Free Floundering by Romy Ash Page A

dining room, calling out the questions to Pa – waiting for his answer. I run my hands over the names. Further out I look down into the water. Feel the wood, smooth under my fingertips from all the leaning. It smells of fish guts. The water swirls little fish and weeds around the pylons. Way out, off the side of the jetty, there’s a big wire cage, for swimming maybe, or sharks.
    The sound of an unfurling rope makes me jump. There’s a man further up the jetty surrounded by small cages. Each cage at the end of a rope. He looks like a dad, like he could pick you up and swing you above his head. He’s leaning over the side of the jetty lowering one of the cages into the shallows. He looks up, sees me there.
    Crabs, they just walk on in there. Don’t even have to do nothing. He laughs. Shakes his head. It’s bloody paradise.
    Yeah. It comes out of my mouth as a squeak. I brush the hair from my face and look at my feet. See the water rushing under me through the gaps in the planks. I turn quickly, walk back to the caravan. My feet burn on the hot, soft sand.

    Bert is gone. I slow run, trying to stop myself from sprinting to the door of the caravan. Loretta, Loretta, Jordy, Jordy, I say.I open the door, look in and it’s empty with just the flies buzzing around. The candle is a melted stump with a black, twisted wick and there is candle wax all over the tabletop.
    What? says Jordy from outside.
    Nothing, I say. I jump. I try to remove the panic from my words. Where’s Loretta? I say.
    Loretta said to be careful out in the dunes, that when she was a kid a girl suffocated digging holes in the side of ‘em. She said she’d be back in a bit, she’s gone to get the water.
    Uhuh, I say and step outside too, look up at the sky that’s big.
    This is like them shantytowns they have for abos, he says.
    How would you know? I say.
    From before you was born.
    As if, I say. He thinks he’s seen everything before I was born.
    I’m gunna go check it out.
    Can I come? I say, trying hard to keep the whine out of my voice.
    He looks me over.
    Okay, he says. But you’re only allowed to talk when I say so.
    Jordy walks to the centre of the road. He walks down beside the old man’s caravan and I follow him. Behind the caravan there’s lines of painted white rocks marking the edges of the yard. There’s junk everywhere, but it’s neat. Piles of things collected from the beach: planks of wood, rusted metal, driftwood that’s twisted muscle. Old glass buoys hang from the back awning, dusty but like whole swirling worlds.
    We step over the white rock border and into the yard, past the piles of wood. Under the awning is a little table and a chair with the memory of a bum still in it. A freezer hugs close to the caravan in the shade. Jordy lifts the lid on the freezer and looksin. I lean under his arm. Cool air makes my face tingle. Inside is a huge fish chopped into pieces. I see the frosty pink of the severed flesh. Its eye looks straight up at me – big as a fifty-cent piece.
    They call a fish that big a metrey, the old man says.
    Jordy drops the freezer lid onto the back of my head. I get a lungful of frozen air. Pull out of there. The old man is standing right there, close to us, as if we’d been discussing something important. I can see all the wrinkles on his face and that he’s angry. Jordy turns and hisses, Run.
    I run. I don’t think where we’re going, just follow the shape of Jordy’s back. I keep him in sight and when he tires I run beside him. We both stumble and laugh. Jordy stops, puffed. I look around. We’re at a cleared bit in the scrub. It’s tucked into the side of a dune, and the sand is littered with pieces of hose and dirty water bottles and there’s a pair of rusty scissors hanging on a stick. There’s ants all around our feet. Jordy is laughing.
    I’ve got desert mouth. I need a cordial, I say. At Gran’s there was always cordial in a blue plastic jug in the fridge. I never knew what colour it was