Tim Winton (16 page)

Older, vaguely threatening blokes like Slipper were grudgingly respectful, especially in the presence of our mentor. Whenever some mouthy grommet started quizzing us about Sando he would be quickly silenced by one of the older crew. They knew by now that he'd surfed Old Smoky on his own for years. He was in his own league; we'd all sensed it instinctively. Sando radiated gravitas.

And I got used to the power of association.

But when Sando first took Loonie to the islands, he left me behind in more than a literal sense. Somehow I stayed behind. I lost confidence in my place and value. It's possible some of my sense of relegation was imaginary or the result of shame, but I was convinced that Sando no longer took me seriously, that Loonie didn't regard me as an equal anymore, and the rich feeling of being in charge of myself evaporated. For the first time in my life I was not so much solitary as plain lonely.

Not long after Easter, in the first week of the term break, an unexpectedly vicious cold front burst upon the coast. Wind tore trees from the ground and blew roofing iron deep into the forest, and when the storm was spent it left the kind of booming swell that kept me awake half the night with that old mix of excitement and apprehension.

I waited for the sound of the Volkswagen but Loonie and Sando didn't show. About eight o'clock, while the oldies were off in town, I got on my bike and rode out to the coast.

From way across the estuary curtains of spray were visible at the rivermouth.

At Sando's the boat and the Kombi were gone; they'd opted for the Nautilus. I could hardly blame them for blowing me off but it provoked something in me. The dog didn't bark as it trotted down and I was relieved because I wanted to get in and go without waking Eva. It followed me into the undercroft where I pulled out the big yellow Brewer I'd disgraced myself with a few weeks before.

I waxed the board with a block from the Milo tin on the bench and walked back down the drive with it. There was no way I could ride a bike and carry that great spear of a thing, so I hoofed it out to the headland and by the time I'd hiked across the ridges to the clifftop overlooking Old Smoky, the sun had broken through and I was clammy with sweat. My right arm felt wrenched from carrying the board so far. I did some stretches while the bombora cracked and flared out on the sunlit sea.

I don't know why I paddled out there on my own. I was hurt and angry. And I suppose I felt there was a point to prove. I knew Old Smoky had been surfed solo before. But not by a fifteen-year-old.

At this distance it seems like an act of desperation - or worse - a lunge toward oblivion. Even now I can barely believe I did it.

Before I got halfway out to the bommie, it dawned on me that Old Smoky was breaking much bigger than I'd seen it before. Between long, deceptive lulls, waves angled in to stand up twenty feet and more, and by the time I got close I knew I'd seriously underestimated the size of the swell. At this scale, it was a wonder the wave still broke cleanly.

I hummed. I spoke aloud to myself. I manoeuvred into position over the reef and checked and rechecked my bearings as I'd been taught. The offshore breeze fanned up a steady chop and beneath the surface the water was busy.

I was right on the lump when a new set of swells wheeled in from the south-west. They quickened as they got a footing on the shoal and soon I was labouring uphill time and again to get beyond them. Each seemed bigger than the one before and every time I squeaked over and tumbled down into the trough behind, I was blinded by spray. In all that stinging white confusion I failed to see the third wave until it was too late. It was already seething, beginning to break, and by then it was a matter of riding it or wearing it, so I turned and went.

All the way down the big board chattered against the surface chop; I could hear the giggle and natter of it over the thunder behind me. When the wave drew itself up to its full height, walling a hundred yards ahead as I swept down, it seemed to create its own weather. There was suddenly no wind at all and the lower I got, the smoother the water became. The whole rolling edifice glistened. For a moment - just a brief second of enchantment - I felt weightless, a moth riding light. Then I leant into a turn and accelerated and the force of it slammed through my knees, thighs, bladder, and I came lofting back to the crest to feel the land breeze in my face and catch a smudge of cliffs before sailing down the line again. With each turn, each stalling fade, I grew in confidence. By the wave's last section I was styling. I scudded out into the channel, so addled by joy I had to sit a while to clear my head.

