The Keeper by Rosanne Hawke

short. ‘No bull?’ I’m trying to decide whether to believe him or not and I find I really want to.
    â€˜Can’t write it down like Mei.’
    â€˜So what.’ Dev’s head is so close all of a sudden that I can’t move mine back. ‘So what,’ he repeats and for once I have no answer. I just carry on with rigging my line. Dev throws me a grin when I look back at him. It’s like he knows just when I will.
    Today the whiting are on the bite. ‘It’s the pillies.’
    Dev grins when I talk like Grandad used to. Dev and I do more than catch fish though. We see dolphins too. It happens after we pull anchor and move further out. ‘There, on the right!’ I hear them first – the slight whoosh of air blown out of a breathing hole. Dev’s hooked up a salmon and is playing it, pumping and winding, ready to land it in the boat. ‘Wow, Dev, she’s a real keeper.’ It’s jumping, trying to get free – just like I would, if I was caught on the end of a line – when all of a sudden this dolphin bursts out of the blue, takes the salmon in its mouth, hook and all, and splashes back into the sea.
    â€˜Did you see that!’ Talk about jumping dolphins!
    â€˜We can kiss that salmon goodbye, mate.’
    â€˜Hook and all. Guess it’ll dissolve one way or the other.’
    We don’t catch much after that, even though the dolphins move on, yet it doesn’t seem to matter. For once the fishing’s not important – it’s the sitting, saying what comes into your head next after the staring. There’s something about watching that expanse of shifting blue and green that draws things out of me somehow. I know I talk a lot to Mei about bikes or fishing or what I did yesterday. Maybe she never wants to hear all that stuff. She never says. But this is different, stuff I never talk about to anyone . ‘Grandad was cool, you know.’
    Dev doesn’t glance down. Like it’s the most normal thing to talk about a dead guy. ‘I had a grandad too once.’
    â€˜Mine just got sick and died.’
    â€˜Mine too, mate.’
    â€˜I didn’t think he ought to have, you know? Not when I didn’t have a dad.’ It’s on the tip of my tongue to say it wasn’t fair but I stop in time. That sounds so childish; Gran always says there’s no promise that life will be fair. I wish it was. Dev grins at me then. He’s got the bluest eyes today. It must be the reflection off the sea. It’s almost like he’s heard the stuff in my head, all the things I don’t say. It makes me feel warm in places I haven’t for a long time; it makes me ask the next question.
    â€˜Why did you come?’
    â€˜My sister saw the ad. She’s always on the lookout for a partner for me. She thinks I’m lonely.’
    I think about some other meanings of ‘lonely’. ‘She right?’
    â€˜Sometimes, I guess. Anyway she thought where there’s a boy without a dad there’d be a young mother.’
    Suddenly I feel like a breeze has sprung up. A cool one. Mother, partner. The usual old bitterness begins its well-trod pathway through my gut. I try to keep the hurt out of my voice. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have one for you.’ He didn’t come for me! I try to keep calm, like it was before, but I can’t; horses are coming, galloping into my head. I try to stop them, try to shut the gate but they keep on, taking over, throwing up clods of earth. The noise is deafening and I think I stand up. I’m sure I drop my rod. The boat’s lurching. I know that much and nor do I care.
    â€˜Mate—’ I can see Dev through the haze. For once he’s worried. I aim a kick at the tackle box. It goes flying, so does the hessian bag. Water washes out, the whiting we’ve caught slide onto the hull. The boat’s dipping low now and I’m struggling to stay upright.