Breath

  Listen, he said at last. Eva’s doin it tough, just now. It’s a hard time for her.

  Neither Loonie nor I knew quite what to say to this.

  And I’ve been away a lot. So.

  We puttered along the edge of the estuary where the sloughing white skins of melaleucas spilled onto the road.

  Is it the pills? asked Loonie.

  I glared at him in surprise. I’d never seen any pills.

  She takes pills, said Loonie defiantly. I seen her.

  There was a long pause.

  No, said Sando. It’s not really the pills.

  I sat there in a funk. Loonie hadn’t even told me.

  She’s always bloody cranky, said Loonie. I just figured it was them, that’s all.

  Just shut up, I hissed. It’s none of our business.

  And it’s not what you think, anyway, said Sando.

  Loonie shrugged. The gesture was defiant, so emphatic in that tight space it hoisted my shirt an inch. He was sullen the rest of the way back and when it became clear that he was being dropped off first, his mood darkened further. Outside the pub he got down, pulled his bike off the tray and wheeled it away without a word.

  The mags, I said to Sando. They were just there. On our boards.

  All in the past, mate. No worries.

  How badly I wanted to say something about the photos then, just a gesture of esteem, but it was clear this wouldn’t be welcome. There was something about Sando that wasn’t settled. He wasn’t fixed like my father, and intrigued as I was I found this aspect of him confusing to the point of anxiety. It was as though he wasn’t quite as old as he looked, as if he hadn’t yet finished with himself.

  Tell Loonie not to be too uptight about the pills, he said. They’re just painkillers.

  We can leave our boards somewhere else, I offered.

  Nah. It’s cool. Really.

  Okay, I said, unconvinced.

  And listen, there’s a little spurt of swell coming. Day after tomorrow, if it’s blowing offshore, get up early.

  Early?

  Sparrowfart. I’ll pick you both up. We’ll go somewhere . . . discreet.

  Secret.

  Yeah. I think you’re ready.

  We trundled on up to my place and I climbed down and grabbed my bike. As I pedalled up the choppy drive in the last light of day I could hear the VW labouring back out of town towards the coast, and the sound of it still clattered through the trees when I reached the house in its tufty paddock and its aura of roasting smells and radio.

  The next day Loonie and I had a job pulling down a shed behind the butcher’s, and while we twisted out nails with pinch bars and claw hammers, I tried to engage him in speculation about Eva and Sando. Personally I found the tears and arguments enthralling. Nobody blued like that over at my place and it was as exciting as it was disconcerting. I was curious about what it was between them that set them off, but I couldn’t interest Loonie in anything beyond Eva’s many shortcomings. He saw the whole scene as evidence that she was nothing but a stuck-up pain in the arse. She was a drag, a bitch, a stupid Yank, and a junkie.

  Painkillers, my arse, he said.

  But, what about that limp? There’s something wrong with her.

  Yeah, she’s a whingein female.

  Still, I said. You notice how she always wears jeans? You reckon people still get polio in America?

  Jesus, who cares? I wish she’d go back there.

  She’s not that bad.

  You saw those mags. He was famous, mate, and maybe if it wasn’t for her he still would be. Chicks, Pikelet. They drag you down.

  I thought you fancied her, I ventured.

  You’re full of shit.

  I let it go and kept working in the grit and mildew of the old shed. I knew I was on dangerous ground here with Loonie, yet his bluster made me smile because I’d seen him look at her – all those sidelong glances, the way he took in the heavy swing of her braid and the solid curve of her breast – but since the day she drove us back in the rain, his dislike had been implacable. It was as if his contempt for her fuelled his devotion to Sando. For in Loonie’s mind, Eva would always be the millstone around our hero’s neck. Her smooth American skin and blue eyes seemed to enrage him. He hated her acerbic talk and slanting mouth. She was in his way. She always stood between him and Sando and she knew it, came to enjoy the fact.

  Eva was right about Sando and us. The box of magazines had surely been some sort of provocation, one of many things that were never really explained. Later I wondered if she’d done it to make him see what was developing between him and two boys less than half his age, to give him pause. I can’t pretend to know what effect the gesture had on Sando, or how they settled it between them, if they ever did at all, but I know that those photos only served to increase our awe of him. Years on I had time enough and cause to wonder if she’d really had other, murkier motives, thoughts she didn’t admit to or yet understand.

