The Minnow

  Bill leaned forward and plucked the FishMaster from the go-cart.

  ‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing?’ I demanded.

  ‘What does it look like,’ Bill sneered. ‘I’m taking your fancy-pants gear to the inlet. You coming or not?’

  Shit. Now I had no choice. Knowing Bill, if I refused to go he would probably tip everything into the creek and bring me back an empty tackle box. Just to spite me.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, almost pleading.

  ‘No,’ he answered. Triumphant.

  Bill turned abruptly and strode away. He opened the door of his twin-cab and climbed in, threw the FishMaster onto the passenger seat and slammed the door.

  ‘Bill!’ I yelled. But it was too late. He started the truck with a roar and drove off towards the inlet, skidding on the gravel and leaving tyre marks on the drive.

  In a way I was relieved. Part of me wanted to run my heart out, get to the inlet and stop the bastard. But the other part of me realised that there was no hope of running. Even if I were as fit as a mallee bull, I couldn’t run with the Minnow. So I went back inside, finished my lunch, went to the toilet, made a honey sandwich, filled a bottle with water, grabbed a cushion, put everything in the go-cart and set off for the inlet. I walked at a slow and steady pace.

  All I hoped was that Bill would have calmed down by the time I arrived.

  ‘You took your bloody time,’ called Bill, as I walked down the pier towards him.

  ‘I’m pregnant, if you hadn’t noticed,’ I replied. So far, so good, I thought.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ he said, indicating the bucket. ‘The fishing’s good.’

  His mood had lifted. My luck was as shiny as a freshly minted coin. Believe it or not, that’s not a Nana saying, although if you think about it, it doesn’t sound like something Nana would say. No, it’s one from Mr Greerman. Remember the old guy with the pyjamas? Mr Greerman’s sayings are different and he doesn’t usually explain them— except to say that they make sense if you’ve been in the war.

  I looked in the bucket and there were a couple of decent-sized fish. Then I casually opened the FishMaster. Everything was there. Mostly undisturbed, too. I felt a wave of relief.

  ‘What? Did you think I’d chuck it?’ Bill asked. There was that edge again.

  ‘Of course I did,’ I answered. ‘That’s why I rushed here.’

  Bill threw back his head and laughed. ‘Here you go,’ he said, handing me his line. ‘Take this and I’ll make a new one.’

  I pulled the cushion over to the edge and sat down, dangling my legs over the side. It would be okay. I’d just bide my time for an hour or so and then tell him I had forgotten to leave a note for Jonah.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Hello sport.’

  ‘Dad,’ I repeat, because I can’t believe it. ‘I’m dreaming, aren’t I, Dad?’

  ‘Not really,’ he answers.

  ‘Then things must be pretty serious to get you inside this place.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Where is Mum?’

  ‘Not far. She and Sarah are in the car.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘We took a vote. I’m collecting you.’

  ‘That’s a bit of a bruise you’ve got there, Tom,’ said Mrs Blanket.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. My cheek is blue and sore and quite swollen.

  ‘Clare will be back in about ten, if you don’t mind the wait.’

  ‘That’s okay, Mrs Blanket. Jonah is buying me a steak.’

  The Minnow prodded me. I turned to see what she was so excited about and found myself staring at a brand-new display cabinet. It reminded me of one of Nana’s highboys, but with the front missing.

  ‘What is going in here?’ I asked.

  Mrs Blanket looked at me and raised her left hand in a sign that meant ‘wait’. Her right hand rummaged among all the stuff on the counter until she found what she was looking for. ‘There you are,’ she said to the pamphlet. ‘Tom,’ she said, waving me over. ‘Come and look at my new acquisition.’ Only someone with a love of language would use ‘acquisition’.

  Mrs Blanket pointed to a picture of phycodurus eques, a sea dragon from South Australia. It had a long snout and strange leafy tendrils for fins. I wasn’t sure if I liked it.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Mrs Blanket.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘It is hard to believe it’s a fish.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’

  ‘Incredible for arthritis,’ said Clare, coming in through the back of the shop. ‘Shit, Tom. Do you want something for that shiner?’

