A few days later he stood on deck with his father flensing another whale, the operation now routine for him, almost mundane in its rhythm. Phil had ignored him the past few days and now the boy watched the man work, wondering at this childish exclusion. His hand against the slippery hide of the whale steadied him as he stood to flense and he, because of his divided attention, was careless with how he flicked the knife. He struck his splayed fingers. The knife ran sharp against the knuckles, scraping ugly bone. He was quick to drop it and squeeze the hand but the pain seared deep, then deeper. He dared not cry out at first for fear of exaggeration, but soon the blood leaked through his knuckles and his squeezing hand turned white. He saw the blood dripping from his wrist mix on the deck with the blood of the whale. So he cried out and stumbled to his father.
His father took one look and pried off his clenched hand. The boy wept, not caring, finally, what the other men might think.
‘Now, now, it’s okay,’ his father said. He took a quick look at the cut and then allowed the boy to grip it once more and encouraged the grip with his own, so their hands were coupled together as though in desperate prayer. Then his father held the boy’s cheeks in his hands and forced the boy’s eyes to meet his own, which conveyed calm certainty. He led the boy to the gate. All the men about them looked concerned and moved aside to let them pass. Steve shook his head and grimaced and clucked his tongue. Phil didn’t look up as the boy was ushered by. They walked down the steps, still coupled by the hand.
The boy began to feel faint and he nearly stumbled into a wall. Despairing, he crawled from the footpath onto the grass. The tears welled in his eyes again and he blinked them away angrily, ashamed by his lack of fortitude.
‘Let me look again,’ his father said softly.
The boy shook his head.
‘Come on, mate. Let me see.’
The boy peeled his hand away and gazed upon the wound himself. A deep angry gash ran across three of the fingers on his right hand. There was white visible in the gaps, gleaming beneath the blood, and the boy stupidly tried to flex the knuckles. The wound reopened and spilled its bright colour anew. He cried, and held his hand to his chest.
‘Come on, mate,’ his father said. He put his hands beneath the boy’s arms and tried to lift him but couldn’t without the boy’s cooperation.
When the boy next opened his eyes his father was no longer there. Just the grass, laid out like carpet. Beyond that the mess hall. The boy shut his eyes again and wished himself to a different time. He talked to his mother. Please, come back. It felt as though she had only just died; the feelings, the thoughts. With his eyes shut he imagined her holding his throbbing hand and stroking it in that way she had. Soon he stopped crying.
His father clomped down the steps from the deck with three other men following. One of them was Phil, who offered the boy a sympathetic smile. The four men crouched around him and bore him up by his limbs. They carried him to the main office, a place the boy had never entered. They crashed through the door and turned left, and there before them was a bed covered in brown vinyl. The boy was gently lowered onto it, and then the men filed out, each in turn placing a calloused hand on the boy’s knee. Phil was the last to go, and he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He looked like he might cry. ‘You’ll be right, mate. Don’t worry.’ He left.
His father moved over to the boy and gripped his shoulder. ‘I gotta go get the doc. You’ll be alright?’
The boy nodded. ‘I think it’s stopped bleeding.’
‘Just keep pressure on it and I’ll be right back.’
The boy rolled onto his side and looked everywhere except his hand. It throbbed. There was a plastic tub in the corner full of kids’ toys despite the lack of children on the island. There was a bookshelf crammed with medical books and some of the spines had been sodden with water at some stage because they peeled at the edges. A red telephone gleamed on the desk. Beside the desk was a white basin. He could hear his father in a distant room speaking on a telephone. His muffled voice through walls a comfort.
He soon returned and sat in a low chair beside the bed.
‘Doc won’t be long,’ he said.
‘How long?’
‘Not long.’
The boy sniffed. ‘Can I have a drink?’
‘Yeah, mate.’ His father stood, arched his back, a picture of calm. ‘What do you want?’
‘Just water.’
