1988

by Andrew McGahan

  It was a cold feeling. What was I doing there with him? I wandered back across the verandah, sat down on the stairs. I stared at my feet. Three months to go, three months. I needed a novel.

  Nothing came. My brain was rotting. Too long without use. I hadn’t showered in days, or shaved. Or changed my clothes—hand-washing them in the sink wasn’t worth the bother. Cape Don didn’t demand personal hygiene. It didn’t demand anything.

  I looked up. Vince was walking across the compound. It was close to four p.m., time to switch over the generators. He looked half asleep, flapping along in his thongs, gut hanging over his shorts. He stared at the ground. Maybe he’d just woken up. Cape Don didn’t make many demands on his time either.

  Vince entered the shed. The generator died. I sat in the warm, still silence. Wayne came out of his studio.

  ‘Fuck art,’ he said.

  He headed for his bedroom, shut the door. I heard him flop onto his bed.

  All of us, we were sliding into decline.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Vince received some news from his ex-wife. Their son was on school holidays and wanted to visit the lighthouse. He was ten years old. I didn’t know how things stood between Vince and his ex-wife, or what the custody arrangement was, but it was clear Vince hadn’t seen his son for some time. Certainly not since being posted to Cape Don.

  The news had an effect. Vince eased up on the drinking. His eyes lost some of their red glaze. He cleaned out his house. Pieces of his uniform began reappearing. More importantly, he put in another order for parts for the outboard motor. This time the order was with a private firm at his own expense, not through the Commission. He wanted the stuff fast. He planned, he said, to take his son fishing.

  The boy arrived on the Friday supply plane. I drove out with Vince. He was looking as good as he ever would, shaved and clean and fully dressed.

  ‘Looking forward to seeing him?’ I asked.

  ‘What d’you think? It’s probably the only chance I’ll get all year.’

  But he sounded nervous. I thought about that. The kid might have expectations. His father was a national park ranger, in command of his own station on the remote and wild northern coast. It sounded impressive, the job of a man who was steadfast and capable. Vince had a lot to live up to.

  So did Cape Don. I’d long ceased to think of the place as a functioning ranger station, or as anything at all. It existed, and for some reason we were all stuck there. That was it.

  We hit the strip, climbed out. The boy was waiting by the plane. He was sandy-haired and freckle-faced. There was even a family resemblance. He was a young Vince, before the years and the sun and the alcohol had done their work. Vince blushed and grinned and put out his hand.

  ‘G’day Danny.’

  ‘G’day Dad.’

  They both seemed embarrassed. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been there. What did I know about divorce and separation and absent fathers. They deserved some privacy.

  ‘Danny, this is Gordon. He runs the weather station.’

  ‘G’day Danny.’

  ‘Hi.’

  I began loading the grocery boxes. There was also a special package—the outboard motor parts. Vince was chatting with the pilot, all false joviality. Danny stacked his own gear into the Toyota. He was looking around, up and down the strip. I tried to remember my first impressions of the place. Even in the middle of the wet season it had seemed drab and dusty. Now, well into the dry, it really was drab and dusty. What was Vince going to do with him for a whole week?

  I sat in the back for the drive home, let Danny up front. Vince asked him about the flight over, about the rest of the family, about school. Danny gave ten-year old answers. Alright. Okay. Nothing much. We drove up the hill and there it was. Cape Don. Three houses. Cement lighthouse. Sheds.

  ‘You keen to do some fishing Danny?’

  ‘Sure Dad.’

  Even with the new parts it was another three days before Vince got the outboard going. In the meantime he and Danny drove around the place in the Toyota—I didn’t know to where, or for what. Maybe Vince had been saving up some work for himself, to impress. They also went on a bushwalk. They loaded up with water and sandwiches and headed off into the scrub. I watched them go. Bushwalking. It was something I hadn’t really considered, not since we’d first arrived.

  According to the maps there was nothing to see out there anyway, not in the country around Cape Don. No gorges or caves or waterfalls. No Aboriginal paintings, no spectacular views, no landmarks of any kind. Just endless scrub, swamp and mangrove. Even the Cobourg people themselves didn’t bother with it much. They stuck to the coast, or the better land eastwards. But at least Vince and Danny didn’t get lost. Vince was a ranger, after all.

