Big River, Little Fish

by Belinda Jeffrey

  ‘My pa sent me every day,’ Tom says. ‘He didn’t know.’

  Marge huffs as if that knowledge is of no consequence and Tom knows she’ll still hold it against Oliver.

  ‘I’m good with my hands,’ Tom says.

  ‘You talk to cars! You talk to ... to...’

  Tom knows who she means but she can’t bring herself to say her name. Marge can spend her time building up an imaginary version of him, a Tom that’s not real, but she won’t speak of real imaginary people. At least Tom knows the difference.

  ‘At least she listens!’ Tom says.

  ‘You’re strange, Tom. And there’s something wrong with you,’ Marge says, standing and tugging at her gown. Her voice is calm, as if she’s peaceful, but inside Tom knows she’s a raging bull. ‘Your father and I have tried everything,’ she continues. ‘You’re ungrateful, Tom. Selfish.’ She rinses her glass under the water at the sink, dries it, and places it in the cupboard all in one practised sequence of motions.

  Tom yells. He screams and bangs his fists on the table and Marge watches him from the kitchen sink. When she leaves the room, there is no sign that anyone has been there. Just the sink sparkling where she ran the cloth over and rubbed it dry with the tea towel.

  Tom picks up Doc and leaves through the back door.

  ‘I want to stay with you,’ Tom says, lying Doc on the ground inside the shearers’ quarters.

  ‘Jesus,’ Oliver says, startled at Tom’s appearance. He springs from the bed and holds his hands out in front as if they’re clasped around a gun. He looks at Tom but he doesn’t know him at all, like Oliver is some other man. And then, slowly, he comes back. He sits back down on a metal cot, as if he’s drained of energy, and the springs squeak.

  ‘I want to live here,’ Tom says. ‘Mrs Guthrie needs the help and it’ll be easier with the river and everything.’

  Tom notices his pa shaking. His legs, his hands. Oliver wraps his arms around himself.

  ‘Jeez, you gave me a fright.’ Oliver stands and walks to the other side of the shed. The air is colder here at the Guthries’, out of town, and especially in the shed. Just a thin barrier of corrugated iron and some upright joists separating the inside from the night. There is a neat line of ten cots in the shed. A small sink in the corner, a long timber table and bench seats. The Harley leans on its stand beside Oliver’s bed.

  ‘What did your parents say?’

  Tom shrugs. ‘Reckon I’m old enough to make my own decisions.’

  Oliver laughs which turns to coughing. He pours a glass of water from the pitcher on the table.

  ‘That can be a whole lot of trouble.’

  Tom hesitates. He fiddles with his fingers. ‘I’ve been expelled from school.’ He figures Oliver will find out one way or another.

  ‘What for?’ Oliver slams the glass on the table.

  Tom swallows. ‘I–’

  ‘You’ve been skipping school, haven’t you?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Sure. I don’t understand anything. I made an agreement with your father! Do you understand? I told him I’d keep it. That you’d listen to me.’ Oliver paces the floor. ‘Do you know what it cost me to come here, to ... to face them? Do you?’

  ‘But–’

  ‘But bloody what?’ Oliver yells. ‘Everyone looking at me like I’m a nothing. Every day I feel like I can’t go another minute without a drink. Do you know what it’s like to have a fire inside your blood screaming at you and all you want is to drown it out? It’s a beast growling in your bones and it is so thirsty and it’s the river rising up on the outside swallowing my house and–’ Oliver stops as if he can’t remember what he was saying. Or why. He looks at Tom and rubs his forehead. ‘Tom, I’m sorry.’

  But Tom doesn’t wait to hear it.

  There’s one cigarette left in the packet from the small nails tin and Tom is relieved. Tom puts the empty packet back in. He and Hannah found the money for the cigarettes when they were down beside the ferry one Saturday morning. They convinced Harry’s brother to buy them in exchange for giving him a packet.

  ‘Grown-ups always have something in their hands. You know,’ Hannah said that morning, ‘cigarettes, a drink. Beer. Shandy.’ She practised looking sophisticated and Tom had to tell her when she captured ‘the look’ she was after. The look of it didn’t matter on the second cigarette. Just the technique and the feeling like they were getting older and outgrowing themselves. And it hadn’t felt strange or weird sharing those moments with Hannah.

