Big River, Little Fish

by Belinda Jeffrey

  He stops just beyond the line of cars and sits down on the ground though Biscuit remains standing. She has a dress like Hannah’s, only hers is pale yellow. A thin layer of tulle covers the thicker fabric of the skirt and it flutters. Tom stands, realising she won’t want to dirty her dress. Funny how Hannah never minds that sort of thing. Perhaps she’s different with Harry, he thinks.

  ‘Thanks for the drink,’ Biscuit says, sipping her raspberry cordial again. ‘And the dance. I’m glad you came,’ she adds before taking another drink.

  ‘No worries,’ Tom says.

  ‘Heard you started shearing at the Guthries’.’

  Tom finds himself telling her all sorts of things, then. About Murray, his friends, the sheep. About Mrs Cath and Jimbo. In between it all, she laughs like punctuation and Tom likes it.

  ‘Wish my life was that exciting,’ she says. She rolls the empty glass between her palms.

  ‘Want another dance?’

  Inside the hall, Tom sees Marge and Ted dancing on the other end of the line. Marge smiles at him and he waves. Even Miss Pinny is dancing, Tom sees. He squeezes Biscuit’s shoulder and she giggles. Dancing with Larry no less and the only bit of it that seems right is they’re both as unusual and prickly as the other.

  ‘Brave of Mrs Guthrie to come,’ Biscuit says.

  ‘What’s your meaning?’

  ‘Well, you know. Not really polite in her condition. At least that’s what my mum says.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom says, feeling defensive. He sees Mrs Guthrie and his pa sitting together as he circles the floor with Biscuit.

  ‘I think, good on her. I wouldn’t want to miss out. Mind you if she had a husband it would be different. Says my mum.’

  Tom stops dancing and Biscuit looks surprised. ‘I think I’ll sit this one out,’ Tom says, leaving Biscuit and heading for his pa.

  Biscuit fiddles with her hair before running from the dance floor.

  Tom stands in front of Mrs Guthrie and straightens his shirt. Then his tie. He holds out his hand. ‘Would you like this dance?’

  ‘Why, Tom,’ Mrs Guthrie says, glancing towards Oliver. She holds a hand over her stomach. ‘That’s very kind–’

  ‘Please?’ he says.

  Mrs Guthrie looks around her before nodding. She stands and lets Tom take her to the floor.

  Tom can feel everyone looking. Staring. And he doesn’t care. He’s had the cane rapped over his hands because of what the likes of Harry, T-Bone and Wilson said about her giving him lessons. The song finishes and he leads her back to her seat.

  ‘Thank you, Tom,’ she says sitting down, her cheeks flushed.

  There’s a noise at the main door, blokes crowding around the entrance. Tom looks over and Oliver leans forward on his chair to get a look.

  ‘Ferry’s gone,’ Tom hears. He looks at his pa.

  ‘Quick, give us a hand.’

  Oliver is off his seat, rushing to the door as fast as he can. Tom and Mrs Guthrie follow him out of the door, pushing their way through the throng of people. The band starts up again.

  Outside a group of men run down towards the ferry. It’s close to the bank, though it hasn’t quite made it. It’s leaning to the side, the back corner end of her is in the water and a truck is already half under. Swanson has a rope tied around the bumper bar of the truck and it’s tied to the other side of the jetty. Even from the bank, you can hear the timber creaking and the sound of the cables straining. The engine whirring.

  Oliver is taking off his jacket, untying his shoes. ‘Tom, you’ll have to drive them home,’ he says. He looks at Kate. ‘Go with Tom, okay?’

  Mrs Guthrie brings her hands up to her mouth. She takes a few steps forward after Oliver, but he’s fast down the bank. The last sight of him is standing, bare-chested, on the top of the levee bank before he dives in the water.

  Something you learn being around a flooding river long enough is, while she might look safe enough from the surface, there’s no telling what’s underneath. Snags, trees, half a damn house. Everything ripped up and swept up can get tossed and buried. An undertow can pull you away faster than you can swim. That’s what Tom’s thinking as his pa goes under.

