eyes on the knife.

  She looked at him for a second, her heart pounding. ‘Were you tapping on the windows?’

  ‘No. Except for just then, when I knocked. What’s with the weapon?’

  She stared at the knife in her hand. ‘Oh God, I don’t know.’ She stood back to let him in. He hesitated. ‘Come in. Quickly.’ She locked the door behind him.

  ‘Is there someone outside? Do you want me to have a look around?’

  She put the knife on the dining table. ‘I don’t know. Yes. Have a look. It feels like someone’s taking the piss. There’s just this tapping.’

  They stood silently for a moment in the dark, listening. He was carrying a boat torch, a bright yellow brick. He turned it on. ‘Lock the door behind me. I’ll have a quick look.’

  While he was gone she closed down the computer and turned on the reading lamp beside the sofa. His torch flashed through the windows like a police helicopter as he moved around the house. It swept across the verandah, over the black water beyond the path.

  She met him at the front door. ‘Can’t see anything. He must have gone when I came.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Whoever it was. Do you want me to stick around for a while? Sit out on the deck or something?’ He glanced in the direction of the shed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Just looking around.’

  ‘It’s not him.’ Danny said nothing. ‘Look, it’s not him. I know he smokes a bit, but he’s OK, really. Anyway, his boat isn’t here. Couldn’t speak for that one, though,’ she said quietly. Her eyes flicked in the direction of Tom’s place.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ Danny said. ‘He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘Right. Sorry I shouted at you. Freaking out over nothing. You don’t need to stay.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  She nodded. ‘Thanks,’ she said again, and began to close the door.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said, and walked slowly down her steps to the jetty, where his dory was tied. She watched him untie and row into the night, his torch resting on the passenger bench. He merged into the blackness, becoming a faint dot of light, jerking faintly with each stroke as he rowed towards the island.

  Later, in bed, wide awake with coffee and adrenalin and fantasies of Tom falling off his jetty pissed, she finally got around to asking herself why Danny had come. She hadn’t given him a chance to tell her what it was. She couldn’t imagine. She picked up her book, a guide to natural childbirth techniques that a midwife at the hospital had recommended, read twenty pages, took in nothing, and fell asleep with it resting on her belly.

  Tom saw it all, the waster from his shed hiding his boat a few jetties along, then creeping around her place with a stick, water taxi bloke waving his flashlight around like it was something else. Didn’t take ’em long to come sniffing. He’d been sitting on the barge with his mug and flask. He loved a still, dark night. What was that Kane up to? Funny way to woo a bird, but what would he know?

  At the bottom of the bottle, he sat with his empty mug lolling, wondering whether he could be bothered to get up to go to bed or if he’d just rest his head on Dog here and watch the stars for a while. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d woken up damp at dawn on the river, but Dog had developed some shocking digestive troubles of late—too much fish, that was the trouble. Even Tom had standards.

  Still, next thing he knew, a baby’s sharp wail woke him. He felt a lurch in his stomach, like it was his own baby, like there was something wrong. Had he imagined the sound? Like whe
n Molly had that year of on and off sickness, and they’d had to watch her at all hours because of the fevers. Edie couldn’t do it all. Sometimes she was so exhausted with worry she slept straight through. Perhaps that was when she’d gone odd, Molly. He’d never known. Never would now.

  It took him a moment to realise it wasn’t his baby, that he didn’t have one, that he’d fallen asleep on his barge on the river. The baby filled its lungs again and again and cried wildly for help. Where was its bloody mother? He sat up, sweating in the cool night. Beneath him ran the deep unknown waters where Molly had drowned. Had Alf been right? If he’d done something, said he’d do something even, would that have stopped her?

  But what could he have done? he asked himself for the millionth time. Edie was the boss of anything to do with that child, especially when it became clear she was touched. Soon as they’d known, nothing he said counted. Edie cosseted and spoiled and lavished. And he took himself off to the pub of an evening with the boys.

