Dirt Music

  At the sandy end of the jetty Georgie met the sorry youth she’d lured from the bowels of the surfshop and together they walked out to where the crowd waited.

  Jim’ll be in a nice old shit, said the boy.

  Think of the money, she said.

  Raider pulled in with a histrionic reversing of screws. GM diesels, she thought with what remained of her fishwife self, cheap and loud. Whatever he saved at the dealers this season he’ll be spending on hearing aids in the next.

  They brought Boris up conscious and muttering. He was never pretty but today he sported a head like a spoiled mango. His wound was a ragged exclamation mark from scalp to nose and Georgie saw that he needed sutures.

  The pupils on him, said Rachel as they loaded him in.

  Pissholes in the snow, said Yogi.

  You’ve never bloody seen snow, Yogi, said Rachel.

  Seen a few pissholes, though.

  You see what I have to work with, Georgie? said Rachel mildly. I’ll have hours of it.

  Least you’re in the back with Boris.

  Some alternative.

  Who’s up? Jim yelled from the bridge of the lurching boat. There was blood on his shirt and he looked ornery behind his reflector shades. Who’s comin?

  Me, said the kid beside Georgie. His dejected voice barely carried above the idling diesels.

  Well, what’re you waitin for—a printed fuckin invitation?

  The boy swung aboard to stand beside the other crewman and Jim had them boiling away before the lines even hit the deck.

  He’ll wish he was never born, said Yogi. Poor little cunt.

  Hey, driver! called Rachel. You thinking of taking this bloke to hospital any time soon?

  He’ll be orright. Torn upholstery, thasall. Keep yer rubber gloves on, girlie.

  Girlie me I’ll kick you fair up the date.

  You’ll put a hole in me ouzone layer.

  Yeah, that’d hurt.

  Scuse me, George. Must convey a chap to his physician.

  Yogi waddled around and climbed into the 250’s cab.

  Rachel paused from swabbing and smiled.

  Yogi’s forgotten the doors. Would you mind?

  Sure.

  Georgie liked Rachel. Word was she’d been a social worker. Georgie had the impression her bloke might be the local dope dealer. Despite having stayed ten years, Rachel wasn’t a genuine White Pointer either. She wore peasant scarves and didn’t shave her legs. Her face was plain and honest and open. Georgie wondered how it was they had never become friends, but even as she asked herself the question she knew the answer. She just hadn’t taken the trouble. For three years she’d kept entirely to herself.

  She swung the doors to. Rachel winked. The big Ford eased up the jetty behind a rolling wave of gulls.

  AN HOUR OUT of the city Fox sees the ambulance come bawling and flashing round the bend, its white duco flecked with the shadows cast by lemon-scented gums. Grips the wheel. Clocks the sight of Yogi Behr at the helm, elbow out the window like a bloody hot-rodder. Sees his eyes widen in recognition as they pass in a slam of slipstream. The moment rides by. He’s okay but chilled to the teeth. It takes a breath or two to digest the fact that Yogi, the little bugger, crossed himself going by as if warding off the evil eye.

  JOSH HELD the two halves of his skateboard and looked at Georgie in disbelief. Not that such a thing could occur but that it might have been accidental.

  That’s it!

  Georgie had begun patient and contrite, as upbeat as she could manage to be so late in the day. Brad looked on with an air of disinterest she no longer believed in. The fridge hummed.

  Maple top, Georgie.

  I know, love.

  My birthday present.

  From me. Yes.

  Well that’s it!

  Leaving bag and shoes and shirt on the kitchen floor he flounced down to his room.

  Bummer, said Brad with the faintest hint of a smirk.

  He knows I’ll buy him another one, she said, a little shaky. So how’s school?

  Sucks. New teacher wants a choir.

  Great. You used to sing so much. You’ve got a lovely voice.

  Not anymore.

  Oh.

  And no woman’ll make me.

  Georgie felt it somehow directed at her, was stung as he grabbed up an apple and sloped off. Within a few moments the hateful, lobotomized music of some Nintendo game rose from the stairs. The usual explosions, yelps of pain, murderous laughter.

