Chapter 6
We hate the tourists. We hate everything that isn’t us. We protect our own, until we don’t.
But when that sun descends, the town is ours again.
I watch sunburned parents shaking out towels, lugging a cooler with one hand, an exhausted toddler with the other.
They leave empty bottles of soft drink and brightly colored buckets discarded in the sand.
It’s like they think the day is over. Truth is, it’s only just begun.
They might own the day, but we own the night.
I remember Colleen’s arm slung around Mum’s shoulders, not gently, but tight. A grip that said, It’s okay, I won’t let go. But what I remember most is that they barely spoke at all. Now I know why. Sometimes there’s nothing women can say to each other except, “Leave him before he kills you.”
And leave him, Mum finally did. I just wish she’d taken us with her.
But Colleen stayed to fight it out. Growing up, I felt the steadiness of her presence in the background. Like a hand just barely touching my back, making sure I didn’t fall.
I sit on the sand, my knees up to my chest, cap pulled low over my head. Jessie is beside me, happily watching all the comings and goings, coat warm from the sun. She can’t stop wagging her tail at the seagulls. She’s not quite sure what to do with all this blessed freedom. Me either, I suppose.
“This yours?” Colleen spits out, thrusting a beer can at a teenage tourist reeking of cigarettes.
He ignores her, stomps off, towel slung over his shoulder. She glares at him like she wishes she could throw the can at his head. I smile into my knee, remembering Joy and my thrilling outburst.
Colleen charges over to me, dragging her bin bag as the sun drops fast behind her.
I get to my feet, looking over my shoulder to the sand dunes, scanning them for any sign of my brother.
She squints at me and the realization hits.
Her features soften, and her grip on the garbage bag loosens. “Minnow.”
I smile. “Hey.”
I stuff my hands into my pockets as Heath strides down the sand dunes, a white fishing bucket hanging loose from his fingers.
“Good to have you back, Min,” Colleen says simply.
But I swear her eyes moisten. She quickly turns her face away as if she’s glancing over her shoulder, but I notice how she bends her face into it.
I’ve always felt that Colleen wished she could have done more for Heath and me.
That she carries some guilt about the mess of the past. But I don’t feel that way.
Her background presence was comforting enough, and I knew I could walk to her house and watch cartoons with Trav whenever I wanted.
I was always welcome there. That was enough.
But after the incident with Trav…after he was sent away, I stopped going around to her place. Truth is, I felt guilty about what happened with her son. Responsible for it.
We say nothing, and the silence swallows us up. It’s my brother who breaks it, arriving at my side, shoulders stiff, as if he can feel the tension.
“Hey!” someone yells out. Luke waves at us from a yellow-and-white-striped beach towel.
A toddler sits opposite him wearing only a nappy, clutching fistfuls of sand, her eyes narrowed in concentration.
Luke lumbers over, leaving the child by herself on the towel.
He stands in front of me, lips twitching, hands on his skinny hips. Colleen eyes him warily.
I nod at the kid. “She yours?”
“Fuck no, thank God,” Luke snorts. “My girlfriend’s. She’s got a bun in the oven, though. That one’s mine.” He pauses before adding, “I think.”
Heath frowns, stepping back, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but talking to his former friend.
Luke doesn’t seem to notice. “Those bloody sharks,” he says nodding at the water. “I’m scared to swim these days.”
“Not even a shark would take you on, Luke.” Colleen smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She only tolerates him, I realize.
“Damn right about that.” He smiles proudly.
“Was it a tourist, you reckon?” she says, frowning. “I bloody hope it was.”
“Not sure,” Heath says. “There wasn’t much left to identify.”
I look down at the sand, remembering the small chunks of meat on the dark surface.
Colleen chews her bottom lip. “You been checkin’ the nets?”
I raise my head. “The nets?”
“The curtains of death!” Luke announces dramatically. “Shark nets.”
“The VFA put ’em up last month,” Heath softly explains, pointing far out to the ocean. “Two meters under the surface, a hundred meters long. S’posed to reduce the chance of an attack.”
“Well,” I say, “they sure as hell aren’t working.”
“You can’t prevent shark attacks,” Heath says. “Not really. The nets can only do so much.” He must notice Colleen’s face, because he adds, “We check for holes every afternoon. And every second night we make sure nothin’s stuck in the bloody thing.”
She asks, “Is there, usually?”