  Tom thinks about Hannah kissing Harry. And whether his mum ever loved his pa like that. It occurs to him that there are other girls. Biscuit for one. And one day he might have to learn to like someone different. Perhaps life itself is backwards. Marge so angry she’s calm. The drink drowning his pa no matter which way he turns, and Tom feeling closer to his mum for never living than any parent who is. Life is plain hard to read. Full stop.

  Tom sits under Hannah’s window for a while until he’s shivering. He walks around the back of the house to the shearers’ quarters and he sees that the unfinished cot is still there on the veranda. Tom hesitates before climbing the stairs and lighting the lantern, which is still hanging on the hook just as Mr Guthrie left it. The sad thing about it is he was almost finished. It was all put together, sanded. All it needed was to be painted. The tin and brush were waiting beside it. Tom opens the tin with a paint scraper and dips in the brush. While the lantern hisses softly in the dark and moths gather around until they’re a thick mass, Tom covers the cot with a coat of white paint.

  The silhouette of his pa’s body is outlined on his cot as Tom creeps inside the shearers’ quarters. Tom hears his pa’s irregular breathing. He tiptoes around the edge of the first cot, skips a few, then lays down on the fourth one. No matter how slowly he lowers his body onto the bed, he can’t stop the springs from squeaking.

  ‘I’m not asleep, Tom,’ Oliver says.

  ‘I am,’ says Tom, dragging the grey army blanket up over his body. ‘Night, Doc,’ he whispers.

  The corrugated iron walls creak and clack in the night as the air temperature cools. Tom wakes early, just before the sun comes up and, looking around the room, wonders which bed Murray Black sleeps in when he does his shearing shift.

  ‘As long as it’s no trouble with Marge and Ted,’ Mrs Guthrie says over breakfast. Oliver and Tom had already put in an hour’s work fixing some of the fencing and spreading feed around. Tom watches his pa hobble around with his leg and the way his mouth stretches thin at times means his leg must hurt more than he ever says. But he didn’t slow down or say anything about it and it got Tom to wondering what happened. Ted had told him long ago that the war had taken Oliver away in the first place and Tom wonders whether whatever happened to his leg was because of the war, too.

  The war was always accounting for tragedy. No one talks about it much. The war killed Biscuit’s uncle and T-Bone’s uncle but it also brought Tildon and Swanson and their families to the riverland looking for work when it was all over. Tom has overheard snippets of conversation over the years. How homes in Europe were bombed to bits and families were forced to flee their country. Once Ted said it had brought bad luck to the world and a bitter taste that was hard to forget. Murray had once said it brought him work.

  They’d talked about the war at school, but it wasn’t personal. It didn’t seem to be the kind of war that happened to Biscuit or Ted or Lil. It didn’t belong to the river. It happened to strange men on the other side of the world. Flying Bomber planes and storming the Gerrys with Tommy guns. Medals and dirt and mud and glory. For Tom it painted scenes of adventure, some nights. And he and T-Bone – when they were younger – would play war at lunch-time with their die-cast cars. Sticks and stones were bombers and wreckage. They never died; they always came back. It was possible the war had something to do with his pa’s leg.

&
nbsp; Tom and his pa don’t mention Tom’s expulsion and their fight. Instead Oliver confessed to Tom that he didn’t know much about farming or sheep, but he was determined to work hard and learn fast. Tom told Oliver he had a way with machines and the like and there wasn’t a car, bike or tractor he couldn’t fix and talking to them, as if they were real, was part of the secret. His pa laughed and teased him about being cocky, grabbed him around the neck and pulled him close, rubbing his hair. Tom laughed, too, and it felt good and the hour of work passed so quickly it was as if it had never been.

  ‘I’ll sort it out,’ Oliver says to Mrs Guthrie and she seems content with that and nods.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘Tom’s been a regular here since he was young.’

