Carpentaria (32 page)

More gropers appeared, following the side of the boat; their fins cut through the water and in their wake, they left small trails of swirling water. Many of the sea birds, after noticing a place to rest from their hovering in the hot breeze, flew in to land on any available surface on the boat. They assembled in large numbers, squabbling over space, forcing Norm to brush them off as fast as they would land. Norm was overjoyed. He swept the birds away with his hands, while still trying to row to keep up with the gropers, happily telling Elias he had found the right place.

‘So, here we are old friend. Here we are and we actually made it. I brought you home.’

Norm gradually stopped rowing, contented to look on, while the sea swelled into life with the assembling gropers ploughing together through the water, vying for space next to the boat. He thought how remarkable the big fish were as they swam to join in with other groups, until many hundreds were clustering. Strangely, it reminded him of the Pricklebush families gathering at funerals. Even though the day was growing hotter and stiller with humidity, it did not lessen Norm’s exuberance. He felt joy flooding from his heart. He swooshed away the white seagulls hovering between him and Elias and cried out, so far from land, ‘This is paradise.’ The birds lifted themselves up from the water and floated through the hot thermals like angels high up in the skies where the night meets the Milky Way. What say, he thought, considering he too could possibly fly. If he went back to Desperance or not, it did not matter, for in this place, he felt alive again. He had brought Elias’s spirit to his final resting place while discovering man could do almost anything if it was meant to be. Even knowing he was an old man in reality, he could go to sea again and again, if he could still read the signs.

The fish completely surrounded the little tin boat, and it was any wonder to Norm that they did not bump into it. Initially, citing Acts of Contrition, and other prayers for the Stations of the Cross, Norm anticipated hell instead of heaven, after the moment where the weight of the milling fish would collide into and capsize the boat. The fish nudged the back of the boat through the water while Norm sat and watched, looking sadly at Elias, in the knowledge they would soon be parted forever. Finally, the fish moved away, creating a circle of clear water around the boat. Norm waited for several minutes, not sure of what to do next or what would happen. The fish did not move, and even while delaying the inevitable, he knew that he had to let Elias go.

‘So, it’s time old mate,’ Norm said, as he balanced himself in front of Elias to untie the ropes holding him in place. During his journey, Norm had become quite nimble as he moved around the small vessel, as though he had always possessed a corklike buoyancy with the movement of water. ‘It’s time for you to go home.’ He remembered the coral trout and undid the lid of one of several plastic containers kept behind the ends of their seats for storage. The fish in their bags were emptied from the container and Norm placed them in Elias’s folded arms. Then he lifted his friend, knowing he had to let him go, but not wanting to either, because once he did, he knew he would be alone. Betrayed by feelings of loneliness, and a sadness which was only half reserved for Elias, he sat holding the body. He could feel Elias’s spirit resisting his hold. Very carefully and reluctantly, Norm lifted Elias over the side of the boat and placed him into the strangely calm emerald green waters. Elias sank deeper and deeper, gently through the giant arms of water waiting at every depth to receive him, until finally, Norm could see him no more. Then he knelt down in the water on the floor of his little boat, and prayed for Elias, and was thankful he had brought his spirit safely to his final resting place.

In time, when he looked up again, he found himself alone. All the gropers had departed and the day was almost gone.

An unusually early darkness fell over the ocean on the day of Norm’s burying Elias at sea…

How quickly the day had passed, and how incredible it seemed that burying Elias could have taken all day. Norm Phantom lay on the bottom of his boat reflecting on all that had happened. He longed for sleep. It occurred to him that perhaps the day had not passed quickly, and the eery half-light was actually his own eyes failing to see clearly, after weeks of water-reflected glare.

‘Have you thought you might be going blind?’ he asked himself, warning himself while staring upwards at the clouds, but too tired to care. He thought of the stingray’s efforts to send him blind for invading its territory. It had made him its prey. Deliberately it had lingered within his vision throughout the day. Yes, deliberately making him stare into the glare, while it waited for the sun to fall low enough in the sky in an attempt to blind him by its reflection. Ho! Man overboard. Who? Where? You, you idiot who’s yelling out mad. Poor Elias had called. Don’t fall prey to the stingray. He knew he would have to be more careful if the stingray came again, or else no one would call
Man overboard
. No one would hear, not even himself. He would fall overboard, trying to chase after its smile.