  Mrs Guthrie clutches her stomach and Tom takes her arm. He leads her up the street and back to the car and helps her into the passenger seat. Sirens go off after he closes the door. Four blasts. Four places along the levee bank the river has broken through. The hall empties in a mush of bodies and Tom pushes through trying to find Hannah. Biscuit tries to wave him over, but he moves around the edges, pushing through arms and elbows. He can’t find her and he starts to panic. He pushes through to Biscuit. ‘You seen Harry?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Tom!’

  Tom moves away. He makes for the side door and runs between the cars. Engines start up, people drive home. Men move on down to the levee lines with shovels. Their good shirts rolled up as high as they will go and thoughts of a quiet night gone from their minds.

  Tom traces the building from the side around the back. He sees the shadow of bodies against the wall. He stops. ‘Harry,’ he says. The bodies stop moving. Tom walks closer. ‘Hannah?’

  There’s a rustling of clothing. Someone clears their throat and a body steps back from the shadow of the wall into a patch of light at the grass edge. Miss Pinny. Her lipstick is smudged over her face as though her lips have grown to twice their size. Tendrils of hair have come loose from her bun and she hurriedly buttons her blouse. Tom can’t move. He doesn’t know what to say. He thinks he should turn around and pretend that he hasn’t seen anything, but he can’t. Miss Pinny almost trembles. She looks back to the figure still against the wall and runs in the opposite direction. Tom waits. The other figure coughs. He turns. Larry walks past Tom, his face down.

  ‘Sure you can drive, Tom?’ Hannah says.

  Tom doesn’t answer. He may not be able to read and write, but driving, anything to do with cars. She shouldn’t have to even ask.

  Mrs Guthrie is quiet beside him. Looking out to the road.

  Larry is quiet in the back.

  Hannah is the only one talking. And after a while, when they’re past Big Bend Road, even she is quiet.

  They’re not quite all the way home when the sirens sound again. Two sirens going off in quick succession means everyone who can walk or carry a shovel should get to the levee. Tom checks the shearers’ quarters and no one is there.

  ‘Better do my bit,’ Larry says. ‘I’ll walk in.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Tom says. ‘You start and I’ll follow.’

  ‘You okay Mrs Guthrie?’ Tom says, walking into the house.

  ‘Sure,’ she says weakly, sitting down on the couch. ‘Your pa will be okay,’ she says as if Tom had asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you need anything? Before I help out on the levee?’

  ‘No, Tom. We’ll be fine.’

  Tom thinks about checking on Hannah, but the levee is more important. The wind is whipping up again and Old Mother could just break through everything. Everyone has to do their bit to hold her back.

  Tom changes, quickly, throwing his good clothes onto his cot. He wonders where Murray and the others have gone. They’d have heard the sirens. Even Jimbo must have gone with them. Tom puts on his boots, leaving the laces undone, and runs outside.

  ‘Tom!’

  Tom kills Harley’s engine.

  ‘Tom!’

  He hops off and runs back up to the house.

  ‘Mrs Cath,’ says Mrs Guthrie, breathless. ‘I can’t find her anywhere.’

  Tom looks around. It’s a useless gesture. As if by looking she’ll appear out of the dark.

  ‘She could have gone with Jimbo,’ Tom says.

  ‘Her bed has been slept in.’

  ‘I’ll look for her.’

  ‘I’ll
come with you.’

  ‘No. I’ll do it,’ Tom says, thinking about what his pa would say if he were here.

  ‘I insist. I’m not useless. I have to do something.’

  ‘Where’s H–’ Tom starts saying. He stops himself. ‘Come on.’

  TED

  September 1956

  Ted can’t believe how fast the water’s breaking through and he feels the force of Old Mother crashing against him. He loses his footing and slips against the garage door. Water rushes over his feet, his knees, his legs. It bubbles up into his mouth as he fumbles for a handhold. He rolls over onto his knees to balance his weight and he stands, slowly, raising one knee up at a time.

