The Good Mother / In The Wake Of The Raftsmen

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  Poole came out to the yard before he left, where I was playing with Declan, who’d just sprayed me with water from his water gun. I was pretending to be angry and chasing Declan around and around on the grass. We were both laughing. It was a Saturday, a perfect Saturday.

  Poole was in jeans and a t-shirt, his big feet no smaller in sandals. Thanks for your patience, he said. I looked up at him but didn’t say anything. He turned around to go and turned back. I’m sorry for your loss, he said finally. I’m sorry.

  In the Wake of the Raftsmen

  Inga Simpson

  They lashed the logs together with the vines they had cut from the forest. Layney and Gill held them steady in the shallow water, while she and Dean wound the lengths around, securing each one to the next until nine logs formed a raft. Dean had brought rope, not trusting the traditional methods, but he didn’t take it from his pack. Together, the logs were strong.

  It was how the raftsmen had first cleared the forests, dragging and sliding all those cedars and bunyas to the river’s edge and lashing them together to float them to the sawmill. The raftsmen had spiked their logs together with iron ‘dogs’ too, but she hadn’t been able to get hold of anything like that. Their raft wouldn’t be bumping against others, and hopefully not against anything at all, so she could only trust that they would hold.

  They dragged their cargo, wrapped in a khaki tarp, from the forest. Strapped it to the logs in the raft’s centre with the last of the vines. She unpacked and repacked her pack, and ran through the checklist again. The forest behind them sang, thick with life. It had grown back, though not the same.

  They waited. Sap from the vines itched a cut between her thumb and finger. The water was rising beneath the raft, eager to float it, and all their plans. A white-faced heron waded, dipping its beak, on the opposite side of the river.

  ‘How much longer do you reckon, Jess?’ Gill said.

  ‘Another metre or so,’ she said. A vee of nine pelicans flew in, came around, as if on a well-worn flight path, and landed in formation, to fish the river for a time.

  * * *

  They waited until the river was full, the water pushing up until the beach half-disappeared. She had seen a mullet jump, from her eye’s corner, landing with a splash. In thirty years, she had never caught a jumping fish in full view. The trouble was, they didn’t make much sound exiting the water, and her reflexes were so slow; by the time she turned, all that was left were the rings marking its point of re-entry.

  Still the white-faced heron fished, elegant on its long wading limbs. The raft shifted, impatient.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ she said.

  They threw their packs on deck. Gill held the raft steady, while she, Layney and Dean climbed aboard. Gill pushed them deeper, as long-legged as the heron, and with a wet, skipping leap, came aboard.

  They paddled, for a time, against the tide. One at each corner, kneeling and digging deep. All their gym training and day trips had paid off; she was able to push through the first fifteen minutes and go on, nice and steady. Cockatoos screeched either side of them.

  Then the tide turned. A choppy confusion at first, as water going one way met water coming back, with the raft in between, and then it was flowing down river, taking them with it.

  They lay, panting, on their backs, under the gaze of a clear blue sky. The sort that only winter served up.

  ‘Whoop!’ Gill raised her fists.

  Jess lacked the energy necessary to move her limbs, still caught up in the wonder of the raft’s riverworthiness, and the strength in her own body. ‘We did it.’

  ‘Fuck yeah,’ Dean said.

  Riverwater glugg-glugged beneath them. Jess sat up to take the drink bottle passed around. ‘Thanks.’ She rolled up her pants, and dangled her legs in the water like a child. The others laughed but followed her lead.

  ‘I feel like Huck Finn,’ Layney said.

  Jess smiled, the sun pinking her cheeks. She felt more like Tom Sawyer, on the run. The water was cool, tickling between her toes.

  Her first river journey had been during her second year at university. Semester break. A friend of Cliff’s had driven the old forestry roads, through spotted gums and cycads, to drop them, their kayaks and all their gear, at the back of the mountains, the source of the Moruya River. That water had been a world away from this one, cold, narrow and rushing over rocks. She had overturned on the second set of rapids, her kayak caught up against a log.

