Bait and Ammo

Bait & Ammo, 1km
Bait & Ammo, 500m
Bait & Ammo, 100m
Bait & Ammo, next left
Bang!
Another angler on ice.

a
new pyrmont cafe decided
to
abandon any pretence
about the nature of its environment
when it opted to
call itself "concrete"

in the new-casino dominated
suburb
streaked with roadways

it would perhaps be laughable if it called itself "leafy palms"

and

hoped no-one would notice.

The Accident

So this was an out of body experience. He had thought it would be more peaceful, serene was meant to be the word. But it wasn’t. It was more distressing than expected, even worse than failing first year.

First the dismay as his car hit the parked landcruiser. Then there was an hour or so of anticipation as the white bullbar slowly pushed through his bonnet, and then as his bonnet more quickly pushed through his windscreen. The windscreen really picked up speed as it collected his plastic charms and pushed them towards him. Of course by then, he had started moving too. His hands still on the wheel, his bottom seemed to have become weightless and powerful at the same time, pushing him upward and forward against his seatbelt. The seatbelt held his chest back from the steering wheel, but not his head from the windscreen, nor his face from the now hurtling charms. His head seemed to gain some of that same mysterious force as his bottom, and it slammed his face into the flying wall of windscreen, bonnet, and little plastic toys.

It wasn’t the pain that sent him out of his body - he barely had time to register pain before a tunnel opened in front of him, with something white at the end. It was the white landcruiser bullbar. He hurtled down the tunnel, moving with the same force as before, but this time meeting no resistance. He couldn’t flinch as he approached - he had nothing to flinch with. And he didn’t stop when he hit the bullbar either. He flew past, or through,or something, he didn’t know what to label it. Whatever it was, he continued into the engine cavity of the landcruiser., through the firewall, the cabin and out the back of it, where he slowed down and came to rest.

Everything slowed down again. "This is fucken weird" he thought to himself. But before he could consider his new situation, he remembered his body. He couldn’t feel pain, but concern for his body drove him up and over the landcruiser so that he was looking down at his smashed pintara. The whole bonnet was twisted around the barely damaged landcruiser, the bullbar pushed up on one side, looking as if it had been aiming for him. He could not see his body, but he could see bloody, broken-faced crash dummy sitting where he had been sitting. It was gruesomely realistic. No, it wasn’t a crash dummy, it was his body. He felt despair.

Well if that’s what his body was, then what was he? As soon as that thought came to him, his concern for his body ebbed slightly, and his attention drew back from the scene below. He realised that he felt a nauseous despair, and yet the nausea was disembodied. It was because he was disembodied. His nausea could not be felt in the pit of the stomach because he had. Stomach. His stomach was down there, stuck behind the steering wheel.

The pelican

He thought the pelican was big, even for a pelican. Looking at it, there was no way you could mistake it a person. It had no hands, not even front paws, and his its were way out of proportion. The webbed feet were clumsy looking on land, but at least they looked purposeful. Its eyes were black, much like any other bird's eyes, but to Jamie they looked colder even than the eyes of a lizard, not at all warm like the black eyes of a dog. They looked small compared to the size of its bill, but that was because Jamie was used to looking at people, and dogs, whose noses are definitely smaller than a pelican's beak even leaving aside the fact that a pelican has a much smaller face.

He picked up a flathead fillet from the tray and tossed it to the pelican, who calmly walked past the ibises and seagulls to catch the fish in its beak. Now he had the pelican's attention. He walked onto the other side of the counter, another couple of flatties fillets in his hand. The pelican also moved closer, looking at Jamie steadily with one eye. He tossed a fillet, and the pelican caught it. The pelican moved closer again. Then Jamie felt fear. The bird was big, and its eyes were cold and intent. He felt that if the bird meant to, it could do him damage.

He thought about throwing the last fillet, then thought again - he'd be left fishless, defenseless, exposed in front of his counter. Then he noticed the pelican glance from the fillet to Famie's face. The pelican knew Jamie had another piece of fish, and somehow knew who the fish was meant for. Jamie decided to take some of the initiative. He dragged his eyes from the gaze of the bird, and looked beyond the pelican as he moved to toss the fillet. He was surprised see the bird move back, that the bird understood his gesture. He was also surprised to see the pelican take a couple of steps backward. Somehow he felt that birds weren't really made to walk backward.

He threw the last fillet, and as he did so, he kept his eye on the bird. He felt that he had to keep his eye on it.

As the bird caught it, he realised he had been throwing Mr Armanelli's stock to a pelican. He quickly moved back behind the counter, and resumed the preparation of his tray of flatheads. The pelican turned, took a couple of walking steps, then a couple of steps at a run, then pushed out a its big wings and took flight.

Jamie didn't see the bird as magnificant animal, or graceful flying machine. He saw it as a person. A mysterious, different kind of person, someone who he couldn't talk to, but then he couldn't talk to most people. But he had had a conversation with it. A wordless conversation about fish, intent and hunger, probably the most straightforward conversation he had had for a long time.

As he moved from the flathead fillets onto the paler ling, he wondered if the bird would be back. He didn't wonder for any longer than it took him to sort out the first few fillets. He knew it would be back, and he knew that they would converse again.