  He’d told Alf now, made his feelings clear on the subject. Maybe things’d be quiet again. The odd fishing trip. Bit of foraging for scrap. Keep him in whiskey money till it killed him, or the river got him. Wouldn’t complain about either. Better than the other, at any rate.

  ‘Shut that bloody child up, would you?’ he bellowed at the row of houses in the dawn. There was sudden silence. A brief pause before the baby began again. ‘Fuck me drunk,’ he muttered. He nudged Dog forcefully with his toe and they shambled inside. He slammed the bedroom window shut and picked up a half-empty longneck from the floor beside his bed. Dog began to howl. He took a long swig from the bottle, shoved a pillow over his head and immediately began to snore.

  The row home always sent the blood rushing around, filling Danny’s brain with thoughts and plans. He usually used the shot of energy to propel him up the hill, mind ablaze with dreams of land or memories of a girl. As his thighs pumped him up the hill tonight, though, through the lush corridor of eucalypts, oleanders and palms, thoughts tussled in his head. It’s Kane, trying to stir her up. I should have told her; that’s what I was there for. Rob’s right. We can deal with him. But he could feel their troubles tangling, him and this girl; he needed to get himself free— stay well clear of that fool in her shed. Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t told her. If it had been Kane, she’d find out for herself what a loser he was, soon enough.

  He was up the hill and on the rocky track up to his shed before he knew it. A lone gum towered above him, grey in the night, bone-white by day. He only wanted one thing, and it depended on him keeping his nose out of other people’s worries. He needed goodwill, a quiet life, no trouble. The bloke wouldn’t last. He’d be gone soon, and life could go on as before, without his involvement. Like his dad used to say: Don’t stick your neck out, son. You’ll get your head cut off.

  He climbed up into his loft bed, fully clothed, watched the stars through the trees beyond the window. Let his breathing slow. She’s alone in the world. And the baby— no dad. Another one. Maybe they didn’t need fathers. Maybe you were just good for helping to make them in the first place, and you should just get out of the way after that, for all the good you did. Eventually, he began to slip beneath his life, the stars blurring, into a place where he dreamed of rowing, endlessly on a flat ocean, hopeful always of a glimpse of a gentle green land.

  A boat passing close to her window woke Rose from a dream. She’d written about sex of one type or another for years, with barely a second thought once she’d submitted it. Tonight, though, her dreams were filled with her own subjection and humiliation at the hands of endless leering men. She couldn’t find it in her to fight, couldn’t find it in her to want to. She had woken from a dream in which Kane stood above her, at the front of a queue of them, saying, ‘You asked for this, you hot little bitch.’ She sat up in bed. I like Kane, she thought. She felt shamed somehow, embarrassed at having dreamed this about him, for allowing Danny’s suspicions to infiltrate her sleeping self, and lay awake until dawn while her baby rolled and kicked inside her.

  Kane sat on the branch of a gum up on the steep incline behind his shed. He watched Danny wave the torch around, watched him row home, saw her lights go out. You’re awake though, aren’t you. I can feel it, he thought. His book said you had to make your own opportunities, and here he was. The trouble with Rose, with all these girls now, was that they thought they could do everything on their own. So you had to be clever, show them they needed you without ever saying anything.

  Hadn’t counted on Dan the Man stepping in every time she broke a fingernail, but he’d sorted that, too. He was learning from the past, creating his own future. Last week, at the marina, he’d seen a red-nosed, watery-eyed old bloke stepping out of a Fast Freeze truck. He looked just like Danny, when you realised who he was, only kicked in the teeth by life for an extra thirty years. He knew, the second he saw him, what he should do.

  The old man hadn’t wanted to believe him at first, he could tell. His face had turned red; he’d grabbed the front of Kane’s shirt. Then Kane showed him a picture he’d taken with his phone. It was blurry—Danny had been shooting past in his taxi—but there was no mistaking who it was, the old bloke’s face told him that much. The man left without speaking, hopped up into his truck out the back of the shop and was away.

