Big River, Little Fish

by Belinda Jeffrey

  ‘I’m not happy about it,’ Ted continued. ‘What with your after-school lessons on hold, now.’

  ‘I’m right,’ Tom said, knowing he couldn’t seem too pleased about the arrangement.

  Rain pelted down on the iron roof drowning any sound from the transistor radio. Still, Ted had it on. Tom didn’t mind the noise. It filled up the space and made it easier to focus on the engine.

  Tom had wanted to check on Mrs Cath and Old John after the funeral but it didn’t seem right to leave Mrs Guthrie and Hannah like that. The rain got Tom to worrying about John’s knees and there was the possibility his pump might play up again. And Tom didn’t know where Murray was. He hadn’t seen him in ages.

  It had begun occurring to Tom that it was possible Murray might not be around one day. That he might pack up and leave him for good without saying a word. Murray often left for weeks at a time, but he’d always come back. Only this time felt different. Tom didn’t know where to find Murray other than the fishing beach. He didn’t know where he lived and there was still so much Tom felt Murray knew about his mother and what happened and he’d never got around to asking. Or rather insisting. Same with Mrs Cath. It was as though there would always be time. Another day, another year to find out what he needed to know. But what happened to Ray Guthrie changed that.

  Tom rolls the grease trolley from underneath the car. He stands and wipes his hands before seeing to Doc who’s nestled in the corner of the garage. Tom feeds him with bread and honey, carrots chopped small. It’s not long before there’s a pair of silky ears peaking out of the bag and his small body emerges. Shaking, at first, his velvet nose sniffing the plate and the air. He hops, an awkward lurch towards the plate, and nibbles the food. Tom pats his ears and the muscles running down his back feel like a vine underneath his fur. Doc finishes with a shake of his ears and a shiver radiating through his body. He nudges the bag and crawls inside.

  ‘You’ll have to let him go one day, Tom,’ Ted yells above the sound of rain. ‘I wouldn’t get too attached if I was you.’

  Tom returns to the trolley and slides underneath the car, to the smell of diesel, oil and metal.

  ‘You hear something?’ Ted yells.

  ‘No,’ Tom shouts back.

  ‘There it is again.’

  Tom slides out from the car and listens. ‘Someone at the door?’ he says, getting up and walking towards the sliding garage door. Tom opens it, squeaking, along the tracks. The rain pelts down hard outside and the sky is grey. Mud runs in a path between the garage and the house and, standing there outside the garage door, is a man, drowning in rain, holding Harley.

  The grandfather clock ticks and tocks and is the only sound in the room as Tom sits with Ted and Marge and the other man at the kitchen table. Marge pours tea and offers milk and sugar and passes round the Arnott’s tin. A puddle of water drips under the man’s chair from the edges of his pants and his shirt that wasn’t covered by his raincoat. Drops slide down his hair and trickle along his neck onto his shirt. The man reaches over for the sugar bowl. His hand trembles and he apologises as he knocks his cup and tea overflows onto the saucer and then the tablecloth. Marge says, ‘never mind,’ and busies around him with a tea towel.

  The man has a tangle of dark hair, hanging low over his blue eyes. He could be a patch of limestone cliff with his weathered skin and stubbled chin. As if life has scratched him with her fingernails.

  Tom glances at Ted who sits with his arms folded, his eyes focused on a rose on the tablecloth. Steam rises from his untouched cup of tea.

  ‘This is Oliver Richardson, Tom,’ Ted says suddenly. ‘He’s your father.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Oliver says quickly, his eyes darting between them all. ‘I just couldn’t do it, Ted.’

  Tom looks up at Ted while Marge laughs nervously. ‘Another biscuit anyone?’ she says thrusting the tin towards them.

  ‘What does he mean?’ Tom says to Ted. ‘Couldn’t do what?’

  Ted swallows. He takes a biscuit and places it on the saucer.

  Tom looks at the other man and back to Ted. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Ted says, standing up. He leaves the table and walks outside, closing the kitchen door behind him.

  The man clears his throat and his biscuit trembles in his fingers. A fine dusting of coconut from the Iced Vo Vo falls into his tea.

