After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

by Unknown

  One, the bait fell off mid-air, slung out on a too hard cast, and he was sure as it hit the water he saw a belly flash, something gobble it as soon as it hit the surface. The next prawn was tightly weaved, aimed at the spot the fish had flashed itself, and the cast was executed, he thought, with minute accuracy. But nothing so much as nosed it. The third throw, when the sun was really hurting his ears and starting on the lower lids of his eyes, was more exciting: a sudden rip of life on the other end of the line, but then nothing, it took just the bait not the hook. Four, nothing at all and he found his interest waning. Normally there was the possibility, endless as the water in the sea, the millions upon millions of chances – what else happened to a dead prawn in the water other than it was eaten by fish? But now he wanted someone to talk to. He wondered if Sal was as keen a fisherwoman as she was a gardener. The backs of his hands burnt on his final throw and he decided just to drag her in, see if something would chase, but when, not far from the shore, he felt a bite, he didn’t do anything other than give it a sharp tug, then whatever had bitten was gone. He unhooked the sucked bait and threw it out – something inhaled it, breaking the surface of the water with silver. Sod it, they were playing silly buggers with him anyway.

  In the shade of the bait shop he was blind for the first few minutes. He stared hard at a wall of jelly lures, waiting for the sunspots to go from his eyes. The place smelt like rubber and glue, and it was a good smell, like diesel or chalk dust, the kind you could smell too much. He squeezed the red gummy body of a squid lure and heard the man at the counter behind him shift with annoyance. He gave himself another few seconds to straighten out his sight and turned to him. ‘Got any prawn nets in?’

  Without looking, the man, who was younger than Frank had first imagined and who wore sunglasses inside, pointed above his head. ‘Got yer basic, yer midi and yer reinforced.’

  ‘Reinforced?’

  ‘Get ’em done meself – weave in a bit of leather round the edge. Keep her going for good.’

  ‘Sweet. I’ll take one,’ said Frank, knowing he had to buy the reinforced net or risk a long uncomfortable stare from behind those glasses.

  The man softened a little and he allowed a small smile. ‘What you after?’

  ‘Uh, prawns.’

  ‘Know a good place, do ya?’

  ‘I’ve seen a few up round the sands at Mulaburry.’

  ‘Ah. ’S good fishing place. Easiest bet on catching a few bream just off the rocks there – real girl fishing hole, but she’s good if it’s a feed you’re after and not so much the sport. Know the place I mean?’

  Frank nodded.

  Back in the sun of the main street he sat himself outside the bakery at one of the aluminium tables. He ordered a black coffee and a currant bun, and when the bun came it was the size of his face. He watched the street, not sure what he was looking for – something recognisable in the few people walking by, or someone who might stop and talk. He wished he’d leant up against the counter in the bait shop, quizzed the guy on where to find a jewfish, asked about sharking, as if he knew something on the subject himself. He could have told the guy how he lived on that land, could even have explained that his mother was in that bream hole, could have got the upper hand on the conversation, maybe enough that leaning on the counter could have turned into a few drinks later on, a pub quiz, a joint on the beach. It felt strange to be wishing these things on himself, of someone who didn’t seem the sort of person he would have liked anyway.

  He looked at his watch – nearly time for the kids to get out of school. He could give Sal a lift home, think of some things she might be interested in knowing about. Did she know how to wrap dough round a thick stick and bake it in an open fire, then fill it with golden syrup and let it drip all down you, in your hair and eyelashes? Probably. But maybe she’d appreciate the gesture. Perhaps she’d want to have a go at prawning with him, though he wasn’t sure she’d be tall enough.

  He paid his bill and walked to the truck, surprised at how much he was looking forward to chewing the fat with a seven-year-old. He parked up a little way from the school gates, thinking maybe it would look better if he pretended to have been passing. A bell rang somewhere inside and for a moment there was absolute stillness. Then the doors opened and a wave of kids wearing light-blue caps with flaps at the back spilled out, and he was glad he wasn’t waiting at the gate. A few parents and older kids pounced, but on the whole the tide of children dispersed on their own, in tight little groups, yapping like seagulls and dropping skinny wrappings and juice cartons not too near the bins.