I felt fabulous, completely charged. I was not a coward or a kook. I knew what I was doing and it wasn't within a bull's roar of being ordinary.

In retrospect I know I should have sat there glorying a bit longer, given myself a full soak of fuckoff vindication until I got over myself and had a laugh at my own expense. Then I could have gone about the business of putting the act back together, gathering my thoughts, returning to some method. But I was so amped and eager I just wheeled about, paddled back into the impact zone and picked off the first wave of the next set. Compounding the first mistake with a second, I rushed at the thing instead of letting it come to me, and so I never quite got into position and had to scramble to get momentum. As the wave peaked I dug hard and felt myself pitch forward, teetering at the crest, surging for a few yards only to feel the wave forge ahead without me.

I knew before I even sat up and looked back over my shoulder that I was in strife. I'd left myself bang in the path of the following wave - which was bigger again and already breaking. In the seconds left I sprinted for the channel but I knew I'd never get there. I pumped myself full of air, hyperventilating hurriedly, and at the last possible moment, as the crashing white wall came down, I stood on my stationary board and speared deep as I could get.

I kicked hard but in an instant the whitewater smashed in, blasting me sideways, hurling me down. I saw hazy outlines of rocks. Kelp flew by. My ears hurt badly but I couldn't equalize, and then I was pitching end over end across the bottom, glancing off things hard and soft until slowly, like a storm petering out, the water slackened around me and I floundered up toward the light.

I broke the surface in a drift of foamscum and barely got a breath before another tower of whitewater crashed over, and this second hold-down was worse. I'd started with less air and got worked harder, longer. When I kicked up it was into the path of a third wave, and then there was a fourth. Each breath was more hurried, each dive just a bit shallower than the last. I got so strung out and disoriented I ploughed headfirst into the seabed, thinking I was headed for the surface. Burns and tingles shot up my legs. I saw light where there was no light. My gut began to twitch. Things went narrow - it was like looking out through a letterbox - and out there, at the other end of the slot, the white world was trying to kill me.

But when the sea let go and the water cleared I clawed up into the sky. For a moment, at the surface, it seemed my throat was jammed shut. I couldn't make myself breathe. And then wretching spasms overtook me and bile and seawater poured out and the air burnt down sharp as any regret.

There was no sign of the yellow Brewer. Once I got control of myself I saw I'd been bulldozed, mostly underwater, for four hundred yards. The only way home from here was to swim.

It took me an hour or so to reach the cliffs and maybe another thirty minutes to make it up them. I got seasick treading water in the moiling backwash. And at the end, when I wondered if I had the strength to hold out much longer, I came in on the back of a huge, blunt roller which set me down on a ledge from which I could crawl, very slowly, to safety.

When I got back to Sando's I tried to keep clear of the house but I so badly needed a drink. Eva caught me gulping from the rainwater tank.

Pikelet?

I'm just goin, I croaked.

Saw your bike. Where you been?

I shrugged, but I was standing there in my wetsuit and my knees were crusted with blood.

I gotta go.

Come up here.

No, I'm off.

You heard me. Jesus, look at you. Get up here.

I stumped slowly up the stairs and onto the verandah.

You went out there on your own, didn't you?

I lost his Brewer. The yellow one.

You mean you swam in? Let me look at you.

I'm just thirsty. I feel bad about the board.

Oh, forget the goddamn board. Sit down and I'll get you something.

The moment I sat I felt overcome with fatigue. I must have dozed because when I looked up she was there already with a Coke and a plate of sandwiches. I ate and drank greedily while she watched.

You take him too seriously, she said at last.

Who?

You know who. I'll get something for those gashes. Stay here.

But I didn't stay there for fear of falling asleep again. I followed her into the house and propped myself up against the kitchen bench while she rummaged in a cupboard.

Sit down before you fall over, she said. You'll have to wait until they get back. You're in no shape to ride home.

I can ride, I said. I had no intention of still being there when Sando got back.

Will you just sit the fuck down.

I did as I was told. Suddenly I was close to tears.

