Brother Fish (56 page)

‘We catch us a yellow cab,' Jimmy replied simply.

I laughed, then explained, ‘Mate, there's only one taxi on the island – Arthur Cooper's 1932 Morris Major – but old Arthur is usually pissed by six o'clock. Even if he met the boat, which is highly improbable, we haven't come all this way to die on the final stretch at the hands of a drunken taxi driver.' Then it occurred to me that with the Douglas DC3 on the blink the skipper would have brought the mail and maybe Busta Gut would meet the boat with the post-office van. In this second unlikely event, we could get a lift into town with him.

‘Busta Gut – dat his name for real?' Jimmy asked.

‘Nah, it's Buster Gutherie, big idle bastard. His mum, Ma Gutherie, is the postmistress, which is just as well for Busta Gut or he'd be unemployable. His idea of delivering an urgent telegram is sometime in the next couple of days if he happens to find himself in the vicinity of your street. He's probably still got the one I sent to Gloria from Launceston in the bottom of his mailbag.'

The harbour was in darkness as we approached – not even the fish co-op lights were on, or the big blue light that usually lit up the dockside. Stranger still, all the fishing boats were in, which was weird – at this time of the year the boats would be out all night cray fishing or shark longlining.
Someone's mucked around with the lights
, I thought,
surely they must know the boat comes in at midnight
. The skipper gave a blast of the ship's horn as he started to bring the bow around in order to dock. Suddenly all the co-op lights went on, and the lights from several parked trucks flashed on in the dark, then the big dockside light flared up washing the area in pale-blue light. Truck horns started to blast out and a great cheer rose from the shore.

‘
Jesus!
' I exclaimed.

‘Look like yoh got yourself a welcome committee, Brother Fish,' Jimmy said, laughing. Now we could see a crowd of about 200 people on the dockside outside the co-op.

‘The whole bloody island's turned up! Shit, what do we do now?' It was the last thing on earth I would have expected. A banner strung across the front of the co-op read, ‘Welcome Home Jacko!' then, hastily added, was, ‘& Jimmy!' They must have rigged up a loudspeaker because on a small platform standing at the very forefront stood Gloria, Sue and the twins, Cory and Steve, with a bit of a brass band arranged around them. Moments later it struck up, with the four harmonicas to the fore belting out ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home'. Gloria was the lead mouth, and she was good, but she didn't
quite
have the authority a lead needs. I guess there was still a place for me in the family group.

By the time we'd drawn alongside people were cheering their heads off, throwing streamers, whistling and carrying on a treat. ‘Giddonya Jacko!', ‘Bloody beauty, mate!', ‘Well done, son!' individual voices in the crowd yelled. One female voice cried out, ‘Thanks for bringing me a Yank, Jacko!' It was Dora Kelly, one of my numerous cousins on Gloria's side. I was surprised – she'd turned into a real good-looking sort in the time I'd been away. It was a grand welcome home and everywhere people were opening bottles of beer and filling paper cups from a flagon of sherry and passing them to the ladies present. Then the band struck up ‘For They are Jolly Good Fellows', with everyone singing at the top of their voices.

‘Three cheers for Jacko and his Yank mate!' Father Crosby yelled, and the crowd responded. When the gangplank went down and Jimmy and I came down on our crutches the crowd hushed, then someone in the band started a drum roll and the clapping began, and the cheering started all over again with all the women crying. Gloria and Sue came rushing up, both of them bawling their eyes out as they hugged me. Then they turned to Jimmy and did the same, welcoming him to the island. I'd forgotten to mention to Gloria in my letter from Korea that Jimmy was a Negro, and the island kids who'd been allowed to stay up to meet the boat stood gaping, their mouths around their kneecaps. It wasn't just the kids – I doubt if one in twenty of the islanders had ever seen a black bloke before, and I'll guarantee none had seen a six-foot-nine American Negro in full military dress uniform.

After Gloria had stopped blubbering, she kept saying, ‘You're skin and bone, Jacko! What did those mongrels do to you?' Sue just cried and hugged me and cried some more, sniffing and bursting into tears, and then drawing back and looking at me, and then doing it all over again with me patting her on the back and ‘there-there-ing' her each time. Finally, between gulps, she managed to say, ‘Jacko, you look bloody awful!' Then off she'd go again. Some nurse, eh?