  ‘Jonah’s getting her a steak,’ said Mrs Blanket before I could answer.

  ‘It is my cheek,’ I said. ‘Not my eye.’

  ‘Waste of a steak then,’ said Clare and marched off to the fish tanks. She returned with a handful of weed that looked remarkably like Mrs Blanket’s sea dragon. ‘Hold this to your cheek until it warms, then rest it for twenty minutes or so.’ She caught my expression. ‘You don’t have a tank?’ she asked, although it was more of an accusation than a question.

  ‘No,’ I answered.

  Mrs Blanket and I stood silent, while Clare digested the news that I didn’t keep fish. ‘Okay,’ she continued. ‘Once it warms, cool it down in a dish of water then reapply. Do this three times, then throw the weed away. And don’t change the water.’ Clare waited for a response.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I reached out and took the weed. ‘Thanks, Clare.’

  ‘No worries,’ she said. ‘The bruise will be gone by this time tomorrow.’

  The bell clanged as someone entered the shop. The three of us turned to see Jonah holding a small brown butcher’s bag.

  ‘Well,’ said Clare, ‘unless you’re bloody vegetarians, that looks like dinner.’

  Rumbly is the sweetest. On cold lights I let him sleep with me and the Minnow. He is so little that I have to make a special bed for him. I roll an old towel into a circle. I put his heart pillow and his beanie in the middle so that he knows it is his spot.

  He’s pretty smart, so it didn’t take long to train him to stay put. Occasionally I wake up to find him asleep on my pillow. But I don’t mind.

  Back when Dr Patek introduced the moderate-exercise rule, Hazel would check on me. I’m not sure why she did this—given that I saw her almost every day when I visited Nana—and it made me feel uncomfortable. Jonah said I was just being paranoid. My thesaurus doesn’t have a listing for paranoid. If I wrote a thesaurus I would definitely list it: Paranoid: delusional, fearful, suspicious.

  There was a knock at the door, so the Minnow and I pretended to be asleep.

  Jonah answered it. It was Hazel. I could hear them talking.

  I was about to get up when I heard Jonah laugh. It sounded like they were fine without me. Rumbly stretched and yawned. I scratched his tummy. He opened his eyes momentarily, almost as though he was checking where he was, then fell back to sleep.

  Eventually Jonah tapped on my door. ‘Hazel’s here,’ he whispered.

  ‘Hi, Hazel,’ I said as I walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi, Tom. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Good, thanks.’ Maybe it was time to clear the air. ‘Did Nana put you up to this?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hazel. But there was something about the way she said it.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, as I realised she was pulling my leg.

  Hazel’s smile broke into a laugh. ‘I care about you,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, Haze,’ I said. ‘I’m an idiot.’

  ‘No,’ said Hazel. ‘But dare I say you’re acting a bit paranoid.’

  Jonah looked away. But I knew he was smiling.

  In three weeks, it will be the twenty-sixth; the Minnow’s prediction. The leaking has almost slowed to a stop, the rain has eased, Nana looks like she’s coming good, and Papa, well, he is still being a bastard, and the Minnow is maintaining her silence. Hazel says ‘three out of five ain’t bad’ so I’m not c
omplaining. Although on a more personal note, I don’t know where they’ll put me when Nana comes back. If I had a choice I’d like to be back at Jonah’s. I miss the quiet. There is too much going on here, although much of it is a rerun. Betsy Groot has had the same conversation with me every day.

  ‘Oh, hello, dear. Where’s your grandfather?’

  ‘Not sure Betsy. Have you checked the veranda?’

  ‘You realise there’s someone in my room.’

  ‘Mrs Gladstone. I’ve met her. She seems nice.’

  ‘Don’t ever get old, Tom. You die and someone moves into your room.’

  Exit Betsy, enter Papa.

  ‘Betsy Groot was looking for you.’

  ‘Don’t tell her where I am.’

  ‘That horse has bolted. I’ve already told her to look on the veranda.’

  ‘Well, I’m not there.’

  ‘Where should I tell her to look?’