He kept that thought to himself for the rest of the ling, then the bream, and the tuna steaks. He even kept it through the arrival of the customers, through the weighing of fish, the giving of change, the cursory thankyous. He was surprised how pleasing the thought was, and he kept turning it over even as he cleaned the trays, even as he hosed down Mr Armanelli's tiled floor. He used the thought to chase out the thought of the arrival of the fishermen later in the day.

The wreck of the Parnassia was spread on the rocks, from the slope of stone halfway up the headland, to the flatter rock near the surf. It looked more like the site of a plane crash than a shipwreck, with pieces of debris spread in a wide area.

He lightly skipped across the rocks, toward the splintered remains of the hull. The nets were hopelessly tangled in with the dirty white timber pieces of hull.

The engine itself was resting a few metres away from the hull. It had come away from its bearings but was still attached by the main drive shaft. The wheelhouse looked oddly intact, although resting on its port side. He climbed through the bulkhead, and saw that the radio, emergency gear and sonar looked OK. He unscrewed them from their mountings, snipped the cable linking them to their useless aerials and placed them into a carry bag. He found three life vests, scattered amongst the debris, and these had to be stuffed into the other carry bag.

He looked for, but did not find any personal items, like watches, or hip flasks. Nor was there any sign of crew.

Their water is slightly gold in colour when you look though the width of the tank, and a darker green gold when you look through its length. Its not water you would normally consider drinking, but they seem to breathe it, drink it and live in it quite happily. Their standards are different to ours.

There’s six in the big tank, and one in the smaller tank on the shelf below. They are all different, but because they shed their outer shells every couple of months, they are different in different ways over time. You know they are individuals, but its hard to tell. The one that stands out the most is Hobbes. He has only four and a half legs out of six, and his left claw has only one and a half pincers. The broken pincer has a red stump. He is aggressive when it comes to food and living space. That’s why I call him Hobbes - as in "red in tooth and claw". He’s been quiet lately though. That’s probably because he’s about to lose his shell.

I named Amanda before I knew for sure she was female. She was the biggest in the tank, and incompetent, like Amanda Vanstone. At least that’s what I tell people. She’s really named after someone I know with similar qualities. She was the first to fall pregnant, and now she is pregnant again. That is, if you could call hanging a couple of eggs off your tail pregnant. Maybe it should be called "Spawning" or something, but that sounds a little too much like something out of "Alien" to fit.

Anyway since last time she gave birth, there are heaps of little Amanda babies around the tank. They are as small as the half moons on my little fingernail, and around the same colour. This is in contrast to the older yabbies, who range in colour from Bluey’s pure pale blue, to Hobbes’ dirty blue to the Sick One’s ghostly grey.

The Sick One is now the biggest, and I’m not sure of his gender. He’s in the separate tank, because it seems that every second time he loses his shell, he also loses his big claws. I’m not sure if its some genetic defect, or if the others pick on him and pull them off while they are still soft and new.

Bluey is the prettiest, because his shell is a brilliant blue, and unlike the others, his joints show no hint of orange. His nature seems to follow his pacific colour - he stays out of the turf wars by hiding high on the branches of the plastic plants. He’s not the only one to be hiding at the moment. The two unnamed small ones are pregnant at the moment, so they are hiding in their the plastic garages, waiting for their little ones to hatch.

Spunky is the most likely to disturb them. He never seems happy with one particular spot. He’s always pushing the other ones from their chosen places in the tank. This seems to happen especially at night, when their eyes glow.

I don’t know if they are happy. I wonder if they realise how lucky they are, not needing to live in fear of predators. I wonder if their small tank provides enough stimulation for their small brains. There is a lid on the tank, and on the couple of occasions when I have left it off, they get out and wander around.

Its a Stanley Duralock. Stanley, an English brand name, familiar to those who visit hardware shops, a reassuring brand to someone who has always used their indestructible screwdrivers. Duralock must be one of those compound words that you are allowed to copyright. Dura could be short for durable. And lock must refer to the yellow mechanical sliding switch on the side that stops the tape from springing back into the black plastic case when you are half way through a measurement.

Its easy to pick up this tape measure. Its easy to heft and feel the solid weight of the thing. Its too big to fit flat in your hand, but that’s not surprising; you are meant to hold it in your off hand, thumb over the logo and fingers on the other side over the metal belt clip. Once your hand is in that position its easy to draw out the yellow metal ribbon, by pulling on the metal bit on the end with your good hand.

The first time I pulled it out I was mystified. Initially reassured by the steady pull against the inner spring that powers the retraction of the tape when you are finished, I was alarmed when I noticed that the metal bit on the end of the tape had some play in it. That wasn’t supposed to happen, not with a Stanley brand tool. It moved backward and forward relative to the tape by a millimetre or so. Then I realised. It moved by its own thickness. That means that when you take a measurement from the end of something by resting the end bit on the edge of it, the end bit moves out a little. On the other hand, when you take a measurement from inside something, the end bit is pushed up against the end of the tape, ensuring you get the same measurement either way.

I don’t remember my father having this feature on his tape measure. But then again, his tape measure also didn’t have a spring loaded retraction spring, and its tape was more likely to flop around unnecessarily. I think that in general the world is getting better.

Do you know what you said the other day? You said that you wanted to see the Boeing factory before you died. What kind of statement is that?