Free Juneau: Wisdom Tree 4 by Nick Earls Page A

on the way out. He coughs. He pulls his hand from his jacket and checks his watch. ‘Midday. You should meet the others.’
    â€˜Yeah.’ I turn around to check the car park, but there’s no minibus yet. ‘Three thirty, remember? Boarding?’
    He smiles. ‘I remember. And Hope has a date with a piñata at three. So…’
    I thank Hope for everything she’s done and they make their way to the door of the Twisted Fish, which is opened for them by a young woman. The toe of my father’s boot clips the step on the way in, but he corrects himself and keeps walking.
    At the bus stop there’s one bench seat under cover, and I take it before the rain comes.
    At a row of nearby ticket booths selling tours, a vendor shouts to a pair of Japanese tourists, ‘If you take the city bus you will miss your cruise ship.’ They happily give him a thumbs up and say, ‘Cruise ship, yes.’
    Somewhere not far away, a minibus is on its way back from the huskies, a few minutes late already. Inside the Twisted Fish, my father and Hope are at a window table, possibly the best in the place for the view of the ships and the cold waters of the Gastineau Channel overwhich Thomas Chandler came all those years ago. My father is shown a bottle of wine by a staff member. He scrutinises the label and nods. I have heard him, dozens of times, criticising the drinking of alcohol with lunch. ‘It wrecks your entire afternoon,’ he’s said.
    The wine is poured for him to taste. He sniffs it, tries some and nods again. The waitress says something that makes both Hope and my father laugh, like two people who have just found a good time, quite unexpectedly, and are set on making the most of it.
    I move to the end of the seat and turn around, to look towards the road for the bus, to leave my father and Hope to their lunch.
    There is green cemetery grass sticking out of my boot tread. At the far end of the wharf, the cruisers are waving their arms at the rain and starting to run. On Mount Roberts, the clouddrops lower and lower and still the cable cars go up, vanishing into it, as if I’m dreaming them and the dream is turning them into mist.

1
    GOTHAM
    2
    VENICE
    3
    VANCOUVER
    4
    JUNEAU
    5
    NOHO

Nick Earls is the author of more than twenty books for adults, teenagers and children, including novels such as Zigzag Street , Bachelor Kisses and Analogue Men . His work has won awards in the UK and Australia, among them a Betty Trask Award for Zigzag Street and a Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for 48 Shades of Brown . His books have appeared on bestseller lists in both those countries and in the Amazon Kindle Store. Two of his novels, Perfect Skin and 48 Shades of Brown , have been adapted into feature films and five have been adapted into stage plays.