Big River, Little Fish

by Belinda Jeffrey

  ‘But it’s late,’ Oliver says.

  Jimbo shrugs. ‘She’s a grown woman.’

  Tom doesn’t know what to say to that. He can feel his pa stiffen.

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ he says.

  ‘Well, I’m not daft,’ Jimbo says, returning to the sink.

  ‘Come on, Tom,’ Oliver stands and reaches for the helmet. ‘Let’s take a look see.’

  ‘But–’ Jimbo says.

  ‘Put her to bed,’ Tom says as he leaves.

  ‘Now, there’s just some things...’

  Tom doesn’t hear the rest.

  Tom points to roads and paths for Oliver to take and the headlights on the bike open up a thin arc of bush and road in front of them. They try the Caruthers’ first, but nobody is home. Next they try Biscuit’s house and then run into town. There’s no sign of the Guthries’ car or Mrs Guthrie, Hannah or Harry.

  There are lights on in windows all over Swan Reach as most of the houses are packed full of families who’ve fled the flood and taken refuge. Oliver turns the bike around and heads back out along the road.

  Halfway back home they find the Guthries’ Holden idling by the side of the road. Tom is off the bike and running to the car first, Oliver behind him. Mrs Guthrie is inside by herself. Crying.

  Oliver pushes Tom out of the way and opens the driver’s door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, seeing them. ‘I just can’t.’

  Oliver unclasps her seatbelt and reaches past the steering wheel to turn off the engine. He takes Mrs Guthrie by the hand and leads her out of the car onto the road. Her crying opens up the night and Tom has the sudden realisation that they’re not far from where Mr Guthrie went over.

  Oliver puts his arm around Mrs Guthrie and he soothes her. ‘Shh, it’s all right. We’re here.’ And her crying settles, more of a whimper and she leans into him. ‘I just don’t know what to do. We need him,’ she says, touching her baby. ‘Children need a father.’

  ‘You’ve got to think about yourself,’ Oliver says. ‘Let me and Tom do more. You should have come to us.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘I mean it,’ he says. ‘You need anything, you come to me.’

  The shape of her body is outlined in the light. The roundedness of the baby inside.

  ‘I couldn’t drive,’ she says.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I could see it, you know. Just came on me and I could see his car spinning and the sound of it and I could feel it pulling me in, like I had to follow him.’

  ‘Shh.’

  ‘And the thing about it is I never loved him, not ever, and there were days when I wished for something bad to happen. You know, I pushed him and I’ve got no right wishing him back because I can’t do it by myself.’

  Oliver turns her towards him and she collapses against his chest. Tom turns away as if it’s something he shouldn’t be witnessing. He feels strange about it.

  ‘Think you could manage the bike, Tom? I’ll need to drive her home.’

  Tom nods, afraid that if he speaks his voice will betray the confidence he wants his pa to have in him.

  ‘I love that bike,’ Oliver says as Tom takes the handlebars and lifts his leg over. Tom kicks his foot down on the clutch and the engine growls. Funny how something you’ve been planning, so long you forget where it started, can sneak up on you and all you can think of is, if only I was ready.

  Tom wants to show his pa and he takes off. It’s just like he always knew it would be. Harley and Tom. Like father and son.

  Tom parks the bike around the back of the house, the Holden follows him. Mrs Guthrie has stopped crying and she runs inside. Oliver follows her in with Tom behind.

  ‘Found her, then,’ says Jimbo from the kitchen. Oliver glances at Jimbo and says nothing.

  Mrs Guthrie runs to Hannah’s room and closes the door behind her. Tom is glad she’s back. Jimbo’s still whistling and there’s no sign of Mrs Cath.

  Jimbo shrugs and passes Tom by, walking out into the night towards the shearers’ quarters. A light goes on inside the shed and Tom listens to Jimbo talking to his pa. Tom yawns and he’s suddenly so tired he can’t think straight. It’s as if this day has gone on forever and for a moment he can’t remember which events belonged to this day and which belonged to the days and weeks before it.

  Oliver is quickly under the covers of his cot and Jimbo follows, taking a bed on the other side of the room. Jimbo has stopped whistling by the time Tom comes in. He blows the lantern out and slips inside his own bed. His head is a blur. He can’t form a single, clear thought.

