The Briny Café (17 page)

Eventually he buries the mutt on the point of a woody finger of land that juts out to sea like the bow of a boat. He places the spade alongside. A grave marker. Then he phones Jimmy and tells him he's confined to barracks for a few hours. He disconnects before the kid has time for a single question.

 

Jimmy manages to hold firm for two lonely hours, then cracks under the pressure. He roars up to the café in his tinny and flies inside. His face bleak with worry, hippity-hopping from one foot to the other at full speed, looking for his captain and the faithful mutt.

“Where is he, Ettie? He said he'd be home by now. Boag needs his dinner, doesn't he? Where's Boag? Why'd he confine me to barracks? What's barracks, Ettie? I'm followin' orders, just like I said I would. Now he's gone. What'd I do?”

It's as if the safety rug provided by Sam's stability has been pulled from under him, and Jimmy is falling back into old ways.

“He'll be back soon, love. It wasn't anything you did. Truly. You eaten?”

The kid's face clears. “He's gettin' Tilly the turtle, isn't he? It's a surprise, isn't it? Tilly and me and Boag and Sam. All together.”

“How about some cake? A lovely rich cake with plenty of fruit in it. Would you like that?”

“Does it have custard, Ettie?”

“Not today, love. Next time.” She cuts a thick slice and gives it to him on a plate.

“Where's Sam, Ettie? Where'd he go?”

“We'll all wait here together for him, love. He'll be back soon. Don't you like the cake?”

“I'm savin' some for Sam. And Boag.”

“No need for that, love, there's plenty for everyone.”

 

Sam enters the café with an overbright face and red-rimmed eyes. He spots Jimmy immediately. “What are you doing here, mate? You were confined to barracks.” But his voice is kind. It is a question, not an accusation.

“He's been looking for you. Worried sick,” Ettie says. “And you might want to tell him what a barracks is next time … You okay, Sam? You managing?” she adds softly, coming up to him. She lays her hands on his chest, slides them down and circles his waist with her arms. She feels a shudder, like a sudden chill. The tension drains out of his body and he touches her head lightly.

“Been trying to find ways to plug the holes, Ettie. Took me a while.”

“What holes, Sam?” Jimmy asks.

“Nothing big, mate. And it's good you're here. I need a hand.”

“We're a team, Sam, aren't we?” Jimmy says, feeling the equilibrium coming back into his life.

“Always, Jimmy.”

 

Sam and Jimmy carry Tilly the turtle from the car park to the edge of the seawall, holding her between them like two ends of a sack. They load her into Sam's tinny and lay her on a bed
of scrappy old towels to cushion the ride to the Island. Tilly, with a slow blink and a nod, withdraws into her shell.

“Is she home, Sam? Or gone out?” Jimmy asks, searching both ends.

“Home, mate. Guaranteed. And that's where we're going. Tomorrow we're gonna take the
Mary Kay
all the way to Cat Island and we're gonna lower Tilly over the side so she can go off to find a quiet spot on a deserted beach to lay her eggs.”

Jimmy holds a paddle and pushes them out into the deep. Sam drops the outboard down and pulls the starter cord, twists the throttle into gear. They set off slowly homewards across still water and under a fleecy white sky, rocked every now and then by the wake of a passing tinny.

“Where's Boag, Sam?” Jimmy's eyes dart around the boat as if the dog is hiding like the turtle.

“His owner came for him, mate.”

“That's you, isn't it, Sam?”

“No, Jimmy. I was just looking after him for a while.”

“That's sad, Sam. You loved Boag. Boag was a good dog.”

“Yeah, mate. The best.”

“You cryin', Sam?”

“Don't be bloody stupid.”

 

After locking up the café, Ettie and Kate visit Fast Freddy with a basket of life-affirming treats. They find him in bed, unshaved, wearing yellow-striped pyjamas, looking a pale wreck in the glow from a bedside lamp. A moth pounds against the light bulb. Freddy flinches with every collision. Ettie is reminded of a song about a moth that couldn't resist
the flame but died happy thinking it had reached the moon.

“What makes a moth crave the light when it must know it will kill it?” Freddy says, solemnly. “What is the point of life if the pursuit of it ends in death?”

“What do you think, Freddy?” Ettie asks without a hint of sympathy in her tone, trying to force him to reengage in the everyday. He looks startled by the question.

“Well …” he begins, drawn in despite himself. “There are many schools of thought. Some think procreation. Others seek enlightenment …”

“
You
, Freddy. What do
you
think?”

“Being useful is a good place to start,” he ventures after a moment or two.

