Big River, Little Fish

by Belinda Jeffrey

  ‘This the place?’ his pa says.

  Tom mumbles, ‘Yeah.’ He can feel the rumble of the bike through his body even after he steps off and Oliver folds down the stand to hold the Harley in place.

  ‘God that felt good,’ his pa is saying. He stretches and smiles and looks to Tom for direction.

  Tom knocks on Jimbo’s door and he appears scratching his balls, his hair sticking up in unruly clumps.

  ‘Tom!’ he says.

  ‘This is my pa,’ Tom points to Oliver standing beside him. ‘We just wanted to check you were right. What with the river.’

  ‘You got plans?’ Oliver says.

  Jimbo opens the door and waves them inside. The small space inside the shack is covered with rubbish. Newspapers and letters across every surface, books here and there. Tom and Oliver stand in the doorway. ‘We could help you pack things up, if you need,’ Tom says. ‘When the time comes.’

  ‘Na,’ Jimbo waves his concern away and disappears around the corner to the sink. He returns with a rabbit, handing it to Tom. ‘Fresh killed today.’

  ‘Ferryman’s house is already going under,’ Tom says, taking the rabbit, but Jimbo doesn’t respond.

  ‘Come back on the weekend, Tom. If you can. Made some improvements to the slingshot.’

  Tom hesitates outside Bum-crack’s shack, but he keeps moving on to see Mrs Cath. They find her lucid and happy with the room half tidied and clean dishes on the sink. She won’t hear of any help to move and, in-between stories about her sister, Judith, says to Oliver. ‘You look so familiar, dear.’ They drink two cups of tea before saying they have to be leaving. Tom gives her the rabbit.

  There’s a note on John’s door saying, I’ll be back in a week.

  It’s the end of the line of shacks, only the fishing beach in the distance and what’s left of Lil’s hut. Tom forgets Oliver is there, for a minute, and continues walking. The water is already covering the sand and the fire ring.

  ‘Jesus,’ says Oliver, looking at what’s left of the hut.

  Tom stops, turning to see his pa walk to stand in what was once the doorway of the hut.

  ‘I haven’t been here since...,’ he rubs his forehead and runs his hands through his hair.

  ‘It’s falling down,’ Tom says, even though it doesn’t need saying. ‘I like it here,’ he continues, walking around and it occurs to him that he has something to show his pa and it feels good. ‘Me and...,’ Tom hesitates. ‘I keep the canoe tied up here and my fishing gear.’ Murray Black comes to Tom’s mind, though he doesn’t mention him. Tom looks up to find Oliver gone from the door frame, down towards the river.

  ‘We’re all going to end up in the drink,’ Oliver says as Tom comes up behind him. ‘Water’s going to rise and maybe a man can’t fight what’s gonna drag him under anyway.’

  Tom doesn’t like the way his pa sounds. A feeling like they’ve slipped off the ferry into deep water.

  ‘Jeez,’ Oliver says, turning around and walking away. ‘Come on. Better get you home.’

  Tom looks through his bedroom window watching his pa drive away. Just taking off like that out of town, down the road, away from the rising river. He stands at the window until the headlights disappear over the horizon and, for the comfort of a familiar habit, breathes on the glass and draws his name in the fog. He rubs it out with his hand before it fades away by itself. With the ferryman’s house sure to go under soon, it could be his pa will never come back and a few weeks is all the time they’ll ever have. Only now he’s taken what he never meant to leave behind. Could be he’ll never look back.

  Tom tries sleeping, but he has ants in his veins. He throws back the covers and swings his legs out of bed. After checking on Doc – who’s still asleep in the pouch – he reaches underneath his bed for his Arnott’s tin and empties the contents onto his rumpled blanket. Three fossils, five mallee root letters, a collection of Kellogg’s cards and an assortment of nuts and bolts he’s collected over the years. He wishes he had a cigarette, but they’re in the Guthries’ shed. Tom decides he has to get Hannah back and, scraping the letters into a pile, realises there’s only one way. If he doesn’t get digging soon, the land will all go under water.

