Short Story

story

DEATH BY PRAWNING BY MARIAN MCGUINNESS

Angel slid the sausages out of the pan onto the plate. The sizzling fat spattered her arm like a sparkler as the greasy logs slipped into place beside the mound of mashed potatoes and peas.

She placed the plate on the plastic tablecloth in front of Wayne. He barely looked up from the telly. He was having a one-way conversation with the quiz show contestant as she spun the prize wheel. ‘Com’on … stop at the fecking boat!’

The aluminium walls of their caravan creaked as he thumped the table when the wheel clicked past the boat and stopped. LOSE A TURN.

Summer had been so long. It was exhausting, especially at night when not even a breeze whimpered off the sea. Angel was trapped in this oversized tin can. She opened the fridge and took out another beer. She knew the drill. It was worth her sanity and her unbruised skin to keep the peace. She held the curved dewy bottle in her cleavage to cool herself a little before twisting the stubby into its holder and handing it to Wayne. His only thanks, a fleshy belch, as he passed her the empty. She placed it next to the plastic garbage bin. Six dead marines since he’d been home from work.

She moved her chair to the breezeway and slumped into it. The tin can they lived in had two temperatures: stinking and freezing. Tonight, it was stinking as the mozzies pooled around the screen door waiting to slip into the annexe with its scent of sausages and sweat. Angel pulled her t-shirt up over her loose breasts and daubed her face. January could be as cruel as her husband.

‘I’m going out tonight, Wayne, I’ve gotta get out of this heat.’

Wayne’s eyes flickered from the telly. He stopped sucking his beer. ‘Like hell you are.’

‘I’m going prawning down The Narrows. The run’s started. Everyone in the park’s talking about it. I borrowed a net from Jack, and seeing he’s had that stroke he won’t be prawning again. Life’s cruel, ain’t it.’ She pondered at the hopelessness of Jack’s life. ‘At least he’s started to talk again, that’s good, ain’t it?’ her voice buggers as they swim out the channel to the sea. An’ the moon’s right. Just a sliver. It’s gotta be a new moon, so it’s nice and dark. You’ll see. I’ll catch enough for a prawn supper.’

‘I’ve been studying the charts,’ Wayne mocked … ‘you gotta be kidding. You need brains to study and we both know where your brains are.’ He flicked his fingers between her thighs and massaged. ‘How do I know you’re not gonna meet one of your fancy fellas,’ and he clamped his hand as she winced at the sudden pain. ‘Well, I’ll cramp your style. I’m comin’ with you.’

Wayne went outside to their small storage locker attached to the annexe. He fossicked around for his waders and prawning net. He hadn’t used them in years.

Angel changed into her boardies and beach shoes. She tied a bit of rope to an old foam beer cooler and stuck it in the car.

Wayne revved the engine. Everything revolved around his needs. His time. Just before Angel locked the sliding door, she took an officiallooking envelope from the cupboard under the sink and propped it against the tomato sauce bottle in the middle of the kitchen table. She rarely got mail. Everything was addressed to Wayne and even if her name was on the envelope, he still opened it. But this time it was different. She’d picked up the mail this morning at the caravan park office after Wayne had gone to work, and hidden it. Now, it was waiting for her return. The envelope of possibility.

Mrs Angela White

Pelican Point Caravan Park NSW

The car park at The Narrows was buzzing with the 70s music from hippypainted Kombis and the duff-duff of the local teens’ hotted-up cars. It was the end of the school holidays and families were picnicking in the twilight on the grassy verge of the channel trying to get some relief from the heat.

Angel loved walking along the boardwalk at night. It was the closest she could get to being on holiday. Wayne followed her towards the boat ramp, past the meaty smells of charring shish kebabs cooking over

raised optimistically. ‘And he’s lent me his special torch; it’s a beauty, goes right under the water like a submarine. Says I’ll see all the way to the co-op with it. Just think, fresh prawns, not like the fried crap from Greasy Joe’s.’

Wayne stabbed a nugget of sausage, dipped it in the mash and peas and trawled it through the speckled tomato sauce sludge. He washed it down with half a stubby and forced a burp.

‘Stupid cow. What would you know about prawning? For one thing, you gotta get into the water, and you can’t even fecking swim.’

Angel’s head had been a mess lately. Her brain was like a jigsaw where too many pieces were pushing together. The lousy caravan. The heat. The rough, drunken fumbles under the sheets that she couldn’t get away from. Koala. That’s what his friends called him. They cracked-up at their crass in-joke every time she was with him.

Sleep snug last night did ya, Koala?

She’d loved to have shouted, Koala’s drowned his brain and withered his willy with booze! But she never had the courage to stand up for herself. Not until now.

Angel opened The Lakes Times at the tide chart and spread it over the greasy plates. The grime blotted through the pages.

