The Minnow

by Diana Sweeney

‘Yes’, he says with a nod. ‘You’ll remember there were two people from West Wrestler,’ he pauses. ‘Detectives,’ he says, pauses again, catches my eye. ‘Well, they were asking about you; they wanted some information about Bill.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ My heart has started to race. I can feel small beads of perspiration on my upper lip. ‘I’ve been in hospital, Sergeant Griffin,’ I say. ‘I don’t know why the police would want to speak to me.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he says sweetly. ‘They are just running their enquiries, is all. I said I would follow up on the loose ends. You’re just a loose end, Tom. Nothing to worry about.’

  But I am worried. I have a growing feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. The Minnow can feel it too.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Miles Griffin!’ says Nana, appearing in the doorway. Her hair is plastered to her head and she has a towel wrapped around her shoulders. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes, young man,’ she says. ‘What brings you out here?’

  Sometimes Nana’s timing is impeccable. That will be today’s word.

  Nana and Sergeant Griffin start up a conversation, so I excuse myself and leave the room. Papa has disappeared. He is probably down at the car park, checking out Jonathan Whiting’s car—which is good because I want some time alone. I need to sort through some of my feelings about Bill before Sergeant Griffin springs another visit. I sneak quietly along the front veranda and around the corner. I’m heading for the day bed at the far end. I can see it’s unoccupied, but I have yet to get past the common room without being seen. This isn’t easy because there are windows running the full length of the veranda. If it weren’t for the Minnow, I would crawl some of the way, but she makes that impossible.

  ‘G’day, Tom,’ says Hazel, leaning out of the doorway.

  Hazel is the residential unit manager. She ran the hospital wing for almost a decade before she was transferred. Nana adores her.

  ‘You after some peace and quiet, darl?’ she asks.

  ‘Heading for the day bed, Haze, but I was hoping to get there unnoticed.’

  ‘Common room’s deserted,’ she says, with a wink. ‘Your granny’s latest pond-dive was too much excitement and everyone, except Campbell, is off having a nap.’ Campbell is the common-room cat.

  Hazel walks over to me, takes my arm and leads me to the day bed. She helps me up, arranges the pillows under my knees and covers me with one of Betsy Groot’s hand-knitted blankets. ‘There you are, ma’am,’ she smiles. ‘Will there be anything else?’

  ‘Thanks, Haze,’ I say. ‘You’re the best.’

  ‘Give me a yell when you want to get down. Campbell and I will be in the office, catching up on paperwork.’

  Bill has secrets. I know this because I’ve seen them: small canvas satchels stashed in various cubbyholes in and around the boatshed. He used to move them from one spot to another every few months, usually late at night when he thought I was asleep. But how could I sleep? I was homesick. I missed Mum’s laugh and Sarah’s morning snuggles. Mostly I missed the sound of Dad rummaging around in the dark.

  The first time I heard Bill digging, I thought it was Dad. I snuck out of bed to get a better look and there he was, spade in hand, like always. I sat on the floor and watched him, filled with relief that the nightmare was over and my life was back to normal, until something made me realise that I was watching Bill. Suddenly I felt sick and frightened. I watched for hours, frozen to the spot, as Bill dug a hole large enough for me. It was still dark when he finished and I crawled back into bed. I lay awake till dawn. I was living with a stranger who, by the look of it, was going to kill me and bury me in the yard.

  In the morning the hole was gone and the ground was flat. I walked over the spot a few times, trying to feel if it was looser than the surrounding dirt, but it all felt the same. ‘You worried about something, buddy?’ asked Bill, leaning against the screen door. I realised I had no idea how long he had been watching me.

  Bill cleared his throat and spat the contents onto the dirt.

  ‘Because you look like you’re pacing,’ he said.

  Mrs Blanket’s assistant, Clare, is from Kansas. I know Kansas from The Wizard of Oz. Clare moved to Australia to be a teacher but changed her mind once she arrived. She decided she liked animals more than kids, and she worked as a jillaroo for a few years out west, until the drought forced her to look for work in town. It flooded not long after she settled here. She says if she was ever going to leave, she would have done it then. I’m glad she stayed.

