It was Sarah’s idea to go to the docks. There wasn’t a particular reason, just that she would start high school the next week and everything seemed stupid. All Ruth wanted to talk about was being a lady and growing to be a young woman, and Mal was just gone. All through the holidays, he never showed Sarah how to lasso properly, or let her go with him to the new paddocks for breaking. Kari was allowed, she was young enough to sit on the fence and be held by Smithy or Blue. Since she’d punched Macka’s nose and made him bleed, Mal called Sarah too rough for a girl and said she’d have to be a young lady now. Ruth suggested bringing girls to the Boolaroo house to play.
‘I don’t know any girls and I don’t like them anyway.’ Sarah sat on the edge of the steps, not moving anywhere, no way.
‘Aw, love, you must know some. You can’t be a tomboy all yer life, can ya? Come on.’
‘I’m not a tomboy. I’m just me.’
‘Listen love, yer a young lady now, a young woman.’
‘Well why isn’t Wog a young man? He isn’t is he? No, he’s a boy.’
‘Well it’s different with girls, love.’
‘Oh god. I hate you.’
‘Sarah…’
‘Well, I do.’
‘Ssshhh. Your father’s coming.’
Everything went quiet when Mal walked up the steps. Ruth held her arm across herself, until Mal tapped at her with his boot. ‘Carn inside. I wanna talk.’
Sarah’s mouth tasted like blood. She sat on the step, with the cement getting slowly warm under her bum and mozzies screeching around her face, until the sun started being fierce and Kari banged through the back door. Sarah shifted to make room for her sister on the step. ‘Are they fighting?’ She didn’t know why she was asking this, Kari wouldn’t answer straight anyhow.
‘No, it’s quiet, very quiet.’ Kari’s hand slipped into Sarah’s and stayed there.
Sarah didn’t want to stay, didn’t want to be stuck there all day with talk of ladies and girls and women and changes. She squeezed Kari’s hand hard, turned to face her full on: ‘d’ya wanna have an adventure?’
The docks were noisy and big. Bigger than Sarah’s dreams. Bigger than she remembered from the one day visiting them with Mal, holding Mal’s hand, hiding her face in the back of his big palm. The edge of the dock wasn’t like the edge of the creek or even the lake. It was sudden, a big cement kathwop, ending like a smack in the face.
All the way in, on the bus (paid for with two-cent pieces from Kari’s pink pig money box) Kari had bounced on the high back seat beside Sarah going, ‘are we nearly there yet? is it far to the docks? are they big dya know your way I have to go to the toilet.’
Sarah had stared straight ahead, didn’t even say shut up. She took her shoes off, just because. The bus driver took them right up, right to the docks. Sarah and Kari bustled about the banging crates and loud yells of the docks, walking walking walking, a part of the noise and shapes of big men in blue singlets. The knees and thighs of the big men were at their eye level, walking closer to the smell of salt and fish and then a metal stair ladder going up like the beanstalk. Up to the clouds, and up. Joining onto a boat. A big shining blue and white boat. As big as the world. They stepped back, dizzy, from the edge. Looked up to where the boat really, truly touched the sky. Way up there, up top, up front, was a flag. Big and flapping away up there. Not like the flag Sarah had waved when the Queen came to the Royal show. This flag flapping away was nicer, like a picture. White, with a big red circle smack dead in the middle.
A brown hand, small and hairless, patted Sarah’s shoulder. She looked up to the brown face, flat and small like the hand. A voice, not like the loud banging voices of the singletted men, saying ‘you lost hey? What you looking for, Sailor?’
Sarah stared up at the neat face. ‘No, we’re not lost. We’re looking at the boats. We’re allowed.’
Kari nodded beside her and agreed, ‘we’re allowed.’
‘Allowed hey? Not runaways?’ the white legs of his trousers flapped in the wind, like the flag on the ship.
‘No. We’re not runaways.’ Sarah took a breath and crossed her fingers in her pocket, ‘It’s an excursion. For a project. About ships. We have to look at all ships. For the project.’
A flat white grin crossed his face: ‘ah. Ah yes, now I am seeing. A ship, hey. We take you to a ship – just for a little, hokay?’
