Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds (37 page)

Cloud was fleecing away into the northeast and patches of pale blue were taking its place. Up on the cliff at the McCoys', Darren had taken a piece of cypress from the woodpile and chocked it against the melaleuca gate to keep it open, narrowly missing having his hand caught in Ron's rabbit trap which was still hidden in the firewood stack. As Craig and Liz approached, about ten or fifteen people, including three of Dom Khouri's sons and his only daughter Veronica, were standing about beside a trestle table full of food and drink. The table had been set up on the clifftop right next to a large vertical object wrapped in black plastic which was obviously what everyone, whether they knew it or not, had come to see. Noel had taken the six bentwood chairs from Ron's shed and placed them beside the trestle table. Rhyll and Trumpeter Carson were sitting on them talking to Nan Burns and Bob Elliot. Nan and Bob had been suitably surprised to see Trumpeter Carson and were talking animatedly with him between glancing over at the wrapped object sitting alone on the cliff, on the other side of the open gate.

Dom Khouri stood with his wife by the La Branca bench that Ron's father had made, talking to Barbara Traherne and Noel and Jim Lea. The five of them were looking out to sea as Dom Khouri described how the scene they were looking at reminded him of home.

‘So, what are you going to do with Ron's place, Dom?' Jim asked.

‘Nothing much for a while,' he said. ‘Who knows, it's too soon
to say. We'll let things rest for a couple of years at least, and maybe build something then. We'll be able to spread out a bit. Have all the grandchildren around.'

‘That'll be nice.'

‘Yes it will. I'd like to grow some things too. Make a small orchard, even.'

‘Min always said it was too windy for fruit up here,' Jim told him.

‘Yes,' Dom Khouri said. ‘But look at her nectarine trees. So maybe stone fruit. I don't know. We have to wait for Ron and Min to agree. I'll let them be my guide.'

Jim Lea laughed. ‘Don't forget Len. Mind you, you might end up with a mown slope, an open shed and just a bunch of sheep at that rate.'

Dom Khouri smiled. ‘So be it,' he said. ‘Or as we used to say in Lebanon: “The dead make the living think”.'

Dom Khouri had organised caterers, but Darren and Noel had assured him that waiters and waitresses might be a bit over the top. The trestle table was full of seafood and lamb and chicken dishes, salads and bowls of vege tables, and underneath the table were four large rubbish bins full of ice and beer, and three cases of wine from a winery near the Grampians. They had agreed in their discussion that this day was to be no funeral or wake, but rather a celebration, albeit tinged with sadness, of Ron's life and what he had meant to them all. Sweet William had assured them that he didn't think Ron would mind if they had a bit of a piss-up.

Ron's partner in countless hands of cards, in countless jocular dusks, was, in fact, nearly the last to arrive. He appeared walking through the garden with Eve, in a suit and tie and with a pork-pie hat on his head that only Rhyll recognised as Ron's. Eve was dressed in a green crepe frock and wore a little magpie pin on her bosom, in memory, she said, of Min. She was smiling as usual as
they walked toward the crowd, and assisting her husband, who seemed a lot older than her all of a sudden.

When Trumpeter Carson noticed Sweet William coming towards him, he said, ‘Now look, Rhyll, here comes a true gentleman.' Trumpeter stood up and the two old men shook hands.

‘So what's this all about then?' Trumpeter said, placing a hand on Sweet William's shoulder. ‘They tell me you've had something to do with it.'

Sweet William blinked slowly. ‘It's just a bit of a show for a shy man who wouldn't hear of it while he was alive,' he said. And then, with a mischievious grin, ‘Bloody good of you to make an appearance, Trump.'

Veronica Khouri put a glass of beer in Sweet William's hand. He raised it slightly to the sky and said, ‘Well, a man's not a camel. Here's health,' before taking a good long draught.

