An Open Swimmer (7 page)

‘Like eating rabbit shit.'

A crash in the bush.

‘Close,' said Sean.

‘Should've brought the .22.'

‘Even beans are better than roo.'

Jerra poked the can with a stick. The fire was feeble.

‘I'm thinking of leaving soon.'

‘What? There's a week left.'

‘Yeah. Well I thought we might move on.'

Sean was shaking his head, red eyes laughing.

‘In the morning.'

‘Shit, why not tonight?'

‘Plenty of other places.'

‘The old man of course. Geez. I don't
believe
it.'

‘You know how ol' blokes like that are.'

‘Yeah. But do you?'

The fire smouldered, smoke easing from between the teeth of coals. Sean dragged the black can from the ashes.

‘Doesn't look like it's gonna get any hotter without wood,' he said, rolling it in the damp leaves at his feet.

‘If you want some wood, there's plenty o' bush,' Jerra said. ‘If yer not sure, the dead stuff usually burns best. You'll probably find it lying on the ground.'

Sean slapped beans onto the buckled plates.

‘Here, smart-arse. Mind the bones.'

Sean was calling, asleep in the VW. Jerra couldn't stand it. He felt like going in there and throttling him. He sat by the circle of blackened rocks, scraping the soot away with a stick. The limestone showed dull white, bone, beneath. Dew settled on the back of his neck. No wind. Not a leaf moved.

He left the fire. It was too late to bother about more wood. He stumbled down to the beach in the moonlight. The white flickered through the trees. The sand was loud. Footsteps crunched, the broken teeth of shells. Walking near the still shore, he saw the buried beam, longer and whiter in the moonlight.

Difficult on the rocks. Shadows made it impossible to judge blackness as solid rock or air, and he fell a few times, opening an elbow and a shin. Feeling his way over the surfaces with his palms, he came upon the gulls, crowded, sleeping in a hollow. He avoided them, climbing closer to the water, slipping on the damp felt of algae.

Orange and red, the fire lit a circle in front of the humpy, rippling shadows across the sand, lighting the eyes of the old man, squatting, staring in.

He was cutting with little scissors, a pair of women's nail scissors . . . 
neighbours' landmark, which the men . . . of old have set.
Fifteen:
A single . . . wit . . . ness shall not prevail against
 . . .

Rolling, rolling the stuff between his fingers.

. . . 
or see this great fire any more, lest I die
 . . 
.

Jerra jumped from the last rock.

. . . 
And the rest shall hear, and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among
 . . 
.

The old man, without a shirt, stood up and backed away.

‘No, not me. Go away. I had to!'

Jerra stopped.

‘No, hang on, it's me.'

The old man hobbled into the darkness of the humpy.

‘Not all my fault. Don't, no burning. Please!'

‘Hey, it's
only me. It's orright,' called Jerra, going over to the hut.

‘She sank it on purpose, you know. She ever tell you that? Did you ever . . . were you ever with her? Eh? Must've been the only one left in town, then. Was it yours? What she had in her? Not mine, oh no. Couldn't've. Not that she'd know.
A single witness . . . 
go away.'

‘I am,' said Jerra, annoyed. ‘Tomorrow.'

‘No. Go now. I loved, that's somethin'.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Been waiting, you know. Hard to find, eh? Have to get me twice if yer countin'.
Two
!'

‘I could meet you up at the shack, tomorrow.'

A confused muttering from the darkness. Short laughs. Something scraped on the floor. A piece of wood fell in the sand next to Jerra.

‘I've 'eard yers talkin' about me in me dreams . . . 
send
n'
fetch him . . . 
an'
fetch . . . 
can't drag me down there to burn. Arr, yer bastards!'

Climbing the rocks, Jerra could hear the hollering, a flat echo off the rocks.

The VW hawked, then started with the old clatter, and the exhaust blew dust and scales from the grass behind. Sean slopped some water on the windscreen and got in, slamming the door. It fell open again. He cursed, slammed it again.

Jerra turned in the clearing. He gazed a moment at the windblown beach and the cairn of blackened stones.

Rain had hardened the sand. It was darker and packed in the ruts.

‘Anti-bloody-climax,' murmured Sean, against the window.

‘Veedub's mine. We all have our moments of power.' He slid into the bends, frightening birds into the air, and the shack came into view. Jerra pulled over.

‘The last farewell,' Sean sneered, glancing at Jerra's grazed elbow.

Jerra went over to the hut and hit the wall. He thought the old man might have come up to say goodbye.

‘You there?' Bubbling of the VW. ‘It's me.'

‘Might've slipped to the other side. You know, psychically.'

‘Pass some paper.' Holding the paper against the window. ‘Ah. Hadn't thought —'

‘Hmm?'

‘His name. Can hardly write anything if I don't know his name.'

‘Jekyll?'

‘For shit's sake!'

‘Seen it all before. Movie, perhaps.'

‘Bugger it,' said Jerra, climbing in and slamming the door. He yanked the handbrake. ‘Let's just go; that'll be enough.'

He gave it a little. And missed second with a crunch.

