Floundering (6 page)

Loretta sticks her head out of the caravan. Tom, she says, don’t you wanna come in?

I scrunch my hands into Bert’s seats. Yeah, I say.

Well, come on, she says and smiles really big.

I close Bert’s door and it slams accidentally. Sorry, I hiss at him and walk away.

I pull on the caravan screen door. The step is tinny under my feet. My eyes adjust to the darkness inside. Loretta and Jordy are sitting at a tiny table with a candle between them. The candle wavers. Loretta scrapes the water bottle across the sandy tabletop and it makes my skin crawl.

Well, that looks like a bed, says Loretta. I can see one end of the caravan taken up by the square of a mattress. And I reckon you two could sleep here, she says and pats the seat she’s sitting on.

What about sheets? I say.

We’ll find them in the mornin’, sport.

She gets up and starts opening cupboards one by one, looking inside them. She leaves them all open.

Here we go, she says. She gets three cans out of the cupboard, and dumps them on the table. One of them has no label, on the
other ones the labels are faded and disintegrating.

That one’s a surprise, she laughs.

She opens a drawer. The cutlery rattles. She gets out three spoons and a can opener. She sits back down and opens each can.

Sweet, she says, creamed corn, and laughs again.

I’m not hungry, says Jordy.

More for us, she smiles at me.

I rub my feet under the table. She flicks a spoon at me and it slides on the gritty sand.

I get up and close each of the cupboards, clicking them back into place. Loretta rolls her eyes. I sit back down and she dumps the can in front of me.

You little weirdo, says Loretta and she reaches over the table to ruffle my hair. I swoop from under her hand. Go on, she says.

The corn is swimming in a milky liquid. I stir it with my spoon and try to get a spoonful that’s got less liquid. It drips all over the tabletop. The corn kernels burst in my mouth. They’re sweet, but I gag.

I can hear us all breathing.

I can’t sleep, I say.

Shut up, says Jordy.

There are strange shadows on the ceiling of the caravan. I feel under the table and there’s gum there. Jordy’s feet hang out over the edge. Gran read me books before bed. They were all girl’s books. Jordy always hid his head under the covers so he didn’t have to listen.

I can hear the ocean whisper and growl.
Grrrrrrr, shhhhhh,
grrrrrrr, shhhhhhhhh, grrrrrrr, shhhhhhhhh, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, shhhhhhh.
All night it growls at me. I’m terrified a wave’s going to come right up and wash us away.

She’s flung out on the mattress like a splattered bug on the windscreen. I creep up and take a good look at her feet. They aren’t cracked like Gran’s feet. They’re smooth and small as mine.

She opens her eyes and I step back, heart racing at being caught.

I think it’s Christmas, Loretta, I say.

She curls over on her side and puts her head under the pillow mumbling something. The pillow has no cover on it, and it’s marked with brown stains.

I bump against Jordy’s feet trying to get past, and even though he looks like he’s asleep he kicks me before pulling his legs up into a ball. There’s thick dust on everything, and the windows are so caked with salt I can’t see through them. The caravan has a force field of salt in the exact shape of a caravan.
A blowfly is awake, battering against the window, trying for the light. I open the screen door and a whole lot of other little flies get in. They aim for my face, stick to my sweat. I step outside just in my school shorts, and the screen door screeches closed behind me.

A girl rides past on a shiny new bicycle, streamers flying from the handlebars. She stares at me like I can’t see her looking. I glance down at my chest and it’s pale, I have a tan only on my arms, with a sharp line where my shirtsleeves hang. It’s as if I’m still wearing the shirt.

Merry Christmas, she says.

I look away, mumble Hi into my pale chest. She pedals away towards the tents. When I look up the old man is there watching me from beneath the awning of his caravan. He sees me seeing him. His legs are knobbly sticks out of his shorts. He walks around the side like he’s remembered something he has to do. I go back inside our caravan and put my shirt on. Loretta and Jordy are still curled in their balls. I take a long swig of water and go back outside, saying loudly, It’s Christmas. Slam the door shut.

I walk around the back of the caravan to where there is a path to the beach. Beside the path is a rusted, corrugated iron shed and inside there’s a drop toilet with an old paint tin beside it, full of sawdust to cover the poos. I do a long wee down into the drop. Sprinkle some sawdust in there. Outside the toilet I follow the path to the top of the dune. It only takes a second to reach the top.

The bay is shaped in a long curl, like a hook. The river mouth breaks the beach in two. Near the river there’s a jetty. I run down the dune, letting out a little whoop, and then look around to make sure no one has seen me. Laugh at myself. There’s ghost
crabs at my feet. Their shells are see-through. The sound of crabs scuttling into the cracks when you walk close gives me shivers, but these sand crabs are nice, they seem soft. Looking back to the caravans I can only see wonky TV aerials sticking up above the dunes. At the edge of the water I let the waves foam over my feet. I make my way across the hard sand to the jetty.

