The Turning (20 page)

His brother paddled past and sat some distance away. Leaper looked shoreward at the pink blob of the water tank above the dunes. He observed Max who fingered the water and stared out to sea. How
would he talk to him, explain what had happened? And why should he bother; why did it matter? He’d spent his boyhood vainly trying to get Max’s attention. He aped his older brother,
adored him, followed him at school and on the beach, blind to the fact that Max was contemptuous of him and had been from the moment he was born.

It was Max who introduced and fed the idea that his little brother was a bit simple. The fact that it wasn’t true was obscured by Leaper’s capacity to absorb and endure such meanness
out of love, as though that’s all it was, his cruelty, a mere test of brotherly love. He was, without doubt, naïve. Leaper instinctively believed the best of people, beginning with his
family. In his mind Max was only ever joking. As a boy of eight, he really did think that their mother was only going on holiday when she brought them here to the old man one summer, never to
return. And he was almost twenty before he saw that, instead of hiding his feelings toward him, his father had no feelings at all.

Leaper wasn’t so naïve anymore; he’d seen plenty in his two seasons of glory. But he didn’t feel better or stronger for having been wised up. If anything he yearned for
the unselfconscious part of him because, looking back, it was the only bit that felt authentic. This vigilant, grown-up version he’d been living was mostly an act. It was the reason
he’d come unstuck this year in front of the whole country. He was certain of that; he’d had time enough to think about it. But what he thought might be achieved by talking to Max about
it was a lot less clear. Even as he sat here he knew that his brother was part of the mess he’d made of himself – every minute in the water reminded him of something more that confirmed
it – yet what did he expect from Max but the usual spitting disdain? You’d have to be a bit simple to persist with Max. And yet there were things to say. There was nothing to lose by
saying them. Except maybe a few teeth and a bed for the night.

Another set bore down on the reef. This time they were ready. The brothers hustled and jockeyed for position and Leaper felt himself smiling with real pleasure at this instant reversion to form.
He wasn’t as strong as Max, but he was so much fitter that it should have been no contest except for the fact that he was out of practice. He pulled back and gave his brother the wave and Max
launched into it with an expression that said it’d always been his. The old conviction.

Leaper sat in the spray with a bitter laugh. He watched Max’s progress by the occasional flash of board or upflung arm that showed above the steady bending wave. Max still surfed with an
angry intensity, a kind of misery Leaper saw in some footballers. It was the scrapping spirit of the bloke who played the percentages. No style, no natural flash, all power and no beauty. Max
reminded him of the journeymen he’d played on, the ugly scramblers, disciplined triers. They were the ones who vented their frustration on the likes of him.

They weren’t alike, him and Max. All their efforts were in opposite directions; it was what each of them needed to try for that caused the trouble. Trying. The very word was a provocation
between them.

He hadn’t missed Max. He stayed away from the old man’s funeral; given the home-and-away schedule, he’d had excuses enough for not being there, but he didn’t offer
them.

Another wave reared from the deep. It seemed to stagger a moment as it confronted the shoaling reef, and a creaturely shiver ran along it as Leaper spun and paddled into his path. In a moment
there was the old sense of being overtaken, of having been snatched up by something mighty, and he rose to his feet grinning. But before he’d even taken the drop and leant into his first
turn, the wave was twisting on itself, hurling him out across the bubbling reef without the board underfoot. He hit the bottom hard and bounced across the coral reef in a welter of foam. When he
surfaced, the board was tombstoning at the end of its leash and he could feel that he’d lost skin off his knees and elbows.

That was choice, said Max paddling by.

Stunned and winded, Leaper pulled himself onto the board and followed his brother back out to the break. He was surprised at the sudden flicker of anger that passed through him.

Some things are best left to the men, said Max when they sat up in the calm water outside.

Yeah, said Leaper. Whatever.

You never had the steel for it.

What? Football?

It’s a man’s game.

It’s just a business, Max. You’re so naïve.

Max glared at him, his beard streaming water, and Leaper felt his face flush with unholy pleasure.

