Summary
Harry makes Miles a hot cup of Milo, a popular Australian drink mix of chocolate and malted grain stirred into milk. Harry knows you’re not supposed to drink milk when you have a cold, but there isn’t anything else. When Harry brings it over, Miles is already asleep. In the next chapter, they visit Aunty Jean’s house, where they must leave their boots at the door and enjoy a Saturday afternoon roast. Miles hopes to leave early to surf with Joe, but Aunty Jean keeps the boys around by offering to cut their hair. Miles finds it hard to believe Aunty Jean is their mother’s sister because she looks, acts, and smells like an old lady. She has lived alone since Uncle Nick disappeared.
While looking for towels for Aunty Jean, Miles finds a box in the linen closet; it is full of never-used, perfectly folded baby clothes. He thinks about the baby clothes while Aunty Jean cuts his hair and speaks with emotion about how she feels bad about selling Granddad’s house but still believes she deserves something, having grown up there. Harry and Miles agree in private that she cut their curls too short and that was the last time they’ll let her cut their hair.
Miles and Harry help Joe empty the shed at Granddad’s, sorting objects into discard and keep piles. While Joe is inside the house, Harry and Miles look at the backseat that came out of their mother’s wrecked car. Harry remembers the upholstery was a dark cherry red color. Harry remembers how he played with his matchbox toy cars while sitting on the seat. They find a white pointer’s tooth wedged in the seat gap. Joe comes out and Miles shows him the seat and the rest of the car pieces: the steering wheel, axle, and trunk. Joe wipes his hands on his pants after touching the steering wheel. He suggests they should take a break and have lunch. On the lawn, Miles looks at all of Granddad’s old stuff and wishes Joe wasn’t leaving.
Harry gets in the car with Joe and thinks about how he enjoys going to the rubbish dump because of all the wild animals scrounging there. He hopes to see Tasmanian devils. On the drive, Joe says he’ll probably go to Samoa first, in the South Pacific. Harry thinks about all the other dented panels and various car parts they pulled out of the shed. Harry says maybe there was a man there, in the car, wanting to say more but not remembering why he said it. Joe reminds Harry that he hit his head hard during the crash. Harry remembers how Miles too had been concussed and the paramedics in the ambulance were keeping him awake when he just wanted to sleep. Harry asks when Joe is leaving and Joe says soon.
Having been left at the house to go through it, Miles instead heads down the path to the grey sand beach at Lady Bay. He pulls the cold, sharp shark’s tooth from his pocket and examines it. Miles tries to picture it hanging from the rearview mirror of his mother’s car but can’t place it. Gary Bones, a large and pugnacious boy from school, appears beside Miles and snatches the tooth, walking away. Miles chases after Gary and tackles him. Gary’s fishing rod breaks in the fall. When they get up, Miles has a nosebleed. He frantically talks about how he wonders if the tooth belonged to his dead mother. Gary threatens to punch Miles but instead drops the tooth in the sand. At the house, Joe gets Miles ice for his loosened, bleeding tooth. On the verandah, Miles claims he fell. Joe sighs and begins to walk away. Miles says he knows what happened to Mum: she purposefully crashed the car because she wanted to die. Joe says that’s nonsense: her blood pressure medication gave her a heart attack and that’s why she crashed. Joe pushes past into the kitchen and Miles sees that Harry heard everything Miles said.
Harry sleeps in and then goes to George’s shed. He finds George at the water, where George invites Harry to join him in his old wooden dinghy. Harry says he can’t go because he gets sick. Harry remembers Uncle Nick joking that Harry will never be a fisherman because of his seasickness. Harry eventually sits next to George. George casts a line and hands the rod to Harry, who has never been taken fishing. Harry prays a fish doesn’t bite. When the rod bends and the reel goes flying, George helps Harry steady the rod and wind the line in. At the shed, George cleans and fillets the fish. Harry thinks fishing is the sort of thing he could like. Harry is amazed at how the mud-colored, slimy fish could look and smell so great when cooked with salt and lemon.
Dad leaves Miles to clean the boat and go to deal with the men at the cannery, where everything stinks of fish and bleach. Dad picks Miles up after dark and doesn’t say where he was. The narrator comments that Jeff and Dad have been going off to poach big fat abalone in the mornings to pad out their catch. Miles keeps his eyes trained on an approaching truck. Dad drives down the middle of the road, like always. Suddenly the truck’s headlights go dark. As they pass centimeters apart from each other, Miles sees a bull on its side being pushed by the truck. He realizes the truck must have hit the bull. Neither the truck nor Dad slows down.
