Shadows in the Darkness

by R. B. Baxter



  Shadows in the Darkness

  by R. B. Baxter

  Copyright 2012 R. B. Baxter

  License Notes

  Shadows in the Darkness

  I startled awake, the silhouette of my father looming over me.

  “Bloody hell Jake,” he said. “I thought you were dead.”

  I was about to rebuke him for waking me but then I remembered; we were going fishing.

  “Arthur and Terry’ll be here in a minute,” said Dad as he moved towards the door. “Hurry up and get yourself dressed. There’s toast and a cup of coffee waiting for you on the table.”

  I watched him walk from the room. I was surprised. A cup of coffee. That was a first. Mum would never let me drink coffee. She thought I was too young.

  I’d been fishing with my father many times before but only ever in the estuary. I’d never been out to sea. So when Dad announced that we were both going out with his old mate, Arthur Owens, I couldn’t believe my luck.

  Mum wasn’t keen on the idea though and it took a fair bit of whinging on my part to get her to change her mind. She eventually gave way but only after I told her how the experience would be good for me. I knew that’d get her. She’s into all that life-experience stuff.

  I was sipping my coffee when I heard the rumble of a vehicle pulling up out the front.

  “Finish up, Sport,” said Dad. “It sounds like they’re here.”

  I gulped what was left of the coffee and followed my father out the front door and along the path to the street where a Land Rover and boat-trailer combo stood waiting by the kerb.

  The old Land Rover Defender had definitely seen better days. Its duco was so sun-crazed that a fine webbing of pencil-thin cracks covered every inch of its battered cream-coloured surface. It stood there shabby and unkempt, stark contrast to the thirty-five feet of gleaming fibreglass perched on the galvanised boat-trailer behind it. More like a javelin than a boat, it looked as if it had been plucked from the pages of one of the latest marine-sports magazines.

  Dad opened the rear door of the Defender and as I clambered inside a guttural voice rasped a harsh greeting.

  “G’day there Tom. Who’s this young fella then?”

  “Morning Arthur,” said Dad, sliding onto the back seat beside me. “This is my oldest bloke, Jake.” He turned to me. “Say hullo to Mr Owens, Sport.”

  I looked up at the large silhouette leaning over the back of the driver’s seat. The Defender’s interior light was not working so we addressed each other in semi-darkness.

  “G’day Mr Owens,” I said.

  The huge shape leaned back and coughed a sharp bark of laughter at the ceiling of the cab.

  “Oh, bloody hell, that’ll be enough of that! The only mongrels that call me Mr Owens are bank managers and coppers. Me name’s Arthur and I don’t answer to too much else, okay?”

  He had a voice like a rockslide, the words crashing and grating against each other as they fell out of him. They were loud in the confined space of the Defender’s cabin.

  “Okay Arthur,” I said. “Thanks for taking me out with you today.”

  “No problems matey,” Arthur said as he turned back to the wheel. “I’m happy to have ya’ aboard.”

  I was luxuriating in this new feeling of addressing a grown-up by his first name but then Mum’s careful conditioning kicked in and I began to feel a bit uneasy. My day wasn’t even an hour old and I’d already broken two of her firm edicts; first with the coffee and now here I was calling an adult by his given name, an unacceptable practice in a child as far as my mother was concerned.

  With a grinding crunch Arthur jammed the Defender into gear. Then he jerked his thumb toward the passenger seat beside him.

  “This bugger lurkin’ over here in the shadows is Terry.”

  I turned and was surprised to see a shape detach itself from the shadows of the front passenger seat. He was small and narrow and had been lying so low in the seat I hadn’t noticed him when I first climbed in. He sat up long enough to turn his head in my direction and speak.

  “G’day mate.”

  A white flash from teeth and eyes is all I caught of the shadowed face before he turned away and folded himself back into the shadows he had come from.

  With a lurch Arthur steered the Defender out into the centre of the road.

  “Don’t mind that cranky bugger Jake. He didn’t wanna come today but I pulled rank and made him, so now he’s got the sulks.”