She reaches out and turns off the light. The battered moth rests on the shade, deprived of death. “Every day is a gift. You told me that, Freddy. A long time ago when I was so broken-hearted after that tennis player dumped me and I thought I might never get out of bed again.”

A small smile reaches the corners of Freddy's mouth and struggles all the way to his round blue eyes. “Saved ya, did I?” he whispers.

“Yes, Freddy. Now it's my turn to save you. With chicken soup, lasagna, salad and a slice of buttery lemon cake. You're going to have to get out of bed by tomorrow, too. I'm moving from the Island to my beautiful new penthouse on the top floor of The Briny Café. I need your help, my friend. Once again, I need your help. Are you up to it? Can you see to the packing and give Glenn a hand?”

“I'm up to it, Ettie. No worries.”

“Bless you, Freddy.”

“Thank goodness you didn't call me
a good man
,” he says, coming out of his shell a little more.

“But you are, Freddy. Or we wouldn't say it,” Kate says.

“How's Kate doing with the coffee making?” he asks, as if she isn't in the room.

“She's ace, Freddy. A natural.”

“Knew she had it in her.”

“Me too.”

Kate steps over and plants a kiss on his hoary cheek. He blushes furiously, bright enough to stir the moth from its somnolence. It swoops and dives and follows the two women out the door, determined to die somewhere under the full glare of a spotlight it believes to be the moon.

After leaving Freddy, Ettie and Kate stand on the dirt track that circles the Island separating foreshore properties from the higher blocks of land. Kate says she plans to visit Sam on her way home. Ettie offers to come, but Kate shakes her head. “You're only thirty steps from your front door. Go home, have an early night.”

“Give Sam my love. Tell him I'll be there in a flash if he needs me,” she says.

“You and Sam. You ever have a fling? Or, you know, something?” Kate asks, in a voice that's disinterested enough to put Ettie on full alert.

She looks for somewhere to sit. Tramps over to the nearest set of steps, bunches her skirt around her thighs and sinks down with a sigh. The burn in her feet starts to cool. “Maybe he had a crush, years ago, when he was barely old enough to drive a car and I was almost, but not quite, old enough to be his mother. He was a lost, sad young man, Kate. Like everyone else I helped to look after him. There was never anything more.”

“Where were his parents?”

“Car accident. It was early summer. A gorgeous day. Two policemen came looking for him. That's how we found out they'd been killed. After that, we gathered in the Square. People from the bays, the Island. Full-timers, weekenders. None of us knowing who should be the one to tell him. There were so many people. And the Square never so quiet. We couldn't find him. Not for ages. Turned out, he was off fishing. He'd decided at the last minute to skip the trip into town because the kingfish were running hot.”

“Who told him?”

“Well, I did. My mother died, you see, when I was even younger than he was. We all thought that might help Sam to understand. Tragedy just lands on you sometimes, for no reason at all. In the end, I hardly said a word. He looked at our faces and he knew. He got back in his rowboat and just kept rowing and rowing and rowing. The Misses Skettle and I, we followed at a distance. They had a small cabin cruiser in those days, a river boat, but they took it out to sea without flinching. Never lost sight of him. Even out beyond the heads where the swells swallowed and spat him up over and over. There was a full moon that night, otherwise he'd have been dead alongside his parents. He was never alone after that. Not until we knew he was through the worst.”

Kate walks a little away, facing the sea, hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched. Lights dot the hillsides, the only clue to the separation of land and sea.

“God, no wonder he's so stuck in the past. Must have been awful.”

“They'd saved and saved for a new car. Bought a lovely little
red bubble. They were so proud of it. It was brand-new, you see, not secondhand. They were nearly home when a truck roared around a bend, crossed into their lane and wiped them out. And not a thing any of us could do to set things back the way they were.”

“How old was he?”

“Sixteen.”

“So that's why he collects orphans. And watches over the community.”

“Kids, dogs, turtles. Anything that's lost.”

“He really loves you, though. You can see it in the way he's always looking out for you. It goes way beyond helping out a friend. He's … sort of protective.”

“And I love him. God, we go back thirty years. In a typical Cook's Basin way, we're as close as family.”

“Someone has to tell him to back off the Weasel problem, Ettie. The guy's a thug. He knows no boundaries. The stakes will skyrocket in ways Sam couldn't even imagine.”

Ettie stands, brushing the dirt off her skirt. “Sam can take care of himself. And he'll never be alone, not in Cook's Basin. Now I'm off. I'm completely exhausted and you should go home to bed, too. Leave Sam. He's had a shocker day. He needs time to sort himself out.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Goodnight, Ettie.”

