Sailmaker

Rosanne Hawke is an award-winning South Australian author. She lived in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates as an aid worker for ten years. Her books include
The Messenger Bird
;
Soraya
,
the Storyteller
;
Mustara
;
and
Taj and the Great Camel Trek
, which won the 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and was shortlisted in the 2012 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. She is a Carclew, Asialink, Varuna and May Gibbs Fellow, and a Bard of Cornwall. She teaches Creative Writing at Tabor Adelaide, and writes in an old Cornish farmhouse with underground rooms near Kapunda.

www.rosannehawke.com

Also by Rosanne Hawke

The Keeper

Killer Ute

Marrying Ameera

The Wish Giver, with L Penner, M Macintosh (illus)

The Last Virgin in Year 10

Mustara, with R Ingpen (illus)

The Collector

Soraya, the Storyteller

Yar Dil, with E Stanley (illus)

Across the Creek

Borderland Trilogy (Re-entry, Jihad, Cameleer)

Wolfchild

Zenna Dare

A Kiss in Every Wave

The Messenger Bird

Taj and the Great Camel Trek

Mountain Wolf

For Michael – you're a sailmaker too

1

Shawn's watching me like I'm an injured tern flying too close to the rocks. What does he think I am? A loser? Anyone can windsurf. Now kite surfing – that would be so cool – sailing through the sky. Flying and water, what more could you want? No use thinking about it though – Gran would never let me. Though she's been less like a clucky chook since Dev's come to stay.

‘Hey, Billings! Head in to shore. I want a turn.'

That's always the problem when a rig isn't your own. Just when the wind gets good you have to hand it over. Just one more tack. The old sailors must have felt like this – so close to the spray, the wind in your face. The rush makes something rise up inside and whisk your breath away. Your stomach too.

Shawn's shouting again. I pull back on the boom, ready to go in, and it's right on the turn that I notice it. A glint of silver. I have to check it out – doesn't look alive – too metallic.

‘Billings! That's the last time—' I can't hear the rest. It'll have to keep – this is more important right now. The board's heading up to the metallic thing and I get it at right angles to the wind so it won't move too far. My feet are planted either side of the flapping sail as I take a good look. Shawn can see I'm onto something. He's stopped shouting and he's in the water, swimming out. It's not so far. He reaches me just as I've dropped the rig in the water and I'm off the board.

‘What is it?' Then he sees the tinnie lapping in the swell. ‘Whose can it be?'

‘Dunno.' This isn't good. Who'd leave a tinnie to float across the bay? Unless they fell out of it or something. It's as if Shawn can read my mind for we both glance around in the water at the same time.

‘Just like you to see it, Joel. Seagull at a picnic, that's you – eyes wide open.' He's kind of grinning at me but his eyes look like a cloud's gone across them, and I feel the same. This is too weird. Shawn takes the windsurfer back and I slowly swim in, dragging the tinnie behind me by its rope. There are no oars and the motor won't start. Did they run out of fuel? And who'd take a tinnie out without its oars?

Shawn's finished de-rigging as I pull the tinnie up on the beach. We look it over. It couldn't have come far – not scratched or rusty enough to have been in the water forever.

‘There's food and stuff under the plank, looks like.' Shawn's pulling out a bag.

‘Maybe we shouldn't touch anything. Evidence and all.'

Shawn gives me this look, like, what would you know? Guess he wishes he found the tinnie so I add a piece of explanation. ‘Dev says the police have to see these things first.' Shawn and I aren't the best of mates, not like Mei and me. Last year Shawn was evil to me but having Dev come to stay changed a lot of that. Though Shawn can still turn heaps nasty, just like a freak gale in the gulf. Like now. He stands up suddenly.

‘Go and tell your precious Dev Eagle then, Bilious. Tell him while he's still around. You're such a loser, one dad in jail and the other a phony.' He makes it sound like he knows something I don't and he picks up his board, stashes the sail round the mast, and stalks off up the beach, dragging the rig and board behind him. I just make sure the tinnie's high and dry and head back home.

Dev's sitting out in Gran's cottage garden in the front. Looks like he's just mowed the lawn; he's got a beer. Gran's with him, sipping tea, her secateurs on the outside table. It makes me stop to see them like that, cosy. Dev's cut his hair – he used to have this black peppery plait down his back; now he's got grey above his ears as well as in his goatee. Six months ago it was just Gran and me. Don't get me wrong – Gran's great, but a kid needs a dad, and I got myself one. I put this ad in the paper. It caused a lot of trouble at the time, but hey, I'm used to trouble. This is like a genie's wish come true: coming back from the wide world and finding your gran and pretend dad sitting quietly in the garden together. Dev's pleased to see me too.

‘How'd it go, mate?' He's got this slipped grin on. He knows what I usually think of Shawn Houser.

I'm learning to joke a bit, like Dev does. ‘Wasn't bad – we didn't draw blood at least.' That's another thing. Dev gets really disappointed if I fight. It's hard not to at times, especially when Shawn's got his face smashed right up into mine, but I can't stand that look on Dev's face when he finds out. You wouldn't believe it to see him – black leather vest over a T-shirt that hardly fits over his sixpack and shows up his eagle tatts, but he reckons he's worked that one out the hard way.

