The image of Blue comes to me. Trapped behind the bars in the big prison. A fat, hungry, male predator caught and contained. Hanging on the bars as people parade past to get a look at him. He’s not scary to look at behind the bars. He’s like the first big croc on the walkway up top. Just a pathetic thing that was only in his element in the wild. Where he could prey and sweet-stalk his victims. I feel sad for him. Blue, that is. Locked up. Another thing I know is stupid, but I think it all the same. It was me that put him there. Caught and caged him like an animal. I left him no option but to hang himself. I hate myself for thinkin’ this way, but it takes this bitter feeling I’ve got hangin’ around inside me and squashes it, like Mylanta settles indigestion. I feel better when the rage is flattened into a pool of sadness down deep. I’d dive right in, if I could.
‘So. Who’s gonna hold the little fella, then?’ The guide holds up the little croc and smiles. He’s black. Aboriginal black. I can tell by his face. Angular cheekbones and wide eye sockets. I want to be him. He looks happy and free and home amongst it all. I like him. I want to ask him what he thinks of his skin.
‘Come on. Don’t be shy.’
There’s a few kids in the front hustling each other, but no one wants to step forward. I’m pushing through the crowd, I’m lookin’ right at him and my hand is in the air. ‘I’ll have a go, mate,’ I say. I have no idea why, but I have to hold it.
‘Remember what I said, okay.’ He holds the croc towards me. ‘Get a good grip and don’t let go. He’ll wriggle. It’ll take you by surprise, but don’t let ’im go.’
I nod. I know what to do. He’s passed over in my hands and I’ve got one fist around his tail, one up around near his neck. He’s stronger than he looked. He’s cold and strange and limp. Then all of a sudden the tail thrashes and my heart is racing. I move, but I don’t let go.
‘Wooo,’ the guide says and he’s smiling, reaching over just in case I freak out.
I have this overwhelming feeling of power. If I let go I could hurt it real bad. I could squeeze and make it suffocate. I could hurl it through the bushes, into the big croc pens, and they’d snap him up like an entree. I’m no match for a croc my own size, but I could take my revenge on something that would grow up to be one. I could get in first, so to speak. For a second the urge is strong. I hold it out to the guide and he takes it, careful like. I can tell he takes good care of them. I push my way back through the crowd, wiping my hands on my pants. It’s almost as bad as Bait lick.
I’ve held out till Saturday night. But I can’t control it any more. I’m lookin’ around my room at the boomerang, didgeridoo, three tea towels, two stuffed crocodiles and five fridge magnets with my hand on my cock in the late orange light. I imagine Sally on top of me, but my mind puts bars around her. And when it’s over, quickly, all I can feel is the little croc in my hands. Slippery. Small. Wet.
14
It’s Sunday morning. I’m vaguely aware of the day but I’m not fully awake. There’s a knocking on my door and I open my eyes. The room is already orange.
‘You still asleep, Barra?’ The handle turns and the door opens slightly till it’s tight against the latch-chain. The handlelock doesn’t work. It’s Sally smiling through the gap in the door. Already I’m more awake. I unhook the chain and she walks inside. Her hair brushes my cheek.
‘What time is it?’ I ask.
‘Breakfast,’ she holds up a McDonald’s brown paper bag. She places it down, rustling, on my bed and pulls out everything that’s inside. Pancakes on a foam tray, bacon and egg burgers wrapped in paper. Two black coffees in a cardboard cup holder. Smells like hot chips. Everything from McDonald’s smells like hot chips when it’s been trapped in a paper bag.
Mum and I used to have hot chips at least three times a week. Mum would put so much salt on them that my eyes would water and shrivel up. She loved squirting vinegar over them, too, but I wouldn’t let her if we had to share the packet. Just thinking about chips with vinegar makes my mouth tang even now after all those years. The mind can forget a lot of things, but the body never lets go.
‘Thought you might like to go to Berry Springs this morning for a swim. You ever been there?’
I remember the brochure Cassie was fanning herself with at work.