Carved into the wooden steps and railing are names, ‘I was ere’, and other things that read like the cryptic crossword questions that Gran used to do sitting in the dining room, calling out the questions to Pa – waiting for his answer. I run my hands over the names. Further out I look down into the water. Feel the wood, smooth under my fingertips from all the leaning. It smells of fish guts. The water swirls little fish and weeds around the pylons. Way out, off the side of the jetty, there’s a big wire cage, for swimming maybe, or sharks.

The sound of an unfurling rope makes me jump. There’s a man further up the jetty surrounded by small cages. Each cage at the end of a rope. He looks like a dad, like he could pick you up and swing you above his head. He’s leaning over the side of the jetty lowering one of the cages into the shallows. He looks up, sees me there.

Crabs, they just walk on in there. Don’t even have to do nothing. He laughs. Shakes his head. It’s bloody paradise.

Yeah. It comes out of my mouth as a squeak. I brush the hair from my face and look at my feet. See the water rushing under me through the gaps in the planks. I turn quickly, walk back to the caravan. My feet burn on the hot, soft sand.

Bert is gone. I slow run, trying to stop myself from sprinting to the door of the caravan. Loretta, Loretta, Jordy, Jordy, I say.
I open the door, look in and it’s empty with just the flies buzzing around. The candle is a melted stump with a black, twisted wick and there is candle wax all over the tabletop.

What? says Jordy from outside.

Nothing, I say. I jump. I try to remove the panic from my words. Where’s Loretta? I say.

Loretta said to be careful out in the dunes, that when she was a kid a girl suffocated digging holes in the side of ‘em. She said she’d be back in a bit, she’s gone to get the water.

Uhuh, I say and step outside too, look up at the sky that’s big.

This is like them shantytowns they have for abos, he says.

How would you know? I say.

From before you was born.

As if, I say. He thinks he’s seen everything before I was born.

I’m gunna go check it out.

Can I come? I say, trying hard to keep the whine out of my voice.

He looks me over.

Okay, he says. But you’re only allowed to talk when I say so.

Jordy walks to the centre of the road. He walks down beside the old man’s caravan and I follow him. Behind the caravan there’s lines of painted white rocks marking the edges of the yard. There’s junk everywhere, but it’s neat. Piles of things collected from the beach: planks of wood, rusted metal, driftwood that’s twisted muscle. Old glass buoys hang from the back awning, dusty but like whole swirling worlds.

We step over the white rock border and into the yard, past the piles of wood. Under the awning is a little table and a chair with the memory of a bum still in it. A freezer hugs close to the caravan in the shade. Jordy lifts the lid on the freezer and looks
in. I lean under his arm. Cool air makes my face tingle. Inside is a huge fish chopped into pieces. I see the frosty pink of the severed flesh. Its eye looks straight up at me – big as a fifty-cent piece.

They call a fish that big a metrey, the old man says.

Jordy drops the freezer lid onto the back of my head. I get a lungful of frozen air. Pull out of there. The old man is standing right there, close to us, as if we’d been discussing something important. I can see all the wrinkles on his face and that he’s angry. Jordy turns and hisses, Run.

I run. I don’t think where we’re going, just follow the shape of Jordy’s back. I keep him in sight and when he tires I run beside him. We both stumble and laugh. Jordy stops, puffed. I look around. We’re at a cleared bit in the scrub. It’s tucked into the side of a dune, and the sand is littered with pieces of hose and dirty water bottles and there’s a pair of rusty scissors hanging on a stick. There’s ants all around our feet. Jordy is laughing.

I’ve got desert mouth. I need a cordial, I say. At Gran’s there was always cordial in a blue plastic jug in the fridge. I never knew what colour it was going to be inside the jug. She had three lots of cordial in the cupboard, orange, green and red – like traffic lights. She never made it strong enough, but it was always cold and a surprise. When Jordy poured it he would measure each cup of cordial with a ruler so it was exactly equal. He’s taking great big breaths and my breaths are big too.

Did I say you could talk? he says.

No.

Did I say you could talk then?

No.

What about then?

I just look at him with my mouth open, full of my tongue wanting to make a word.

Okay, okay, you can talk.

I don’t even want to talk to you.

Well, you’re talking now.

I kick a bit of hose. It’s weird here, I say.

It’s alright, he says.

We can make a cubby in the dune.

Loretta said not to dig in ‘em.

I imagine getting a face full of sand, and the thought of it crunching in my mouth against my teeth makes my whole body shudder. Jordy goes to a tall bit of the dune and kicks it. Kicks it again until the sand falls over his feet. I make sure to stand a good way away so that if it all collapses I’ll be there to pull him out by the edge of his shirt, or his foot.

Let’s go find a drink, he says.

We walk through scrub for a while before we get to the tents. I hadn’t realised how far we’d run. The tents have their ropes out really far to trip us. There’s a mum out the front of one and she smiles and says, Merry Christmas. I just look at her, keep walking and don’t say anything back.

I think I’ve got sunstroke, I say to Jordy.

You have not.

I have, I feel dizzy and I’m going to vomit.

How would you even know?

They’re the symptoms.

As if.

Eventually you get so thirsty you go crazy.

Whatever.

Both of us stop when our caravan comes into sight. Bert still isn’t here. Just the caravan screen door banging open and shut.