  Late that afternoon Jim came in bloodshot and silvery with salt.

  Ah, she murmured, pouring him a glass. Captain Happy.

  Ahoy. As they say.

  How was it?

  Shithouse.

  The kid?

  Worked his ring gear out.

  Good for him.

  Three hundred kilos.

  Not bad for a day of disasters.

  I’m a day ahead of em, I reckon. Maybe tomorrow we’ll kill the pig.

  Hell, that’s what, seven thousand dollars?

  Before bait and fuel. Wages. Tax.

  Yeah, destitution, eh.

  He grinned.

  Called the hospital, she said. Boris took fifteen stitches. Concussion. He’s okay. What hit him?

  Snapper sinker big as a hotdog. It was all fouled in the pot. Came up swingin off it. Kerblam. Coulda killed him. Some bloody wood-duck up for the weekend got his line snagged on the gear and just left it there. Hey, nice goin with the skateboard.

  You know already?

  He was waitin on the front lawn for me, the little dobber.

  He knows I’ll buy him another one.

  Bugger him, he can save for it. Told him often enough about puttin the damn thing away.

  No, I’ll get it.

  Not this time. He needs to learn. After a certain point everybody’s on their own.

  Georgie sighed. He didn’t see the politics of it. But she was too tired to argue.

  At dinner Jim quizzed the boys about their day at school. Like most kids they’d blotted it from consciousness the moment they flew from the classroom door, so their responses were vague and guarded and Georgie felt the ghost of the broken skateboard hanging over her end of the table. Although Jim had started there himself, he had misgivings about the local school and Georgie could sense his restraint in not launching outright into a test of what they had learnt in six hours. He was a curious man. At forty-eight he was weatherbeaten but still attractive in a blunt, conventional antipodean way. His eyes were grey and his gaze steely. There were scars on his forehead and sun lesions on his hands and arms. His lips were often chapped and he had coarse, sandy hair whose curls, no matter how short the cut, seemed incongruously delicate for a man whose rumbly voice and physical presence altered the atmosphere of a room. There was something resolutely sober about him, a ponderous aspect. He was emotionally reserved. His features were impassive. Yet he had a weary humour that Georgie liked and when he did laugh a network of creases transformed his face, dividing it so many times as to render the whole less daunting.

  At White Point Jim was the uncrowned prince. People deferred to him. They watched him and took his lead and hung on every word. Several times a week men and women alike would drop by for a moment in confidence and he’d retire with them to the airless little room he used as an office. Even his perennial presidency of the regional branch of the Fishermen’s Association couldn’t account for the breadth of his authority. Some gravitas seemed to have been inherited from his legendary father, years dead. Big Bill was, by all accounts, not merely a man’s man, but a bastard’s bastard whose ruthless cunning was not confined to fishing. The Buckridges had been successful, acquisitive farmers in their time but as fishermen they were profoundly, prodigiously superior, and others in the fleet were in awe of Jim’s success. To them it was almost supernatural. They lived and died by chance, by fluctuations in weather and ocean current, by momentary changes in spawning patterns and migration. Crustacea was a fickle kingdom. And Jim Buck
ridge seemed touched. He simply refused to admit to it or even discuss it but Georgie knew this was the nub of his effect upon them: they thought he had the gift. Although he lived like a man without a past, never reminiscing—not even with the kids—and always seeming to look forward, Georgie knew there were painful secrets there. He was a widower, and he’d lost his mother as a child. He refused to discuss either loss and sometimes Georgie detected a suppressed rage in him that she was glad to be spared. It was rare; it came and went in brief flickers, but it unnerved her. Watching the caution and deference with which townsfolk treated him Georgie wondered if they thought his fishing luck was special because it was the obverse of his domestic life, if they believed that his freakish touch had come at a high personal cost. She knew they came around to stay in with him socially, but also in the hope that his luck might rub off on them. He endured it but he seemed to hate it too.