  They stopped on a white beach by a rockpool, and Cliff lit a fire to warm her. ‘I should have warned you about logs,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of a trap. The water rushes underneath and generates suck. Like a plughole. If the boat gets up against the stationary object—the log—the force of the water is concentrated on one side of the hull.’

  She had figured all that out while she was in an upside down world of bubbles, her breath driven from her chest by the cold. Avoid logs. Death trap. She hadn’t been able to right herself, as she could from a roll, and the deck tarp hadn’t held. The kayak filled with water and went under. If Cliff hadn’t been there to pull her out, she would have drowned.

  ‘Don’t let the river get you broadside,’ he said. ‘If you get into trouble, face it head on.’ He rubbed her goosebumped flesh with his warm hands, dried her hair with a towel. And they made love there, while her clothes dried on the rocks, to the rush and swirl of white water.

  * * *

  There were no rapids on this river. It looped wide and languid brown, in no hurry to reach the sea. They soaked it up like lizards. The world drifted by, or perhaps it was more true to say they drifted by it. Gill passed around her famous smoked salmon, dill and crème fraîche sandwiches. They passed paperbarks, shedding their skins, layered with story. The pelican that had accompanied them since they stopped paddling, sailed, neck proud, off the port bow.

  Dean yawned. ‘What do you think the rest of the human race are doing today?’

  ‘Who cares,’ said Layney. ‘Has a sandwich ever tasted better?’

  Jess laughed. A glass of sparkling would have completed the picture, but elderflower cordial, still cool, came close. ‘This is living, isn’t it?’

  Gill pointed towards the right bank. ‘Look.’ A sleek head cut the water in a vee, then scuttled into shadowed tree roots.

  Jess stood. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Water rat?’ Layney said.

  Gill nodded. ‘Think so.’

  ‘I feel like a water rat. Fancy a swim, anyone?’ Dean was already stripping off.

  Gill shrugged, peeled out of her shirt and leggings. Layney was more shy, leaving her underwear on. Jess turned her back, stepped out of her quick-dry pants and dived from the raft. Beneath the surface, the water was cool, out of reach of the sun. The tide took them on, but somehow the raft moved more quickly, intent on the task ahead. They swam in a line to catch it up. Dean made it first, then Gill, and Layney.

  Jess gave up the race, dived deep down to dig her hands into the river’s silt. When her lungs were bursting, she pushed to the surface, swam after the raft. Gill threw out a hand, and heaved her back on board. She lay panting, the sun on her whole body, drying the river water.

  The tide was slowing, contemplating its next turn.

  * * *

  Late afternoon, the mullet started jumping en masse, snapping at a swarm of insects just above the surface. A flotilla of teens on jet skis had almost swamped them after lunch, whooping over the engine noise, but since then the river had been its peaceful self.

  ‘What about a bit of fish for diner?’ Dean said.

  Layney raised an eyebrow. ‘Got anything to catch them with?’

  He unzipped a pocket on his pack, extracted line and a hook. Produced a piece of left over smoked salmon.

  Jess covered a smile with her forearm. Dean set the bait and cast the line behind the raft.

  Jess’s father had always said a watched line never jags, so she kept her eye on where they were headed. She was sceptical about Dean’s chances
, but found her mouth watering at the thought of barbequed fish. Her father had preferred beach fishing, casting for bream where white met blue. It had been as much about the beer and cigarettes, watching the sun go down, but they had feasted every now and then.

  A piece of vine had come unravelled on her side of the raft. She lay on her stomach, working with her arms out in front of her to re-tie it. The end in question had stiffened and dried in the sun. She secured it beneath the raft rather than on top this time, to keep it moist.

  A fish leapt. Right in front of her. Over her really, giving a full view of its belly and red gills. ‘Ha!’ she said.

  ‘Yeah!’ Dean reeled in a decent sized mullet. Freed the hook from its lip. ‘One more like this should do us, eh?’

