Bay of Fires

by Poppy Gee

  As she washed her hands, the woman who had been sitting at the bar earlier came in. Almost everything about her suggested a femininity that had succumbed to a male world; her thick brown Blundstone boots, her hair cropped short, her sullen expression and ruddy skin. Small gold hoop earrings were her one concession that she was something other than one of the guys with whom she worked and drank.

  “How’s it going?” she greeted Sarah. “First date?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I knew it. I said it to my mate Mick. I said, those two are on a date,” the woman disappeared into the cubicle. She began urinating, a heavy stream, and raised her voice so Sarah could hear. “Hold onto him, lovey. He looks like one of the good ones.”

  “Lucky you’re here,” Sarah called back. Immediately she forced a laugh to soften her sarcasm. The woman was only being friendly.

  Blunted and sleepy from the afternoon beers, Sarah gazed at the blur of dairy pastures out the window. At the T-intersection Hall took a wrong turn, but she did not notice immediately. Instead of turning right and going back the way they had come, Hall had turned left onto the Blue Tier road. It had been a long time since Sarah had traveled up here. It was part of the area her father had researched for his Ph.D. If you followed this road all the way to the end, you would arrive at Goulds Country, an almost abandoned tin-mining town that was noted for being the only remaining settlement in Tasmania built completely from timber. On the way there, lost in the scrub, was an old miners’ graveyard that contained gravestones from the 1880s, as well as many short, grassy unmarked mounds—the graves of babies who never stood a chance. In the surrounding forest was the brick chimney stub of a burned-down church, several hiking tracks that led to lookouts, and gnarled wooden huts, few and far between, inhabited by hippies or the inbred, according to talk. It was an inhospitable tract of bush and barely managed farmland. Narrow and rutted, the road weaved upward, enclosed by thick, ancient gum trees. There was nowhere to turn around.

  First Sarah wound her window down, all the way. She was wearing slippery sandals, impossible to run in, and she pushed them off her feet without undoing them. She opened her handbag, took the twenty-dollar note Hall had given back to her, and shoved it into her jeans pocket. When Hall glanced over to see what she was doing, she pulled out Erica’s lipstick and pretended to examine it.

  “Bit bumpy to try and put that on,” Hall said. “Although I’d like to see you try.”

  If he was a murderer, he would be passive-aggressive. She wondered how he would try to do it; he probably had a tire iron or a handgun shoved down the side of his seat. Her only chance was to get out of his car and run. Hard. She would run deep into the scrub and hide. Later, when she was sure he had gone, she would hike downward until she hit one of the dried-up creeks and then follow it out.

  The radio wheezed, and he asked her to choose a CD from the glove box. She didn’t want to open it. Her mouth felt dry. Adrenaline coursed through her; flight was her body’s desire. It would be logical to assume that Hall Flynn was not going to kill her. He was too normal, too nice. But what if Sarah’s gullibility, lack of preparedness, stupidity, put her in a vulnerable position?

  “You going to tell me where we’re going?” she said. It was his last chance. She was ready to throw herself out of the moving car.

  “No idea.” Hall laughed with embarrassment. “Wrong turn, sorry. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice. I’m just looking for somewhere to turn around. It’s spooky.”

  “You’re not wrong. This is the place you would move to if you wanted everyone to forget about you. I bet there are a heap of dodgy characters living up here.”

  “Reckon you could live up here?”

  “I could.” Sarah relaxed. She hoped he had not noticed her taking her sandals off. Her fingertips were damp on the leather seat. “Bit far from the ocean, though.”

  Five minutes later they passed a driveway cut through the trees. Hall reversed into it, turned around, and they returned the way they had come.

  Waiting for the bream running on the incoming evening tide, Sarah contemplated the strange location of the guesthouse. It overlooked a narrow granite reef where, even on a calm day, noisy seagulls fought each other for space. Occasionally a big wave scattered the birds into the sky. In stormy weather, surf exploded across the kelp-shadowed water, swallowing the shore rocks and threatening to wash away the succulent garden of Jane’s place above. There was no beach below the guesthouse, just the rocky point and black bull kelp. You couldn’t swim there. When the wind blew onshore, as it did for eight months of the year, salty gusts drenched Jane’s windowpanes and rusted her window latches so some were permanently stuck. It was a rough tract of ocean, but Jane liked to boast that in the thirty years she had lived there, not once had the waves trespassed on her property.

