by Susan Duncan
“How old was he?”
“Sixteen.”
“So that’s why he collects orphans. And watches over the community.”
“Kids, dogs, turtles. Anything that’s lost.”
“He really loves you, though. You can see it in the way he’s always looking out for you. It goes way beyond helping out a friend. He’s … sort of protective.”
“And I love him. God, we go back thirty years. In a typical Cook’s Basin way, we’re as close as family.”
“Someone has to tell him to back off the Weasel problem, Ettie. The guy’s a thug. He knows no boundaries. The stakes will skyrocket in ways Sam couldn’t even imagine.”
Ettie stands, brushing the dirt off her skirt. “Sam can take care of himself. And he’ll never be alone, not in Cook’s Basin. Now I’m off. I’m completely exhausted and you should go home to bed, too. Leave Sam. He’s had a shocker day. He needs time to sort himself out.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Goodnight, Ettie.”
On the foreshore, in the dark shadows of tall trees, Sam sits on the seawall, a stubby in his hand, drinking a beer in quick, angry sips. Cook’s Basin has always had its share of miscreants, bludgers and even a few light-fingered layabouts, but executing a dog is an all-time low. A desecration of every code the community holds to its collective heart. He is cold with rage.
He hears an outboard engine and sees the blurry outline of a boat swinging close to the spot where the Mary Kay is moored. He puts down his beer and rises to his feet, bracing mentally and physically for a fight. The sky, the water, the night is the colour of pitch. The moon is an hour away. He walks silently to the jetty, flexing his fingers. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He inches further forward. The boat aims for the barge.
Slows. Idles.
Ah jeez. He returns for his beer, then makes his way back to the end of the jetty, rolls up his jeans and sinks his feet in the water.
“Lost, are you?”
Kate spins towards his voice and sees him. A dark shape less than twenty feet from her.
“As it happens, I’m not. I came to make sure you and Jimmy are okay,” she says across the water.
He stands and points at his jetty. She slips into gear and eases alongside the pontoon with half an inch to spare, a perfect manoeuvre. They both know it is pure luck.
He extends his hand to help her out but she ignores it and stays in the boat, leaving him feeling wrong-footed, as usual. He says nothing. He tells himself she’s going to make a fine partner for Ettie. She works like a demon. And her idea to turn over the attic was a stunner. She’s even managed to make a coffee for him that was almost up there with the best. She’s okay. More than okay. She’ll do for Ettie and the café, even the community. It’s the chemistry between them that’s off. They speak a different language.
“Thanks for checking but we’re all good here,” he says.
“It’s a no-win battle, Sam. Give it up.” Her tinny rocks on the water.
A voice calls out in one of the houses strung along the foreshore, televisions flicker in blue pods, the sound carrying across the bay.
Sam sits on the jetty and hoists his legs over the gunnel, holding her boat steady. “I’m going to keep repeating myself till it sinks in, Kate. If there’s a problem, you wear it away.”
“The Weasel is the kind of problem that wears you away. Permanently, Sam. Stay out of it. Or you’ll end up with concrete instead of leather boots.”
In the green and red glow of Kate’s nav lights, his face shuts down. He stares along the shoreline, raises his beer to his lips. Empty. “You can’t let scum rise. Soon as you do, it takes over like algae, suffocating everything underneath.”
“Vigilantes are no better than thugs.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Call the police. Let them handle it.”
“Kids at risk, Kate.”
“Kids make their own choices.”
“Kids don’t even know there are choices,” he says.
She is silent for a while. “You spend your whole life in Cook’s Basin?”
“Born and bred. Wear my boots to hide webbed feet,” he says, trying to ease the tension.
“Onshore the Weasel is about as dirty as it gets. Cook’s Basin isn’t the real world, Sam. Not even close.”
“That’s why we’ve gotta look after it. You’ve gotta stand up for what you believe in, Kate, or you lose it.”
“Yeah, well, in my experience, idealists are the first casualties.”
“Thanks for dropping by.” He gives her boat a shove with his foot and stands. A hulking dark figure. Arms crossed. Legs apart. Like he’s riding choppy seas.
