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128
Wet Spell
’
The girl is by the creek again, staring into it with her arms folded.
Need a light?
I strike the flint wheel the way I see dad do it and I
can smell the fluid sweetening and the flame licking its lips.
’
You’ve got to see this
, my dad said early in themorning, my eyes brimming
with rheum. By the creek a group of people were gathered watching
a body get hauled out from the congealing mass of bloody water.
Isn’t that the sheila that just moved in
, one of the ambulance blokes
said disapprovingly.
On the stretcher I saw her eyes were reflective like the duck’s
when I pulled out its feathers and her dress was tangled in nettles.
The gauze on her forehead unfurled shyly like a bird’s wing from
the pain that was starting to precipitate, and I figured she knew just
as well what it was like to bleed. The smoke from the collision
behind her looked like a halo.
’
Dad got me the boat. Baby blue, but it was lacklustre and had dents
in places. I guess it’s just something borrowed, something blue that
could suffice as more or less the same as any other. Still I couldn’t
help but feel it is just a hollow husk. I rowed along the creek where
nothing ever floats and I couldn’t tell whether it was night or day,
the winter masked it and there were no mother ducks parading the
young to their resting place. The light might swallow the shadows,
or the shadows could swallow the rest of the light.
It just depends who has the larger mouth.
‘
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