Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

He walked backwards round the corner, thumping into a small redheaded girl who blew a spit bubble at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said and waded against the tide of kids back to his truck. He slid inside and rested his head on the steering wheel. He pushed his tongue into his bottom lip and made the noise ‘eughn’ like one of the kids might. He tried to feel silly but he just felt disappointed. Of course, after what had happened to the Mackelly kid… of course she’d get picked up by her parents. She was only seven. He breathed a sigh of relief, imagining what would have happened if she had seen him, if she’d thought he was collecting her and not her mother.

He didn’t feel like going back to the shack, but he drove there all the same, trying to shake off the feeling that the day had been a waste. He’d bought a reinforced prawn net anyway.

The cockatoo was gone from the side of the road, just a few white feathers lifted in the breeze as he drove by. When he pulled up, Linus was there. He’d helped himself to a beer and sat on the steps wearing his old green hat far back on his head, leaning into the last of the yellow sun. His belly had snuck out of the bottom of his T-shirt and rested like a cat on his thighs. ‘How’s life, ol’ matey?’ he asked.

‘Good, good,’ Frank exaggerated. ‘What can I help you with?’

‘I already helped meself.’ The grizzled old bugger raised his bottle at Frank, the white of his stubble shone against his black skin.

‘Right.’ There was nothing for it but to get a drink and sit with the hoary coot.

‘Just wondered how the place was treating you. Getting on okay? Need any hocus-pocus doing?’

Frank laughed a loud ha! and opened his own beer.

A yellow light hit the tallest of the box trees at the edge of the bush. Frank waited, but for a long time the only noise was the far-off applause of crickets and cicadas.

When Linus finally spoke it was to say, ‘Terrible business, Ian’s girl.’ He looked out over the cane, no eye contact.

‘Bad as it gets.’

‘I ’member her being born. Well, it was only fourteen years ago, so I suppose I would. Makes you think you could go back an’ do something ’bout it. Gonna be some sort of memorial thing at the enda the week. I’m sure Stuart’ll have told you — she had a lot of aboriginal friends. They’re going to do some sorta ceremony for her. Not really sure how Ian’ll see that, but.’ He snorted. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Ian hasn’t really got a problem. ’S more he’d just like to crush someone I think. Grind ’em into the ground. An’ who can blame him? Heard he went ape-shit when they found out her boyfriend was a black fella. But he wouldn’t have minded, not really — he just didn’t know about it.’

The sun was lower down on the box trees now, a lick of yellow on their trunks. Flycatchers settled on the tips of their branches. There was a sudden brightening of everything, the sun took one final deep breath, then the light mellowed and started to fade. Frank’d never been so aware of night falling. ‘You live alone, Linus?’

‘I do. I prefer to live in the town, though. Me and Eleanor. Left her at home. Not like you, not one of those “flash your bum at nature and sleep on the grass” types.’

‘Oh?’

‘Tell the truth, mate, gives me the willies, a man staying out here all on his own.’

He looked at the old man, but Linus stayed looking dead ahead. He sipped from his beer. Frank shrugged, tried to look nonchalant. ‘Sometimes I hear a thing or two I can’t put a name to. But then most of the time it’s just bandicoots and dreams.’ There was a silence and Frank started to form a long complicated question in his head; then, surprising himself, he said, ‘What do you know about the bunyip?’

Linus frowned, looked down at his drink. ‘He’s that fella on TV with the orange face, isn’t he? The one that’s rude t’ everyone? Swears a lot — a puppet.’

‘No — that’s a wombat — and I mean the actual bunyip.’

‘The actual bunyip, y’say? Where did you grow up? Fuckin’ out the back of beyond?’

‘All I know about the bunyip is stuff from kids’ books. He hangs around swamps or something.’

Linus drank from his bottle and Frank could hear it going down, heard it snake through his gullet, drop into his belly. Linus’s stomach made a noise like something being extinguished. ‘Firstly, it’s not the bunyip — it’s bunyip. That’s the bugger’s name. Secondly, what makes you think it’s a he?’

‘Right.’

‘And third — which makes me think it is a he — bunyip likes eatin’ women. An’ not in a good way either.’

Frank shifted in his seat.

Linus’s eyes shone at him from under his derelict hat. ‘Fourthly, mate, I know you’re a bit beyond the black stump, but if you’re going to start believing in bunyip we might as well paint a gecko on your arse and give you a firestick to shake.’

Frank smiled. ‘I was talking to Bob Haydon’s kid about it.’

‘Right. Well, she’d know a thing or two about the matter.’

The faraway rumble of a road train.

‘You know,’ said Linus, ‘there’s this old saying: “There is no way to get into an orange after your mother is dead.” I don’t know who said it. Some Chinese fellah. Pretty smart, though.’ He smiled up at the sky.

A whistler circled high above them, called and landed in the box trees, which shed leaves and flycatchers like a shoal of black fish. Frank gave up the fight to understand what Linus was on about and sucked on his beer. It was beautiful again. Just breeze enough to blow away the mosquitoes. Clouds blended orange on a blue horizon. Frogs barked under the veranda.

‘I talked with your grandfather once.’

Frank turned to look at him.

‘I’d a job with the grocers — ’fore all this Bi-Lo racket. He had this standing order, before your grandmummy came out, it was a monthly deal — not much, really, just big box of matches, some kero. Few cans. Not what you’d want to live on. Anyways, I’d worked as a delivery boy maybe three months ’fore I ever saw the bloke. He’d jus’ leave money on the table an’ I’d leave the box for him. But one time he was around an I said g’day, an’ he was a friendly enough bloke. We had a chat.’

‘About what?’

‘Nothin’ much. Just got the sense he was lonely that day. Asked him about himself, but he didn’t tell me much. Asked how old I was. I’m guessing I was about the same age as your old man was then. Asked if I’d had to go to war. I told him too young, and he nodded and shook my hand. Asked me if I had a wife, an’ when I said no he said, “Best way.” He said, “Best way, might be another war yet.” An’ he told me he hoped I’d have a plenty good life. An’ that was it. I told him I’d see him around but I never did. I think he’d just popped up that day because he was lonely.’

‘You remember it pretty well. Long time ago.’

Linus smiled again out into the blue air. He inhaled and took a long swallow of beer, pulled his lips over his teeth and looked at the bottle in his hand. ‘Made a bit of an impression I’d say. Never did get married. There was another war. And I see his point. I see his point well.’

‘He didn’t mention my father? Or my grandmother?’

‘Nup. When she turned up was first we knew of that.’

There was something soft about the old man suddenly. Something in the way his teeth worried his bottom lip. ‘Beaudy lady. We used to talk.’

His lips were wet and Frank imagined him as a young man. He would have been good-looking, the bones of him dark with heavy shadows.

Linus stifled a burp, which seemed to knock him out of his thoughts. ‘She was all interested in where I come from. Not something I was used to, people wanting to know about that. I suppose she bin told to go suck by her country too. Don’t think it suited her that well, being out here all on her own just with him. She said was like something had a hold on your poppy. Guess he went through it in the war or something.’ He bit his bottom lip with his white teeth, squinted his eyes. ‘Your grandmummy she loved him, but. She had to stay with him. Loved ’im.’ Frank wanted to say something, but he couldn’t think for the image of young Linus and his grandmother, the sugar figure in the wedding dress.