  It occurs to Tom, as he lies back down on the bed, that people leave things behind when they die. Mr Guthrie’s shed, his clothes, his pipe. The unfinished cot. When Tom came across his mother’s hut, even that first time, there was nothing inside. And it doesn’t seem right she would have died with nothing. Someone must know what happened to her things. It wouldn’t matter to Tom what he found of hers, just something. Anything. A marker in the ground and a date don’t seem enough. At least with flood maps, you know she’s coming back. One day, some day, Old Mother will return.

  In the morning, Tom finds the ferry idle by the river, Oliver nowhere to be seen, and everyone busy with river business. Tom watches Ted and T-Bone’s father leave the hall with a group of men from the official Swan Reach flood committee.

  ‘Town meeting tonight,’ Ted says to people on the street.

  Miss Pinny and Marge are talking with other women outside the grocery store.

  ‘Tom,’ Marge calls to him. ‘Tom!’ she calls again, but Tom crosses the road and walks on down to the river beside the ferry. He looks across the water to where a car idles beside the bank, and two more pull up behind it. Tom looks back up the road. He imagines the sound of Harley and his pa arriving with a reason for why he’s late. But there’s only the sound of familiar voices and the river rushing loud and a kookaburra screeching in the tree beside him. Tom lifts his legs over the ferry rail and places Doc down on the floor of the engine house. He fills the engine tank with diesel and sees to the ropes and chains at the gates before pushing the crank handle. The ferry pulls away from the bank with the water bulking up under the floor, the small waves and current setting the empty ferry rocking, slightly, as she crosses.

  Ted and Marge appear at the water’s edge too late. Miss Pinny alongside them. Ted removes his hat and waves it around his head before throwing it onto the ground. Ted turns and walks away back to the hall and Tom looks to the other side of the river where there are now four cars waiting to cross.

  ‘I don’t care if he never comes back,’ Tom says to Doc. ‘I’ll work the ferry myself and buy my own bike.’ Tom pulls the brake lever and the ferry slows, banging against the bank. He unlatches the chains, swings open the gates, and waves each of the cars on board. The timber slats sound like a xylophone as the cars drive on. Tom slips the belt over the drive-wheels and sets the ferry across the river again. He doesn’t care what anyone says, he’s running the ferry all day. Only thing that’s going to stop him is Old Mother Murray herself. Marge, Ted, Miss Pinny, they can all say what they want. There is no point in Tom going to school.

  The thing about cars and bikes and ferries is that you can’t get them backwards. At least, for Tom. Back and forth. One way and then the other. There’s no real place to start or finish, no pre-set order, and accuracy is the job done right. Taking cars across the river is important. People have work to do, livestock and crops to deliver, bank managers to see, family to visit.

  By the time Tom gets to the Swan Reach side of the river, Tildon is there with his ute full of potatoes and Swanson pulls up behind him with his Diamond-T-Reo truck. A ute arrives in the main street, which is filling with people, dumping a tray full of sandbags on the road. There’s talk about the best places to build levee banks, who’s going to manage the shifts and rosters, what rooms will be used to sleep work gangs that will come in from all over to help out. All of it to keep Old Mother from drowning the town.

  Tom catches Ted in the crowd. He looks up at Tom and their eyes lock, but Tom can’t read him. It’s over in a flash as Ted bends down to drag a bundle of wheat-bags across to the edge of the street. Tom starts up the engine. Tildon winds down his window and tips his hat and waves and Tom waves back. Do
c wriggles in the bag and Tom digs in his pocket for an arrowroot biscuit. Keep him quiet for a bit.

  The ferry is empty on the return trip and Tom watches what’s happening in the town. Old Mother is already swallowing the front door of the ferryman’s house and Tom knows it’s only his imagination, but she seems to be rising by the minute. There’s a growl of engines over the rise of the main street and Tom expects to see the Harley come over the hill, but it’s a line of Ferguson tractors arriving to help with the levee banks. Trucks dump loads of dirt and sand – scraped out of the golf course – on the side of the street where men and women and kids begin shovelling it into sandbags. There are no more cars waiting on either side of the river so Tom decides to let Doc out on the grass behind the ferryman’s house.

  He doesn’t hear the sound of the engine, at first, not with the grunting of tractors and shovelling going on in town. But the growling engine is hard to ignore as it stops and idles beside the grocery store near where Tom squats on the ground with Doc. Oliver puts out his good leg to steady the bike. He nods at Tom and cuts the engine before wheeling the bike up to the back of the house and hooking the helmet on the handlebars.