Come on, says Jordy and we walk up to it. I click the screen door shut and sit on the step in the sun. Jordy looks under the caravan.

There’s chairs, he says and pulls out two canvas chairs with cobwebs all over them. Jordy opens one of them and sits down in it. It looks broken but he doesn’t fall. I swipe a fly from my face. He gets up. His chair buckles.

It’s hot, I say.

Did I say you could talk yet? Look, an awning, he says.

He taps at a metal lever sticking out the side of the caravan, then pulls. The metal screams, and flakes of rust and dirt fall all over me.

Hey, I say. I jump up and out of there. I try shake the dirt off me. Be careful, I say.

Jordy pulls it all the way out. It’s wobbly, but it stays there, and it makes a small square of shade out the front of the caravan. The edge of the canvas is black with dirt and disintegrating, but the bit that was rolled up inside the metal is brown-and-orange striped and looks new.

Cool, says Jordy. He sits back in his tumbled-down chair, righting it first so he can get in it. I sit back on the step. In the shade the rest of the world looks hotter. We sit there for a while not saying anything, then Jordy gets up.

I’m going to the beach, he says, without looking back at me. I want to follow him, but I leave it too long and then I’m just sitting there alone. I scratch a bite on my leg. I scratch it until it bleeds, then a fly lands on the wound. My stomach grumbles. I
hear a car on the gravel. I see the dust before the car and I stand up, ready to run to Bert, but it’s not Bert, it’s an old white ute. It stops across from me, pulls up beside the old man’s caravan.

He gets out of the ute and looks over at me. I don’t wave at him, or say hello. He pretends he hasn’t seen me. Walks to the back of the ute. He tries to lift a crate from the tray. He scrapes it along the metal and up to the side, drops it. He tries to lift it again. It falls back into the tray with a shudder. He gives up and carries the two-litre Coke bottles inside two by two, then the crate. In the caravan he would have to put them all back in the crate. I hear a generator jump to life with a loud hum.

He comes back out with a glass of Coke with ice and sits down in his chair that’s sagging out the front, ready for him. He looks happy taking the first sip, but then he’s staring right at me and he doesn’t look happy anymore. I walk over the gravel road.

Get, he says, get out of here.

I stand just at the edge of what looks like his area and say, I’m not near you, I’m just standing over here.

Standing there’s too near, little matey. I told ya, piss off.

How about here? I say and take two steps back, so I’m kind of standing in the middle of the road.

Too close, he says and takes a long sip of his drink.

I take a couple more steps back so that I’m right in the middle of the road. Here?

Too close.

I take another step back, Here?

Nup.

Until I’m right the way back under my awning and I yell, Here?

I guess that’s as good as it’s going to get, he says. I see him
smile. I smile.

Can I’ve a Coke?

You want a Coke?

Yeah.

He sighs, gets up and goes inside. When he comes back outside he has a glass. I go to walk over there.

Stop.

He walks out onto the road and gives me the glass.

Thanks. I take a sip.

He walks back to the shade.

Loretta hasn’t come back from getting the water.

Who’s Loretta?

My mum.

What do you want me to do about it?

Nothing, I guess. I take another sip of the Coke. It’s bubbly and warm. Tastes a bit like sick. I kick my feet in the dirt. We might need to go and look for her, I say.

What do you mean we?

I walk over there and cross the invisible line into his yard. There is a mean curl at the edge of his lip.

We have to go get her, I say.

He says quietly but with force, Get back over your side. And give me that. He takes the Coke from my hand. Get, he says.

I run back to our caravan and sit on the step watching him. He finishes his Coke and gets another. He rolls a cigarette, smokes it. He rolls and smokes three cigarettes with me sitting there watching him. I make patterns in the sand at the step of the caravan. The shade from the awning travels. I wipe sweat from my face and feel my bum fall asleep. He gets up, goes inside his caravan for a while and when he comes out the
front again I’m still there, sitting on the step. I see him swear under his breath, turn around. When I see him next, he’s got his fishing rod, a floppy hat hangs over his eyes. He walks past me, like I’m not there, and heads down the path to the beach. I brush the flies away from my face, look at the dirt between my feet. I can taste the Coke a little still. Brush the flies away again. Jordy’s still gone.

The old man takes a long time to come back. It’s late afternoon. My bum has moulded to the shape of the step. He sees me still sitting there. Stops in the middle of the dusty road. He doesn’t look like he’s caught nothing. It’s just us, but he looks behind him like he’s checking if there’s someone else there, then he looks to the blue sky as if he’s praying for rain – or something. He disappears around the side of his caravan.

I stand up, stumble. My legs don’t work anymore. I run as well as I can, away from him. I run down to the beach, my feet sinking into the sand. The spinifex grass swishes in the wind I make as I pass. The sun is in my eyes and I don’t see Jordy there at the bottom of the path. I run smack into him. I hit my head so hard against his elbow that I see black, and cartoon stars. We tumble down the dune together and I get sand in my pants and my mouth, ears. The beach is inside me. We’re down there in the sand and I feel a sharp punch in my leg.