  Jim loved to fish but he wanted his sons to do something else. He didn’t want them to follow the standard White Point trajectory which meant bumping out of school at fifteen to end up in seaboots or prison greens. Bill had sent him to board at an exclusive school notorious for its alumni of politicians and white-collar criminals. Neither Josh nor Brad would ever need to work a day in their lives if he didn’t insist upon it, but Jim was a stickler for hard work, for education and upright behaviour. All of which made him even more an exception at White Point. Down off the rooster perch of the bridge he was a fair, articulate, thoughtful man. And he’d always been kind to her. He was capable of, sometimes compelled by, a special, almost fearful physical tenderness. He was blokey and, yes, a little dull, especially of late, but he wasn’t a narcissist or a whiner. She’d had her share of supposedly reconstructed males, and after them Jim was a breath of fresh air. They were an unlikely pair—she’d always enjoyed that. The shame of it was that recently, each time she catalogued his virtues like this, it left an odour of self-persuasion, and she feared that as a couple they grew less likely by the day.

  After dinner Jim stepped out for a bit. He came back with a video from Beaver’s garage. Georgie and Jim were on a Bette Davis bender. The great, hairy retired biker specialized in the campest years of Hollywood. Beaver was the closest thing Georgie had to a friend in this town.

  All About Eve, Jim said. Her last really good one. And Marilyn Monroe.

  Aha.

  So sue me—I’m a bloke.

  Georgie helped him put the boys to bed. Josh, his face softened by the nightlight, looked at her imploringly.

  Dad says I have to save for a new board.

  I’m sorry, love, she murmured. But it was an accident and you know we’ve been trying to get you to put it away.

  A hundred and fifty dollars, but.

  I’ll help you out.

  Yeah?

  Are the wheels okay?

  Think so.

  Then it’s just a new deck.

  Josh pulled at his buttons thoughtfully.

  We’ll have a look at the surfshop tomorrow.

  Don’t tell Dad.

  Why, love?

  He’s mad at me.

  Well, you were mean to me. It hurts, Josh. I have feelings, too.

  The memory of the S-word lingered between them. Things had been rocky these past weeks in its wake.

  Night, he said abruptly.

  Josh?

  Yeah?

  Thought you might say sorry.

  It wasn’t me who did it.

  Georgie got off her knees and left him. Up in the livingroom Jim was asleep with the weather fax and the TV remote in his lap. The southerly caused the windows to shudder.

  The house felt like a plane powering up at the end of a runway. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. She sat down and watched the movie anyway. Marilyn Monroe came and went without him, twitching those lips fit to beat the band. Georgie worked through the bottle of chardonnay hating Anne Baxter, wondering how Miss Davis seemed forever old, raising her glass to the deliciously cold George Sanders.

  The tape played out and rewound automatically and when it was done she sat in the ambient hum of other domestic machines.

  She got up unsteadily, checked her email in vain. There was only rubbish: perverted strangers, hawkers, the usual dreck. She padded downstairs and looked in on the boys. Brad slept with his head flung back like his old man. He’d lost his infant cuteness. She supposed Josh was in the process of shedding his. You could see why women teachers retreated into the pleasing compliance of the girls in their care. After nine, from what she could see, boys didn’t care to please. In his room Josh slept with his sheet off. He lay in the starfish position, a gentle nickering in his throat. She wanted to touch him while he was disarmed but she resisted the urge.

  What was it with him? Did he sense her withdrawal? Was his behaviour some kind of pre-emptive strike? God knows, he’d been through a storm of grief as a six-year-old. Did he feel it instinctively, this change? Had he really caused her to drop her bundle this winter, or did he just pick up on her beginning to let go?