  ‘Don’t know why you bothered coming back,’ Tom says, scooping Doc back into the bag and slinging it onto his shoulders. ‘I can run the ferry fine without you.’

  ‘Hey?’ Tom hears his pa. ‘Now wait a minute!’

  Tom ignores him, running onto the ferry. Oliver hobbles down the hill to the edge of the water, following after him. A car waits on the other side of the river and Tom starts the engine.

  ‘Oy!’ Oliver calls.

  ‘Ferry is s’posed to run all day. And where were you this morning?’ Tom pushes the crank handle and the ferry pulls away from the bank but Oliver has his legs over the rail before it leaves. ‘Just who do you think you’re talking to?’ Oliver says.

  ‘I don’t know. Some dumb bloke who can’t work out whether he’s coming or going. Leaving or staying.’

  Oliver lashes out, slapping Tom across his face. ‘Jesus,’ Oliver says, turning away towards the rail.

  Tom throws himself on Oliver, grabbing him around the neck. ‘You bastard. Bloody bastard!’

  ‘Tom!’ Oliver says, pulling against his arms. ‘Let go. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What’d you come back for, hey? Why not just keep on going back where you came from. We don’t need you, ya hear. We don’t need you.’

  Oliver pulls Tom’s arms from his neck and twists his body to hold him still.

  ‘Maybe I need you,’ Oliver says and Tom’s body slackens slightly. ‘The bike wouldn’t start,’ Oliver says.

  Tom pulls away to lean on the rail and the ferry nears the bank.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Oliver says. ‘It ... Jesus, boy,’ he says, running to pull the brake lever.

  The ferry bumps against the bank and Tom rushes for the gates, swinging them open and ushering the cars on board. Last car on is Mrs Guthrie’s Holden with Hannah in the passenger seat. Tom turns to see Oliver at the controls, so he closes the gates and fixes the lock and the ferry moves off.

  ‘Hello, Tom,’ Mrs Guthrie leans forward to see him.

  ‘Hi,’ Hannah says from the passenger seat. Her window is wound down and it looks wrong, seeing them there without Mr Guthrie.

  ‘Hi,’ Tom says, looking down. Seeing Hannah makes him think about that night and what a fool he’d been.

  ‘Can you thank your pa for me, please. Don’t know what I would have done without him this morning. Darn sheep knocked down one of the fences and three got out,’ she stops as though there’s more to the story, but she’s too tired to tell it.

  ‘Oliver was wheeling the Harley up past our place,’ Mrs Guthrie says. ‘Said he was down the river fixing up the hut.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Tom says, turning to catch sight of his pa by the rail.

  ‘Just been to the doctor,’ says Mrs Guthrie. ‘Took the Walker Flat ferry across.’

  ‘I gotta go,’ Tom says, tapping his fingers on the rim of the car. Mrs Guthrie shifts the stick into gear and Tom opens the gates and the car rumbles over the ramp and up the bank to the road. Hannah leans out of the window and waves. Her hair shines in the sun and Tom waves back. He catches her smile before her head disappears and the car rounds the bend. It’s good to know she’s still around, thinks Tom.

  ‘I got to thinking last night after I dropped you off,’ Oliver says, joining Tom to close the gates. ‘That maybe I could fix up the hut. I gotta live somewhere, you know.’

  ‘That’s my place,’ Tom says defensively. ‘Besides. You’ll only get flooded out. Too close to the water.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Oliver says, like he agrees, though it’s as if he just thought of it. ‘But as it happens, Mrs Guthrie offered me a place to stay. Shearers’ quarters,’ he says, ‘in exchange for helping out around the place.’

  Tom is quiet as the ferry crosses the river.

  It’s dark when Tom and Oliver leave the ferry to attend the meeting in the town hall. It seems as if everyone has been in town all day helping out with the levee bank around the post office.

  ‘Bloody water has to go somewhere,’ one bloke is saying. ‘Levee banks cause a world of problems.’

  ‘And what else do you expect us to do? Hey?’ another bloke leans over to reply. ‘We have to defend our own. We got the cliffs hemming us in like livestock. Other towns don’t have cliffs pushing the water all to one side.’

