Ghost River

by Tony Birch

  Tex lifted the kero lamp from the table, passed it over Ren’s face and smiled at him.

  ‘The bird,’ he said, turning to Cold Can. ‘Is the bird.’

  He moved the lamp across Sonny’s face and then onto Della’s. He paused and examined her closely, then grimaced, as if he didn’t like the face he was looking at. He leaned forward and whispered in Ren’s ear. ‘One question, bird.’ He grinned.

  Ren tugged at his rotting blanket. ‘We don’t have time for this, Tex. You got to get out of here. We all do. Tell him, Cold Can. Please.’

  Cold Can said nothing. He’d go along with whatever Tex wanted, until the end, if that was the way it had to be.

  Tex turned to Sonny. ‘Big Tiny fella? Never come up?’ he asked.

  Neither of the boys knew what had become of Tiny. ‘Don’t know where he is, Tex,’ Sonny answered, shaking his head.

  Tex’s eyes lit up. A little of his old self was in those eyes. ‘Saw a picture when I was sleeping,’ he said. ‘Old Tiny down in the water. Ghost river caring for him.’ He shook a gnarled finger at the boys. ‘True story. He went in the water. And he never come up.’ Tex nudged Cold Can. ‘Never come up. Told you.’

  Sonny shone the torch around the room. The water was rising quickly. ‘We got to go now. And we need you to come with us.’ He had to raise his voice above the torrent of running water. ‘I can carry you out, Tex. Give you a piggyback.’

  The blanket dropped from Tex’s shoulders as he reached for Sonny with both hands. ‘Go and leave old Tex be.’ He pushed Sonny gently on the chest with an open hand. ‘You no river boy any more. I have my business. Can’t be seeing you no more. Leave me be.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that, Tex.’ Ren was almost crying. ‘We want to help. Or you’re gonna die in here.’

  Tex took a long slow breath and raised his voice. ‘You were the best boys. Now be men. Let me be with the river.’

  Tex looked at Della again. Her face glowed in the low light of the lamp. He raised a hand towards her and she stepped back into the darkness.

  There was nothing left the boys could say to persuade Tex to move. The water rose further, extinguishing what was left of the smoking fire. Sonny spotted a stack of old blankets on a shelf. Tex watched on as Sonny placed a dry blanket over his shoulders. He moved across to Cold Can and did the same, then dampened a corner with water and slowly cleaned the grime from Cold Can’s face. He then wiped a corner of the blanket over Tex’s face. The old man smiled up at him and whispered, ‘You is a good boy, a good boy.’

  Ren stepped forward and wiped his own face before saying, ‘I love you, Tex.’

  Tex reached forward, wrapped the boy in the blanket and held Ren’s body to his own. The river was held in that body. Tex rubbed a gritty hand across the back of Ren’s neck and let him go. ‘I know. Loved me.’

  Sonny said a few quiet words to Cold Can that Ren couldn’t hear on account of the noise, which was increasingly louder. Sonny turned to Ren. ‘We have to go now or we’ll be trapped.’

  Ren, and then Della, followed Sonny, wading through water up to their waists. Ren stopped and looked back into the room and saw nothing but darkness. Climbing the stairs, he felt a sense of fear and betrayal in equal measure. He was sure he’d never see Tex again, and that there was nothing he or Sonny could do to avoid what was about to happen. It didn’t stop him feeling like a coward. As he reached the top landing, water gushed over his shoes and down the stairs to the floor below. It would only be minutes before the storeroom went under.

  Escaping the wheelhouse Ren saw that the rain had almost stopped and the wind had picked up. The fresh air filling his lungs tasted sweet. He sat on the bank of the swollen river, exhausted. If the river had taken his body at that moment, he would have been too weak to fight against it. He glanced up at Sonny, seated in the hollow of a tree, looking just as beaten. Della had lifted her soaking dress above her knees, exposing her thighs. She didn’t seem to care that Ren was staring at them.

  The moon broke through the clouds and the light bounced off the foaming caps of rapids that had formed below the falls. The river was about to encircle the wheelhouse. A rifle-cracking sound whistled through the air as an upturned tree, bigger than a house, careered over the falls, snapping branches off as it cartwheeled over the rocks.