A little girl of about five with a pink ribbon in her blonde hair and wearing a matching pink kewpie-doll dress, who should have been asleep hours earlier, came forward with a large bunch of gladioli that almost obscured her. She hastily presented it to Jimmy, then dashed back and grabbed her mum by the skirt and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

It was then that Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan stepped out of the crowd. I was leaning on my crutches with a bottle of beer someone had thrust at me in one hand, grinning like an ape, completely overwhelmed, trying to introduce Jimmy to everyone, being hugged by the women and patted on the back or grabbed by my free hand by the blokes. When Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan came forward the babble of voices around me seemed to go silent and I was alone, a little boy sitting cross-legged staring nervously down at the library floor.
Oh Christ, what now?
I could feel the panic rising in my stomach.
What'll I do if she kisses me? Oh, Jesus, I've got this bottle of beer in my hand!

I forced myself back to the present and smiled as she drew closer. ‘Welcome home, Jack,' she said in her stentorian headmistress-style voice. The mob started to crowd in. She took the bottle of beer from my hand and handed it to Cory, who was standing beside me, then reached out and hugged me. She smelled of some sort of perfume, roses maybe or something else, some flower anyway, quite nice. ‘Congratulations – you're a hero, Jack,' she said. There was more clapping, and she shook Jimmy by the hand. ‘My goodness, you are a big boy! Welcome to the island,' she said warmly.

Jimmy smiled, recognising her from my numerous references over the months. ‘Thank yoh, ma'am, I done bring Brother Fish back safe an' soun'.'

‘Brother Fish? Oh. I see, you mean Jack! Thank you – I can't say how much we've missed him.' Then she turned to the crowd and held her hand up for silence. She may not have been the librarian any longer but she was still the justice of the peace and the owner of the
Queen Island Weekly Gazette
, and seemed to command as much respect as ever – even Father Crosby shut up, prepared to share the limelight in her case.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' she began, ‘at precisely eight this evening, news came through on the Australian Associated Press wire service to the
Gazette
office from Canberra.' She paused to let the importance of this statement sink in. It wasn't very often anything came from Canberra to the island, and when it did it was usually bad news. Then she started to read from a slip of paper. ‘The Minister for the Army has announced that Private Jack McKenzie has been awarded the Military Medal for outstanding bravery while serving with 12 Platoon, D Company, 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, in the Battle of Kapyong in Korea.' She looked at me, beaming. ‘Congratulations, Jack!' she said.

Well, you should have heard the carry-on. If I'd won the Victoria Cross they couldn't have cheered any louder. As for me, I was completely gobsmacked. There were lots who'd fought better than me in that battle – brave warriors deserving recognition long before I did. The first night of the battle I'd sat on my arse in a weapon pit next to Ian Ferrier, our company radio operator, watching the fighting take place below me. I even wondered momentarily if they'd got the wrong McKenzie, but as I was the only one of that name in our battalion and they'd nominated the right company and platoon I guessed it had to be me they were referring to.

Jimmy grabbed me by the hand and I thought he might tear it off at the wrist, he was that pleased for me. ‘Brother Fish, yo' da best! Da bravest and da best!'

Gloria once again burst into tears, and so did Sue. Cory and Steve kept walking around and shaking their heads and exclaiming, ‘Shit, eh?', ‘You beauty!' and words to that effect.

For the moment, anyway, I was a far cry from the little bloke who'd slunk off to war with his tail between his legs and his head full of ideological bullshit and jargon about fighting to defend the free world from communism. I wondered briefly if the medal might mean that the McKenzies were no longer worth only a pinch of the proverbial in Gloria's eyes, or if Alf's disgrace ban would finally be lifted. Gloria was a hard woman and it might take more than a tin medal from the queen to lift the curse and cancel out the ban. Besides, bravery never got us anywhere. Alf had been the bravest little bugger you could ever meet and would've taken on a wounded buffalo with his bare hands if it meant defending Gloria. All it got him was a regular thumping down at the pub of a Saturday night. Then I thought of the chemist in Launceston.
You're the same gutless wonder you always were, McKenzie. The medal ain't gunna change that, mate.

