by Libby Davy (2000)


“What does his voice sound like?”

“What games does he like best? Does he collect butterflies?”

“Have you taken him to your favourite rockpool yet? What did you see together? Did the Octopus come to visit?”

“Where were the crabs? Did you see them scurrying over the baked bread rocks?

Watch out for jo-blakes round there.

Smell the bush rosemary. So sweet and dry.

What about the dropbears.

If they found you – walking home tired down the track one night – by moonlight – whose head would they gnaw off? Yours or your friend’s?

How can it be that a dropbear can eat a whole head? What of the big head bone? A bit hard to swallow you might think hey..?

They can swallow them whole, like boa constrictors can elephants. (Derr. Haven’t you read The Little Prince?)

It might take all winter to dissolve but think of how strong the snake’s bones would be after that!

All those skinny, curved bones that wrap around its long, long backbone from arsehole to breakfast time.

How do you skin a snake? Do you put the tip of your knife in its bottom and… let it rip? Just like when you clean herring.

Does your new friend know about these things? Will you show him?

Maybe he won’t like them?

Errrrrrrrrrrrgh. Guts.

Gizzards.

Intestines dropping down to the floor.

Inside an abalone when you clean it there’s a sac of guts that’s small but very dark. It doesn’t seem to smell very much. Not like herring. Herring are oily fish. It’s hard to get their fishy smell off your hands, even when you scrub and scrub. It goes right inside your skin.

Why is a ‘bull’ herring called a bull then? Is it because they are boy fish, or because they are big… and strong. Are they the only boy fish with lots of wives? Next time I catch one we can see how hard it pulls.

But who’ll be there to tell me if it’s really a bull or not?

I haven’t seen sheep’s guts for a long time but when you cut them open they really plop out. Gush out. Fall in a heap on the floor but still connected. A fucking fountain of guts.

They’re rather disgusting really.

I feel sick.

My Dad seemed to think it was pretty good to take the guts out of things before you ate them. Some times he’d suck them out. (Crabs stupid.) I mean you had to didn’t you. Can’t leave them in there because they don’t taste very nice at all. (Except crabs… guts… eggs. Sweet lady crabs.)

When you clean the herring they, the girl herrings, well sometimes they have lots of eggs in there – they’re called ‘roe’ – and you can smoke them or just cook them with the herring and they feel grainy on your tongue and taste really nice – specially when you smoke them.

Dad used to have a 44-gallon drum with rods running through it to smoke his fish. He’d kind of cut them in half lengthways – from their bum hole right down until their head split in half and they’d open out like butterflies.

He’d hang them over the rods and smoke them in sawdust and stuff. I think they had some kind of metal big nappy pin thing (like the ones we used-to attach the bait to the crab pots?) That held them open and in place. That’s how I remember it.

The smoked fish were very tasty. They weren’t cooked as such, just smoked – but I suppose the heat in the smoke and other stuff in the smoke kind of cooked them.

Even when it was all finished and had been for days, even weeks, I could put my head in the drum and still smell the fish and the smoke.

These were some of the smells Dad had. Along with beer and fags and the odd bit of epoxy resin maybe – if there was an experiment going on or something being filled, fixed or stuck together.

Over the years Dad’s smells changed quite a bit depending on what he was getting into at the time.

If it was honey time he would smell of wood smoke again (but without the fishiness) and bees wax. He had to dope the bees up with the smoke puffer (after gently lighting the little fire inside) and make them go to sleep while he Raided the Hive.

It always seemed a bit mean – this Raiding the Hive. Like hordes of pillaging Mongols looting the castle or something. But they recovered soon enough.

I think the bees had to have a good Queen to keep their shit together after something like that happened. The Queens were important in the bee scheme of things. Dad used to often talk about them. One for every hive, all bundled up in the middle, protected and fed.

Sometimes I think our Mum was like that. When she was hidden under the doona and Dad brought in her cup of tea every morning – whether she drank it or not. All that being sweet and Motherly and looking after us little children, well she’d need a bit of extra love stored in her cells wouldn’t she. (Wonder if she ever had honey in it.)

So out would come the centrifuge and the hot water and the biggest meanest carving knife (those Raiding Hordes again) and the caps would get sliced off each frame and the smell of beeswax would flow and then the honey would.

In the sun. On the terrace, under the Jacaranda tree.

The frames got slotted into another 44-gallon drum (The Centrifuge). They went into special spots made just for them. This was the green Honey Drum not the Fish Drum. Dad didn’t even make this one it was so special.

We would set the thing going with the big wooden handle at the top, slowly at first and building up a bit of speed until it started to fuge and the honey got sucked from the little bee holes shaped perfectly like cells of life.

It would hit the side and build up and up, thicker and thicker until your arm got tired and it went faster and faster and eventually…. there would be so much honey hitting the side and coming out of the bee holes and slipping down the sides that it would finally! start to ooze its way out the brass tap at the bottom.

There had to be jars handy and in the honey would flow. Honey, hot bees wax, fags, wood smoke, sweat, steam and love.

The bees would be kind of flopping about looking a bit out-of-it still from the smoking (maybe we were too, maybe there was a numero uno doing the rounds).

Summer and sun and bees and honey and beeswax and pots filling up and questions of what we’d do with it all and who we’d give some to and where the bees had foraged and taste-test fingers dipping in and bees falling about.

Tilly my kelpie would run backwards and forwards wondering what was going on and why the stoned bees weren’t darting away from her at the same speed when she yapped and snapped at them, lips pulled back.

Sometimes I got to make it spin.

There was a real art to taking the waxy caps off frames and I got to do that too. You have to keep the knife hot. You have to keep dipping it in hot water. When I did it right (you can’t go too deep otherwise you bugger up the bee cells where they live for the next batch) Dad would say so and there was even more love and bees and honey.

I never got stung – well I don’t think so anyway.

It was lots of fun and I can remember it well.

My Dad had two hives but the bees out the back of Stevie’s were nasty bastards. We ended up leaving them alone after they bit Dad on the balls about a million times.

……………..

Libby Davy

20.2.2000 Sunday evening
After reading The Little Prince again
1,370 words
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