  He glances around what he can see of the town. Sirens are blasting, torchlights and gas lanterns pricking through the dark like earth-stars. Ted feels like the balance of his life is slipping, tipping. Something draining from him quickly and it surprises him with its urgency. He understands himself as a finite creature in that moment and, like an animal, he takes hold of what’s left in his teeth. He grimaces as he stands, there is pain through his body, though he can’t pinpoint exactly where.

  ‘Marge!’ he calls. In all the confusion, with the dance and the ferry and Old Mother crashing through the levee banks, Ted lost sight of where Marge was. He saw the torrent of water crashing through the levee closest to the garage and he ran towards it. He can’t remember where Marge went.

  There is no reply and Ted gropes along the slippery wall, his fingers sliding over the corrugations in the iron until the ground rises and his thighs clear the water. He pushes through, down the side of the garage, to the back door of the house.

  Water rushes in from what seems to be every direction and, already, their possessions have been up-rooted and swirl around the room. She seems to take photographs and plates and carry them on her watery hands through the doors. Ted scrambles through the water, grabbing what he can. He places their wedding photograph on top of the leadlight kitchen cabinet, the picture of Tom when he was two.

  In the lounge room, the grandfather clock leans over and the pendulum bangs against the side of the cabinet. That clock has kept perfect hour for thirty years, but it’s no match for Old Mother; she’s a destroyer of everything, even time.

  Ted can hear yelling out on the street and realises that there’s little he can do in the house and he’s of more use down at the levees trying to hold her back. He gathers the rest of the photographs from the top of the sideboard near the lounge room window and removes the albums from the top drawer. He gathers them all up and leaves.

  Outside, water rushes in through the garage door and Ted glances inside. He takes hold of the door and wades in, pushing past a car sitting on top of the grease-pit, to an old cupboard at the back of the shed. There’s a tin in the back of the cupboard and Ted hasn’t thought about it for so long. It’s been tucked away for years and, until tonight, he’d all but forgotten it ever existed.

  It was Marge who had made Ted hide that tin away saying it was better for their boy to make a clean start. Only increases the pain having things reminding you of what’s back there, what you can’t change. But he sees it differently now, how they could have given him everything long ago and it might have brought him some peace. It occurs to Ted, only now, that Lil’s death has held them hostage to their own loss and fear too long. As if by pretending, by ignoring the manner of Tom’s beginning, he’d belong to them all the more. They are the ones who’ve had it backwards, Ted realises as he tucks Lil’s tin under his arm. You can’t push a boy forwards by holding his past away from him. Perhaps, in knowing you’ve been loved from the grave, you can love life all the more.

  ‘Some nights I see our babies,’ Marge said to him before Tom came. ‘They call to me, Ted. In my dreams I can touch their fingers and they’re more real to me than anything I take hold of while I’m awake.’

  ‘Then you should hold them while you can,’ Ted had said to her. ‘Because the morning will see them gone soon enough.’

  First few weeks Tom was with them, she was afraid to go to sleep for fear he wasn’t real and wouldn’t be there when she woke up.

  OLIVER

  September 1956

  ‘Pull the bastard,’ Swanson says, his arms straining on the rope.

  Oliver, wet through, pulls with him and the truck moves slightly. Metal scrapes and creaks, but the truck is too heavy. There are three other blokes – out of their cars – pulling on the rope, too, plus the truck driver. The rope burns through Oliver’s hands and his bad leg slides on the wet timber, which slopes down towards the river with the weight of the truck. A crowd has gathered on the bank. They’re shouting encouragements, but there’s little they can do. They could take their chance and swim to the ferry, but too many men in the water could increase the danger if the truck slides over.

  The ferry lurches and Swanson yells. His hands come away from the rope and he holds them to his chest. The truck slides closer to the edge.

