Westpoint Tales - Jon & Bobby's Tale, 9

Life went on. Jon went back to work in a few days. The Craddocks didn’t want him to, but he was insistent.

“If you don’t want me, Mr. Craddock, then I’ll have to find another job. I can’t sit around doing nothing.”

They wanted him, but they made sure that he only had light work to do. (Not the check-out though!) He spent most of his spare time with the ‘twins’.

He went once and had a meal at their house, but, sensing their mother’s disapproval, he didn’t go back there again. They did have a great house though. Mostly, they spent their time wandering around and they showed him their town – all the rivers, the beaches, parks and sportsgrounds and other ‘hang out’ places.

The ‘twins’ found an acceptance from the other kids around town that they’d never known before. Everyone wanted to be Jon’s friend.

Sometimes, when it was raining, they just sat around in his room at the Beachhouse, talking. He didn’t want to play the games that they would liked to have played. He couldn’t. They gave him some music, an I-pod loaded with songs. It was second-hand, but they didn’t need the two that they had, they always listened to the same music anyway.

Finally! Jon went back to the Outpatients, at the hospital, where Dr. Lyons removed all the dressings from his body, except for the one on the gash down his side. He replaced that one with a water-proof spray-on, and told him that, yes, it would be okay for him to go swimming again. (“YES!!”)

“A bit of salt-water will be good for you, I guess. It should help to heal you up. Just don’t overdo it, Son. If you feel any pain, or any discomfort at all, stop and rest. Listen to what your body tells you. Take it easy out there.

And, Jon, as a father, I want to say ’thank you’. Thank you for what you’ve done for my boys. They’ve never been busier or happier. You’ve really opened up their lives and brought them out of themselves, and that’s good.”

“Thank you, Doctor Lyons, but whatever I’ve done for them, I’ve gotten back double. There’s two of them but there’s only one of me.”

“You got that right. There certainly is only one of you – you are unique!”

Jon blushed, pleased but embarrassed now. “Thank you, Sir. Now I’m going swimming! Please tell Billy and Bobby that I’ll catch up with them later. I’ll phone them tonight. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for everything. Now I’ve got to go!”

He walked back to the Beachhouse, left his clothes in his room, went over to the river, left the towel on the ladder and dropped into the water.

Billy and Bobby were pleased for him – pleased that he could go back to doing what he wanted to, but he didn’t phone them.

At 8o’clock, when it was starting to get dark, Billy rang the Beachhouse to see what Jon was doing, but he was disappointed. Sherry answered the phone.

“Oh, hello young Lyons. No, Jon’s not here. He went swimming hours ago, I guess that he’s just forgotten the time. He was supposed to come and eat with us tonight, but we still haven’t seen him. That’s not like the Kid at all. He usually does what he says he’s going to.

Okay, we’ll tell him to ring you, when he gets back. ‘Bye, young Lyons.”

At 9o’clock, Bobby rang the Beachhouse, but he still hadn’t returned. Nor was he there at 10o’clock. They went to bed, Billy went to sleep, but Bobby lay there, wide-awake and worrying. Where was Jon?

At midnight, Billy woke up and saw Bobby getting dressed.

“Bobby? What are you doing?”

“Go back to sleep, Billy. I’m just going to see if Jon’s back yet. I can’t sleep anyway.”

“You’re going to see him? Okay, I’m coming with you.”

They both got dressed and put their jackets on, it was getting chilly out there. They snuck out of the house and biked across town to the Beachhouse. Jon’s room was not locked, but it was empty. He was not there.

“Damm! Something’s wrong, Billy. Something’s wrong! It’s been dark for hours now and he never swims after dark.”

“He doesn’t. Let’s go over to the river.”

They went out and over to the wharf. There was nothing there, except, when they looked down the ladder, a white towel was hanging, limply, on one of the bottom rungs.

“Fuckit! He’s not here either. Where is he, Billy? Where is Jon?”

“Well I don’t know. He’s not up my arse, I’d feel him.”

“Don’t be disgusting! Something is wrong; I just know it.”

“Maybe he’s resting somewhere. Dad said he told him to stop if he starts hurting.”

“He’s not just resting. It has been about 9 hours now! What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. Let’s go and see the police, they’ll know what to do.”

They ran up the brightly-lit but quiet and empty main street. The Police station was empty and locked. There were no staff on overnight in their small town, thanks to bloody cost-cutting. Bobby picked up the emergency phone and spoke to the call-centre operator, but she wasn’t very interested.

“We can’t call out the whole town just because a teenager is not in his bed. Go home and get some sleep, Boy. He’ll show up in the morning. If he doesn’t, come back and speak to the sergeant when he’s on duty.”

Disappointed and pissed, they went back to the wharf. The towel was still down there on the ladder. They sat down to wait. About an hour later, it was starting to rain, it was cold and they were getting wet, so they went back to the Beachhouse and they got into Jon’s bed. He wouldn’t mind. They cuddled up together, getting warm, and they drifted off to sleep.

