To Become a Whale

by Ben Hobson

  The two stood and surveyed what they had wrought, the boy’s arms aching. The father smiled and rummaged in one of the milk crates for a can of beer. He opened it, then tipped his head back and chugged some down.

  He held the can out to the boy. ‘You want some?’

  It smelled stale and sour but the boy wanted to impress his father, so he took the warm steel and swigged. It tasted bad and smelled worse up close. The boy tried to smile but failed.

  The father didn’t notice. He took the can back and downed the rest. ‘We better get some dinner, hey?’

  The boy nodded.

  His father found another beer and cracked it open. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  They settled on spam sandwiches and a warm bottle of Fanta each to follow the beer, and the father decided to warm the spam next to the fire they were yet to build. The headlights of the car illuminated them both while Albert, who was now curled up in his box, looked as though he had been swallowed up by shadow. They built a wobbly pyramid of kindling over scrunched-up newspaper and lit it. It caught quickly and the father grinned in the firelight, a face-wide chasm that spooked the boy.

  ‘This is fun, right?’ his father said, spreading his hands before the warmth, the ruined hand crab-like with its missing fingers. His smile invited a response but the boy refused and instead spread his own hands.

  They boiled water scooped from the oil drum, resting the billy can in the embers. While they waited they spread the lukewarm spam on bread. It stuck like gum to the knife and the boy grimaced. He chewed quickly and offered some to Albert, who munched happily in the shadows.

  After they’d eaten, they fetched a washcloth, towels and fresh clothes from their suitcases. Once the water in the billy had boiled the boy’s father added some cold water, then he took the billy in one hand and draped a towel and his fresh clothes over his shoulder and walked off a short distance. There he stripped naked. The boy noted the way the hair on his chest was matted and how the muscles in his calves roped together. Then, embarrassed, he turned to study the fire.

  His father soon returned and plonked down on the milk crate opposite the boy, still towelling dry his hair.

  ‘I left you the billy.’

  The boy stood up. ‘Is the water still warm?’

  ‘If you hurry up it will be.’

  The boy picked up his own towel and walked into the darkness, starting at every noise.

  The water in the billy was tepid. He stripped off quickly and began to shiver. He draped his clothes over a tree and pulled the washcloth from the billy.

  When he was done, he dried himself and dressed. He returned to the fire with the billy and his dirty clothes.

  His father had started brewing tea in another billy which the boy did not know they had. They could have used it to boil more water so that the boy could have had a warm wash too, if only the father had thought about it. A sad realisation: his father often forgot about him. The more he thought about it, the more his resentment deepened. He couldn’t let it go, and wouldn’t if he could. It made him even more nervous about going to the whaling station. What if his father forgot about him out there, on the island? He was on the verge of asking his father to place him in the care of his grandparents, when his father said, ‘I’ll get you a cuppa.’

  Instead of telling his father that he did not like tea, he decided instead to give the old man a break.

  His father poured the brown liquid into a cup, added a dash of milk, then brought the cup of tea around the fire and put it in the boy’s hands. It tasted like a tree. He looked up at the stars and his father clapped him on the shoulder and returned to his seat and took a sip from his own cup. Then he said, ‘Good work today.’

  The boy said, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It must have been hard going through the bush with that barrow.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Not much of a path?’

  ‘Not really.’

  A pause as they both sipped at their tea. The fire between them danced around the remains of some paper his father had screwed up and put in.

  ‘How you doing?’ his father said.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With anything. I don’t know.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I mean with your mum dying,’ his father said. ‘I mean, how are you?’

  ‘I’m alright.’

  ‘You don’t want to talk about it?’

  ‘Not really,’ the boy said. ‘Not now.’

  His father smiled. ‘You sound like me.’ He shifted forward and then stood quickly. He put down his cup and brushed his hands on his pants and said, ‘I almost forgot!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been wanting to teach you this.’ He moved around the fire to where the boy sat. ‘Stand up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just stand.’

  The boy stood and then his father extended his good hand and smiled at the boy. ‘Shake it.’

  The boy shook his father’s calloused hand. ‘Why?’

  ‘I gotta teach you to shake a man’s hand right. I saw the grip you gave the minister and your uncles at the funeral. See this?’ He raised their hands coupled together skywards and wobbled the boy’s arm. It flopped about. ‘You got no strength behind it. You gotta really grip the other bloke’s fingers.’ His father’s grip tightened. The boy clenched his fingers and his father grimaced then released his hand. He said, ‘Go easy.’

  ‘Like that?’

  ‘No. Don’t do that. You gotta be firm without shouting about it. A bloke who knows who he is won’t crush the other bloke’s hand ’cause he doesn’t have to. He’s just firm about it. Do it again.’

  They clasped hands once more and the boy felt his father’s assured grip. They shook up and down three times and released. ‘Like that,’ the father said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You can tell a lot about a man by his handshake. We don’t want you shaking hands looking weak. You gotta present a strong front for other blokes, mate, or they’ll walk all over you.’

