Brown Skin Blue

by Belinda Jeffrey

  But they’ve got me. I can feel the truth of it around me, dragging me closer. The noose is around my whole body and I don’t fight it.

  It’s my boots that bring me round in the end. The feeling of my toes snug inside. The water rushing round them. They’re nothing, these boots. They won’t really save me from anything. But I still like the thought that they might.

  29

  I’ll tell you a few things about these crocs. These guys have expert senses. Colour and movement. So if you ever fall in to a river full of crocs, your only chance of surviving is to be as dark as the water and as dead as a log.

  Cassie is on the loudspeaker and I’m upstairs with the meat hook. ‘Come on Albert. I know who you are, you cheeky bugger. Come on over. Got a bit of meat for ya.’

  The speaker clicks and Cassie is quiet for a minute. Then she’s back on:

  Someone here just asked whether anyone has ever fallen in the river and survived. Well it just so happens that one person has. The only one we know of.

  Cassie thumps the roof with her stick. It’s the way she signals me:

  Young Barramundy, one of our workers – in fact the one up top feeding your crocs today – fell in a while back while he was fixing the jetty. The only thing that saved him was that he had no shirt on and his skin was as dark as the water. And he didn’t move. The current eventually washed him close to the bank and we were there with a net. But even he’ll tell you he’s bloody lucky. There ain’t no reason why these things happen.

  Cassie pauses while I dangle the pig meat over the side and Albert jumps for his dinner. I feel the jerk on the line and smile as his great chompers clamp around the meat. Pig meat, not Barramundy meat. In a strange way the crocs have freed me. I left my fear in the river that day. It washed me clean in dirty water. Nothing’s changed on the outside. I’m still the same. Everything that happened still happened. And everything that’s going to happen is still going to happen.

  Mum died the day after I fell in the river. Boof sent the package to the hospital that morning but she never opened it. They sent it back to me, unopened. Just as well. They wouldn’t have understood what was inside.

  Contents of the package:

  3 blue cocktail umbrellas

  1 wooden spoon – dug up from the dirt (caravan park site number 5 – still there)

  1 crocodile-skin wallet

  1 Top End Croc Jumping brochure

  1 list of fathers – all names crossed out.

  I covered Mum’s grave with cocktail umbrellas. I opened up every one of them and planted them all around the mound of dirt. Every different colour I could find.

  Sally was with me all the day after they pulled me out of the river. She sat with me at the hospital while they stitched up a few nicks here and there in my leg. Wasn’t the crocs but them dragging me out of the river that did it. She stayed most of the night because they wouldn’t let me go in case shock set in. She didn’t say much and neither did I. But I gave her the keys to the car and the van and said they were hers. She could go wherever she wanted. She didn’t need Bob or me. She could have herself. She hugged me and said she wasn’t going to leave. But in the end she did.

  I don’t know what happened to her, but I hope one day she’ll send me a letter. I’ve thought a lot about what happened with Sally. The baby and Bob. And while I never actually asked her, I don’t think she ever told Bob. I think I’m the only one who knew.

  Sometimes I imagine being grown up and her kid coming lookin’ for me. My name on his list. Barramundy. He’ll be hoping the bloke with my name isn’t his father for sure. There’s a story about him, though, Sally will say, and it goes like this ... It makes me smile to think of things like that. Because the world goes on. Rivers flow, floods come and go. And some things just don’t have answers. I still feel the noose around my neck, sometimes, but I know it’s not real.

  I’d like to thank you for choosing Top End Croc Jumping Cruises today and to thank you for bein’ on my final run. It’s my last day at work today before I take time off to have this baby.

  I can hear clapping and cheering underneath me. We haven’t got a replacement for Cassie yet, but I’ll be the main man with the meat hook. Boof will take over in the office and Bob will still do his thing.

  I don’t hate Bob as much as I used to. I don’t like him, either, but he’s just around. There’s a new girl in the café. Rose. She’s an old goat. Grumpy, stubborn, ancient and ruthless. Just the kind of worker Cassie and Boof need. But there’s no fear things will happen like with Sally a second time around. I don’t think even Bob is that desperate. Though I’ve been wrong before.

  The reporter that came lookin’ for me about the sexual abuse investigation caught up with me in the end. Except he came lookin’ for the boy that survived the crocs, not the one that survived Blue. Boof saw him comin’ – they have a look about them, he says – a satchel on his shoulder and an open, palm-sized notebook in his hand. Boof looked at me then stepped out of the café and met him on the ground in front of the office. ‘I told you before, the kid you’re lookin’ for is gone.’

  ‘Na, mate,’ the reporter said, ‘I’m lookin’ for the boy who fell in the river.’

