Cloudstreet

II. Fish Lamb Comes Back

JUST near the crest of a hill where the sun is ducking down, the old flatbed Chev gives up the fight and stalls quiet. Out on the tray the kids groan like an opera. All around, the bush has gone the colour of a cold roast. Birds scuffle out of sight. There’s no wind, though the Chev gives out a steamy fart.

You’ll have to back her up, Lest, the woman says to her husband. Go on, turn her around.

Carn, Dad! someone calls from behind the cab.

The man spits out the window, lets the brake off, and they roll back. He lets the clutch go, and with a jerk that sends the kids lurching all over the back, the motor grinds up again and the grey-blue bush is full of clatter.

This time the truck goes up the hill in reverse and the kids elbow each other and feel a right bunch of dags heading up like that, but they’re the first to see the rivermouth, the oilstill river and roiling sea; it looks so like a picture they’re suddenly quiet.

The engine idles, best it can.

Whacko, one of them says.

They shift around on the prawn nets and watch the sun hit the sea without a sound.

Lester and Oriel Lamb are Godfearing people. If you didn’t know them you could see it in the way they set up a light in the darkness. You’ve never seen people relish the lighting of a lamp like this, the way they crouch together and cradle the glass piece in their hands, wide eyes caught in the flare of a match, the gentle murmurs and the pumping, the sighs as the light grows and turns footprints on the river beach into longshadowed moon craters. Let your light so shine.

Around them their six children chiack in the sand.

Get some wood, you bigguns, Oriel Lamb says. Hattie you look after Lon.

The beach widens in the light of lamp and fire. The children see sparks rising like stars.

These are farm people, though Lester Lamb has taken to being a policeman because the farm is on its last legs. Lester Lamb polices like he farms, always a little behind the moment. He’d quit the force if only his wife’d let him. Around town he’s known as ‘Lest We Forget’ and if he knew, it’d break his Anzac heart.

He unravels the prawn net and shucks off his pants. His scrawny white legs bring a smile to him.

I’ll take the boys.

They’re not tall enough, Oriel Lamb says.

Ah, the girls grizzle too much. Drives me mad.

Put on yer shoes, or yull be stung. Don’t want any cobbler stings. Can’t stand your grizzlin.

He laughs and remembers the last time he was stung, when they had to load him onto the flatbed and Hattie had to drive because no one else could, and they delivered him to the doctor in the main street naked and screaming like a breech birth.

Orright, he says, lacing up the old brogues his father left him, no stings tonight. Give us a kiss then.

With the two older boys, Mason and Samson, Lester Lamb wades out. He holds the lamp over the water while the boys drag the net; it makes a long triangle out behind them, narrowing down to a little sock in the end. Mason is eleven. They call him Quick because he is as unquick as his father. Samson is two years younger and the others call him Samsonfish, or just plain Fish, for his wit and alertness. Everyone loves Fish. Just by dunking a girl’s braids in an inkwell he can make her love him. He endears teachers to him by giving them lip. And in town, he’ll wait till dark and crap in a paper bag and set fire to it on someone’s doorstep so they come out screaming and stamping and get poofooted, only to melt into jolliness when they see it’s just Fish Lamb and his fun. Even his three sisters Hattie and Elaine and Red love him, and they hate boys to Hell and back.

Quick knows that his brother Fish is smarter and better looking than him, and that people love him more, though Fish doesn’t catch fish as well as his name would suggest, because he’s always wisedicking around, talking too loud, being lovable.

Don’t smile, Fish, Lester Lamb says. You’ll frighten the prawns away.

Oi, Quick, look at Dad. He looks like a statue in a fountain with that light. Wants to be careful someone dunt come over an toss in a penny to make a wish.

What would they wish for, ya reckon? Quick asks.

Yeah, what? Lester Lamb asks.

Prolly wish they could get their money back, I reckon.

Cheeky blighter, Lester Lamb thinks as he wades with the light and lets the talk go away from him.

On the beach, Oriel Lamb sees them dragging round the bend and back towards the beach. The fire coughs and she goes back to darning. She doesn’t hate being poor the way Lester does. She’ll cut garments down and cadge and patch to give things a second life, she’ll keep the farm swaying on its back trotters, but not be unhappy. She’s prouder than the British Empire. She’ll send the kids into town on old Mabel with a shilling between them and know they’ll spend it on sherbert and icecream and watch the outdoor flicks for free from a vacant bush. They’ll see Randolph Scott back to front through the old white sheet, and they’ll see the projector flicker and send out its bolt of light, and they’ll watch the townie kids eating popcorn out of paper cups, but they won’t for a moment think they’re poor. They’ll know they’re Lambs; they’ll know how to treat others with a mixture of pity and respect. And, what’s more, they’ll always come back with change.

She looks up and sees Lester and the boys hauling the net up onto the beach. The water is flat behind them. She can almost see the trees etched out on the other bank, the paperbarks where the dunes begin. There is the sound of surf away across the sandbar. Little Lon is asleep at her feet. She wraps him in her cardigan and he seems no bigger than a kelpie curled up like that.

