We. Are. Family.

by Paul Mitchell

  It had been built on a crawl space foundation and the new owners couldn’t figure out why the walls were cracking. Stump-ing problem was the usual diagnosis. Like all the other explora-tory surgeons before him, one bloke delved into the crawl space to check the struts. All fine. But while he was down there, the halogen lamp exposed the outline of a skeleton on the cement base. It looked like graffiti, scratched in before the wood struts were laid.

  ‘They decided to take a look, Peter, and cut it open...’

  As Lee told the story, Peter could see the workers slicing into the concrete with powerful buzz saws. They had been careful not to dislodge the remains. They had worked in silence and been meticulous. They had been respectful of Joe Stevenson, apparently.

  ‘I let mum cry on my shoulder.’

  He told Peter he’d thought of a million things to say and a million reasons not to say them.

  ‘I didn’t ask her if the people’s house was okay now. I knew it would be.’

  14. Simon Stevenson

  He made himself a deal: if the family walking the slipway approached his jetty, Simon would personally help them aboard. They’d be his last fare for the day. On ‘Cruising Easy’s Daintree Croc Tour’.

  The family approached and he made good on his deal; he clomped his fat work boot onto the jetty and took the mother’s hand. There was no harm in being generous. Plus, she was gorgeous. A natural beauty, holding her baby boy. Well, not really a baby. Simon was no judge but he reckoned the kid in tiny sneakers was about eighteen months old. The toddler’s mum wore no make-up. There was no fancy hair-do or jewellery. Just smooth, tanned skin and deep-set eyes. And there was something South American about those full lips. Her chunk of a husband followed her, steering two older kids. Simon let go of the beauty’s soft palm. She smiled, thanked him, and took hold of the boat’s slim railing.

  ‘Crocs can’t get in, can they?’

  ‘Nah, Cruisin Easy’s safe as houses.’

  She carried her child to the bench seat. Her cream dress showed the faint outline of polka-dot underwear. Simon had been dog-tired before, useless as old gravy. Now the Daintree was glassy and the mangroves full of Grey Whistlers and Fan-tails, chirping and having a ball. Simon perched himself behind the boat’s pirate ship-style wheel, and ran his hand through his wreck of hair. The family got organized, pulled sunscreen and water bottles from bags. The husband had a big nose. He was pale-skinned and younger than the beauty. And he’d seen too much city gym time. His brand new straw hat was too small. Despite his bulging shoulders, he had long, spindly fingers. He was probably one of those tech heads, Simon thought.

  The bloke said he was a plumber.

  ‘More management these days than anything.’

  What a drone of a voice. From under his straw hat he peered for crocs through the onboard binoculars. Wanker. The boat was still tied to the jetty. The kids, the boy in a baseball cap and the girl in a lime dress, they weren’t the mother’s, no way. She was much too interested in the baby, playing with plastic drinking cups on the hull floor.

  ‘Are you from up this way?’ she asked Simon.

  Her voice was caramel with a lick of dark chocolate. She adjusted her cotton hat and put on bumblebee sunglasses. Simon saw himself in them.

  ‘No, from Mexico.’

  She looked nonplussed.

  ‘You know, from Victoria, south of the border?’ he explained. ‘I was in Gippsland, Westmore, few other places. Came up to Queensland, Rockhampton mainly. Fishing boats. Now I’m here. Just getting further north. Be off the end of Cape York next.’

  She smiled as Simon took the ropes from the jetty knobs and coiled them on deck. The beauty put a floppy hat on the nappy-filler. The kid whined. She made sure the other kids put sunscreen on, too, and asked Straw Hat if he was wearing anyway.

  ‘Yeah, I’m right,’ he snapped at her.

  She was only asking, you tool.

  It wasn’t that hot anyway. At least not for Simon. Heat was different in Queensland. It got into your bones, then it was your bones. Then your bones slowed down. Simon never thought his legs would get so brown or weathered. His dirty socks, wound down at the boot lip, were part of him. Thick wool hinted that trouble lurked nearby. Something might bite. They said Danger! to thong-wearing passengers. And that kept the women all ears for his onboard commentary.

  He puttered the boat from the jetty and decided he’d better win the husband over.