  ‘Oh. Okay. The veranda’s fine. I’ll make sure I’m there tomorrow.’

  Ground Hog Day.

  ‘Hi, Jonathan.’

  ‘Hello, Tom.’

  Jonathan smiles at me and walks over to look at Rumbly who is curled up in one of Nana’s hats. Jonathan’s face does a squiggie thing. I imagine that’s the face he’ll wear when he meets the Minnow: crumpled and soft and affectionate. It’s strange though; it’s a face so unlike his normal expression that I wonder what the Minnow will make of it. I’d ask her, but I have given up trying to mend things between us. Eventually she’ll come around. She always does.

  ‘Nana’s doing well,’ I say.

  ‘So I hear,’ he says. He scratches Rumbly’s tummy. ‘Hazel tells me you might be going home.’

  ‘Really?’ I say.

  No one has told me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he replies. ‘Maybe I’ve ruined the surprise.’

  ‘If it is a surprise, you haven’t ruined it. Did Hazel say anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  Even if she had, Jonathan is not about to compound his mistake. He’s a stickler for protocol, and his slip-up just now is clearly troubling him.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jonathan,’ I say. ‘I’ll act surprised when I hear the news.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom.’

  Jonathan continues to scratch Rumbly. Rumbly is making the guinea pig version of a purring noise.

  ‘Tom, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he says. Someone sneezes down the hall. The atmosphere in Nana’s room is like something from a movie. All that’s missing is the tick of a clock.

  ‘This is none of my business,’ Jonathan continues, ‘although it could be.’

  Well, there’s a typically Jonathan Whiting sentence. Lawyerly. Ambiguous.

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jonathan, so you may as well get whatever it is off your chest.’ In the movie I’d have told him to ‘come clean’.

  ‘It involves Bill Hamperton,’ he says.

  The room is completely still. Jonathan clears his throat. He stands and walks to the window. ‘Bill is in trouble with the law, Tom. I have friends—as they say—in high places and Bill is in the kind of trouble from which there is little escape.’

  ‘Have they found him?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, Tom, they’ve found him.’

  ‘Oh,’ I answer. I never thought they’d find him. I thought he was gone for good.

  Caleb Loeb and Jonah Whiting are an item. I didn’t hear it from Jonah. I heard it from Caleb Loeb. He wrote a note. It wasn’t meant for me, at least not directly, but he must have known that it would get to me eventually.

  Dear Jonah, it said. You are everything to me. Kiss kiss.

  He actually wrote the words ‘kiss kiss’, I’m not making that up.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked Jonah when a small piece of paper fell out of his jeans pocket.

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered.

  ‘Then give it to me,’ I said. Jonah looked embarrassed as he handed it across.

  ‘Kiss kiss?’ My voice an accusation. ‘Who the hell writes kiss kiss?’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh,’ said Jonah and snatched the note out of my hand. He folded it in half and in half again, then tucked it back inside his pocket. He took his time, ignoring my stare.

  ‘Are you going to answer me or not?’

  ‘Caleb.’

  I knew it, but somehow it still hit me like a slap.

  ‘Caleb Loeb?’ I could hear the screech rising in my voice. ‘Kiss kiss from Caleb fucking Loeb?’

  ‘No need to swear,’ said Jonah.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. Now get out of Nana’s room.’

  I fell asleep this morning, right after breakfast. I had a very interesting dream about Bill’s boatshed. In the dream I was an animal, small and very close to the ground. Maybe I was a possum, or a bandicoot. I’m not sure what I was. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that, as an animal, I was safe.

  It was dark. Bill was digging one of his holes, and I was scruffing about in the bushes nearby. At first I thought I was alone. The night smells had me excited and I was off in my own little world—until I recognised something familiar. It was one of those weird dream moments where I found myself somewhere odd and couldn’t understand how I got there.

  I turned my head to locate the direction of the scent, and that was when I spotted Bill, about six or seven metres away. I realised that if he looked up, he would see me.