  ‘You’re looking a bit tired,’ says Clare, using her index finger in a simple back and forth motion to mimic the dark circles under my eyes. ‘You need a sleeping tonic,’ she says, and disappears out the back.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Blanket,’ I say, waiting for Clare.

  ‘Hi, Tom,’ she says. ‘You’re looking tired.’

  ‘Sorted,’ Clare says, reappearing suddenly, clutching a small glass jar and a large syringe.

  ‘You ever had a Kansas sleeping tonic?’ she asks, knowing my answer. I shake my head, no. Clare walks over to the axolotl tank and hands me the jar. With the syringe she draws a full measure of water. ‘Well,’ she says, looking at the jar in my hand. ‘Open it.’ I take off the lid and she squirts the water in. She does this twice more until the jar is about a third full. ‘Follow me,’ she orders, and I follow her back to the counter. ‘Give it here,’ she says, reaching for the jar. I hand her the jar. ‘And the lid,’ she says. I hand her the lid.

  ‘Now, Tom,’ she says, in what I imagine is her teacher’s voice, ‘this is important. Do not drink this. If you do, you’ll sleep for a week.’ I’m not sure if she’s joking or serious. She screws on the lid and places the jar in front of me. She rests her forefinger on top. ‘At night,’ she continues, ‘just before you get into bed, remove the lid and place the jar where the moonlight can reach it.’

  ‘What if it’s cloudy?’

  ‘When there’s no moon, it won’t work.’

  ‘That’s all I do?’

  ‘No,’ she leans closer, ‘you need to stir it.’ Clare reaches under the counter and rummages around for a bit. ‘I don’t seem to have what I’m looking for,’ she says, more to herself than me. ‘Wait a minute.’ Clare walks through the shop and disappears outside.

  ‘She’s a strange one,’ says Mrs Blanket, ‘but her cures seem to work. She gave old Mr Cravensbourne a heart tonic from the carp tank a few weeks ago. He swears he’s never felt better.’

  I look at the carp. Three blank pairs of eyes look back at me. ‘Was that around the time Oscar died, Mrs Blanket?’ I ask, then wish I hadn’t.

  ‘Here you go,’ says Clare, walking back through the shop with a twig in her hand. ‘Stir it with this, slowly and carefully.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Good question. Five turns should do it. Maybe six. You’ll sleep like a baby.’

  ‘Jonah,’ I say, calling out to the front porch from the bedroom, ‘do you think you can walk me down to the inlet?’ Dr Patek has spoken to Dr Frank and they both agree that the moderate exercise rule can be extended to include the inlet as well as the letterbox. I can’t see the point of walking to the letterbox. ‘Jonah,’ I call, louder this time.

  Jonah Whiting is a dreamer. It’s one of my favourite things about him, although it can be annoying when I want an answer.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That took a while,’ I say. Papa calls it answering via satellite.

  ‘Yeah, well, I was thinking.’

  I walk out to the porch with the FishMaster. Jonah’s still eating his breakfast. He’s sharing his toast with a baby magpie, and he has the little bird eating out of his hand.

  ‘Jonah,’ I say, ‘if the FishMaster had wheels I could walk to the inlet on my own.’ I had been thinking of borrowing Nana’s shopping trolley. Actually, it was Papa who suggested it. He said Nana doesn’t use the trolley anymore because she gets Jonathan to carry all her shopping. Papa nicknamed Jonathan Whiting ‘the bag man’.

  �
��It’s okay, Tom, I don’t mind carrying it.’

  Jonah says that, but sometimes I wonder.

  ‘But,’ he says, turning to face me, ‘I could hook it up to my old skateboard if you’re serious about walking on your own.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No, not now. Later.’

  ‘Let’s go then,’ I say. ‘Just give me two secs.’

  I used to be able to fish on an empty stomach, but now I need supplies. I pack some bread and fruit into an old lunchbox, fill a bottle with water and, remembering how uncomfortable the pier has become, grab a cushion off the couch.

  The walk to the inlet is uncomfortably quiet. Jonah seems a million miles away, too far for me to reach. So I get a fright when he speaks.

  ‘You remember Caleb Loeb?’

  ‘Jeez, Jonah. I almost dropped the Minnow.’

  ‘Funny.’

  ‘Caleb Loeb. Tall, skinny guy. Pretended to have a bit of a thing for Mrs Lee.’

