рожевий слоник

Paid to fish

12.11.2028

the pin
shift: 18:00 to 22:00. evening bonus active.
pin 4417: altona, east of the pier, 2 m from the rail.
gear: rod (supplied). esky (supplied).
rules: stay on the pin. keep the rod up. do not open the esky.
rating: 4.8

Des was on the pin by ten to six, because the Pin liked you early and never said so, and his rating had gone up a tenth the week he started doing it.

He had a theory about the rating. He had several. None of them had lasted a fortnight.

The rod was a good rod. Better than his own, which was in the shed with the line still wet from March. The esky sat at his left heel where the app had drawn it, and it hummed, the way it always hummed, like a fridge in a room you were trying to sleep in. He had stopped hearing it in the first week. He heard it now because Ro was coming along the pier with the chips and had stopped to look at it.

"It's doing the thing," Ro said.

"It's always doing the thing."

"What's in it?"

"Bait."

"Bait doesn't hum."

"It's a fancy esky. Give us the chips."

Ro gave him the chips and sat on the rail, which was not allowed, and Des let it go, which was the deal. Ten years old and already better at deals than him.

"Did you catch anything?"

"Not yet."

"Did you catch anything yesterday?"

"Not yet."

"That's not how yesterday works."

Two pins down, Lenny's old spot, a bloke Des did not know lifted a hand. Same rod. Same esky at the left heel. Des lifted a hand back. That was all anyone did. Lenny had sat there for five months and then one Tuesday the rating had come up a number short and the pin had gone to someone else by the morning, esky and all. Lenny said he was fine about it. Lenny was at the pub a lot.

The Pin buzzed against his thigh.

18:09. move 2 m left. hold.

He moved two metres left. He held. Ro watched him do it.

"Why'd you move?"

"Better spot."

"How do you know?"

"The app knows."

"The app knows where the fish are?"

"The app knows where the spot is."

Ro thought about that and ate a chip. The sun was going down behind the refinery and the water had gone the colour of a coin. Out past the end of it there was a light, low, where there was not usually a light. Des had noticed it on the first night and then on every night, and he had never once said anything about it, and neither had anyone else, and he had started to think that was the point of it. A thing you could see and not say.

A man came along the rail with a takeaway coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, walking the way people walk when they are not going anywhere. He stopped a bit short of the esky and tilted his head at it.

"They hum in the same key," he said.

Des looked at him.

"All the way along. Listen." And he walked on, coffee and cigarette, past Lenny's old pin, past the one after, and did not look back.

Des listened. He had never thought to. Under the water and the road and Ro chewing, there it was, one note, up and down the pier, like the whole foreshore was a fridge.

"Weird man," said Ro.

"Yeah."

"Priya's dad asked at the meeting what the eskies are."

"What meeting?"

"The community one. Mum went."

"And?"

"And Macca said if you don't like it there's the train."

Des put a chip in his mouth and did not chew it.

He had heard that line on Tuesday, at the pub, from Macca, about the new family at the end of the street, who had done nothing except arrive. He had heard it on Thursday under a post in the community group about the car park, from someone whose name was a bird. He had heard it, now that he was listening, about four times that week, and he had never heard it before that, in a town where he had lived for twenty years, and here it was in his kid's mouth with vinegar on it.

"Don't say that," he said.

"I didn't say it. Macca said it."

"Don't say it anyway."

"Why?"

He did not have a why. He had a feeling, and a feeling was not a why, and Ro was ten and would want the why.

"Because Priya's dad only asked a question," he said.

Ro ate a chip and let it go, which was the deal.

The esky hummed at his heel. One note. He looked at it. He had looked at it a thousand times, but he looked at it now the way you look at a door. Blue lid. Grey latch. The latch was the kind you could open with a thumb, which had always seemed like a strange choice for a thing you were not allowed to open. His thumb was already on it. He had not decided that.

18:31. esky contact detected. rating impact pending.

He took his thumb off.

He thought about Lenny at the pub. He thought about the bloke on Lenny's pin lifting a hand. He thought about the number coming up short on a Tuesday, and about someone new sitting here by Wednesday with Ro's rail and Ro's chips and the same blue lid, and he thought: there's the train.

He picked the rod up instead. He had been told to keep it up, and he kept it up.

And the rod bent.

Not the tide. Not weed. The tip went down and stayed down and the reel talked, and for the first time in six weeks there was a fish on the end of it, a real one, pulling east along the pier the way they did, and Des was off the pin and after it before he had thought about the pin at all.

"Dad!"

"I know!"

"Dad, you've got one!"

"I know I've got one!"

The Pin buzzed against his thigh.

18:34. off pin. return to pin 4417. 30 seconds to rating impact.

He was four metres east. Then five. The fish ran and he let it, because you let them, and the line sang off the reel, and the Pin buzzed again, and he looked at the chalk mark on the boards where his pin was and at the water where his fish was, and he understood what the job was.

The job was not fishing. The job was looking like it.

He walked back. He walked the five metres back to the pin with the rod up and the fish still on, line going out the whole way, the reel making the sound it makes when you have given up on something and are letting it be taken. He stood on the chalk. He kept the rod up. The line went out and out and then, somewhere off the end of the pier, went slack.

18:35. on pin. rating: 4.8.

Ro looked at him. Ten years old and already better at deals.

"It got off," Ro said.

"Yeah."

"Can you get another one?"

"We'll see."

He wound the line in. The hook came back clean. He put a new bit of bait on it that had never been in the esky, and cast, and sat back down where the app had drawn him, two metres from the rail, east of the pier, with his kid and the chips and the one note going up and down the foreshore.

The light sat on the horizon where it always sat. Nobody said anything about it. The esky hummed at his heel, warm as a dog.

21:58. shift ending. evening bonus applied.
rating: 4.8. next shift available.