Sally spreads the butter over the pancakes and pours every drop of the maple syrup on top. The pancakes are drowning and my mouth is watering. Sally licks her fingers.
‘Na.’
‘Right then,’ she says stacking up her fork with pancake. ‘That settles it.’ Her mouth is full and she raises her eyebrows at me and uses her plastic knife to point to the spare fork on the bed. I grab the fork and we’re both eating the pancakes from either end of the tray. There’s three pancakes and we share the middle one.
‘That’s unless you’ve got something better to do?’
‘Na. Sounds good.’ Sally unwraps the muffin and sips her coffee. The pancakes taste so good, I feel relaxed for a minute, until I realise I have no idea how to do what we’re doing. Friday night we...
‘I tell you what,’ she starts saying, ‘the sooner I get out of home, the better.’
It occurs to me that I don’t know all that much about her. I only know Sally in the context of the Croc Jumping and my room.
‘It’s good you’ve got your own place, Barra.’
I look around at my room and suddenly wish I hadn’t bought all that crap from the reptile park. Everything stuffed is laughing at me.
‘I see you’ve done some decorating.’ Sally’s smiling and pointing to all my dumb shit.
‘Yeah,’ I mumble, clearing my throat against the last of the pancake. ‘Went a bit stupid, really.’
Sally laughs. ‘Why not?’ she says definitely. ‘Life should be crazy, sometimes. Otherwise what’s the point in living?’
It makes me smile.
‘I’m glad you like the food.’
‘Can’t go wrong with McDonald’s.’
‘You got bathers, Barra?’
Shit. I’ve got boxer shorts and singlets and that’s about it.
‘Well, I’d be alright with you going in the nuddy, but the place is packed on the weekend.’
‘I’ll be right.’ The coffee isn’t bad.
‘How’d you do it, Barra? You know, get out of home?’
The question hits me like a panic and my mind goes blank.
She bites into her muffin.
‘You still live with your parents?’ I ask.
She shrugs her shoulders.
‘I couldn’t hang around any more. Didn’t seem right,’ I offer. ‘Gotta leave sometime.’
‘Oh,’ she says all of a sudden, ‘did you get my note?’ She doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘What did Bessy say?’
I swallow my coffee.
‘Come on, Barra, you should thank me.’
‘I’ve got his address.’
‘Bet ya didn’t think you’d find one of ’em so soon, hey? See,’ she continues, ‘Bessy is a friend of my mum’s and I’d heard that name before. I haven’t seen Bess in ages, but I knew she worked here on weekends.’
Sally is pretending to preen herself, her left hand fluffing an imaginary hair-do. ‘You gotta love me, Barra!’ Sally leans over and kisses me on the cheek. ‘I just wanted to do something for you, Barry.’
‘Listen,’ I find myself saying, ‘yesterday morning ... you left and ... I should have—’
‘Should have what?’ She shrugs. ‘It was nothing, Barra. Don’t read too much into things.’
It was nothing?
‘It was nice,’ she adds.
Sally gathers up the scraps of food and wrapping. ‘Get your gear, Barra, let’s get there before the crowds. Come on, you’ll love it.’
‘What time is it?’ I still haven’t found out.
‘What does it matter? Let’s just get up a
nd go.’
The radio in Sally’s car is busted but she’s got a portable CD player in the backseat. She likes Atomic Kitten. To be honest I’ve never heard of them before.
Berry Springs isn’t far from Humpty Doo and we have the windows wound all the way down. The wind keeps whipping Sally’s hair all over the place. Most of the time it is wrapped around various parts of her face and I wonder whether she can really see enough to keep driving. But she doesn’t seem to care.
She tried to get me to sing along with her, but thankfully, I’d never heard of the songs, and I won’t be pushed into singing in public. Even for Sally.
I desperately want to touch her but I can’t let myself go. I feel like I’ve got straps around my body. I wish I had a band shirt. Maybe it would make me braver. As it is I have to swim in my boxers and a singlet.