“It’s only going to get worse.”
He waves, undefeated, and walks back down the wharf.
The Cook’s Basin grapevine buzzes and the community seethes. Phones run hot with the combined forces of outrage and horror at Boag’s terrible fate. It is universally decided this is not the moment to sit back and wait for the police and what will almost certainly be an unsatisfactory end. No more verbal warnings. No more detached pontoons. This time, the damage planned will be expensive, extremely inconvenient and even permanent. Sam is informed of the chosen strategies but asked to stay away from the action. If confronted by the Weasel, no one is sure what he might now be capable of.
With the full support of the community, three men steal into the Weasel’s boat pen. With a sense that the ides are in their favour by providing a heavy fog that rolls in thickly from the ocean, they unscrew the cap of two petrol tanks. Add a dose of sugar to the fuel. They replace the caps, lift the containers to shake them vigorously, and depart into the mist. As silently as they came.
At the rear of the house, three women, all of them mothers of teenage children, gather in silence, carrying hessian chaff bags and an aluminium ladder. They place the ladder against the Weasel’s water tank. While one holds it firm, another climbs to the top and empties the contents of a bag into the water. Two more sacks are passed up. The remains of a long-dead possum and three dead rats are left to quietly decompose in the water supply. The women slip away, sure-footed on paths they have walked since they were children.
High in the trees, an owl hoots. Somewhere, a dog barks. Nothing in the Weasel’s house stirs.
The Weasel, they mutter amongst themselves, has absolutely no inkling of exactly how ruthless a tight-knit, united and outraged group of people can be when Cook’s Basin’s rules are casually snapped in two.
Cook’s Basin News (CBN)
Newsletter for Offshore Residents of Cook’s Basin, Australia
* * *
NOVEMBER
* * *
LOST
Dave’s brand-new iPhone at Bomber Cove yesterday. Proud owner for ONE day. If anyone has found it, please call him.
Island Brunch
Brunch in the Park is on again.
10 a.m. to noon.
Free-range eggs, bacon from happy, free-range pigs, great coffee and tea.
It’s a fundraiser so try to wake up in time!
COMMUNITY CELEBRATION
Cutter Island will celebrate 200 years of Island history next year. Get ready to be cajoled and threatened into digging out old photographs, postcards – anything relating to the early days – from under beds, in lofts or boatsheds, and put pen to paper to give accounts of earlier offshore life. Let’s create an exhibition that will make the residents of 200 years in the future know whether they’ve stuffed it up, or got it bang on the money.
Thank You!
A big thank you from our young daughter who slipped on the ferry wharf steps. We are newcomers to the Island and were overwhelmed by the help, love and support from the community. Many thanks to the red boat that ferried us ashore. I was too flustered to get your name. I am happy to report our daughter is fine, with just a few stitches in her arm. Her parents are recovering and her mother is finally reducing her dependency on herbal relaxing tonics. We are still so glad we moved
here. Truly!
Felicity
Note from the Editor
For all those caught up in the jellyfish legs controversy, the number for our jellyfish is ten. The photographs prove it. All bets are off from now on.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Fast Freddy wakes disoriented at a time when it is normal for him to go to sleep. He dashes onto his deck to see if it is the world that has slipped into reverse, or just him. He remains befuddled until he realises fog has wiped out the spot where he usually finds the horizon. Then he remembers. He bows his head, brings his hands together in the shape of a steeple. His prayer asks that when Boag returns to begin a new life, in whatever form he takes, he will find love, peace and tranquillity. And tidbits in abundance.
After an appropriate time of respectful silence, he showers, shaves and dresses to make his way to Ettie’s house. He finds Judy, Jane and Jenny already hard at work and the small house almost packed up. The Three Js, who have taken time out from cooking a large pot of spiced pear and saffron chutney destined for The Briny, leave him to finish. He is given three departing cuddles in a row, followed by three smacking kisses on the top of his greying head.