  I smiled and nodded. Then I had a quick look over the seat at Terry. He was lying there silent and unmoving and I wondered what Arthur had meant. Why would Terry not want to go fishing and more to the point, why would Arthur feel a need to force him? As I sat back in the seat I got a gentle elbow in the side from Dad. He leaned in close and spoke quietly.

  “It’s because of the whales.”

  I frowned, waiting for him to continue.

  “Arthur reckons there’s something strange about Terry—something mystical,” Dad whispered. “You see, Arthur’s a builder and Terry began working for him as a labourer about a year ago. They started going out fishing together and Arthur noticed that every time he had Terry out there with him, some whales showed up. It didn’t matter when they went out, if Terry was in the boat, the whales came. Sometimes they got pretty close as well, within a hundred metres or so.”

  I looked hard at my father for a few seconds. “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you Dad?”

  He chuckled. “No Sport, I’m not.”

  I chewed my lip as I thought about this. “Okay,” I said, “but why does that make Terry cranky?”

  “Well, because Terry doesn’t believe it and he gets all shirty with Arthur for always bringing it up. Arthur’s certain it’s got something to do with the fact that Terry is Aboriginal. He reckons it’s a mysterious, Dreamtime sort of thing. But Terry thinks it’s just a coincidence, nothing more, and he doesn’t like Arthur saying otherwise.”

  “But why did Arthur force Terry to come?”

  Dad smiled. “Because it’s your first time outside and Arthur wants you to see the whales.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. It was all too much for this time of the morning so I turned to look out the window and watched the tall eucalypts as they flashed by like thin pale ghosts in the moonlight.

  There was a moment of confusion when we arrived at the boat ramp and Arthur realised he had forgotten to pack the lifejackets.

  Dad was annoyed. “Jesus, Arthur! How does the owner of a boat forget to pack lifejackets?”

  “Ahhh, shit! I took ‘em out of the boat yesterday to air ‘em out and now I’ve gone and forgotten to put the bastards back in.”

  “That’d be right,” said Terry. “You know Arthur it’s a bloody good thing for you that shit stinks. You’d forget to wipe your arse if it didn’t.”

  Arthur glared at him before turning back to Dad.

  “Look Tom, we’ll be okay. We’re only goin’ out in the bay aren’t we? And besides, we’ve never used lifejackets when we went out before, have we?

  “No, but they’ve always been in the bloody boat,” said Dad. “And besides Arthur, I wanted one for the young bloke. I promised his mother he’d wear one.”

  “Ahhh, shit! Sorry ‘bout that Tom.” Arthur shook his head and turned to me. “Sorry Jake. But listen, yer can swim can’t ya?”

  “Like a fish,” I said and it was true. I was a good swimmer.

  Arthur brightened. “Well, there ya’ go then.” He turned back to Dad. “See Tom, we’re worryin’ about nothin’. The kid’s a bloody Olympian! We’re not goin’ out that far and as for the conditions, well, have a look. She’s as flat as an old maid’s tit.”

  It took a few minutes for Art
hur and me to get Dad to agree to let me go out regardless of the missing lifejackets but he eventually gave way.

  The practised combination of Arthur and Terry quickly had the boat in the water and in no time at all Arthur had us moving at a slow idle across the inlet towards the gap in the headland that let out onto the open ocean. Terry was fiddling about; stowing equipment and checking on things and with the help of the large full moon hanging low and fat in the pre dawn sky, I finally got a decent look at these two men that Dad and I were going out to sea with.

  Arthur pretty much fit the image I’d formed on first meeting him in the dark of the Defender’s cab. He was a huge man; broad across the shoulders and heavy around his middle. His forearms, thicker than my twelve year old thighs, were gnarled and twisted with the knotty sinew and muscle that came from hauling around bricks and timber every day. His silver hair was thick and lustrous and his skin had the ruddy, weather-beaten look of a man who spent his life outdoors.

  Terry on the other hand was small and lean and he moved about the boat with the grace of someone born to it. He looked