 

On the foreshore, in the dark shadows of tall trees, Sam sits on the seawall, a stubby in his hand, drinking a beer in quick, angry sips. Cook's Basin has always had its share of miscreants, bludgers and even a few light-fingered layabouts, but
executing a dog is an all-time low. A desecration of every code the community holds to its collective heart. He is cold with rage.

He hears an outboard engine and sees the blurry outline of a boat swinging close to the spot where the
Mary Kay
is moored. He puts down his beer and rises to his feet, bracing mentally and physically for a fight. The sky, the water, the night is the colour of pitch. The moon is an hour away. He walks silently to the jetty, flexing his fingers. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He inches further forward. The boat aims for the barge.

Slows. Idles.

Ah jeez. He returns for his beer, then makes his way back to the end of the jetty, rolls up his jeans and sinks his feet in the water.

“Lost, are you?”

Kate spins towards his voice and sees him. A dark shape less than twenty feet from her.

“As it happens, I'm not. I came to make sure you and Jimmy are okay,” she says across the water.

He stands and points at his jetty. She slips into gear and eases alongside the pontoon with half an inch to spare, a perfect manoeuvre. They both know it is pure luck.

He extends his hand to help her out but she ignores it and stays in the boat, leaving him feeling wrong-footed, as usual. He says nothing. He tells himself she's going to make a fine partner for Ettie. She works like a demon. And her idea to turn over the attic was a stunner. She's even managed to make a coffee for him that was almost up there with the best. She's okay. More than okay. She'll do for Ettie and the café, even
the community. It's the chemistry between them that's off. They speak a different language.

“Thanks for checking but we're all good here,” he says.

“It's a no-win battle, Sam. Give it up.” Her tinny rocks on the water.

A voice calls out in one of the houses strung along the foreshore, televisions flicker in blue pods, the sound carrying across the bay.

Sam sits on the jetty and hoists his legs over the gunnel, holding her boat steady. “I'm going to keep repeating myself till it sinks in, Kate. If there's a problem, you wear it away.”

“The Weasel is the kind of problem that wears
you
away. Permanently, Sam. Stay out of it. Or you'll end up with concrete instead of leather boots.”

In the green and red glow of Kate's nav lights, his face shuts down. He stares along the shoreline, raises his beer to his lips. Empty. “You can't let scum rise. Soon as you do, it takes over like algae, suffocating everything underneath.”

“Vigilantes are no better than thugs.”

“What's the alternative?”

“Call the police. Let them handle it.”

“Kids at risk, Kate.”

“Kids make their own choices.”

“Kids don't even know there
are
choices,” he says.

She is silent for a while. “You spend your whole life in Cook's Basin?”

“Born and bred. Wear my boots to hide webbed feet,” he says, trying to ease the tension.

“Onshore the Weasel is about as dirty as it gets. Cook's Basin isn't the real world, Sam. Not even close.”

“That's why we've gotta look after it. You've gotta stand up for what you believe in, Kate, or you lose it.”

“Yeah, well, in my experience, idealists are the first casualties.”

“Thanks for dropping by.” He gives her boat a shove with his foot and stands. A hulking dark figure. Arms crossed. Legs apart. Like he's riding choppy seas.

“It's only going to get worse.”

He waves, undefeated, and walks back down the wharf.

 

The Cook's Basin grapevine buzzes and the community seethes. Phones run hot with the combined forces of outrage and horror at Boag's terrible fate. It is universally decided this is not the moment to sit back and wait for the police and what will almost certainly be an unsatisfactory end. No more verbal warnings. No more detached pontoons. This time, the damage planned will be expensive, extremely inconvenient and even permanent. Sam is informed of the chosen strategies but asked to stay away from the action. If confronted by the Weasel, no one is sure what he might now be capable of.

With the full support of the community, three men steal into the Weasel's boat pen. With a sense that the ides are in their favour by providing a heavy fog that rolls in thickly from the ocean, they unscrew the cap of two petrol tanks. Add a dose of sugar to the fuel. They replace the caps, lift the containers to shake them vigorously, and depart into the mist. As silently as they came.

At the rear of the house, three women, all of them mothers of teenage children, gather in silence, carrying hessian chaff
bags and an aluminium ladder. They place the ladder against the Weasel's water tank. While one holds it firm, another climbs to the top and empties the contents of a bag into the water. Two more sacks are passed up. The remains of a long-dead possum and three dead rats are left to quietly decompose in the water supply. The women slip away, sure-footed on paths they have walked since they were children.

High in the trees, an owl hoots. Somewhere, a dog barks. Nothing in the Weasel's house stirs.

The Weasel, they mutter amongst themselves, has absolutely no inkling of exactly how ruthless a tight-knit, united and outraged group of people can be when Cook's Basin's rules are casually snapped in two.