  Kane swung his legs beneath the branch, listening to the rustlings from the bush, from within the house. He was making things happen. Never got any help from anyone. He didn’t need it. He was changing his life all by himself.

  Chapter 13

  Down at the island shop, Danny drummed his fingers on the formica counter as he waited for his mail. He didn’t like coming here; the daughter of the people who owned the shop was on his list of girls best avoided. Today, though, he wanted a coffee; he’d seen Jesse the night before, and there’d been little sleep to speak of and a late row home—her dad had been due in the morning.

  It was the girl’s mother behind the counter today; she gave him his post—a single letter—with a glare thrown in for good measure.

  ‘Something eating you, Joan?’

  ‘There’s no need to rap your knuckles on the counter. I was being as quick as I could.’

  He stared at her for a moment. Christ, he thought. I just want to kill everyone. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ he said and threw his hands in the air. She was already moving on to the next customer with a sour look on her face.

  He sat at one of the tables out on the waterfront, took a sip of his coffee and studied the envelope. It was his brother’s handwriting—barely legible—the postmark was Broken Hill. That was the idea. Get away, way away. He tried to imagine the orange dirt, a country town, but there was too much water around him. Inside the envelope was a flimsy Christmas card with a note scrawled in tiny handwriting. ‘Someone’s dropped you in it with Dad. He’s got the shits bad. Giving Mum a hard time. Watch yourself. Trev.’

  He read the message again a few times before crumpling the card up and throwing it in a nearby bin. He stood from the table. I’m going to kill that guy, he thought. He saw he’d left the envelope on the table and picked it up to trash that, too, but it was stiff—there was still something inside. He pulled it out: a photo of a little girl. It looked like her birthday. She was grinning from ear to ear and wearing ribbons in her hair. Her skin and hair were different shades of brown. Her eyes were blue, like his. So big now. This must be her eighth. He sat down again. He turned the photo over, though he knew what he would see. There was a word on the back: Abby.

  He vaguely noticed a little crowd emerging from the boatshed, having just come off the ferry. Among them, moving slowly, was Rose. She saw him, hesitated for a moment and then began to walk towards him, holding her back with one hand, a bottle of water with the other.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, before sitting down opposite him.

  He stared at her.

  She was looking at the photo, still in his hand. He put it in his pocket. ‘I didn’t ask you what you wanted, when you came round
.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you came round the other night.’

  ‘Oh.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Run out of sugar?’

  He sighed. ‘That bloke Kane, he’s bad news.’

  ‘I told you, it wasn’t him. He’s all right.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I did my best. It’s your life.’

  She studied him for a moment, getting to her feet awkwardly. ‘I know it is.’ He looked out past her to the blinding sheen of the river, shook his head. She paused for a moment, seemed to think better of saying anything and extricated herself from the bench. He watched her walk away up the hill, more purposefully than she’d walked towards him but still far more slowly than anyone around her. She was huge: tall, slow, stately. He finished his coffee. He’d done it now. He could stop bothering himself.

  Up the river a pleasure cruiser was taking the oldies out on a coffee cruise. He watched it pass beneath the rail bridge, and then a few minutes later the highway bridge, then the freeway bridge, bound for the settlements further inland. That bit of land up there, it had to be the answer for him. He had some savings now. If he could talk that woman who owned it down a bit, make some arrangement about paying it off, he could go, right now. Do a deal with Alf about delaying payment for the boat. He’d make it an absolute rule never to tell anyone where he lived, and that’d be the end of it. Then his dad could have the shits all he liked. He’d go over to Alf’s now, see if any extra jobs needed doing. Sometimes when the taxi was quiet he’d pick up some parts or clean out his shed, up along the Gut, alongside the village. A terrible bloody job—you smelled of grease and tackle for days—but money was money. And his own place, where no one knew how to find him. He’d clean out a hundred dirty boatsheds for that.