by Ben Hobson
‘We’re not building the house straight away, mate,’ his father said. ‘I don’t even have plans. We’re just going to build a temporary shelter for the two of us. Just for now. Then, after the whaling season, we’ll start the house. You remember Phil? He’s got plans. We’ll look at them to get an idea for what we’ll need to buy, including the wood. Does that make sense?’
The boy thought for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Where are we going to go to the toilet?’
‘You mean, where are we going to take a shit?’
The boy blanched but said nothing.
‘There’s no women around, mate,’ his father said, laughing. ‘We can talk like men out here.’
The boy nodded, but was secretly frightened by this idea.
‘I don’t know,’ his father continued. ‘In the bush. Just make sure you walk far away and bloody bury it when you’re done.’
‘But we’ll get a toilet eventually?’
‘Yeah. We’ll get plumbing.’
A pause. The boy said, ‘Why are we doing this?’
His father finished a sip. ‘Why?’ The boy nodded and his father sighed, then laughed, an angry snort. ‘I don’t know. Your mother always wanted to live out bush. I couldn’t stand being in that house anymore with all her things. And that hospital smell of it all. Just a fresh start. I don’t know.’
The boy swigged the last of the orange juice and his father did likewise, then clenched the bottle with his poor hand. ‘Come on. Let’s get the cement mixer and the barrow.’
They did so. Heading down the road, the small plastic wheels on the mixer almost cavorted off. Albert the puppy sat inside and looked as though he was enjoying the adventure, his tongue hanging out. The boy struggled with the last of the trek with the wheelbarrow. It sank in the dirt and he struggled to push it through. When he was done he fell on the ground, spreadeagled, soaking in the sky. His father with sweat-stained brow. ‘Harder work out at Tangalooma,’ he said. ‘We better get you ready. Get you working hard.’
The boy breathed. He slowly flapped his arms, letting them brush against the dirt. They had less than a month before they’d be on Moreton Island and he was deeply afraid. He didn’t want to count the exact number of days for fear their number would already be too small. So he tried, with some difficulty, to forget his troubles for that moment and instead regarded the sky with new eyes. The sound of the ocean not so far away. ‘Can we go to the beach?’
‘Now?’
‘To swim?’
He sat up and his father was looking at the watch on his wrist and scratching his beard.
‘I really wanted to start on the shelter,’ he said. He looked at the pile of timber. ‘It’s bloody uncomfortable in that car. Want to spend as few nights in there as possible.’
‘It won’t take long.’
Eventually, his father nodded and smiled. The two quickly changed into their swimming clothes. Ill-fitting shorts for the boy. Now he understood his father’s strange insistence that he pack them for the funeral. With the boy carrying Albert under one arm, they headed towards the sound of waves.
The beach was rough and strewn with sticks and ropy weed, like thousands of flat brown snakes, dead and frying on the sand. The sand itself was muddy and gelatinous and the boy could see small sticks jutting up beneath the water. The water, though, was bright and inviting. A perfect turquoise glinting in the sun. He let Albert loose and the puppy scampered off, but because the boy could see him he didn’t bother giving chase. Instead, with hands on hips, he squinted into the water and shielded his eyes to better see through the sun’s glare.
Beside him, his father was already removing his shirt and shoes. He soon dashed towards the water. Before he reached the blue he turned and gestured to the boy. In his eyes a freedom the boy had not expected. His father waded into the small waves and, without looking at the boy again, turned onto his back and swept his arms through the water, face tilted towards the sun. All thought of his situation and his son apparently absent.
The boy, still shielding his eyes, watched his father at ease. His father was not just his father. Seen from a different perspective, the boy knew he would see a simple man, a small man, a man who’d lost his wife recently, a man possibly doing his best. Long ago he’d lost his fingers. Was this pity? The boy wondered what it might feel like to have the salt water swish past the ancient nubs, whether there was any dormant memory of how they used to be.
