Summary
Norm is known throughout the region for his work preserving dead fish. People come to visit him from all over the place so that he can restore the fish they have caught with such skill that the fish appears to be alive. Norm believes that every house has a spirit, and in the Phantom house, the spirit’s brain lives in the "fishroom." The fishroom robs people of their truths and secrets, and many people who visit come up with an excuse to leave quickly.
A mass of crickets live in the fishroom and they sing in a loud chorus. One day, the crickets sing so loudly and strangely that Norm goes to the room, where he finds Elias's dead body. Norm cries and screams. Norm’s daughters see their father in a maddened state. They do not recognize Elias. They believe their father has killed a man and decide to destroy the evidence. They create an enormous bonfire and throw Elias’s bags of fish into the fire. Chaos ensues. Norm tries to stop his daughters from burning the evidence but is unable to. Kevin is tied to his bed and nearly dies from choking on his vomit.
Elias’s body is still out in the yard when Constable Truthful, the Desperance policeman, shows up to look into the cause of the fire smoke. Truthful hangs around the Phantom house until Girlie succumbs to his pressure to have sexual relations with him. While Truthful is with Girlie, Norm fantasizes about killing the cop. Once his family and Constable Truthful are asleep, Norm takes Elias’s body and heads out to sea while a storm gathers. He heads to the dwelling place of the gropers, a large Australian fish. Norm recalls visiting this place in the past with Elias. Back then, Elias seemed to communicate with the fish: when he slapped his hands underwater hundreds of gropers surged toward the boat and then pulled away at the last minute. Recalling this event, Norm feels certain that Elias has returned to ask Norm to take him back home, to the spirit world. This is a faraway place that belongs to the spirits of fishes, women, and sea creatures.
Out at sea, Norm struggles for hours to catch a giant Spanish mackerel. He feels ashamed when he eventually guts the fish. Norm sees the strange, threatening shape of a giant stingray floating across the sea. He perceives this as the cursed, deathly spirit of a sorrowful sea woman who has come to find them. Finally, two weeks into his journey, Norm is overjoyed to find the gropers. Hundreds of the large fish lead Norm and Elias to the area above their deep underground cave dwelling. They open up a circle around the boat and Norm drops Elias into the water, burying him at sea.
Norm feels overcome by exhaustion and he tries to sleep before heading back to Desperance the following day. He sleeps fitfully and has nightmares. When he awakens all the fish have left the area. Yet Norm is so hellbent on catching fish that he does not read the signs of a terrible storm approaching. A feminine sea spirit taunts Norm, telling him to jump into the sea. Norm refuses to give himself over to her. The storm intensifies and strong waves crash over Norm, who manages to hold on to his boat and survive. When the storm finally subsides, Norm is swollen, bruised, and very weakened. He slips in and out of mystical visions. Norm wants to row southwest to Desperance but he is unable to resist the strong pull of northeast currents. Beaten down, angry, and hallucinating, Norm collapses on the beach. Both the sea woman and the “land woman devil,” Gardajala, taunt and lure Norm.
The following day, as the tide rises, Norm sees a five- or six-year-old boy moving his small boat inland. Norm recognizes the child as his son Will and begins to imagine that the rest of his family will join them soon. The boy has a cockatoo which Norm believes is his bird from back home. The boy brings Norm fish to eat and clarifies that his name is Bala and he is the son of Will Phantom and Hope, a member of Joseph Midnight’s Eastside mob. The boy explains that the “bad men” killed Hope and Will is away. Norm informs Bala that he is his grandfather. Norm feels angry at Will and the Eastside mob and continues to hallucinate and dream.
Bala comes to get Norm to bring him to a new camp. He explains that this is a place where one must always hide, and says Norm will put them all in danger by remaining visible on the beach. Norm resists and remains on the beach while Bala goes to catch a duck for them to eat. A storm approaches and a tidal surge overtakes the mudflats. Forceful currents of water cut through the inland bush, carrying tons of sand and debris. Bala is caught in the surging water. Norm runs, pulling his boat behind him with a rope. Suddenly, he sees that he is surrounded by “phantom” people who appear to be gliding through the bush in an effort to find higher ground. In his boat he sees mysterious women with eucalyptus leaves growing out of their fingers. Finally, the group finds safety on higher ground.
There, the men force a confused Norm into his dinghy, which they secure with an anchor rope. They lower Norm into the river and he begins to row, as the men form a human chain to resist the strong current. Norm’s boat gets stuck in branches and he finds Bala hiding in the tangle of vegetation. Norm speaks to Bala sweetly and convinces the boy to come with him to safety. By the time they return to land, the “ghostly tribe” is gone. Norm hatches a vague plan to find the highest ground before nightfall.
