Pearl and Finn
“I have a present for you,”
he grinned. The teeth behind his upper canines were missing. She liked his
gappy smile. It made quite the ruffian of him.
He dropped some ice cubes into two
tumblers and they went outside to the muscular old karri tree. They sat at the
wooden picnic table. She watched the light dapple across the grass as he poured
the drinks.
She was a queer creature, he thought
as he glanced at her. A strange combination of genetics; tall and strong with
dark skin. If he didn’t know her parents were Scottish immigrants, he could
think she was ... something else. But then there were the freckles across her
nose and that voluminous hair. And those eyes. He willed her to look at him.
She turned up her gaze from the ground and he spilled Drambuie all over the
table. It seeped between the boards and onto his crotch.
She laughed, not unkindly. “Where
have you been?”
“What? Oh. I’ve been up the coast.”
“For the whole week?”
“The wedgies look after my fruit
while I’m away.”
Finn had devised a protection racket
with guinea pigs to save his fruit from the birds. He fenced the guinea pigs
into the orchard and let them breed to their heart’s content. The parrots
stayed away because the Wedgetail eagles and hawks circled the orchard, eyeing
off the furry fodder.
“Do they ever get a feed?”
“Occasionally. I give the guinea pigs
drain pipes and stuff to hide in. That’s just good sportsmanship, don’t you think?”
“A fair chance for all,” she agreed.
“So where did you go?”
“Well, I have a story for you now,”
he handed her a glass. “Cheers.”
“Cheers. Tell me a story.”
“I went up the coast, like I said, to
this inlet I found years ago. It’s about eighty kilometres away. Remember the
sealer’s camp I told you about? It’s on the far side. You have to swim or row a
boat over there, there’s no track and it’s on the opposite side to the camping
ground where all the bloody signs and rangers are. So I took the tinny down
this time. Last time, I swam over and found the foundations of the old stone
hut and some terraces. There was some really old wood there too, like ships
timbers, just lying about. It’s a strange spot.” He stopped and stared at her
black eyes. “I was there, the first time and I got all kinda sad, like I didn’t
want to leave, you know?”
“You belong there?”
He wished he could articulate what he
meant but sometimes her direct gaze threw him and while she was waiting for
words, he’d lost them to the foggy reaches of his mind. “So I went back, this
time for a bit longer than a day. I took the tinny over with some beef jerky
and two minute noodles and I did the wild man thing.” He laughed. “Get this. I
took the metal detector too because I wanted to have a hunt around for stuff. I
mean, whoever lived there once would have left ... I dunno, tobacco tins or an
axe or knives or something. But you know what? When I got over there and
unloaded my gear, I got the metal detector out and it was bloody useless!”
“Flat battery?”
“No!” Finn shook his head. “Remember
the Trappe brothers went down in that plane, about six months ago?”
“Yeah. It was full of government men
or coppers or something, wasn’t it? Crashed up the coast from here.” She nodded as she
started to realise what he was saying. "The Trappe boys ... they were good men, in their own way."
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