After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

by Unknown

  He saw the difficult lines of her face, the hair that hooked in her eyelashes, smelt the oilskin coat.

  ‘Bob told you about Emmy?’

  Frank nodded. He wondered if he should mention those bruises on Bob’s face, but it wasn’t for him to stick his beak in. ‘Think maybe we should go home?’ he said, even though it would have been nice to feel her hot and sinking into the sand underneath him.

  She held out her hand, laid it palm up on the sand. He put his over hers, not to hold it, just to cover. ‘Why are you here, Frank?’ she asked and he found that, really, he didn’t know.

  The next day the southerly still blew at work and it dried him out, leaving the skin of his hands tight and old-looking. He couldn’t stop touching his right eye, which became blood-lined and weepy, and he could feel some bit of grit in it, like his eyeballs were drying out and sand was getting in. When work was over he went into the pub toilet and rinsed his eye, soaped up his papery hands and washed them until they looked pink. The men had gathered round a set of tables by the front window of the pub, so you could look out and watch surfers on main beach. There was hardly any swell, but still the water was speckled with them, some lying flat, some sitting upright, dangling their legs in the water and looking out to the horizon, willing a wave to come and knock them off.

  ‘You look pretty ropy mate,’ offered Bob, as he sat down. He pushed a drink across the table.

  ‘Ta for the beer,’ Frank said. ‘Got some grub in my eye.’

  ‘Listen, Vick told me about yesterday.’ Frank bit his tongue. What had she said? ‘Thanks, mate. Should’ve gone meself, just couldn’t face it.’

  Frank nodded and took a long drink simultaneously so he wouldn’t have to talk.

  Linus cleared his throat. ‘How’s the bass, Stuart?’

  Stuart leant forward and set himself more comfortably in his chair. There was no sign that he was put out by the previous week. ‘Yeah, she’s pretty good, thanks, Linus mate. She’s getting pretty tame.’

  ‘Stuart keeps a bass in his pool,’ said Linus, looking at Frank. There was the suggestion of laughter round his mouth.

  ‘Really? It’s okay with the chlorine?’

  ‘Aw, mainly rainwater, mate, more of a pond right now than a pool.’

  ‘A mosquito pot,’ Linus said. ‘An’ a stinking one at that.’

  ‘You’re just jealous, mate.’

  Linus no longer looked like he was taking a rise. The old man’s eyes narrowed as if he was seeing something different from the rest of them.

  ‘Sure thing, she’s a pretty bass.’ There was a general quiet reverence while apparently everyone pictured the fish.

  ‘You teach her any tricks?’ asked Bob.

  Frank was on the verge of laughing out loud.

  ‘Aw, she’s coming on. Last weekend got one of the kids to take some footage of me feeding her. She’ll come right up and take it out of my hand.’

  Everyone nodded, impressed.

  ‘Aw, and then – it was unreal!’ Stuart sat up tall, smiling, leaning back on his stool. ‘The kids caught a skink and threw him in, and Bassy came up and hit it – took the bloke in one go!’ He used his hands to show how the fish went. ‘I was spewing we weren’t filming. She was too full to take any more – gonna give it another shot this weekend. Been thinking about throwing a mouse in there too.’

  ‘Sweet as,’ said Bob.

  Everyone drank.

  ‘So,’ asked Frank. ‘What’s your plan, is she a pet or are you going to let her go?’

  Stuart eyed him suspiciously, then seemed to decide it was a genuine question. ‘Well, I catch her about once every two weeks – jus’ using a lure – an’ then at some point I’ll go an’ release her.’

  ‘Righto – where at?’ It had seemed to him to be a perfectly normal question, but the atmosphere at the table changed. Everyone sat up a little straighter, Linus moved his beer in concentric circles, Bob snorted and cleared his throat.

  ‘That’, said Stuart, ‘is for me to know.’

  Later in the evening the drink seemed to sort out the creakiness of Frank’s body. His joints felt lubricated, his head light and he felt unusually spry as he kept his eye on a girl at the bar, thinking perhaps he should buy her a drink. When it came to his round, he sidled up to her. ‘Anything for you?’ he asked.