‘I’ve been studying the charts,’ she said, with as much excitement as she would allow herself to show. ‘Low tide’s in an hour, an’ that’s the best time to go prawning. Catch the little

makeshift barbecues, and the bubbling hookahs being puffed by the men. A group of teenage boys kicked a soccer ball across the grass, just missing Wayne’s shins. ‘Bloody dolebludging terrorists,’ he spat, kicking the ball into the channel.

As the tidal water rushed from the lake to the sea, gangs of kids ran along the channel’s asphalt edge calling out to the prawners whose torches were already spot-lighting the water. Look … there’s one … I can see its eyes. Get it! Aw, you missed. Quick … there’s another one!

Angel stopped to breathe it all in. And to take stock of what she was about to do.

Low tide. Fingernail moon. The pulsing, watery vein rushed before her beckoning like a macabre, interactive game. The water flowed beneath the arching road bridge further up the channel and braided darkly around exposed sandbanks. She watched as prawners, with their torches and nets, worked the shoals like lines of aliens straining against the tide. Hunting.

Wayne didn’t wait for her. He slid down the mossy boat ramp and steadied himself in the shallows. In the darkness, he looked around. He watched for a flashing light. For someone signalling his wife.

Angel looked at the rushing water before her. Wayne was right. She could barely swim. Prawning was not her most brilliant idea. She’d been dumped good and proper years ago in a mangled surf. She had never forgotten the panic of death by drowning. It was the stuff of her nightmares. Watery sand straining through her eyes. Clutching for air. Disoriented. Flailing.

She psyched herself up and, using her long-handled net like the balancing bar of a tightrope walker, she crab-footed down the boat ramp. She took it slowly, not wanting to slip and be slung another loud, coarse insult from Wayne.

She waded into the water and tied the foam beer cooler to her waist that would hold her catch of prawns. It floated behind her. She turned to face the onshore breeze that had worked its way across miles of ocean. It fanned her blonde hair off her face as she savoured the cool caress of water around her thighs.

‘Well, where is he?’ Wayne stood in front of her. The water slapped around his waders. He gripped his prawn net like weapon.

‘Who?

‘Don’t play dumb with me, bitch. Remember, you’re not that smart. So, which scab out there are you meeting?’

Wayne scanned the channel. Nothing. He couldn’t see who the prawners were. It shitted him because it was now too dark to see anything but the constellation of bobbing torch lights along the channel of black water.

Angel gave a sad laugh.

‘If that’s what you want to believe, then go ahead. But the only affair I’m going to have is with the water!’

Wayne grabbed the torch out of her hand. His beer breath whipped her face. ‘You’re pissing me off, woman! Prawn on your own. You and that stupid contraption hanging off your waist. You’re such a loser. Just be ready to go home when I’m finished!’

Wayne trawled through the stringy weed that fringed the edge of the channel stabbing his net now and then at the elusive prawns. She watched him stagger from the shallows towards the deeper, murky water under the bridge. She imagined the cold, inky water swilling around his waders, rising, rising.

He didn’t bother looking back at her. He didn’t see Angel lurch in the darkness and disappear into a hole. He didn’t hear her gurgle or see her hand flail the wet roof above her.

Angel bobbed up, gulped and sank as the sand beneath her feet tumbled further into the hole, taking her with it.

A hand reached down. It grabbed her and pulled her by the shoulder out of the water.

‘Thought you might be in trouble,’ said the soccer-ball teenager. ‘By the way, your husband’s a wanker.’

Angel held onto his arm as she struggled for breath.

‘Thanks. I thought I was a gonna,’ she gasped. ‘I’m not a good swimmer.’

‘And you can’t prawn on your own. Especially without a torch,’ the teenager laughed.

Amir and his brothers waited for Angel to catch her breath. They wanted to take her back to their family, who would look after her while she recovered, but Angel was determined. She still wanted to prawn, so the four worked as a team sharing their torch beam as they trawled the water.

Angel squinted and looked upstream. She couldn’t see Wayne. She knew he would kill her if he saw her with the boys.

Fish nibbled at Angel’s legs as she dipped and scooped her net towards the orange-eyed prawns that darted from the shafts of light into the safety of the dark. Even with the broken weed and cigarette butts drifting by in the soupy channel water, Angel had never felt such freedom.

Within half an hour she had a good catch stored in the foam beer cooler that floated behind her. Plenty for a celebratory feast.

She had done her homework. Her calculations were spot on. On cue, the tide changed direction and a powerful dervish rushed into the channel from the sea.

‘Time to leave,’ said Amir as the water surged around them. ‘The prawns have finished running. It’s too dangerous out here now.’

Angel waded back to shore buoyed by the warmth of her new friendships. As the boys helped their parents pack up their picnic gear, Angel walked back to the boat ramp where she had last seen Wayne. She sat and waited. Like she had been told.

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