  ‘I don’t know where to start, Tom,’ he says, looking to Marge.

  Marge turns to Tom. ‘He was coming for a visit, Tom, and he happened to come upon the Harley left in the bush. He,’ she hesitates and touches the curve of her hair at her neck, ‘Well, he knew whose it was because it used to be his.’ She glances at Oliver who has his head lowered over the tabletop. His leg twitches restlessly under the table and his cup tinkles with the movement on the saucer. ‘But,’ Marge says sitting up straighter and reaching over to collect what’s left of Oliver’s cup of tea. ‘It’s been returned – and we’re grateful,’ she adds, ‘and Oliver was just passing through. Just a quick visit, Tom.’ Marge pushes her chair back and looks at Tom, smiling.

  Tom could yell, stand on his head, jump on the table and somersault out of the door and she would still pretend it wasn’t happening. She sees only what she wants to see. Here’s Tom’s father come back from what could be the dead, with the Harley that was stolen and blamed on Murray, and Marge wants to smile it away over a cream biscuit and sugared tea. A quick ‘Hello, thanks for popping by’ to his father and back to life the way it was.

  There are words going over and over in Tom’s mind,

  This man is my father. This man is my father? And it’s backwards, surely, because didn’t his father just walk away through the kitchen door?

  Tom jumps up from his chair and runs out of the house.

  ‘Someone just found my Harley so you can let Murray go,’ Tom says to Kingston.

  ‘Your father know?’ he says.

  Tom swallows. ‘I want to see him,’ he says.

  ‘Well, I’m glad your Harley’s back, Tom.’ Kingston takes out his notebook. ‘Who did you say returned it?’

  Tom glances back up the street to his house. ‘A...,’ he fumbles. ‘A man.’

  ‘Righto,’ Kingston says, taking his hat from the peg beside the door. ‘Better have a look.’

  ‘Where’s Murray?’

  ‘How would I know where blacks go, son.’

  Tom watches Kingston walk away up the street towards the garage and a swell builds up inside his chest and his head begins to swim. He leans over, resting his hands on his knees, gulping in air.

  ‘Let him out days ago,’ Kingston says, without turning his head.

  Tom squats on the ground beside the water at the cliff wishing Hannah was there. There’s a thousand thoughts and sensations rushing through his head and his first reaction is to run away from it all. He’s thought about his father so many times and he told himself long ago he’d never see him again. What do you do when your father turns up after fifteen years looking like some drudger off the street? What do you say? And what does he want?

  ‘He’ll be gone soon enough,’ Tom tells himself. Might be an hour, a day. Maybe even a week, but he’ll leave again. Only this time, Tom thinks, he’ll take Harley with him. All those lessons and lost afternoons and for what? Hoping for a ride that was never going to be his.

  Tom throws rocks into the river and watches the ripples crash into each other. One, two, three.

  It’s dark when Tom returns home. He stops at the window at the side of the house and sees Marge sitting in the lounge room, knitting. Oliver sits on another chair opposite her. He looks so uncomfortable, twitching, restlessly moving his legs and arms. Tom turns from the window with his back to the wall. Lights are on in the garage, the faint sound of music.

  Tom hovers in the doorway of the garage, watching Ted hobble around the benches. Harley
is back in her rightful place at the back of the garage. Ted walks away from the bench towards the bike and takes a rag to the chrome. He spits on it and rubs the rag in circles over the metal and Harley begins to shine in small, concentric circles.

  ‘Hi,’ Tom says.

  Ted looks up. He coughs and waves the rag in Tom’s direction, then bends down to continue. Tom walks past Ted to Doc, still curled inside the bag, in the corner of the shed beside Harley. He lifts the flap to see him, then closes it.

  Ted stops, stands and stretches his back, flinging the rag over his shoulder. He sighs. ‘When he first came back to town after you were born, I offered him a job. Said he could take on all the fancier jobs and I’d concentrate on the basics. He had a way with bikes, you know.’ He glances at Tom before walking to the bench and fiddling with the dials on the transistor radio. ‘I saw him race, once, before he signed up. I took Lil down to Adelaide and we watched him race that last time.’