‘The wind wasn't too strong, was it?' This is Gran.

‘Nah, it was okay. Shawn wanted another turn as soon as I got out there though.' I catch something thoughtful in Dev's face as I sit with them on the verandah and tell what else happened.

‘Found someone's tinnie in the water.'

‘Must have come adrift,' suggests Gran. ‘Better ask down at Houser's shop if any of the fishermen have lost one.'

‘Couldn't have,' I say. ‘The rope was good. That tinnie was either untied or it was taken out. No oars though. Water and food onboard by the look of it but I thought we shouldn't touch anything.' And I remember Shawn's burst of aggro and glance at Dev. He sure doesn't look like someone thinking of moving out. Dev doesn't say much, just gets up to ring the police. He's got to know the local guy well enough.

Then Gran starts in on what has become her favourite topic. ‘Have you taken your pill this morning, matey?' On weekdays she puts it by my cereal like it's my only chance at life. Guess my head is quieter. There was always this buzz in the distance that used to gallop in closer, noisier sometimes. And it's clearer in there too – I can see stuff I never knew was there, like in water that's just been de-polluted, you can see the starfish on the yellow sand at the bottom. Mei reckons I'm heaps different, but it's embarrassing. Who takes pills? Only olds, or people going nuts or dying of stuff.

‘Aw, Gran, lay off.' And I get up to go inside. Gran is such a worrywart. It used to be strangers – I was never supposed to talk to people I didn't know, or ride fast bikes. Dev fixed those. Now it's pills and I'm sick of it.

2

It's out in the local rag on Monday morning.
Local boy finds abandoned tinnie in bay.
It doesn't even mention Shawn Houser – he'll be in a ripe mood when he sees it. Seems there was a detention gang from the local correction centre working on the island and one guy had tried to escape. So the tinnie was from the island. It must have floated in with the tide. Winds can get really bad out in the gulf at times and with no oars he wouldn't have had a chance. The guy obviously drowned then, but they can't say that until they find the body so it's:
Barber Smith missing, presumed drowned.

It's a weird feeling thinking you may have been the next person to touch something that some bloke who's just died touched too. Wonder how he got the petrol to start the engine? The old guy living out on the island wouldn't have left a sign on the tinnie:
Ready for escape, petrol provided.

I've almost finished my Weet-Bix (and taken the little white thing under Gran's watchful eye) when Dev tells me about the auction.

‘Reckon we should go on Saturday, mate. Might be something worth buying.' Dev never tells you everything at once so I don't know what could be interesting at an auction and I don't care either. What's cool is that I'll have Dev to myself all day with a ride on his Harley as well.

‘Sure thing,' I say.

Then he shocks me by asking me this next question. ‘How much money you got saved, mate?'

Never been asked that before. Private stuff but I answer him. ‘Seventy bucks.'

‘Better bring it with you. You never know if you'll see something worth having.' So much for saving money, but I guess he knows what he's doing.

Life has sure picked up since Dev answered my ad. Guess it wasn't a smart thing to do when I think about it now, but I was pretty desperate at the time. I was the survivor of a shipwreck and was hanging onto the hull that was going down fast. Dev came riding in and threw me a lifebelt.

School's still like a war zone sometimes, though I feel more like I'm the secret agent. Not so much front-line hand-to-hand combat – just lying low for a while. Ever since I went to that doc in Adelaide and got these pills, Gran's beeen saying what I can't and can eat, but I've done better at school. Sure hope Shawn doesn't catch on; that'd blow my cover for sure. I never realised before there was a pattern to those dumb tables we had to learn when we were kids. Reading's better too – not half the battle it was. Only Mei knows about it all. And Ms Bosse. She calls it Medication.

When I walked into her class in early February and saw her name on the board, I groaned aloud. With a name like that she'd have to be worse than Ms Colby, last year's teacher from hell. How far can you go? What's worse than hell? If Ms Bosse heard me she didn't let on. She sure looked different to Ms Colby and she asked us all to say our names and something about ourselves. I watched her like an eagle with an empty gullet when I said my name. I reckoned the other teachers had told her all about me and I said it loud, made it fly like a flag. She's got this mole on the side of her chin with a thick brown hair growing out of it – well, the hair didn't even move. I thought it was safe to say I liked fishing then and no one snickered for once. Guess winning a fishing competition shows I'm good at it. I've done that too.

Then Ms Bosse said something suss, said she'd like to rearrange the classroom and have us sit where
she
wanted for a while. See what I mean about her name? I started to protest. I mean that is so
bossy
. But she just gave me this steady look, a bit like Dev does, as though I had every reason in the world to be upset. She said if we hated it after a term we could change it. Didn't budge either, but nor did she fume like Ms Colby. You could almost see the smoke coming out of Ms Colby's ears some days. She sure made me feel like I'd stepped out of the school sewer.

So it's turned out that Prescott and me are in the front. Mei's on the other side of me. Shawn's right down the back. It's weird, down at the front I've got nowhere else to look except at Ms Bosse and the board. And if I can't work something out there's Mei to show me. And would you believe it? Shawn's so far away he can't bother
anyone
. There's no one behind him to impress. It's the quietest our class has been since Grade 4. Ms Bosse couldn't have worked it out better if she'd known all about us.