  Trouble with the river flooding is there’s no absolute way to hold her back or get out of her way. Every day word comes through from the bigwigs at crisis management or flood committee chairmen from up river with a new estimate for where the river’ll peak. And every day she rises higher and no one can believe how much water’s coming down and everyone knows there’s no real way of predicting when it will stop. There’s no timing for these things, no way of scheduling it in so Rutherglen gets his oranges harvested in time or Thumper doesn’t have to lose his grapes. All you can do is be there with her while it happens. Holding a lantern along the levee and sounding the siren when she whips up and beats like a drum on the wall. You can lash the wall with mallee branches and stand firm, but she’s a force unto herself.

  BIG RIVER

  September 1956

  Tom wakes with a sense of urgency. He sits upright and twists out of the covers, putting his feet on the floor, scratching his head and rubbing his eyes. It’s not quite dawn, but Tom can feel the cold descending, just before the sun comes up. He pulls on his boots and jacket and heads out of the door. Jimbo snores like a chainsaw.

  Tom creeps around the side of the house and taps on Hannah’s window. He taps again and waits, sliding down to the ground with his back against the rough stonework. He stands and taps again and Hannah appears, her arms folded across her chest. She rubs her arms with her hands. Her face is puffy and her hair is a mess. Tom has not been this close to her in ages.

  He’d woken up knowing he needed to find a way back to her no matter what, he couldn’t just let her drift away. It doesn’t matter that she has barely said one word to him since that night, he will not let her go that easily.

  Tom waves and feels foolish. He smiles and wishes it didn’t feel so awkward. Hannah does nothing for a moment before leaning forward to open the window. Her dressing-gown falls open as she lifts the window higher. A cold wind rushes around the shape of her body, her nightie flaps around her skin. ‘Hurry up, Tom,’ she says, standing back and wrapping her gown around herself again.

  Tom climbs in through the window and closes it against the cold. Hannah sits on her bed and Tom stands at the wall beside the window. He digs his hands in his pockets and removes his collection of mallee letters. He throws them on the bed beside her and the parcel lands with a quiet thunk.

  ‘Jeez, Tom,’ Hannah says. She holds the bag in her hand, her fingers feeling the shape of it.

  ‘You can have the lot, if you like,’ Tom says.

  ‘What for?’

  Tom shrugs and he feels suddenly so uncomfortable, so inadequate, he wishes he hadn’t come. It occurs to him, in feelings more than thoughts, that he is out of his depth.

  Hannah sighs.

  ‘I know I’m not Harry,’ Tom says.

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘But I’ve known you forever.’

  ‘Tom–’

  ‘I don’t want things to be different between us. I just want to go back to how it was.’

  Hannah is quiet.

  ‘I need you to come with me to do something this morning.’

  ‘Harry doesn’t want me hanging out with you.’

  ‘How many letters did you find?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Show me
your mallee letters.’ Tom walks closer towards her. He unwraps the bark strips from his letters and tips them onto the bed. Hannah runs her hands across them.

  ‘You made that bet with me before Harry,’ Tom says.

  By the time Tom takes the helmets from the back door and they tiptoe outside onto the dewy grass, the sun is peeking over the horizon. Hannah smiles when Tom hands her a helmet. She follows him across the grass to Harley. Tom wheels it to the track away from the shed. He jumps on the throttle and revs the engine, nodding to Hannah to climb on behind him. Her body is warm as she wraps her arms around his waist.

  Tom clicks Harley into gear and the bike takes off. Hannah giggles and squeezes him tighter. It doesn’t matter to him, suddenly, if this is the last time he ever has with Hannah. Somewhere in his mind the three of them always had to be together. At least once.

  There’s no need to take the top road, but Tom does anyway. He opens up the throttle and they are timeless. There is no direction, no history, no future and their story has no beginning or end.

  Tom turns into Big Bend Road and the ground throws up stones under the tyres. He stops the bike before the true end of the road, which is now under water, and leans the bike up against a tree. He leads Hannah across the bush well beyond the backline of the shacks.

