Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

Stuart passed by with an armful of thick orange rope. ‘Bastard of a thing, eh?’ he shouted, straining like he was carrying bricks not rope. Bob nodded, put his scarf back up and headed down the gangway. Stuart caught Frank’s eye and came close to him. ‘Be those black fellas again, I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said, low and soft. There was a smile in his voice and he gave Frank a wink as he walked away.

At morning tea, Pokey came out of the foreman’s hut. The left side of his face was the deep swollen dark of black wine gums. Stripes of red showed the imprint of a fist on his cheekbone. His left eye was closed, but you could make out the blood-red line that was his eyeball. He walked with a limp, his good eye searching out the faces of his workers, daring anyone to say anything. Most people looked up and then got on with what they were doing, but the silence was heavy. Charlie watched Stuart with an empty look on his face and Stuart giggled.

The ceremony was out in the long grasses by Redcliff. There were five or six cars all by the side of the road and smoke came up from the point, made the air thick and smell of burnt seawater and cloves. It had already started by the time he got down to the small assembly of people, and he was alarmed to see that at first glance they were all aboriginal and mostly young. They turned to look at him, then turned back to themselves, thin scarves round their foreheads. A young girl with hoop earrings and red paint in her eyebrows fanned a small fire, fed it with grasses and the smoke blew low over the lot of them. Two boys sang a song that could have been joyful, if their faces weren’t stretched in the way that they were, if their eyes didn’t stare, full and black. He stood a little way from them, feeling the marsh wet his boots, the sponge earth seeping. He spotted Linus sitting with his shirt off, white lines down the length of his nose. He smiled at Frank and Frank nodded.

Through the smoke he saw a white face, Vicky, her hair tied at the nape of her neck, covering her ears and trailing round her throat. In the heat of the gully she wore an oversize oilskin coat. Frank caught her eye and she slipped through the smoke round the edge of the gathering. They stood next to each other, and he could feel the heat of her and smell the wax of her coat. She stretched out her little finger and all at once she was holding his hand, and it was hot and wet, and she squeezed so that the bones of his fingers ached.

‘Where’s everybody else?’ he whispered.

‘Who?’ she said, not whispering, but no one looked up.

‘I thought there’d be others.’ It felt silly his being there — he hadn’t even known the girl, hadn’t met her father. ‘What about Bob?’ She shook her head but didn’t offer anything else. He stayed quiet, feeling the strange hand in his and wondering what it was supposed to mean. A girl sang a song from a movie. Celine Dion. A kid, about seventeen, his thick hair shaped into a short fin, gold chains round his neck, sat alone cross-legged close to where the smoke blew thickest.

‘That’s Johno, Joyce’s boyfriend,’ Vicky said in his ear. The boy’s jaw was hard set and he blinked a lot in the smoke. His fingers pressed at each other. A dark orange scarf shone against the matt skin of his face. The boy stared at the two of them and there was something bad about the way he did it. Then he got up and made off into the long grass, and Frank wanted to leave too. Linus gave him a look and he wondered what he was thinking about the two of them holding hands. Crickets cracked all around them. The ground seeped under Frank’s weight, the water stained brown from the tea trees. He tugged on Vicky’s arm and she looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there. She didn’t resist when he steered her back towards the path, when he took them down the route to the beach, razor grass slicing at their shins. ‘Where’s everyone else?’ he asked again, once they were out of earshot, just the occasional high voice and the smell of smoke on the breeze.

‘Who else would you expect to come? Those are just her friends.’

‘Did you know her?’

Vicky looked at him but didn’t answer. She turned her head to look up the beach. The sky was pinking. She sat down in the dry sand close to the grass. He sat down too and took his boots off. She buried her feet, letting the loose white sand run through her fingers and watched as she did the same to his feet. He felt a sort of sickness about what could happen next — her strong legs, the width of her hips.

‘That poor boy,’ Vicky said, ‘they had him in for questioning. God only knows what they did to him.’

‘The boyfriend — they think he did it?’

‘He didn’t do it. The one that did is most likely a million miles away by now.’ The sea pulled at the sand and spat it out again.

‘But do they think Johno did it?’

‘They?’ Her voice was faraway and flat, like the questions didn’t mean that much to her.

‘I suppose he wouldn’t be around if they thought he’d done it.’ Vicky didn’t answer, not even a shrug. They sat in the quiet until the sun was setting and a large, smooth, black piece of petrified driftwood that had long ago washed up and planted itself on the sand cast its shadow long and dark up the beach.

‘Couple of days ago Ian Mackelly went to have a talk to Johno. Took along some of the marina boys. Bob went.’

‘What happened?’

‘They went to his house — place he lives with his parents and his grandfather. Little kids there too. They didn’t take along anything but they rolled up their sleeves. Bob said they really just wanted to talk.’ Vicky smiled and shook her head like she couldn’t even believe the fact.

‘Well, maybe that is all they wanted to do.’

Vicky looked at him. ‘You don’t have kids.’ She pushed the balls of her hands into her eyes and there was a small wet noise from them.

‘They asked for Johno to come out and he didn’t, so they stayed there all night. Four of them, big men, waiting with their flaming shirtsleeves rolled up.’

‘I can’t believe they would’ve hurt him, Vick. Bob wouldn’t let it happen.’

‘It’s like I said. You don’t have kids.’

The waves were quiet, the birds didn’t sing, and ghost crabs scattered on the surface and disappeared into their holes. The wind must have shifted because smoke came down and threaded slowly out to sea. It blew in through their hair and Vicky sniffed. ‘No spirit sticking to me,’ she said.

He saw the difficult lines of her face, the hair that hooked in her eyelashes, smelt the oilskin coat.

‘Bob told you about Emmy?’

Frank nodded. He wondered if he should mention those bruises on Bob’s face, but it wasn’t for him to stick his beak in. ‘Think maybe we should go home?’ he said, even though it would have been nice to feel her hot and sinking into the sand underneath him.

She held out her hand, laid it palm up on the sand. He put his over hers, not to hold it, just to cover. ‘Why are you here, Frank?’ she asked and he found that, really, he didn’t know.

The next day the southerly still blew at work and it dried him out, leaving the skin of his hands tight and old-looking. He couldn’t stop touching his right eye, which became blood-lined and weepy, and he could feel some bit of grit in it, like his eyeballs were drying out and sand was getting in. When work was over he went into the pub toilet and rinsed his eye, soaped up his papery hands and washed them until they looked pink. The men had gathered round a set of tables by the front window of the pub, so you could look out and watch surfers on main beach. There was hardly any swell, but still the water was speckled with them, some lying flat, some sitting upright, dangling their legs in the water and looking out to the horizon, willing a wave to come and knock them off.