The Minnow (10 page)

‘I think she's trying to speak,' Mum said in her worried voice.

‘That's what it looks like,' the wrist holder answered, ‘but it's probably just a gagging reflex caused by the tube in her throat.'

‘But what if she's trying to speak?'

‘The tube will make it impossible.'

Mum brushed my cheek with her hand again, slowly this time.

‘Try not to speak, puppy. The doctor won't be long.'

Nothing's biting. The inlet is conveniently close to Jonah's house, I just wish it was a more reliable fishing spot. I had planned to catch dinner, but it looks like we'll be eating something out of a can.

‘Watch out!' shouts the Minnow. I turn towards Bill.

‘What?' he says, looking at me accusingly.

‘Nothing,' I reply.

‘Watch out for what?' I whisper to the Minnow.

‘Over Bill's shoulder,' she answers.

I turn to look. There is nothing there. She's scaring me.

‘Something's about to happen,' she says. ‘Trust me.'

Once, when I was four, I lived outside with Dad for almost a month. I loved it. I slept in the hammock, ate strange things that he cooked on the fire, spent each day with him doing whatever it was he was doing. One morning, at Bunter and Davis, while Dad was hunting for roofing iron, I found a box of wooden pegs. They were large and old and someone had made them into toy people. Each peg had clothes and a painted face, and hair made out of yellow knitting wool. The three pegs wearing trousers had yellow wool moustaches and the four pegs wearing dresses had rosy red cheeks and big red lips. I decided all seven were girls.

When I showed my discovery to Paul Bunter he said I could keep them on one condition; that I moved back into the house with my mother. I remember feeling so torn. I loved being outside with Dad. I loved sleeping in the hammock and rummaging around at the scrap yard.

I looked up at Dad, and he just smiled his Dad smile.

‘Mum misses tucking you in,' he said.

‘I know,' I said, because I missed her tucking me in, more than I'd realised until that moment. So I moved back into the house with my new toys.

Two men stood at the entrance to the jetty. Both were holding rifles. Bill was facing me so I wasn't sure if he knew.

‘We might have to swim for it,' suggested the Minnow. She was serious.

‘Bill,' I managed.

‘One or two?' he asked.

‘Two,' I replied.

‘They moving?'

‘Not yet.'

‘How far?'

‘Jetty entrance.'

‘He's going to bolt,' said Papa.

‘What's going on, Bill?'

‘Too hard to explain,' he answered. ‘Just tell me if they do anything.'

‘One of them is talking on the phone.'

‘What's the other one doing?'

‘Nothing. Bill, they've got guns.'

‘Shit.'

Great, I thought. I should have walked to the letterbox.

‘Whatever happens, Tom, stay perfectly still,' said Bill. ‘They've no interest in you, so don't give them any reason.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘I have no idea,' he said, but as the words left his mouth he folded forward and toppled into the water.

‘Bill!'

‘Don't move, Tom,' said Papa.

One of the men ran towards us and the other took off in the opposite direction.

‘I didn't even hear the bullet,' I said to Papa as I realised what had just happened.

‘There was no bullet,' said Papa. ‘I told you he'd do a runner. Sneaky bastard is probably under the jetty catching his breath.'

I wanted to lean down and have a look.

‘Hey kid, you see where he went?' The man had a handsome face. He wasn't even panting.

‘Yes, straight off the edge. I thought you shot him.'

The man with the handsome face lifted the rifle over his head and placed it carefully on the jetty, crouching down beside it. He leant forward and scanned the dark water of the inlet. ‘How deep is it?'

‘Not sure, I've never been in.'

He flattened his body against the deck and pulled his torso far enough over the edge to get a look underneath. Papa nudged my arm.

‘Look towards Ponters Corner,' he whispered. ‘Left of the split rock.'

Directly opposite, on the inlet's farthest bank, was Bill. I have no idea how he made the distance without being seen. He was sitting perfectly still, tucked in behind some lantana. I would never have seen him without Papa's help.

He was watching us. No, he was watching Mr Handsome.

‘Tom!' shouted Jonah.

I got such a fright, I screamed. Mr Handsome jumped to his feet and grabbed his rifle.

‘It's Jonah and James Wo,' I said, trying to calm myself.

Papa and Mr Handsome and I watched Jonah and James Wo walk up the pier towards us.

‘What's going on?' Jonah asked. ‘Who is this?'

I looked across the inlet. Bill was gone.

Nana wants to know everything. Mavis Leitch and Betsy Groot and Mike Spice have crammed into her room and the four of them are buzzing with excitement. Nothing much happens at the Mavis Ornstein Home for the Elderly, so the news of my lucky escape from Bill and the two men has spread like wildfire. Jonah and James Wo have been allocated hero status, and Hazel has invited them for Saturday lunch in the common room.

Nana's room feels rather crowded.

‘I'm off,' says Papa as Jonathan Whiting appears in the doorway.

‘Hi, Jonathan,' everyone says in unison.

‘I see you're already here, Miss,' Jonathan says to me.

‘Sergeant Griffin drove me,' I say.

‘Oooh,' says the pack.

‘Here, Jono,' says Nana, patting the seat next to her on the couch. ‘That grandson of yours is such a darling.'

Jonathan Whiting beams with pride and takes his place next to Nana. ‘Tom was just telling us how the man flattened himself on the jetty. Go on darling,' instructs Nana, as five elderly sets of eyes turn to face me. ‘We're all dying to hear what happened next.'