By this time it was four o'clock and, with two hours of light left, Darren and Noel decided that everything was ready. Then they saw Craig Wilson and his wife stepping up off the driveway quartz so Noel went over and shook Craig's hand. Craig introduced him to Liz, and Noel could see that it was an effort for them both to have come. He led them straight over to Sweet William, who turned aside from where he'd been talking to Trumpeter and Rhyll.

Noel allowed Sweet William to finish his drink while chatting with Craig and Liz, and Walker Lea also, who'd walked over to say hello to Liz, recognising her from Vrindarvan. Then he gave Sweet William the nod.

The old man excused himself. He walked around the trestle table, taking up a fork in his left hand as he did so. Moving through the melaleuca gate to stand beside the wrapped object on the cliff, he tapped the fork on his glass. Everyone turned his way.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, removing the pork-pie hat.
‘Thanks for coming up. I'm not very good at this spruiking caper so I'll be brief.

‘Now then, first of all I'd like to thank the wind for its non-attendance today. It must be an important occasion indeed if the wind gets it right, eh? Either that or Ron's had a word.'

He paused, looking down at the ground, and lightly brushed the crimson tip of his nose with a knuckle. Looking up again at the faces before him, he continued.

‘It's my belief actually,' he said quietly, but with a subtle oratorical flair, ‘that Ron might well have had a word with the wind today. Looking about I'd say, in his absence, he'd be pretty comfortable with this gathering. Min, of course, would be itching to be here, but Ron, well, perhaps it's appropriate that he's somewhere else. Let's face it, he almost always was! He was the last word on solitude, eh. Out hunting on his Pat Malone all the time. He'd come and go, Rhyll, wouldn't he. Never bored, I wouldn't reckon. There's a knack to that. Today, if the truth be known, he's probably in a canoe somewhere, paddling along the River Styx. Enjoying himself, without the brouhaha.

‘You all know that, next to my darling Eve, Ron McCoy was my closest friend. I'm proud of that. I never ever met a man who knew as much about this little world in which we live, and as a criterion for a life well spent you can't beat that. You can get in an aeroplane and spend your life going around in circles and not know half of what Ron knew. That is, of course, one reason why we are all so sad that he's gone, and why we miss him.

‘But now the boys, Darren and Noel, with the help of Nan Burns and Ron's good friend and neighbour Dominic Khouri, have done something to make sure Ron will always be around to show us what's what. To remind us when the snapper's on, when to batten down the hatches, where to get a feed of duck or yabby, or when to retire inside with a stout and a hand of cards. For the likes of
myself, and Rhyll over there, us oldies, the days are more and more full of memories. Ron, of course, was never one to get nostalgic but, for the life of me, I am. Can't help it. As one of the very few who ever heard it, I'd give my eyetooth to hear him play that friggin' organ again. But that's not going to happen. Still, I've got the tunes in my head. And there's not that many to remember. Only let me hear one every blue moon, the bastard.

‘Anyway, we're all going to miss him; in fact, we already do miss him. But in years to come I'm tickled pink to know that he's always gonna be here on this site, for any of us who want to come up along this old track for a bit of a think, and to see which way the wind blows.'

With a gentle smile Sweet William raised his glass to the gathering and stood aside. At the trestle table, Rhyll passed a hand over her face and frowned savagely at the ocean sky.

Darren and Noel stepped forward and began to remove the black plastic from the thing they had made. As it peeled off and fell to the ground, under instructions Darren had given him in the car, Trumpeter Carson began to play his fiddle. It had been a while but he could never forget the fingering for ‘Shenandoah', and Rhyll's nod told him it didn't sound too bad.

The eyes of the small gathering widened as Darren and Noel peeled away the last bits of gaffer tape and Trumpeter Carson played the tune in double-stop style. There in front of them, with the background of sea and sky and the Two Pointers, stood a colourfully painted timber totem pole, on the very top of which was a sure likeness of Ron, in mid-action casting his fishing rod towards the sea. The figure was set into a cylindrical groove at the top of the pole so the tip of the rod served as a weathervane, pointing southwest to where the light breeze was coming in from the sea beyond Minapre. The likeness of Ron was about four feet six inches high above the tall pole, carved out of satin-box from Darren's timber
stash and painted expertly by Noel. The figure wore a maroon and yellow cap and a knee-length gaberdine coat sculpted to a tee and painted sea-grey. Although the face was a bit broad across the brow and also a touch long in the chin, the expression of the face and the posture of the body left no-one in doubt as to who it was. It was Ron McCoy, fishing in the wind.

