Cloudstreet Read Online Free PDF Page A

wipes her hands on her apron, looks up and sees her husband out on the water, his head illuminated and seemingly free of his body. Her men look like they are walking on water. Somewhere a fish breaks the surface.
    She leaps to her feet. Lord Jesus, something just falls through the bottom of her heart. She startles the others.
    Lest?
    Oh, the water has never been so quiet. Quick and Fish and their father move through it like it’s a cloud, an idea, just a rumour of water, and when Fish goes down there isn’t a sound. Quick feels the net go slack. Lester Lamb smells woodsmoke from the beach; he hears his heart paddling slowly along, but nothing else.
    Fish will remember. All his life and all his next life he’ll remember this dark, cool plunge where sound and light and shape are gone, where something rushes him from afar, where, openmouthed, openfisted, he drinks in river, whales it in with complete surprise.
    And Lester Lamb, turning in alarm at the shout from shore, came round too hard and swung the lamp into the water and left them in hissing darkness. Quick was yelling; he heard the boy beating the water.
    Quick staggered and fell over the net and squealed at himself trying to get off, to get it off. A pole glanced off his chin. He felt the net butt under him. Fish! He was on him; he was trying to come up under the net.
    Lester Lamb hoisted Quick out of the water and off the net. The sky was the colour of darkness, starless, mute. Everywhere, everything was net.
    He’s under it, get if off get if off! Quick was yelling.
    Lester Lamb could not see. He could only feel water and net and panic.
    Oh, I remember. Mesh against the face, the cage of down and up and the faint idea of light as the cold comes quicker now out of the tunnel, that strange cold feeling that’s no longer a stranger. Fish feels death coming unstuck from him with a pain like his guts are being torn from him. Fish is having his gizzard, his soul torn away and he feels his fingers in the mesh, reaching up for anything, his … someone’s … and then he’s away.
    Away.
    The net went still in Lester Lamb’s hands. A sound escaped him.
    Just pull! Quick yelled.
    What?
    Into the shallow. If he’s caught in the net, just pull him in!
    When they got into the shallows they saw the shadow trailing and they dragged it up the bank to the woman’s feet and the smell of cooking prawns. Lester Lamb saw his son’s fingers in the mesh of the net, still holding.
    He was dead and they knew it, but the woman beat the water out of him anyway. To little Lon, awake now with all the screaming, she looked like she was giving Fish a good hiding for his cheek.
    Quick heard her shouting at the Lord Jesus.
    Blessed blessed Saviour, bring him back. Show us all thy tender mercy and bring this boy back. Ah, Gawd Jesus Almighty, raise him up! Now, you raise him up!
    And Fish lay there in the mostly dark, eyes and mouth open, lurching like butcher meat as his mother set her fists to him:
    Lord Jesus
    Whump!
    Saviour Jesus …
    Whump!
    And she made sounds on him you only got from cold pastry.
    The old man on his knees weeping: Yairs, Lord, yairs!
    And the girls strangely quiet there on the sand with waterlap and prawnkick and the smell of mud and rottenness.
    Fish’s pain stops, and suddenly it’s all just haste and the darkness melts into something warm. Hurrying toward a big friendly wound in the gloom … but then slowing, slowing. He comes to a stop. Worse, he’s slipping back and that gash in the grey recedes and darkness returns and pain and the most awful sickfeeling is in him like his flesh has turned to pus and his heart to shit.
    Shame.
    Horror.
    Fish begins to scream.
    The great gout of river hit Oriel Lamb in the face and Lon laughed. Got back on his wet little bum and laughed. Fish started to geyser away and Lon laughed again and they were all shouting enough to hide the awful, the sad, the hurt moan that Fish let out when the air got to his lungs. Never, never, was