  And on the fourth day of Danny’s visit work was finally completed on the outboard motor. Vince attached it to the dinghy, gave it a test-run in the bay. Then, that afternoon, he and Danny loaded up and went fishing. Deep sea, Vince said, out on the reefs.

  I saw them off, went back to my own life.

  They weren’t back by five. I changed over the generators seeing Vince wasn’t there to do it. Evening fell. Wayne and I ate dinner and played Scrabble. It was over seventy wins to one now, in my favour. I was getting two seven-letter words per game, and scores averaging anywhere between three or four hundred. Wayne seemed to be losing interest. He was still wallowing in the one fifties, two hundreds. After the game I went out and checked the compound for the Toyota. It wasn’t there. It was fully dark and Vince and Danny were still out fishing?

  It seemed unlikely. They were probably pulling the boat up on the sand at that very moment, then they’d be driving home. Or maybe they were looking at stars, or examining the night’s bush life. There were lots of things a ranger could do at night. It was nothing to worry about. I went back inside and read for an hour, came out again. Still no Toyota.

  It seemed strange. I hadn’t noticed Vince and Danny packing any torches or lamps. I went back inside again. Then it was getting towards nine. There was still no sign of them. The bay was only a five-minute walk away. I wondered if I should go down and check.

  I waited until ten. I went into Wayne’s studio, asked him what he thought.

  ‘They’ll be alright,’ said Wayne, ‘Vince is a master bushman isn’t he?’

  ‘They’re at sea, not on land.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘I thought I might walk down to the bay, have a look.’

  ‘Don’t forget the torch.’

  ‘You wanna come?’

  ‘I’ve been out there once at night. Never again.’

  I took the torch and went outside. I stood in the compound for a moment. Then I went over to Russel and Eve’s house. It was the first time I’d ever called on them directly, the first time I’d even looked through their front door. There was a long, empty hall. And silence. The lights were all on, the ceiling fans spun. I knocked on the screen door. ‘Russel? Eve?’

  After a moment, Eve came out of one of the doors. She looked rumpled and sleepy and bothered. I hadn’t even seen her for a few weeks, since their fight. Sexual fantasies aside.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said.

  ‘Is Russel there?’

  ‘He’s asleep.’

  ‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘Could you wake him up?’

  She rolled her eyes, went back into the room. Russel came out, yawning, already rolling a cigarette.

  ‘Yeah?’

  I explained about Vince and Danny. I asked him if they’d told him they’d be late.

  He shrugged. ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Should we go down and have a look?’

  ‘You’ll be right alone, eh?’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  I was on my own. I began walking down the hill, waving the torch in front of me. It was ridiculous. No one else was worried. I was getting paranoid, too much time on my hands. They’d probably run me down on their way home. Laugh at me. There’d be some obvious explanation.

 
I stomped along the track. On either side was the deep, still, blackness of the bush. Sounds came out of it. Knocks. Thumps. A scattering of leaves. Animal sounds. Some of them sounded large. I thought about Wayne, running back from the bogged Toyota. At least I had a torch. I knew there was nothing out there likely to cause me harm, but fear was an old and spiritual thing. Reason had nothing to do with it.

  I came to the turn for the bay, headed down it. The bush faded away to mangroves. Now, indeed, there were reasons to be wary. I was alone at night in the mangroves, in crocodile territory. It was everything I’d been warned against. People got eaten this way. I flicked the torch all around, saw nothing but branches and mud. I came to the beach. The Toyota was there. That was all. No boat, no Vince or Danny. I sat on the hood. I played the torch out into the bay. It was low tide. Mud and puddles. Nothing.

  I sat there. The sky was overcast and it was very dark. A faint, damp breeze drifted in from the sea. It felt cool. Almost cold. The mangroves waited behind me. Silent.

  I didn’t like it. I walked back to the compound and knocked again on Russel’s door. He came out.

  ‘They’re not there. The boat’s not there.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What should we do?’