  Hall had dropped Sarah home after lunch and said he had work to do. She imagined him sitting at his laptop, writing up the pig story, checking through the notebook for a new angle on the murder investigation. He had talked about journalistic ethics and the public’s right to know. Lucky for her he didn’t know about her evening with seventeen-year-old Sam Shelley. The newspaper Hall wrote for would love a story on that: Fish Doctor Hooks Illegal Catch. Jesus.

  Eumundi Barramundi was a publicly listed company. That meant the public had a right to know a certain story about her. It was the kind of gossip the local Eumundi rag liked to print in lieu of real news. They would print a clever headline: Fish Farmer Goes on Bender and Loses 5,000 Fish or something. Her laughter was stunted. There was nothing funny about losing three tonnes of prime barramundi. Maybe it was real news. If she had not quit, she would have needed to sack at least three casual staff, an event that would send a nasty ripple through a tiny place like Eumundi. No point paying people to feed fish that didn’t exist.

  Above the spindly branches of the casuarinas and banksias the Nissen hut’s curved roof fit snugly under the night sky. Only two lights were on, one in an upstairs bedroom and another downstairs in Jane’s room.

  Apart from the gently slapping ocean, there was no sound; no distant dog barking or an outboard motor dragging a net for mullet. She cast out and wound the line in. Nothing was biting. The bream were more timid than she remembered. She lightened the weight and checked the bait before casting out again. Still waiting for a bite, she pulled her hair out of its tight ponytail and shook it. Loose hair fell around her face, soft on her cheek. She sang; lyrics from “Flame Trees” that used to make her feel sad now had new meaning. For the first time since she left Eumundi she wasn’t analyzing the harsh accusations and insults that had sounded in her mind as loudly as if Jake were right there, puffing his beery breath over her. It was a relief to let her thoughts flow naturally.

  Reluctantly, when she could no longer see the watery horizon, Sarah packed up. She shoved the bait container and hook jar into her satchel, wound down the fishing rod, and secured the line. Her knife had sardine blood on it. By torchlight Sarah dipped her knife in the ocean, wiping it on a rag she kept for this purpose. The blood wouldn’t come off and she dipped again. Tentacles emerged from the water without warning, wrapping around the knife and tugging at it. Sarah didn’t flinch. She released the handle and watched the blue-ringed octopus slide beneath the rocks. It was her favorite knife, but she didn’t care.

  The color photo ran the next day in the Tasmanian Voice. Sarah’s face, grinning as she offered the bottle to the pig, was stretched across most of the page. The caption underneath the photo said Here’s cheers…Sarah Avery shares a beer with Alice the pig. It wasn’t even true. She looked hideous; her watery eyes were bulbous and her gums were showing. What on earth was Hall thinking? Erica laughed so hard her eyes welled up with tears. Even Don, who was usually so kind, chuckled as he counted the takings at the kitchen table.

  “Stop it, Erica. Not everyone is photogenic,” Pamela said.

  Pamela had things to discuss. Yesterday she had spotted a man riding a Jet Ski up and down between t
he reef and the point. Don had seen a bronze utility truck parked all day at the boat ramp. The man Jet Skiing was too far out for Pamela to be certain, but through her binoculars it looked like Jane Taylor’s estranged husband, Gary.

  “There aren’t that many red-haired men around here.” Pamela bit her lip. “Keep it to yourselves but I did put in a call to the police. I just told them what I saw. And that he fit the description of Gary Taylor.”

  “I can’t remember Gary Taylor ever driving a bronze ute,” Erica said. “What does Jane say?”

  “Well, I’m not going to ask her. She’ll bite my head off.” Pamela opened a packet of chocolate Wagon Wheels biscuits and offered them to Sarah and Erica. “She’s always been strange. Do you remember when he left? You were teenagers. She didn’t tell anyone. I was still getting mail for him—which she collected every week—and he had been gone for a year. She never said a word.”