  Sando pulled up at dawn with a dinghy hitched to the Volksie. It was the first Saturday of the new year. So began what he called our appointments with the undisclosed. We were, he said in a slightly thespian manner, gentlemen in search of a discreet location, and we understood, without his having to say a word, that we were also now a secret society of three.

  He drove us west through miles and miles of forest. Morning light fell across the road in webs and in time we came to a small, unfamiliar bridge where Sando swung off onto a side track which led to the bank of a deep creek. Nonplussed as we were, Loonie and I did what we were told and helped guide the trailer and dinghy to the water’s edge. The boat was loaded with fuel and three boards much longer and narrower than our own. When our eyes met across the gunwales Loonie broke into his split-lip grin.

  We wound down the creek through a tunnel of overhanging trees until it met a broad estuary whose shores were densely timbered. There were no huts or jetties here, nothing to suggest that people came by at all, and it was obvious that none of this country had ever been logged. The landscape looked primeval.

  Sando throttled up and sent us charging across the shallow inlet. When I glanced back at him in the stern, clinging to the tiller with the wind furrowing his hair and beard, his smile was cryptic, even sly.

  At the plugged mouth of the river the estuary narrowed to a little cul-de-sac between high, marbled dunes and on the seaward side there was a high bar like the one at Sawyer Point. When Sando killed the motor we heard the rumble of surf but we couldn’t yet see the ocean.

  Where are we? asked Loonie.

  This is Barney’s, said Sando, already reaching for his wetsuit. This whole stretch of coast sticks out further south than anywhere, so it picks up every bit of swell.

  How come the name? I asked.

  Cause Barney lives here, he said with that fey grin.

  Loonie and I both looked about. There was still no sign of habitation, no footprints in the sand, not even a vehicle track in the hills beyond.

  Only fair to tell you, said Sando.

  Lives where? said Loonie scornfully.

  Sando cocked his head seaward and stood up in the boat to pull on his suit. He stepped out and we followed his lead. We helped pull the dinghy onto the sand then took up the boards he assigned us and followed him up onto the buttress of the bar where we finally saw the long sweep of the bay.

  Oh, man, said Loonie. Far out.

  I stared at the clean, blue walls of swell fanning down the empty beach. Each wave broke about two hundred yards out at an angle to the shore and peeled evenly east across the sandbanks into the tiny distance. I couldn’t believe how long the wave was, and as if reading my thoughts, Sando explained that it was best to walk back up the beach after each ride. There was not a human mark on the beach, only wheeling birds, seaspray and the white noise of falling water.

  And what about Barney? I asked with a misplaced grin, assuming that I was up with the joke.

  He’s not hungry all the time, said Sando. Which improves the odds.

/>   Fuck, said Loonie. Tell me it’s not a shark.

  Okay. It’s not a shark.

  Loonie gave out a wheezy laugh of relief, and I laughed along with him.

  Well, said Sando. Not your average shark, put it that way.

  The laughter died in our throats.

  It’s not that big a deal. I’ve been comin here for years and look at me. Still got all me fingers and toes.

  But you’ve seen it? I croaked.

  Oh, yeah. Five, six times.

  And what kind of bloody shark is this? said Loonie hotly.

  Like I said. Not your average noah.

  Stop pissin about and just say it, said Loonie.

  He’s a white pointer, mate. The great white hunter.

  Fuck! Fuckin fuck!

  Now you can shit yourself all you want. Pants down, son, knock yourself out.

  Sando and Loonie stood there, staring each other down. You just didn’t call Loonie out like that. I knew he wouldn’t take a backward step now, not for man nor boy. I shrank back, feeling like the bird-chested kid that I was, and waited for something to blow.

  How big is this thing? I asked, as if it made a ghost of a difference.

  Aw, maybe fourteen foot, said Sando genially enough. He still had Loonie in a steely glare. Hard to tell, Pikelet. Got a big ole head, though, and a grin like Richard-fuckin-Nixon.

  So – I was desperate for diversion now – why’s he called Barney?

  Sando laughed. I named him after Eva’s old man; he thinks I’m a waste of skin. He won’t eat me outright, the father-in-law, but he likes to show the ivories every now and then, just to remind me who’s boss. So, Barney it is. Come on, let’s hit it while the tide’s in.