“Yeah, stingrays, turtles, it’s a bit sad really,” he admits. “Not the big boys, though, not yet.” He hesitates before adding, “But I’d stay outta the water, yeah? For now, anyway.”
“Surprised they didn’t close this beach today.”
Heath shakes his head. “The attack happened near the pier in beach three. It’s closed until tomorrow. And even if they did close it,” he continues gruffly, “they’d still bloody swim in it.”
“Think they know better than everyone,” Colleen says, annoyed. “Bloody tourists.”
“Not just them,” Luke sniffs. “We’re not gonna stop fishin’.
And Lord knows nothin’ will keep the boys from surfin’.
Look.” He nods up at the parking lot. Five men in black wet suits survey the surf, boards gripped eagerly in their hands.
Heath stares at the man in the middle, the one with the buzz cut. I freeze, heart thudding.
Colleen squints up at her son, swearing under her breath. “Trav.”
My brother doesn’t say a word, not yet, but I can feel it, the disapproval.
The shift in his stance, the way his mouth tightens as he looks from me to Trav.
Trav to me. Does he disapprove of Trav only?
Or both of us? The shape we took on when we were together?
The darkness we brought out of each other?
Trav shields his eyes from the sun, looks down at his mother. Then me.
Colleen calls him again; I can’t hear what she’s saying. Can’t hear anything but the blood rushing in my ears.
One of the last times I saw Trav, he was slouched beside me in class, chin tucked into his palm, when the cop came for him.
Our fifth-grade teacher paused at the blackboard, open-mouthed, chalk dangling from her fingertips.
My classmates and I watched with interest as the cop marched up to her, terse and vaguely apologetic.
They had a hushed discussion that left our teacher solemn and staggering to her chair, palm pressed into her abdomen.
The cop hauled Trav out of class. He was sent to a juvenile facility for violent kids, and I’d long left town before he returned.
Travis Holloway.
The girl he nearly stabbed to death was our classmate Amy Anderson.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can feel Heath’s and Colleen’s searching gazes.
But my attention is locked on Trav. In my mind, we’re kids again.
Nine or ten years old. He’s kneeling in the water, mud sticking to his thighs.
I’m standing over him, waiting. He reaches up, offers me something. Greedily, I take it.
I shake my head, snap out of it. Trav throws his board back into the van, leans against it.
Waits.
Silence.
Heath gives me a sidelong look, and I keep my eyes on the sand until Colleen snorts, “There was a fatal attack yesterday and he still wants to surf. God, he’s crazy.”
“Sharks witnessed the rise and fall of the dinosaurs. Did you know that?” Luke asks. “You gotta wonder how they survived all this time.”
“You’re either the shark or the food,” I recite.
Heath flinches. I’m quoting my father and he knows it. How many times did he repeat that? Stomping around the house or reeling in an undersized snapper that he’d use for bait. You’re either the shark or the food.
Luke steps forward, annoyed that the attention has shifted from him. I glance behind him to where the baby sits on the towel, looking up at the sky.
Colleen shields her eyes from the falling sun as if she’s scanning the water for sharks. “It’s spawning season, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Heath says. “Lots of sharks around is a sign that the ocean’s healthy. That’s good news, at least.”
“Not good news for those poor bastards who keep getting eaten, though,” I mutter.
Luke snorts. “Least it’s not us.”
Us. Them.
I turn to him. “You sure it’s not? Any of the locals missin’ lately?” I’m aiming for a joke, but he doesn’t smile.
“Like your dad?” he asks darkly before adding, “Or maybe it’s old mate Terry you should be asking about that…”
Heath stares levelly at Luke, who raises a lazy palm in a defensive I’m just sayin’ gesture. “He did youse a favor,” he says flatly. “Did us all a favor. He always was a bastard, your dad.”
I can feel it even before I look up. The heat of Trav’s gaze on me, a stare that lingers.
Even without meeting his eyes, I know. The back of my neck prickles, and there’s a jittery energy in my limbs.
I can’t decide whether to run toward him or away.
My heartbeat is too fast, too loud in my ears.
But there’s a strange hope buzzing under my skin, excitement laced with dread.
“Be back in a minute,” I finally mutter, slinking away. I say it so fast it comes out in one word, bebackinaminute.
The dune rises, steep and soft, the sand shifting beneath my feet as I climb the golden wall. I feel Heath’s disapproving eyes on my back, but he doesn’t follow.