He tell you they're heading to Java?

I shook my head, unable to speak.

It's just not funny anymore. I don't know if I'll be here when he gets back.

She wielded a fistful of cotton balls and a bottle of something nasty-yellow. I blinked.

Jesus, why'm I telling you this?

I could only shrug.

Hey, she murmured. Pikelet, you won't say anything, will you?

No.

She looked at me appraisingly, and when she unscrewed the bottle and poured antiseptic into the cotton her hands shook. She took me by the chin and tilted my head up to press the scouring stuff cold to my brow and I tried not to wince.

She put the bottle down and fingered through my hair a moment to find the divot in my scalp. I looked at the pale hairs around her navel where her windcheater rode up.

You'll live.

She was a foot away. She smelled of butter and cucumber and coffee and antiseptic. I wanted to press my face into that belly, to hold her by the hips, but I sat there until she stepped away. And then I got up and left; I didn't care what she said. I rode home slow and sore and raddled.

That evening, while the day's warmth leached into the forest shadow, I sat against an ancient karri tree to smoke the hash Loonie brought me. At dinner I ate my chops with elaborate caution, anxious at every quizzical glance. I felt transparent, light, uncomfortable. In the night I dreamt my drowning dream. There I was again, head jammed tight in the reef, and when I woke, touching the tender parts of my brow and scalp, it took a while to believe it had only been a dream.

You've been in a fight, said the old man at breakfast.

No, I said.

Look at you. You may's well tell me.

It's nothin, Dad.

Face like a bird-pecked apple, said the old girl.

What the hell d'you get up to? he said with more dismay than anger in his voice.

I fell on the rocks, I murmured.

Out the coast?

Yeah.

How many times have I told you --Tell me about Snowy Muir, I said.

The old man snatched up his hat and his workbag.

You never told me the story, I said more gently.

Some of us have got work to do, he said. He kissed my mother, stuffed his hat on his balding head and made for the door.

Loonie was outside the butcher shop in the drizzle when I got off the school bus. He had the fading remains of a black eye and his lip was split in a whole new way. I didn't need to ask. I knew it'd be his old man. Loonie had told him he was going away again.

You went out to Old Smoky on your own, he said.

I shrugged and hoisted the bag onto my shoulder.

Fuck, he murmured. He's pissed off about the board.

You broke two already yourself, I said. Anyway, who told you?

She did.

Eva? She told you*.

Nah. I heard em bluin and bitchin. She sorta blurted it out. Said you went on your own. And the board's gone, isn't it?

Swam in.

Fuck.

Did you do Nautilus? I asked despite myself.

Man, it was bullshit. I got three. Barrelled every time.

Him?

He got one. But he's fuckin scared of it.

I blinked at this.

Old, said Loon
ie.

There was something pitiless in his smirk.

And he's takin you to Java, I said.

Who told you that?

Eva, I said with a hot flash of satisfaction.

He grunted and rolled himself a fag and I realized that we were no longer friends. At the intersection, where the pub loomed over the servo across the road, we each veered in our own direction without even saying goodbye. Neither of us could have known that we'd never meet again.

Sando pulled up at the school oval one lunch hour while I was kicking a football with a bunch of kids I barely knew. It was the old sound of the VW that caught my attention. I saw him parked over behind the goalposts but didn't go across right away. By the time I relented there were only a few minutes before the bell went again.

He sprawled over the wheel like a bus driver. He had a denim jacket on, and a silk shirt of some kind of shimmering green, and his hair and beard and earrings shone in the early winter light. He raised his eyebrows as if surprised to see me. I stood there in my grisly brown uniform.

You're off, then.

Yeah, he said. Tomorrow.

I nodded and looked out across the rooftops of Angelus.

Thought you might come out for a send-off. We don't see you much anymore.

I glanced back at the kids punting the pill from pack to pack.

I can't, I said. The oldies wouldn't let me.

He nodded, scratched in his beard pensively.

Hey, someone found the yellow Brewer.

Really?