  * * *

  They landed the raft in a tidal cove. Crabs scuttled off into mangrove finger-worlds, half-submerged. They set up their tents on the bank, a grassy clearing behind a banana farm. Jess set out her bedroll, flipping it into the tent’s corners. She lay there for a moment, a limb in each corner, a tired starfish. It was a relief to stretch her spine on flat ground, after the curve of the logs.

  Gill stuck her head in. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Coming.’

  She got herself up, slipped on shoes and gathered driftwood from above the waterline. Carried it down to the beach.

  Dean frowned. ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Lighting a fire,’ she said.

  ‘We can’t do that,’ he said. ‘We don’t want some ranger to come sniffing around.’

  Jess dropped the logs. ‘It’s Sunday, and we’ll be gone in six hours,’ she said. ‘I want a real fire. To camp out the way we used to. It’s our last night,’ she said.

  Layney stood behind her, draped an arm over her shoulder. ‘Hey.’

  ‘I’ll get some kindling,’ Gill said.

  Dean unzipped another side pocket on his pack: matches. The reliable boy scout.

  Jess wrapped the fish in banana leaves and laid them out on the grill. Turned the potatoes among the coals. Accepted the beer offered. It wasn’t quite cold enough, although they had kept them underwater all afternoon. Without its label, which must have floated off downriver, it tasted like homebrew, which just went to show how much was in the packaging. Homebrew was fine. The fire crackled and spat and warmed her front. The beer cleared her throat.

  Cliff had once lugged champagne (and glasses) all the way in to the gorge, and somehow chilled it out of sight, to produce it over a dinner of grilled freshwater crayfish. He had proposed on a rock beneath a full sky of stars, which had surprised her but at the same time it had all been just as it should be.

  ‘How long?’ Layney put down a bowl of salad and four plates.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For the fish.’

  She poked the leaves, heard the sizzle of juices escaping. ‘Think they’re ready.’ She loaded up the plates and handed them around.

  Gill groaned. ‘This fish.’

  ‘It’s good,’ Layney said.

  ‘Can’t get any fresher than that,’ Dean said.

  ‘Cheers,’ Jess said. ‘To the fisherman.’

  ‘And the chef,’ he said. ‘Can’t believe you thought to bring ginger.’

  Jess smiled. The ginger was Layney’s, for her stomach, and she knew the fish were not as pure as they tasted, carrying traces of every toxin pumped into the river.

  Dean handed out the last of the beers, and started cleaning up. He hadn’t been their first choice. Wade, a professional rock climber, leader, and all-round legend, had done an ankle scaling the carpeted stairs to his girlfriend’s apartment, of all things. Dean had been on the reserve list, but like the rest of them, probably hadn’t imagined the great Wade going down.

  Dean was no substitute and knew it. Wade had driven big b-doubles for a decade, and could fix—or sabotage—any machine. But young Dean was doing the job, and was, she had to admit, cheerier than Wade might have been.

  She wiped up the plates, packed them away. ‘You did well, today,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  He blushed. ‘It was a good day.’ He looked over her shoulder. ‘She going to be alright?’

  Gill and Layney had wandered down to the water for a quiet moment, sitting close together on a log curving over the river. They lived on the water full-time, down south, a boat moored near the city but ready to move off at any time. They had both been teachers. Gill still taught drama, but to adults now. Mature-age students were just as childish, she said, but with bigger egos.

  Once Layney got the diagnosis, she had taken early retirement. Refused treatment. After dedicating all of her free time to fighting the use of chemicals, she said she wasn’t going to pump her body full of them.

  ‘I think so,’ Jess said. ‘Seemed strong enough today.’

  Dean nodded. ‘Reckon.’

  The fire was nearly spent; driftwood always burned too fast. A throw of stars looked on from above. She waited for one to shoot down but none came. All chance at wishes, it seemed, was gone.

  Jess cleaned her teeth, padded out into the darkness to empty her bladder. At last she wriggled into her swag, cut the light. Breathed to the suck and pull of tree and river. Behind her, she heard wings beating in the forest, slithering, the screech of a powerful owl. It called her back; the life that was close, always at the edge of her mind—but just out of reach. If she stepped into the gloom, the bats and birds would retreat. To really be a part of it, the whole of nature—nature without human interference, anyway—was unattainable. She could only ever inhabit the margins, the space in between.