  He thought. ‘Weather’s alright. Might just be on a beach somewhere. Campin’ out.’

  ‘They would’ve told us.’

  ‘Maybe. Better wait till mornin.’

  He wandered back down his hall. I stood there. We weren’t going to do anything. I walked back to the house. Wayne was still in his studio. I explained the situation to him.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘They’ve overturned. They’ve been eaten by sharks.’

  ‘Russel doesn’t think so.’

  ‘How does he know?’

  ‘He doesn’t.’

  Wayne gave up his painting. We had a few drinks out on the verandah, pondering the mysteries of the sea. I stayed awake, waiting for my 3 a.m. observation.

  They didn’t come back.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Next morning was cool and grey. Russel came over to the house, got me, and together we walked down to the bay. Birds called. Wallabies bounded out of our way. Russel ambled along, smoking. If he was worried about Vince and Danny, he didn’t show it. Even so, I didn’t expect that we’d find them. They were lost. Gone. Floating now out somewhere in the Arafura Sea, fish nibbling at their feet.

  We got to the beach. The Toyota was still there. The tide was up. Small waves tumbled and splashed on the beach. And floating a hundred yards or so out on the bay, bobbing up and down, was the boat. Vince and Danny were in it, bent over the sides, paddling with their hands. They saw us. Stopped.

  ‘What’ya doin’?’ Russel called across.

  Vince looked tired and angry. ‘Out of fucking petrol.’

  Russel laughed. He nodded towards the fuel drums on the beach. ‘Swim in. Plenty of petrol here.’

  ‘No fucking way.’ Vince pointed along the beach. In the mud leading into the mangroves there were tracks. Two sets of them, each one a central furrow with claw prints on either side. Russel considered them.

  ‘Couple of big fellas eh?’

  Vince nodded grimly. ‘They’re bloody everywhere down here.’

  Crocodiles. I’d been there last night, right there, in the dark, and so had two crocodiles. My life had been in danger. Maybe it still was. The tracks went from the water up into the mangroves, but there were none going down again. I backed away a little.

  Russel shook his head, smiled. He went to the petrol drum and filled a small can. Then he peeled off his shirt and waded into the sea. No crocs emerged from the mangroves. When the water was deep enough, Russel dived in, surfaced, flicked the water out of his hair. He whooped. It was a morning dip. He was enjoying it. Vince stood in the bow, staring at him. Danny watched too, with wide, sleepy eyes.

  I kept an eye on the crocodile tracks. I supposed the chance of an attack was, in reality, fairly slight. I supposed that Vince probably knew that too. Still, no parent wanted to risk getting eaten in front of their own child. I could understand why Vince was staying in the boat.

  Russel swam the last fifty yards, reached them. Vince helped him on board. They refuelled, played around with the engine a little, finally got it started. They motored in, Vince standing stiffly at the wheel.

  ‘As for you,’ he said to me, once they were all ashore, ‘What’re you, deaf?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Russel says it was you down here with the torch last night. Danny and I were over the other side of the bay, yelling our guts out. Didn’t you hear?’

  ‘No.’ I was, in fact, partially deaf in one ear, but Vince didn’t seem in the mood to hear that. ‘What, were you just floating around over there?’

  Russel laughed. ‘They weren’t floatin’.’

  Vince glowered. ‘We were stuck in the mud. I ran aground.’

  He got the story out. It was a sad one. The evening before he and Danny had kept fishing until around sunset, then headed in. The problem was the tide was going out. The tides were sizeable around Cobourg, over three metres, and the bay was shallow. Vince wasn’t too sure of his way. They’d run aground and stuck fast.

  This had happened about half a mile across the bay, near the mouth. They were forced to spend the night in the middle of a mudflat. The boat was within walking distance of the shore, but they’d heard crocs slopping around in the mud. They’d stayed on board. It wasn’t much fun. They had no torches and no food. And some of the crocodiles sounded close.

  ‘And you couldn’t hear us, so we were stuck there.’

  ‘What was I supposed to do even if I had?’

  ‘Well . . . shit, at least you would’ve known where we were.’