  ‘Had my ex-wife on the last tour before you blokes...’

  He didn’t add that Fiona came, under sufferance, just to show him his son, Ryan. Who was suddenly interested in him after God knows how many years.

  ‘The boss suggested a few places I could drop her off...’

  Straw Hat held the binoculars to his chest and couldn’t hide a smirk. He looked away before the big kids saw him and he studied the sky. It was big, blue and open. Trees dropping the first frangipanis of the season into the river.

  ‘Looks like a Balinese wedding,’ Simon observed. The beauty tried to get her husband’s attention, but he was all eyes through the binoculars, searching for crocs. Wondering if he’d get his money’s worth. I’ll give it to you, Simon thought, don’t worry about that.

  There’s no other way to see a croc but in its natural habitat. It’s a dead-eyed terrorist with a Neo Jurassic head, boogie boarding towards you. And everyone wants to see a croc on their Daintree cruise. If they don’t, they tell their friends, Hey, I went with Cruisin Easy and I saw diddlysquat. Don’t go with them, go with the other mob, Bottom Feeders.

  The ones with ‘croc cam’ stuck to the arse of their boat.

  That bloody camera. Simon wished the crocs would swallow it. But as Tony ‘Bottom Feeder’ Bourne kept telling him, ‘They’re not just killing machines, Simon. They’re curious creatures.’

  The bloody things only nudged at the camera with their snouts. Simon wondered how curious they’d be if someone accidentally pushed el suavo Bourne in the river.

  Simon didn’t get why southerners thought croc cam was a good deal. It was no way to see an evolutionary masterpiece, an animal that hadn’t changed in two hundred million years because it hadn’t needed to. It was a case of survival of the killer. A croc was stronger than ten blokes could ever get in a lifetime of pumping iron. A salty crunched its jaws through wild pigs, rabbits, possums, sheep—whatever—then thunder-crashed its way through still water and mangroves. If his catch was too big to swallow, he’d wrestle it into the undergrowth. Thrash it round until a limb snapped off. The way Simon wound off a chewed fingernail.

  The Daintree knew no other royalty. There were mangroves, pink and white frangipanis and wide-winged water birds. Spiders spun domed webs that sat like morning mist in the branches. But there was nothing like his royal highness, King Happy Jaws. He had no one to fear.

  Simon brought the boat close to some frangipanis. The family touched them and smelt the petals. Then he shunted them to a few more spots along the banks. He let the motor idle and chatted about how the Daintree forest supported its snakes, insects, spiders and plants. All primed to snare the unthinking southerner. The kids whispered to Straw Hat and he yelled at them. God knows why. Surely not for talking while Simon was? That’s what Simon’s father had always done. Straw Hat’s yell made the beauty jump, but she didn’t dare cross her husband. She hugged her baby instead.

  Simon took a good look at Straw Hat’s pink shaving rash and his glum lips. Those frown lines and the red puffs on the tops of his high cheekbones. All good targets for a right cross or a left hook.

  It was time for action. Simon motored the family to Scooter’s hideaway.

  Scooter was an insurance croc. It was right on change of season, which meant high tides and no crocs. The bastards, especially the bigger ones, were out of sight. Good for Bottom Feeders, no good for Cruisin Easy. So it was thank Christ for Scooter. He was a young, two-metre male whose favourite hiding spot left part of his leather above the waterline. And helped Simon pay his rent. />
  ‘Wow, look Dad! It’s a croc. Look!’

  Straw Hat joined his son at the railing. He pulled his camera out and started videoing. He got some nice close ups of Scooter trying to hide in the bushes, his long mouth fixed in a grin.

  Scooter knew the drill.

  Straw Hat managed a smile. He filmed his kids’ wide-eyed reactions. He got some shots of his nervous wife at the railing.

  ‘Wow! Isn’t he amazing?’ she gasped.

  Simon explained he knew it was Scooter by the band of black markings on his right leg.