  ‘You knew her then?’ Tom says, standing up.

  Ted shrugs. ‘Not really, Tom. I was going into town that weekend anyway and she asked if she could come along.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘She was pretty, Tom. She had eyes that–’ he sighs. ‘She had her own mind. She chose to live down there and wait for your dad to come home.’

  Tom rests his hands on the side of Harley. He runs his fingers over the chrome.

  ‘He just never came back, Tom,’ Ted says, turning towards him. ‘I offered him a place and he never came back.’

  ‘Who took my bike?’

  Ted is quiet.

  ‘You know!’ Tom says, watching his father.

  ‘Do you remember seeing him that one time? It was just before Miss–’ Ted hesitates. ‘He came back for a visit then. You two sat out back on the veranda.’

  Tom remembers that day, or, until now, thinks he remembers that day. But it’s been so long since then, and at the time it seemed so short, he’s wondered whether or not it had really happened, or had been something he just made up. He has memories like that with Lil, too. Just snippets of moments they might have had together. And they seem like memories, too, the more he thinks about them.

  ‘We’ve had to live with knowing he could come back any time, Tom. We always wanted what was best for you.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘He turned up here saying he was going to be a father to you if it was the last thing he ever did. He was out there,’ Ted points to the shed door, ‘staggering on his feet. Thinking he can come and go in a boy’s life and being a father is something you can turn on and off when it suits you. He saw the Harley,’ Ted says, ‘and his eyes lit up. I gave him the bike because it was his. ’Cause he had no right thinking he could come back for you.’

  Ted throws the rag on the bench and leaves through the side door. Tom hears the back door of the house open and close. Voices. Tom slings Doc on his shoulders and walks through the main garage door in time to see Oliver staggering down the front stairs. ‘Go on,’ Ted says. ‘Go and get your drink. Sure you’ll be back. I’ve heard it all before. He’s ours, you hear!’

  Tom feels like the earth is churning under his feet. He grabs his bike and pedals off into the night. ‘Tom!’ he hears Ted call. Halfway to Big Bend he thinks he should have taken Harley and ridden off into forever. But there’s no going back.

  At the Guthries’ house there’s no sign of Hannah. Tom looks through her window, he waits by the back door. He can’t hear her voice at all. He thinks about Mrs Guthrie being inside all on her own and how she must feel now that Mr Guthrie has gone and won’t ever be coming back. There’s some kinds of loneliness you can only share with certain people. Tom knocks on the back door.

  ‘Tom,’ Mrs Guthrie says. The way she says it she could be surprised or confused, or both. She has that faraway look that Mrs Cath has. She opens the door and Tom leaves Doc beside it before following her through the kitchen into the lounge.

  ‘Help yourself to anything, Tom,’ she says, sitting down. ‘I’m that tired these days.’

  Tom looks around, there’s still no sign of Hannah.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do, Tom,’ she says. ‘Sorry,’ she adds quickly, bringing a handkerchief to her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t be talking about this to you.’

  ‘What do you need?’ Tom says. ‘I can help.’

  ‘I ... I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know anything about sheep and the farm,’ she says. ‘And children need a father.’ She runs her hands over the mound of her stomach and glances towards Hannah’s room. ‘You’ve been a good friend, Tom.’

  Tom can’t believe he hasn’t understood before. Hannah must feel like he does, now that Mr Guthrie has gone. Confused and angry. Torn between wanting to run away and stay. Instead of looking for Tom, Hannah must be spending all her time with Harry, thinking he can make her feel better.

  ‘What do you need done, Mrs Guthrie?’

  ‘I just don’t know.’

  Tom needs to find her. He tells himself it’s so Mrs Guthrie will have one less thing to worry about, but more than that, he needs to find her for himself. It’s as though his life is being cracked open and it hurts; this past breaking in.

  By the time he’s near the Caruthers’ place, his heart is thumping with the thought of Oliver disappearing by morning, and Hannah lost to Harry Caruthers for good. He can’t bring himself to talk to Oliver, but he doesn’t want him taking off again either. ‘Hold on, Doc,’ he says, speeding up. Faster, he says to himself, faster, faster. It’s the only way forward.