We park the car and walk from there on the dirt track through the gardens. On either side of us, dotted around the grassy areas, are picnic tables and small timber barbeque plates. It must be early because there aren’t many people around at all. In the far corner, smoke is rising from a back barbeque plate, like white mist, and the sounds of spitting timber and hissing flames crackle through the air. Something starts sizzling on the plate and the smoke changes and I can taste meat. There’s a variety of bird sounds, like they’re all talking to one another in different languages. One type of bird has a really loud, rising squeak with a popping sound at the finish.
Sally had towels strewn on the backseat of her car and I’ve got them slung over my shoulder. Our thongs clack against our feet as we walk.
The sound of rushing water becomes louder. Back in the picnic area, there was a faint sound of rushing water, but it’s louder as we wander along the path. I’m following Sally. She’s tucked her hair up in a band and her ponytail swings against her neck. She’s wearing a small pair of pink shorts and a tight blue T-shirt. The top of her bikini ties hang through the neck of her shirt at the back. I can’t keep my eyes from the movement of her hips.
There’s a set of steep concrete stairs, with a rail, at the end of the track. The air is cooler here and, as we keep going down, I can feel the cold creep up from the rushing water like a wave. The stairs end at a rectangular concrete pontoon over the water. On the far side of the pool is a small rushing waterfall. Above that is a small ledge where the water runs over the rocks. Further back is a fence that cuts across the running water to keep out bush debris. Leaves and rocks have built up in a thick wad around the bottom of the fence on the other side as the water rushes through the mesh.
The pool we’ve come to is the lower pool. There are more pools that join themselves in long, narrow streams between them. In the car Sally said she used to come here as a child with a rubber inflatable ring. Her father would take her right to the top pool and let her go. The current would carry her down the channels through each pool to this one at the end.
Sally turns and smiles at me. She strips off her shirt and dives right in. I hang the towels on the rail and sit on the edge of the pontoon. I watch her emerge from the water, a shower of droplets springing from her body.
‘Come on, Barra, get in!’
She disappears again. I let my feet touch the water and the cold shock of it rushes to my head. It’s hot already and I’m sweating, but the cold around my feet sends a chill through my spine. I stand up and jump.
If I stand in the right spot under the waterfall the water pummels my back muscles. I don’t ever remember feeling so relaxed. It’s a tricky thing, though, finding exactly the right spot. The rocks under the water are mossy and slippery and the force of the water is pushing me away. Sally is next to me. I catch flashes of her milky skin and coloured bathers underneath the white of the rushing water. There are warm patches in the water, too.
In the pool away from the waterfall, the water is clear and still except for small ripples where the current and momentum of the rushing water pushes it towards the bank. The rocks and moss and dirt on the bottom of the pool make the water look black, whereas the waterfall is a rush of white foam. Sally grabs my arm and I follow her, swimming breaststroke away from the waterfall. She swims away from the pontoon, where our towels are, to the side where the banks of the pool narrow into a channel of warmer, stiller water. Palm trees grow right on the edges of the water and hang down low across the surface. It’s dark at the bottom pool, which is almost totally enclosed with large trees sagging against each well above the surface. But along the channel, towards the next pool, patches of sunlight skip across the water, turning it sea-blue in places. In some patches, right underneath the outstretched frond of a palm, it looks green. The air becomes warmer as the channel opens into a larger pool. The sky opens up above it, where the sun beats down. This pool is bigger than the bottom pool, and on the side there’s a larger pontoon, more stairs and a rail.
Sally keeps swimming through and I follow.
A group of young kids arrive on the pontoon, laughing and jostling each other. Their towels are thrown without care and each of them dive-bombs into the water, jumping high, holding their legs to their bodies and landing with a thudding splash that sends water spurting high above the surface. Each of them breaks through the water, their heads like bobbing apples, laughing and calling out to each other. There must be six of them.
