The Turning

  Well, you didn’t see that one coming, said the girl, suddenly behind him.

  Vic whirled around and a string of snot and saltwater landed on his arm. While he scrubbed at it with his knuckles, he saw the green polish on her toenails.

  Sorry, she said. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.

  Vic shrugged. The sun was right behind her head; he couldn’t see her at all.

  Nice in the water?

  Yeah, he said. Nice.

  I was wondering. If I could have a go on that thing.

  She stepped over and put a toe on the board. She wore Levi’s and a tee-shirt that said Phi Zappa Krappa. There was a picture of a naked man sitting on the toilet.

  Okay, he said.

  You sure?

  He shrugged again.

  Always wanted to try, she said. And Christ, I’m so bored. You know?

  Vic smiled hesitantly and wiped his nose twice – once with each hand. He got up off the board. The girl reefed off her shirt and shucked down her jeans. She dropped her mirror shades onto the little pile they made on the sand. She wore a lime-green bikini with little plastic hoops at the hips like that Bond girl. Sunlight caught the fine down on her thighs. She had brown hair that swung across her back. She had real breasts. She was older, much older than him.

  Any tips? she said, hoisting the board to her hip.

  Um. Don’t fall off?

  She smiled kind of sideways at him and walked down to the water. He watched her go, alert to her calves and the way her bum moved. He wondered what it’d be like to have an older sister. How could you stand the sight of all that flesh without turning into some kind of sister-weirdo?

  As a surfer the girl was no more a natural than he was. Her hopeless floundering came as sweet relief. When she came back she dropped the board at his feet and squeezed the water out of her hair. There was sand salted down the front of her legs. She was pretty. He didn’t know where to look.

  Thought you’d come out and help me, sport, she said, grabbing up her shirt and wiping her face on it.

  Sorry, he mumbled, turning away from the sight of her dabbing at her chest with the damp shirt.

  What’s your name?

  He told her.

  From the city?

  He shook his head. Not anymore, he said. We just moved down south. Angelus. It’s pretty crap.

  He looked at her green-painted fingernails as she flapped the shirt. Something wasn’t right.

  She sat on the sand and crossed her legs like a primary schooler or a hippy. She pulled on the mirror shades and then he saw it. There was a finger missing.

  What? she said.

  Sorry?

  The finger?

  No, he said.

  Bullshit. Come on sport, own up. Here, look.

  She held up her left hand. The third finger was little more than a stump.

  Vic felt himself grimacing, tried to undo his face but she’d seen it.

  Hay baler, she said.

  Oh, he murmured, not knowing what a hay baler was. It sounded like a farm thing.

  You on a farm?

  Kind of. Boarding school, really.

  Did it. Hurt?

  Like a total bastard, she said. But, you know, all the big things hurt, the things you remember. If it doesn’t hurt it’s not important.

  You really think?

  She grabbed him by the ear, pinched his lobe so hard he saw spots, and the more he tried to squirm free the tighter she gripped him. It felt like his whole ear would be uprooted from his head. She was a psycho; he was stuck out here with a psycho and he had tears in his eyes now and she had her mouth on his, kissing him soft and slow until his mouth slackened, and all the time, even while her tongue slid across his teeth and he snorted like a frightened horse through his nose, she squeezed his ear without relenting until the long hot kiss was over.

  She let go. He gasped.

  See?

  See what? he said, grabbing his ear.

  You won’t forget your first real kiss.

  You’re nuts!

  Wrong choice of words, sport, she said, looking down at the stiffy in his shorts.

  Vic hunched away from her.

  Just trying to make a point, she said with a grin.

  Fuck you, he said.

  My mother’s worried about my wedding day. Says it’ll be awkward when my husband goes to put the ring on in front of all the dearly beloved.

  Does it worry you? he asked, despite himself.

  Nah. Weddings are bourgeois. Marriage is over. Who the hell wants to get married?

  Your mum did.

  She’s a farmer’s wife. She doesn’t know any better.