  She looked at him like she might laugh and for a second his good feeling died in his boots, but she smiled. ‘Sure – rum and lemonade, please.’

  He put in the order and leant against the bar. ‘You work around here, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Not exactly – what about you, been down at the marina?’

  ‘Yeah, been packing nails today.’ It wasn’t the keenest line he’d ever used.

  ‘Nice one.’ She said.

  ‘Ta.’

  ‘So . . . ?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  And as easily as that it was over and she had on one of those looks again like she might laugh.

  ‘Guess I haven’t been up to much lately.’

  ‘Guess not. Well, ta for the drink anyways.’ She sipped through her straw and gave him a smile that was nice, and he cheered up.

  With his hands full of drink, Stuart slapped him on the back. ‘Nice one, Franko,’ he said, the tops of the beers running down Frank’s fingers. ‘You just bought the foreman’s fourteen-year-old niece a drink. He’ll thank you for that, I’m sure of it!’ The table erupted and Frank felt his face go hot. He glanced over to where the girl sat down opposite a battered Pokey and sucked wetly on the red straw.

  At midnight he found himself in the driver’s seat of his truck, too tired and too drunk to go anywhere. ‘Lucy Lucy Lucy Lou Lou Lou,’ he said quietly to himself and then he was crying. He fell asleep strapped into his seat belt and didn’t wake until it was just starting dawn. There was a red drinking straw in his shirt pocket that he couldn’t place and he dropped it out of the window, preferring not to think too much about where it had come from. He felt like his guts had collapsed on each other and breathing out too far made him feel sick. He started the engine and pulled out into the empty street, glad it was too early to have to try to avoid crashing into other vehicles.

  It was a soft, damp morning and things were paler than usual on the road that led home. The bark of the gums blanched at him as he drove down the track. A heavy mist hung low in the air, so that once he’d come to a stop outside the shack there was nothing to see past the cane.

  Both chickens were sleeping, their white eyes closed like small barnacles, their bodies fluffed and frowsy. When he closed the truck door it sounded too loud and made his heart beat like a footstep. A rosella took off from the veranda and a large white cockatoo, which perched in the banana tree, turned its back on Frank at the same time as crapping into the open air.

  His boots made a din on the floorboards. He was usually bare-footed and he trod lightly for fear of waking someone. He sat down on the side of his bed and undid his laces carefully, softly placing the boots next to each other underneath the bed. A swim was the only real cure for overcooking yourself. He tried whistling to break the ice of quiet as he floundered for his towel, but the bare windows glared at him. The banana tree swept against the roof, shhhhhhh.

  He cleared his throat.

  He took off his clothes and slung the towel over his shoulder, pulling at fistfuls of his hair to try to clear his head, and making it stick straight up as he walked out of the shack and down the path to the bay.

  The sea was pasty, the rip a little high. Scum yellowed the tidemark. The water was warm and his dick hardly shrank as he floated until he lost the feel of his body. He watched from the corner of his eye as he passed the bream hole and thought of his mother standing there holding a live prawn in her fingers and hesitating to thread it on to the hook. Past that, further out, was the point where they’d used to set the crab trap. A memory surprised him: his father waking him at dawn before everything, when his mum was sleeping in that creaky double bed of theirs. ‘Come
and we’ll see what the crab pot’s sucked up,’ his dad had whispered.

  ‘What about Mum?’

  ‘Man’s work.’

  ‘Hokay.’

  He’d felt an odd gravity to the situation as they tiptoed out of the shack, not closing the door in case the noise woke her up. They wore just the pants they’d slept in and he’d felt yesterday’s sunburn wince on his back.

  When they got down to the water, his dad disposed of even his pants and flung them at the dry sand up the beach. He did the same, and went and stood by his dad as he dragged the surf ski down to the waves.

  ‘C’mon then, Franko, in you get.’ His dad held the surf ski steady in the shallow white water.

  ‘We going in the nud?’