You were soft, said Max with new feeling. You were a fuckin coward.

Leaper said nothing. He conceded that he was a lazy trainer and a lukewarm clubman, but he didn’t shirk the hard stuff; it just never found him. He wasn’t afraid of anything until
the very end and even then, in the last awful, mid-season weeks, it was the very sudden and novel prospect of failure that scared him. The violence of the game didn’t really register because
Leaper had never been injured. There was all that talk of him being too thick to fear getting hurt – Max’s old smear spreading beyond White Point – but it wasn’t about being
stupid because even when the rest of his game went to shit, when the ball felt like a sandbag and his legs like pot ballast, he still had a kind of spatial genius, his instinct for evasion.

So, what the fuck happened? Max asked, as if despite himself. There was an exasperation in his voice that surprised Leaper.

I couldn’t do it anymore.

And what the bloody hell does that mean?

I don’t really know.

That you
wouldn’t
do it anymore. That’s what it looked like.

Watching, were you?

Christ, you moron! You play for my team; of course I was watchin. Tearin my fuckin hair out. You just bloody stopped.

Leaper smiled. Max grasped at the water now, the tendons rigid in his neck.

I gotta live here, said Max. You’re a bloody embarrassment.

But you hated it when I was good.

Fuck off.

Admit it.

Fuck off out of it.

Poor old Max.

You come here to blue with me? said Max with his pit-bull leer.

I dunno, said Leaper, noticing now that both his hands were bleeding.

You’re a fuck-up.

Leaper could hardly deny it. Only a few months ago he was still the prodigy. But come March he was hot and cold –
enigmatic
, in the words of the commentators – and in April
he’d become first a
disappointment
and then a
travesty
. There was no obvious source of trouble to point to, no knee reconstructions to endure, no contentious overpayments or
distracting sex scandal. He was a mystery. His demise was as puzzling as his emergence. One week he kicked ten at a canter and the next he couldn’t have earned a kick in a stampede. It just
got worse. The crowd called him ordinary. The coach said he was rubbish. Players shunned him. Word was he wasn’t trying and that was the biggest laugh of all.

Geez, Max, I thought you’d finally be happy. For once the whole world sees it your way. Vindicated, that’s what you should be feeling.

You stupid little bastard. People dream of havin what you had. It makes em sick to see a spoilt prick like you walk away from what they couldn’t have.

Just you, Max. Why don’t you admit it? You’re talkin about yourself.

You didn’t try—

But that’s what you don’t get, mate. That’s the whole problem.

You were more arse than class.

Fair enough. But I just played for fun, Max. I loved playing the game. Remember? Shit,
you
should remember. You hated my guts for it. Jesus, I was the only person you ever hated more than
the old woman; it was like I was responsible for her pissing off as well as everything else. I was like some insect you had to squash.

You think you can take me? Max said, sculling closer. You reckon you can?

I dunno, mate. What’s the point?

Won’t or can’t?

Aw, that again?

Why the fuck are you here?

I’m not sure. Maybe I wanted to say some things. There’s nowhere to go.

You just walked off the fuckin ground. Up the race. In front of thirty-five thousand people and the TV. The country, you dumb cunt!

I couldn’t play anymore. I told you. It was like the magic was gone.

Aw, and ya just dunno why.

Leaper washed the blood from the heel of one palm and looked at the cut a moment. It was nastier than he’d first thought.

Oh, I know why. It’s no mystery to me, mate.

Fuck this, said Max, paddling for a wave after they’d let several roll through unridden.

Leaper turned and watched him go. For a long moment his brother’s body was visible through the wall of water. The sound of all those tons of water falling was as huge as a stadium crowd.
As he watched Max go, he wondered if he
could
take him now. Years of weight training had bulked him up; he was strong and quick and two years younger. And there’d be a certain
satisfaction in dishing out a little of what Max had given him all through the years, the bullying bastard.