  Sarah remembered. Talk about Gary and Jane had begun before he left. They used to come to the Abalone Bake and the odd barbecue. She remembered her mother commenting on how they always drank more than anyone else and argued without caring who was in earshot. Sarah could not remember hearing them argue; she had observed a man who seemed nervous around children, and who was overweight and shy. She couldn’t imagine him having fun on a Jet Ski.

  “I feel sorry for Jane,” Sarah said.

  “I don’t. I’ve wasted enough time on her over the years. You can’t help someone who won’t help themselves. Here, have another biscuit.”

  “Maybe help is not what she needs,” Sarah said.

  “When Gary left, she had a lot of debt. I recommended her for a couple of cleaning jobs. I’ve never chased her too hard for her account here, either. I’m not like that.” Pamela bit into a biscuit, catching the falling crumbs in the palm of her hand.

  “Did the police think the Jet Ski person was suspicious?” Erica said.

  “They don’t say much. Ask that reporter, Sarah. He’ll know. But I do predict Jane Taylor will receive a visit from the police very soon.”

  Judging by Hall’s conversation with the barman at the pub the other day, it seemed he was already on to it. Sarah sighed. Pamela’s doggedness had an edge to it.

  “Well, if he is back, it needs investigating. I’ve seen that Jet Ski here before and I can’t remember when, but I feel like it might be around the time Chloe Crawford went missing.” Pamela spoke defensively. “Why does a man leave the town where he has lived all his life without even saying good-bye to anyone? Why does his wife never mention it? She just carries on as though he is still living there, and then these girls going missing out the front of their place.”

  “Of everyone’s place,” Sarah said. “Poor Jane.”

  An ugly red washed Pamela’s paleness. Her expression stiffened with bravado. “She’s going to have to live with it. If you behave strangely, people will talk. That is the way it is. People talk. Jane Taylor isn’t stupid. She knows.”

  “Hey, Don,” called Erica. “Are you putting your money on Gary Taylor?”

  “I think there’s enough of an argument to charge Coker,” Don said. “I don’t know why they haven’t put him in a holding cell by now.”

  “They can’t lock someone up just because everyone thinks he’s weird,” Sarah said. “Next you’ll be arguing to lock up anyone who is Jewish, Gypsy, or homosexual.”

  Don gave her a keen look and continued counting the money without replying.

  Pamela and Erica were looking at the photo again, giggling.

  “Enough.” Sarah closed the newspaper.

  The station wagon slowed to a stop several meters in front of Sarah and Erica as they walked up the hill from the shop. In the passenger seat was Darlene Gibson—Bunghole’s wife. She had been with Bunghole outside the shop when he had almost hit Sarah in the head with his milk carton as he tossed it into the bin. Today Darlene wasn’t smiling.

  “Keith has got nothing to do with this.” Darlene folded sunburned arms on the open window.

  “Who?” Erica asked.

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Bunghole.”

  Sarah and Erica laughed.

  “Who’s accused Keith of anything?” Sarah immediately thought of the roadkill that had been thrown at Roger’s cottage. Had the police somehow heard about that? She knew Roger would not have reported the incident.

  “We’ve seen the way you lot look at us. You’re stuck up. And you’re not pinning this shit on us.”

  The kids crammed in the backseat—at least four—complained, and the woman in the driver’s seat yelled at them to sit down.

  “We’ve got our own theories,” Darlene continued.

  “You’re doing the talking,” Sarah said. Her curiosity about what the campers thought was going on was greater than her desire to tell it like it was.

  “I’m not going there. It’s what a lot of people are saying.”

  “Go on.”

  “Nup.”

  “Bald Don,” shouted the woman in the driver’s seat. She put her foot down and the car accelerated, gravel spitting out the sides.

  “What the…?” Erica said. “I thought they blamed Roger.”

  “I don’t think they really do believe Don did it,” Sarah said. “They just hate him because he bullies them about where they fish.”

  Could Don have done it? Years ago, a popular Launceston schoolteacher had driven back to town from school camp at Waddamana, murdered his wife, and returned to the school camp that same night. It had taken the police six months to charge him, in which time he had played a perfect grieving widower.

