Salt Water Flat

Sea's gone up full-sky mirror. Doldrums stretching all the way to the horizon. Two months fighting storm-driven, thrash-up swell and this morning, not a breath of puff in the sail. Abe’s still asleep in his bunk down below, cabin’s shuddering with the deep basso rumbling of his snores, old rattlebag. It’s not like him to sleep late but he needs as much rest as he can get if those hands are going to heal. I smothered the last of the Vaseline on them before I hit the rack but them rope burns take ages to come good.

I bloody knew it the moment I come to, could still feel it at my neck like those guys that have a leg amputated and say they still got sensation in the missing limb. Didn’t stop me stripping the sheets off my bunk and shaking them out like laundry day. Been frantic since first light, dashing about like a blue-arsed fly feeling sick and dizzy with the blood humming in my ears. I scoured the cabin, every inch of the wheelhouse, the deck, all the nooks and crannies. It’s gone all right, must of got pulled-off in the storm. At the bottom of the bloody Atlantic now. Fat lot of good it’ll do down there, shining in the dark with the lampreys and the giant squid along with any hopes we got for a future back on the dry. I been sitting here, dead still as the bloody sea, running through all me lies and excuses but it’s no good. I’m going to have to tell him when he wakes up. Maybe better he sleeps forever now. Christ, I wish he’d wake up. Wasn’t that long ago we had that fight about it.

'No, but I’m the closest thing you got kiddo. '

I clutch the locket at my throat, cool silver like a heart-shaped pebble in my fist.

'Maybe but that still don’t make you my Pa. This is all I got left of her, this little thing is all there is. '

'Well, at least let’s open it and stash the antidote somewhere safe. I mean what would happen if you went overboard. It’s not just about you is it?'

'No, no way. She said I had to keep it locked until we met survivors. I don’t even know what’s in it. Might be a gas, maybe it escapes if you open it or some glass breaks or something.'

She waved, weakly from behind a mass of tubes, catheters, respirator. There it is again. Something in me knew I’d always be seeing that wave. Ma, in her element in a way, on the ward, just in the bed not beside it this time.

'I ain't going to give up my ma's dying wish to make you feel better Abe, not for nothing.'

'Okay, okay, just let it go then. But its for your own good, for both of us really and let’s face it, we’re all each other’s got.'

'You don’t know that. ..'

'Don’t know what exactly?'

'You don’t know we’re all that’s left. There’d be no point in anything if you’re right. We should just throw it in the sea and get it over and done with. '

His big old shoulders slump and he’s beaten, resigned. No way I’m backing-down, not on this, no chance.

'…No, you’re right Evie Morgan. I don’t know that. I don’t know anything anymore. You keep it on but just be careful ok?'

It started with us, our little town up Northern Territories, Salt Water Flat, famous for bugger-all but some old dinosaur fish skellingtons they dug up from the Plasticine Era or something. Funny but all this old red desert was underwater in the old times. Not fair really, not like we had a billy to piss in in the first place then some disease comes knocking us all down like pins up Ace Bowling in town. Called it the Aboriginal Flu didn’t they, course they did, something else to blame us for, as if they needed another reason to shove us out. Ma was Infectious Diseases doc in the hospital. She was the first indigenous doc in that place. I was right proud of her even if she did disappear to Melbourne to get her Masters. When she come back, the Mayor trotted her out like she was a unicorn or something, suddenly she was cutting ribbons all the time. They’d get her to ‘open an envelope’ she said.

I never knew my old man, he buggered-off before I came on the scene. Ma told me what he done then never mentioned him again.

She was used to all kinds of nasty bugs out the bush but this one had her stumped all right. People coming-in and going straight back out feet first in 48 hours. Not a nice way to go either, internal organs turn liquid and you drown in your own self. Then it starts to spread, white fellas started keeling over in town and suddenly its national news. Said it’s ‘cause we all eat bush meat but if my mob are anything to go by, it’s more like Skippy and Mighty White. A couple of weeks and its popping-up in South East Asia, then India and pretty soon the whole bloody world’s drowning in it, although the WHO tried to call it something else, some Greek name or something but it was too late, Aboriginal Flu stuck fast.

Ma got pretty desperate, working all night, isolating strains, trying to patch-up some kind of antidote. She said she had to get it right ‘cos otherwise it was an ‘extinction level event.’ Clock was ticking so she tried them all out on herself and anything promising on me, see if anything stuck. Something must have done ‘cause she gave it me in that locket, told me to keep it close, open it if I made it onto dry land again and I could inoculate any healthy survivors.

