They woke, sweaty and baked in sun. His father groaned and the boy could see his feet jab against the window and his knees straighten. His head popped over the seat and he looked down at his son with a grim expression.
‘You sleep all night with that puppy?’ he asked.
The boy rubbed sleep from his eyes. ‘Yes.’ He looked down at the sleeping mutt, so peaceful.
‘You know, you mollycoddle him and he won’t ever sleep on his own.’
‘What?’
‘He has to learn to go to sleep by himself,’ his father said. He reached down and scratched the dog behind the ears. The boy almost snatched the dog away before his father’s hand could touch it. ‘If you answer his cries at night, he’ll learn that’s how he gets attention. And for the rest of our lives he’ll be whining at night to get into bed next to you. It might be cute one night, but you’ll soon hate it, believe me. We did the same thing to you. You would cry at night. We had to leave you in your room so you learned to go to sleep by yourself. Your mother hated it, but it was good for you.’
The boy looked at the pup and imagined a baby’s face there and wondered what he would do if his own son cried. The rust-coloured fur of the puppy was dull and dusty and the tip of its nose was somehow always moist. He scratched behind Albert’s ears.
‘I like having him here,’ the boy said.
‘Yeah, well, he’s not going to be able to do what we need him to do if he’s crying for you every night, is he?’
‘What do we need him to do?’
His father opened the car door without answering and more sunlight streamed in, low over the horizon of swishing leaves. The boy, holding the dog, opened his door and let Albert down. The pup shook himself and scampered off. The boy gave chase and quickly caught him up in his arms and put him safely back in the box in the car. He lowered a window and shut the door, the puppy already whining.
They ate more of the bread, butter and Vegemite. His father spread the tar-like paste too thick but the boy pretended to enjoy it. He got up from his milk-crate seat and offered some to Albert through the window.
The father eventually stood and opened the rear car door and got in, sat with his legs swinging out the side. The puppy’s crying was silenced with a stern ‘no’.
‘What are we doing today?’ the boy asked from his seat on the milk crate.
‘Well,’ his father said, and his legs stopped, ‘we gotta shift the rest of the wood, I guess. And the mixer.’
They changed into clothes that still smelled like sweat. As he put his shirt on, the boy wondered how they might wash their dirty clothes in this, their new home. He stuffed his pyjamas back into his suitcase and then walked into the forest and urinated against a tree, the sound of the ocean duller in the light of day.
Moving the wood took until past midday. Albert cried, but the boy had no leash for him and no way to keep an eye on him were he to let the pup roam free, so he stayed confined within the box next to the pile of cement bags. When they were done the boy stood back to survey the pile of timber and found there was less of it than he’d expected. Nowhere near enough to build an entire house. He told his father so as the man approached and dangled a bottled orange juice over the boy’s shoulder. The boy opened it and drank the warm liquid.
‘We’re not building the house straight away, mate,’ his father said. ‘I don’t even have plans. We’re just going to build a temporary shelter for the two of us. Just for now. Then, after the whaling season, we’ll start the house. You remember Phil? He’s got plans. We’ll look at them to get an idea for what we’ll need to buy, including the wood. Does that make sense?’
The boy thought for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Where are we going to go to the toilet?’
‘You mean, where are we going to take a shit?’
The boy blanched but said nothing.
‘There’s no women around, mate,’ his father said, laughing. ‘We can talk like men out here.’
The boy nodded, but was secretly frightened by this idea.
‘I don’t know,’ his father continued. ‘In the bush. Just make sure you walk far away and bloody bury it when you’re done.’
‘But we’ll get a toilet eventually?’
‘Yeah. We’ll get plumbing.’
A pause. The boy said, ‘Why are we doing this?’
His father finished a sip. ‘Why?’ The boy nodded and his father sighed, then laughed, an angry snort. ‘I don’t know. Your mother always wanted to live out bush. I couldn’t stand being in that house anymore with all her things. And that hospital smell of it all. Just a fresh start. I don’t know.’
The boy swigged the last of the orange juice and his father did likewise, then clenched the bottle with his poor hand. ‘Come on. Let’s get the cement mixer and the barrow.’
They did so. Heading down the road, the small plastic wheels on the mixer almost cavorted off. Albert the puppy sat inside and looked as though he was enjoying the adventure, his tongue hanging out. The boy struggled with the last of the trek with the wheelbarrow. It sank in the dirt and he struggled to push it through. When he was done he fell on the ground, spreadeagled, soaking in the sky. His father with sweat-stained brow. ‘Harder work out at Tangalooma,’ he said. ‘We better get you ready. Get you working hard.’