  Neither of the boys noticed the shadow cast against the wall of the wheelhouse. Della saw it at the last moment and screamed as her father tore through a hedge of blackberry and charged at her, grabbing her by the throat and slamming her into the dirt.

  It would have been wrong to mistake her cries for fear. Della was consumed with rage. She struggled with her father as he dragged her closer to the broken bank. Instead of fighting him, she gripped hold of his heavy coat with all her strength and refused to release him. Ren stood rooted to the spot and watched as Della crashed into the water, taking her father with her. They went under.

  ‘You see them, Sonny?’ Ren called.

  Sonny jumped from the stump and ran along the bank, shining the torch in the water and following the raging current towards the iron bridge. Ren saw Reverend Beck surface near the middle of the river, his mouth wide open, snapping at the air. The uprooted tree closed in on him and scooped him up in its branches as if catching a fish in a net.

  Sonny turned and headed back along the bank. ‘You see her?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I don’t. But did you see what just happened to the Reverend?’ Ren asked, in disbelief.

  They heard a sound coming from the bank. Somehow Della had managed to drag herself out of the water. She slid up the bank like a giant eel and slowly got to her feet, coughing and spitting out river water. She wiped a hand across her mouth. Her clothes hung from her body like a second skin, her long wet hair hiding her face from view.

  ‘My father?’ she asked.

  Ren pointed downriver. ‘He went that way.’

  If she was upset it didn’t show on her face. She turned to the river and spread her arms. ‘The Lord preserves all who love Him, but each of the wicked He will destroy.’

  ‘Amen,’ Sonny added.

  ‘Where we gonna go now?’ Ren asked Sonny, as the rain started to spit again.

  ‘Only place left is the car graveyard. We can shelter in one of the wrecks.’

  ‘I’m leaving the river,’ Della said.

  ‘For where?’ Ren asked.

  ‘Home.’ She looked across the river. ‘My mother will need me to take care of her. She doesn’t cope alone.’

  ‘What about your father?’ Ren asked. ‘You’ll have to report him missing. They’ll send a boat downriver and try to find him. He’d have a chance of making it to one of the islands.’

  ‘Chance plays no part in our life or death,’ she said, some-what mysteriously. ‘My father’s fate will be decided by Him.’

  Sonny wasn’t interested in Ren’s questions. All he wanted was to see the back of Della.

  ‘Come on, Ren, we have to move.’

  Della turned, hitched up her long dress and began hiking up the bank to the mill.

  ‘Crazy bitch,’ Sonny mutttered to himself.

  The boys dragged themselves to the wreck of the Holden. Ren got into the front seat and Sonny in the back. Each of them shivered with cold. As the inside of the car warmed a little the windows misted over and the outside world vanished.

  ‘You know I never thought I’d seen anyone as loonie as that Reverend,’ Sonny said, ‘the way he preached in that church. Until I saw the look on her face just now. Della killed her own father, pulling him under with that coat and boots on.’

  ‘Maybe he’s survived. Freed himself from the tree.’

  ‘Be a real miracle if he has.’

  ‘I don’t blame her, for what she’s done.’ Ren told Sonny about seeing the red-headed girl being taken across the yard to the stable by Della’s mother. ‘She’s in
on it, her mother.’

  ‘Why would she go home to her then?’ Sonny wondered aloud.

  ‘Dunno. Maybe she’ll kill her too.’ He laughed nervously and rested his head against the car window. Every bone in his body had frozen solid. He’d have no explanation for his mother and Archie in the morning and knew there wasn’t a story he could invent that would get him out of the trouble he would be in. He didn’t want to begin thinking about the punishment he was facing. He could hear Sonny breathing quietly and looked across at his friend in the back seat. Despite what he’d gone through in recent weeks Ren had never seen Sonny looking so peaceful.

  CHAPTER 18

  Sonny shook Ren awake in the morning. He sat up, rubbed his hands over his face and turned to the back seat. Sonny patted a bulge in the shirt pocket under his damp jumper. ‘I bet you’ll wanna see what I got here.’