The puppy, further up the beach, was creeping towards the water with his nose lowered. He stood motionless as the tide receded, then dashed away as it returned to lap at his paws. The boy laughed. The sound startled him.
Soon he entered the cool water. Up close it was murky and impenetrable. His feet squished into soft mud. The waves were gentler than their sound had implied.
‘Good bream country,’ his father said. ‘And maybe flathead. Maybe out a bit further.’ He motioned with his head in some direction. The boy grew afraid he might step on one of the ugly brown fish buried in the sand with its eyes glazed and its spiny ridge ready to transmit toxins. In pain for maybe days. He began to move his arms more vigorously to keep his feet from touching the bottom, trying not to let his father see he was scared.
‘Too bad you didn’t bring any fishing rods,’ the boy said, breathing heavily.
He hadn’t meant anything by this comment, but his father’s face darkened and the freedom the boy had witnessed in his eyes abruptly faded. He said, ‘Couldn’t bloody think of everything,’ and swam away. He called back, ‘Like your bloody mother.’
Bewildered, the boy watched him go and then looked at the murky bottom and replanted his feet and squished the mud between his toes.
Later they sat on the beach, hugging their knees to their chests, and watched the sun go down, all thought of work forgotten. His father, seemingly having forgotten the boy’s earlier words, tousled his hair.
‘You see that island out there?’ his father asked and pointed.
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s Moreton Island,’ his father said, and lowered his hand. He looked serene. ‘That’s where we’re going. That’s where Tangalooma is.’
The boy looked. In the oranges and pinks of the sunset it floated on the water’s surface like some giant turd. He squinted. In the distance he saw some lights flicking on near the beach. Impossible to make out structures.
‘You excited?’ his father asked.
‘I think so.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m scared I won’t do good.’ The boy looked down.
His father said, ‘You’ll be fine, mate. I’ll look out for you.’
The boy nodded slowly. He stood and walked over to fetch Albert and had to race down the beach when the puppy refused to heed his call. Eventually he caught him and bundled him up. The puppy licked dried salt water from his skin as he walked back to his waiting father.
EIGHT
The next day they went into town. The boy did his best to note the direction in which they travelled, but lost his bearings when he lost the sea. In half an hour they were there. They pulled up at a petrol station and the attendant came out and looked wearily at their car and his father smiled and walked inside with his son. The two sat at a round table that reminded the boy of the one in his grandparents’ kitchen. They ate bacon and egg rolls and the yolk almost dripped on his shirt but he slurped it up and smiled at his father, who did not return it. His father went to order a coffee from the petrol attendant at the counter. He turned to the boy and raised his eyebrows. The boy answered with a shake of his head.
As they were leaving the store the father saw a stack of firewood outside. The boy was at the doorway as his father returned to talk to the attendant, who told him a price. His father moved his hands as though summoning angry magic and then he took a wadded note from his pocket, threw it on the counter and stormed out. They loaded wood into a milk crate then put it into the boot of their car. The boy looked at his father as he slammed the lid. They drove the car t
o a side street and left Albert inside with one of the windows rolled down.
They walked along the footpath of the main street and in the eyes of the locals the boy saw recognition and judgement, as if they were all aware somehow of the father and son’s strange relationship, of where they slept. The boy avoided all eye contact and stayed close to his father. They entered a general store. The boy held his arms out and was loaded up with cheap fishing rods, thin rolled-up mattresses and sleeping bags, pillows, some food. Despite their old barrels – one of which they’d brought with them in the car – the father also bought a jerry can. They paid for the items and lugged them to the car. Nearby, his father found a tap behind a pub and retrieved the barrel. He made the boy keep watch while he filled the barrel from the tap. The boy felt shifty. The water slapping into the metal loud and unrestrained. The boy wanted to leave the town as soon as they were finished. Instead they went back to the car, rolling the steel drum along the footpath, and put it inside. The boy patted Albert, who started to whine before he shut the door once more.