  The other three cars begin to slide closer to the truck and the combined weight is too much for the men holding the rope. They each let go, sliding forward as the ferry crashes into the water. The truck goes over the edge and there’s a release of weight. The ferry engine grinds louder and there’s the smell of burning metal and smoke as the wheel spins and the metal cables tighten. The ferry lurches towards the bank and then stops before inching forward as another car goes in the water. The ferry reacts by lurching back and Oliver is thrown against the cabin where he sees the back gate snap clean off the ferry. Thunder cracks overhead and rips through the sky.

  ‘Bloody bastard,’ Swanson says, running towards the remaining two cars with more rope. The other men follow him, taking the end of the rope and tying it to the car bumpers. Oliver skids on the deck. He claws his way around the cabin wall and inside the door where he takes the wheel. He kicks the engine to full and smoke hisses in the rain that begins to come down. Sparse, heavy pellets at first before giving way to a steady stream of rain. The wind hammers it against the iron sheeting of the engine house and Oliver wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. The engine struggles against the uneven weight of the load. She’s likely carrying some form of debris underneath her or something is hooked over the cables, but the only thing Oliver can do is drive her to the bank before she gives out completely.

  Beside the ferry, the truck and car sink quickly with a spray of bubbles. The top bonnet of the truck is visible for a while as Old Mother whips the ferry like a fish tail. The water’s too high for the suspension of the cables now that the water is level with the concrete anchors on the bank.

  The crowd on the bank have cleared to a small gathering of men, mostly, braving the rain. Flood lights, donated by the Salvation Army in Brighton, light up a patch of sky just beyond the hall and post office where the levee must be most at risk. The sirens sound again and a few Ferguson tractors appear over the mound of the road.

  ‘Come on,’ Oliver says, willing the ferry to make it. ‘Just get us there.’

  Swanson swears and curses. The men on board the ferry, including the driver of the truck and car now under water, strain to hold the last two cars on deck.

  The ferry is close to the bank. Oliver idles the engine and jumps into the water between the edge of the ferry and the bank, sinking into water and mud up to his armpits. He clambers up the bank, slipping on the mud, which hacks off in wet clumps and falls into the water. His arms bulge with the effort of dragging himself clear, with his bad leg unable to grab a foothold.

  ‘We need a ramp,’ he shouts to the men still holding vigil at the bank.

  They clear off, running up the street, and Oliver catches his breath. The ferry is more stable, flatter, though she still leans to the side, and the men don’t have to struggle so hard to keep the cars from sliding.

  Planks of wood and sheets of iron are laid on top of each other from the ferry over the water to the bank.
Ted appears with a drill and secures the ends of the makeshift ramp with bolts on the ferry and on the bank. Oliver nods his thanks and tests the ramp. In truth, it looks a miserable job but there’s no other option.

  Swanson leans inside the first car and shifts it to neutral in order to push it towards the ramp. At the edge, he jumps inside, starts the car and flattens his foot on the accelerator, driving straight across the ramp, smoke skidding off the wheels and blowing through the exhaust. The timber and iron buckles and heaves, but the car crosses over the ramp and onto land. A few men whistle and clap though the sound is drowned in the rain. The second car approaches and the driver hesitates before driving across but just before the car makes the bank, the left-hand-side ramp cracks. The exhaust pumps smoke into the rain and the engine revs and the left tyres spin in the water. The wheels suck up mud which sprays into the rain. The ferry lurches again and Swanson and the other men rush to the rear of the car, pushing her from behind.

  ‘Come on,’ Oliver whispers.

  ‘Get the Ferguson!’ Ted calls back towards the hall where men work the levee bank.

  A Ferguson appears from behind the hall, bouncing down the road towards the water. The driver leaves the tractor idling, jumping down from the cab. Oliver sees that it’s Murray Black, looping a chain around the car’s bumper. He ties off the chain, jumps back into the cab, and shifts the gears into reverse. The car jolts and lurches, then moves up over the lip of the bank, rights itself, and trails out of the water.

  Swanson and Oliver are both breathing heavily. Oliver looks back to the ferry, which sits just off the bank. Half of it in the water, the other half keeping just above the water line. The ramp is washed away already and the river has come up as high as the ferry buttress posts. The remaining drivers jump clear of the deck to the riverbank.