When the Night Comes (23 page)

“I didn't know what to do.”

Outside the clouds had rolled in and it felt like night was coming
down fast. That's what the light was like—the night coming. I was worried that it would be dark before I got home. That I would be walking in the darkness.

The end-of-day bell rang in the hallway outside and the sound cut through the air. It made me jump. There was some shuffling, movement from the back. Andrew Olsen stood up and walked to the door. He hesitated for a second, holding the door partway open.

“It's okay,” Mr. Wilkins said, but he wasn't looking at Andrew. He was looking down at the floor again.

There was a rush of movement then. Most of the kids who sat in the back grabbed their books and followed Andrew Olsen. They didn't even put their beakers and test tubes and Bunsen burners away. They just walked to the door as fast as they could, heads down, almost running. I could hear their voices outside. It sounded like they were laughing.

Mr. Wilkins sat on the edge of his desk. He wasn't so pale now. He told us, the ones who stayed, that he was very sad and that he had been sad for a long time—he hoped by becoming a doctor he could do some good. For someone. Maybe he could put the past away. Leave it there to rest.

“I can't forget that boy lying on the road,” he said.

I thought about the footage that had been on the news—the flashing lights reflecting off a fallen schoolbag. The emblem of a waratah shining out in the dark.

I never knew that Mr. Wilkins was there. That Mr. Wilkins had been there trying to stop the bleeding. Trying to keep Tom Balinski's heart pumping.

The boy lying on the road had not been alone.

T
he last time I saw Mr. Wilkins was in homeroom at the end of the week. Some parents had come to say good-bye, mothers mostly, and he flirted with them all, made them laugh and blush. He could get away with that.

“Call me Anthony,” he'd say.

“Oh, Anthony, you will be missed!”

Some of the mothers gave him red wine and chocolates and cards, and he kissed them all on the cheek. The room was full of people for ages. When students started to leave, I got in line to say good-bye. I didn't have anything to give him, not even a card. I don't know why I hadn't thought to make one and I wished that I had.

Mr. Wilkins shook my hand, a strong, firm handshake.

“It's been a pleasure,” he said. I shook his hand back but I didn't say anything. I didn't tell him what a difference he had made. How much he had helped me find a way, some loose path to follow. I didn't tell him. I just left the room quickly, my cheeks burning.

I walked fast toward the bus stop, but when I got halfway to the school gate I could feel the freezing air on my arms. I wasn't wearing my blazer. I'd left it behind. I ran back to the classroom and everyone had gone except Mr. Wilkins. He was sitting on his desk, looking out at something far away—the mountains, the stars, at the galaxies beyond the Milky Way. Like he was already gone, staring out at his future.

I grabbed my blazer. It was lying over the top of a chair. “Maybe everything happens for a reason,” he said. I turned around and Mr. Wilkins was staring at me. He got up off his desk, picked up his bag, his red scarf, put it around his neck.

“I don't know. If you keep doing science, if you keep working hard, then you will be able to go anywhere, do anything. You could work on the moon—at the bottom of the sea—Antarctica—Helsinki—Zanzibar. Anywhere. Anywhere far away from here.”

He walked over to me then, put a solid hand on my shoulder.

“I know you will do it,” he said.

Then he opened the closest window, lifted himself onto the ledge, and without looking back jumped out onto the concrete path. I watched him walk away from the classroom, away from the old buildings of the school, until he was gone, and there was only the empty window and the cold air blowing in.

I
t was just us. Me and Bo.

From where we were, we could see all of Hobart rise up out of the river. The city and the houses going up the hills, and the mountain there—its stone face behind the clouds.

We were at the bottom of it all, sitting on the wharf together. Me with my legs swinging out above the black water and
Nella Dan
across from us, brilliant in the autumn sun.

She was a good ship.
A good ship.

And as if he could hear the insides of me, Bo said, “You do not know whether a ship is
good
or not until you have been on board for a time.”

He looked down at the water then, the palms of his hands resting loosely on his legs.

Stillness.

“I have been on some ships that were not so good. Just places to work and to sleep and to get through the time. Saving your pay, waiting to go home. But it turns out that
Nella Dan
is indeed a
very
good ship. I have been lucky.”

I looked at Bo's face, the way he was looking at his ship. Maybe he was thinking about his friend, Soren, or about leaving again tomorrow. Or maybe he was thinking about his island, his home. A place far away that I only knew from stories.

A rowboat painted sky blue and orange, a small house made of wood.

Three giant walnut trees all in a row, and the sound of the Baltic Sea.

“Yes, I am lucky,” he said again. “And tomorrow we head for Macquarie Island.”

I knew about this place. Bo had told me. A green mountain in the sea, so full of penguins and elephant seals that it is hard to walk for them. They are everywhere, on every bit of flat land you can find. On the beaches and in the grasses and even inside the work sheds of the station.

“I think it is one of my favorite places,” he said. “Yes. Maybe the only thing wrong with the place is the wind. It is almost always windy and there is nothing you can do. It is just this force that is there. But the penguins and the elephant seals and the birds—well, they do not seem to mind. They are fine. It is their home and they are used to such things. They are used to it.”

A car horn blew, and Mum's white car pulled up, the engine running. Bo got up and waved to Mum. He held out one of his hands to pull me up.

“Maybe you will go there one day,” he said.

I got in the car, in the backseat, and Bo got in the front. I turned around as we drove off. I looked through the back window.
Nella Dan
—her red reflection streaking out on the water, the brightest thing in the whole of Hobart. She lit up this whole gray town. I waved to her.

Mum and Bo were talking in the front and my brother was back at home, probably watching TV. We turned the corner and headed up the hill and soon buildings blocked my view, but I kept looking down toward the water anyway, looking for her as I had done so many times. I could hear her calling—calling out to me.

I made a wish then, a kind of promise, that I would go where she had gone, that I would see what she had seen. That I would remember this.

The next morning, when
Nella
was leaving, I was at school and I wasn't really thinking about her. I didn't know then that her engines would not start, that she was late to leave. That she did not want to go. That all the crew and passengers eventually got off and stood on the wharf with their families and friends while the engineers tried to get her engine going. And later on, after everything, people said that it was so strange, because she was always in such a big hurry to get going. Always so eager to get back to her ocean. But this time, she clung to the wharf of Hobart and it was like she did not want to go.

But she did go, a few hours late. She headed down the Derwent and down past our lookout at Kingston and then out on her way to where albatross and the petrels came out of the mist to see her again. To show her the way.

MS
Nella Dan

VOYAGE 3, 1987/1988 SEASON

29th November 1987

POSITION:
51° 29.800' S, 155° 39.700' E

CAPTAIN'S NOTE:
Some of the marine science equipment has malfunctioned, so we head to Macquarie Island a few days earlier than planned. We will try to resume marine research on the return voyage.

Erik sharpens the knives.

I watch him from the red booth—sharpening wand in one hand, knife in the other. Casually, as if the ship isn't rocking. Casually, as if he has been doing this for all his days.

Music is blaring from the tape player—Judas Priest. Erik's moving to the music now, to the beat, eyes fixed on the blade.

“Living after Midnight.”

His beard is growing, his hair cut short, skin still tanned from the summer against his clean white apron. Handsome even, some might say.

He puts down the sharpened knife, takes a bite of bread—his lunch. He chews for a time, then picks up a fresh blade and begins his dance.

Happy with his task. Relaxed.

No longer a boy.

A young steward at home, working on his ship.

A man.

O
n the table in the sunroom, the newspaper was open.