  ‘He’s only a pup, but he’ll be a powerhouse one day,’ Simon told her, pumping his chest out at the wheel. The beauty bent to pick up her baby. Her round arse was so peachy he couldn’t help smiling and flapping his tongue out. Like she was an ice block and he’d been dry for days. It’d been months, actually. But he felt stupid for waving his tongue around. That was no way for a Skipper to behave. Besides, he’d promised he’d sort himself out. As far as he saw it, Fiona had kicked him out—and the court had banned him from his son—because of porn. Not because she was scared he’d hit her. And their kids.

  When Fiona had put those prints of Tahitian chicks and their tits all around the house, Simon was as confused as a carrot-fla-vored lollypop. If she hated porn, why did she do that? Yes, she’d all of a sudden started thinking she was a painter, like Simon’s brother, but that was no reason to porn up the house. And why tell him to nick off for good and he can’t see his son, Ryan, and then bring the kid all the way to Queensland all of a sudden?

  To fuck with his head. That’s what it was.

  His son had stared at him, his headphones on for the whole cruise. Said nothing. Now the family in his boat was staring at him because he was forgetting to do his job.

  ‘Okay, Scooter’s had his fifteen minutes of fame.’

  Simon hit the throttle hard. He pulled himself together and told Scooter’s story. The still air carried his voice.

  ‘A bloke like Scooter, he does it hard. You see, crocs are ter-ritorial. Scooter’s got to get himself some territory without pissing off, pardon my language, the big bloke down the river.’

  The family was listening, but only the mother looked at him. After staring at her arse he couldn’t meet her eyes. He checked out the mangroves. He thought of his son and then, strangely, his fibro porch and the view of the sugarcane. Miles and miles of it.

  Straw Hat looked like Simon’s dead father. That square jaw and big nose. That’s what was really pissing Simon off about him. His father who had threatened to kill him, but couldn’t even give him, really, a decent whack when the occasion called for it. His beltings never hurt. But he still knew how to hand out the pain: why make it Simon’s duty to keep the whole family together after he died? Now Simon was on this tour of nowhere with a family, while his own was in bits and pieces all over the country.

  ‘The old bloke’s almost double Scooter’s size,’ Simon stammered on, shaken by the bullshit he was letting fester in his head. ‘About four metres. That’s more than half the size of this boat.’

  Straw Hat bent and inspected the hull. Did the mental arithmetic. Simon calmed himself. Got professional again and steadied his voice.

  ‘He gets pretty annoyed if a croc like Scooter even looks like he’s heading to his part of town. A bloke like Scooter, he’ll find himself in more than a few scraps with the big one. And if he doesn’t watch himself, it’s all over...’

  He explained that only ten per cent of male crocs made it to adulthood. ‘Hardly any of the young ones have a hope against the old blokes. Most of them, in a situation like Scooter’s, they head further up river and try to get away from grizzly old blokes. If they’re really lucky, they find themselves a lady croc.’

  Simon’s mouth was even drier after his speech. He thought of Fiona, looking half-decent today. She’d lost weight. Not much, but some.

  He went for his water bottle beneath the steering wheel. He wanted to look up and see the beauty smiling at him. But it was just another cruise and she was just another wife. So when he settled back behind the wheel and saw her smiling, he got a buzz in his groin. Her smile was probably for the baby, but her head was tilted in Simon’s direction. The setting sun turned her face to choc-malt. He’d ignore a slab of beer to taste that flavour tonight.

  The baby played with empty cups for the rest of the tour. The older kids slouched with headphones while the mother placed her hat on the seat beside her dopey husband and let her hair flow free.

  Simon cruised up a tight inlet. On Fiona’s cruise he’d seen a green tree snake hanging from a mangrove. He tacked the boat carefully around the overhanging trees, but the snake had gone. It made him sad and he didn’t know why. He hated snakes; the slurping and sliding over branches. The boy reckoned he spotted a water snake flashing to stern, but Simon saw only the boat’s tiny wake.

  On the ride back to the jetty, Straw Hat checked every frame of his video footage. He nodded for a while. Then his face went stiffer than usual. He pointed at the screen, at Simon’s tongue flapping no doubt, and he stared hard at the captain of the boat. But Simon ignored him. He sat back and enjoyed the warmth on his face, the glint from the water as the boat chopped towards the jetty. If you decide to send them all to the car and face off with me, Simon thought, that’s fine. It’s your duty. A man has to protect his family. You can have the first punch free. And maybe even the rest.