His father left the room, returning a few minutes later with a glass bottle full of water cold from the fridge. The boy drank as his father held it to his lips. He felt loved, and at the same time sad that it took such a dramatic event to arouse his father’s affection. His father’s hand on his head, the bad one, stroking his hair.
‘What’s going to happen?’
‘You want me to have another look?’
‘No.’
His father smiled and sank onto the chair. ‘I don’t know, mate. I don’t know what will happen. I’d say you’re done working this season.’
‘Will you get in trouble with Melsom?’
His father shook his head. ‘No. It was an accident.’
‘But it’s his fault.’
‘How is it his fault?’
‘I’m not supposed to be here, am I?’
‘You can be here. What makes you think that?’
A shrug. ‘I don’t know.’
His father sighed. ‘It’s just an accident. I’m surprised you’re not more concerned with the welfare of your fingers.’
‘What do you mean?’
His father lifted his own crippled hand and squeezed the missing knuckles.
‘I could lose my fingers?’
His father laughed. ‘No, I doubt it.’
They stopped talking. The boy wanted to read one of the books to take his mind off the throb in his hand, the throb behind his eyes, but wouldn’t ask. His father waited, drumming his fingers. A while later the doctor walked in. The boy had never seen the man before and wondered if he had been flown in especially.
‘So what happened?’
‘Sam just cut his hand.’
‘With what?’
‘Does it matter? He had an accident with a knife.’
‘I need to know so I can give him antibiotics, if he needs ’em. Though I guess he’d need ’em anyway.’ He rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger. He looked up again and tried to smile. ‘Alright. Give me a look.’
The boy removed his hand from the cut. The blood was dry and dark in the wound, which was clean across his middle three fingers. The blood had dried down his forearm. He dared not moved his hand or flex his fingers.
‘This is a mongrel cut,’ the doctor said. He breathed out and the breath struck the sensitive skin near the wound. He had a large belly, this doctor. ‘Flensing knife, right?’
The boy nodded and the doctor looked smug.
His father said, ‘What’s going to happen?’
‘He’s not grabbing anything with this hand for a bit,’ the doctor said. He was twisting the boy’s wrist and looking at the wound from all angles. ‘We’ll have to drown it in soap and dry it and get him on some antibiotics. Which we don’t have here.’
‘He’ll have to go back to the mainland?’
‘Yes.’ The doctor turned to look at the boy’s father. ‘We’ll get him on the boat and you’ll have to take him to a hospital over there. I can give him one pill here, but we don’t stock much. I can wrap the wound and stitch it, too, that’s fine. But he’ll have to get to a real hospital so it doesn’t get infected.’ While he spoke the doctor moved to a cupboard beneath the basin and took from it a clear plastic tub. He added soap and tested the water’s warmth before filling it up. He brought it back and looked at the boy with empathy. ‘This might hurt a bit. Okay?’ He put the tub on the bed beside the boy and had him put his wounded hand into the water. The doctor very calmly massaged soap into his wound. It stung just as he’d expected. The soapy water turned pink.
The doctor soon withdrew the boy’s hand and patted it dry gently with a brown towel. The blood ran in rivulets down his forearm. He said, ‘Bit tough, your son, eh?’ to the boy’s father, winking at the boy while he did so.
The doctor bent over the hand which now lay sprawled on the bed. In the same cupboard that had housed the plastic tub he found a small kit, which contained a needle and thread and a sachet of sterilising liquid. He threaded the needle with wiry black and coated it in the liquid and expertly jabbed it into the skin of the boy’s finger. He yanked it through the wound and pulled the thread through carefully afterwards. The boy could feel the fibres of thread inside his skin. He decided to shut his eyes. His father found him a toy gun in the crate of kids’ toys and the boy levered back the mechanism and fired the impotent gun at the wall. He didn’t look at his fingers again until the doctor patted his knee. His fingers now a sight. Black, jagged ridges. As though he was holding barbed wire. He ran his good finger up and down across it and winced as he struck each one.