Sally turns around to look at me and swims on her back. Her mouth and chin disappear under the water and she comes up spraying a spurt of water towards me. I use my hand like a scoop to skip water at her, but it falls short. She smiles, though, turns around and swims breaststroke towards the next channel at the far end of the pool.
It occurs to me that I still have no idea what time it is, but it must be mid-morning. If I keep my head out of the water for too long I can feel the heat on my skin. The water feels like a cocoon against the outside world.
I catch sight of a croc sign at the edge of the pontoon. A warning that salties can inhabit the area, a caution not to swim anywhere in the region if the closure notices are in place.
I wonder who decides whether the water is safe for swimming or not, and how it’s worked out. How do you end up being the bloke that trawls the water for crocs?
I’m almost at the mouth of the next channel when I hear screaming from the pontoon. One of the kids is yelling and crying. Sally turns back and swims to me. She shrugs her shoulders and swims towards the kids.
The screaming boy is holding his foot and, when the other kids move, I see blood on the concrete. Sally is there first, launching out of the water effortlessly. She clears the kids with her hands and bends down towards the boy.
His face is black and his white eyes are squinting with the pain. Big, streaming tears roll down his cheeks. There’s a large piece of jagged green glass stuck in the bottom of his left foot.
‘You’ll be right, mate,’ Sally says confidently. She looks into the kid’s eyes and smiles. ‘I’ve done first aid.’
‘What’s your name?’ Sally asks him.
‘Tyson.’
‘Nice name,’ she says.
The other kids are standing behind their friend, towels wrapped around their bodies, water dripping on the ground and spreading in dark pools.
Sally grabs the end of the nearest towel and dabs around Tyson’s foot. He yelps and scrunches his lips inside his mouth, straining.
‘You all here by yourselves?’ she asks the others.
A tall, fair-skinned girl answers, ‘Na, we got people back up the barbies.’
Sally takes the piece of glass between her fingers. She looks on each side of it then pulls quickly. With her other hand, she presses the towel over the cut.
There’s a kid still holding onto the towel that is pressed to the cut, but Sally looks up and smiles at him and he lets the towel fall. She takes the bulk of the towel and wraps it around Tyson’s whole foot, pulling it as tightly as she can. It’s a rough job, the towel is way too big for such
a little wound, but the kid isn’t crying. It doesn’t take long before the tears on his face are dry. His eyes are red from the crying and his lips are pink. Crocs aren’t the only thing you’ve gotta watch out for. Drunken dickheads are next on the list.
Sally stands up and washes her hands in the water.
‘You’re in luck, Tyson. Barramundy here is really strong.’ She flicks her hand towards me. ‘He’ll carry you all the way back.’
The kid looks up at me. I can’t tell whether it’s a hopeful look or he’s worried by the prospect, but I’m in Sally’s hands and I bend down and pick him up. He isn’t that heavy, but I’m not that strong, really. My arms are more like twigs than branches.
The kids trail behind us, the ends of their towels dragging in the dirt. By the time we’ve walked up over the ridge and past the entrance to the stairs for the bottom pool, I’m completely dry.
Tyson feels like a dead weight in my arms, but Sally is walking beside me and my heart is racing.
Once we’re at the entrance to the picnic area, the kids run around us over towards the furthest barbeque area at the edge of the grass. There’s four or so adults and smoke snaking up from the barbeque plate. When the kids reach them, the adults look up and see us. One bloke jogs over and meets us on the way.
‘You right, boyo?’ the bloke says to Tyson.
Tyson looks up, his arms still around my neck and smiles. His eyes are all white again.
‘Thanks,’ the bloke says to us.
Tyson is put on a fold-out chair, with his leg up on another one. No one has anything to patch him up with except a few old bandaids that his mum finds rustling around in the bottom of her handbag. Sally uses a water bottle to clear away the blood and says the cut doesn’t look too deep. The bandaids go on and we’re invited to stay for lunch.
Sally is sitting on the grass with a beer in her hand, chatting to everyone like she’s known them forever. I haven’t said much.
‘Where do you all live?’ Sally asks.
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