Ghost River Read Online Free PDF Page B

to go on. But he didn’t.
    â€˜Then what happened?’ Tiny finally asked.
    Tallboy lifted his head, opened his eyes and gave Tiny’s question some serious thought. Ren suspected that maybe Tallboy was making the story up as he was going along. He didn’t mind.
    â€˜Well, I open my eyes and the young fella had a shop girl with him, they was over the top of me, shaking me awake. I’d give a ton of gold dust right now to have that old bed down here. I’d share it with all of you, I would.’
    The Doc, who’d been laying across the fire, stealing the heat from the others, lifted his head from the ground. ‘And what the fuck does this story have to do with anything?’
    Tallboy looked across the fire at the Doc, with half a mind to choke him to death. He took a deep patient breath and answered in a quiet voice. ‘It’s just a story bout a good day I had one time. And a young kid who didn’t treat me like shit. That’s all it is.’ He pointed directly at Ren. ‘It’s like these two young fellas here.’ He winked at the boys. ‘I see friendship in them.’
    â€˜And it’s a good, good story,’ Tex said, by way of instructing the Doc to keep his mouth shut.
    The campfire went quiet until Tex began humming a tune. The other men quickly joined in singing.
    After the boys had left the camp Sonny asked Ren what he thought about the story of the Doc and the mother. ‘You reckon he would have killed someone? He don’t look like a killer.’
    â€˜Nah. Not a child. Anyone who kills a kid, and if others know about it, they wouldn’t be walking round free. He’d be in prison. Maybe even hanged.’
    â€˜They’d hang him for that?’
    â€˜They hung that fella, Ronald Ryan, last year, for shooting a prison guard. And Archie says he didn’t even do it, was the other fella who broke out with him!’
    â€˜You afraid of these men?’
    â€˜Could be. But Tex, I reckon he’d keep them in order with that poker. See how hard he whacked them two for fighting? Anyway, I can’t give up the river cause of some old men. It’s our river too. And I like the stories they tell.’
    The boys would come to know how much the river men loved their storytelling and singing. The only time they went totally quiet was whenever a snoop passed by the camp, sometimes an official from the Water Board, or a fisherman they hadn’t come across before. Tex would give the others the nod to go deaf and dumb . Anyone passing by who didn’t know better would have sworn the men were clapped-out mental cases. And that was the way Tex liked it. He didn’t care that outsiders looked down on them. Silence was a valued lesson he learned during his years away , a reference to a stint in prison for which he provided no detail, except to say, ‘It was where I come to know to keep the mouth shut and lay doggo.’

CHAPTER 3
    Stories of the river were told across the city. There wasn’t a child living within reach of the water who hadn’t grown up warned away from it with tales of dead trees lurking in the darkness of the muddy riverbed, ready to snatch the leg of a boy or girl braving its filthy water. Rusting skull and crossbones signs, hammered into tree trunks around the old swimming holes, warned of infection. There were also the horror stories of children who disappeared on sunny afternoons never to be seen again, leaving piles of clothing behind on the riverbank, waiting for a parent or the police to discover the telling evidence. It wasn’t only children who drowned. As well as the suicides there were the accidents. People fishing fell out of boats from time to time and went straight to the bottom, weighed down by heavy clothes and boots. A dark joke claimed that drowning was a more fortunate end, as eating a fish caught in the river would cause a slower and more painful death.
    On calm days, when the