Orright? Quick asked Fish.
The river’s big.
My oath.
Quick watched the whorling wake behind him and felt good at how straight it was. He wasn’t too worried now; his bum felt good on the seat, the handles of the oars weren’t too big for him and he liked how they stretched out so far and kept balance right there in his palms.
Cracker boat, eh?
Yeah.
It’s ours Fish.
Whacko! yelled Fish. A gull dived across the stern, slapped the water and was gone.
Oriel Lamb shoved her hands into the dishwater and didn’t utter a sound. It was hot enough to cook in but she went ahead scouring and scrubbing, letting herself absorb its heat into her own until she felt fire behind her eyes. It was even making him sweat, she knew, him standing there dumb against the kitchenette, waiting for her to say something. She slapped dishes onto the draining board. Her hands were the colour of crayfish. He can wait, she thought; he can jolly-well, flaminwell, he can damnwell wait. But now that he was wiping sweat from his face with the teatowel there was a stubbornness coming on him. He was getting ready to wait and that twisted the heat up in her still more. She thought: people murder each other. Yes, it’s possible that you could just take up that meatskewer there and ram it into his lungs. Lord, she never thought it likely that he’d hold out like this, defy her, defy the whole burning rightness of her. And then he began to sing:
There’s a track winding back to an old-fashioned shack along the road to Gundagai—
She hefted the big china gravyboat and swung it with a backhand sweep that caught him square in the belly hard enough to beat the wind out of him, hard enough to knock him back against the kitchenette and slip and hit the floor bum first. Oriel put the gravyboat down on the draining board and the handle came away, still round her fingers.
Has my life been a waste? she said in a flat, still tone. Has it been that useless?.
But Lester said nothing. He sat there. It looked like he was making plans to get some air into him somehow and it gave her no satisfaction at all.
It didn’t feel so bad to have sore hands when you knew that you’d left East Fremantle behind and passed Rocky Bay, with all its puking foundries and limestone cliffs, for the long stretch through Melville and the sugar factory whose pipes came down to the water to send rainbows out into the channel. Quick saw yachts moored in flocks over on the Mosman shore and the great, long scar of the sandspit. Shags sat high on channel markers to watch them pass.
It’s a long way, Fish said. Is it a long way, Quick?
Yeah, mate. It’s a fair whack, orright.
Quick was starting to wonder if the old man was the full quid. He wasn’t sure if even a fullgrown man could do this. It was late. The sun was sitting low now, right back where they’d come from.
Can I do?
Do what? Quick asked.
Do the sticks. The rowers.
Quick rested a moment and felt the boat glide along upstream.
Orright. We’ll share. Then we’ll go faster, eh.
Fish damn near rolled them out of the boat in his excitement to get up there and it took all Quick’s will not to yell at him.
It was lucky they were headed in the long bellied arc around the Mosman spit because that was the only direction they were ever likely to go in, the way Fish was rowing. Quick pulled hard, but Fish seemed bent on digging all the water out of the river, hauling and grunting so they heeled around to port. Quick hoped Fish’d get bored by the time they needed a straight run, though he figured it’d be dark by then anyway.
Lester sparked up the truck in the dusk and pulled out into the street. Down on the tracks, an engine was hammering up from West Perth with the city lights behind. No one saw him go, he was sure. He felt prickly with nerves; his mouth tasted like sand.
Passing through Subiaco he dodged the late tram and heard the town hall clock ringing the hour, and then he steered the old rattler down along the sombre wall of bush that was Kings Park towards the University and the river.
Down at Crawley there were lights out on the river and fires on the beach. Lester parked the truck and went down through the boozing parties of prawners with their whingeing kids and boiling drums of water to where the grass ended and the peppermints gripped the bank above the sand and the thick stewy smell of the river was strong and plain in his face. He walked up and down, staring out into the darkness. Now and then he could see men in the water wading with nets, or kids with Tilley lamps and spears in the shallows hunting cobbler, but no sign of Quick and Fish. They had no light, no real idea. They could be anywhere, and it was his stupid fault. Panic was acid in his throat. Lord, what a fool he was; he wasn’t fit to have children, she was right.
He began to jog.
Out past Claremont, out past somewhere — Quick doesn’t know anymore — he just stops. He sits back and ships the oars and gives it away. Fish is curled at his feet, sleepy.
Well, Quick says. He sits a few moments. In the starlight he can make out Fish’s features. He has his eyes open. What you thinkin?
I can hear the water.
We’re on the river, you dill.
I can hear it.
Yeah. Quick twists about in his seat. Up on the hills there’s houselights and even the dimmed lamps of cars. You cold?
No.
I’m knackered.
You wanna sing, Quick? Let’s sing.
It’s quiet for a few moments and then they begin to sing, and once they start it’s hard to give it up, so they set up a great train of songs from school and church and wireless, on and on in the dark until they’re making them up and starting all over again to change the words and the speed. Quick isn’t afraid, and he knows Fish is alright. He lies back with his eyes closed. The whole boat is full of their songs — they shout them up at the sky until Fish begins to laugh. Quick stops singing. It’s dead quiet and Fish is laughing like he’s just found a mullet in his shorts. It’s a crazy sound, a mad sound, and Quick opens his eyes to see Fish standing up in the middle of the boat with his arms out like he’s gliding, like he’s a bird sitting in an updraught. The sky, packed with stars, rests just above his head, and when Quick looks over the side he sees the river is full of sky as well. There’s stars and swirl and space down there and it’s not water anymore — it doesn’t even feel wet. Quick stabs his fingers in. There’s nothing there. There’s no lights ashore now. No, there’s no shore at all, not that he can see. There’s only sky out there, above and below, everywhere to be seen. Except for Fish’s giggling, there’s no sound at all. Quick knows he is dreaming. This is a dream. He feels a turd shunting against his sphincter. He’s awake, alright. But it’s a dream — it has to be.
Are we in the sky, Fish?
Yes. It’s the water.
What dyou mean?
The water. The water. I fly.
Lester punishes the truck up and down the bays and bluffs, getting out to blunder along shelly beaches and call out to his sons, but all he flushes out are soldiers and openbloused schoolgirls who leap up and advise him to fuck off before murder is committed. It’s a warm night. Sweat gathers on him and the old truck is overheating. Lester’s making promises to himself now: he’ll never play the ponies again, no more grog, no more foolery and toolery. Street lights are out now and the prawners have long gone. The city is asleep and the quiet infuriates him. Up on the bluff over Claremont, he aims the headlamps out over the river across the masts of moored yachts and the bowed backs of sleeping shags. At Freshwater Bay he stands on the sand and listens to the sound of mullet jumping and prawns scattering before them. You’d think I’d learn about rivers, he thinks; you’d swear a man’d get smart. He remembers the sound of Fish thrashing under the net, how he was forcefed river until he was still and dead and trampled on by his own frightened kin. That funny, skylarking kid. That Fish.