Past the Shallows (10 page)

Maybe nothing would bite on that hook at the end of his line and he could just sit here and pretend to be fishing. That would
be the best thing that could happen. And he said the words silently in his head: please fish just keep away. All you fish
just keep away from my lure and that little silver hook.

Jake pushed his head between the two of them, put his cold wet nose on Harry’s cheek, snorted and took a look around. Then
he was off again, sniffing something in the river weeds. Harry knew that Jake could keep himself amused all day as long as
George was somewhere nearby. He could be free if George was there watching over things.

George settled in beside him with his line cast out and he was still humming, just softly, and the clouds were moving in the
sky. The breeze was just onshore, but not cold. Not wispy. Harry let his back curve down, relax, and his hands were steady
now, not clasped so tight. And he thought, OK. This is OK.

And he nearly jumped right out of his skin. His reel began to spin, the line running in a blur
and the rod slipped right through his hands. But George’s hands were fast, ready, and he grabbed on. He jammed the reel. The
line slowed, the rod bowed right down to the water. And Harry found that one of his hands was on the reel again, right over
George’s hand, and then he was holding the handle of the reel all on his own, gripping on. He was doing it, slowly moving
the line back turn by turn. And that fish must be big because it tugged so hard.

Jake was back, his eyes keen on the water just waiting for that fish to rise. He was whining, ready to bark, ready to leap
into the water.

One wind, two winds, three, and there it was: speckled slime brown, the colour of mud with bulging eyes too wide apart for
its body. Huge fanning monster fins on either side of its cheeks. George scooped the fish up into a net and flopped it into
a bucket of water. It lay on the bottom against the yellow plastic, gills opening – gills closing. It was disgusting.

‘Flathead,’ George said.

Harry didn’t catch any more fish, but George did. Four. Harry was happy to hold onto his rod and look out at everything and
listen to the songs George hummed. And he thought that maybe he even liked fishing. This kind, sitting on the land kind of
fishing. Maybe this was why Joe and Miles
liked it so much. And he knew that Granddad would have taken him. It was just that he was too little, too small to go when
Granddad had been alive. And if Granddad hadn’t died then he definitely would have taken Harry fishing, too. And it would
have been good like this was.

Back at the house, George gutted and filleted the fish, set them to cook on a hot plate over the fire. With a bit of salt
and a squeeze of lemon the fish smelled good as they sizzled. Harry watched in amazement as something that had been so ugly,
the colour of mud, turned bright white as it cooked.

The flesh was firm and sweet and Harry had never tasted anything so delicious.

D
ad had left Miles to clean the boat and deal with the cannery again. Deal with the men in white plastic with blood and fish
guts all over them. Men with sharp knives and no smiles, soaked in fluoro light. That’s what it was like in the cannery, fish
guts and blood. It stunk of warm fish skin and bleach. And everyone who worked there smelled like that, too. It didn’t wash
away. The fish oil soaked inside their skin and it stayed.

Most kids ended up working there. Miles knew them; kids from school who left before the end of Year Nine. But they didn’t
look like kids anymore. They were hard. Just big arm muscles and thick hands. Gutting and finning salmon from the salmon ponds,
shucking the abalone and canning them. And
Dad said Miles would end up there if he didn’t work hard. If they lost the boat.

It was already dark when Dad picked him up and he didn’t say where he’d been. He just drove fast. Took corners fast and Miles
had to hold onto the door to stay in his seat and not slide across and hit Dad.

Now that Martin was out of the way, Jeff was in Dad’s ear all day telling him that they should start diving over at Acton
Island or down the cape.

‘Why are we wasting time? We can’t compete with the big boats,’ he’d say.

He talked about other places, too. All of them out of the fishing zone. And in the afternoons, Dad would go off in the ute
with Jeff. Maybe somewhere down the coast where they could poach close to the shore without being seen. Under the high cliffs
and rocks down where there were no roads. In the mornings there would be a few tubs of abalone already on the boat. Big fat
abalone.

When they got to the straight, hard bit of road, Dad pushed the ute even faster. Miles looked up ahead and in the blackness,
maybe two hundred metres off, were the huge headlights of a truck coming. Coming down. And Dad wasn’t even on his side of
the road. He was in the middle of the road like always. Driving right in the middle of the road.

Miles kept his eyes on the truck, on the headlights, maybe only one hundred metres away now. Then the lights went out.

The truck was gone. There was only the sound of the truck and the sound of the ute moving on the road in the dark.