  Bum-crack is asleep inside his tinny, which is tied to the outhouse toilet bowl now exposed to the world. The outhouse itself is gone and so is much of the shack. A table and two chairs are roped around trees further up the rise and Bumcrack looks a sorry sight, his large body curved around the seats and sidings of the tinny. His jetty is completely under water and Tom imagines a hundred beer bottles lying like skeletons on the bed of the river. Driven into sand and mud with the force of her currents. A poor man’s treasure.

  ‘Tom,’ Hannah says, pointing to the river. The wind is rough there by the water and the river swirls in a dozen separate bodies. It would be dangerous out there; even in a boat she’d churn you up. One current spinning you into another. Waves building up, slapping onto the bank. The air is thick with spray.

  ‘Hello,’ Tom yells into the boat. ‘Wake up.’

  Bum-crack stirs but sleep still has him.

  Tom looks to Hannah. ‘Hello, you have to wake up.’

  ‘Wha–?’ Bum-crack sits bolt upright, the tinny swaying in the edge of water like a hammock in the wind. He looks around, but he’s not seeing. His eyes are glassy.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Tom says. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Bugger off,’ he says automatically.

  ‘I’m not leaving until you come with me.’

  His eyes clear a little and he sees Tom. He rubs his head and coughs. Bum-crack has the body of a bear. His face is stubbled with dark whiskers. It is an effort for him to step out of the tinny and, when his legs have found ground, he teeters towards the nearest tree. He holds it, coughing and spitting on the ground. Tom and Hannah may not have been there at all. He moves around his makeshift camp looking for rags, a towel. He leans over a metal bucket filled with fresh water, washes his face and brushes his teeth. In a small shaving mirror, nailed to a tree, he combs his hair and trims his moustache.

  Tom and Hannah watch and wait, wondering whether to let him continue or announce their presence again.

  ‘I know what you want,’ he finally says, removing his shirt and soaping up the top half of his body with a scratch of rag. It’s freezing, but Bum-crack seems oblivious to the weather as much as anything else. He dries himself with the towel and buttons a clean shirt around himself.

  ‘I–’

  ‘I said I know,’ Bum-crack cuts Tom off. ‘You want to help me. Everyone wants to help the old helpless bugger down by the river. Isn’t that right?’

  Hannah looks to Tom. She steps closer to him.

  ‘Actually,’ Tom says, stepping forward, ‘Mrs Guthrie up the top farm has taken on people from down here. Mrs Cath, Jimbo, John, if he comes back from his sister’s place, and–’

  ‘Not a chance,’ Bum-crack cuts him off again. ‘I don’t need charity. I can manage by myself.’

  ‘Well, the thing is, my pa’s looking after the farm for the Guthries’ and, well, he needs men for labour.’

  Hannah looks at Tom, her hands on her hips.

  ‘See, if you don’t come and help, Mrs Guthrie might lose her whole place. River’s not the only menace round here. People still people getting on by with circumstances, trying to make a living. So many men working their own places and everyone else’s in their spare time. Levee banks at night and fighting back the river for their farms in the day. Truth is good men are in short supply. And you’d be doing us a favour. We’re a man short without you.’

  Bum-crack is quiet. His lips move in and out like he’s thinking.

  ‘We can’t pay you much. Just food and bed, is all. And Mrs Guthrie and my pa, well, they’re proud, see. And if you worked and didn’t take the means of pay they can offer you, well...’ Tom pauses and Bum-crack looks at him. ‘You’d be disrespecting them. People only got their pride these days. One thing Old Mother can’t wash away.’ Tom pauses. ‘See what I mean?’

  Bum-crack grunts. It’s a sound that could mean any number of things but, coming from him, any acknowledgement is a positive sign. Bum-crack turns away, busying himself with removing blankets and a horsehair pillow from the tinny.

  Tom whispers to Hannah and she glares at him. Tom shrugs and digs her in the shoulder. He pushes her forward. She glances back to Tom who’s smiling.

  Hannah moves to stand beside Bum-crack.

  ‘We can’t do it without you,’ Tom says again.