Freddy carefully wraps the remainder of Ettie’s belongings – lamps, a few large serving bowls, a wall clock, some books – and places them in boxes, sealing them tightly with tape. With the weather bureau predicting choppy seas, a simple crisscrossing of flaps will invite disaster if Glenn’s flimsy old punt rocks and rolls excessively.
The fog lifts by mid-morning. Sam calls Jimmy out of his bedroom where he’s been glued to Tilly’s side. Between them, they carry the turtle to the waterfront.
Smelling the brine, the sand, her familiar territory, she emerges from her shell, fixing her eyes on Jimmy and then Sam in what they choose to believe is affection. They hoist her onto the deck of the Mary Kay and set off for Cat Island, a wildlife sanctuary where Tilly can spend a few days adjusting to freedom if the big swim feels a bit beyond her for a while. When she is fit enough, it is only a short paddle to the open sea where she can turn north or south, depending on her mood.
They reach the corkscrew bay where rivers, oceans and closed waters meet. Sam stands aside while Jimmy squats beside Tilly, his long legs folded like a picnic table, patting her shell.
“Goodbye, Tilly. Come back and see us,” he whispers. The turtle looks at him through obelisk eyes, dips her head and drags her flippers across the deck in a lumbering walk. With a gentle nudge from Sam, she flops over the side and sinks into the water without looking back. They watch until her black shape disappears into the deep.
“D’ya think she’ll remember us, Sam?”
Sam takes a while to search his memory for one of his mother’s timeless affirmations.
“You love Tilly, Jimmy?” he asks.
“Yeah, Sam.”
“Well, mate, sometimes the hardest part of love is letting go.”
“Oh it’s hard alright,” says the kid, sniffing. “Ya got that right.”
The community truck – an aging ute with a rusting tray and gears that have never moved higher than second – bounces along the rutted Island tracks towards the water. Ettie’s belongings sway and jiggle, but nothing breaks loose, tied down by Fast Freddy who’s a stickler for doing things right so there’s never any cause for regret later. Pleased the fog has lifted to coincide with the high tide, Glenn and Freddy, two men who have known each other since childhood, pull into the delivery wharf. They shuffle from ute to barge, thankful for once for the lack of rain.
“A good omen,” Freddy says about the weather. He’s struggling with his end of Ettie’s heavy sofa, which he remembers helping to install at the top of the Island a couple of years ago.
“Nature,” mutters Glenn, who flatly refuses to let Freddy get away with a single hokey-pokey ounce of superstition.
Soon cartons, a bed, a table and four chairs, odds and ends such as mops and brooms are loaded, all without a single rope to hold them steady. Glenn jumps in his leaky old tinny. Freddy takes up duty aboard the punt. Glenn fires up a fifteen-horsepower engine and nudges it away from the wharf. Freddy, eyeing a necklace of rusty holes the size of cannon balls, says a quick mantra.
“Prettier than a party boat,” Glenn shouts gleefully, referring to festoons of chewed tyres for fenders. They make their snail-pace way towards The Briny on a rising chop. The air crackles and snaps around them. A storm is on the way.
“I lived in that house for thirty years and that’s all there is to show for it,” Ettie says, watching the punt approach. “Doesn’t say a lot, does it?”
“Maybe you had a sixth sense that one day you’d leave,” Kate says.
“Nothing so esoteric. Too many steps to lug too much, that’s all.”
Fast Freddy and Glenn wave and the two women walk along the jetty to meet them.
When everything is delivered upstairs to the attic, Kate pushes a dithering Ettie out of the way. “Let me get to work up here while you keep cooking. I’ve moved so often I’m borderline genius at it.”
With relief Ettie withdraws and returns downstairs to her baking.
Kate tells the two men where to put the furniture and then says they’re free to go, she will do the rest. They take off like a pair of rabbits, terrified she might change her mind and ask them to spin the room one more time. That sofa, they agree, is too damn heavy to pick up more than twice in one day.
Kate unpacks boxes, makes the bed, fluffs the pillows, places frangipani soap in the bathroom along with shampoo and towels. She wires the sound system and programs “Blue Skies”, Ettie’s favourite, to come up first. She resists the impulse to hang a huge canvas of wind-ruffled seagulls on a wall that catches the morning sun. Art is personal.
