Gone Fishing by Susan Duncan Page A

trouble spot got doused, we’d light another. On and on until the factory was shut more than it was open and it was costin’ ’em more than givin’ us a decent wage.’
    â€˜There’s no factory floor. No identifiable bosses. No bloody union.’
    â€˜Oh, there’ll be a boss somewhere. Find him then put the pressure on. It’s all about money, Sam. Keep hittin’ them in the pocket till it hurts so bad they go away.’
    â€˜Not sure how you do that.’
    â€˜Talk to your girlie. Kate.’
    â€˜You ever call her girlie to her face?’ He is curious. If he tried it, she’d probably knock him to the ground. Half his size or not.
    â€˜Do I look like a nincompoop? Me legs might be buggered but me brain still functions. Once worked as a financial journo at the big end of town, didn’t she? She’ll know where to start.’
    Sam leaves Artie and goes back to his own home for the second night in a row. Forgetting to eat, he sits on the deck. All night he reads the development proposal over and over under the weak yellow outside light, wearing out the print with the force of his thumb and forefinger, hoping he’ll be hit with a genius idea.
    When he was nine years old his mum and dad took him on his first holiday ever. He was shivery with the excitement of sleeping somewhere other than the bunk bed in the primitive rented boatshed the three of them called home. God, the excitement of crossing the water from Oyster Bay to Garrawi Park on Cutter Island – what would it have been, five hundred metres? But it felt like an ocean voyage even though he’d done it a million times because this was a holiday , not just a visit to play with friends.
    He helped his dad put up a tent his mum had bought second-hand from Vinnies, a rare and exotic find that had sparked the whole holiday madness to begin with. The park, already noisy with kids running wild on the first day of the school break, was alight with dancing campfires. Families sorting billies, frying pans, plates, searching before it turned dark for somewhere flat to spread a sleeping bag so the blood didn’t run to your head and give you a headache in the morning. A rite of passage it was, now that he looks back on it. And all of it free, which was the only kind of holiday his family could have afforded. ‘This is how you light a campfire safely, son, so you don’t burn yourself or endanger the bush. See up there? Stars. Look hard. Learn their names. That’s how ancient mariners travelled uncharted waters and found their way back home. You can always get your bearings from the stars, son. Remember that when you’re out in a boat with nothing but the sea all around and you feel like you’ve lost your way.’
    He’d stolen his first kiss from Carly Atkinson under the spreading arms of the old cheese tree that weekend and fallen head over heels in what he’d thought was everlasting love. ‘I’ve got a girlfriend,’ he’d raced to tell his dad, who saw the glitter of infatuation in Sam’s young eyes and took him aside for a chat. ‘Man to man,’ he’d said in a serious tone. Sam nodded, his chest bursting with a whole host of sensations he could hardly define let alone control. They sat together, cocooned in that same tangle of massive roots at the base of the cheese tree. His father placed a protective arm around Sam’s young shoulders. ‘There’s love and there’s sex, son,’ he said. ‘It’s wise to be able to pick the difference.’ Sam’s understanding of life changed forever in the next half hour.
    On the second day, a threatening sky turned on a solid downpour that didn’t look like shifting for a week. Water filled the tent like a swimming pool until his dad couldn’t pretend it was only condensation any more. Sam feels a tear run down a groove in his face to the corner of his mouth. He licks it