Brother Fish Read Free Page A

rubbed-raw armpits and waited for a tram. With the help of the conductor I climbed aboard, and when he came to take my fare I asked him to let me off somewhere so I could find something decent to eat.
    â€˜Fancy a nice feed o’ fish, mate?’ he asked.
    â€˜That’d be great.’ After the stuffy waiter, his vernacular was familiar and comforting.
    â€˜Righto then, know just the place. It’s a sixpence fare to get there, but, I promise, it’s fair dinkum.’
    After an excellent plate of flake and chips and a cup of hot sweet tea on St Kilda Pier I felt a whole lot better. During the course of the meal I had decided I’d had enough of the big city. Instead of our hitting the bright lights of Melbourne ( Ha, ha! What effing bright lights? ), I’d try to persuade Jimmy that we ought to catch the Taroona directly to Launceston. Melbourne had nothing to offer two Korean veterans on crutches, and the sooner we got to the peace and quiet of the island the better.
    I also decided I’d spend the following day buying presents for Mum and my sister Sue, something girlie, like talcum powder and perfume, Chanel No. 5. While in Japan I’d already purchased my main presents, five harmonicas, one for each member of the family. They were made in America and had a real nice tone. Then, if I could find a shop that sold fishing gear, I might buy my two younger brothers, Cory and Steve, some good nylon fishing line.
    Jimmy’s plane came in late the following afternoon. ‘Let’s go home to the island, leaving tonight,’ I suggested at the airport. I indicated our crutches, my wooden ones and his fancy new lightweight aluminium Yankee extravaganzas. ‘No use hanging around here on these, is there?’ Then, to slot the proposition home, I added, ‘Anyway mate, Boag’s, the Tassie beer in Launceston, is miles better than the local piss.’
    â€˜Hey! Mel-borne, da young lady on the aeroplane she tol’ me it got lots o’ green trees like Central Park an’ a big brown river run clear through da middle.’
    â€˜You don’t want to know, mate,’ I replied. ‘Bloody good place for a funeral.’
    Jimmy laughed. ‘You da boss here, Brother Fish, ain’t no big deal, I’s seen Central Park and da Brooklyn River. Dis yo’ country, man. What you pro-pose suits me fine – I been hurt bad from dat war and dis nigger in need of nourishin’ and yo’ mama’s cray stew just da medicine I needs.’ He pronounced it ‘med-des-seen’ in a way he had of separating and often stretching the syllables in a long word.
    Of course, today, in the context of hip-hop music and in current African-American street talk the word ‘nigger’ is used in a prideful way, much as the derogatory word ‘wog’ in our culture has become a badge of honour when used by the children of Italian and Greek migrants. But in 1953 it was a very different America for an African-American cove like Jimmy Oldcorn. In the South they were still lynching Negroes and elsewhere they still openly used the pejorative ‘nigger’.
    Moreover, in the Korean War, Negro recruits were initially segregated as they had been in World War II. This was done with the patronising excuse that they preferred to be ‘with their own kind’. While there were coloured combat units, in the eyes of the senior staff officers coloured men made poor soldiers. They were thought to be cowardly, unintelligent, afraid of the dark and only fit for labour battalions, though there was no evidence to substantiate this point of view and the coloured combat units fought as valiantly and intelligently or, on occasion, as poorly as the white. Despite a Presidential decree in 1948 promising equal opportunity in the armed forces, this perverse view persisted. The senior army brass in some instances came from the Southern states and they feared desegregation in the army