  ‘That wasn’t pretend. He was just young. You’re so wrong about people, Tom.’

  ‘Is that right? Was I wrong about you?’ My trump card.

  ‘Yeah, okay, you’ve always been right about me. But you’re wrong about Caleb.’

  ‘Go on then, enlighten me.’ Enlighten. It means lots of things, some of them religious, but right now it means I want information.

  ‘I think I’m in love with him.’

  ‘What happened to the crush on James Wo?’

  ‘Still a hundred per cent. But Caleb is my age and, well, he understands what I’m going through.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘I told him.’

  ‘You told him you’re gay or you told him about the crush on James Wo?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Oh, Jonah. What have you done?’

  Caleb Loeb is a piece of work. He has always been a bully, but not overtly, more in an underhanded way. Papa taught me about overt and covert, so don’t go thinking I’ve only known about them since I met James Wo. Anyway, Mrs Lee is a perfect example. Caleb Loeb carried on all through year six, batting his eyes at her, carrying her things from the car to the classroom, cleaning the whiteboard. If any of the boys tried to tease him about it, he would walk up to them and dare them to repeat what they had said. One kid, Jai Graython, called him ‘teacher’s pet’ to his face, and Caleb Loeb broke his nose. When he was asked why he did it, Caleb burst into tears and said it was a mistake and that he never meant to do it. Mrs Lee spoke to Jai’s parents and Jai had to apologise to Caleb in front of the class.

  The thing is, Caleb Loeb despised Mrs Lee. I knew this because Papa taught me how to read the signs.

  Every Wednesday is poker day at the Mavis Ornstein Home for the Elderly, and Papa, who jokes that poker is one of life’s great games, likes to walk around the room, surveying the players’ cards and making comments. That’s how he taught me about the ‘tell’.

  Papa would look at a player’s hand (and I may as well tell you that he often chose Mike Spice), and it was my job to figure out whether the hand was good or bad. Papa would give me hints. For example, he would point out what Mike was doing with his face. Papa said that Mike Spice was green, meaning he hadn’t played much poker, so he was a good subject because he was still figuring out how to mask his feelings. The trick, Papa said, was learning what to dismiss and what to watch. A practised poker player, like Nana, was almost impossible to read.

  I learned that just a flicker of an expression could betray the truth. That is how I knew Caleb Loeb’s crush on Mrs Lee was an act. But what he was doing now was much, much worse. He had convinced Jonah that he was his friend, his confidant. And Jonah was falling for it, hook, line and sinker.

  I wanted to kill Caleb Loeb.

  At the inlet, I get myself settled and wait for Jonah to leave. Since the police turned up, Bill won’t appear unless I’m alone.

  ‘Okay, then,’ says Jonah. I say nothing. ‘I’ll be back later,’ he says, needlessly. Then he walks away without looking back to wave. Bloody Caleb Loeb.

  ‘Seen Sarah?’ Bill asks, sneaking up on me.

  ‘Shit, Bill, you scared me half to death.’

  ‘Swearing doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘And parenting isn’t your forte.’

  ‘Forte? You using one of Wo’s words?’

  ‘Don’t be an arsehole, Bill.’

  We’re interrupted by a loud splash. Both of us turn towards the source of the noise, but there’s barely a ripple. I turn back to Bill, but he’s gone. Well, I think to myself, if you can’t take the heat.

  I open the FishMaster and take out the fishing line that I prepared at home. I’ve wound it around an old toilet roll so it won’t get tangled.

  ‘Why’d you bother bringing the FishMaster?’ It’s Bill. He’s back.

  ‘Why do you bother speaking?’ Nana says if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

  ‘That a Nana saying?’ Bill always knows what I’m thinking.

  ‘Get out of my head, Bill,’ I say. ‘My thoughts are my own private business.’

  Bill sits down on the jetty and hangs his legs over the edge. ‘Water’s low,’ he says, stating the obvious. He reaches into his fishing bag and pulls out a roll of line, takes a hook from his shirt pocket and turns to me. ‘You want to hand me one of your fancy sinkers?’ he asks, looking at me coldly and challenging me to refuse.

  ‘Sure, Bill.’

  I’m not going to take the bait. I know his moods, and this one is always ugly.

