An Open Swimmer (15 page)

He felt the breath of fire on his face. The whisky scalded the back of his throat.

‘You really want to hear?'

‘Educate me.'

Hand on his leg. The room warming.

‘Animals are different alive and dead,' he began enthusiastically, blindly.

‘No prizes for that.'

No moonlight. The rock was cold and hard beneath his buttocks. His father had the whistle in his mouth, sucking quietly. Jerra held the spot, the cord running across the fence to the tractor. Little weeping, shrill sounds came from the whistle.

‘Okay, turn it on,' whispered his father. ‘See him this time.'

Coals appeared in the scrub about forty yards away.

‘There,' murmured Jerra, holding the spot steady on the eyes. Like jewels. Nothing else shone like that. To have one in a little bag, to look at on special occasions, that would be good. To show Sean. Not the rest of the kids. They wouldn't know.

‘Off,' said his father. He whistled again. ‘He'll come further.'

‘Why?' He switched out. The light was heavy, though not as heavy as the little rifle his Dad called the pea-shooter.

‘The whistle.'

‘What does it do?'

‘Sounds like a wounded rabbit. Fox thinks he's got quick tucker.'

‘But he hasn't.'

He smiled. They would get this fox. His Dad was smarter.

‘On.'

He switched on. Gone. No, they were closer, in the long hair of wild oats to the left. He stood. His father moved behind, resting the slim barrel on Jerra's shoulder. He could feel his father's knees touching the heels of his boots, and smell the oil on the barrel. His father took a long breath. He breathed with him. Crack! in his ear. The lights went out. Only the white circle like a moon on the grass.

Judy waited.

‘Explain,' she said, touching his arm.

His palms were damp.

‘You said that stalking and the kill were best, with animals. Stalking is good. That's hard; makes you work. But the kill is different. With an animal, killing changes it. With big things. Things that ripple and snort and you can hear them breathing, you're so close.'

‘So?'

‘No use hunting a buffalo or a roo, because you're hunting something you'll never get. What you get, even with a good kill, is different to what you were after. A roo, I know, won't have that hard, tough look; the eyes are different, like glass marbles. Just a sack of dead meat with blood snotting out the nostrils. A rabbit's like a rag doll when its bladder collapses. Foxes, they're the best thing. You hunt them for the eyes. You get him, the eyes go out, there's just the body of a dog with the tongue out.'

‘Why fish? Isn't that the same, catching a big fish?' she said, moving in on him.

‘Fishing isn't hunting, either.' He knew now. ‘Sitting out of the water, gaffing the sods up, it's luck with a bit of skill. Up to the fish to take the bait. All you do is pull him up, wear him out a bit on the way, and try not to get wet. The fish can rip the hook out, and his lips with it, or surrender.'

And die. With the mate sliding off deep, leaving you with it in your lap, covering the gaff-holes.

‘So there's nothing worthwhile in hunting?'

‘Not animals, but fish —'

‘You just said fishing was all luck.'

‘Not spearfishing.' He grinned. ‘That's hunting. Real hunting.'

‘Oh —'

‘Odds are nearly even. A few in the fishes' favour.'

‘What about aqualung?'

‘Slaughter.'

She curled around him. Hot by the fire.

‘Now I
know
you're bullshitting.' She giggled. ‘All that crap about things different dead.'

‘Doesn't apply.'

‘Crap! Surrender while you can.'

‘A fish is different,' he continued, blurting, trying to explain. ‘Doesn't collapse when it dies. The eyes the same, scales the same. Still a fish. A good kill leaves a small mark in the right spot. Preserved.'

‘Until it goes off.'

‘It'll fight, a big fish. Try to drown you if he can.'

She pressed against him.

‘I believe it,' he said.

‘Mm.' Buttons.

‘Do you know about the pearl?'

‘Little hard —'

‘Something you wouldn't believe.'

‘Oh, I —'

‘Made out of the part of the brain.' The aggregated life, the distilled knowledge of lifetimes, of ancestors, of travel, of instinct, of things unseen and unknown. His sluggish mind blundered on unaware.

‘Silly —'

A hand at the back of his neck.

‘The bit he stores and hides —'

‘This way.'

‘. . . in the back of his head, hard as —'

‘Anything.' She breathed hot.

‘And I believe it. Dad —'

‘Mind the wall —'

‘But lost it.'

‘Here.'

‘Fell between the boards.'

Floating on his back, the water moved under him. Shirt opened to hot fingertips, scalding, everything. A knee pressed into his side. Ends of hair in his face. Her giggles.

‘Bloody fish. Tell me —'

‘God —'

‘Something nice.'

‘No,' he breathed, empty.

‘Hmmm?' Hands on him, opening everywhere.

‘No! No!'

His face met the scorching breasts as he struggled, hair between his lips. She gasped as he levered her mouth off, flung her aside, groping for the faraway light of the doorway. And no breath.

All down the hall, staggering, he scrabbled with his shirt, chest burning. He tried to cover up, but there were buttons gone. Jumper, he couldn't remember. He wanted to puke. Anything. Opening the door, he sucked the chill deep and it stung all the way down in his chest. Stubbed on the rusty tricycle. Off the veranda.

Kettle screaming.

‘I
JUST
am, that's all!'

‘No sense in it!'

‘I know.'

‘What are you running away from?' asked his father.

‘Nothing.'

‘Something happened?'

‘Plenty.'

‘Tell us,' pleaded his mother.

‘What the hell can I tell you that you don't know already?'