She lasted-out a couple of months but I guess she was going to get it in the end, being around all them sick folks. Weird thing is I just went home and pretended like nothing happened. I scraped-out jars of mayonnaise and mustard in the fridge, went to bed, there was no signal on the telly so I watched DVDs and stuff. Eventually pretty much everything run-out and I figured I was going to have to pull my head out of the sand.

When I left, it was like a ghost town. I took Mum’s Patagonia hiking pack, a sleeping bag, a paring knife, some Cheerios and a tube of Pringles. I just walked on up the highway, figured I couldn’t get lost if I stuck to the road, only left it to skirt round a couple of big Goanas baking themselves on the hot tarmac. I dunno what the plan was really, pretty sketchy, walk to the coast and try and get a boat somewhere the bug hadn’t reached maybe. Heat was real bad though and I wished I’d brought Ma’s gardening hat.

I got mad, really mad at everything, mad at Ma for leaving me alone, even if I never knew him I was mad at my Pa for being such a typical white fella, knock-up a native girl then run for the hills. I was kicking rocks and throwing fistfuls of dust up in the air like I was a Pitjantjatjara kungara, not doing good medicine maybe but doing dark magic with me bone-pointer. Thing is, it was all that ruckus that Abe spotted. He’ s coming out from the West in his Nissan truck, possibles strapped-down under a tarp. He hadn’t come along that road at just that fiery second, I’d have got myself burned-up right there.

I was pretty scred of Abe. This big, beardy Bushie from the interior, beat-up leather Barmah and grotty Blundies, covered in ink and he sort of smelled, not dirty-like, just…strong. I never asked but I reckon some of that ink was prison tats. He’d stocked-up on canned goods and just taken-off, said he’d kept steamin’ and didn’t stop for nobody and that’s how come he was still pushin’ up daisies. He didn’t know why he stopped for me, something about the way a little Aboriginal girl was dancing in the red dust and throwing it around like smoke signals or something.

Pretty crazy right, I’m from one of the driest places on the planet, all at sea now looking for dry land.

I hear him groaning and farting in his rack. He’s coming-to and I steal myself to ‘fess-up. I go down those stairs into the cabin like Ned Kelly going to the gallows.

'Hey Abe, listen, I got some pretty bad news mate. '

'Yeah, I hate to tell you Evie but it doesn’t get any worse than the shit we’re already-in. '

Then it just spills out like air hissing out a hot air balloon.

'I…I lost the locket. I woke-up,I put my hand to it and it was …gone. Must have come off when we were battening down in the storm last night.'

Abe goes quiet and reaches for a mug of last night’s cold coffee. He shuffles a bit then straightens-up.

'Well, I’ve got a bit of a confession to make myself Evie. I’m real sorry kid, you’re not going to like it. '

'What? What’d you mean Abe? You said it, we can’t get any more stuffed can we? '

'I opened the locket Evie. I opened your Ma’s locket.'

'You what? You did what?'

This hot raging wells up from my stomach and burns through my chest. I run straight at him and start hitting him as hard as I can on his stupid beard-face, his thick hairy bloody chest. He doesn’t fight me though. He bloody hugs me and I can’t move my arms and I’m trying to bite him and all the time he’s just saying over and over again.

'It’s you Evie, It’s you girl, It’s you…. '

Eventually I’m cried-out and dead-tired, go limp as a Roo pup in its Ma’s pouch and my face stinging from all the salt tears. He relaxes his great meaty forearms,

'You wait there Evie. I got something for you.'

He goes over to the box we never open, the one with the photographs and the keepsakes and stuff from them that ain’t here no more. He takes out a little slip of paper.

'I got scared Evie, that you’d lose it or something bad would happen to you so I wanted to keep the antidote safe but there was nothing in the locket but this. It’s for you. '

He puts the note in my palm and goes up on deck. It’s Mum’s writing in biro.

'I’m sending you away with my heart because that’s just what you are Evie Morgan. I gave you the job of looking after my locket because I figured you might lose hope and I didn’t want you to give up when it gets hard and it did get hard didn’t it Evie-girl? Looks like that last shot I gave you means you got antibodies for the disease. If you find survivors, they can extract those antibodies from your blood and build an antidote. I love you Evie-girl, you always were the best of me, you take all that good stuff in you and you give it back to the world now.'

He’s not me Pa, Abe but he’s got qualities, like a Brumbie racehorse or something, you don’t know he’s good ‘til you see him on the track. Tonight we have a whole tin of ravioli each and we make up a big pot of powdered mash with lots of margarine and pepper. For afters we crack a catering tin of peaches and just sit there in the bottom of the boat with stretched bellies and peach syrup streaming down our chins, grinning like dumb townies that just won the Lotto.