I told them everything except the bit about seeing Bill hiding behind the rock. Sergeant Griffin said it was best to keep that between him and me.

After Jonah and James Wo collected me from the inlet (which was fairly uneventful: Mr Handsome just excused himself and left), Jonah called his grandfather and he called Sergeant Griffin.

Sergeant Griffin drove me and the Minnow to the station. Sergeant Griffin then phoned one of the visiting detectives who told him to take my statement. Sergeant Griffin types very slowly so this last bit took a while.

The next morning, Sergeant Griffin was back. Jonah woke me.

‘There's someone arriving this morning from head office in West Wrestler,' Sergeant Griffin said to me over Jonah's shoulder. ‘She'll be here in about thirty minutes. She wants to make an identikit of that man who was after Bill.' This was a big deal for a small-town cop and you could tell he wanted everything to run smoothly.

I had a shower and got dressed and ate breakfast. Then Sergeant Griffin took me and the Minnow back to the station.

The police sketch artist was really nice. She had beautiful long fingers and a pointy nose, and she had a habit of resting her pencil against her cheek while she looked at me. Together we drew Mr Handsome. Then Sergeant Griffin drove me to the Mavis Ornstein Home for the Elderly to see Nana.

‘Thank you for your help, Tom,' said Sergeant Griffin, quite unexpectedly.

I must have dozed off. ‘What do you think Bill's done?' I asked, as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. We had arrived at the main entrance.

‘Don't know, but I think it's damn lucky that you're not still living with him.'

‘Do you think it's safe to go by the boatshed?'

‘Why?'

‘I think I might have left some stuff. One of my sweatshirts is missing and I can't find my gumboots.'

‘I'll get back to you, Tom. It might not be safe with these characters about.'

Hazel stops me in the hall. ‘They'll sleep like babies after all this excitement.'

‘Hi, Haze.'

‘You taking a break?'

‘Yes,' I say, and the two of us laugh.

I follow Hazel out on to the veranda, past Papa, and around the corner towards the day bed. Hazel pauses to speak to an old woman. I don't recognise her. Maybe she is new. ‘Someone has been looking for you,' Hazel says.

‘Really?' The old woman looks blankly at me and then focuses back on Hazel. ‘Who?'

‘Young man, odd name,' says Hazel, and an image of Caleb Loeb pops into my head. ‘Do you have a grandson?'

‘A grandson…'

‘I'll find out more and let you know,' says Hazel.

‘Thanks, dear,' says the old woman, leaning back in her chair. She closes her eyes.

Hazel nods at me and we move off. ‘Poor thing,' she says. ‘Not a clue.'

‘But she would know if she had a grandson, wouldn't she?'

‘Hard to tell. She forgets where her room is.'

We walk past the day bed and down the ramp into the back garden. The swing seat is in the shade. We walk over and sit.

‘But you have to be careful these days with identity fraud,' Hazel continues. ‘Who knows why someone would pretend to have a granny, but the rules state that we have to do a thorough background check if the resident doesn't have the relative listed.'

‘Pretend? You think the guy was making it up?'

My throat's really sore. I feel like I'm floating on Jonah's lilo. I try to open my eyes. I feel a long way from myself. Part of me doesn't even care.

‘Should we bring in someone she knows?'

‘I don't know. Worth a try, I guess.'

‘Hazel,' I said, ‘what about that woman's grandson. The one with the odd name. Did you meet him?'

‘I can't tell you anything specific, Tom, because it's confidential. But generally speaking, a grandson is uncommon. It's usually an immediate family member: a child or sibling. They've lost touch. Or they've had a falling-out and want to patch things up. The ones who come in person are almost always on the resident's list.'

‘Has anyone like that ever visited Nana?'

‘You mean, do you have an aunt or uncle you've never met?'

‘Yeah, I guess.'

‘Honestly, Tom, I can't remember off the top of my head. Your Nana's been here a long time. Let me think about it and see if anything drops in.'

Hazel's not usually vague. According to Papa, Hazel has an incredible memory. Papa reckons Hazel pretends to be silly so the rest of us don't flag her as smart.

Papa went to school with Hazel's father, Kevin. He says he remembers when Hazel was born. He and Kevin went to the pub and everyone kept buying them beers. They were so drunk by the time they got to the hospital to see the baby, they both passed out in the waiting room.

Kevin and his wife, Ellen, knew Hazel was special when she started reading at two. She started school at four. Papa says she's got an IQ higher than the Eiffel Tower and the teachers didn't know what to do with her. These days, Papa says, they would have stuck Hazel with the gifted kids, but back in the sixties it was more of a one-size-fits-all approach. Inevitably, she got really bored, hung out with real losers, started stealing cars. By the time she was fourteen she had quit school and disappeared. Papa said he hadn't realised that the Hazel who worked at the Mavis Ornstein Home for the Elderly was Kevin and Ellen's Hazel.

But Nana knew. Nana reads the births, deaths and marriages section of the paper every day. One afternoon she spotted Ellen Croxly-Wrightson's death notice. ‘Beloved wife of Kevin and mother of Hazel' it said.

Papa found Nana and Hazel in the reading room. Hazel was sitting at her desk, head in her hands, crying. Nana was standing next to her, gently patting her shoulder.

I just remembered why we named it the Rumbly. We had left early one morning, before sunrise. Bill had loaded the tinny onto the trailer the night before so we could leave straight away. But that meant I had no time for breakfast.