CHAPTER SIX

At school I made friends with Johnno, Carl and Sally. Along with Billy, that made a total of five friends. This was more friends than I’d had for some time. Only me and Billy lived in St Kilda, but sometimes the others would turn up on their bikes at weekends. We hooned around in the adventure playground, played kick to kick on a bit of grass near the gas pipeline, wandered out along the causeway, explored along the edges of the mangroves. It turned out that Johnno and Sally were twins. They don’t look much like each other, you’d never guess they were twins. Sally is skinny and has freckles and brown hair in a pony tail. She’s got bands on her teeth. She laughs a lot. Johnno is a big guy with black hair and three earrings in one ear. He’s more serious than Sally. They get on real well with each other. I’d never come across a brother and sister who did things together, but these two did. Maybe being the same age helps, I dunno.

One Sunday afternoon all six of us were sitting on the sea wall, dangling our legs, just chilling. It was a calm, hazy sort of day, a do-nothing day, just right for chilling. There were a lot of birds wading about near the shore, squabbling with each other every now and then. About once every five minutes they’d suddenly take off in a flock. They’d fly round in a circle and land exactly where they had started from with a series of little splashes, like somebody had thrown a handful of gravel. We were all happy to leave the action to the birds. No one said very much, it wasn’t a talking sort of day. But then Carl stood up, to get a better view of something.

“What’s that?” he said, pointing.

We all looked. About two hundred metres from where we sat something was floating in the water. Some large sea birds were pulling it apart. They were screeching and clawing and pecking. Whatever it was, it was big enough for the birds to land on: a little floating island.

“I reckon it’s a fish,” Johnno said.

“Damn big fish,” Sally said.

“Dead dog, maybe,” I said.

“Oh, yuk,” Sally said.

“Things get old and die,” I said. “Including dogs.”

“It’s a dolphin,” Billy said. “A bottle nose dolphin. You can see its nose.”

“It’s not big enough for a dolphin,” Carl said. “Dolphins are huge.”

“It’s a small dolphin.”

“What do you mean? A small dolphin?” Carl said.

“It’s a young dolphin,” Billy said. “A baby dolphin.”

“So how come it’s dead?”

“How am I meant to know?”

“Maybe it ate too many plastic bags,” Sally said.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Dolphins don’t eat plastic bags.”

“There’s all sorts of rubbish floating about in the water,” Sally said. “Lots of it is plastic. Fish eat it. Birds eat it. Dolphins eat it. Fairy penguins eat it. That and toxic chemicals.”

“You sound like some sort of expert,” I said.

“Yeah. Did a project at school.”

We all sat quietly for a few minutes. The seabirds continued pecking at the dolphin, if that’s what it was.

“We ought to do an autopsy,” Johnno said.

“Get real.”

“Oh yuk.”

“No, I’m serious,” Johnno said. “Someone ought to wade out there and pull it in. Then we could cut it open and see if it has any plastic bags inside. See if what Sally says is true.”

“What about toxic chemicals,” I said. “You can’t just see them. You have to do tests.”

“Anyway, we don’t have a knife,” Billy said.

No one said any more about the dolphin, although we watched the birds for another five minutes. Then we wandered back towards the bait and tackle shop to get ice creams. Then we all strolled over to the boat ramp and watched some guys cranking a boat onto a trailer.

“Catch much?” Carl said to one of the guys. You can always start a conversation with people who have been out fishing by asking that question.

“Heaps,” said the guy. “Loads of whiting, a pile of tommies.” Then he laughed and said, “Under size, the lot of them. We had to thrown them all back.”

“Bummer,” Carl said.

“Nice out on the water, but,” said the guy and unscrewed the bungs at the back of the boat. Bilge water poured onto the ramp.

Billy spoke quietly into my ear, “I don’t reckon these guys know where the good fishing spots are. You’ve got to have inside knowledge.”

“And you know the good spots?” I said.

“Not yet,” Billy said. “But we’ll find them. Wait till we get the raft built, we’ll work out exactly where to fish.”

“We’ve got to get her built first,” I said. “We need more drums.”

“I’ve got Tony working on the drum question,” Billy said.

Sally must have overheard the last bit of conversation. “What drum question?” she said.

“Wal and I are starting a rock band,” Billy said. “We need a drum kit.”

“Ha, ha,” Sally said.

“Want to be our female vocalist?”

“Oh sure,” Sally said. “A singer with barbed-wire teeth.”

“You won’t have the bands on forever,” Billy said.

“Can’t sing,” Sally said. “Anyway, what sort of drums are you really on about?”

“Oil drums,” I said. “We’re building a raft.”

“That’s more like it,” Sally said. “My uncle might have a couple of old drums. He runs a feed store. He gets bulk molasses in drums. Hey, Johnno, do you reckon Uncle Eric would have some spare drums? These guys need them.”

“He might,” Johnno said.

The fishing guys climbed into their four wheel drive and drove away. A last couple of squirts of bilge water came splashing out of the bung holes as the trailer picked up speed.

“We should be getting back,” Carl said.

“Come and have some lemonade first,” Billy said.

We all set off slowly in the direction of Billy’s place, where Carl and the twins had left their bikes. They always left their bikes at Billy’s place, never at my place.