My breath is uneven by the time I reach the parking lot at the top of the dune. I pause there, wind tugging at my clothes, heart tapping my ribs.
Trav is turned slightly away from me. He stands there alone, still and quiet, his full-length black wet suit clinging to him like a second skin. It covers him collarbone-to-ankle, highlighting the curve of muscle and the sharp lines of bone beneath. Not a boy anymore, a man now.
There’s a quiet tension in the way he stands, alert, contained.
I step closer, thinking about Amy. She played dead after Trav poked holes in her abdomen. Staggered home, white-lipped, bleeding hard from her belly. Like Trav, she never returned to school. Her family moved away and nobody spoke of her, after. We don’t speak of those who leave. Maybe we should.
He finally turns when I approach. Slowly. The sun catching the side of his face, grazing his cheekbone, gold and warm. Buzz cut, hard eyes. Trav.
I’m just feet away from him, close enough to speak.
Close enough to be heard. But I don’t know what to say.
Not yet. I can’t stop staring at the fist-sized tattoo on his throat: a shield nestled between an emu and a red kangaroo, Australia’s coat of arms. Interesting choice.
The kids in town were raised on kangaroo.
Free meat, our dads called it. They’d slaughter them in our corrugated iron sheds, serve them up on paper plates, all lean and bloody. Tasted good to be honest.
We eat our own.
His expression is calm, but his eyes give it away. Focused. Too focused. Like he hasn’t been waiting minutes for me to climb this sand dune. It’s like he’s been waiting a lifetime.
I wait for him to speak. He looks like he wants to.
I want to ask:
How are you?
You married? Kids?
Why’d you stab Amy?
Why’d you leave her to bleed out in the woods?
But I know why he did it. I just want to hear him say it.
His eyes flick to the back of my right hand. When he sees the tattoo there, he pauses, curious. It’s a tiny anglerfish, jaws open, its fins like torn sails.
Trav looks away, hiding a smile. “Nice tat.”
I stare down at his hands. Every knuckle, every finger, even the spaces between his thumb and wrist are buried in tattoos.
Painful looking, lived-in. A compass spans the back of his right hand, its points clean and sharp.
On his left, a Bell Miner bird, tail vanishing up his forearm.
Compared with his tattoos, my anglerfish looks puny, juvenile. But he seems to like it.
He leans against the van, half smile still on his lips. I nod at the logo and phone numbers stretching across the sliding door, stenciled in faded navy: Titan Fishing Charters. Call Terry or Travis. “You work for Terry now?”
“Yeah,” he says with a hint of pride, “I’ve been skipperin’ the Titan for a few years now. Terry wants to focus more on the pub. Can’t blame ’im,” he adds, nodding at the sea. “Gets rough out there.”
His voice is deeper now, fuller. Trav never talked much, not because he didn’t have anything to say but because he measured every word like they all mattered.
He was always watching, listening, letting others fill the air while he sat back, collecting details.
I liked that. Still do. His steadiness, purpose. It reminded me of my brother.
“I don’t need to ask what you’ve been up to. I heard,” he says, shielding the last of the sun from his face to study me again. “Showed your true colors in the end, didn’t ya?”
“We always do.”
We pass a glance like a whisper, and I know we’re both thinking about Amy.
Why’d you stab Amy?
Why’d you leave her to bleed out in the woods?
Just say it, Trav.
“Minnow!” My name comes drifting through the air. I pause, turning my head toward the sound. It’s coming from the beach. “Min!”
Heath. It doesn’t sound urgent, but it pulls at me all the same.
I say goodbye to Trav, and just as I turn to leave, he reaches out and gently touches my elbow.
It’s nothing really, just a touch. But my whole body notices.
My breath catches, my skin starts buzzing.
I don’t want him to let go, but he does.
Dropping his hand, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch me.
The silence after is thick, loaded. I don’t pull away, but he doesn’t push further.
The warmth of his breath grazes the back of my neck when he asks, “Did you see the attack, Min?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, “I saw it.”
He pauses. “Musta been awful.”
I fix my eyes on the ocean, but all I see are blackbirds clambering up and down the sweaty branches of a ghost gum.
All I hear is something unholy shrieking through the woods as I shiver under the tree’s shadow.
I’m hiding, mouthing a frantic prayer: Don’t let Dad see me. Please. He’ll kill me, too.
Quietly, I say, “I’ve seen worse.”