  A small pit of fear began to grow. A branch cracked and Bill put down his shovel and reached for his torch. He shone it in a wide arc. The light landed on me, stayed for a moment, then Bill dropped the torch and carried on digging. I couldn’t understand why he had ignored me, until I remembered I was in an animal body. Relief flooded through me like a drug. Part of me wanted to walk really close and flaunt my invisibility. But the part of me that knew Bill’s unpredictable nature, that he would just as likely kill a small animal as let it go, chose to scuttle off in the opposite direction.

  When I woke up, I realised the dream had shown me something. I was no closer to discovering whatever Bill was hiding, but I now knew that animals were no threat.

  They wheeled Nana back to her room this afternoon. And they transferred me to Nana’s wheelchair and parked me in the corner. Hazel stripped and remade the bed. Someone brought a vase filled with flowers from the kitchen garden, old Mrs Beakle brought Nana a chicken sandwich and a glass of lemonade, and Jonathan arrived with a set of crystal tumblers and a bottle of Tanqueray gin. Nana had been gone less than a week but, as very few residents go to the nursing wing and actually return, she was something of a heroine.

  Halfway through Nana’s second gin, Hazel arrived with the tea trolley, shortly followed by the Thursday Night Bridge Players—a group of women whose names all begin with the letter P. Mike Spice and a bottle of sherry were right behind them. Nana’s room was getting crowded, but each arrival was met with a cheer.

  By nightfall the celebrations had kicked up a notch, as other residents wandered over after their evening meal. Those who couldn’t fit inside her room—or didn’t know Nana all too well—sat outside on the veranda, talking and drinking.

  The Minnow and I were going back to West Wrestler. When it came time for Jonathan and me to leave, Nana held out her hand for me to kiss.

  A queen surrounded by her subjects.

  ‘Bye, my darling,’ Nana said to me, a bit slurry. ‘Thank you for keeping my bed warm.’

  ‘Bye Nana,’ I said, leaning out of the wheelchair and hugging her close. She smelled so familiar. I missed her already. Jonathan squeezed Nana’s hand, and the throng parted to let us through. We headed down the wide veranda to the ramp at the main entrance.

  ‘Little wonder she hated the nursing wing,’ said Papa as I wheeled past. He was sulking in a quiet spot, a fair distance from Nana’s party.

  ‘You’re lucky she doesn’t talk to you,’ I said under my breath, ‘because if she did, she’d d
efinitely not be talking to you now!’

  He knew what I meant.

  Jonathan drove at a steady ninety. I was quite tired so I slept on and off for most of the trip. I was too groggy to answer any questions when we arrived, but Jonathan was amazing, demanding to see the person in charge and taking care of everything while an orderly wheeled me to my room.

  A nurse showered me and put me to bed.

  ‘Dr Patek says to get some sleep and she’ll be by to check on you first thing in the morning.’

  I felt safe. I was drifting off when I heard someone.

  ‘That you, Jonathan?’

  ‘Sorry, Tom. Didn’t mean to disturb you,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, but he was gone.

  Nothing much changes.

  You love someone, they die. You miss them. You grow older.

  Sarah is sitting on the end of my bed.

  I know she’s there, but I keep my eyes closed. I have to make her wait. We both know she deserves it.

  She is still there the next morning.

  ‘You’re a moody shit,’ she says, the moment I open my eyes.

  ‘And you’re not?’ I reply.

  ‘No. I’m dead, you idiot.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ I had forgotten how annoying she could be.

  ‘Listen, Tom. It’s not easy to be here. If you had any idea how hard it was you’d…well, you’d…’

  ‘Still the wordsmith,’ I say.

  ‘Piss off,’ she says.

  ‘Piss off, yourself.’

  This was going well. A year and a half and it was like yesterday.

  I sat up and looked at her. I thought she would be exactly the same, but something about her was different. If I didn’t know better, I would say she looked older.

  ‘Should we start again?’ Classic Sarah. Miss Clean Slate.

  ‘No. Just tell me about Mum and Dad.’

  Sarah sat on the end of my bed and told me about the flood, and how she had spent weeks looking for Mum and Dad and me. I was sad to hear that; I thought the dead just found each other. Sarah said she thought she was going to be alone forever, until she stumbled across Dad at Fowlers Hill.