‘Jerra,' she sobbed. ‘We don't know anything.'

‘Then it's the same.'

His father held his arm.

‘Jerra, yer not making sense!'

‘Course I'm bloody not!'

His mother crying on the bookshelves.

‘Tom, what's he done?'

‘Nothing! I got sacked, orright? Here's my board.' He held out some notes.

‘We don't want that!'

‘What do you want?'

‘Whatever you want.'

‘You can't. It's too late.'

He rolled the canvas tight. Rope lay in coils. He had done it well in the dark, not sleeping all night. Picking up the box of cans and cartons, he went for the door.

‘Where will you be, then, son?'

‘Fishing,' he said. ‘Or something.'

‘Jerra?' His mother held out her arms.

He slapped the flywire door back.

Boys don't say it.

The VW was nearly full. Next door, the man was starting his mower before breakfast. Drizzle drifted.

Boys don't.

All the way to the sea he could see the collage of city, misted with rain and latticed with sunlight where it penetrated the cloud, gradually losing focus, diminishing in the mirrors as Jerra sat in low gear up the winding hills. Drizzle spotted the windscreen, blurring, but not wetting it enough to use the wipers. At the top of the hill, the labouring VW was eased, and the road wound through hilly pine forests and gravel pits. It rained heavily. The tyres hissed and the wipers slapped spastically on the glass.

‘Do you love me, Jerra?'

‘Yes.'

Her gown was slipping; a nurse passed, eyebrows lifted.

She always asked before he left. He always felt the eyes on him in the corridors as he left, with her looking after him.

The monotony of pines diminished into hills and thick pastures clogged with huddling grey sheep. Gullies lined with trees furrowed through the hills, and already, in low paddocks by the road, flat black pools lay pocked with rain, fences jutting out with stiff stalks of cut weeds. Cows slapped their tails in the wet. He passed a tractor hub-deep in the dung-like mud. Cold air was piercing the panels of the cabin, and Jerra felt his feet numbing. He remembered the times on the farm when he had stood, barefoot, in the fresh, green cowpats, warming his toes as he squelched.

‘I'm old.'

‘No.'

‘Ugly.'

‘No.'

‘Do you love me?'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Yes. Tell Jerra you said it.'

‘Jewel, I am Jerra.'

She smiled uncomprehendingly.

‘I am Jerra.'

She was watching him gaily as he plodded down the stairs, defeated.

A roo lay upturned beside the road, legs stiff in the air. Smears of blood disturbed the gravel, picked over by crows and magpies. Pie meat, the poor bastard, he thought.

Listening to the note of the engine, and tapping out its rhythms on the steering wheel, Jerra tried to remember the things he had forgotten to bring, but it was hopeless; he hardly knew what he had, and, as always, he confused this with other trips, other forgotten things, other items to be remembered. He pulled in at Williams, coasting into the Golden Fleece roadhouse with the motor off, and sat for a moment with the silence.

‘Yeah?'

A girl in a red parka, with black teeth, at the window. Jerra wound down. It was drizzling.

‘Fill it up, thanks.'

She went around to the fuel tank as he stumbled out. His thongs slid over the oily tarmac, spotted with greasy spectrums, as he made his way to the –
EN
door. He pee-ed into the crap-stained bowl and flushed away the scum of butts and paper. He had seen the flies and smelt this place in the summer, and for a moment the winter was not so bad. The deodorising thing sat on the browning cistern, a sugary, yellow jube.

Outside in the drizzle, he dug his hands into his coat pockets and watched the girl spill petrol down the duco as she tried to force more into the tank. A cow moaned. He got up into the cab shivering, wiped the mist from the windscreen with his hand, and glanced in the back at the jerrycans, the smoky canvas, the blankets, stakes, tins of food, bags and boxes; the handle of the axe and the end of his spear protruded from the hessian bag. He reached over and dragged out a bag of peanuts. He shelled a few and ate them, stuffing the shells into the ashtray, already full with Judy's stinking butts and the foil from Lifesavers.

‘Why doesn't he love me, I wonder?'

She was wandering again, and Jerra picked off a bud, feeling it between his fingertips.

‘He does.'

‘You think I'm an idiot, dear.'

He pressed the bud.

‘He hates me, I think. Does Jim say things about me?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Sean hates me.'

‘He hates this place.'

‘He doesn't have to live in it.'

‘No,' said Jerra, smiling nervously at the nurse who scurried by at exactly the same time each morning, to watch them.

The girl came back to the window, hands wet with petrol.

‘Six fifty-three.'

‘How much in the tank?'

‘Eh?'

He gave her the money, noticing the black underneath her nails.When she returned with the change he had the motor running.

As the country flattened out, opening onto wider slopes of green, the cold crept up from his fingertips, blueing his knuckles. He felt the tyre blow and the van list as he rounded a bend, and he stopped at the gravelly edge of the road. Thongs flicking spots of mud up onto his back, he went round to the rear tyre. He dragged the dusty spare out and rolled it onto its side in the mud. He found the toolbox and left it out on top of the gear in the back. Opening the heavy jarrah lid, he pulled out the jack and wheelbrace, tossing aside something wrapped in a smelly old flourbag.

The spare on, Jerra wiped the punctured tyre as best he could, shoving it under the canvas. He sat at the edge of the sliding door for a moment, scraping the mud from his jeans, then wiping his hands on the flourbag. Something heavy inside. He pulled it out. Small flakes came off in his palm. The ringbolt without a bolt. Funny old thing. He dropped it back in.