Free Juneau: Wisdom Tree 4 by Nick Earls

in the muted light. The sun has gone again. There is rain in the west. Cable cars swing as they leave the Mount Roberts Tramway building heading for the sky, most of them empty.
    We turn immediately after the entrance to the minibus area, into a smaller restaurant car park. It has the usual Juneau array of utes and four-wheel drives, all wearing sprays of grime and bug remains. One spot is occupied by rusty lobster traps piled on top of each other. They are ugly enough to be the real deal, not for show. We are exactly level with the bow of our ship.
    There’s a rush of cool, briny air when I open the door. I lift the backpack out and prop it against the car. The queasiness of the drive hits me as the breeze catches the sweat on my scalp and face.
    â€˜It’s been good every time I’ve eaten here,’ Hope says to my father, taking a critical look through the windscreen at the Twisted Fish. ‘So, I hope it’s good today.’
    â€˜I’m sure it will be.’ He glances her way and smiles. ‘ Mi hablo mucho esperanza .’
    She laughs. ‘ Bueno .’
    My right leg sparks with pins and needles when I stand. I keep a hand on the roof to steady myself as the feeling returns. Hope and my father are out of the car, focussed on the restaurant, on lunch.
    The Twisted Fish is a mud-coloured building with a stone chimney. I can see diners inside, most of them in their forties. One of them, bald, with a neat ginger goatee, holds a glass of white wine to the window to scrutinise it in the natural light.
    â€˜Oh, Tim,’ my father says. ‘Lunch.’ He reaches for his bumbag. ‘The sushi. It’s on me.’
    â€˜You really…’ It’s much easier just to take the money. We’ve staged this pantomime before—offer, decline, insistence, rebuttal, no really, well okay then. ‘Thanks.’
    He folds several notes and hands them to me.
    â€˜Looks nice.’ I nod in the direction of the restaurant. I would crack a joke in Spanish if it was in me to do it. ‘Make sure to take the muesli bar into account with your insulin dose.’
    He gives me a glare that’s nowhere near as subtle as he means it to be, but he manages not to tell me to mind my own business.
    â€˜I’d better give you the…’ My hand starts miming an insulin injection before I can stop it.
    There’s a pencil case in the backpack with his testing kit and insulin pen. It’s below a jumper, his iPad and the snacks, but I get to it eventually and hand it over.
    â€˜Show me the picture,’ he says, noticing the iPad being overturned in the search. ‘The one from the ball.’
    He gives himself a full minute to look at it. The breeze gusts. The rain will be here any time.
    â€˜Thank you,’ he says as he hands it back to me. ‘For this morning, I mean, not just for showing me that.’ He smiles. His face looks old, worn. His skin has almost no elasticity left. ‘I didn’t know what we might find.’ He looks down at his feet, at the gravel and the shallow puddles. He sticks his hands in his pockets and lifts his head, his eyes on me, but on my chest more than my face. ‘My greatest fear was that Thomas had died alone, in some horrible way. Starving in the wilderness, killed by a bear. But I think he was happy. Not for very long, but happy. I think I can believe that.’
    Now he looks me in the eye. He wants it confirmed.
    â€˜I think so, too.’ I can say that honestly. ‘Maybe some people weren’t suited to Dorset farm life back them. Maybe a frontier was a better fit, away from the usual expectations.’
    â€˜I had him pegged as lonely, and in the end he wasn’t. For months at least. They came here, they found each other.’
    His voice cracks and he looks past me, in the direction of the Radiance , or the oncoming rain. He thrusts his hands deeper into his pockets.
    â€˜Yes,’ he says. It sticks