They say the devils sitting around at sea could swim through a fishing man’s mind like a virus, waiting for the perfect opportunity, in which very carefully, a devil switches your thoughts for his. Thinking about the sea could turn a man mad, although there were other things too that could change the look of the world, an old man’s eyesight was not that reliable. He would be flat out seeing a dollar on the ground, Norm thought of himself crossly, for being old, looking at his white beard which ran through his fingers. Perhaps he would not make the journey back to Desperance this time. Exhaustion crept over him, entered his blood, and he could feel its flow pulsing through his body like lead. He settled down for a long sleep. He was overcome by the emotion of the final farewell to his one trusted friend. He told himself he would rig up and set sail tomorrow.

He was wrong. He should have set course home immediately and rowed away. Millions of small fish were journeying south underneath his boat. Near and far, the waters rippled with moonlit silver as they passed by. Norm did not notice this, nor their crowded bodies nudging his boat, as if signalling him to leave. He took no notice of the watery spirits in the distance to the north-west throwing themselves up from the sea as they warred with the warlords of the skies. He should have left straightaway while he thought of sleeping.

If he viewed the threatening skies or felt the fleeing fish, he refused to acknowledge the warnings. His whole being flowed away, rolling in the slight south-east swells which were both familiar and lulling, while he slept. Through his exhausted mind rolled an incoherent jumble of pictures, of guiding stars, sea currents flowing from all points of the compass, crossing the route of the sun. He grabbed from the forest of stars, selecting gliding currents from bundles of spears, and sun rays stacked for choosing as he began plotting, jigsawing bit by bit to form an imaginary nautical map for the journey back to Desperance. It was all he had to do, all it was going to take, and in the morning, or later on in the night, after sleep, he would be on his way.

He slept fitfully, forced to a state of wakeful consciousness sifting and sorting time, place and current. Sleep finally evaded him because his mind was alive, it was electrifying inside his head, where the sea kept dividing itself into greater and smaller horizontal and vertical columns, forming tributaries as thick as the matted hair of the universe, from where all manner of ocean currents were flowing, full to the brim with floodwaters. As he walked in this place, searching for an escape route, streams of water were running in every direction as though it was the history of his knowledge crisscrossing itself until it formed a watery spiderweb, a polygon structure tangled with all of the local currents he ever knew in his mind, all tracks leading home.

Sleep finally arrived through a state of restlessness reminiscent of the meandering of an ant moving endlessly and abruptly, this way and that, through its world in the dirt. With each sharp clap of thunder he was drawn from dreams where he half expected to see Elias springing up from the depths below, as he imagined him trying to force his way through the water’s surface until it tore apart. Norm could feel his heart racing as he watched the desperate face of Elias continuing his struggle to come back to life, while he in turn gasped for air on Elias’s behalf, and battled to keep his own head above the surface. Then, drawn to the sight of Elias’s hands gripping the side of the boat while trying to haul himself dead and all over the side, Norm woke himself up, just to escape his nightmare.

Peering into the moonlight he saw it had been nothing except large fish, a queenfish, a jewfish, a snapper, flying through the water and hitting it again side on with a thud. It was nothing compared to the sound the ghostly squawking seagulls made, and when he opened his eyes more fully, there they were, dozens gathered on every available space in his boat again, white wings lifting off with his slightest movement; and, white wings landing again, all of them, sitting there like angels staring at him.

Norm felt pains gathering in his chest, pushing his body in on itself.
Glory be to the Father
– he thought he was going to die, or else what? Already dead in the escort of angels? A beautiful prayer he liked, reaching the end –
As it was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be
, he called out in his sleep, only to be awakened again minutes later and again. The birds were ferocious and helped themselves, fighting like unscrupulous beggars at the full larder, gobbling down all the dried strips of fish from the Spanish mackerel hanging over the sides of the boat.