  ‘And how did you run out of petrol?’

  ‘That. That was the fucking outboard’s fault. The tide came in again about two a.m., but when we went to start the engine there was no petrol in it. There must be a leak somewhere. God knows, I filled the fucking thing up before we left.’

  So all they’d been able to do was ride the tide and wait for dawn. When it was light enough to see the beach, they’d started paddling towards it. It was very, very slow. Swimming would’ve been easier, but then there were the crocodiles.

  Russel thought it was all hilarious. I felt for Vince though. It wasn’t the fishing trip he’d promised Danny. Getting caught by tides, sitting in the mud, bobbing about without an engine, none of it was good. None of it was professional. It sounded like something Wayne or I might’ve done. And then to have Russel just swim out like that, not giving a shit about the crocodiles . . . mockery was the last thing Vince needed.

  He went back to examining the outboard motor. He couldn’t find the leak. Russel helped him disconnect the whole thing, load it in the Toyota. Danny had already climbed in the back seat, bored and sleepy and waiting.

  ‘So did you catch any fish?’ I asked him.

  He didn’t look at me. ‘No.’

  It was a stony drive home. We unloaded outside the workshed, carried the engine in.

  ‘I’m going to bed, Dad,’ Danny said.

  ‘Okay.’ Vince mustered a grin. ‘You’d need it after last night. But at least you’ve got something you can tell your mates about, back at school, hey.’

  ‘Yeah. I guess so.’ Danny shuffled off.

  Vince watched him go, his face getting hard. ‘Sure. He can tell ‘em how his father, a fucking park ranger, can’t even take him on a fishing trip without stuffing it up.’

  ‘Kids don’t think like that,’ I said.

  ‘How would you know?’

  We stood there.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘What’ll you do with the outboard now?’

  ‘Junk the piece of shit.’

  I wandered home. The drama was over. There was no drama. Only a mild incompetence. Even so, Vince was being too hard on himself. He didn’t know the waters around Cape Don yet, the tides. How could he? He was a desert man. We all knew that.
It was the Commission’s fault. They were the ones who’d put him in charge of a maritime park, in charge of an ocean. No training. No experience. Vince could just explain all that to Danny, if he thought it mattered so much. And Danny would understand.

  I got to my room, lay on the bed, thought about sleep. After a while I heard a loud banging from the workshed. Swearing. It was Vince. He was still angry, still taking it out on himself. I remembered, then, that it was Danny’s once a year visit to an absentee father. And that if there was one thing Vince wouldn’t want to give him, it was more excuses.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Danny departed on the next supply plane. Once he was gone Vince retreated into his house, to his desk and his stool. The ranger in him was through. He’d made his attempt at parenting. It was back to the alcohol and the classics. For the following week we heard the composers blasting till three, four each morning. We watched the empty bottles and cartons pile up outside his back door. At times I’d see him in the afternoon on his way to change the generators. Wild-haired and red-eyed, stumbling along in the dust.

  There was nothing we could do for him. We were in our own limbo, stagnating under the dry season’s sun. Wayne wasn’t painting much, I wasn’t writing at all. I slept and read and smoked. The smoking was my only form of progress. I’d mastered over ten cigarettes a day, and I was enjoying them a little now. I’d acquired some style. My only worry was the asthma. I kept waiting for the attack, the deathgrip, but it never came.

  Instead I developed a boil. It was on the back of my knee. I’d never had a boil before. At first I had no idea what it was. It grew over several days, until the knee became stiff and painful. I waited for the head to develop. Did you pop boils? Lance them? And what caused them anyway? Poor diet? Lack of fresh fruit and vegetables? Certainly our diet was monotonous. Like the rest of our lives.

  Even Friday nights weren’t what they had been. All the alcohol and marijuana couldn’t hide the fact that Wayne and I were growing increasingly sick of each other. We argued over minor things. Books. Music. Movies. The fact that Wayne was missing more and more observations. The fact that Wayne didn’t wash-up when it was his turn. The fact that I did all the accounting and banking, organised the payments to the Nightcliff supermarket, dealt with Vince or Russel when necessary, while Wayne did nothing.