  It seemed to be this way with his father; in the midst of a lesson the boy would feel both forgotten and loved all at once. As though his father’s aim was off. His father teaching him to shake hands wasn’t what the boy really needed. He needed a home, a bed. It was the same with the barrels. The boy had not cared about the water his father had been so intent on providing, but about seeing his old home, his mother’s old bed. His father had provided for him, sure, but didn’t really seem to listen. Like he cared about some version of the boy that wasn’t real. The boy his father hoped he was.

  They left Albert outside the car when they went to sleep. Through the night the boy woke several times to hear the pup whimpering outside and wanted desperately to comfort him. He found himself reluctant to sleep while Albert was in distress. If he must endure, he thought, then so must I.

  TEN

  The next morning, after they’d eaten their eggs and bread and rinsed their plates with water, the boy’s father stood and brushed his legs and knees free of crumbs. He said, ‘Now, I want to show you why we got the dog.’

  ‘I thought we just got him as a pet.’

  ‘No, mate,’ his father said. ‘He has a job.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come here.’

  They trudged back up the road they’d driven in on, Albert cradled in the boy’s arms like a newborn. When they finally reached the top of the hill, they could see spread before them their home and the mud that surrounded it. His father grabbed the puppy roughly and chucked him on the ground. Albert pranced away happily and then stopped and scratched at his ears.

  ‘What I want you to do every morning from now on is train the dog to watch out for intruders,’ his father said. He crouched beside the pup. ‘If we’re both going out to Tangalooma, it means leaving all our stuff here. Everything that won’t fit in the car. And it’s not like at home. Any
body could take whatever they wanted. Any old mongrel who happened along. So we need this guy –’ he patted the dog ‘– to guard our stuff.’

  ‘We don’t have that much stuff.’

  ‘We will, though, mate. We gotta think into the future a bit. Be prepared.’

  The boy nodded but doubted his father was telling him all of it. His father wouldn’t even look at Albert. He said, ‘What do I do?’

  ‘You gotta start with basic stuff, like sit and stay. Then you gotta get him to bark when he sees other people. And jump them a bit. Should startle any bloke come to rob us.’

  The boy looked at his small puppy. In that moment the boy felt nothing for his father, whose aim it was to destroy this beautiful thing which had been such a comfort. The boy adored the gentle nature of the pup; he didn’t want a vicious brute. He looked at his father patting the dog, plainly delighted with his plan. All the pieces of the puzzle his father had devised were falling into place. There was no way the boy would convince him to leave the puppy be.

  ‘We can’t just leave him here when we go,’ the boy said. ‘Who’ll feed him?’

  His father stood, without responding, and walked away.

  The boy watched the pup frolic. He said, ‘Sit,’ in the most commanding voice he could muster.

  The pup paid him no mind, so he bent down and forced the dog’s rear into the dirt. The puppy squirmed beneath his grip but the boy was unrelenting. ‘Sit. This is sit,’ the boy said.

  The pup just looked up with its tongue out and love in its eyes.

  The boy let him go and then tried the command again. The pup stopped and looked and then kept trotting. The boy knew then that he would not follow his father’s orders. He would not turn his friend into a ferocious brute. That would be the last time he tried to train the dog.

  Down the slope, he watched his father take a shovel from the car and begin tapping the concrete with it, the metallic clang reaching the boy clearly. It had set well. His father’s pride plain in the way he held himself, his hands on his hips. The boy crouched down and stroked Albert. From the bottom of the hill his father shouted, ‘Come take a look, mate.’

  ‘In a minute,’ the boy shouted back. He pretended then to train the dog but instead played with him and soon enough his father had forgotten his request. The boy did not want to go near his father. As he played with Albert some of the rocks at his feet scurried down the slight hill and then in the distance the boy saw the oil barrels, still situated beneath their tree, and was struck with an idea.

  He approached his father, Albert at his heels. ‘Dad?’

  ‘You see the concrete, mate?’ his father asked. ‘It’s set a beaut.’

  ‘You want to roll down the hill with me?’

  His father turned and looked at the slope. His face tightened. ‘In the barrels?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Like what your mother made us do?’

  ‘It’s not that steep.’

  His father laughed. ‘That’s what she said. No, mate. I’m going to finish here today. One of ’em is full, anyway.’

  The boy said, ‘Finish what?’

  ‘Finish pegging in these uprights.’

  The boy looked at the slope, at the barrel. He knew it would only take a few minutes, but did not press the matter further. His father clearly did not want to spend his time that way.

  Albert darted off into the bushes and the boy ran after him. Scooping up the pup, he looked at the barrel, then at the squirming dog.

  It took him a few minutes to roll the empty barrel to the top of the hill. He put the barrel on its side, flaking rust coming away on his hands. He picked up Albert and moved him towards the opening. The puppy, maybe sensing what was to come, started to struggle. The boy had to shove him in.

  ‘You ready?’ the boy asked.

  The pup showed no sign of having understood the question.

