Past the Shallows

by Favel Parrett

  ‘What places?’ Harry asked.

  ‘First stop, Samoa. From there who knows?’

  ‘Where’s Samoa?’

  ‘South Pacific. You know, warm water, palm trees, white sand.’

  Harry could picture places like that. He’d seen that stuff on TV, and suddenly he wanted to tell Joe about George Fuller. He wanted to tell Joe how he’d gone to George’s place and had tea and played with his dog, Jake. He wanted to ask Joe if he knew George. George knew Granddad.

  ‘Maybe Granddad kept the car because he thought he might find something?’ he said, and he felt the van slow down, pull over.

  Joe looked at him.

  ‘What do you mean, Harry?’

  Harry looked down at his legs. He wasn’t sure.

  ‘Maybe there was a man there, in the car,’ he said. He wanted to say more about the man but he couldn’t really remember.

  ‘Do you mean the man from the ambulance?’

  Harry shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He couldn’t remember why he’d said that now.

  ‘You hit your head really hard. Remember? You had to go to hospital.’

  Harry nodded. He remembered. Miles was in the ambulance, too, and his head was all cut up and bleeding and Harry had a grey blanket wrapped around him and someone kept saying ‘You have to try and stay awake’ over and over and they kept shaking him and he just wanted them to stop. He just wanted to go to sleep.

  ‘When are you leaving?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Soon, mate. Soon.’

  Miles walked down the path to the beach and sat down on the grey sand of Lady Bay. It was cloudy and overcast, but light was still reflecting off the water and it hurt his eyes. He squinted, let his eyes get used to the whiteness and he looked over all the familiar rocks and sand and water. He was meant to be going through the house but the house was full and stuffy and he didn’t want to be in there.

  He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out the string. He held it up to the light.

  A shark’s tooth, cold and sharp – a perfect blade.

  Everything that a shark was rotted and disappeared; everything but its jaw and its teeth. That was all a shark could ever leave behind. And it was old, the tooth. It was yellow and old and he tried to picture it around Granddad’s neck, or hanging up somewhere in the shed or in the workshop. And he tried to picture it in Mum’s car, maybe swaying from the rear-view mirror, or sitting loose on the dash. He couldn’t place it. He didn’t know it.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Miles looked up. It was Gary Bones standing there. Gary Bones. The big full forward who took hard marks and broke grown men. He grabbed the string out of Miles’s hand, tucked the tooth up tight inside his fist.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  Miles sat silent. He watched Gary Bones carry his rod and fish bucket and the shark tooth away. He watched him walk down the beach towards the bluff. He imagined him disappearing over the hill, imagined the tooth gone forever. Suddenly Miles was running. He was up and sprinting, picking up speed as he hit wet sand. Then he launched himself into the thick back of Gary Bones.

  Time went strange then.

  He was on the sand and he felt the cold water run up his trousers, felt it soak right through and up onto his back. And there were hands on his shoulders, strong and gripping. Gary Bones’s hands.

  Miles turned his face away, looked out at the water and it seemed to glow purple and metallic in the sunlight as Gary Bones’s huge forehead came crashing down.

  The light was bright and blurred. Miles leant up on his elbows slowly, tried to focus, found Gary Bones standing there on the sand. He had something in his hands. A fishing rod.

  ‘It’s broken,’ he said. ‘My Dad’s rod – it’s broken.’ And he looked all weird and small like a kid.

  They must have landed on it when they fell. They must have busted it.

  Miles got to his feet and his face pulsed and throbbed, felt swollen. When he wiped his nose with the back of his hand it stung like hell. Blood came away. It was there on the back of his hand.

  He started walking backwards, small steps, but Gary Bones noticed. Gary Bones was coming. And Miles didn’t know what to do so he just started talking, talking out loud about the tooth and how he’d found it in the seat and he didn’t know whose it was, but he thought that maybe it had something to do with Mum. That maybe it was hers. And he thought that he should keep it because she was dead. Because she died. And he tried not to look at Gary Bones while he talked. He tried to look at the ground, but Gary was standing so close. Miles could even hear him breathe.