  He nearly missed Sal, whose black fringe was hidden under her cap. He only spotted her at all because she was alone, her head down. Unlike the other kids, who wore their school backpacks slung casually over one shoulder, she wore hers tight to her back, a serious walker. She moved at a determined pace, not late but precisely on time, as if any deviation from her step would throw the whole day off track. He opened the door and realised he’d have to get out, because she wasn’t looking his way. He called her name as she turned the corner. He jogged through the kids, trying not to jostle them, trying hard not to look like a Dangerous Stranger. Rounding the corner, he stopped at the sight of Sal, arms stuck out rigid at her side, being hugged chokingly round the shoulders by Vicky.

  He walked backwards round the corner, thumping into a small redheaded girl who blew a spit bubble at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said and waded against the tide of kids back to his truck. He slid inside and rested his head on the steering wheel. He pushed his tongue into his bottom lip and made the noise ‘eughn’ like one of the kids might. He tried to feel silly but he just felt disappointed. Of course, after what had happened to the Mackelly kid . . . of course she’d get picked up by her parents. She was only seven. He breathed a sigh of relief, imagining what would have happened if she had seen him, if she’d thought he was collecting her and not her mother.

  He didn’t feel like going back to the shack, but he drove there all the same, trying to shake off the feeling that the day had been a waste. He’d bought a reinforced prawn net anyway.

  The cockatoo was gone from the side of the road, just a few white feathers lifted in the breeze as he drove by. When he pulled up, Linus was there. He’d helped himself to a beer and sat on the steps wearing his old green hat far back on his head, leaning into the last of the yellow sun. His belly had snuck out of the bottom of his T-shirt and rested like a cat on his thighs. ‘How’s life, ol’ matey?’ he asked.

  ‘Good, good,’ Frank exaggerated. ‘What can I help you with?’

  ‘I already helped meself.’ The grizzled old bugger raised his bottle at Frank, the white of his stubble shone against his black skin.

  ‘Right.’ There was nothing for it but to get a drink and sit with the hoary coot.

  ‘Just wondered how the place was treating you. Getting on okay? Need any hocus-pocus doing?’

  Frank laughed a loud ha! and opened his own beer.

  A yellow light hit the tallest of the box trees at the edge of the bush. Frank waited, but for a long time the only noise was the far-off applause of crickets and cicadas.

  When Linus finally spoke it was to say, ‘Terrible business, Ian’s girl.’ He looked out over the cane, no eye contact.

  ‘Bad as it gets.’

  ‘I ’member her being born. Well, it was only fourteen years ago, so I suppose I would. Makes you think you could go back an’ do something ’bout it. Gonna be some sort of memorial thing at the enda the week. I’m sure Stuart’ll have told you – she had a lot of aboriginal friends. They’re going to do some sorta ceremony for her. Not really sure how Ian’ll see that, but.’ He snorted. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Ian hasn’t really got a problem. ’S more he’d just like to crush someone I think. Grind ’em into the ground. An’ who can blame him? Heard he went ape-shit when they found out her boyfriend was a black fella. But he wouldn’t have minded, not really – he just didn’t know about it.’

  The sun was lower down on the b
ox trees now, a lick of yellow on their trunks. Flycatchers settled on the tips of their branches. There was a sudden brightening of everything, the sun took one final deep breath, then the light mellowed and started to fade. Frank’d never been so aware of night falling. ‘You live alone, Linus?’

  ‘I do. I prefer to live in the town, though. Me and Eleanor. Left her at home. Not like you, not one of those “flash your bum at nature and sleep on the grass” types.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Tell the truth, mate, gives me the willies, a man staying out here all on his own.’

  He looked at the old man, but Linus stayed looking dead ahead. He sipped from his beer. Frank shrugged, tried to look nonchalant. ‘Sometimes I hear a thing or two I can’t put a name to. But then most of the time it’s just bandicoots and dreams.’ There was a silence and Frank started to form a long complicated question in his head; then, surprising himself, he said, ‘What do you know about the bunyip?’

  Linus frowned, looked down at his drink. ‘He’s that fella on TV with the orange face, isn’t he? The one that’s rude t’ everyone? Swears a lot – a puppet.’