S
UDDEN COLD
days of autumn. Jerra felt the dull hardness of the bedroom walls as he overlooked the prim tablecloth of the garden next door, its zig-zagged edges, hem-stitched borders with bougainvillaea and little drooping mauve things that clung tight; seeing the same things that had excited him in those early years when it was like living in a tree-house looming above the silky oaks, being higher, even, than the jacaranda clouds that were now an old, hard purple, and thick enough, it seemed, to walk on. The two-storey house in Nedlands had been an abrupt change, he remembered dimly, from the weatherboard place at North Beach. Night times, when he couldn't sleep, Jerra would lie listening to the tide coming in at Cottesloe; it was six miles away, his father said, but he could hear it, anyway. Now all he heard was the traffic on Stirling Highway and the long breath of the downstairs air conditioner.

Sunlight was a neat square on the shag. There were books and photographs on the shelves, dents in the wall from bats and balls, and, above his pillow, a small footprint that wouldn't come off.

Under the silky oak the downy leaves were the same, crackling beneath his feet, wet in the coarse chill of the mornings. Early, the man next door tortured the mower into life and chased it around until lunch time, shouting when the soft cores of dog turds bit into his shins.

Jerra was watering the nature strip, which didn't need it.

‘Son.' His father nodded, hands in the pockets of his loose grey trousers.

‘'Lo, Dad.' The water was numbing his fingers.

His father sniffed, staring at the kangaroo-paw.

‘Been thinking much?'

‘About what?'

‘What you're gonna do with yourself. Long time since you had work.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

‘Though you might've stuck at the boats longer. I thought you liked fish.'

‘I do.'

‘Better still, you liked catching the buggers. Not often you'd be disappointed on the boats. Caught a pile. Or you said so in your letters.'

‘It's not the same.' He was spraying the pickets of the fence, long lashes on the rough boards, for the sake of the kangaroo-paw. ‘It's the skill. Learnt that, if nothin' else. Like you used to say, the touches on the line, or like divin' for 'em on their own terms, not hauling them in by the ton with a winch. That's like . . . mining, or something.'

He heard the quiet breathing over the spray of the hose. A dog cleared its throat.

‘Yeah. Not the same. But you can't expect —'

‘Sure, nothing's all roses. But it's just not right. Nothing seems to be right.'

‘When I was your age —'

‘Dad —'

‘Orright, just listen. Younger than you, I was, and your grandmother came home one day, pulled me in by the ear, and said —'

‘“Yer an apprentice boiler maker”, I know.'

‘And that was it.'

‘Easy.'

‘No choice.'

‘And no big decision.'

‘It's never just one decision. But I went.'

‘But time —'

‘Seven years.'

‘Then what?'

‘I shot through.'

‘Convincing me of the wrong side, Dad.'

‘But you got a choice.'

Jerra stamped his feet.

‘I ended up doin' a million things.'

‘Ever happy?'

‘Sometimes. There's always something else.'

‘Then, there was. This is now. It's different.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Be easier if I had something to inherit.' Jerra grinned. ‘Then I could just take over when you went dribbly.'

‘Sean?'

‘Yeah. No problems, eh?'

‘No choice, either.'

‘Choice is nothin' when there's zero to choose from. A shop with one product. That's choice?'

His father kicked the grass.

‘Take it away, and that's what you'd want most.'

‘Well, what made you settle down?'

‘Dunno,' said his father. ‘Got tired, I s'pose.'

‘Not satisfaction?'

‘Maybe that's one o' the things you stop worryin' about.'

‘Where does that leave
me
,
then?'

‘Maybe you'll find something. I thought you might finish Uni, like young Sean, and get qualifications.'

‘And end up like him? A degree to be a clerk for his old man. In a shirt business? Working out the pay and the collar measurements. What a life!'

‘He could've got a job elsewhere.'

‘Dad, BAs aren't worth a piss in the river these days.'

His father turned off the hose. It went limp and Jerra threw it down. The pickets shone.

‘I don't care what you do, as long as you find something you can be satisfied with.'

‘Take me till I die.'

‘I thought that once.'

Jerra looked at the greying man, the loose skin around his neck, the pitted palms he remembered gloved in pollard.

‘Not the same,' he said, certain.

‘I'm not so sure.'

City streets were cold in the mornings where Jerra wandered, squinting into shopfronts, sitting with the hungover drunks and the picking birds in Forrest Place, walking mornings without recall, looking dully into the brown froth of the river, over the shoulders of bent old men who fumbled with empty hooks, muttering. They spat on the water, the gobs floating out in the viscous current, like jellyfish. He might have spoken to them, but they just looked over their shoulders, as if to accuse him of scaring the fish away. He could have told them that there were none left, only their jellyfish. They muttered, and cricked their knuckles.

Jerra met eyes he knew, letting them blink by, clacking up the footpaths amidst the stink of rotting flowers, fluorescent windows of scaled, headless fish, the chatter of money in tills, on bars, in pockets, gutters.

Faces in the street had that grin. That tight sucking back of the lips. He was grinning, aching. His father was grinning, hand tight on the throttle. And the turrum was dying. In murmurs. But he had worked hard for it. He ached. Wasn't that enough?

He caught the grass-green bus home. Next door, the man was scraping up the turds with a shovel. A disgrace, it was, and he didn't even own a dog! Jerra grinned, ran his hand along the sucked-in cheek of the dented VW, and went inside, his clothes reeking of cashews from Coles, the newsprint and cement.