As they walked away again the boy said, ‘Where are we going now?’
‘Hardware store,’ his father said.
‘Can we get a leash for Albert?’
His father nodded. ‘Good idea.’
In the hardware store, the boy found a leash and a metal bowl, while his father sat on his haunches and studied pieces of corrugated tin. He lifted a corner and saw the small yellow price tag and scoffed aloud. He brushed his hands together, an awkward gesture, and stood.
‘What do you think of these?’ He indicated the sheets of tin.
The boy looked. ‘For what?’
‘For the walls.’
‘Won’t they make a lot of noise?’
‘In the wind, you mean? I don’t think so. Not if we nail ’em.’
The boy thought, then said, ‘You know more about this sort of thing.’
‘I know I do. Doesn’t mean I don’t want your input.’
Soon his father decided and hefted up at least ten, maybe twenty, of the sheets and awkwardly carried them to the front counter. They wobbled and warped with each step.
The attendant watched this enterprise gruffly and then looked around his father at the boy who, realising he was still holding the leash and bowl, took them to the counter. Reminded of the dog, he pictured him roasting inside the hot car. ‘Can I go check on Albert?’
‘I need your help with this, mate.’
‘He might be thirsty.’
His father grumbled and dismissed the boy with a wave of the hand.
Albert, when the boy reached him, seemed unaffected by the warmth of the car. The boy’s arms stuck to the vinyl as he slid across the seats and he greeted the dog with a scratch behind the ears. He filled a cup he’d brought with him with water from the steel drum, which he had to angle over the seat. The dog immediately lapped it up.
His father returned not long after with his arms full and his face strained.
‘I needed your bloody help with this,’ he said and slammed the tin down into the car, his brow heavy with sweat.
‘Sorry,’ the boy mumbled.
His father put the sheets of tin and leash and bowl on the back seat, the tin bent in the middle. Then he got in, started the car, and drove them back to their new home. They didn’t speak once on the drive.
NINE
They carried the new things they’d bought out of the car and heaved out the old barrel – a mighty task now that the barrel was full – and stacked it all in neat piles. The boy’s father rubbed his hands together as he looked from the piles to the boy, who did his best to mimic his father’s enthusiasm.
After Albert was watered and fed and tied to a tree with his new leash, his box beside him on its side a makeshift kennel, the father instructed the boy to collect some sand from the beach in the wheelbarrow. The boy looked in the direction his father pointed and saw there was no clear path. He would have to hew it himself. He pushed the wheelbarrow before him across dirty sand and roots and past overgrown trees whose branches prodded at his face, claws from another world. The wheel got caught and after some stubborn shoving the boy walked to the front and lifted the whole thing up and carried it. Cuts up his arms and across his bare legs marked his efforts. After a while he stopped and sat on the ground and wiped his brow. The beach through the trees, the mighty blue of it. Some small breeze now he was closer to the shore.
He looked at the sand on the ground beside him. It was dirtier than the sand of the beach and there were twigs and leaves and bits of bark buried in it. It was clearly no good. Still, he took the shovel from the barrow and scooped in the dirty sand, knowing as he did that it was a poor decision and stemmed only from his laziness. With the sound of the ocean behind him, he forced the wheelbarrow back along the path to the clearing, spilling much of the sand as the barrow wobbled over obstructions.
His father was measuring something when the boy emerged. Then he placed one plank across another, like a cross, and tried to hold it steady with his poor hand. He picked up a saw and held it to the place he’d marked but instead of sawing he threw the tool down in frustration and kicked at it. The look on his face would have been comical if not for the ferocity beneath it. So the boy approached the mixer quickly and, before the father could assess the quality of the sand with all its leaves and twigs, shovelled it in, added half a jerry full of water and then spun the handle until the sand was sloppy. He could sense his father’s eyes on him.
He dragged a bag of cement to the mixer, tore it open and had lifted it up to tip it in when behind him his father shouted, ‘Wear a damn mask, mate! That stuff is toxic.’