People began to come forward to have a closer look, Rhyll included, and Craig and Liz, accompanied by Walker Lea. Trumpeter Carson stayed put on his chair and continued to play, hardly having looked up from the violin across his chest to admire the sculpture. Quietly he sang the words of the song to himself, as he played it over and over again, in memory of Ron, and also of all the great years he'd spent himself in Mangowak. He played the old river song for the river of life itself, and the tune formed a melancholy counterpoint to the sheer amazement that had taken over the crowd as they went up to inspect the weathervane.

The pole on which the figure of Ron stood was carved in four horizontal sections up and down its length and painted brightly. Two of the sections consisted of tongues of timber flaring straight out, in the fashion of a palm tree's trunk, upon which scenes were painted of daily life in Mangowak, and of figures bearing a likeness to Ron and Min performing typical tasks. Each of these tongues of timber went around the entire 360 degrees of the pole and contained four different scenes, one for each point of the compass. There was a depiction of Min at her kitchen sink, of Ron in his canoe, of Ron playing the pump organ, of their house itself with the Belvedere sign in the foreground. There were also scenes of the riverflat, of the pub and the general store, of a ute driving up the Dray Road, of King Cormorant and Gannet Rocks, and of the bridge over the Mangowak river. One scene was devoted entirely to the heads of smiling Border collies, five dogs in all, and another one was like a small still life of three objects: a six-ounce glass, a bullet
cartridge, and a drum net. As everyone gathered around the pole, they pointed out these things to each other and tilted their heads back to look at Ron's cast, swivelling in the breeze.

The two alternate sections of the pole, between the lacquered scenes on the tongues of ironbark, were left smooth and round, and on them were painted strong bands of bright colour and expressions that Ron was fond of using: ‘One shot's better than two', ‘The mullet's running', ‘He was grinning like a gang-gang', ‘Let's catch one more for the mother'. At the top of the highest section was written in a cobalt blue paint on an olive-green background:
In Memory of Ron McCoy: gone to fish with his mother Min and his father Len in heavenly waters
.

Ron McCoy, Min's boy, was seventy-five years going on eleven when he died. His death had focused those who knew him on his talents once again. All that looking and safekeeping. All that harbouring of knowledge. All that witnessing and recognising, interpreting, of the signs in light and cloud and sound. Sid Traherne had told Rhyll once that Ron ought to try his hand at gold panning. With his knack for the land and water, Sid had said, he was a monty to become a rich man.

Darren and Noel stood to one side with Sweet William, beaming and accepting congratulations. They had set the weathervane deep into the cliff with concrete next to the La Branca bench and knew now that it would stand there until only the wind itself had whittled it away. No storm would dislodge it, and no gale, they had made sure of that by the depth to which they had sunk its foundation. Now and forever they could come to Ron's cliff and know his knowledge of their coast would not be lost, despite his dark passing. It would live on in them, and was represented in the salty air by the pure tribute they had made.

As the dusk began to set in on the cliff, Nan Burns and Walker Lea built a little fire in a pit beside the trestle table and those remaining
gathered around it. In the glow of the fire, and with a clear sky above them, they told stories of Ron and Min and other great people as well. Sweet William and Eve went home with the nightfall, as did Dom Khouri and his sons, and Craig and Liz, but those who remained stayed long into the night to drink the beer and wine. Trumpeter Carson played his fiddle and was happy to talk of his travels, and a Dolphin torch from the open shed was propped against the base of the weathervane pointing upwards, giving the figure of Ron McCoy casting into the black starry night an otherworldly glow.