  * * *

  She and Cliff had lived for their weekends and holidays, venturing further and further into parks and forests with packs and boots and boats. While she sat at her desk in the library, a building full of stories, she held the anticipation of the next river, forest or gorge—their own adventure tales—close. The light was always brighter outside.

  They were happy enough at home together, after she moved into his place. A regular couple. He cooked, she looked after the little courtyard garden. At night, after dinner, they laid out maps and books and planned the coming weekend or the next big trip, months away.

  Outside, they were much more. When they plumbed a cave, floated a river, or reached a summit, they swelled and grew, together. The river’s flow was their flow. The majesty of a mountain an expression of the best of them, and their capacity to climb it. Of what they could not convey at home. And there, together in each new wild place, they could shut the rest of the world, and what was happening to it, out.

  * * *

  Layney woke them at three. They packed under a half moon slipping behind the Range. A powerful owl called from among the trees and was answered, a low whooo, whoo, like someone impersonating an owl.

  Dean pulled the gun from his pack. ‘Did you hear that?’

  Jess put her hand on his shoulder, felt him flinch. ‘It’s an owl. There’s no one out here,’ she said. ‘We’re going to do this.’

  He loaded the raft, laid out their paddles.

  She put her arms about Gill and Layney, and they huddled, a crooked tripod. ‘Thanks for everything, guys,’ Jess said. ‘You’ve been so good to me.’

  Gill teared up. Touched her forehead to Jess’s.

  ‘You’re welcome, hon.’ Layney said. ‘We’d do anything for you.’

  Dean glanced up from the raft, outside the circle. They went to him. Hugged the man.

  Gill pushed them out on the raft. The tide would take them the rest of the way. Or close to it.

  Nights were still hard, all the blacker without Cliff. She was tired, too, after four days away. She always slept better at camp, safe on her own platform in the trees, swaying with the breeze.

  Her team were quiet, wrapped in their own thoughts. The stars had shifted, the Southern Cross falling upside down, out of the sky. The last of the moon cast a silvered path behind them on the water, but there was no going back now.

  * * *


  They had swarmed out of the night forest into the glow of the clearing. The cameras and alarms had already been disarmed. A Doberman sat up, growled. Unchained. Its fur stood up in a ridge at the base of its spine, and she caught the glint of its spiked collar, and its teeth. It hesitated, its attention divided between them, and then leapt at her—the closest and the smallest.

  She shot the dog and ran on, blocking out the sound of blood in its lungs, its whimpers. They drained the fuel and oil from every machine, and slashed their great tyres. All but one.

  Dean forced the door of the loaded truck, jumpstarted it. She and Gill piled into the passenger seat, threw their packs into the bunk behind. Layney came last. ‘Go!’

  He forced the machine into gear, pulling out onto the gravel road. A plume of smoke signalled their point of departure. The others slipped away, back to camp.

  Dean was not in complete control of the truck, not with such a heavy load. They slipped and slewed on the corners, neat rows of plantation pine rushing up at the windscreen.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Jess said. ‘We have time.’

  The highway was easier, but the traffic was waking up. She thought about the dog. It had just been doing its job.

  ‘This is the turn-off,’ Gill said. She had the map.

  Dean slowed, dropped back the gears, and made the turn, sending a guidepost flying with the last flick of the truck’s tail. They thundered down the gravel logging road, dust flying up behind them. Jess looked back at the full load of logs—she didn’t know how many tonnes—laid out like the dead they were.

  ‘This is it,’ Gill said. ‘On the left.’

  He made the turn. Just. And stopped the truck on the verge.

  Jess worked at releasing the chains, clambering over the logs, her rock-climbing shoes spiking deep into the timber. It wasn’t the first time she had freed logs from a loaded truck but this time they needed to control where they landed. ‘Look out!’ The first bundle rumbled free, rolling, one after the other, down the embankment to the boat ramp.