The boy turned to look at his father. ‘Where are the masks, then?’
‘In the toolbox, where do you think?’
The boy retrieved a mask and fitted it to his face, grumbling quietly to himself about his father’s lack of directions.
The wooden frame his father had constructed was around the size of two cars. As the boy emptied the bag of cement, his father stood the frame up and inspected it. It wobbled even as he held it.
The cement smelled of cold moss. The boy struggled to breathe and turned his head aside. He added more water once it was all in and started the rusty cylinder spinning once more. It reminded the boy of his grandmother’s cooking. The dry cement powder and dirt mud blended into one another. Flour beaten into milk.
His father was starting to struggle with his square frame. Parts were falling off and the old man was cursing and spitting. As the boy mixed, he watched his father place his frame atop the dirt and do his best to make it flat with the orange leveller. He hammered at the corners and checked again until he was satisfied. It looked flat to the boy. His father glanced over at him and said, ‘Keep your eye on what you’re doing, mate.’
Out of the corner of his eye he watched his father’s progress. The man took another piece of timber and, without much care, sawed it into eight sections. With a small hatchet he chipped at the base of each piece until it had a pointed tip. Once finished, he drove each stake into the ground at the corners of the frame in order to secure it. The boy added more water while his father secured the stakes to the frame with nails. He swung the hammer at an awkward angle and most of the nails bent as they went in, but his father seemed happy.
He moved around the structure, putting a foot on each corner of the frame, testing its stability. It moved slightly but the stakes held and his father smiled. He walked to the car and retrieved two more bottles of warm orange juice. He offered one to his son as he inspected the churning muck within.
‘How’s it looking?’
‘How’s it supposed to look?’ the boy said.
His father scratched his head. Had another sip. ‘Like it is, I guess. Why’s it so lumpy?’
‘What?’
‘It’s too lumpy.’ He motioned for the boy to stop spinning. He put his right hand in and ran his two and a half fingers through the muck. It dripped from his hand like curdled milk
. ‘It’s not supposed to be like this. What sort’ve sand did you get?’
‘Just sand.’
‘Did you sift it?’
The boy said nothing. Then, ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to do that. You didn’t tell me.’
‘You should know to do that, mate.’
‘How?’
‘It’s common bloody sense.’
‘I mean, how would I sift it?’
His father stood back and folded his arms. He looked at the car. Then he grinned without humour. ‘Guess I forgot. Anyway. Get better sand next time, yeah?’
The boy thought he had accomplished some small victory but underneath his father’s voice was steel and bone so cold the boy did not dare meet his eyes, for fear the enraged demon had awoken once more. So instead he focused on the mixer. He turned the crank steadily and the mixture inside swirled. The sound was chunky, full of dirt. Something satisfying about the sounds and smells. An honesty. The work soothed him and soon he had forgotten the man working beside him.
When they were both satisfied with their cement mixture, they filled the wheelbarrow and then tipped it messily into one corner of the frame. His father started to spread it with a shovel, patting it down. ‘Go get sand,’ he said. ‘Make some more.’
The boy took the wheelbarrow and wheeled it back towards the path he had worn, stopping on the way to check on Albert, still tied to the tree. He crouched down and the pup licked his fingers and did his best to climb onto the boy’s lap. When the boy left again, the dog started whining.
The entire slab took five wheelbarrow loads of clean sand and the remaining day to fill. It was almost dark when the last load was tipped into the mixer. The car was parked facing them and the headlights were on, and his father was light and dark both as he moved in and out of shadow. He spooned the mixture into the corners with a trowel, then patted it down with the back of his shovel. He levelled the slab off with another length of wood slid across the top. He had to reposition his mangled hand many times before he was finished. Then he walked to the car and found his good leather shoe, one of those he’d worn to his wife’s funeral, and returned. The light behind him streamed into the trees. He smoothed the cement further with the shoe’s sole.