Last of all, she puts a bottle of vintage French champagne into the fridge. It was given to her by a tycoon who appreciated what she’d written about him. She’s been waiting for a suitable moment to open it and right now is as good as any. Only the paint-splattered floor is bothering her. She forbids Ettie to peek upstairs, races to Oyster Bay in her tinny and returns with a jewel-coloured Turkish rug.
“It’s on loan,” Kate tells Ettie when she finally allows her upstairs. “But if it grows on you, keep it.”
Ettie stands still. Struck dumb. She wanders around touching familiar objects like she’s never seen them before. Throws wide the doors to the deck, as if the view is an unexpected surprise. She opens and closes drawers in the bedroom. Checks under the pillow where she finds a pair of pyjamas neatly folded.
In the bathroom, she holds the bar of soap to her nose and runs the hot water tap until it steams. At the back wall of the apartment, where a rudimentary kitchen is set into a long bench, she picks up the kettle and fills it with water for no reason at all. A subconscious ritual. Settling in. Settling down. Claiming the space. She opens the fridge and sees the champagne.
“For you and the chef to celebrate. You can shift stuff around to suit yourself later. But you can sleep here tonight in comfort.”
She gives Kate a hug of thanks. Unable to trust herself to speak, she walks back to the deck, stares out across a sea of whitecaps. “It feels like a dream,” she says at last. “And I am so afraid I might wake and find it all gone.”
“This is only the beginning, Ettie.”
Downstairs in the café, the blokes hang around having a beer and a coffee, a juicy hamburger, a cheese omelette. Without a twinge of personal guilt Ettie listens as they argue the pros and cons of alcohol. Since taking over the café, she’s resisted the night-time vinos. Too busy, anyway, plotting how to turn a rundown eatery into the best food and coffee shop on the coast.
“A grog brings out your groovy wild side,” Glenn insists. He blows across the top of the bottle, making a sound like a foghorn in the rhythm of reggae. Guzzles.
“Only side I ever see on the water taxi is dangerous, reckless and self-destructive.”
“Only when you push drinking too far, Freddy. That’s a different issue. Rig
ht, Ettie?”
She shrugs, knowing she’s not on solid ground, refusing to be drawn into the debate.
Freddy wags his head in despair. “Everyone pushes it too far, ’cause all it takes is two drinks and you forget when to stop.”
“You’re bein’ a bit tough, Freddy. Man likes a glass or two with his dinner. Lifts the flavour of the food. Helps with digestion.”
“First, the man he takes the wine. Then, without even noticing the switchover, the wine it takes the man.”
“Old Buddha say that?”
“Nah. Tom Russell.”
“Philosopher or somethin’, is he?”
“Singer. Country.”
Glenn frowns and looks twitchy. “Not gonna make me listen to it, are ya? Country music, mate. Just can’t go there.”
“Your loss, Glenn. Your loss.”
Glenn turns to Ettie, who’s leaning on the rail of the deck and staring across the water. “C’mon, Ettie. Help us out. What d’ya reckon?” His tone is whining.
“About alcohol or country music?” She is dreamy, only half-listening, wondering how it will feel to live on the edge of the Square without two hundred steps that, while keeping her fit and strong, she is not sorry to escape forever.
“Both!” they reply, in unison.
She kisses their cheeks, thanks them for their help, their kindness, and avoids the question.
“See you,” she says, laughing.
“Aw, c’mon, Ettie, give us an opinion,” Glenn implores.
So she takes a moment of serious thought. “Each unto his own,” she declares, eventually. Because everyone has to learn the truth for himself.
“I win!” they shout, once more in unison.
By late afternoon, the sky is the colour of charcoal. The smell of rain is in the air. Gusts flirt with the water, then race off, leaving long grey shadows in their wake. Bertie and Big Julie appear at the café door, arm in arm. The old man, bent almost double, shuffles his feet forward a few inches at a time until he’s inside. Looking ninety instead of seventy.