  And where was his toughness now? Not that she could hold it against him. A bit of grit was useful. As a girl she’d had it in spades, hadn’t she? She despised her sisters’ girly meekness, the cunning, desperate way they strove for cuteness out of fear of losing favour. They were strategically pliable. And Georgie was not. Yet she was the loner in the family. An uncle once said she had more balls than her father. He was the one who felt her up when she was fifteen. She went upstairs to her father’s desk and showed him a business card which caused his eyes to widen. His boss, the editor of the newspaper he worked for, was her father’s sailing partner and here were his private numbers. If her uncle ever entered a room she was in without another adult present, she told him, she would make the call. That certainly pepped up Christmas gatherings in the Jutland house. She learned to steel herself. Georgie took that martial bearing onto the wards of a dozen hospitals. Along with a sense of humour, it helped when you were extracting a Barbie doll or a Perrier bottle from some weeping adventurer’s rectum. It immured you from the sight of your favourite sister’s nails bitten down to the quick. Or the gunshot sound of a camel’s legs breaking when run down by a speeding Cadillac. It mostly protected you from the sensation that you were making do, that your own soul was withering. But having a child turn away from you, nothing could steel you against that.

  Georgie trawled about in the wee hours. Cyberspace was choked with yearning, with fantasies and lust and bad spelling. The chat rooms were full of pimply boys from Michigan or the daughters of Indian diplomats who wanted to converse like Lisa Simpson. They drove her out into the real night again.

  She walked in the dark hollow between sandhills listening to her own breath as she went. Long before dawn she saw the shadow of a man easing his boat into the lagoon while his dog skittered along the shore. For a moment the dog paused, propped, as though sensing her crouched in the dune behind them. She heard the cough of a four-stroke behind her as she scrambled low in the direction of home.

  AFTER A WEEK of watching the shamateur launch, Georgie knew that she’d let it go too long. She couldn’t tell Jim or anyone now without condemning herself. A couple of times she’d even fed the bloke’s dog; unleashed it again and swum in the lagoon. Somehow she felt complicit and it left her exposed, nervous.

  Acting out of some oblique guilt about this, she sneaked Josh the money for his skateboard, but Jim found out and made the kid take it back and return her money. He could not believe, he said, that she would undermine his authority like that. She could barely credit it, either, but she did not feel contrite. They worked their way through Bette Davis with a funless determination.

  Georgie considered speaking to Beaver about the bloke with the boat. She loved their pumpside talks about the Golden Age. Beaver was gross in a comforting sort of way. His beard had gone the colour of steel wool and his tatts gave his chest and arms a bruised look. He favoured black 501s and blue singlets which displayed his bum crack and his monster gut. Ove
ralls, when he conceded to wear them, hid the arse but enhanced the pot. He was short a front tooth and the remainder weren’t long for this world. A Dockers beanie hid his balding pate but from its rim a plaited rat’s tail dangled the length of his sweaty neck. His steel-capped boots were scarred and blackened with oil. Georgie tried to imagine him taking them off at night—what strange, naked things his feet must be in the moments before bed.

  There was some mystery to his retirement from bikerdom. She couldn’t get him to talk about the stripping of his patch, the loss of his colours. He was, on his day, a scream, but there was something sad about him.

  Today the forecourt was empty. She found him in the workshop with someone’s shitbucket Nissan up on the hoist.

  Petrified Forest, he said without turning around.

  Well, you rented it to us, she said.

  Leslie Howard. Fucksake, eh? What an ugly bastard. How’d he get there with Bette, you reckon? To make her look better? Was that the best the English could offer the big screen between the wars? You can’t even blame rationing for a runty bugger like that.

  Well, said Georgie. Now they have Jeremy Irons.

  Cher-rist!

  Oh, he has his moments.

  Don’t they feed the pricks? And Ra-a-a-fe Fiennes, fuck!

  Beaver wiped his hands on an old tee-shirt in order to receive the video she was returning.

  You ever, she began, you ever see anything odd round here, Beaver?

  Getcha hand off it, George! This is White Point. Odd? That’s me job. Doing odd-ometer readins and windin back the dial.

  She laughed. Oddometer.

  Seriously, though, she continued. In the mornings, I mean. On the beach. Before dawn.

  Not a thing, love.

  Never?

  Ever.

  She watched him degreasing his hands. Noticing her interest he spread the cloth for her to see. It was a Peter Allen tour shirt. Beaver wriggled his eyebrows. She didn’t ask.