Ghost River Read Free

had eleven. Mick was a lucky man. He had a job as a milkman and got his cream, butter and milk for free, which helped him to keep his tribe fattened over the cold months of winter. Before Sonny came along, Ren had been friends with a couple of Mick’s boys, but from the day he’d been rescued in the schoolyard it became the two of them, for better and worse.

CHAPTER 2
    Loretta Renwick knew her son was a dreamer from the day she spotted him looking up at the sky as a small boy. He was sitting on a rug in the public gardens, watching the flight of a bird above his head. He soon began drawing them with crayons, on the rough concrete ground in the backyard, or on the footpath in the street. As he grew he took his sketchbook everywhere he went, drawing train wrecks in the railyards, and mighty ghost gums growing along the banks of the river. It was where he spent most of his weekends, alone, roaming as far as he liked. Ren had a loose contract with his mother, one that Archie went along with despite his grumbles. As long as he was always home before dark, and, as his mother would remind him, he brought no trouble to the family door, he was given a free rein.
    Only weeks after Sonny moved into the street Ren decided it was time to share the river with him. The water was not easy to find and local knowledge was vital. The dirt track leading to the river lay in the shadows of the mill, hidden among a forest of wild thorn, scrub and overhanging trees. At the bottom of the steep riverbank another track skirted its edge. In one direction lay an iron bridge, which carried traffic to and from the high side of the river where the moneyed people lived. In the other direction, a wooden pontoon nudged the bank, bobbing up and down with the current. The pontoon nestled next to the ruin of a wheelhouse. When the gates of the mill were shut the giant wheel that drew water from the river to supply the mill seized with rust, the wooden floors and foundations rotted and the building slowly sank into the muddy riverbed. From a distance it resembled a red-brick boat floating on water.
    Further upstream a low waterfall stretched the width of the river, topped with a concrete ledge, maybe three feet wide. When the wheelhouse had been in operation, an iron handrail had been bolted into the ledge of the falls to transport workers from one side of the river to the other. The handrail had been swept away in a flood many years before, leaving the crossing dangerous, particularly after a heavy rain when the water from upstream swept across the falls with ferocity.
    Ren knew his river as good as anyone and better than most. As well as drawing birds and other animals, his exercise books were increasingly filled with maps of the river, including sketches of the swimming holes, the hollows where rabbits burrowed into the ground, the fox holes hidden beneath the barbs of blackberry, and the drainways spewing out rubbish from the streets above. Ren’s thoughts of the river were so constant he sometimes woke in the night, recalled an image of his most recent visit, opened one of his books and began drawing.
    On one of Sonny’s early visits to the river with Ren they came across the river men. It was a Sunday, and they had spent much of the morning in the grassed laneway behind their yards, doing what teenage boys do when they’re bored, resting against Ren’s back fence and talking about nothing in particular. Sonny was teaching Ren how to roll cigarettes. He was a slow learner. The wind blowing from the north suddenly gusted. Ren could smell the water calling them.
    â€˜Come on, Sonny. Let’s go.’
    â€˜Where to?’
    â€˜Follow me.’
    They ran beside the wall separating them from the mill and negotiated the maze of thorn bushes before sliding down the steep track to the riverbank.
    â€˜The falls or the bridge?’ Ren asked.
    â€˜The bridge. I’ve got an idea,’ Sonny said. ‘Them pigeons that make a