  ‘No – that’s a wombat – and I mean the actual bunyip.’

  ‘The actual bunyip, y’say? Where did you grow up? Fuckin’ out the back of beyond?’

  ‘All I know about the bunyip is stuff from kids’ books. He hangs around swamps or something.’

  Linus drank from his bottle and Frank could hear it going down, heard it snake through his gullet, drop into his belly. Linus’s stomach made a noise like something being extinguished. ‘Firstly, it’s not the bunyip – it’s bunyip. That’s the bugger’s name. Secondly, what makes you think it’s a he?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And third – which makes me think it is a he – bunyip likes eatin’ women. An’ not in a good way either.’

  Frank shifted in his seat.

  Linus’s eyes shone at him from under his derelict hat. ‘Fourthly, mate, I know you’re a bit beyond the black stump, but if you’re going to start believing in bunyip we might as well paint a gecko on your arse and give you a firestick to shake.’

  Frank smiled. ‘I was talking to Bob Haydon’s kid about it.’

  ‘Right. Well, she’d know a thing or two about the matter.’

  The faraway rumble of a road train.

  ‘You know,’ said Linus, ‘there’s this old saying: “There is no way to get into an orange after your mother is dead.” I don’t know who said it. Some Chinese fellah. Pretty smart, though.’ He smiled up at the sky.

  A whistler circled high above them, called and landed in the box trees, which shed leaves and flycatchers like a shoal of black fish. Frank gave up the fight to understand what Linus was on about and sucked on his beer. It was beautiful again. Just breeze enough to blow away the mosquitoes. Clouds blended orange on a blue horizon. Frogs barked under the veranda.

  ‘I talked with your grandfather once.’

  Frank turned to look at him.

  ‘I’d a job with the grocers – ’fore all this Bi-Lo racket. He had this standing order, before your grandmummy came out, it was a monthly deal – not much, really, just big box of matches, some kero. Few cans. Not what you’d want to live on. Anyways, I’d worked as a delivery boy maybe three months ’fore I ever saw the bloke. He’d jus’ leave money on the table an’ I’d leave the box for him. But one time he was around an I said g’day, an’ he was a friendly enough bloke. We had a chat.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Nothin’ much. Just got the sense he was lonely that day. Asked him about himself, but he didn’t tell me much. Asked how old I was. I’m guessing I was about the same age as your old man was then. Asked if I’d had to go to war. I told him too young, and he nodded and shook my hand. Asked me if I had a wife, an’ when I said no he said, “Best way.” He said, “Best way, might be another war yet.” An’ he told me he hoped I’d have a plenty good life. An’ that was it. I told him I’d see him around but I never did. I think he’d just popped up that day because he was lonely.’

  ‘You remember it pretty well. Long time ago.’

  Linus smiled again out into the blue air. He inhaled and took a long swallow of beer, pulled his lips over his teeth and looked at the bottle in his hand. ‘Made a bit of an impression I’d say. Never did get married. There was another war. And I see his point. I see his point well.’

  ‘He didn’t mention my father? Or my grandmother?’

  ‘Nup. When she turned up was first we knew of that.’

  There was something soft about the old man suddenly. Something in the way his teeth worried his bottom lip. ‘Beaudy lady. We used to talk.’

  His lips were wet and Frank imagined him as a young man. He would have been good-looking, the bones of him dark with heavy shadows.

  Linus stifled a burp, which seemed to knock him out of his thoughts. ‘She was all interested in where I come from. Not something I was used to, people wanting to know about that. I suppose she bin told to go suck by her country too. Don’t think it suited her that well, being out here all on her own just with him. She said was like something had a hold on your poppy. Guess he went through it in the war or something.’ He bit his bottom lip with his white teeth, squinted his eyes. ‘Your grandmummy she loved him, but. She had to stay with him. Loved ’im.’ Frank wanted to say something, but he couldn’t think for the image of young Linus and his grandmother, the sugar figure in the wedding dress.

  ‘When your olds turned up after they’d disappeared, I showed them around the place a bit. Nice bloke, your old man was, terrified about your mummy being pregnant. That woulda bin you, I suppose?’