Sarah and Kari followed the brown man up the high stretch of clanky stairs. The metal burnt crosses into Sarah’s bare feet. They clattered behind the brown man, calling ‘whasyername?’ So that he wouldn’t be a stranger. His name was Sim, like Simmo from Marmong, who’s black Arab stallion had got lost in the big gale. They could follow Sim up and on to the big blue and white boat, take a ride from him even, now that he wasn’t a stranger. The stairs went up and up and did a twist on themselves. Kari rocked about, holding on to the edges. Another brown man came out of a door. They made bird sounds at each other, he and Sim, and laughed. Sim touched Sarah’s shoulder, saying, ‘yes, small for a sailor but good, hey?’ Laughing. Not like the laughing in the paddock, loud and thwacking, his laughing was soft, inviting. More brown men, like bugs under summer stones, came running running running from small doors on either side of the stairs. And all jabbering like birds, quick and high, cacking-clicking at each other.
A light switched on behind Sarah’s eyes; she tugged at Kari’s arm: ‘It’s a language. Like Spanich.’ She wriggled her hand into Sim’s hand and looked up at him, proud: ‘I know Spanich. Johnny O’Keefe sang ‘Everybody Loves Saturday Night” in Spanich and I could sing the whole thing with the record. Dad said it was just like the real one. Senorita sin sinitty sin, hey-ey, senorita, senorita.’ She danced around him, clicking her fingers, while Kari clapped her hands and crossed her legs and squeaked laughter.
Sim opened a big heavy door. Inside, dark and heat smacked Sarah in the face. Kari squished herself in behind Sam’s legs. There were more brown men, yelling over the big sound of grinding and growling. Sim waved a man in blue trousers over, and made more bird sounds at him. ‘Drink girls, hey?’ He leant down, put his mouth near Sarah’s ear, ‘Thirsty, yes?’ He nodded and Kari nodded with him. Sarah concentrated hard, remembering what Mal had told her about Spanich, then called up to Sim, ‘Si. Si.’ He did a half frown at her, then nodded. They sat in the engine room, hot, smelly and noise-filled, swinging their legs and being invited into the soft laughing. The drink man came back in a stream of unexpected light from the door, carrying a black tray with small white paper cups lined up on it. He held the tray in one hand, like Ruth at The Coffee Pot, and took the little paper cups off with the other hand. There was sweet green cordial in the cups. Kari drank hers in one gulp and then burped.
‘Are you like Spanich?’ Sarah tapped the hand of the drink man, her legs bashing against the wall.
A soft laugh, ‘No, not Spanich. Japanese.’
Something slid together in Sarah’s head. Japanese. Click. ‘Is that like Jap?’ Sim’s eyes went wide, startled, ‘yes. yes, Jap hey. I guess so, I guess Jap, hyeh hyeh.’
Inside Sarah’s stomach everything went black and thick and tumbly. Her lips felt glugged-up like early morning eyes, thick with sleep. She spilt her cordial on the wide white trousers of the Japanese sailor as she ran, grabbing Kari’s hand, calling, ‘Run, run.’
Kari swung her legs out to the side, leaning over, twisting about as she ran, pulled by Sarah. Her callipers’ heavy clinking echoed by the metal stairs. Sim was behind them, calling ‘Sorry, hokay? Hokay girls?’
‘Run harder.’ Sarah pushed her legs in front of each other, running to the sound of, ‘Stupid. How stupid could I be?’ going over and over in her head. She yanked at Kari’s arm, dragging her down the steps and down. Kari’s legs buckled and bent, they were no use at all. Sarah turned around, so that she was going backwards, and slipped her hands under Kari’s armpits. Kari stuck her legs straight out in front of her, like two wooden pegs. Sarah had to slow down a bit, trying to stop herself falling from the weight of Kari pressed against her body. But no-one followed, it was only the sound of Sim’s voice that drifted down the stairs.
Puffing hard, on the cement of the docks, Sarah put her hands on Kari’s shoulders, like Mal. ‘They would take us to the jungle on this boat, burn us and starve us.’ Kari’s mouth looked too small and shaky, and her eyes were runny from tears. Sarah tried harder. ‘I saw a photo of Dad once, in the button box. His shoulders were sticking out and bones poking through his front. He didn’t look like Dad. It was the Japs that did that.’ Kari didn’t smile, didn’t do anything and Sarah even kissed her before she said, ‘Come on, let’s go home.’
