An Open Swimmer

This book is for John and Beverley Winton,
two of my best friends.

I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes

whose breasts still bear the stress

whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies

obscurely inside barrels

half-wedged and left to rot

we are the half-destroyed instruments

that once held to a course

the water-eaten log

the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage

the one who find our way

back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which

our names do not appear.

‘Diving into the Wreck', Adrienne Rich

I
T HAD
been a long fight between Jerra Nilsam and the fish. He pressed the flat end of the oar against its brow. Globes of moisture clustered on its flanks. His father grinned in the stern. The engine was chuckling. Water parted like an incision behind. The fish grunted. His father said it was a turrum. The long fan of tail slapped the gunwale, the gills were pumping, and blood globbed the bottom of the boat.

In the water, the black diamond, the mate, cruised. When he had gaffed the turrum over the side and was cuffed on the chin by the tail, the diamond had been there, silver when the sun caught its flanks.

Chuff-chuff, the turrum was grunting. Looking up at him, the eye never blinked. The fish began to thresh, clenching and unclenching. Jerra kept the oar hard over its brow, near the gaff-hole. His palms were bleeding and he wanted to cry. He grinned back at his father.

The diamond curved and straightened, blemishing the surface with its scalpel of a dorsal fin. He wished they had a bigger engine.

Bashing. It was bashing the gunwale. The fish buckled up, almost out of the boat. He fell on it, hugging, feeling the fin spikes in his chest. With a spastic twitch it deflated, mumbling.

‘It's dead,' his father said.

He let go and sat up with glistening scales on his chest and glistenings on his cheeks.

He looked over the side. The diamond had gone.

‘Want to open it for the pearl?'

‘No.'

‘It might have one.'

‘I don't want to cut him up, Dad.'

He wished they had a bigger engine and that the fish would be alive again.

A
WAY TO
their left, a flight of cockatoos lifted from the gums and swung in a pink cloud over the road and into the bush.

‘Petrol?' Sean asked.

‘Enough if we find something soon.'

‘Bloody tourist maps.'

‘Not far. Road's headin' for the coast.' Jerra glanced at Sean, whose pale curls bobbed in the breeze from the open window. He flicked on the beams, lighting up the loose surface ahead.

The road was sloping away, curving, unknotting itself. He saw the thick red tail of gravel dust lifting in the mirror.

‘Shaking hell out of the ol' bus,' he said.

‘Wonder it's stayed together this long.'

‘Be still going long after we're skinned and dried.'

The headlights caught the eyes of animals and held them by the throat, rigid, until they passed in a clattering rush of stones and dust.

A roo floated across, bashing off into the undergrowth.

‘Shit, Jerra!' Sean slid back, clutching at his seat belt.

‘Had plenty o' room.'

‘Should have a roo-bar on this thing. That would've put us in the heap for good.'

‘Okay if you can afford it.'

Sean shrugged. Jerra hit the horn.

‘The roos'll know we're coming now.'

‘Great.'

‘Be setting up in the dark.'

‘Don't talk about it.'

‘Remember that time out past Eucla?'

Sean reached over and smacked the horn. Jerra laughed.

‘That's for bloody Eucla and the torch batteries.'

Jerra bashed the horn with his elbow.

‘That's for the look on your face in the morning.' Already, he smelt crushed insects and the flaky wood under ghost gums. ‘The great outdoorsmen!'

Eventually, gravel gave way to sand and banksias and black, fallen marri trunks. The track wound down the rutty slope. The springs groaned as they dropped a wheel into a washout.

‘Good for the diff,' said Jerra.

Grass swished along the chassis as Jerra pulled out of the rut. The track cleaned up for a bit, doodling off from side to side, further, deeper. At a flat, clear spot, they came upon an old corrugated shack.

‘Ex-residence,' said Sean, noting it. Needlessly, Jerra thought.

Further down, swelling out of the carved-off bank of the track, was a grizzled she-oak with the letters NO pared neatly out of the bark, the O bleeding viscous sap from the white flesh.

The sand was getting whiter and softer, and Jerra pushed through a few soft sections, feeling the VW glide and whip; he flicked the wheel a bit harder than was needed, but it was soft and he didn't know when he might be caught without enough speed.

A clearing. They rattled into the grove, scattering a few rabbits caught in the light. Jerra switched off. There was only the gums and the sea.

Sean dropped a mallee root onto the fire. Jerra rolled the pan. He flipped the stuff onto the plate.

‘Here.'

They ate the buttery fried eggs breathing and talking around the food in their mouths.