  And a fat knuckled fist dug into Miles’s ribs. Stayed there.

  ‘Who says I was gonna keep it? Who says?’

  And Gary Bones stared hard into Miles, smiled a tight mean smile. But his fist moved away. He dropped the tooth on the sand.

  ‘If you weren’t such a little freak, I’d beat the crap out of you, Miles.’

  He was still in the bathroom inspecting his face when he heard the van get back. His nose looked OK now, not bleeding so much, but it was his teeth he was worried about. His tongue had been playing with one, pushing it this way and that, and it felt loose. It definitely moved when he touched it. He parted his lips again to have another look. It was the little tooth just next to his big teeth – the front ones.

  ‘What the fuck happened to your face?’ Joe was standing behind him, looking at him in the mirror.

  Miles turned around and pulled his top lip back even further. ‘Do you think my tooth’s gonna fall out?’

  Joe put one hand under Miles’s chin, lifted his head to the light.

  ‘This one.’ Miles marked the tooth out with his tongue.

  Joe touched it gently with his finger. ‘I think it’s OK, but stop touching it. Stop moving it with your tongue. I’ll get some ice.’

  He let go of Miles’s face, walked away to the kitchen, and now Harry was at the door looking in.

  ‘I fell,’ Miles said.

  Harry didn’t say anything. He just stood there in the doorway looking dumb with his mouth wide open. Miles pushed past him and followed Joe to the kitchen.

  Joe gave him a handful of ice wrapped in an old tea towel and pushed him out onto the verandah. Miles held the cloth lightly against the side of his nose and it smelled thick with grease and oil and old cooked meat. Water dripped slowly from his hands and Miles watched the drops land on the old wide floorboards below. He watched the wood suck the water in.

  And he could feel Joe standing near, just behind his back, almost touching. He could hear Joe waiting.

  ‘I fell,’ Miles said again.

  Joe sighed and grabbed the tea towel of ice out of his hands. He went to walk away but Miles stopped him.

  ‘I know what happened to Mum,’ he said.

  ‘You think I don’t, but I do. I know she crashed the car on purpose. I know she wanted to die.’

  Joe grabbed hold of him. Squeezed his arms hard.

  ‘Why would you say that? Why would you even think that? Jesus Christ, Miles, it’s not true.’ He chucked the tea towel on the ground and the ice cubes flew across the boards. ‘She had this thing, this condition – high blood pressure. She took medication for it. That day in the car her blood pressure got really high and she just had a heart attack. That’s it. She just died. She just had a heart attack and crashed the car and bloody died.’

  Joe pushed Miles away. He stormed into the kitchen and slammed the door. Out of the corner of his eye, Miles knew Harry was right there. That he’d seen everything and heard everything. But Miles didn’t speak. He didn’t say anything. He just closed his eyes and pretended that Harry wasn’t there, that he couldn’t hear him or feel him. That Harry didn’t exist.

  He put his hand in his pocket, clutched the tooth tightly in his hand, the sharp edges almost piercing his skin.

  He knew that the tooth belonged to him. That it was his.

  Harry got up. The clock in the kitchen said 9:20. God, he’d s
lept for ages, hadn’t even heard Miles get up and go.

  There was still no bread, but it was Wednesday. Milk got delivered on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and sometimes Dad ordered bread when he remembered about it. Harry stuffed his feet into his gumboots and ran down the drive to the road. He opened the meat safe that hung on the wire fence. Just milk. He carried the two bottles back to the kitchen and poured himself a glass.

  There was no one at George’s by the time Harry got there. He waited for a while on the verandah, then he walked slowly down to the back of the property. He passed the veggie patch and the woodpile. He passed the smoke house but it wasn’t being used. There was no smoke, no smell coming from it. He kept on walking and he found a shed he hadn’t seen before. It was right in among the trees and it didn’t have a door, just an opening, a wall missing. It was packed full of junk: rusted paint cans, an old lawn mower, a metal bath full of broken tiles and rubble. Harry didn’t look too far inside because he knew there would be spiders around and not just huntsmen, but bad spiders, red-backs and those shiny black ones that hid in busted tractors and rusted cars and any metal that had been eaten away. He was careful not to touch anything. He stepped away and he heard a dog bark. Jake. The sound was coming from down towards the bay. Harry followed.