  Vic looked at her hands. He was appalled and fascinated by her.

  I call it my abbreviation, she said, lying back on her jeans, holding out her damaged hand like a starlet admiring the ring Rock Hudson or somebody had just bought her.

  Sorry?

  The finger. My abbreviation. Drives the old man spare. He can’t even look at it.

  Vic couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  Guilty, I spose. I was six years old. Thinks he should have been more careful.

  Maybe he should have.

  Nah. Wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t even an accident. I just stuck my hand in because I was curious.

  Curious?

  To see how it all worked.

  Far out, he murmured.

  And the lesson is that it all works too quickly to see, she said with a laugh. But I remember everything about that day. What everyone was wearing, all the daggy things people said in the car on the way into town. The smell of stubble, upholstery. The taste of tomato in my throat from lunch.

  What’s your school like? he said.

  A battery farm. A thousand girls trying to lay an egg.

  How old are you? he asked, emboldened.

  Sixteen. And bloody bored.

  Can I see your finger? Close up, I mean?

  I don’t care, she said, holding out her hand from where she lay.

  The whole time they’d been speaking it wasn’t the girl’s shaved legs he was watching, not even the wedge of cloth over the mound between them, but her hand raking the sand at her side. Her knuckles were frosted with tiny white grains; he hadn’t been able to look away and now, as he shuffled over on his knees to get a closer look, he felt a flutter in his throat. She turned the hand one way and then the other for his benefit. He leaned down and blew sand from her finger and the quartzy grains settled on her belly.

  She tilted her hand down the way posh ladies did on the movies when they wanted their hand kissed. Without thinking, he kissed it.

  Kiss my aura, Dora.

  What?

  Frank Zappa. It’s a quote.

  Oh.

  This sun’s a bugger. I need some blockout. And I’m hungry.

  She grabbed his face the way an auntie would, then let him go.

  They walked back up the beach in no great hurry, talking a bit as they went. Her name was Melanie and her family had the big blitz truck and the circus tent. They were here for a few days’ break before harvesting. There was a big low in the north and they were keeping an ear on the weather reports on radio. Neighbours and cousins were with them but she was the only one her age.

  We’re in the same boat, he said.

  She laughed sceptically.

  We’re having a bonfire, he said. For New Year’s.

  Uh-huh.

  He sensed that she’d grown bored with him now.

  He caught sight of himself in Melanie’s mirror shades. His lips were white with sand where he’d kissed her hand. He looked like a nine-year-old.

  I’m hot, he said, flushing.

  Okay.

  I’m gunna swim a bit.

  Right.

  See ya, then.

  Vic’s skin all but sizzled when he hit the water. He lay there watching Melanie walk back into camp. The excitement of being with her had lapsed into a sudden sense of failure. The sea sucked at him. He tingled all ove
r.

  That afternoon Vic sat out in the dinghy catching flathead and whiting with the men. Uncle Ernie bitched about traffic fines and summonses and the tax man and Vic’s old man let it go. One of Ernie’s balls kept peeking out of his tiny shorts like a dangling gingernut and both Vic and his father struggled to keep a straight face. Now and then, in lulls in the bite, Vic rubbed the tender lobe of his ear.

  When they came in at dusk the women and the wobbegong girls were in the water, splashing and screaming. Nanna had the baby on her hip, searching the water for unseen perils.

  Later they lit the bonfire and while it got going they ate fish and potato salad and green beans. A big tangerine moon rose from the dunes and the breeze died out altogether. The girls rooted through the icebox for bottles of Passiona. Vic drank Cottee’s cola with his mother and felt his skin tight with sunburn. Nanna had her icewater and the other adults had beer. Soon there were empty king browns all over the trestle.

  When the fire was really crackling Vic walked down to the water in search of more driftwood. Up the beach a little way, out in front of the big old army truck and the striped circus tent, there was a fire burning twenty feet high. It was a real monster. He walked up into the dunes so he could come up behind Melanie’s camp and look on without being seen.