  As the movie Pitch Black neared the end all I wanted to know was whether Riddick was going to do the right thing and save the others. And you couldn’t tell one way or the other until the very last moment. The woman in charge gets to the ship and begs Riddick to go back for the remaining two survivors who are trapped in a cave with no source of light. He tries to convince her just to save herself and instead she says that she’d die for them. When it came down to it she was prepared to die for them.

  Riddick is attacked by the beasts and he’s almost beaten. She lifts him up and tells him not to give up. She won’t let him die either. At that moment a beast spears her from behind and she’s dead. In the end she saved him and Riddick says she was supposed to die for them, not him. He could look a beast, with blue blood, in the eye and say, bring it on, but it took another person, fearless enough to risk her own life for his, to slay the beast inside himself. In her own way my mum stood in front of the beast of my own life in the only way she could and she died making sure I didn’t know.

  It’s too easy to keep quiet and say nothing. It’s easy to hide in the shadows and stay shut up inside yourself. What’s hard is having the guts just to say something at all.

  I walked out of the café to stand next to Boof.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ I said to the reporter.

  ‘Everythin’, mate. Start from the beginning and tell me everythin’.’

  So I did.

  I’m throwing the meat to the kite birds. They’re circling around the boat, diving and catching in their beaks. Sometimes I see their talons, long and sharp on their feet, but I don’t see embers and I don’t hear McNabm Blue’s name inside my head anymore. It’s all out there in the river.

  ‘Right,’ Cassie says, standing awkwardly up from her chair.

  It’s Friday drinks and Cassie’s farewell. The boats are lapping on the water, the sun’s sinking and it’s still like a bloody oven. That’s the Top End.

  ‘Let’s get to this before I go off and have this baby.’

  Not long after all the hoopla settled down after my brush with the crocs, Boof and Cassie took the boat out one day, further up river outside the borders of their Croc Jumping permit. They found five new crocs in one neat stretch of the river, which Boof swore black and blue he’d never seen before. They were re-thinking the arrangement of the business anyway – with Cassie and the baby coming – and wanted to divide the run into three boats and cut down their own workload. So they decided to put on a new boat and extend the run. The government granted an extension of their permit, Rob and Victoria came on board with their boat, Thistle, and all that has to be done now, before t
hey start work on Monday, is to name the new crocs.

  ‘Over to you, Barramundy,’ she says. Cassie nods towards me and I stand up. I knew this was coming but my hands are sweating all the same. I wipe my hair back from my face and reach into my shirt pocket for a scrap of paper.

  ‘Carn, Barry,’ Boof says, ‘those crocs didn’t take your balls, mate.’

  Boof is smiling and I laugh with him. He’s takin’ to jibbing me lately and I like it.

  ‘They wouldn’t dare, mate,’ I reply. ‘Though I’d be careful where you go standing. I’m not so sure they wouldn’t try it on with you.’

  Boof laughs.

  ‘You watch your mouth, Barramundy. I might be knocked up but I could still take a bloke out.’ Cassie holds her hands up in a pretend boxing pose.

  ‘Come on, let him speak,’ Boof says.

  I know this means something. Asking me to name the crocs is their way of saying that they want me to stay and I’m a part of the place.

  I clear my throat. ‘Right,’ I begin. ‘Well. I feel real privileged that you asked me to name the crocs. I mean that,’ I add.

  When Boof came back that day after spotting the new crocs, he said to me, ‘Go on Barramundy, take a bloody guess how many there are!’

  I didn’t need to guess because I just knew. I knew who they were.

  I’m thinking about being out there in the water and everything I let go of and hung on to, and how most of what happened inside and out of me I’ll never be able to explain to anyone. The knowledge of Blue being my father doesn’t bother me as much as it might and I’ve got a new respect for my mum because she never told me, even if she sent me on a wild croc chase. Some stories don’t need telling and I bet there are rivers of them all over.

  The piece of paper in my hand is the same piece of paper I’ve had with me ever since I came here and maybe this is what it’s always been meant for. And then I realise why naming crocs is such a big deal. You see a croc out in the wild and it takes you by surprise, it’s all untamed terror right there. Everything wild and uncontrollable about nature is like a mirror where you see your own small self in a big bloody world. Cyclones can tear you to shreds, bullets and war can reduce you to a crying child, alone and afraid. Raw, untamed nature can turn your own determination into fool’s hope and the sea and all her treasures can rub your courage thin. But somehow names put nature on our terms and sometimes that’s all a person can do. Cyclone Tracy, Albert, Mavis, Elvis, Scoop, Sweetheart, Blue.

  ‘So. Here they are. Teabag, Lovejack, Stumpy, Boomboom and Toucan.’

  ‘Croc names for sure,’ Cassie says, rubbing her hands over her stomach.