  The boy pushed and the barrel was soon racing down the slope. The instant the boy heard the puppy yelping he was struck by how small the puppy was, what might happen to his body as he slammed into the rocks. The boy chased after the barrel as it hurtled down the hill, each smack into the earth a slap to his heart. The dog barking now.

  The barrel rolled to a stop. Before the boy could reach it, he was already telling Albert how sorry he was.

  Albert stepped blearily from the barrel’s dark interior. He tottered on his feet then fell face first into some mud. The boy looked at his friend and saw his fur matted with yellow-brown vomit. The puppy didn’t move from where he’d fallen. The stink of it. The boy rushed to his side and lifted him up.

  His father looked up from his work. ‘What’re you doing?’ he asked.

  The boy turned with his friend in his arms and said, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You roll that puppy down the hill in that barrel?’

  The boy said nothing.

  His father stepped closer. ‘Did he vomit in there?’

  ‘I’ll clean him up.’

  His father laughed bitterly. ‘I don’t care about the dog, mate. He’ll be right. But clean that vomit out of the barrel, yeah? Use the soap.’ There was something in his father’s eyes, the way he didn’t turn from the boy for a moment. Maybe remembering. But then he turned.

  As his father focussed on his task the boy took the soap from the front of the car and trudged through the jungle, holding the dog to his chest. The pup seemed fine now, but the boy felt awful. He emerged onto the beach and waded into the water knee deep and plunged the puppy into the briny muck. The puppy came up kicking. The boy used the soap to wash off all the vomit, getting his fingers entwined in the fur. He scrubbed with care and made sure not to get any soap in the puppy’s eyes. He kept saying he was sorry. His carelessness had hurt his friend. He resolved never to be so thoughtless again.

  ELEVEN

  A week later, the boy and his father sat side by side on the beach with the fishing poles between their legs, the tide licking at their toes. Albert, fully recovered from his trip down the hill, was slightly larger and more sure of the two of them now. He had taken to chasing the tide, getting his white-socked paws wet before dashing back and yipping. The boy watched the puppy while the little finger on his right hand held the line taut so he would notice the striking of a fish.

  On the horizon, clouds gathered, grey and daunting. To his right sat Moreton Island. In two weeks the boy would be there. He’d been reluctantly counting the days with trepidation. He tried to avoid looking in its direction, but found himself without conscious decision risking the occasional glance, and now he dared a long one. In the middle of its mass some golden sand, but beyond that there was foliage and little more. What would he do there? The whales in his mind were big mountains of black, gleaming wet in the sun. The knife sinking into their skin, slicing slowly, methodically. He shuddered. He didn’t even want to cut or scale the fish he might catch now. Hammering the knife in behind its head, like he’d seen his father do. He didn’t really want to catch a fish. If he was reluctant here he was sure he’d be reluctant out there, facing that giant animal, seeing its skin tear open. He had not felt a nibble for some time though, thankfully, and found himself focussing instead on his father’s mostly silent company.

  His father stirred and said, ‘You been training that dog?’

  The boy nodded, though it was a lie.

  ‘What can he do?’

  The boy looked at the dog. ‘Sit!’ he called.

  The pup stopped what he was doing and looked at the boy in bewilderment but did not sit. The boy said the word again, and again, sterner each time. He put down the rod and stood, and as he did the dog sat. The boy picked up his rod again. He doubted his command had had any effect, but he decided to act as if it had. He turned to his father and smiled. His father only nodded and stared back out to sea. He said, ‘Good start.’

  They caught no fish and returned to their shelter. They had crafted the walls of tin and ill-cut lengths of timber. The roof above, made out of the same tin as the
walls, walloped with each gust of breeze. The boy winced every time, afraid it might collapse.

  His father stood in the doorway as the boy sat on his bed and looked at the grey clouds, which were closer now. He held his hand to his forehead like a visor despite the lack of sun. Then he dashed outside in a seeming panic, returning with an armful of the leftover timber. He dropped it onto the concrete between their makeshift beds. From his pocket he took nails, from his belt he unhooked his hammer, and raised a piece of timber to a corner post and nailed it in. He lifted the other end and, even though it was nowhere close to horizontal, nailed that in too. Like a spider’s web, this strange mess took shape. The boy watched and waited to be instructed, glancing fearfully at the roof as it whomped again. He knew it would leak, was amazed it hadn’t already after the light rains they’d been experiencing.

  Albert was outside, tied to his tree. The boy listened for his whimpering but didn’t hear it and assumed the puppy was learning to keep quiet about its feelings.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ his father said. ‘Don’t just bloody sit there.’

  As the boy stood up from his mattress, a bat flapped by their doorway. He knew it wasn’t a vampire bat, but it frightened him all the same. When he had been frightened by a bat as a child it was his mother who had comforted him. She had returned with him to his bedroom to stare at the bat that dangled from the branch outside his window and stared at him with its sightless eyes. It had stretched its wings and swung. She had explained, whispering in his ear, her soft hands on his shoulders, that vampire bats lived only in Africa, and Australian bats were just after fruit. He remembered the trust he had placed in her words.