The boys empty the lummocky mess of stuff into the light, and they fall to their knees to separate jellyfish, gobbleguts, smelt, weed and muck from prawns. In the light, the prawns’ eyes are cheap jewels in transparent bodies that warp and flick against the sides of the steel bucket.

Fish skylarks up the beach. Quick whistles as Hat uncovers a fat cobbler, its glossy catfish body bending to show the sting behind its head.

I’ll take em out again, Lester Lamb says.

His wife shrugs and lets them go. Her blunt little hands are full of prawns.

Oriel Lamb wipes her hands on her apron, looks up and sees her husband out on the water, his head illuminated and seemingly free of his body. Her men look like they are walking on water. Somewhere a fish breaks the surface.

She leaps to her feet. Lord Jesus, something just falls through the bottom of her heart. She startles the others.

Lest?

Oh, the water has never been so quiet. Quick and Fish and their father move through it like it’s a cloud, an idea, just a rumour of water, and when Fish goes down there isn’t a sound. Quick feels the net go slack. Lester Lamb smells woodsmoke from the beach; he hears his heart paddling slowly along, but nothing else.

Fish will remember. All his life and all his next life he’ll remember this dark, cool plunge where sound and light and shape are gone, where something rushes him from afar, where, openmouthed, openfisted, he drinks in river, whales it in with complete surprise.

And Lester Lamb, turning in alarm at the shout from shore, came round too hard and swung the lamp into the water and left them in hissing darkness. Quick was yelling; he heard the boy beating the water.

Quick staggered and fell over the net and squealed at himself trying to get off, to get it off. A pole glanced off his chin. He felt the net butt under him. Fish! He was on him; he was trying to come up under the net.

Lester Lamb hoisted Quick out of the water and off the net. The sky was the colour of darkness, starless, mute. Everywhere, everything was net.

He’s under it, get if off get if off! Quick was yelling.

Lester Lamb could not see. He could only feel water and net and panic.

Oh, I remember. Mesh against the face, the cage of down and up and the faint idea of light as the cold comes quicker now out of the tunnel, that strange cold feeling that’s no longer a stranger. Fish feels death coming unstuck from him with a pain like his guts are being torn from him. Fish is having his gizzard, his soul torn away and he feels his fingers in the mesh, reaching up for anything, his … someone’s … and then he’s away.

Away.

The net went still in Lester Lamb’s hands. A sound escaped him.

Just pull! Quick yelled.

What?

Into the shallow. If he’s caught in the net, just pull him in!

When they got into the shallows they saw the shadow trailing and they dragged it up the bank to the woman’s feet and the smell of cooking prawns. Lester Lamb saw his son’s fingers in the mesh of the net, still holding.

He was dead and they knew it, but the woman beat the water out of him anyway. To little Lon, awake now with all the screaming, she looked like she was giving Fish a good hiding for his cheek.

Quick heard her shouting at the Lord Jesus.

Blessed blessed Saviour, bring him back. Show us all thy tender mercy and bring this boy back. Ah, Gawd Jesus Almighty, raise him up! Now, you raise him up!

And Fish lay there in the mostly dark, eyes and mouth open, lurching like butcher meat as his mother set her fists to him:

Lord Jesus

Whump!

Saviour Jesus …

Whump!

And she made sounds on him you only got from cold pastry.

The old man on his knees weeping: Yairs, Lord, yairs!

And the girls strangely quiet there on the sand with waterlap and prawnkick and the smell of mud and rottenness.

Fish’s pain stops, and suddenly it’s all just haste and the darkness melts into something warm. Hurrying toward a big friendly wound in the gloom … but then slowing, slowing. He comes to a stop. Worse, he’s slipping back and that gash in the grey recedes and darkness returns and pain and the most awful sickfeeling is in him like his flesh has turned to pus and his heart to shit.

Shame.

Horror.

Fish begins to scream.

The great gout of river hit Oriel Lamb in the face and Lon laughed. Got back on his wet little bum and laughed. Fish started to geyser away and Lon laughed again and they were all shouting enough to hide the awful, the sad, the hurt moan that Fish let out when the air got to his lungs. Never, never, was there a sadder, more disappointed noise.

They brought him into town like that. From the pub verandah men saw the Lambs barrelling down the hill like mad bastards, and they heard them singing and shouting like they were ready for rape and revenge, and the sight of them rioting on the open tray of that Chev suddenly put people in the street.

Lester Lamb swung into the darkened dirt yard of the Church of Christ and got ready to beat down the door. He had to get inside and turn on the lights, throw the windows open, find the minister, tell the people. Oriel Lamb, infant astride her hip, was singing and wildeyed. The horn was blowing and the headlamps tore the darkness.

Out on the tray, as the graveldust caught them up and blotted out the world, the girls laughed like they were famous.

Quick cradled Fish’s head in his lap. He felt the blood moving in his brother’s body. Fish’s eyes were open, unblinking.

We got him back! Quick heard his father bellow to the drinkers across the road. Back from the dead. Fish Lamb is back! Praise the Lord!

But Quick held his brother’s head in his hands and knew it wasn’t quite right. Because not all of Fish Lamb had come back.