  ‘Out with their stories, Barramundy,’ Boof says.

  Rose coughs and sniffs and generally looks disinterested. She checks her watch.

  ‘There’s always a story,’ Cassie says in Rose’s direction.

  I open and close my mouth like I’m a fish out of water and make a show of trying to swallow.

  ‘Ask the river,’ is all I say.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I could not have written this book without the support, insight and honesty of my husband, Michael.

  Many thanks are due to Sophie Hamley, Kristina Schulz, Jody Lee, Madonna Duffy and University of Queensland Press. Mike Lefcourt – for your particular care and enthusiasm for reading every version of the manuscript – Laurie Lefcourt and Cameron Lefcourt, The Queensland Writers Centre, my wonderful family and friends.

  Information on ‘Sweetheart’ courtesy of Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Thanks also to Rod Parry.

  ‘Great Southern Land’ – Iva Davies © 1982 EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited (ABN 85 000 063 267) PO Box 35, Pyrmont, NSW 2009 International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  James Roy

  TOWN

  Winner NSW Premier’s Award for Young People’s Literature

  (Ethel Turner Prize)

  Shortlisted Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction

  Winner of the Golden Inky Teenage Choice Award)

  (insideadog.com.au)

  CBCA Notable Book for Older Readers

  In this award-winning novel, James Roy uses the short story to explore the lives of the young residents of an Australian town and the social tapestry of their community. This town doesn’t have a name. But if it seems familiar, it’s because we recognise the people who walk its streets.

  From the serendipity of an unexpected moment of connection, to the sadness of leaving home and the pain of the desperate decisions we make, these stories take a personal and uncompromising look at life. Love and loss, grief, humour and passion. Hope and hopelessness.

  Thirteen linked stories, spanning a year in the lives of thirteen young people, from a town near you.

  ‘James Roy’s latest offering is superb! This is Australian young adult fiction at its best and ... has the potential to become a contemporary Australian classic.’

  Australian Bookseller+Publisher

  ‘...another exceptional piece of work...’

  Good Reading

  Karen Foxlee

  THE ANATOMY OF WINGS

  Winner 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize – Best First

  Book South East Asia and Pacific Region

  Winner of the Dobbie Award

  Shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award

  Ten-year-old Jennifer Day lives in a small mining town full of secrets. Trying to make sense of the sudden death of her teenage sister Beth, she looks to the adult world around her for answers.

  As she recounts the final months of Beth’s life, Jennifer sifts through the lies and the truth, but what she finds are mysteries, miracles and more questions. Was Beth’s death an accident? Why couldn’t Jennifer – or anyone else – save her?

  Through Jennifer’s eyes, we see one girl’s failure to cross the threshold into adulthood. We see a family slowly falling apart. In this awardwinning novel, Karen Foxlee captures perfectly the essence of growing up in a small town and the complexities and absurdities of family life.

  ‘An exceptional novel.’

  Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Riveting.’

  Good Reading

  Elizabeth Fensham

  GOODBYE JAMIE BOYD

  ‘Love’s not a cake,’ I say. ‘You don’t carve it into pieces ‘til there’s none left; it’s more like the Magic Pudding-the more you use of it, the more it grows.’

  Anna and Jamie Boyd are inseparable, the brother and sister team who face the world, their family and school together. Their love for each other is bigger than anything else they know and stronger than any ordinary bond.

  It is Jamie who challenges Anna throughout her life; Jamie who drives her to do things and makes her grow up; Jamie who dares her to jump off Ben Hall’s Rock, smoke weed and drive fast round Carrot Wash Bend. So when Anna kills her brother, what follows next is a revelation to all, most especially to Anna.

  ‘This powerful verse novel, written by one of Australia’s acclaimed authors, is such an important read for young adults. To read it is to heighten your understanding of the mental suffering that many young people endure ... A most inspiring story.’

  Good Reading

  Back Cover Material

  My mum’s skin is white, my skin

  is brown and I have a blue birthmark.

  Two secrets rule my life.

  One is something

  I need to know and the other

  is something I need to forget.

  They won’t let me go.

  ***

  ***

  Some people say you can’t death roll with a beast that has already survived a million years and live to tell th
e story. Or can you?

  First published 2009 University of Queensland Press

  PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

  www.uqp.com.au

  © Belinda Jeffrey 2009

  This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Ebook produced by Read How You Want

  Typeset by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane

  Cover design: Design by Committee

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available from the National Library of Australia

  www.nla.gov.au

  Brown Skin Blue/Belinda Jeffrey.

  ISBN (pbk) 9780702237133

  ISBN (pdf) 9780702245428

  ISBN (epub) 9780702245459

  ISBN (kindle) 9780702245435