  15. Ryan Stevenson

  Ryan moved out of home as soon as he turned eighteen. His plan was to do what the rest of his family couldn’t do. Get it right. What he meant was living. Just going about a day under Westmore’s moody skies. Under them completely, come to think of it: his job was cracking open suburban footpaths to find and fix water pipes. He was happiest when he was down there. There was no one to tell him if he was connecting the PVC 300mm female joint correctly to the male joint. He just did it. Then moved to the next one. A square of light above him and, up there with it, his crew moving from van to hole to lower him, tools on a pulley. He got his work done right, every time. He was team leader. He knew stuff. His head was on straight, as straight as those pipes. But when he came up again for air at the end of the day, his stuff ups were right in front of his face. Like losing a girlfriend whose dad was made of money. And telling his old school friends at a reunion that he believed in UFOs and he wouldn’t mind being abducted by aliens. His granddad had told him about the ones he’d seen as a kid.

  You’ve got an excuse for stuffing up, his younger sister Alice always reminded him. Your dad left when you were a teenager. Remember?

  But it was her dad who left too. Not that she ever seemed to care. She never wanted to see him or know him.

  Simon Stevenson pissed off to Queensland. But it hadn’t changed a thing in Ryan’s life. It hadn’t left any holes. It hadn’t turned him into a statistic. It hadn’t forced him to become anything.

  Sometimes he wished he lived underground. Like at that opal mine town in the desert. But that was too far from Westmore and his grandma, Jules. He owed her for looking after him so much when his father left. Now it was time to help look after her. And he was doing that one afternoon, helping Jules out by taking a package of hers to the tiny post office on Grey Street, when Ryan met his wife-to-be, Sally.

  She was coming out the door and her face was all sideways. Like someone had grabbed her cheek and pulled until it had got stuck. But she was good looking; she had her hair set nicely. It fell in brown waves. Her legs were all bent though, and she pegged along with a walking frame. But she took care of herself.

  That’s good, Ryan thought, for no reason that made sense.

  Sally kept apologizing for being slow getting out the door. Her bum in her jeans was just fine; round and sweet and not at all disabled. Like the prints of Tahitian women his mum had stuck up on her wall.

  Ryan held the door open for Sally.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m in no rush.’

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nbsp; He had nowhere to go, his shift was over. But suits were queuing behind him in that edgy way that suits get; straining their necks because they want to get past, but not wanting to be rude because, you know, the poor woman’s disabled. If they’d pushed through him and Sally it would be admitting what heartless pricks they were for wanting to get on with their oh-so-important days. Making more money in an hour than Ryan probably made in a week.

  Westmore had gone to shit.

  Sally clomped to the post box. Ryan would have let her disappear but she dropped her letter. The envelope scampered down the street in the wind like a mouse going for a block of cheese. Ryan shot after it. He picked it up and gave it to her. She flicked him a loose-lipped smile and in a drawl like a Texan on downers said, ‘Hey, thank you.’

  ‘Ah, that’s no worries. Do you want me to put it in the slot for you?’

  He didn’t even think how that sounded. But she gave him a smile and didn’t answer. And, whoops, he felt a rush in his groin. What the hell am I doing? he thought. She’s disabled. But then he remembered her bum.

  He flipped her letter into the box and asked her out for coffee. The last thing he would normally ask anybody to do.

  They headed slowly to Drew’s on the Corner. He hated that upmarket joint but couldn’t think where else to take her. People looked up from their lattes when they walked in. Sally, all weird looking, and him wearing his orange safety vest.

  Suck on your whatevers, Ryan thought. She’s all right.

  They found a table near the window. The waitress was wearing a dress like one of Ryan’s grandma’s outfits and she made a fuss of getting them seated.

  ‘Now, what would you like?’ Sally asked.

  ‘A beer?’

  She laughed.

  ‘I don’t think they sell them.’

  ‘A chocolate milkshake then.’

  Ryan found out Sally hadn’t always been smashed to shit. It’d happened in a stack on her ex-boyfriend’s Triumph. She’d come off at more than a hundred ks an hour.