  George was in his dark green waders down by the water’s edge. The tide was way out and the place stunk of mud and slime. Jake leapt from the thin wooden jetty and ran around Harry’s feet, licked his hands. George climbed down the ladder into his old wooden dinghy. He sat down and patted the seat next to him.

  He wanted Harry to come.

  And even Jake wasn’t scared. He ran past Harry, jumped in the boat and perched himself right up at the tip of the bow.

  ‘I get sick,’ Harry said quietly.

  The water was still, brown and silty and full of tannin from the river, but George would be going out deep, out past the heads where the swell took hold of you as soon as the engine stopped. Out there the water rocked and pulled and pushed you until your stomach turned over and your eyes rolled backwards and you felt like you might be dying.

  ‘I can’t go.’

  Harry tried to smile but couldn’t. Not really. And he couldn’t look at George.

  That first time, when he’d hung to the rails of Dad’s boat so tightly that he couldn’t feel his fingers or knuckles or even his arms and the cold spray sliced his face like stingers, Uncle Nick had told him to look at the horizon. And he’d tried, but it kept on moving up and down and everything was grey – the sky and the water both the same – and he threw up all down his jumper.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll ever be a fisherman, Harry,’ Uncle Nick had said. And everyone had laughed. Even Miles.

  ‘I’ll never be a fisherman,’ Harry said, but it came out all high pitched and squeaky and he had to clear his throat and say it again.

  George stood up and climbed back onto the jetty. He started unloading his lines and tackle box and buckets from the dinghy. Jake jumped out too.

  ‘Aren’t you going now?

  George shrugged his shoulders and smiled. He sat down on the end of the jetty with Jake beside him.

  Harry took a step onto the grey creaky boards. Then another. When he got to the end he sat near George.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  But George was occupied. He was screwing one of the rods together, fixing the line. He opened his tackle box and got out a brightly coloured yellow and orange plastic lure and a shiny silver hook.

  ‘Flathead,’ he said, and he handed the rod to Harry.

  ‘I can’t … I don’t know what to do.’

  George grabbed the rod, cast out quickly with a flick of his wrist, and handed it back to Harry.

  Harry didn’t want to lose George’s rod, or break it or do anything embarrassing, so he grasped the handle tightly in his hands and shoved the base between his legs for backup. No one had ever taken him fishing. Not even Granddad or Joe or anyone. He’d seen people fishing – kids off the pier at Dover and Southport, men beach fishing in the surf at Roaring at dawn and at dusk – but he couldn’t do it. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. And George was just humming, getting another line together. It was a low hum, a kind of song like singing with no words.

  Maybe nothing would bite on that hook at the end of his line and he could just sit here and pretend to be fishing. That would be the best thing that could happen. And he said the words silently in his head: please fish just keep away. All you fish just keep away from my lure and that little silver hook.

  Jake pushed his head between the two of them, put his cold wet nose on Harry’s cheek, snorted and took a look around. Then he was off again, sniffing something in the river weeds. Harry knew that Jake could keep himself amused all day as long as George was somewhere nearby. He could be free if George was there watching over things.

  George settled in beside him with his line cast out and he was still humming, just softly, and the clouds were moving in the sky. The breeze was just onshore, but not cold. Not wispy. Harry let his back curve down, relax, and his hands were steady now, not clasped so tight. And he thought, OK. This is OK.

  And he nearly jumped right out of his skin. His reel began to spin, the line running in a blur and the rod slipped right through his hands. But George’s hands were fast, ready, and he grabbed on. He jammed the reel. The line slowed, the rod bowed right down to the water. And Harry found that one of his hands was on the reel again, right over George’s hand, and then he was holding the handle of the reel all on his own, gripping on. He was doing it, slowly moving the line back turn by turn. And that fish must be big because it tugged so hard.

