‘Step right back now, girl,’ said Pop, as the engine passed in a billow of hot, smoky air. Grace glanced up at her father. She thought his eyes were far too dainty a blue for his stern look, but she stepped back anyway.
When most of the train had passed and they could see where it ended a face popped out of the guard’s van. It was a youthful face with a shock of straw-yellow hair blowing up in the train’s wake and a huge smile formed from wildly angled teeth. As he came closer Pop saw that the young man had his foot on a wooden box and was getting ready to shove it out the door of the van.
‘They’re late,’ said Pop. ‘They’re not stopping.’
He pulled Grace back and watched as the young guard disappeared back into the van. Then the box came flying out and fell with a thud against the sandy gravel of the platform. The guard looked back at them from his door, dust swirling up between him and them. His shoulders were shaking and he was hooting with obvious glee. Pop stared after him, unmoving, the box at his feet, until the guard and his wild smile had faded from view.
‘Silly bugger,’ he said, finally.
He turned to his daughter. She was standing stock-still, staring at the box, the way he’d seen her do during certain games when she’d been younger, or the way she did when she saw a snake.
‘Come on. It’s all right. Give me a hand.’
Grace looked up at him. The sun had buried his face in black shade so she couldn’t read his expression, but she trusted his voice and, breaking her stillness, bent and lifted the box with him and carried it to the car, surprised to find it not as heavy as she thought it might be.
Henry Gunn was waiting for them down by the boat ramp, a terrible uncertainty in his eyes, as if he doubted the veracity of the air he breathed and the earth he walked upon.
‘The outboard’s broken down,’ he croaked. ‘I’ll row.’
Pop nodded. He had Grace help him unload the box of gelignite and then he sent her home with a quiet word. After she’d gone they headed upstream from the ramp until they reached Henry’s house and then another mile or so along from it they stopped to set the first charge, in close to the bank where the river curled around on itself. It was just one of a dozen places along the river where two children might have fallen in, drowned, then been caught on an underwater snag.
Pop tossed the charge towards a spot where the great bole of a redgum leant out over the water. Henry watched him, slouched over the oars like a hunchback, like a beaten man, his neck and shoulders corded with hard muscle. Pop detonated the charge and there was a thud and muddied water lifted up in a thick geyser and then crashed back to the surface like a fountain being turned off, the shock wave setting the boat rocking. A mass of leaves and black, waterlogged branches broke the surface and rolled back under like living things and all about them was the stirred-up detritus of the riverbed – hag’s fingers of twigs gloved with lace of green weed.
They continued up the river in the same manner until dusk, Henry dipping and feathering the oars and manoeuvring the boat, Pop throwing out the charges like bait. Both of them waited in the aftermath of each blast, hoping for a result, yet not hoping for the body of a drowned boy, swollen and pale, with dead, staring eyes, to be loosed from the depths. Yet sometimes the pale underbelly of a stunned and rolling catfish, twelve inches below the surface, could have been a boy’s arm or leg, and when they saw one their hearts jumped up into their throats until they could see for certain what it was, and each time it was not a boy Pop looked over at Henry and wondered how he could endure such cheap torture. Then, when the light was scarcely enough to see by, Pop called it a day.
‘Tomorrow we can do down below the ramp,’ he said. ‘Steele’s Reach.’
Henry nodded and began to row.
Two days later Pop Mather went into the kitchen of the station house and made himself a pot of tea with much more care than he usually took – warming the pot, warming the cup, putting the milk in first – and then he sat out on the station house’s back verandah in a steamer chair and watched the sun set. One of the tracker dogs had followed a trail that afternoon, way out to the west, but then had lost it. Pop couldn’t believe – if it actually was the boys – how far they had travelled. He went through his plan of action for the next morning and then he closed his eyes for a moment. He dozed for a few minutes but when he woke it seemed hours had passed. It was dark, and his back was as stiff as the southerly that had loped in, all bluster and show, when he hadn’t been looking. He reckoned the clouds that had come with it, swirling over the town, would barely shed enough rain to damp down the dust.
After a while – he thought it might have been five minutes or so but was unsure until he looked at his watch and saw that fifteen had ticked away – he stood up and stretched his back. He heard a plaintive sound from inside the house and looked round the doorjamb to see what it was. Grace was standing under the hall light in her new dress and Lil, pins in mouth, was on the floor adjusting the hem. Pop could tell by the look on his daughter’s face that she wasn’t enjoying herself at all.
He’d forgotten all about the dance. It had been postponed from Saturday, and while some had voiced their opposition, he thought it was probably about time it went ahead. God knew they could all do with something to cheer them up. Christmas was just over a week away now and he doubted whether anyone was quite ready for that. He took a last look at the evening sky before going inside. He gave his grimacing daughter a wink and then he went on into his room to change his clothes.
Grace didn’t really expect Darcy to be there when she walked into the hall with her mother and father, so when she saw her sitting on a chair up the back she almost stopped dead in her tracks. Fortunately her parents had already peeled off from her side to talk to people so they didn’t notice. Darcy looked up, caught her eye, then looked away again. Grace hesitated and then went to the side of the hall and sat down. Slowly, more people arrived, but the mood and the volume of the evening remained subdued and very seldom did anyone raise their voice or even laugh out loud. She avoided dancing when the music began and every so often she would glance over at Darcy to see what she was doing. Sometimes her brother Sonny was sitting beside her and sometimes she saw Charlie Perry, who worked on the Steeles’ farm, whispering in her ear. She liked Charlie and was a little jealous of Darcy sitting next to him, a little hurt by the fact that he was the only boy who hadn’t come and asked her for a dance. She was thinking about slipping out the side door and home when her father sat down beside her.
‘You and Darcy have a falling out?’ he asked.
She shook her head. Pop didn’t repeat the question, just leant back and crossed his arms and sat like that beside her for a good five minutes.
‘Why don’t you just go and say hello,’ he said, finally. ‘Wouldn’t do any harm, would it?’
Grace shook her head again. Pop sighed and wandered away. She watched him go, feeling as though she’d let him down somehow, but also a little annoyed at him.
She waited until neither Sonny nor Charlie were around and then she stood and began to walk. When she was a few yards away from Darcy she stopped. Darcy was barefoot – her shoes discarded under the chair beside her – and she wore the pale cream dress borrowed weeks ago from Grace’s own wardrobe. It was too small for her across the bust and she looked uncomfortable and self-conscious in it. Pinned to the bodice was a wilting carnation and around her neck hung the cowrie shell Grace had found on the beach last summer and brought back for her. They both looked up at the same time and their eyes met. Grace saw the unhappiness in her friend’s eye and was instantly ashamed of herself. She had just taken her first step forward when all the lights in