  He pulled out a pouch of tobacco, wrapped in a plastic bag. He opened it and showed Ren the cigarette papers and box of matches inside. He rolled two cigarettes and passed one to Ren. ‘This will help warm us up.’

  The car soon filled with smoke.

  ‘So where’s the plan at now?’ Ren asked. ‘You look like a drowned rat and you’ve only just got started running away.’

  Sonny took the deepest drag possible on his cigarette. He held the smoke in his lungs and slowly released it before answering. ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘Home. You not shooting through? Make up your mind.’

  ‘I can’t leave Rory.’

  ‘What’s changed?’

  ‘I was thinking about poor old Tex in the wheelhouse last night and about how if I’m not around, Rory could end up like the river men. With nobody to look out for him.’

  ‘What about your old man?’

  ‘If he turns up and he’s sober I’ll give him a chance. And if he comes back and he gets on the piss, I’ll tell him to move on and leave me and Rory to ourselves.’

  ‘You forgotten about the money owed to Chris? And there’s Foy.’

  ‘Chris only knows what I told him, that Vincent wasn’t going to pay him back the money. He wouldn’t have called for Foy to go after them unless he believed there was something to the story.’

  ‘Except that you told him you saw Vincent counting out a bundle of money to put on a horse.’

  ‘Chris might be thinking Foy got hold of the money. Or that Vincent laid the bet with some other bookie before Foy got to him. I mean, look at me, Ren. I’m near as spastic as Spike is, with my bung eye. They wouldn’t think I was smart enough to try something like this.’

  ‘That Chris, he likes you, Sonny, cause he knows you got some go in you. I reckon he’d be onto you. Like Brixey said, he’s a smart old fella. And Foy, he might not think you’re smart enough, but he knows you’re brave enough. You won’t get away from him so easy. Me either.’

  Sonny thought about what Ren said before answering.

  ‘You remember that time, Ren, when you said to me It’s no free country for us. I was so angry with you because I knew it was the truth. I reckon I could go any place and I’d find trouble. I’m good at it. Might just as well stay round here as be anywhere else.’ He looked over the seat at Ren and smiled through the haze of smoke. ‘Anyway, you’d be fucken lost without me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t get in so much trouble.’

  ‘And you’d never have as much fun.’

  When they got out of the car the sun was shining. Their river was gone. It had been replaced by a vast lake. The lower section of the pylons holding up the iron bridge had all but disappeared and the old ghost gums lining the banks were reduced to treetops.

  The boys made their way along the ridge, skirting the expanse of water below. All that was left of the wheelhouse above the waterline was the pitched open roof. Ren thought about Tex and Cold Can trapped inside. ‘There’s no way they could have got out of there,’ Sonny said, reading his friend’s mind.

  ‘Tex didn’t want to get out. He knew his time was up. I hope they stay down there with the ghost river and are never found. The way Tex wanted it to be.’

  ‘You really believe that story?’ Sonny asked.

  ‘I believe in Tex. Everything he told me about the river, I believe it all. Some people believe in religion. Well, I believe in stories. You believe in God, Sonny?’

  Sonny screwed his face up, as if the question made him feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Dunno. I never thought about God. Only thing I ever believed in is that I got to look after myself. You believe?’

  ‘Nah. I went to Catholic school when I was younger. But only because my mother had a job cleaning the church and they let me in for free. Best thing about Catholic school was a hot lunch every day. I prayed like crazy at that school. No God ever spoke back to me.’

  ‘But you believe in the ghost river story?’

  ‘Sure. The Doc never came back up. Or Big Tiny. You see the Reverend Beck last night? He come straight back to the top. The river was spitting him out cause he was no good. They’ll find his body for sure. I bet they don’t find Tex and Cold Can.’

  ‘Della was spat out. I reckon she’s no good either.’

  Ren looked up and followed the flight of a bird gliding high in the sky, surveying the water below. ‘Look at that one, Sonny. It’s a black kite. Read about it at the library. Don’t see a lot of them round here.’ He shielded his eyes from the sun with his open hand and watched the bird. ‘You know how you changed your mind about leaving. Well, I’ve changed my mind too, about the money. The two hundred dollars. I’ll have it, Sonny, if it’s still okay with you.’

  ‘I bet you’re gonna buy that camera with it.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I might let you take my picture. Mug shot.’