  Jake was back, his eyes keen on the water just waiting for that fish to rise. He was whining, ready to bark, ready to leap into the water.

  One wind, two winds, three, and there it was: speckled slime brown, the colour of mud with bulging eyes too wide apart for its body. Huge fanning monster fins on either side of its cheeks. George scooped the fish up into a net and flopped it into a bucket of water. It lay on the bottom against the yellow plastic, gills opening – gills closing. It was disgusting.

  ‘Flathead,’ George said.

  Harry didn’t catch any more fish, but George did. Four. Harry was happy to hold onto his rod and look out at everything and listen to the songs George hummed. And he thought that maybe he even liked fishing. This kind, sitting on the land kind of fishing. Maybe this was why Joe and Miles liked it so much. And he knew that Granddad would have taken him. It was just that he was too little, too small to go when Granddad had been alive. And if Granddad hadn’t died then he definitely would have taken Harry fishing, too. And it would have been good like this was.

  Back at the house, George gutted and filleted the fish, set them to cook on a hot plate over the fire. With a bit of salt and a squeeze of lemon the fish smelled good as they sizzled. Harry watched in amazement as something that had been so ugly, the colour of mud, turned bright white as it cooked.

  The flesh was firm and sweet and Harry had never tasted anything so delicious.

  Dad had left Miles to clean the boat and deal with the cannery again. Deal with the men in white plastic with blood and fish guts all over them. Men with sharp knives and no smiles, soaked in fluoro light. That’s what it was like in the cannery, fish guts and blood. It stunk of warm fish skin and bleach. And everyone who worked there smelled like that, too. It didn’t wash away. The fish oil soaked inside their skin and it stayed.

  Most kids ended up working there. Miles knew them; kids from school who left before the end of Year Nine. But they didn’t look like kids anymore. They were hard. Just big arm muscles and thick hands. Gutting and finning salmon from the salmon ponds, shucking the abalone and canning them. And Dad said Miles would end up there if he didn’t work hard. If they lost the boat.

  It was already dark when Dad picked him up and he didn’t say where he’d been. He just drove fast. Took corners fast and Miles had to hold onto the door to stay in his seat
and not slide across and hit Dad.

  Now that Martin was out of the way, Jeff was in Dad’s ear all day telling him that they should start diving over at Acton Island or down the cape.

  ‘Why are we wasting time? We can’t compete with the big boats,’ he’d say.

  He talked about other places, too. All of them out of the fishing zone. And in the afternoons, Dad would go off in the ute with Jeff. Maybe somewhere down the coast where they could poach close to the shore without being seen. Under the high cliffs and rocks down where there were no roads. In the mornings there would be a few tubs of abalone already on the boat. Big fat abalone.

  When they got to the straight, hard bit of road, Dad pushed the ute even faster. Miles looked up ahead and in the blackness, maybe two hundred metres off, were the huge headlights of a truck coming. Coming down. And Dad wasn’t even on his side of the road. He was in the middle of the road like always. Driving right in the middle of the road.

  Miles kept his eyes on the truck, on the headlights, maybe only one hundred metres away now. Then the lights went out.

  The truck was gone. There was only the sound of the truck and the sound of the ute moving on the road in the dark.

  Dad’s face was blank. Miles went to say something, to yell out ‘Pull over’, but the truck was suddenly there, suddenly right on them. The full force of its horn filled the air and the night and the cabin. And Miles could feel how close the truck was. He could feel the centimetres between them.

  And in the headlights of the ute, Miles saw it. A bull on its side being pushed by the truck, its hulking body covering the space where the headlights should have been. A massive bull. Miles could even see one of his horns.

  The truck must have hit it on the road, must have hit it up where the lights had blacked out. And Miles didn’t know how the truck hadn’t hit them, too.

  He looked up at Dad, his eyes still fixed ahead. Then he turned and watched the red tail-lights of the truck fly away into the night.