  Don was not a murderer. Sarah dismissed the thought. She had known Don all her life and was certain he would never do a thing like this.

  “We all need to calm down,” Sarah said as they started walking again.

  Using an old knife, Sarah pierced the black back salmon’s belly, sliding the blade from the stomach to the head. Cartilage crunched as she sliced under the gills.

  “Do you feel bad for doing that?” Hall said.

  “Nope.” With a firm tug of the gills, the guts slid out. She tossed them into the ocean.

  “Do you feel sorry for the fish?”

  “Not if I’m planning to eat it. They don’t suffer.” She realized he was teasing her. “Much.”

  “How come you don’t keep the fish in a bucket of water?”

  “Stresses them out. It gives them physiological problems. The more stressed out they get, the flesh gapes, and they toughen up. Better to break their neck.”

  “You twisted its neck.”

  “Yeah. Some people use a dongometer, something to whack it with. English trout fishermen spend hundreds on ivory-handled dongometers.”

  “Really?” Hall said.

  He was looking at her intensely, and she had a brief, strange feeling that he was about to kiss her. He didn’t.

  She slid a fresh squid tentacle onto her hook and cast out. Wind was picking up, twenty knots and nicely onshore. Good fishing weather. Hall sat on the rock beside her. Usually she liked fishing alone; Hall, however, was easy company. He appreciated solitude.

  She could hear happy conversation coming from the shack. All summer Sarah’s parents had invited friends over for drinks before dinner. She had taken to returning to the shack when the cool evening air was quiet and the only sign of guests was the empty glasses by the sink and a half-eaten cheese platter or chip crumbs in a plastic fish-shaped bowl on the table. Tonight their voices didn’t heighten her loneliness; instead, their distant gabbling was as innocuous as the ocean’s breath.

  Alerted by the silence, Sarah held her fishing rod between her and everyone else in the shack. Something was wrong. On the couch, her mother, Pamela, and Don sat in a row, like people waiting for a bus. Steve and Dad were smiling so hard she wondered if they were drunk. She noted that each of the champagne glasses on the table had one of her mother’s silver charms attached to the stem. Paralyzed, like a cornered animal, Sarah waited for the dreaded wor
ds to come. In the expectant hush of contained excitement, everyone beamed idiotically.

  “I’m getting married!” Sarah felt Erica’s words under her skin. Her cheeks became numb; the muscles incapable of smiling.

  Erica held out her hand, showing five diamonds on a slender silver band. Sarah leaned her fishing rod against the wall and dumped her bag on the floor. She unbuttoned her jacket. Was it hot in here? She hung her jacket over the back of a chair and turned to look at her sister’s hand.

  “Cubic zirconia?”

  “No! It’s real.” Erica crossed her fingers. She was always crossing her fingers, an annoying gesture. She did it to wish Sarah luck at fishing, or when she dished up a new recipe.

  “I know. They don’t make cubic zirconia that small.”

  A chair leg grated against the floor and someone coughed. Erica’s hand dropped and she glanced from her mother, to her father, to Sarah, standing there in her old Hash House Harriers T-shirt, stained with fish muck.

  “Erica’s ring is eighteen karat, Sarah,” Steve said. “I didn’t mess around.”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Sarah said, taking Erica’s hand. “I’m joking.”

  Erica’s manicured fingers felt warm in her own small cold hand. Sarah was genuinely happy for her sister, but the happiness was a long way inside her and too fragile to vocalize. She examined the ring.

  “It’s a beautiful ring,” she said. It was enough to relieve the silence.

  “It’s exquisite.” Pamela beamed. “And worth every cent, Steven. What do they say? A month’s salary that lasts a lifetime.”

  “And the rest,” Steve said.

  Sarah sat at the table and drank some champagne while Erica described how it happened. Steve had proposed on the beach that afternoon, after playing a song on his guitar which he had written about love and finding a soul mate, having children, and growing old together. Erica was teary as she told the story. It was so pathetic Sarah didn’t know what to say, so she busied herself fitting a charm to the stem of her glass.