20
By the time he gets down to the pier at Williamstown it’s getting late and it doesn’t seem so much like spring anymore. He hurries to the fenced-in part of the foreshore and beyond it he can see the pier. He’ll have to go over the top. He makes his way past the colossal petrol tanks with ladders up the sides and AMPOL and MOBIL printed in car-sized letters all over them. He climbs the cyclone fence and at the top drops his bag onto the sandy dirt on the other side. It skids.
The pier stretches out in front of him, a wooden road over still water. The place smells of seaweed and petrol. Love that smell, he thinks, smiling. The sea shimmers like beaten tin and far away the city rises out of the haze. The sky is verging on white and a string of seabirds pulls across it. He takes a deep breath. This is the only place he can hear himself. Everything ebbs away.
He’s brought both his jumpers, Rob’s old blue and white stripe and the green one he’s wearing. He’s got a singlet on plus his school shorts. So he reckons he’s right. In the washhouse he found a bit of blanket, it’s pinkness fading to memory, and stuffed it in the bag.
He gets out the blanket and spreads it on the wooden boards. It smells musty like the washhouse and that reminds him of his mum and a wave of tears pushes into him but he says ‘no’, and roughly drags his sleeve across his eyes.
When Peter starts to fish the world around him retreats. In the distance, fishing boats push through all that water and behind them tankers the size of buildings move towards Port Melbourne. He fishes with a determination he didn’t know he had. Nothing else matters. Snags and knots and bait-loss are part of everything. He keeps at it, untangling, refixing bait. Even a cat’s cradle of knots has a rhythm to it.
He fishes to catch something but really he fishes for the sake of being there. To be connected with the sea and the sky and he already knows that he’s most himself when he’s alone.
The bay is a pond tonight. He plops his tackle within a circle of where he stands time and again with the certainty of clockwork. The seagulls perch companionably beside him and when they see there’s no food they leave, flapping into the evening like white rags. The sun falls away and night is revealed in the pearly sky. There’s even a bit of moon.
He’s forgotten his torch. He hasn’t meant to stay the night but he doesn’t have a watch to know what the time is. Knows it’s getting late though and by the time he sees the lighted tube of the last bus hurtling around the corner, it’s way too late to even move – he’s missed the thing.
Doesn’t matter. He feels safe and comfortable down here on his own. Free to talk to Daniel right out loud. Tells him about the fishing, about the others, about how Rob’s a pain. ‘Picks on me all the time. Dunno what I’ve done. Lou keeps him off me but she gets sick of it. She’s not there anyway all the time these day, she reads books a lot and she’s mad ’cos she has to look after Jess.’ The relief of being with Daniel has him smiling. He can even see his brother sitting beside him on the pier cross-legged, with his crew-cut and his big eyes.
Peter keeps fishing until he has trouble keeping his eyes open; all the time chatting away to Dan telling him about Emmett and his moods and the fighting. About the last big one where Emmett nearly got the trifecta but the kids had been making a noise out the back and he couldn’t hear the last race, so he didn’t know.
That was the worst thing for Emmett. ‘He was so mad he picked Rob up by his neck and then threw him down and smacked Louisa in the face. Her nose was bleeding all over the place.’
He speaks just loud enough for Daniel to hear. Then when it gets late and the pale moon looks down upon the boy, he succumbs to the weight of the day. He’s not scared. Emmett is the most terrifying thing he can think of and he’s not here. The fence keeps out stray idiots. He lies down under his bit of blanket, puts the bag under his head and sleeps. He keeps the rod in the drink all night though, his hand on it lightly.