  Hannah rests her fingers lightly on Bum-crack’s arm and stands on tiptoes to kiss him, ever so lightly, on the cheek. She runs back past Tom and keeps going through the bush.

  Bum-crack stops. His shoulders slump. His face tilts, slightly, to the place where Hannah had stood. He smooths his moustache and beard.

  ‘Just come up to the shearing shed, Mr Donahue,’ Tom says. ‘We have no one else to ask.’

  Hannah is leaning against the bike when Tom returns. Her hands folded across her chest. She hits him on the shoulder and pokes out her tongue. ‘You’re wicked, Tom Downs,’ she says, smiling.

  ‘You had your chance,’ Tom says, ‘a bet’s a bet.’

  ‘You wasted your winnings on him!’ she says, shaking her head. ‘And I thought–’ she says stopping. Her smile falters.

  ‘You thought what?’ Tom feels good. It’s like it always was between them.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says, waving him away like a fly. She fits her helmet and swings her leg over the bike, shuffling to the back of the seat.

  ‘It’s not me Harry has to worry about.’ Tom sits on the bike and kicks the throttle. ‘But I think Larry Donahue is smitten. See how soft he went? Your kiss reminds him–’ Tom stops and revs the engine.

  ‘You may not put words right on paper, Tom. But you sure played those letters,’ Hannah yells over the noise of the engine.

  Thing about words, Tom decides as he rides up the road, is knowing what’s better not spelt out between people. More than one way to skin a rabbit and pick oranges. More than one way to love someone. Kissing the girl yourself is not always the best way to get her back.

  Tom opens up the throttle on the road and the image of Miss Ladley leaning over the picnic rug to stroke Larry’s face comes back to him. Larry Donahue’s a good sort, Tom, she said to him that day, loud enough for Larry to hear. Don’t ever believe him if he tells you otherwise.

  Somewhere inside Larry Donahue – closer than Tom once thought – is the same man Miss Ladley planned to spend the rest of her life with.

  ‘Don’t worry, Kate,’ Oliver is saying to Mrs Guthrie when Tom and Hannah return.

  Hannah disappears without a word to anyone and Tom can’t understand what happened to her between the bike and the ba
ck door. He shrugs and sits down at the table beside Mrs Cath, wiping his hands on his pants.

  ‘I’ve got it sorted.’

  Mrs Guthrie sits at the table. She looks tired. Her baby takes up too much space. Oliver pats her on the shoulder, quickly, before removing his hand. He thrusts his hands in his pockets and moves away from the table, as if he was nowhere near her at all.

  Jimbo whistles in the kitchen. He swears, removing burning toast from the toaster. Charcoaled smoke blows in from the kitchen and Mrs Cath sneezes. She giggles and leans her head on Tom’s shoulder. ‘I know what you did for me,’ she says.

  ‘Do you think you could manage the washing, Mrs Cath?’

  ‘Always been good with washing,’ she says.

  Jimbo takes a pile of burnt toast out through the back door and Mrs Cath sneezes again. ‘Bloody waste, you silly bastard,’ Jimbo says to himself.

  Tom laughs and Mrs Guthrie looks at him disapprovingly.

  ‘You’ve got to see the funny side,’ Oliver says, sitting down.

  Kate sighs and her mouth forms a nervous smile. ‘I’m just not myself.’

  ‘No need to explain anything,’ Oliver says. ‘I’ve been talking to blokes in town. There’s lots of time to kill on the levee, if you can make yourself heard over the sound of the river and the tractors. I’ll get a classer, no worries. It’ll be okay.’

  ‘Oh Christ!’ Jimbo says beyond the back door. ‘Bloody boongs at the fence!’

  The thing about running a sheep farm is knowing when to get the sheep shorn. You shear too early in the season, a cold snap comes through and your sheep can freeze to death. Die of shock. Shear too late and you risk the wool getting burley and flyblown. A sheep farmer understands the way of his animals and he learns to know when to bring them in. But with Mr Guthrie dead and gone, and the river flooding, there’s more to worry about than usual. Leave the shearing too late and there won’t be ground to shear on. Sheds washed away in the water and men too busy fighting for their own patch of ground, or defending their towns.