A welcoming party had always been planned at the dockside. Later I learned that the pub had donated four wooden kegs of Boag's Draught as well as three flagons of McWilliams' Sweet Sherry for the ladies, but now the party really got going and it was dawn before people started to go home – dawn being only a coincidence and the empty kegs being the real reason for departure. I don't think I've ever seen half the island, including Father Crosby, motherless all at the same time. People piled onto the backs of trucks laughing and shouting to the drivers, who were just as pissed as they were. In one instance I saw a kid who couldn't have been a day over twelve years old, his little sister beside him in the cabin, driving a four-ton truck, the two kids the only sober ones among the couple of dozen adults piled giggling in the back. In the island tradition you could be quite sure more than one future islander would be born out of wedlock nine months after my and Jimmy's arrival on the island.

When – after much drunken back-slapping and sloppy-kissing – we were finally ready to leave, Busta Gut staggered up to me. ‘Jeezus, Jacko, I nearly forgot, mate!' He waved his arm unsteadily above his head, and I saw that it contained a mangled envelope. ‘Telegram f'yiz!'

He handed the envelope to me.

‘Can't be for me, mate,' I replied. ‘Must be the one I sent Mum from Launceston.'

‘Nah, me mum said that was about yiz comin' 'ome in the boat. She sent me right off to deliver it urgent.' He pointed to the crumpled envelope in my hand. ‘It's f'yizorrite.'

I was too tired to open it, and so I stuffed it into my pocket just as Steve drove up in the fish co-op truck. When there was any driving to be done Steve was always at the wheel, because he was the mechanical whiz in the family and could fix anything – as well as drive in just about any state of inebriation. They'd placed a bench against the back of the driver's cabin so that Jimmy and I could sit with our plaster casts straight out in front of us. Fixed to the radiator were crossed flags – the Stars and Stripes and ours. Trailing on one side of the back of the truck were streamers of red, white and blue crinkle paper and on the other, green and gold. I'm sure the truck had been scrubbed and hosed down thoroughly, but it still smelled vaguely of fish.

Jimmy and I were hoisted up onto the bench in the back of the truck, and those still standing climbed in – and one or two who weren't were hoisted into the back. Even before we pulled away Gloria, who sat in the front holding Jimmy's bunch of gladdies clutched to her breast, was fast asleep with her nose buried in the orange and pink flowers. Off we went in low gear, doing a full fifteen miles an hour up the hill from the harbour.

Along the way we had to stop to pick up Father Crosby, who'd fallen off his bicycle and was snoring at the side of the road. We dropped him off at the presbytery in time for mass. I thought about waking Mum, who never missed early-morning mass, but then decided to let her sleep and to cop the flak when she woke. Later she would explain that Father Crosby had arranged a special dispensation from God and had cancelled six o'clock mass in anticipation of the grand welcoming event. ‘We'll transfer mass to the evening,' Father Crosby had promised. ‘God won't mind a twelve-hour delay.'

I think it was Mum's proudest moment, even more so than the announcement of the medal, when he'd come up to her the previous morning after mass and said, ‘My dear, the Good Lord has brought Jacko home safely and as a hero, which is the next best thing to being a saint. I have thanked the Lord for your son's safe return and I clearly understood Him to say that, as his humble servant on earth, I should drink a cup or two of kindness in the lad's honour. Now, I couldn't be doing His will and taking early mass tomorrow morning, could I?'

Old Mrs Scobie, who hadn't missed early-morning mass in thirty years, came up to Gloria and told her it was iniquitous and that she'd be punished by God. Gloria replied, ‘Agnes, it's such a pity you'll be too pissed to attend evening mass. God will not be happy, my dear.'

Every once in a while someone would bang on the truck's cabin roof as we reached one or another home on the way. I reckoned most of Livingston would be closed until pretty late in the morning, as this mob was certainly in no shape to go to work. Several people had passed out and were still on the truck when we reached home, so Steve drove it under the big old fig tree so they'd have shade, as the sun was already well up by the time we arrived. Then Cory, pissed as a newt himself, carried over a bucket of water and a tin mug, spilling half of it over his head as he lifted it onto the back of the truck. When the drunks finally woke up they'd be spitting cotton.