After a time he fell asleep again. He dreamt he watched the stars fall deeper through the water, where their light lit up the watery world of the gropers’ palaces. He looked down into the depths, through the effects of water moving to and fro with the waves, until he saw the abyss that descended down the many levels of a Mesozoic bluff. The deep hole could have been the result of a Dreamtime volcano, or a meteorite the size of a mountain, or a city that had sunk deep down into the earth.

Every layer of this world was covered in sea gardens of coral, coloured all shades of red and pink, and glistening green sea vegetables, amidst olive seagrass fields waving in folds in the currents. A fish lives far better off than a dry old blackfella from Desperance, Norm Phantom considered, looking at this spectacle. He saw himself walking through these quivering gardens, searching for Elias, but all he found were bluey-green lobsters and crayfish mooching. They froze like little statues as soon as they saw him approaching, walking how a fisherman walks – guarding his every step, and singing out –
Elias! Elias!
Well! It was none of their business. They were only crustaceans darting under cover in his wake, exchanging fright for flight, escaping quickly, slipping back down into their burrows.

Awoken by the scuttering and scurrying of small creatures escaping with his dreams, he looked over the water and saw the big tank fish – gropers swimming together in congregations of fifty or more like dark clouds arriving from the distance. As each group moved upwards, they surfaced loudly in volumes of water, raising their bodies high out of the sea, which were splashing down like waterfalls behind them. The creatures did not stop when they reached the highest level they could before falling back into the sea. Norm wiped their salty spray from his face, as he studied them swimming through the ocean of air, to ascend into the sky world of the Milky Way. They became specks in the sky until they were so far away in the distance, they became a cloudy blur in the celestial heavens of stars and spirits.

Afterwards, the only disturbance they left behind were little eddies in the water that made the boat roll more frequently. Norm, drifting in and out of sleep, caught a glimpse of the fish become stars shooting back in the skies, and finally, the night caravan moving further and further away on its journey. He knew at once Elias was up there with them. Gone thank goodness in another form than the old hunched-back dead man who would have gone off to heaven carrying the basket cases of Desperance along with him. Elias was taking the journey back to his own country, or the place he wanted to call home. Norm was ecstatic with his generous vision of Elias. He knew for the rest of his life he could stop looking out for him. He would no longer resemble a man. He would be like a star. A man like a star. Fish stars. Numerous reminiscences slipped by in Norm’s search for the sign which would distinguish Elias and make him clearly visible for all times. Nothing happened. The book had been closed on their friendship. So, by jingo this was it. Nothing left, except the wretched shell left behind in sun and sea-salt worn-thin cotton clothes who wondered if he were a man.

In the early morning, Norm woke to the startled cries of the seagulls. He pulled his jacket over his head to keep the light away from his face and lay there inert, deciding whether he felt exhausted from dreams, or from too little sleep. Above the harsh awakening, the vivid memory of the Groper exodus stayed clear in his mind, until the deafening racket of squawking birds resounded in his ears, echoing as though the sound was being slapped back from distant hills.

Peering out from under the jacket, he was shocked to see an even bigger assembly of birds had gathered on the water and in the skies since yesterday. As far as his eye could see, more and more birds filled the skies. The surrounding sea had turned almost stark white with the huge flocks that had assembled on the waters, lolling to the slight rise and fall of the flowing waves. As he stood up and clapped his hands the birds flew off his boat, but instantly came back. Then he understood and said, ‘
Kangolgi
.’

It was the time when the migratory birds were coming back to the coastline of the Gulf, some travelling on to other parts of the country. Above the travelling birds he now saw the long morning glory cloud of the Wet season looming over his boat. Any local knew instantly what the long tubular cloud was. Stretching from the western to the eastern horizon so low in the sky, Norm thought it might touch him as it descended to the horizon of the sea. Now it occurred to him that the birds were travelling along a special route made from the evaporation left by the heat in the cooling atmosphere by the trail made by the big fish on their journeys into the sky world of summer. The cloud band would soon evaporate, but would return again and again in the morning, until the air became saturated with the humidity of the gatherings of enormous storm clouds. Then when the heavy rains finally stopped and the waters became calmer the following year, the big fish would return, as was the natural cycle of things.