  ‘Nud as a grub.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘You worried a crab’s gonna have it off or something? C’mon, who’ll see?’

  He stepped in, cautiously viewing the funny pigskin hanging from his dad.

  ‘’S the thing I’ve learnt, Franko,’ he said as he pushed them off into the gentle swell, ‘there aren’t that many places to be nude any more – you gotta take the chance when it comes along.’

  His dad hopped in behind so that his legs, dark with thick hair, went either side of Frank. Water swilled crisply in the hull of the surf ski, turning warm with being near their bums. He wondered if he would get away with peeing, but thought he’d best hold it.

  They lapped out to the point where the bottom was sandy and deep, and the polystyrene ball painted with the name COLLARD floated. He’d watched his dad stroke out with it the day before, seen the hooked skeleton of a blackfish dark against the sky, and he’d been sulky then that he hadn’t taken him along too. But here he was for the good bit and heat rose in his chest at the thought of the two of them on their own, bringing in the food. The sky was fully light now, but still a pale impression of the day ahead. Even the sea was a calm version of itself. It rocked them gently in their long boat, there were no rips to steer against. The wind was a soft hooting breath.

  ‘Righto, let’s see what we’ve got here. If it’s a shark, you knock it on the head.’ He’d nodded seriously as his dad began pulling up the rope. Once the slack had been taken, his dad pulled hard on it, frowning, the tendons at his neck and the muscles round his shoulders pulsing.

  ‘Is it stuck?’ he asked, worried the ski would upturn.

  ‘I reckon she might be, mate. Must be under a shelf rock or something. Hold on, we’ll come about and try a different angle.’ They let the tide move them gently in an arc, his dad pulling all the time.

  ‘Crikey! She’s a bugger,’ his dad muttered under his breath. And then a little give. Then another and he began to pull, red-faced, hand over hand, straining, with his teeth set and his arms shaking.

  ‘She’s coming up, mate, bit by bit – we’ll have caught on an old anchor or something.’

  After what seemed like ages they saw the trap down in the water, full and black. ‘What is it?’ asked Frank, unable to keep the sense of dread out of his voice.

  ‘Dunno, mate, but she’s sure as hell something.’

  As the trap came up at the side of the boat, his dad let it hang a little, so the seawater drained out and it became light enough to hold up and get a proper look at.

  ‘By crikey,’ whispered his father. ‘Get a load of that, Franko boy.’ Suspended over the side of the boat was a cage of crabs, a mess of bright blue swimming legs and the ticking noise of their breath, all of them muscling about, too many for the cage. ‘That’s at least sixteen, seventeen crabs in there, Franko.’ He held the trap over the side, the great weight gone. They both stared at it, wondering how on earth to get it back in to dry land.

  Frank floated on his back, remembering how the place had stunk the good stink of boiled crab for days and the noise the shells made when they tipped a bag of them back in the sea. He smiled at the memory and tilted his head back a little so the water could get at the lids of his eyes.

  Something bumped his arm.

  He raised his head and saw that he had drifted clear out of the bay and there was something in the water with him. After swallowing a mouthful, he felt for all his limbs and found them still there. A fin appeared a few feet away, not a huge fin, but still a fin and it didn’t look like a reef shark. It hung in the water, oddly still, waiting for him to make the first move.

  ‘Shit,’ he said and he kept on saying it to keep himself calm. He tried to keep his legs in a steady stroke, but they kept shaking and flinching of their own accord. The main thing, regardless of the shark, was to get out of the rip that was taking him further and further out. He’d been caught in currents before and he knew to swim the horizon, not fight against it. He rounded the point of the bay and swam and swam, the sound of his breath like wind through a torn plastic bag. The shark kept with him, an arm’s length away to the side, and he tried to keep it in the corner of his eye, tried not to turn his head to look at it, which slowed him down.

  Then the fin went under.

