I’d waited. ‘Pop, if this is real, and there’s gold there …’

‘Exactly. So, I was thinking, one day soon …’

‘We could go look?’

‘Yeah, what d’you reckon?’

‘It’s worth a go.’

‘If it’s not there it’s not there.’

Then I’d asked, ‘Pop, why have you waited so long?’

He’d flattened the map and replied, ‘I’m not sure. But the thing is, Clem, now you know about it too.’

We’d both sat in the shed, staring at the cross, like it was glowing, like it had chosen us, said, Come on, boys, you’ve had some hard times, but that’s all over.

Now I wiped the sweat and dust from my forehead and said, ‘What d’you reckon, Pop? Coupla million?’

‘Yeah.’

He had the look. Like he’d once doubted but had overcome these feelings. But this belief, this conviction had come too late and now he was old and unable to go searching for the thing that might save him, and us, from a fibro existence.

‘I’m not getting any younger, you know.’ He picked up another stone, examined it, discarded it.

‘I know, Pop.’

‘I can still drive. And if it is there …’

If, I thought. If. The glue that held everyone’s life together. If Les would just calm down; if Ron would come over and talk; if John would stop stealing.

‘If we found it and made a claim it wouldn’t do me much good but you and Fay, and Jen, and your kids. That’s what I’m thinking about.’

Which seemed reasonable. All you had to do was go and look and if the old guy in the pub had been a fruitcake, so what? This is what I had seen in the shed that day, and what I could still see now. It wouldn’t do any harm to go and look.

He said, ‘You still believe the map’s right?’

‘He wouldn’ta made it up, would he?’ I wondered if this was the wrong thing to say. Ever since I could remember, Mum had said, ‘That bloody map. Some old drunk gives it to you and you actually believe him? Dad, come on.’

‘Yes, I do believe him. Why shouldn’t I?’

I was getting feeling back into my hands. ‘That’s very famous, Lasseter’s Reef. People have been searching for it for years.’

‘Too right. But the thing is, that day in the pub I got lucky, but I let it go, Clem. I let it go. We gotta reclaim it.’

‘Yeah, we do, Pop.’

The map was still in his toolbox, and he still showed it to me, explaining where it was, and how we’d get there. He’d planned the route, the stops, the motels, the lot. It was all just a matter of faith.