After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,60

Kirk and Mary, scratching in the dust.

Frank felt tense. ‘What d’ya need to know that sort of thing for?’

‘Just like to know. What else do you know?’

‘I know how to fish.’

‘I already know that.’

‘Light a fire?’

‘I know that too.’

‘Well, okay. Tell me what you know, then.’

Sal sighed. ‘How to fish, how to make a fire, how to build a bivouac, how to hold a crocodile, how to change a tyre, how to get water in the desert, how to dress a crab, how to peel a prawn, how to peel a prickly pear, how to skin a pineapple.’ She took a deep breath. ‘How to get a stamp off a letter, how to make damper, how to spell SOS with flags, how to get a fish hook out of a lip, who Ned Kelly was and how to kill a chook.’ She sat back, her plate now empty, and arranged her knife and fork neatly in the centre.

Frank’s eyebrows were far up his forehead. He could feel them there. ‘Tell you what, kiddo, I’d ask for a bit of help with that last one.’

Sal looked again at Mary and Kirk.

‘I’ll show you how to gut a fish next time I knock a few on the head, eh?’

Sal studied his eyes. ‘Hokay,’ she said as she slid from her chair. At the door she turned back. ‘I like omelettes with capsicum in.’

‘That one didn’t have capsicum in it.’

‘No.’

She took off down the steps, hopped on her bike and hared off down the track to home, leaving a line of red dust in her wake.

‘Hokay,’ he said and to fill up the still space she’d left he wandered outside with a beer to talk at the chooks.

Sea mist ghosted through the yellowed evening, painting the blue gums and wetting his face. A sea eagle coasted just above him, eyeing where the water’s surface ripped up, white and hairy, probably a feeding school of bream. He cast to that spot and sensed the wobble of fish sucking his bait. He felt expectant and a little bit drunk, his feet wide apart, the tips of his fingers resting on the drag. He’d been fishing with Lucy on a few occasions – once, before he’d got bad, they’d taken a long weekend and camped next to a river, a little inland, and there were a few windless days when the place seemed to be there entirely for their benefit. They’d caught fish from the river when they were hungry. A jabiru stalked them as they sat by the bank, taking off and flying close enough for them to feel the wind move on their faces. There were no other people at the spot and it was easy to imagine, when the sun started to go down and deer and echidna and paddymelon melted out of the bush, that they shared some secret with the land, that they and they alone lived in a way that set the precedent for all future campers. The two most perfect people on the planet. They made love in the open on a quilt that he wrapped round her afterwards, keeping the fading rays of the sun from touching her shoulders. He stayed awake, feeling the trees and dirt and water and breathing in the gloaming air. Even the mosquitoes gave them room, barely wingeing, just a whisper by his ear that made him put his hand over hers in case the noise woke her.

When the sun was fully down he carried her to the tent and laid her on the mattress, where she opened her eyes. She’d smiled, and locked her arms round his neck and grabbed at the hair there. ‘Beautiful boy,’ she’d said and he’d kissed the sand from her belly.

By the time he saw what was going to happen it was too late. A regular tugging at his line that he had taken for the ambling of his bait over rocks became the urgent yank of a caught fish. The fish had swum up to the surface and the eagle was swooping for it, as he stood there, gormless, his mouth working around words his brain hadn’t instructed him to say yet. Just too late, he let out as much line as he could, hoping the fish would take it and swim back down, but the eagle was keen and it easily grabbed hold of the fish in both claws, not missing a beat with its huge black-tipped wings. The drag screamed and he watched in