Analysis
In Chapter 7, Wright paints a colorful and tragic scene of family chaos and suffering. Norm feels that his children are stupid mongrels who have only brought the family shame and bad luck. He is shocked and saddened when his daughters decide to burn the evidence of Elias’s death in a big fire, which he knows will only attract the police to the Phantom home. Norm is also angry at his daughters for strapping Kevin to his bed with belts and nearly killing him. At the same time, Norm’s daughters also feel that their father only brings the family shame and bad luck. The police and residents of Desperance frequently accuse Norm of being a murderer and ridicule his daughters as a result of their father's bad reputation.
Wright demonstrates the role that discrimination and violence play in this family chaos and suffering. Many times, the police have come to search the Phantom home, leaving it in a state of destruction. Moreover, Constable Truthful treats Girlie as a sexual object, and she is essentially forced to have sexual relations with the policeman in order to protect her family from getting into legal trouble. Racism, classism, and sexism all play a role here. As a white settler man, Truthful feels entitled to exercise his power over Girlie, a Black, Indigenous woman whose family has been impoverished by settler colonialism. Norm wishes he could kill Truthful. But in the end, he feels obligated to “let the white man get what he wanted.” Wright shows how all of these dynamics play into causing stress and strife within the Phantom family.
Far out at sea, the beautiful, mystical dwelling of the groper fish stands in stark contrast to the violence and chaos that the Phantom family experiences on land. The groper fish symbolize "the Dreamtime" and deepen the reader’s understanding of the Dreamtime realm. According to Norm’s Aboriginal community, the gropers come from the Dreamtime realm. On the one hand, Dreamtime seems to represent a spiritual realm in which the spirits of people, animals, and nature interact and cause real effects on the earthly realm. Out in the middle of the ocean above the gropers’ dwelling place, Norm is subject to the laws and powers of this spirit world.
The Dreamtime also seems to represent the ancient way of the land, prior to colonization and environmental damage. The author associates the fish with the ancient history of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and their home remains largely unchanged by colonization and the environmental destruction caused by human activities like mining. In this sense, Norm reflects that “a fish lives far better than a dry old blackfella from Desperance.” For Norm, the fish represent an ancient, spiritual realm that preserves the dignity of life untouched by colonialism and climate change. In the same vein, the gropers represent “the natural cycle of things,” in which the sea, land, and skies are closely connected by weather patterns and humans understand how to live in harmony with these patterns rather than trying to control them.
When Norm meets Bala, the novel begins to address the theme of home and family in a new way. Up until now, Norm has had a tortured relationship with his family and the home they inhabit. He hates the home that Angel built from debris on top of a serpent’s nest. He frequently fought with his wife Angel and she eventually left him for another man. Norm also fights with and resents his children, whom he views as failures and disappointments.
Yet when Norm meets Bala, he begins to reflect on his behavior and to experience subtle, gradual changes in his attitude. At first, Bala looks so much like the members of the Phantom family that Norm believes the boy is Will. Norm perceives the child as a good boy and he feels excited to see Angel and the rest of his young children. As he waits for his children to come down the beach, “he found himself promising this and promising that. Everything would be good from now on. Everything. It was so good to start again, to be given one’s time over—another chance.” This is the first time in the novel that Norm indicates he has doubts about his role as a father and that he would like to have a second chance in order to do things better.
However, when Norm learns that Bala is the son of Will and Hope, he feels angry and hateful. Hope is a member of Joseph Midnight’s family, the family with whom Norm and the Phantoms have maintained a violent and prolonged war. Suddenly, Norm stares at Bala “as though he were looking Old Midnight in the face.” Yet Norm is not able to maintain his hatred of Bala for long. At first, Norm brushes away his “proud feelings” and wonders, “What was the use of it?” Then, when Bala builds Norm a fire and offers to bring him food, Norm feels grateful and endeared toward the boy. Eventually, Norm comes to a realization: “he would have to look after the boy, because the boy was alone, there was no Will and no mother either.”
By the end of the chapter, Norm feels overjoyed when he finds Bala in a tangle of branches and saves him from the flood. The boy becomes a symbol of renewed hope for Norm: “Norm looked down at the little boy’s head and cried in relief. Rain, tears, rowing the flooded river, he knew this was the solace of Elias: how he used his death to help an ignorant old man find his grandson, to rekindle his hope in his own, joyless soul. He rowed.”