They woke, late, in the morning. There was no window to let the sun in there to wake them up. Back at the wharf, the towel was still down there and there was no sign of their friend. They sat and waited. When the town clock rang out 10am, they went back to the Police Station and spoke to Sergeant Jamieson. He wasn’t too worried either.

“Look Boys, Jon can take care of himself if anyone can. He probably just stayed out with the seals. He’s done that before, hasn’t he?”

“No, he hasn’t. He said that he’s not a seal. He can’t sleep out on bare rocks.”

“But didn’t he stay out at the seal colony when he first arrived here?”

“He did,” Billy agreed, “but he had a tent and a sleeping bag and stuff. Now he’s got nothing, all his gear is up in his room at the Beachhouse.”

“He’s out there somewhere, Sergeant, and he hasn’t even got any clothes with him. And he’s still not completely fit. This was the first time he’s been swimming since the shark hurt him. Something is wrong!”

“Okay, Boys. We don’t normally do anything until someone’s been missing for 24 hours, but I’ll get the fishing boats to keep an eye out for him. If he hasn’t shown up by this afternoon, I’ll get a helicopter to have a look around. There’s not really a hell of a lot more we can do. Maybe the radio station will ask people to look out for him on the beaches too. Go home, Boys. Go home and rest. He’ll be fine.”

They left, but they didn’t go home. They went back to the wharf to sit and wait, and worry. Eventually, their mother arrived and took them home. She was majorly pissed! Worried, relieved, upset and angry. How dare they sneak out and stay out all night without telling anyone? That Jon was a bad influence on them.

“Mum, don’t. He is not.” Bobby argued. “Jon’s done nothing, but he’s missing and he’s in trouble. I just know that he’s in trouble.”

“He’s not in any more trouble than you are, Yong Man. You can go to your room, both of you, and stay there this time!”

The long day passed, and then another. Everyone was getting worried by then, the Supermarket people, the Beachhouse people, the whole town it seemed. The boys, especially Bobby, were getting frantic. Where was Jon? He couldn’t be dead, could he? They would know something, wouldn’t they? Where was he?

Even Mrs. Lyons was getting concerned. She and Justine walked for hours along the beaches. She didn’t dare say it out loud, but she rather thought that the kid might be dead. It Happened. It had been three days now, how long could he survive out there?

Then, something did happen at last – something strange. One of Westpoint’s small fishing boats, making its way home with a full catch, was suddenly surrounded by seals – dozens of seals!

The fishermen on board had no time for seals, dirty fish-stealing creatures that they were, but there was something strange here. They were drifting around, heads sticking up and barking at the boat.

The noise was deafening. Some of them were even howling – howling like injured dogs. They’d never heard anything like that before. Several of the seals looked like they were crying with big tears on their faces. Could seals do that?

“Face, what the hell’s going on here?” Asked one of the crew. “You think it’s that kid – that Jon? The ‘Lord of the Seals’ they call him, don’t they?”

“Damm, Cray. It must be. It must be him; why else would they be doing this? He’s been missing for days.”

The seals were almost, but not quite, surrounding the boat. They had left one channel open out to the south-west, so Face turned the boat and headed that way. In a few minutes, they were approaching the Pinnacles – 3 large rock-pillars standing up out of the sea off the Cape.

There was something odd here too. Seagulls. There were always seagulls around there, nesting and resting on the Pinnacles, but, today, there were hundreds of them. Thousands of them!

Calling and screaming, a cloud of seagulls wheeled around the rocks. Then, they saw it. In the centre, in the ‘eye of the storm’, something was lying on a flattish rock at the foot of the seaward rock pillar.

“Oh, bloody hell, Face! Look at that.”

A small figure lay, feet trailing in the water, like a doll dropped down there. A naked, broken and bloodied doll. Face sounded the boat’s alarm siren. The seals and the gulls all shut up and the silence was deafening. The figure on the rocks raised his head up and then flopped again. He was alive.

They couldn’t get any closer to the rocks in the surging waves, so they sent out a distress call, highest priority, and then circled around while they waited for the rescue helicopter. The chopper arrived, at last. Face, on his cell-phone, directed them to the spot and a medic was lowered down to the rocks.

He spent what seemed an age tending to the kid, then secured him to a stretcher and they were winched up into the helicopter. They flew off into the town, to the waiting hospital, and the boat made its way home.

Everything was back to normal now. Most of the seals and the gulls had gone. As the boat chugged its way back to the port, they threw a couple of cases of fish overboard, as thanks for a job well done.

The chopper landed in the hospital grounds and the broken, bloodied, boy was lifted out and raced into the operating theatre. The local radio gleefully ‘newsflashed’ the good news. Jon, the Supermarket boy, had been found. He was alive and in the hospital now.