  Frank got up. His legs were heavy. He stood at the fridge a moment letting his breath settle. He wanted to ask questions but he was scared his voice would wobble with the beat of his heart. He brought another beer for them both and when he sat down again Linus continued, ‘Plenty of people I knew had gone off to war, plenty. Plenty didn’t come back. Fuckin’ I bin in a war, I done that, I seen some bad things, we all did.’ Linus shrugged. ‘That’s war tho’, mate. Isn’it?’

  Frank nodded.

  ‘Maybe it’s somethin’ to do with you Europeans, you haven’t seen much colour before an’ so when you seen the blood, it’s a shock? I dunno. But.’ Linus’s words hung in the air. Strange to be thought of as European.

  ‘Either way. One day, telegram man arrived, found no one in. No one in the next day or the next. Car in front of the house. Cold box cleaned out, shoes under the bed. There was a bunch of clothes on the beach and no more Mr and Mrs.’

  ‘They died in a car accident out at the turn-off. A road train.’

  Linus looked at Frank, his eyes bright in the dark. ‘Nah, mate. Nah, they didn’t. You should talk to your old man about that. He’d know the story.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Frank without thinking. Dead was easier. A closed case.

  Linus looked at him. ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that.’ A mosquito landed under Linus’s eye and he pressed his finger to it, rolled it against his cheekbone.

  ‘What did you talk about with my grandmother?’

  ‘Tole her about me. She wanted to know. We talked about the old people. Important to do that. You gotta know what you can ’bout ’em. See my dad’s mum was sent to the hospital islands. They reckoned she was a sick one, so what they did is they sent her there to die. ’Parently she might have been pregnant. Never come back any more.’ His voice changed, it sounded old. ‘Dad ’members she was taken off in chains, long string of black fellas all with bracelets round their necks. For their own good, y’understand. I don’t know if you know much about it over there. Anyways. You went, you didn’t come back any more.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Wasn’t you.’ Linus laughed. ‘Was it? ’N’way, my mum she was a white lady – that’s how come I wasn’t taken away. Got me reading and writing early on too. Helps a black fella, that.’ Frank nodded.

  ‘I member you too, you know. I re
member the funeral.’

  Frank moved his chair a little forward, then back again. ‘Funeral?’

  ‘Your mother’s. Sat up on those rocks and watched it.’ He pointed towards where the sea was, like they could both see it.

  ‘That’s weird, Linus. That makes me feel weird.’

  ‘It probably would.’

  Frank squeezed his beer bottle.

  ‘Sad business,’ Linus carried on. ‘There’s a sad business in men being left alone.’ He inhaled to say more, but held it. A butcher-bird yodelled and Linus let the breath out. ‘Your mum seemed a lot like your grandmummy.’

  ‘My grandmother was my father’s mother. They weren’t blood relations.’

  ‘But they were both married to the same blood.’

  ‘Suppose. You reckon that makes a difference?’

  Linus didn’t answer for a long time. The air had changed a little, it was thinner or cooler or something. More drink.

  Linus spoke, with a voice from a long time ago, and the words sounded rehearsed, like he’d heard them or said them over and over way back. ‘Some fellas, they make the women lonely. Maybe it doesn’t apply to you, mate, but maybe that’s why you’re here all on your tod?’

  It would be nice if Linus were gone, it occurred to Frank. The soles of his feet felt hot and uncomfortable on the wood of the veranda, as though he’d walked a long way barefoot. ‘How old were you when my grandparents came here?’

  ‘Old enough.’

  There was a long pause, one which didn’t seem to have any effect on Linus, who stood and smoked and squinted as if the sun were still in the sky.

  ‘So what am I supposed to do with that?’ Frank asked finally.

  ‘Do?’ Linus turned round to look at him like he’d forgotten he was there. ‘I dunno, mate, you do what you want. Like I said, I’m no spiritualist. I’m just an’ old bloke, an I thought you might like a chew of advice. Give this place a bit of acknowledgement, mate. Just a bit of respect or understanding or something – that’s all you need. If you’re waking up at night with the ground coming alive and trying to eat you or whatever.’