In among the legs on the dock they smack-crashed into some blue police legs.
‘Lost mate?’ A proper man’s voice, gruff like Mal.
‘Yes,’ Sarah said this time, ‘yes, lost.’ Trembling, that the Japs might follow them, find them, steal them away to the jungle. Yes, lost.
‘What’s yer address?’
Not thinking about trouble, Sarah squinted up at the policeman, ‘we own the police station in Boolaroo. That’s where we live.’ She made herself stand straight up, forgetting that they had run away for an adventure, forgetting that Mal didn’t know. ‘Mal Sweet’s kid, that’s who I am.’ Because she had not forgotten that, who she was.
The policeman, Mick Pery from Toronto, walked between Kari and Sarah, holding one hand each. His mate was slumped in the white highway patrol car, dazed by the sun. Mick opened the back door, pushed Sarah and Kari in and shoved his mate on the shoulder. ‘Mal Sweet’s kids, got themselves lost. Reckon Mal’s gunna have a word or two to say. He’s got a flamin temper.’ Kari squealed all the way back to Boolaroo, flushed up with the fast of the highway patrol. Sarah stared out the window, busy with the sick in her stomach.
In the station, Mal ran fast across the room to Kari, picked her up and turned her around in the air. All soft he was, inspecting her like a new bridle. ‘Are ya orright, Bloss? I’ve been worried sick.’
Kari wriggled in his hands and shone back at him like the sun. ‘We went on the bus and the boat.’
Sarah stood on the outside edges of her feet, counted the tiles on the floor and waited for him to notice her.
Mal held Kari right into his chest. He flicked his voice over his shoulder at Sarah, ‘ya should know better, yer sister could’ve been hurt.’ There was fire in his voice. Sarah looked up from the tiles, remembered nineteen was what she was up to in her counting, and stared hard at the side of his face.
He stayed looking at Kari, like Sarah was a fly on the window-ledge, not quite bothering him yet.
The mad sick in Sarah’s stomach bunched up tight, then catapulted out with: ‘We ran away, no-one even knew and we were on a Jap boat, they gave us green drink and made me laugh and I liked them and I want to go and live with them. With the Japs.’
Mal pushed both of them, Kari and Sarah, up the back steps of the house. ‘Where’s ya friggin mother?’ Kari had begun whimpering, quietly, like a puppy, and Sarah ran beside him, yelling into his side ‘it’s not her fault, we ran away, no-one knew.’
Inside, Ruth looked at his fire, and fast-walked upstairs to the bedroom.
‘Don’t, Mal, don’t.’
Kari did a clink-run behind her, grabbing her arm. Ruth pushed her arm out, forcing Kari back. ‘Stay with yer sister.’ Ruth was short, sharp and as fierce as Mal, but Kari kept clinging.
Sarah yelled again ‘leave her, leave her, she didn’t know,’ and then hid against the wall.
Mal was close behind Ruth, following her to their bedroom door. He threw words over his shoulder, ‘this is yer mother’s business.’
Ruth looked strong and almost not afraid. Kari wouldn’t fall back, kept clinking along beside Ruth, determined to protect her.
Sarah’s rage bunched up in her stomach again and the fear of Mal pushed her along the wall, to the door of her bedroom. ‘It’s Kari’s fault, not Mum’s. It was Kari’s idea.’
She slammed her bedroom door shut behind her but even through the wood Sarah could hear Ruth screaming and screaming with the hard thuds of Mal’s punches. Kari was yelling ‘Get off get off off off off,’ her callipers clinking as she ran across the landing.
There was the sound of more punches, more of Ruth’s screams, and Kari, clinking and yelling ‘Stopstopstop’ and Mal saying ‘get off ya stupid bitch, get out the friggin way.’
Then a big sound of Kari’s scream and a tumbledown sound and Ruth calling out ‘no no Kari no’ and a thud like a tree against the wall. The screaming stopped then.