The boy breathed. He slowly flapped his arms, letting them brush against the dirt. They had less than a month before they’d be on Moreton Island and he was deeply afraid. He didn’t want to count the exact number of days for fear their number would already be too small. So he tried, with some difficulty, to forget his troubles for that moment and instead regarded the sky with new eyes. The sound of the ocean not so far away. ‘Can we go to the beach?’
‘Now?’
‘To swim?’
He sat up and his father was looking at the watch on his wrist and scratching his beard.
‘I really wanted to start on the shelter,’ he said. He looked at the pile of timber. ‘It’s bloody uncomfortable in that car. Want to spend as few nights in there as possible.’
‘It won’t take long.’
Eventually, his father nodded and smiled. The two quickly changed into their swimming clothes. Ill-fitting shorts for the boy. Now he understood his father’s strange insistence that he pack them for the funeral. With the boy carrying Albert under one arm, they headed towards the sound of waves.
The beach was rough and strewn with sticks and ropy weed, like thousands of flat brown snakes, dead and frying on the sand. The sand itself was muddy and gelatinous and the boy could see small sticks jutting up beneath the water. The water, though, was bright and inviting. A perfect turquoise glinting in the sun. He let Albert loose and the puppy scampered off, but because the boy could see him he didn’t bother giving chase. Instead, with hands on hips, he squinted into the water and shielded his eyes to better see through the sun’s glare.
Beside him, his father was already removing his shirt and shoes. He soon dashed towards the water. Before he reached the blue he turned and gestured to the boy. In his eyes a freedom the boy had not expected. His father waded into the small waves and, without looking at the boy again, turned onto his back and swept his arms through the water, face tilted towards the sun. All thought of his situation and his son apparently absent.
The boy, still shielding his eyes, watched his father at ease. His father was not just his father. Seen from a different perspective, the boy knew he would see a simple man, a small man, a man who’d lost his wife recently, a man possibly doing his best. Long ago he’d lost his fingers. Was this pity? The boy wondered what it might feel like to have the salt water swish past the ancient nubs, whether there was any dormant memory of how they used to be.
The puppy, further up the beach, was creeping towards the water with his nose lowered. He stood motionless as the tide receded, then dashed away as it returned to lap at his paws. The boy laughed. The sound startled him.
Soon he entered the cool water. Up close it was murky and impenetrable. His feet squished into soft mud. The waves were gentler than their sound had implied.
‘Good bream country,’ his father said. ‘And maybe flathead. Maybe out a bit further.’ He motioned with his head in some direction. The boy grew afraid he might step on one of the ugly brown fish buried in the sand with its eyes glazed and its spiny ridge ready to transmit toxins. In pain for maybe days. He began to move his arms more vigorously to keep his feet from touching the bottom, trying not to let his father see he was scared.
‘Too bad you didn’t bring any fishing rods,’ the boy said, breathing heavily.
He hadn’t meant anything by this comment, but his father’s face darkened and the freedom the boy had witnessed in his eyes abruptly faded. He said, ‘Couldn’t bloody think of everything,’ and swam away. He called back, ‘Like your bloody mother.’
Bewildered, the boy watched him go and then looked at the murky bottom and replanted his feet and squished the mud between his toes.
Later they sat on the beach, hugging their knees to their chests, and watched the sun go down, all thought of work forgotten. His father, seemingly having forgotten the boy’s earlier words, tousled his hair.
‘You see that island out there?’ his father asked and pointed.
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s Moreton Island,’ his father said, and lowered his hand. He looked serene. ‘That’s where we’re going. That’s where Tangalooma is.’
The boy looked. In the oranges and pinks of the sunset it floated on the water’s surface like some giant turd. He squinted. In the distance he saw some lights flicking on near the beach. Impossible to make out structures.
‘You excited?’ his father asked.
‘I think so.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m scared I won’t do good.’ The boy looked down.
His father said, ‘You’ll be fine, mate. I’ll look out for you.’
The boy nodded slowly. He stood and walked over to fetch Albert and had to race down the beach when the puppy refused to heed his call. Eventually he caught him and bundled him up. The puppy licked dried salt water from his skin as he walked back to his waiting father.