LITMIR.BIZ

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it had made him sick to do it – and now there was just a man or two with a team of dogs, some of the bushfire brigade lads, and himself – and the occasional crackle and sigh from the radio.

      ‘Wish you were some help, old son,’ Pop said out loud.

      He sighed and closed his eyes again. Where were those boys? Where the hell were they? To think they’d landed more men on the moon, yet two little boys could not be found. They’d stared at the map, tried to get inside their heads, but they really seemed to have vanished without a trace. Henry had been adamant they’d gone fishing, told him how much Tom liked it. Pop thought it was doubtful, but the river still had to be searched, and thoroughly this time, not just by a few blokes in a boat with some hooks. Even though nearly every child in the district could swim, water had still claimed too many, particularly the little ones. Little Flynn could have fallen in somewhere, and Tom might have had to jump in after him. After that, with clothes on, even a grown man could get tired quickly and start to go under. It was either look in the river again, or sit quietly up the back of the church and pray.

      He opened his eyes. The girl was over in the old siding now, the heat haze from the tracks making her limbs tremble and flicker. Just half a year ago she had been skinny and shapeless – a little girl. He thought of the boys lost out in the bush and was seized by the sudden realisation of how much he loved her, the precise size and shape of it revealed to him without alteration as if he had always been loath to believe it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d told her as much, or the last time he’d really held her the way he had when she’d been younger. He watched her a little longer until he realised his mouth was dry again. He heaved himself up and went to the front of the car and unhooked the waterbag from the bumper and took another good long drink from it.

      Grace followed the rusting rails through the long grass. In front of the old sawmill there were sidings and steel-edged humps for the loading and unloading of trains that had not stopped there for years. The old stationmaster’s office stood empty at one end of the main platform. She tried the door of the little wooden hut and it creaked open on rusted hinges. Inside she found a bank of seized levers, coated in dust and cobwebs, and a clock on the wall stopped at seven minutes past three – an eternal afternoon. She closed the door and sat outside by the rails and waited with her hand on the hot steel and then, almost as though she’d wished it, the rails began to quiver under her fingertips. She thought of Darcy racing the train and she put her ear down to the rail and fancied she could hear its faint song. Presently she heard the train’s horn sound off in the distance. She stood and climbed the siding to wait, looking over to her father.

      Pop heard the blast of the horn as well but the race they had an interest in had also just begun. It was raining down there and the track was heavy. He pictured the horses, well fed and fairly sparkling with condition, not like the working hacks up here, some with their ribs showing, scratching their flanks against ironbark posts and flicking flies away with a judder of muscle. The racecourse would be like a path to horse heaven for those nellies.

      The caller began his call. He sounded like he was selling cattle, auctioning first place off to the highest bidder, and then, fluttering across the country, came news of the winner, the placegetters, the dividends on the last race, odds on the next – always a next race like waves against a shore. He wondered what the odds were now of finding the boys alive. If he could find God’s bookie he would certainly ask him. What were the odds?

      He stood and slapped his overalls and squinted out from under the brim of his hat in the direction of the arriving train. Grace stood on the siding with her hand up to shade her eyes. She waved to the train as it appeared round the bend, her arm smudged near the shoulder with pale dust, her long dark hair halfway down her back just like her mother had worn hers years ago.

      ‘Gracie!’ he called, not able to help himself. ‘Be careful now!’

      She turned and flashed her eyes at him. He strode up to the siding and raised his hand as well as the train slowed. The driver showed them his pale palm. Pop put his hand down on Grace’s shoulder.

      ‘Our horse came second.’

      ‘Damn.’

      ‘Hey now. Enough of that.’

      The train rumbled on, the wheels squealing on the steel curve, and then it straightened up and came alongside the platform.

      ‘Step right back now, girl,’ said Pop, as the engine passed in a billow of hot, smoky air. Grace glanced up at her father. She thought his eyes were far too dainty a blue for his stern look, but she stepped back anyway.

      When most of the train had passed and they could see where it ended a face popped out of the guard’s van. It was a youthful face with a shock of straw-yellow hair blowing up in the train’s wake and a huge smile formed from wildly angled teeth. As he came closer Pop saw that the young man had his foot on a wooden box and was getting ready to shove it out the door of the van.

      ‘They’re late,’ said Pop. ‘They’re not stopping.’

      He pulled Grace back and watched as the young guard disappeared back into the van. Then the box came flying out and fell with a thud against the sandy gravel of the platform. The guard looked back at them from his door, dust swirling up between him and them. His shoulders were shaking and he was hooting with obvious glee. Pop stared after him, unmoving, the box at his feet, until the guard and his wild smile had faded from view.

      ‘Silly bugger,’ he said, finally.

      He turned to his daughter. She was standing stock-still, staring at the box, the way he’d seen her do during certain games when she’d been younger, or the way she did when she saw a snake.

      ‘Come on. It’s all right. Give me a hand.’

      Grace looked up at him. The sun had buried his face in black shade so she couldn’t read his expression, but she trusted his voice and, breaking her stillness, bent and lifted the box with him and carried it to the car, surprised to find it not as heavy as she thought it might be.

      Henry Gunn was waiting for them down by the boat ramp, a terrible uncertainty in his eyes, as if he doubted the veracity of the air he breathed and the earth he walked upon.

      ‘The outboard’s broken down,’ he croaked. ‘I’ll row.’

      Pop nodded. He had Grace help him unload the box of gelignite and then he sent her home with a quiet word. After she’d gone they headed upstream from the ramp until they reached Henry’s house and then another mile or so along from it they stopped to set the first charge, in close to the bank where the river curled around on itself. It was just one of a dozen places along the river where two children might have fallen in, drowned, then been caught on an underwater snag.

      Pop tossed the charge towards a spot where the great bole of a redgum leant out over the water. Henry watched him, slouched over the oars like a hunchback, like a beaten man, his neck and shoulders corded with hard muscle. Pop detonated the charge and there was a thud and muddied water lifted up in a thick geyser and then crashed back to the surface like a fountain being turned off, the shock wave setting the boat rocking. A mass of leaves and black, waterlogged branches broke the surface and rolled back under like living things and all about them was the stirred-up detritus of the riverbed – hag’s fingers of twigs gloved with lace of green weed.

      They continued up the river in the same manner until dusk, Henry dipping and feathering the oars and manoeuvring the boat, Pop throwing out the charges like bait. Both of them waited in the aftermath of each blast, hoping for a result, yet not hoping for the body of a drowned boy, swollen and pale, with dead, staring eyes, to be loosed from the depths. Yet sometimes the pale underbelly of a stunned and rolling catfish, twelve inches below the surface, could have been a boy’s arm or leg, and when they saw one their hearts jumped up into their throats until they could see for certain what it was, and each time it was not a boy Pop looked over at Henry and wondered how he could endure such cheap torture. Then, when the light was scarcely enough to see by, Pop called it a day.

      ‘Tomorrow we can do down below the ramp,’ he said. ‘Steele’s Reach.’

      Henry

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