  With every kick he imagined plunging his foot right into its mouth, having his feet taken, the sharp white bone at the ankle, bleeding to death. He passed through a cold current and thought he was being swallowed whole. His guts moved inside him and he thought, Don’t piss. God, don’t shit. As he gained on the land, he fixed on the dunes, thinking about the solidness of it for his feet, and about running up into them and rolling naked in the dry yellow sand.

  Paddling hard, he came into the shallows, but it didn’t leave him alone. When he could touch the bottom with his flat foot, it darted at him, sending bow waves at his chest, coming for him and veering away at the last second, chasing him, herding. When he stood, he could see the back of it, and it made him fall over, get up again and fall over and get up. It was bigger than he’d thought, as long as he was, but worse were the dark streaks across the pale fish, the boxed head of a tiger shark. He ran in the water, falling every second step, choking on salt; his hand was speared by a sharp shell or point of coral, but it didn’t put a beat in his progress. He ran out of the water and didn’t stop until he was far up the beach, a hooting noise coming from his chest. Turning and flopping on to the ground, he watched the fin torpedo up the bay and out into the open sea.

  ‘Fuck me,’ he said, wiping his face over and over with his hands, standing up naked and bleeding with a sandy bottom.

  ‘Fucking well fuck me.’

  20

  The gravelled road leading into the village was long and black and straight, and the only saving grace was that it was too dark to see to the end of it. The clouds hid the moon and there was no light from the village, nothing to see, no way of knowing if your eyes were open or closed, and Leon was alone.

  They were expecting baddies. Most likely they would come up the road, not guessing that they had got there first. Unless they’d been warned. The rest of the section were dotted about the place, with orders not to smoke, though he suspected these would be ignored. He wished he had some left to pass the time, a tiny light might give some perspective to the black. Might ward off the mosquitoes, might take his mind off the thing that sat next to him in the dark. He held up his camera and took a shot into the black. It had been fine when they were all together, when you could see other people and think about other people, but here, alone, he thought about those three heartbeats, holding the gaze of that first boy he had killed. The feel of the thing crawling up inside him. The hole his gun had dug between his legs, the sick feeling when the barrel jammed. The dead.

  The Vietnamese believed in ghosts. He did not, but he was in their country now and you couldn’t help but feel it, alone in the black. He touched his eyes to make sure that they were open. The skin round his sockets was hot and dry, and the coolness from his fingertips was good. It would have been wonderful to lie down. He thought about the yellow print on Lena Cray’s dress, how it snagged over her belly.

  In an instant something changed. He stayed deadly still, trying to locate what it
was. When he realised he felt all of hell flatten him and horror tightened his throat. He had been asleep and something had woken him. He’d let the buggers in, they’d walked right past him, they were in there now slitting throats. He didn’t move. He barely breathed. He was sure at that moment in the black that someone held a gun to his face. He felt breath on his cheek, he would hear the click of a barrel. Then calmness. Go on then, he thought, go on then. But nothing. The breath on his cheek was gone. Perhaps it had never been there. His eyebrows arched high, he watched for the first wash of light as it turned the sky. He saw the sun rise and wondered if it would make him cry. The grass was wet from dew and between his tripod and gun a spider had strung a web, and water caught the sun as he breathed the dawn deeply.

  Tramping off towards the jungle again with no one murdered in the dark, no baddies showing up, he felt heavy and sick as though he’d been drinking hard the night before.

  ‘Jeeze, you look crook,’ Cray said, wiping repellant on to his neck. ‘Didn’t you get any sleep?’

  Leon looked at him. ‘I was watching the road all night.’

  ‘Well, what did you watch? Was so dark out there, you wouldn’t have seen the bugger come up and kiss you on the lips. We all bedded down, thought to hell with it.’

  The corners of his eyes stung. He felt crook. He really did.

  A few hundred yards into the trees the creek had come close in to the village. He heard it running from a way off. A couple of planks made a thin bridge and he was glad not to have to wade through – his boots were still stewy from the last crossing. Before they reached the bank, there it was again, the back of Cray’s neck tensed and he felt his fingers numb on his gun. But Cray’s neck relaxed and he turned round to face the others. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head and walked on.