  I hand Bill the Townley-Morris fiske sinker. I made that name up, if you’re wondering. All my sinkers have names. Most of them come packaged with brand and model names, although sometimes the model is just a number. I rename sinkers if I don’t like the sound of the brand, and I always name the sinkers I find. It’s surprising how many get washed up, caught in old bits of line. Sometimes I find them on the pier. Once I found eighteen sinkers in an old tin. I keep those in a separate compartment in the FishMaster, just in case one day I meet their owner. Anyway, the Townley-Morris had a TM printed on it, so I named it to fit the initials. It got the ‘fiske’ because I found the sinker at Fiske Point.

  Fiske Point is a small bay with a sand spit that extends out from one side and dense scrub on the other. We usually fish from one of the bay’s feeder creeks, but you can also fish from the beach and from the sand spit. The sand spit is pretty amazing. At low tide it stretches for about two hundred metres and you can walk all the way to the point. The sand, which is only a few metres wide, is all there is between the clear calm water of the bay on one side and the deep choppy ocean on the other. The only downside is that the ocean breeze kicks sand into your eyes almost continuously.

  One of Fiske Point’s bigger creeks—Bill and I named it the Rumbly, I forget why—is wide enough for the tinny. You have to row hard against the current for about three hundred metres until it opens out into a large lake. The water’s deep and dark and the fishing is good. If it wasn’t so hard to reach, we would probably fish there more often. One time, we left the tinny tied to the embankment, but walking through the scrub was even harder than rowing, so we never did that again. Anyway, I was telling you how I found the sinker. It was late one afternoon and Bill and I were fishing at the Rumbly’s lake. It was surprisingly quiet—not much was biting. The last of the sun was flickering through the trees, and as it landed on the branch of an oleander tree, something shone out towards me like a torch. Bill was asleep so I pulled up our lines and steered the tinny over to check it out. The rest was easy. The branch grew out over the water and was low enough for me to reach. I felt around for the source of the shiny thing and found the sinker. Luckily Bill was dead to the world and didn’t stir even when the breeze picked up and leaves rained down on him. The sinker was attached to a piece of line that was wound around the branch. Unwinding it took a while. But by the time Bill woke, we were back in our spot, lines recast.

  ‘How’d the boat get full of leaves?’ B
ill said as he checked his line.

  ‘Well, you should know,’ I answered. ‘Seeing as you say you never fall asleep.’

  ‘Touché,’ said Papa.

  Bill attached the Townley-Morris fiske and cast his line. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I’ve learned to keep watch when Bill is in one of his moods. I was kind of wishing Jonah hadn’t left, so I was relieved when Papa appeared. Papa doesn’t like leaving the Mavis Ornstein Home for the Elderly, but he has started making it a bit of a habit ever since the police showed up. I haven’t had the nerve to ask Bill what they want with him.

  If you’re wondering why I named the sinker the ‘fiske’ and not the ‘rumbly’, it’s because I’m saving the name Rumbly for when I get a pet. When I was little I really wanted a cat, but Dad forbade it. He said they were vicious killing machines. We used to have a feral cat problem at The Crossing before Dad sorted it. Dad was always awake at night, so killing cats gave him something to do. Nana referred to it as T-triple-C (The Crossing’s Cat Culling). She said our town was indebted to Dad’s insomnia.

  Mrs Blanket doesn’t keep puppies or kittens and she only sells male rabbits and guinea pigs to prevent uncontrolled breeding. ‘You can’t trust most folks with pets,’ she says. ‘They’re either too lazy or too broke to have their pets neutered, or they let them go feral when they’re bored with them and we end up in all kinds of trouble.’ She stopped selling carp when she heard about people letting them go in creeks and she absolutely refuses to sell pets in December because she disagrees with pets as Christmas presents.

  I think Rumbly would make a great name for a turtle.

  When I woke up, Mum was smiling at me. She looked just exactly the same.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, but no words came out. She reached over and touched my cheek with the back of her hand. It felt wonderfully familiar.

  ‘Don’t speak, pet,’ she said, ‘the doctor will be in to check on you soon.’

  I tried to swallow but it hurt. I tried to feel for the Minnow but my body seemed wooden and distant. It was hard to keep my eyes open, so I let them close.