‘Bit of a turn-up. First time we've ever struck camp without pitchin' on a nest of ants —'

‘Or a cocky's driveway —'

‘Rifle range —'

‘Creekbed —'

‘All we need now is to make friends with a possum with the clap —'

‘Oh, geez, 'ere he goes!'

They pissed and went to bed. The smell of smoke in his clothes made Jerra feel he had been there for ever.

I
N THE
daylight, the clearing was another place. Last night it had been as big as a paddock, now there was just enough room to turn the VW.

Poking the ground with their spears, they turned over the leafy crust, revealing a moisture which could survive the heat. The musty damp clung to the soles of their feet.

‘Fire's nearly out,' Jerra said, dropping the gear in the shade.

Sean scuffed his feet into the leaves. Jerra went for some wood.

The fire nipped at their knees, spitting. Jerra sat feeling the roughened edges of his hands.

‘Sore?'

‘Just not used to it. Haven't used 'em for ages. Never liked peelin' leatheries, anyway. Dad always used to do it.'

‘Yeah, your Dad.'

‘S'pose he did most things for me, eh?'

‘Yeah.'

‘How's your ol' man?' Jerra asked as if he was interested. Probing.

‘Into Westam at the moment.'

Catching red emperors, thought Jerra. From the boardroom table.

‘Westam?'

‘Yeah,' said Sean.

Fat congealed, the fire subsided. The late breeze was in when they awoke, sprawling on the thick foam mattress, sucking teeth, farting, hearing the gums bend and unbend.

‘Slept in this ol' bus a few times,' said Sean, peering through the sparse hairs on his chest, letting out a long bark.

Jerra gazed at the insect squash-marks on the ceiling, ran his finger through the patina of gravel dust.

‘Lots.'

‘How many trips?'

‘Lost count.'

‘Wish you'd stop farting.'

Jerra grinned. It was like lying in the park after school. He could feel the flat leaves of clover under him, see the scabby trunk above bearing all the open-mouthed maggies that chased them to and from school, and he rubbed the little scar on his thumb.

Shadows appeared on the granite spill. Black holes and shafts opened and wavered. Jerra and Sean hopped and stumbled out to the headland. Within an hour there would be no daylight. A breeze tumbled in cool ripples from the sea, and gulls bumped in the currents, up, around behind them as they stepped out to a smooth ledge and began at the tangles:

. . . 
bite it off half-way.

‘Should've put this bait in water,' Sean said.

‘Ooh, ripe.' Jerra flicked his baited hook out. ‘A cast at last.'

‘Rhymes.'

‘Eh?'

Squatting on the warm, grey rock, they felt the air cooling towards twilight. You could feel it, next to the water. A peculiar smell, wet granite. Dark as the distant mutterings of the gums. Against the small flanks of stone came the glugs and laps of the dark water.

The nylon was light on their fingers, rising and falling in the drowsing swell.

‘Fish,' murmured Jerra.

‘Hmm?'

‘Catching an' eating the buggers.'

‘Why else would you sit on a rock getting a sore bum?'

Jerra looked into the greenish-black.

‘Dunno.'

‘Only good when there's something down there interested in getting hooked.'

‘Arr.'

‘Easier at a fishmarket.'

‘Eating's only half of it. Less.'

‘It's something.'

‘The waiting. Like this.'

‘Bloody frustrating.'

‘Like when we were younger and Dad took us. His fault when I didn't get anything.' Jerra remembered the endless mornings anchored on a mirror-calm stretch of water, when Sean was like a real blood-brother to him, when there was nothing but herring on his mind.

‘He never missed a bite.'

‘Hated him for it. Wish you could fix up the dumb things you do when you're young.' He was unsure what he was really saying. He wondered what Sean was thinking.

‘Getting dark.' Sean had packed his gear. ‘Let's go.'

‘What's that?'

‘What?' said Jerra.

‘On the beach.'

Jerra stopped walking and peered in the bad light.

‘Looks like a dog or something with four legs.'

‘Probably a wild one from up the bush.'

It was gone and so was the light.

Dark. They lit the fire. Something mushy was fired in a can, and they sucked tea from tin mugs, spitting tea-leaves into the fire. Bloody tea-bags; Jerra knew they were around somewhere, but he gave up and they brewed it in the billy. They went to bed as the dew came settling on their backs.

In the night, Jerra woke to the sounds of movement outside. The food was safe. It was probably the dog they had seen. He slept.

Before dawn, Jerra climbed over Sean and went stiffly out into the half-light and the long, crackling wild oats. Dew was ice between his toes, the breeze roughened the skin of his shoulders. He tossed a few sticks on the warm ash, pulled on a shirt, and went down to the beach.