  He crouched in a bit of saltbush and gazed down on the fire and the pile of mallee roots beside the truck. There were people laughing down there, big men’s voices and squeaking kids and the titter of women. He smelled meat grilling and onions frying.

  Like a peasant feast, said a familiar voice beside him.

  Vic nearly cried out in fright. Melanie was tucked into another clump of saltbush, a bottle glinting in her hand.

  Scared you again.

  No, he lied.

  Bored, too, eh?

  A bit.

  Want some?

  What is it?

  New Year’s Eve.

  Very funny.

  Feel like a swim?

  No, said Vic. A walk maybe.

  Okay, a walk.

  As the moon dragged itself back into shape, they walked out into the rolling, white sandhills until they came to a valley whose wind-ribbed contours reminded Vic of the ocean floor; the fluted ripples went on forever.

  Cheer me up, sport, said Melanie.

  Vic told her about Ernie’s dangling gingernut and the jugs on his Auntie Cleo. He told her about his cousins, their needle teeth and wobbegong skin.

  Woebegone, said Melanie.

  Wobbegong. It’s a carpet shark.

  I know this. Sport, I’m with you.

  They sat down in a hollow to rest a moment. Melanie pulled the lid off her bottle and drank.

  Happy New Year, she said, passing it to him.

  Ginger, he murmured, sniffing.

  Stone’s Green Ginger Wine. Made from the little ginger balls of strange uncles.

  Vic laughed. He took a sip but didn’t like it. The stuff tasted like ginger beer mixed with diesel.

  How’s your ear? Melanie said, reaching over and giggling as he drew away warily.

  Orright, he said.

  Let me see, then.

  Vic didn’t trust her but he couldn’t resist the idea of her touching him. She took his earlobe tenderly and rubbed it between two fingertips.

  You’ll remember that, I reckon.

  Yes.

  Mean old trick, she said, grabbing his chin like an auntie again.

  How come you’re sad? he said with her still holding his face.

  It’s nothing, sport.

  You really seem sad.

  New Year’s Eve.

  School’s not for another month.

  Not for me, sport.

  Posh school, then.

  No, she said. I’m not going back. A few months on the farm.

  She put a finger over his mouth to stop him talking and she held him like that while she socked back another drink. He closed his lips over her finger.

  Ah, she said. A kiss. But what about this one?

  She held up the stub of her ring finger in the moonlight before him and Vic took her wrist and drew it to him. He felt her whole hand across his face as he took the stump into his mouth. It blotted out the sky, it blacked the glare of moonlight and tasted of salt and ginger and sugar all at once. There was no texture of a fingerprint against his tongue, just a slick smoothness that made his blood bubble.

  Come here, she said. What the hell. Auld Lang Syne.

  She kissed him and her mouth was soft and hungry as she bent down to reach him and he heard the bottle gurgle out into the sand where their knees had knocked it while her tongue found his and he shaped his mouth to hers. He let his hands settle on her hips, felt his head cradled in her fingers and he swam up into her, happy and awake as he’d ever been. When she broke off and kissed the top of his head he was bereft. He pressed his brow to her throat and she dug her fingers in his hair and drew up her shirt so that her breasts shone in the moonlight. She guided him down and he kissed them. They were full against his face and when he drew the nipple into his mouth she murmured and gasped and finally, confoundingly, began to cry.

  It was midnight when he got back to the bonfire. The others were singing and kissing and nobody asked him where he’d been. They were Langs singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and the cousins were asleep on their feet.

  Vic woke in the night to the sound of puffing and moaning. Everyone was in bed now but a camp stretcher was grinding and squeaking. He felt his mother stir beside him. It was Auntie Cleo panting over there. Vic saw her legs up in the moonlight.

  Oh, for God’s sake, whispered his mother.