Leaper didn’t catch any wave that came through. He was too churned up with thinking. Everything was arse-up again; it was just plain perverse. He’d had years to get past all this
family shit and for a good while there he really had got beyond caring. He’d felt liberated. Those first two seasons he felt like an animal out of his cage. He played football
unselfconsciously and lived the same way. Until news of the old man’s death. The business of the funeral, and not going. It was about showing Max he didn’t care. That was what poisoned
him; it got into everything, this business of showing them. One ordinary game and then he wanted to show them he wasn’t ordinary. Then he was showing the coach that he was trying. Jesus, it
was all the showing and trying that ruined him. Because when he ran out onto the park not giving a shit, just excited to get a kick, to fly high and feel the mindless thwack of the ball against his
chest, he was something inexplicable, something that delighted him as much as the fans. That’s what left him when he played to prove every balding, wheezy lard-arse commentator wrong. The
magic evaporated.

Wasn’t that all he was doing here, hungry and tired and a bit chilled now at White Point – getting into Max’s face, showing him he didn’t care when it just wasn’t
true? Just having Max within arm’s reach made him boil with memories. The time Max had tried to suffocate him in the dunes, bury him alive. The day at school when he shat himself and was
locked in the dunnies while Max marshalled the laughing mob outside. Christ, if Max was shamed by last week’s fiasco then why not enjoy his discomfort? But it felt poisonous. It took too much
effort to keep it up. What he felt like was a cup of tea and about fifteen doughnuts in the warmth of Max’s van. He wanted to see his girls. They were small, still; they’d smell of
clean pyjamas and honey on toast.

Max paddled up beside him and cleared his nose horribly.

Won’t surf either, eh? You’re a case, Frank.

You still in the old man’s van?

Took it to the tip.

Keep anything out of it?

Not much. What, did you want something from it?

No. Nothing. Hey, tell me about your missus.

Max scowled.

Raelene, that her name?

His brother nodded.

I was thinking of dropping over.

Don’t, said Max.

It wasn’t my fault I could play footy, Max. It wasn’t my fault Mum did what she did. This is just stuff that happened to us.

You make me sick.

How come you’re not working today? The cray season’s not finished.

I got put off the boat.

Shit.

That’s women for ya.

I really wanna meet her.

Don’t come over.

Relax. I won’t say a thing about you. Just had this urge to connect. You know?

Don’t come. You can’t come.

There was a strange note of urgency in Max’s voice. Along with the fury there was a kind of pleading that Leaper couldn’t believe.

Max?

Fuck off. Leave me alone.

Max paddled away a few yards as the dark lines of another set piled up in the distance. Leaper followed him out of habit, a reversion to old ways, until he caught himself and sat up. He was too
tired for this, there was no point talking to him. Maybe he should just paddle in and go see Raelene despite him. But why bother? He didn’t even understand the compulsion to meet her. Was it
just to piss Max off or was he really curious about meeting the woman who’d married the bastard and was now family?

A surge of turbulence passed between Max and him, a sudden fattening of the water that caused Leaper to blink. His brother had his back to him, was still paddling away, when a bronze flash
jerked him sideways on the board and drove him high in the water, spinning him round so that Leaper saw his open mouth within the streaming beard and the shark moiling beneath him. A second later
he was all flailing arms that went under a moment until he surfaced in a pink smear.

Leaper didn’t move. Max’s teeth were tobacco-stained. His eyes were white. The straining cartilage of his nose was white. He sucked in a breath – it was as though he’d
only just remembered how – and began to shudder before the whaler broke off and twisted away.

Leaper sat there.

Max groped for his board. It looked too short; it was half a board. Leaper saw the rest of it drift up the face of a wave that rose, tottered, and rolled past them unbroken.

You fuckin pansy! screamed Max. What’re you waitin for?

Leaper hesitated.

Frank?

Leaper paddled into the spoiled water and took Max by the beard, tried to haul him onto his own board, but Max wouldn’t be parted from the remains of his own, so Leaper towed him a way by
whatever handful he could get of him, trying to get him into a stretch of clean water, but Max jerked and lashed so much that the sea churned with whorls and streamers of blood.