  Tom hears a noise and he slows his pace to listen. Voices carrying on the breeze in the still of the night. He stops pedalling and slows his breathing.

  ‘Don’t, Harry,’ he hears.

  Tom hears panic in the voice and runs his bike away from the road down the slope of grass towards it. The darkness is flushed with moonlight turning trees and rocks into black cut outs, the house is an angular shape in the distance.

  ‘Harry,’ Tom hears.

  Tom drops his bike to the ground, wraps his arms around Doc, still slung over his shoulders, and runs.

  Tom comes upon the shapes of two bodies on a blanket, where the grass has been cleared around a large gum tree. As he gets closer, he recognises one shadow as Harry and there’s no question in his mind about who is with him and he can’t even bear to call out her name. Tom puts Doc on the ground and runs. Don’t. Stop, her voice replays in his head. Hannah. Tom fills in the shadows with details: Harry has her pinned to the ground and she can’t get away. Tom throws his fist into Harry’s back who grunts and rolls to the side.

  Hannah is a shadow rising from the blanket. She runs off into the night towards the road. Twigs snap under her feet.

  ‘Go on,’ Tom yells to her back. ‘Run home!’

  ‘Go on, get up you bastard,’ Tom yells at Harry who’s crouched on the ground. Tom kicks him in the legs. ‘You’ll pay for hurting her.’

  Harry staggers to his feet, one hand clutched around his middle. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I heard her. I heard you,’ Tom shouts, swinging another punch towards him.

  ‘She wanted me to keep going. Anyway, you had your chance.’

  Tom kicks Harry in the stomach. ‘Say that again and I’ll lay you up for a week.’

  Harry smiles, a thin line of dribble runs from his mouth as he half stands, his arm across his stomach, bent over to protect himself. ‘You’re an idiot,’ Harry says, breaking free of Tom’s grip and staggering away up the hill. ‘She wanted it,’ he calls back over his shoulder.

  Tom watches Harry leave and his arms fall, limp, at his side. Adrenalin subsides into a creeping feeling of stupidity. What if he had got it wrong and Harry had been right. It might be true, what Harry says, as those words replay in his head. Maybe she wanted it and he’d read it all wrong.

  Tom
collects Doc and strings the rucksack over his shoulders. His breathing is heavy and deliberate and he’s never felt more alone or stupid. The thought of seeing Hannah run from the blanket feels like poison. The thought of losing her has been creeping up on him for months and after tonight she might never want to see him again. Maybe he’s done it after all. He might have pushed her away for good.

  A light rain begins to fall as Tom pedals away from the Caruthers’, past the Guthries’, and down Big Bend Road towards the river.

  Tom holds Doc close to him as he lies down inside the canoe under what’s left of his mum’s hut, listening to the rain hit the roof. The sound of a thousand fingers drumming tabletops. He closes his eyes, not wanting to think about or face anything that’s real. In the dark, in the memories of sleep, everyone who is leaving can leave. And when he wakes in the morning, it will be done. And they’ll be gone.

  Can you hear me, Lil?

  Tom’s last thought before falling asleep is to wonder how hard it was for Old Mother Murray to carve out that path through the cliffs, to change direction when it would have been easier to flow on straight through. Because it’s something Murray Black would have said if he had been there.

  Tom wakes with the sound of voices and the feel of strong hands on his shoulders. His eyes fly open and Ted’s face is right in front of him. Tom sits straight up and it takes a moment for him to understand where he is and what’s happened.

  ‘You all right, Tom,’ Ted says, his face is lined with concern.

  Tom nods. He rubs his eyes.

  ‘We’ve been that worried about you,’ Ted says.

  Tom stands up and steps out of the canoe. Sun streaks in through the cracks and gaps in the walls. There’s a shape in the doorway, a figure, and Tom blinks and rubs his eyes again before realising it’s Oliver. A rush of relief comes over Tom and, without thinking, he lurches forward to hug Ted. He feels his father’s body hard against him. Ted laughs, nervously, says, ‘there, there, Tom,’ and ruffles his hair. Tom wishes his father would hug him in return, to squash him with certainty. But he doesn’t and Tom steps back.