  He listened until his lap was wet and the sheet clammy around him. Ernie gave one sharp grunt, like a man who’d suddenly remembered something, and in the quiet that followed, while the sea crawled against the shore and the moon spilled through holes in the tarp overhead, Vic thought of Melanie and the strangeness of her tears and the long, silent walk back to camp. He hadn’t hurt her, he knew that much, but he sensed she was in some kind of pain, something important that was out of his reach, the way everything is when you’re just a stupid kid and all the talk is over your head. He thought of the hollow between her breasts, pressed his face to the pillow and slept.

  His father woke him at dawn. The boat was already afloat in the shallows. Ernie yanked at the outboard’s starter rope.

  They were out in deep water before Vic was properly awake. The water was clear; you could see sandy bottom in the green holes in the reef. Kelp rose yellow and brown from jagged lumps and fish sprayed in all directions.

  When they came upon their first float, Vic’s old man gaffed it aboard and hauled on the rope. The boat wallowed between swells and tipped precariously as the pot came over the side all clicking and slapping with tails and feelers and dropping legs.

  Happy New Year, said the old man, dragging crays out and dropping them into the bucket.

  Shit! said Ernie. Hang on!

  The engine roared and the boat surged and the old man all but fell onto Vic who saw the wave looming beyond him. The bow rose. The old man’s head was on the seat beside him, one hand gripping Vic’s leg as they speared up, freefalling from the back of the wave. They slammed back onto the water and the old man laughed but Vic could already see the next wave coming.

  Go! he screamed. Go!

  Ernie throttled up and the old man crawled out of a nest of rope to sit up in the bow, head swivelling. This wave was much bigger. It was beginning to break already and in its path the water was dimpled and lumpy with the contours of the reef beneath them.

  The old man pointed one way. Ernie steered in the opposite direction. And just as the wave broke on their beam a few yards out, he turned the boat shoreward and tried to outrun the thing.

  Vic felt the wave bear down on them, a spitting, roaring draught behind his ears, before it snatched them up and left them, for two or three seconds at most, actually surfing down the face the way he’d never dreamt possible. The motor sn
arling. Sea and air thundering in his head.

  And then it was quiet. Bubbles danced before his face and his hands were pearly and his hair swooning all in one direction. His head hit something sharp and hard before he realized he was beneath the boat. The water was crowded with rope and lines. Something bit his leg. He was bursting and the grey shell of the boat held him under till the water pressed at his lips.

  Something collared him, dragged him down and sideways. Vic felt the water against his teeth. He screamed out the last of his air and then he was up.

  He’s snagged, said his father.

  Except for the fading carpet of bubbles the sea was smooth again. The air was raw in his lungs. He began to cry. The old man dived and came up pulling line so Vic could move, but every time he kicked as he trod water something bit deep in his calf.

  It’s a hook, said the old man. Can you swim?

  Vic nodded, still bawling.

  It’s okay, said the old man. Vic, son, we’re orright.

  He floated and sculled the best he could with the hook and heavy line dragging on his leg. Ernie climbed onto the overturned hull, the cheeks of his arse bare to the morning sun. Together the men righted the boat and while Ernie bailed it the old man swam back with a knife to cut him free.

  Then they caught the floating oars and climbed into the boat. Ernie was naked. His shorts were gone. The three of them had a jittery laugh and started bailing with their hands.

  The motor was dead. It took a long time to row in against the breeze. Women and girls cried on the beach. Vic’s cousins looked uglier than something dragged from a reeking craypot. Nanna fetched Ernie some shorts.

  In the shade of the tarp the women held him down while Ernie and his father pushed the big hook through his leg until the barb broke free of the skin and then they cut it off with pliers and dragged it back out. The whole time they worked, through every blast of pain, he thought of Melanie. Her finger, her swinging breasts, a puddle of sand on her belly. He didn’t give a bugger about the cousins; let them see him writhe and blubber. He was thinking of her. He was immune; nothing could touch him. And afterwards, in the long calm on the other side of the pain, when he felt spent and sleepy and silky-skinned, he let the women douse him with Mercurochrome and ply him with eggs and sugary tea, and pat his tears dry, and when they finally left off he took the barbless hook and limped up the beach to give it to her. Melanie would understand; she’d know what he meant by it.