The Great Inland Sea by David Francis

Author:David Francis [Francis, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59692-849-7
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2005-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

I sit on the wooden veranda. It seems strange to write to Callie on my mother’s stationery.

Palparara, via Maude, New South Wales. I form the words deliberately, European loops and curves my mother taught me, not like American printing. Callie who writes like a child.

My father scuffs down towards the yards, his leather slippers on. It’s the time of day when he fills the trough and feeds his favourite horse. He throws it a biscuit of hay, brushes himself of the seeds that fly back on his shirtsleeves. He turns on the tap in the trough and waits with one hand in the water.

I look at the writing paper, the curled-up corners, and then stare into the sharpness of the sun. I wonder if she’s with the man who answered the phone, if he knew who I was from my accent. I don’t write the things I’ve wanted to.

My father shuffles back up the drive, rubs his hand on the woven-wire gate as he passes, looks at the rust on his thumb. He nods to acknowledge he’s seen me. “Writing to that girl with the name?” he asks. I angle the page so he can’t see. “Did you tell her why you’re here?”

“Why am I here?” I ask him.

He looks at the box of my mother’s moth-eaten paper that sits on the steps beside me. “Sniffing around the past, I suppose,” he says, a dullness in his tone. He leans down and picks up an unused postcard from the box. A stuffed Tasmanian tiger, dry about the eyes, stuck among the trees for the postcard photo as though it’s still alive.

“Looks more like a dog than a cat,” I say.

He narrows his eyes at it. “They’re supposed to be extinct,” he says.

“Do you have envelopes?” I ask him.

He looks down at my half-written letter. “I don’t correspond,” he says. I fold it as though it’s finished. “Did you invite the girl out here?” he asks.

“She has her own fish to fry.”

“They usually do,” he says. He puts the postcard in his pocket. “You should get some fish of your own.”

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