Dad’s face was blank. Miles went to say something, to yell out ‘Pull over’, but the truck was suddenly there, suddenly right
on them. The full force of its horn filled the air and the night and the cabin. And Miles could feel how close the truck was.
He could feel the centimetres between them.

And in the headlights of the ute, Miles saw it. A bull on its side being pushed by the truck, its hulking body covering the
space where the headlights should have been. A massive bull. Miles could even see one of his horns.

The truck must have hit it on the road, must have hit it up where the lights had blacked out. And Miles didn’t know how the
truck hadn’t hit them, too.

He looked up at Dad, his eyes still fixed ahead. Then he turned and watched the red tail-lights of the truck fly away into
the night.

It hadn’t even tried to slow down.

And neither had Dad.

J
ake alternated between leading and following on the narrow track through the scrub and the ground was really wet here, wet
from the river and wet from the rain. Harry had never been this way before. Not this far upstream. No one came up here really,
but George seemed to know the way. And it looked like all this land had been cleared once. A long time ago. When the forest
was cleared it never looked right when it grew back. It was missing bits. There was no moss or ferns or dark hardwood trees.
Just tall scrappy gum trees and grasses and shrubs.

They climbed a small hill and from the top Harry could see the bigger blue hills in the distance. A sea of blue forest going
on forever. But below, in the valley, the layout of the land was clear. There were paddocks, old wooden stump posts, old sheds.
And
as they got closer, Harry could see the blackened stone foundations of a building. A house. The brick chimney still standing
but slightly crumpled on one side where bricks had fallen loose.

George put his backpack down, got out some hessian sacks and handed one to Harry. And Harry could smell them, the red apples
sweet and bubbling, ripe to bursting. It didn’t take long before his sack was heavy with them. He could only reach the low
branches, but the old orchard was so overgrown, the trees weighted and full. Rotten fruit was thick on the ground. He’d better
watch out for snakes because there would be rats around – he’d heard some scurrying before, and Jake was barking and running
like mad. Chasing rats and taking bites of fallen apples. He had one in his mouth now and he brought it over. It was slimy
and half rotten, but Harry took it anyway. He chucked it as far as he could and Jake leapt after it.

Harry looked up at George.

‘Is this your place?’ he asked suddenly.

George let his full sack rest down against the earth. He looked at Harry. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Where you grew up?’

He nodded. He picked up the sack again.

It was time for lunch.

Harry had taken his jumper off while they were picking and he’d enjoyed the winter sun on his bare arms, but now that he was
sitting down he was cold again. George lit a fire, poured some water from his flask into the billy. He got out some bread
and, using a large rock as a cutting board, cut a few rough slices. Jake got up from where he was lying and moved closer to
the food. There was butter and some smoked orange fish that looked sticky. It glistened like it had been varnished. Harry
didn’t like smoked fish but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to be rude.

He watched George put some butter on the bread then a thick slice of fish. Then he took an apple out of his pocket, cut some
thin slices and laid them on top of the fish. Harry took the bread in his hands. He could smell the fish but he was hungry,
so he closed his eyes and took a bite. It was salty but sweet, too, and with the apple and the butter it tasted good.

The water in the billy started bubbling. George added loose tea and took the billy off the fire using a stick. When the metal
handle had cooled down a bit, he grabbed it in his hand and swung the billy from side to side with quick, sharp movements.
He poured the black tea into the two white, chipped tin
mugs and there was no loose tea in them. Not even one leaf.

There was no milk, but Harry didn’t mind. The warm mug in his hand and the fire were making him feel good. Good and warm and
tired. He looked around at the old farm. He had so many questions that he wanted to ask George, like why don’t you live here
instead of in a marshy paddock? And how did the fire start that burned down the house? But he only asked one question.

‘Do you remember your mum and dad?’

George nodded his head slowly. He put his cup down and rolled up his sleeves. Harry saw for the first time that George’s scars
weren’t just on his hands and face. The bubbled white and pink shiny skin went all the way up both arms.

‘Sometimes I don’t remember,’ Harry said. ‘Sometimes I can’t remember Mum.’

He caught glimpses of her in his head, just a flash every now and then and he tried hard to hold onto them. But he wasn’t
sure he knew the lady in the photographs at home. He wasn’t sure he knew her.

‘Dad doesn’t like me very much,’ he said.

George finished his tea in one big gulp and put his cup down again next to Harry’s on the dirt. And he
squeezed Harry’s shoulder. He told Harry all about Mum when she was young. What he remembered.