The doctor regarded his handiwork with satisfaction. ‘Looks good.’
The boy’s fingers were then wrapped in flesh-coloured cloth, tight. Pressed together in such a way, it looked as though the boy had grown a flipper. He found he could bend the knuckles a little, though it hurt.
The boy and his father walked back to their room, and as they passed the flensing deck on their right the boy could hear above the sound of work. His absence had not affected the men at all. They walked up the stairs and entered their room and then stood silently. After a moment, they began to gather the boy’s things, scooping his clothes from the floor, finding his toothbrush. The boy noticed, though, that when they’d finished packing his things they did not start on the father’s.
‘Why aren’t you packing?’
His father sighed and sat on the bed. ‘I’m going to have to send you back by yourself.’
‘What?’
His father looked up. ‘Don’t talk to me like that. We need the money, mate. And you’re a big bloke now. You’ll be alright.’ He searched his pockets and then stopped. ‘I’ll give you some cash for a taxi, enough to get to your grandparents’ place, and you can tell them what happened and they’ll take you to the hospital. Make sure you go, you hear me? Don’t just get there and forget about it or think it’ll be okay.’ He waved his crippled hand before the boy. ‘This was infected and I did nothing and look what happened. Yeah? Promise me.’
‘Of course I’ll bloody go,’ the boy said.
His father softened. ‘You’ll get to see Albert again, at least.’
‘You’re not coming?’
‘No, mate.’
The boy stared at his injured hand. ‘You can’t just abandon me when it suits you.’
‘I’m not abandoning you.’
‘Yes you are.’
His father said nothing and then stood and lifted the boy’s suitcase. He shoved open the door and nodded with his head for the boy to follow. ‘Come on. We’ll say goodbye to everybody.’
‘No.’
‘You being a sook, then? Fine.’
They walked down the steps, both angry, the boy refusing to glance back at the room he was now leaving behind. He looked at his feet and heard the birds and the men working without him and the sound of the winch hauling a whale. Then the sound of waves. They came to the jetty. The boy hadn’t been here since they’d first arrived.
The Norman R Wright was waiting for them. The man behind the wheel nodded gloomily as the boy stepped aboard. His father threw his suitcase in after him then fished in his pocket for his wallet and took out a wad of faded purple notes. ‘Here.’
The boy accepted it, sullen. ‘I just go to Grandma and Granddad’s?’
‘Yeah.’
‘This’ll be enough?’
‘It’ll be heaps,’ his father said. He looked at the boy’s bandaged hand. ‘Still hurt?’
‘No.’
‘I’d come with you, mate, if we didn’t need the money.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’
His father looked at him then and compassion was so clear behind his eyes the boy almost forgave him. His father wanted to form words. His mouth moved a bit, then he clammed up. He only said, ‘You be good.’ He added, ‘You’ll be better off without me, anyway. I’m only screwing everything up.’ He turned and walked slowly back along the jetty.
The boy watched him go with tears in his eyes and then shouted, ‘You know I stole that whetstone, right?’
There was something to his father’s gait. Too slow maybe. The man didn’t even turn, just replied, ‘Yeah, well, that’s that, I guess.’
‘I wanted you to be fired,’ the boy shouted, though it wasn’t true.
His father didn’t acknowledge this. He just kept walking away, each step another towards total abandonment of his son.
The setting sun ruined the colour of the sea. He looked over at the factory. The men on the flensing deck were working hard. He couldn’t see Phil. Brian hosed the slipway as another beast was cranked up, its skin warping in the heat. He watched three of the sad animals travel up to the deck to be butchered. Still the boat didn’t leave. ‘What’re we waiting for?’ the boy asked finally.
‘Might be somebody else coming. We don’t leave till seven.’
The boy sat on the wooden bench. His father could have waited with him at least. He looked again at the deck as the towering lights flickered on and illuminated the men beneath them. Not a one had noticed his absence. The flensing deck functioned as it always had. The boy was left feeling utterly worthless.