Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

‘You look pretty ropy mate,’ offered Bob, as he sat down. He pushed a drink across the table.

‘Ta for the beer,’ Frank said. ‘Got some grub in my eye.’

‘Listen, Vick told me about yesterday.’ Frank bit his tongue. What had she said? ‘Thanks, mate. Should’ve gone meself, just couldn’t face it.’

Frank nodded and took a long drink simultaneously so he wouldn’t have to talk.

Linus cleared his throat. ‘How’s the bass, Stuart?’

Stuart leant forward and set himself more comfortably in his chair. There was no sign that he was put out by the previous week. ‘Yeah, she’s pretty good, thanks, Linus mate. She’s getting pretty tame.’

‘Stuart keeps a bass in his pool,’ said Linus, looking at Frank. There was the suggestion of laughter round his mouth.

‘Really? It’s okay with the chlorine?’

‘Aw, mainly rainwater, mate, more of a pond right now than a pool.’

‘A mosquito pot,’ Linus said. ‘An’ a stinking one at that.’

‘You’re just jealous, mate.’

Linus no longer looked like he was taking a rise. The old man’s eyes narrowed as if he was seeing something different from the rest of them.

‘Sure thing, she’s a pretty bass.’ There was a general quiet reverence while apparently everyone pictured the fish.

‘You teach her any tricks?’ asked Bob.

Frank was on the verge of laughing out loud.

‘Aw, she’s coming on. Last weekend got one of the kids to take some footage of me feeding her. She’ll come right up and take it out of my hand.’

Everyone nodded, impressed.

‘Aw, and then — it was unreal!’ Stuart sat up tall, smiling, leaning back on his stool. ‘The kids caught a skink and threw him in, and Bassy came up and hit it — took the bloke in one go!’ He used his hands to show how the fish went. ‘I was spewing we weren’t filming. She was too full to take any more — gonna give it another shot this weekend. Been thinking about throwing a mouse in there too.’

‘Sweet as,’ said Bob.

Everyone drank.

‘So,’ asked Frank. ‘What’s your plan, is she a pet or are you going to let her go?’

Stuart eyed him suspiciously, then seemed to decide it was a genuine question. ‘Well, I catch her about once every two weeks — jus’ using a lure — an’ then at some point I’ll go an’ release her.’

‘Righto — where at?’ It had seemed to him to be a perfectly normal question, but the atmosphere at the table changed. Everyone sat up a little straighter, Linus moved his beer in concentric circles, Bob snorted and cleared his throat.

‘That’, said Stuart, ‘is for me to know.’

Later in the evening the drink seemed to sort out the creakiness of Frank’s body. His joints felt lubricated, his head light and he felt unusually spry as he kept his eye on a girl at the bar, thinking perhaps he should buy her a drink. When it came to his round, he sidled up to her. ‘Anything for you?’ he asked.

She looked at him like she might laugh and for a second his good feeling died in his boots, but she smiled. ‘Sure — rum and lemonade, please.’

He put in the order and leant against the bar. ‘You work around here, then?’ he asked.

‘Not exactly — what about you, been down at the marina?’

‘Yeah, been packing nails today.’ It wasn’t the keenest line he’d ever used.

‘Nice one.’ She said.

‘Ta.’

‘So…?’

‘Yeah.’

And as easily as that it was over and she had on one of those looks again like she might laugh.

‘Guess I haven’t been up to much lately.’

‘Guess not. Well, ta for the drink anyways.’ She sipped through her straw and gave him a smile that was nice, and he cheered up.

With his hands full of drink, Stuart slapped him on the back. ‘Nice one, Franko,’ he said, the tops of the beers running down Frank’s fingers. ‘You just bought the foreman’s fourteen-year-old niece a drink. He’ll thank you for that, I’m sure of it!’ The table erupted and Frank felt his face go hot. He glanced over to where the girl sat down opposite a battered Pokey and sucked wetly on the red straw.

At midnight he found himself in the driver’s seat of his truck, too tired and too drunk to go anywhere. ‘Lucy Lucy Lucy Lou Lou Lou,’ he said quietly to himself and then he was crying. He fell asleep strapped into his seat belt and didn’t wake until it was just starting dawn. There was a red drinking straw in his shirt pocket that he couldn’t place and he dropped it out of the window, preferring not to think too much about where it had come from. He felt like his guts had collapsed on each other and breathing out too far made him feel sick. He started the engine and pulled out into the empty street, glad it was too early to have to try to avoid crashing into other vehicles.

It was a soft, damp morning and things were paler than usual on the road that led home. The bark of the gums blanched at him as he drove down the track. A heavy mist hung low in the air, so that once he’d come to a stop outside the shack there was nothing to see past the cane.

Both chickens were sleeping, their white eyes closed like small barnacles, their bodies fluffed and frowsy. When he closed the truck door it sounded too loud and made his heart beat like a footstep. A rosella took off from the veranda and a large white cockatoo, which perched in the banana tree, turned its back on Frank at the same time as crapping into the open air.

His boots made a din on the floorboards. He was usually bare-footed and he trod lightly for fear of waking someone. He sat down on the side of his bed and undid his laces carefully, softly placing the boots next to each other underneath the bed. A swim was the only real cure for overcooking yourself. He tried whistling to break the ice of quiet as he floundered for his towel, but the bare windows glared at him. The banana tree swept against the roof, shhhhhhh.

He cleared his throat.

He took off his clothes and slung the towel over his shoulder, pulling at fistfuls of his hair to try to clear his head, and making it stick straight up as he walked out of the shack and down the path to the bay.

The sea was pasty, the rip a little high. Scum yellowed the tidemark. The water was warm and his dick hardly shrank as he floated until he lost the feel of his body. He watched from the corner of his eye as he passed the bream hole and thought of his mother standing there holding a live prawn in her fingers and hesitating to thread it on to the hook. Past that, further out, was the point where they’d used to set the crab trap. A memory surprised him: his father waking him at dawn before everything, when his mum was sleeping in that creaky double bed of theirs. ‘Come and we’ll see what the crab pot’s sucked up,’ his dad had whispered.

‘What about Mum?’

‘Man’s work.’

‘Hokay.’

He’d felt an odd gravity to the situation as they tiptoed out of the shack, not closing the door in case the noise woke her up. They wore just the pants they’d slept in and he’d felt yesterday’s sunburn wince on his back.

When they got down to the water, his dad disposed of even his pants and flung them at the dry sand up the beach. He did the same, and went and stood by his dad as he dragged the surf ski down to the waves.

‘C’mon then, Franko, in you get.’ His dad held the surf ski steady in the shallow white water.

‘We going in the nud?’

‘Nud as a grub.’

He hesitated.

‘You worried a crab’s gonna have it off or something? C’mon, who’ll see?’

He stepped in, cautiously viewing the funny pigskin hanging from his dad.

‘’S the thing I’ve learnt, Franko,’ he said as he pushed them off into the gentle swell, ‘there aren’t that many places to be nude any more — you gotta take the chance when it comes along.’