  Before climbing through the fence into the back of the mill they turned and looked across to the cliff-top.

  ‘Hey, Sonny, do you reckon you’ll ever be brave enough to jump from there?’

  ‘Nah. Never thought I was. I was stringing you, Ren. What about you?’

  ‘I was stringing too.’ He smiled.

  They climbed through the fence and walked to the gates of the mill. Ren couldn’t believe what lay in front of him. The compound was gone. It had been swallowed by the earth, leaving a massive crater in its wake, as wide and deep as a football oval. The boys stood at the edge and looked down at the heavy machines that had been working to destroy the river. The machines lay on their sides, drowning in a muddied pond at the bottom. They looked like the remains of prehistoric creatures revealed to the world.

  Sonny scratched at his grubby cheek. ‘Maybe Tex was right. The ghost river swallowed the earth. Took it down with her.’

  ‘Gonna take them a lot of time before they can do any more work here.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe not before next summer. I’m gonna swim at Deep Rock and at the swimming hole by the falls every day.’

  ‘Yeah. Every day,’ Ren agreed.

  They turned the corner at the top of their street, each of them caught up in their own thoughts, but before Ren could step up onto his verandah he was roughly jerked backwards and wrapped in a bear hug. It was Foy.

  Sonny was about to run off, but stopped when he saw that Ren was trapped. ‘Fucken leave him alone!’ he yelled.

  Foy squeezed Ren by the neck. ‘I’ll be happy to, as soon as you pricks hand over the fucken money Vincent owed me.’

  ‘We don’t have no money,’ Sonny said. ‘Vincent was putting it all on a horse.’

  Foy squeezed a little harder on Ren’s neck. His face began to turn blue. ‘I went through that room and turned it upside down. You forgot to take this with you.’ Foy reached into his back pocket with his free hand and pulled out Vincent’s pocketbook. ‘It’s listed here. The last entry. $3000 – C. I don’t think that stands for Cunt. Now tell me where the money is or this one has his neck snapped in half.�
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  The front door of the house flew open and Loretta tore into the street. ‘Let go of him!’ she screamed. ‘You let my son be.’

  Foy held up an open hand. ‘Stay away, woman. Get back in the house, where you belong.’

  Loretta swung a punch at Foy, hitting him in the side of the face. He released Ren and as he tried to push Loretta away, he slipped on the wet bitumen and fell to the ground, hitting his head against the gutter. The commotion in the street brought the neighbours out – Mr and Mrs Portelli and a couple of their kids, an old pensioner from further along the street, and Della and her mother.

  Foy got to his feet and snarled at the small crowd closing in on him. Loretta put an arm around Ren. ‘You leave these boys alone,’ she spat. ‘You don’t need to be coming around here. Leave us in peace. Good people live on this street.’

  Foy looked at Loretta with a viciousness few were capable of. He turned to Sonny and whispered in his ear. ‘I’m going to catch up with you another time, son. You were born for trouble. Wild and too fucken stupid, you are. I’ll be waiting for you next time you fuck up.’ He walked through the small crowd, got into his car and drove off.

  Sonny looked down at the ground and saw that Foy had dropped Vincent’s notebook. As Loretta examined Ren’s neck for any bruising, Sonny flicked through the pages of the book noting the regular payments to C, but also to Foy – no initial. He stuck the book in his back pocket.

  ‘Come on, Charlie,’ Loretta said. ‘Inside. You too, Sonny. You’ll be staying with us until your uncle is out of hospital.’ She turned to her son. ‘And Charlie, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’

  Before Ren followed his mother into the house he looked along the street to Della, standing out near her front gate. She looked back at him, with an odd look on her face. It was as if Ren was a stranger.

  It was many months later, on an early summer night, when the northerly breeze picked up and a familiar scent filled Ren’s bedroom. It was forecast to be warm again the following day and Ren thought about a swim in the river, but with none of the enthusiasm of the summer before, as there was no one around to share it with. After Rory had come out of hospital he decided it would be better for Sonny if they moved away and avoided Foy altogether. They shifted across to the other side of the city. Before they left, Sonny handed Foy’s pocketbook to Ren.