  Hannah is quiet throughout breakfast and Tom wishes it was like it used to be with her but he doesn’t know what’s really wrong and how to fix it. She’s like writing and reading. The same complicated mystery.

  He heard Marge talking with some women one day at the post office and they were saying Marge was lucky she only had Tom and he was a boy. They said girls go strange when they hit fifteen. They lose all sense and have everyone worrying about them.

  Mrs Guthrie looks to Tom and there’s a slight smile on her face. Her shoulders shrug slightly as if she’s on his side. Whatever that is.

  Hannah leaves the table, grabs her bag, and is out the front door before Tom finishes his toast.

  Mrs Guthrie sighs.

  ‘You don’t know how much this means to me, Mrs Guthrie,’ Oliver says, not looking at her.

  She’s leaning over the table clearing the toast scraps and butter plate and she waves his words away like a fly. ‘You kidding? You’re a godsend, you are,’ she says, her voice brighter than Tom’s heard in a long time.

  ‘Well,’ Oliver says, almost stuttering. ‘You need anything. Just ask.’ He stands and digs Tom on the shoulder before leaving through the back door.

  Mrs Guthrie sits down opposite Tom, who still has half a cup of hot tea to drink. He swallows and reaches for the cup.

  Mrs Guthrie smiles and rubs the back of her neck underneath her hair. ‘Funny how things work out, hey, Tom.’

  Tom nods.

  She laughs. ‘You’re a good kid, Tom.’

  As they arrive in town, people stop them to say that the river rose nine inches overnight. Three different gangs of men had been working the levee all night and were still there. Farmers had been digging up dirt from their paddocks with tractors and dumping it along work-lines, where sandbags were filled and cemented together with clay, in rows two-thick.

  Oliver stops outside Marge and Ted’s house.

  ‘You’re going to have to sort this out, Tom,’ Oliver says. ‘If they say you have to come back home then that’s what’s going to happen.’

  Tom kicks the ground and nods. He sees Marge at the lounge room window, the curtains flutter and she’s gone, before opening the front door and standing there, the wind rustling the ends of her skirt, her hands on her hips.

  Tom looks back at his pa to see him waving towards the house. The engine growls and Oliver disappears down the road towards the ferry.

  Tom is made to wait at the kitchen table while Marge fetches Ted from the town hall where he’s organising the placement of sandbags. He clods into the kitchen, mud splattered on his trousers and streaking the skin on his arms.

  ‘Go on, Tom,’ Marge says. ‘Tell your father to his face.’

  Tom looks down at his hands and swallows against the feeling of his stomach rising to sit in his throat. She’s twisting everything and, in her kitchen, it all sounds wrong. He’s small and useless. At this moment he feels he might just be the meanest kid that ever was.

  ‘Well?’ Ted says. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘I wanna stay with Mrs Guthrie for a while,’ Tom says. ‘I can help her on the farm in the mornings before the ferry. I’ll help here in the afternoons before–’

  ‘He wants to stay with Oliver,’ Marge says, folding her arms.

  By the time Marge lets Tom leave, the ferry is busy running across the river. Tom waits until the ferry hits the bank on the Swan Reach side and jumps over the railing to see to the gates. His pa nods in his direction and deals with the drive shafts.

  There’s a familiar pattern to the way they work things together, now. Despite the river rising, and all the panic it’s bringing, the future is looking better to Tom. Everyone that comes onto the ferry tips their hat and smiles and Tom knows he’s quick with his tasks and he feels good about himself. His hands put to work in a way they’re made for.

  When Oliver and Tom finish the ferry run for the day, Tom finds a suitcase of his belongings beside Harley. He hasn’t seen Marge and Ted since earlier that morning when Ted said that if Tom could be a help to Mrs Guthrie then he could stay for a while. It should feel good that he got what he wanted. But it doesn’t. When he thinks of his parents he feels heavy and useless.

  Men are clustering in groups outside the hall, cigarettes hanging out of the corner of their mouths, as they take a breather from shovelling bags. The sign of the river is all over them. Caked in mud on their trousers, splattered in their hair and on their faces. Women arrive with baskets and hampers of scones and sandwiches and thermoses of sweet tea and Tom doesn’t think he’s ever heard so much laughter. Babies are bundled in blankets and tucked in perambulators in a line behind the food station.