Harry follows Jake and George through scrubby, cleared land until they reach the blackened ruins of the house where George grew up. They pick apples that are ripe to bursting. George lights a fire and they have lunch of smoked fish combined with apple and butter on bread. Harry enjoys the warm tea mug in his hands; he wonders why George doesn’t live here instead of the marshy paddock. George rolls up his sleeves and Harry sees his arms are covered in scar tissue from burns. Harry says his father doesn’t him very much. George squeezes Harry’s shoulder and tells Harry about what George can remember about Harry’s mum when she was young. Harry leaves with a bag of apples that taste like pie and sunshine. He knows he and George are real friends now.
Harry watches a shiny dark blue car pull into the driveway. Two uniformed people knock on the door and identify themselves as officers. Harry opens the door when he hears that one of them is a woman. She expresses concern that he is home alone and then says they need to speak to his dad. They are from the fisheries, and Dad’s license is invalid and he has a number of fines. Harry doesn’t reply. The officers leave and Harry hears the man say “what a shithole” before the car doors close. Harry thinks he’ll go out until Miles gets home. The perspective shifts to Miles, who walks to Granddad’s house after work. There is a for-sale sign and Joe’s stuff is gone. Miles walks around and looks at Harry’s treasure finds on the beach and Granddad’s piles of wood for furniture projects. He remembers searching for pieces of rare driftwood with Granddad. He hears Joe’s van pull up and goes outside thinking whoever buys the house will assume the wood piles are just for the fire.
Miles and Joe go surfing on slate-green water at the dangerous Southport Bluff surf spot. Miles thinks about Joe’s warning that he’ll be stuck taking care of Harry and being responsible for everything if he doesn’t get out. While catching a large wave, Miles knows it is time to do something—time to make something of his own. After, in the car, Joe says he is thinking he’ll leave tomorrow—he just has to get out of here. Miles thinks there might be tears in Joe’s eyes. Joe drops him off and promises he’ll be back. Miles kicks the van door open. Joe tells Miles he is only nineteen. Miles doesn’t believe that age will ever come for him. Inside, Miles prepares beans and mashed potatoes for dinner as there isn’t anything else to eat. While eating, Harry tells Miles about the fisheries people who came to the house.
Analysis
The theme of family dysfunction arises during Miles and Harry’s visit to Aunty Jean’s house. While Aunty Jean is a safe authority figure for Harry, and thus a person in whom he can seek refuge, Miles bears a grudge against Aunty Jean because he holds her responsible for increasing Dad’s poverty and stress, and for forcing the sale of Granddad’s house and thereby leaving Joe without a home. Even though Aunty Jean has done nothing cruel to Miles, the nuanced nature of family dysfunction means that he uses Aunty Jean as a scapegoat figure within the broader family tree, someone he can blame as an outlet for his resentment.
The theme of grief resurfaces while Miles and Harry are helping Joe clean out Granddad’s house. In the garage, Miles and Harry find pieces of Mum’s crashed car. They are surprised to find it and confused about why Granddad would have kept it. Miles finds a shark-tooth necklace in the cob-webbed backseat and understands immediately that it belongs to him; however, he doesn’t remember how it came into his possession. With the shark’s tooth, Parrett introduces a symbolic object into the story that will prove crucial to unlocking the mystery of what actually happened the night Mum and Uncle Nick died.
Parrett also drops a clue as to what happened the night Mum died during the conversation Joe and Harry have while driving to the dump to dispose of Granddad’s old things. Still curious about why Granddad would have kept the car parts, Harry says, seemingly out of nowhere, that maybe there was a man in the car when Mum died. Joe asks if he is referring to a paramedic, but Harry isn’t sure. He doesn’t know why he said it, but he wants to say more. The seemingly nonsensical comment will later prove to have been correct: even though Harry was very young, he retains a traumatic memory of the incident, and remembers correctly that there was a man in the vehicle with him, Miles, and Mum.
Continuing with the themes of grief and traumatic memory, Miles hopes the tooth will unlock his memory of the night. He tells Joe that he knows what happened, saying she purposefully drove into the tree. Joe resists getting into the conversation, dismissing Miles and insisting that she had a heart attack because of her blood-pressure medication. With this scene, Parrett shows the contrast between how Miles and Joe process their grief. While Miles denies what he has been told about how she died, Joe avoids thinking about it, preferring to consider any questions about her death to have already been answered.
The narrative touches again on the theme of economic strain when Harry answers the door to officials from the department of fisheries. Because of his poverty and debt, Dad has taken to poaching from protected waters; now the fisheries people are on his case to resolve his infractions and make him pay for his fishing license. The fisheries officials’ contempt for Harry and his impoverished family is evident in the way they insult the rundown property. The lack of empathy on display adds to the stakes of the fisheries visit: it is unlikely the fisheries officials will be lenient as they crack down on Dad, and when Dad is under stress, he takes his anger out on his kids.