  ‘Worked back in thirty-one,’ someone else says. ‘Worked then, it’ll work now.’

  ‘Order,’ Ted says, taking his seat on the stage. Tom and Oliver stand at the back of the hall and Tom fidgets with his hat. He smooths back his hair and it feels strange having his pa stand beside him. And nothing really settled between them and his dad up on the stage. And Tom realising how lost he’s beginning to feel. Like the people he’s been closest to all his life are drifting further away. If only Oliver had never showed up, if Murray had never left. Oliver coughs beside him and adjusts his weight on his good leg. It’s not Oliver turning up that Tom wants to take back. But his leaving in the first place.

  ‘The official flood committee has already decided on the best plan of attack and it’s just my duty to tell you all what’s going to happen and how you can best help. We’re all concerned about the same thing, here, right?’ Ted says.

  ‘Hear, hears’ sound around the room amid general murmurs. A few chairs scrape on the timber floor.

  ‘But if we work together we can hold fast until the worst of it passes. Now there’s people here who lived through thirty-one and let me tell you, we wouldn’t be half as well prepared without advice from the likes of Old Bill Hughes and Delma Jenkins.’ Ted holds out his hands towards the front row of chairs and a few people clap.

  ‘So we, of the committee, have agreed to suspend our business operations as much as we can and organise things around the place. We’ve been out this morning and it’s agreed that we’ll concentrate on the post office, which is closest to the water and plan the others as needed. Now people up the river are saying that if we hold tight and man the banks, we can see the water pass through without too much trouble. You know how these things are. Talk up a mountain but it’s a hill we’re climbing, in all likelihood. Could be over in a few weeks, we think. Thing is, we need as much help as we can get. More we can be prepared for her full hit, better off we’ll be. You should suspend all business that’s not absolutely crucial and it’s all hands on deck. If you’re old enough to hold a shovel or drive a tractor, we need you. School will still run, though,’ he adds and Tom looks down at his shoes. Not for him, he’s thinking. He can shovel sandbags and run the ferry day and night. He can be a help. Fact of the matter is you can’t read or write your way out of a flood.

  ‘Reckon you and me should sign up for shifts after the ferry shuts down,’ Oliver says. ‘I don’t need much sleep,’ he adds.
/>   ‘Me neither,’ says Tom.

  ‘Now,’ says Ted from the stage. ‘The real danger’s going to come at night. If her water breaks and the banks don’t hold, everything could be lost.’

  When Tom gets home later that night, Marge is sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing-gown with a glass of water in front of her.

  ‘Sit down, Tom,’ she says.

  Tom slips Doc from his shoulders to the floor beside the chair.

  ‘Thing is,’ Marge begins quickly. ‘You’ve been expelled, Tom,’ she says and Tom thinks back to the morning with Miss Pinny standing beside Marge at the grocery store.

  ‘Miss Pinny said you started skipping school ever since your–’ she cuts herself short. ‘Since Oliver showed up.’ She sips her water. ‘And for the last week you haven’t been at all. Not one single day.’

  Marge has a way of talking to you as if you weren’t really there. She looks at the table, the glass, the wall. Her cooking, whatever, and prattles on around you.

  ‘You and Oliver broke the deal,’ she says and her cheeks flush bright pink with anger. Or disappointment. ‘And after ... everything else. What with Harry and storming out of class and deliberately thwarting every attempt to help you improve yourself. Well,’ she sips her water again. ‘School’s decided to kick you out. Expelled,’ she says as if it required underlining.

  Truth is, Tom knew it was coming. Sooner or later someone was going to find out. His pa had sent him to school, but he’d never gone. In the time since his pa had arrived, he’d rebuilt John’s pump and unblocked Mrs Cath’s toilet. Without Mrs Guthrie knowing, he’d mended a few spots in the fence that looked weak and generally kept an eye on parts of the flock. And all the time he convinced himself he was achieving more than if he’d wasted his time sitting on a wooden seat with his own inadequacies and failings reinforced every minute by a woman who hated him. She had a way of looking at Tom that had him feeling a good two inches shorter during school hours. And he got to thinking that it didn’t matter much which way he used words or how carefully he tried explaining things, people didn’t listen anyway.