  Mrs Guthrie arrives with Hannah, boxes of food in the back of the car.

  ‘Here,’ Oliver says, rushing to take them. ‘Don’t you go exerting yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, wiping her hair back from her face.

  Oliver takes the boxes one at a time over to the common food depot. Men line up in front of the coppers and stoves that have been brought out of houses and set up to keep hot food coming. Tom takes a handful of sandwiches from a platter and a mug of hot soup and eats them quickly. He grabs a shovel and begins his shift.

  Tom and Oliver work until midnight and ride home on the bike. Despite feeling bad about his parents, it’s one of the best days of Tom’s life. He didn’t fail at one thing. Except maybe Hannah that morning. But with her, there’s always tomorrow.

  For another few hours, Oliver and Tom work by kerosene lantern around the farm. Mrs Guthrie is waiting in the kitchen with hot stew and a pot of tea.

  ‘You shouldn’t wait up for us,’ Oliver says.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she says.

  Oliver doesn’t know how to answer her and he makes an effort of straightening up his clothes.

  ‘Thanks,’ Tom says. ‘We’re that hungry.’

  ‘I heard some of the boys were passing the flask around the levee line,’ she says. ‘I’ve got some sherry,’ she adds. ‘Ra ... some men like the warmth of it. Feel free to help yourself,’ she says, pointing to the sideboard where a set of crystal decanters and small matching glasses are lined up along the top surface.

  Tom smiles and Mrs Guthrie catches him. ‘Not you, Tom.’

  Tom pouts and pretends disappointment. He wonders if Hannah is already in bed and supposes she is. Despite what happened that night, she spends more and more time with Harry. It’s as if she doesn’t live here anymore. Tom’s seen Mrs Guthrie worrying over it, not that she says anything to Tom and Oliver about it. He’s pretty sure he’s heard Mrs Guthrie talking to Hannah when she doesn’t think they can hear.

  ‘Not for me,’ Oliver says, clearing his throat and shovelling the stew into his mouth.

  ‘Oh,’ Mrs Gutrhie says.

  Tom glances to his pa.

  ‘He doesn’t drink,’ Tom adds, thinking it would be easier if he clarified things.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Mrs Guthrie says, her hand resting on her stomach.

  ‘It’s okay for Tom to stay here a while?’ Oliver says, nodding in Tom’s direction.

  Mrs Gu
thrie nods. She smiles.

  It’s surprising to Tom how tired satisfaction can make a boy. He is asleep soon after pulling the blanket over his body.

  A north-westerly wind builds up in the night and, by morning, the river is a torrent smashing against the levee banks. The sirens go off before dawn and Tom and Oliver are awake in a panic, pulling on their boots and rubbing their eyes.

  Old Mother is furious and she thunders like stampeding horses, without purpose or plan. Her mirror has cracked into voracious rapids and she makes twigs of trees, snapping them off at roots and hacking them from the ground.

  Oliver opens up the throttle and the sound of the engine is almost lost to the cry of Old Mother. The river is visible here and there as they drive along the main road into town. The siren lasts another minute or so, sets off three short blasts calling everyone to the post office side of town. Oliver parks Harley at Ted’s garage.

  There’s a stream of people running for the post office and Tom and Oliver follow. Tom can’t believe how much the water has risen in the night. Waves thrash against the levee bank running up the road beside the grocery store.

  Ted is at the bank when Tom and Oliver arrive. He nods in Tom’s direction, but he’s quickly about his business, rolling up his sleeves and taking hold of sandbags that are lifted, two men at a time, into position on the levee. Mr Caruthers and Harry arrive.

  Kingston shouts instructions to anyone who’ll listen. ‘We need mallee branches and someone get a Ferguson down here now.’

  BIG RIVER

  August 1956

  Every day and night it’s the same. Sandbags and levee patrol, sirens in the night and Old Mother swelling and breaking her banks all over. Tom catching hours of sleep here and there and food when he can.