‘I’m not angry,’ he says. ‘If you need to see your mum, all well and good, but you leave this crook bullshit behind, you hear me. No more.’
My head throbs with confusion. My eyes swell. The rain on my cheeks and on my head and in my crying eyes.
‘But you’re the only real friend I got.’
‘Then you need to get some new ones,’ he says.
I drop my head. I put my fists in my eyes, press down hard like you press down on a cut to stop it bleeding.
‘What’s gonna happen to me, Slim?’ I ask.
‘You’ll live your life,’ he says. ‘You’ll do things I only ever dreamed about. You’ll see the world.’
I’m cold inside. So cold inside.
‘You’re cold, Slim,’ I say, between the tears.
I’m so angry inside. So angry inside.
‘I reckon you did kill that cabbie,’ I say. ‘You’re a cold-blooded killer. Cold like a snake. I reckon you beat Black Peter because you don’t have a heart like the rest of us.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he says.
‘You’re a fuckin’ murderer,’ I scream.
He closes his eyes at the sudden noise.
‘Settle down,’ he says, looking up and down the bridge, seeing no one in earshot. Everybody’s gone. Everybody’s gotta go some time. Everybody’s runnin’ from the rain. Nobody runnin’ to it. So cold inside.
‘You deserved everything you got,’ I spit.
‘That’s enough, Eli,’ he says.
‘You’re full of fuckin’ shit,’ I scream.
Slim shouts and I’ve never heard him shout.
‘That’s enough, damn it!’ he hollers. And the shouting makes him wheeze and he falls into a coughing fit. He brings his left arm to his mouth and coughs into his elbow, retching and rattling lung coughs like there’s nothing inside him but old bone and the earth dust from Black Peter. He breathes deep, wheezing and spluttering, gargles and hacks up a phlegm spit that lands two metres to his right beside a couple of discarded pilchards. He calms himself.
‘I done enough,’ Slim says. ‘And I did it to too many people. I never said I didn’t deserve the time I got, Eli. I just said I didn’t do that killin’. But I done enough and God knew I done enough and He wanted me to think on some other things I’d done and I did that, kid. I did my time thinkin’ on those things and I thought them inside and out. And I don’t need you thinkin’ on them for me. You should be thinkin’ ’bout girls, Eli. You should be thinkin’ ’bout how you’re gonna climb the mountain. How you’re gonna climb outta that shithole you’re livin’ in there in Bracken Ridge. Stop tellin’ everybody else’s story and start tellin’ your own for once.’
He shakes his head. Stares out to the brown-green sea.
The tip of his rod bends sharply. Once. Twice. Three times.
Slim studies the rod silently. Then he reefs on the rod with a whipping pull and it bows like the rainbow I saw over Lancelot Street.
‘Gotcha,’ he says.
The rain batters down and the sudden action makes Slim cough uncontrollably again. He hands me his fishing rod as he attends to a coughing fit. ‘Flathead,’ he says, between choking coughs. ‘Monster. ’Bout ten pounds.’ Three more coughs. ‘Pull her in, will ya?’
‘What?’ I say. ‘I can’t . . .’
‘Just bloody wind it in,’ he barks, standing now with his hands on his kneecaps, coughing up some vile witch’s brew of tar and phlegm. And blood. There’s blood in his spit and it hits the bridge’s aggregate bitumen and the rain washes it away but it keeps coming. No colour as strong as the colour of Slim Halliday’s red blood. I reel the line in frantically, darting my head back and forth between the sea and the blood at Slim’s feet. The sea and the blood. The sea and the blood.
The flathead pulls away with the line, swimming for life. I pull harder on the Alvey, winding in long, slow rotations like I used to turn the handle on the rusty Hills Hoist in the backyard of the Darra house.
‘I think it’s a monster, Slim!’ I scream, as suddenly awed as I am elated.
‘Just stay calm,’ he says between coughs. ‘Give him some line when you think he’s gonna snap away.’
Only when Slim’s standing do I notice how thin he’s become. I mean he’s always been thin. He’s always been Slim. Arthur Halliday needs a new nickname, but Emaciated Halliday just doesn’t have the same romance.
‘What are you lookin’ at?’ Slim wheezes, hunched over. ‘Pull that monster