He scuffed along the sheltered meniscus of the shore. In the middle of the bay, waves peeled off in long, smooth folds, crumpling onto the banks, spray wafting from the crests as the swells flexed and collapsed on themselves, rumbling.

There were footprints and scuff-marks in the sand, he noticed. Handprints not footprints. Something had been carved into the sand, but the tide had softened it to a few grooves and channels in the mushy shore.

After breakfast they argued over the swell, avoiding each other's face.

‘Come
on
!
This is the first surf we've had for ages.'

‘Thought you wanted some fish,' said Jerra, dropping the hessian bag.

‘Fish are always there,' said Sean. ‘The swell might be gone tomorrow.'

They stood kicking the dirt with the balls of their feet until Jerra shoved the diving bag under the car in surrender.

‘You can go diving if you like.'

‘Better stay together.'

Brilliance held the lids against their eyes. Sun beat them into the sand. Gulls slid about as they paddled out and sat in the rolling shimmer, straining their necks, watching for the sets that bumped up on the horizon, the biggest feathering early and a long way outside. That sink and pull in the guts. They fidgeted in that time between seeing the horrie begin to break and deciding where to wait. In the midst of the set, swells back and ahead, there was no horizon, no beach, only the shush of water falling from the crests and the aqua fluting of the hollow troughs.

They felt the breeze and the bite of spray. It seemed a long way to walk back when they could paddle and take off no more.

Half-way back along the beach, a beam protruded from amongst the crackling weed and sand.

‘This'd be good on the fire,' said Sean.

‘Jarrah, too. Burn like hell.'

‘Here,' said Sean, kneeling on the hot sand.

They pulled at the exposed end. Nothing would move it.

‘A hell of a long way up the beach to be buried that deep.'

‘You know the weather in July this far south.'

‘Plenty of wood near camp.'

‘Yeah,' said Jerra. ‘Not as if we have to excavate fossil fuel.'

Flinging their boards to the ground in the shade of the Veedub, they might never have been wet.

For tea that night, they ate long slabs of sweep and thick abalone steaks prised from the reef, the fire throwing a pale, flesh-coloured circle, a wavering ripple in the black bush.

‘Thought what you're going to do?' Sean blinked, his eyes lit red. To Jerra, sometimes, they were like the eyes of a fox drilled in a spotlight.

‘Ah, who knows?'

‘Have to decide, eventually.'

‘How does a bloke decide, these days?'

‘I never had much trouble.'

‘You were set. All you had to do was get old enough. Yer biggest hassle was buying the blue tie.'

‘Hardly.'

Jerra smelt the singed hairs on the back of his hand. He felt that deadness in him when he felt like picking up something heavy, an axe or something, and heaving it into the ocean, just to hear the splash.

‘That job with your old man was waiting for you.'

‘So is yours.'

‘Ah, bullshit.' It really was, he thought. They all feed you bullshit.

‘Just a matter of growing up. They were all expecting you to finish at Uni.'

‘Who?'

‘Your oldies and your grandfather. He put a lot of time into you, you know.'

‘Hey, how come you're so respectable all of a sudden?'

‘You grow up.'

‘When you get a job.'

‘Yes.'

‘Yes.' When you get a job. Jerra remembered the first day Sean went to work, crisp and aloof. It wasn't long afterwards that he left to live in a townhouse in South Perth subsidised by the corporation.

Jerra let the feeling of it pass over him as all those things did now.

‘Ah, come on.'

‘You'll see.'

‘I do now.'

‘Everyone goes through it.'

‘Through what?'

‘You know what I mean.'

‘Like getting pubes on yer dick.'

Sean smiled, shaking his head.

‘Mine are still there,' said Jerra. ‘How's yours?'

‘That's piss-weak.'

‘Talk about something else then.'

‘Given in to corruption, have I?'

‘Ah, I dunno, Sean.'

‘You gotta live,' said Sean, tossing a sappy log into the flames.

Jerra turned from the smoke.

Sean slung the tepid tea into the bush. The moon was a pale splash on the bay.

He lay still. Sean breathed steadily. Outside, sap hissed in the veins of the green log. Bitter smoke seeped into the van, clouding the windows. The breeze strengthened. Only vaguely could he see the shadows of the bitching trees, contorted in the moonlight.

Just as Jerra was about to sleep, Sean rolled onto his side and said, ‘Mum.' He would never have said it, awake.

Jerra could have hit him. He was awake for quite a while after that. It scared the hell out of him, and he couldn't help but wonder how much Sean knew.

An animal coughed in the night, hacking indifferently.