  Loonie threw down his board. Why the fuck you bring us here for?

  Make men of you, said Sando. Thought you had the nads for it. Coupla giant-killers like yourselves. Boys who say they surf Outside Point at eight feet.

  We bloody did, said Loonie. And there’s witnesses.

  So you say. And maybe you did. But, gosh, Loon. Weren’t you scared?

  Piss off.

  Hell, I was, I muttered.

  Least you’re honest, Pikelet. But scared of what? Water over sand? A bit of a sinus-flush? What’s to be scared of out there at the Point?

  It was bloody eight foot, said Loonie. Ten!

  Sando just snorted. He turned and jogged down to the water’s edge and launched himself into the deep, moiling gutter of the rip. We watched him pick his way to the deep channel that ran out to the break, paddling casually, duckdiving spills of whitewater and shaking spray from his hair.

  It’s all bullshit, said Loonie. He’s shittin us.

  I shrugged.

  He’s callin us fuckin sooks.

  Maybe, I said.

  Thinks we’re just gunna sit here like a coupla girls.

  Girls or no girls, I was quite prepared to do exactly that, to sit there safe and warm on the beach and watch Sando dice it out with Barney. I was already thinking about what to do if he was eaten, whether I could remember how to start the outboard. Driving the Kombi home presented a few problems, but I figured I’d tackle these lesser obstacles one at a time. But before I could get anything straight in my mind Loonie took up his board with a strangled, angry cry and ran down to the water. A few moments later, hapless and terrified, I followed him.

  That’s how we surfed Barney’s the first time, with Loonie taking on every wave enraged, and me just trailing along, dry-mouthed and shaky, until the exhilaration of the rides themselves inoculated us both against the worst of our fear.

  The wave at Barney’s wasn’t huge but it was long and perfect: blue, pure, and empty. It was like something from a magazine and we were in it. Loonie and I strove to outdo each other, to take off as late as possible, to drop in with the kind of studied nonchalance we copied from Sando, and then steer up into the shimmering cave each wave made of itself. Inside those waves our voices bounced back at us, deeper and larger for all the noise, like the voices of men. We felt strong, older. We came howling from the gullet of wave upon wave and stopped believing in the shark altogether. It was a landmark day.

  We surfed Barney’s for months with Sando before the secret got out. Some nosy crew from Angelus followed us in, saw the tyre tracks and found the parked VW and trailer. But even when they showed up, more surfers watched from the beach than actually paddled out. Especially after the spring morning when Barney surfaced like a sub in the channel, rolled over beside Loonie and fixed him with one terrible, black eye before sliding away again.

  That eye, said Loonie, was like a fuckin hole in the universe.

  It was as close as he got to poetry. I envied him the moment and the story that went with it.

  Heading home from that first day at Barney’s, bone-sore and lit up, we relived the morning wave by wave, shoring it up against our own disbelief. By common assent, Loonie had caught the wave of the day. It was a smoker. I was paddling back out through the channel when he got to his feet. The wave reared up, pitched itself forward and simply swallowed him. I heard him scream for joy or terror and could only see him intermittently as he navigated a path beneath the warping fold of water. He was a blur in there, ghostly. When finally he shot out and passed me, he looked back at the weird, dilating eye of the wave and gave it the finger.

  Geez, I wish we had a camera, he said afterwards, as we chugged back through the forest. It was too good. Shoulda got a photo.

  Nah, said Sando. You don’t need any photo.

  But just to show, to prove it, sorta thing.

  You don’t have to prove it, said Sando. You were there.

  Well, least you blokes saw it.

  My oath, I said.

  But it’s not even about us, said Sando. It’s about you. You and the sea, you and the planet.

  Loonie groaned. Hippy-shit, mate.

  Is that right? said Sando indulgently.

  Orright for you. You got plenty of shots to prove what you done. Honolua Bay, man. Fuckin A.

  All that’s just horseshit, said Sando. It’s wallpaper.

  Easy for you to say.

  Sando was quiet for a moment. You’ll learn, he said in the end.

  Loonie beat his chest there in the confines of the Kombi cab.

  Learn? Mate, I bloody know!

  I laughed but Sando was unmoved.

  Son, he said. Eventually there’s just you and it. You’re too busy stayin alive to give a damn about who’s watchin.

  Mate, said Loonie, straining to maintain his bravado. I don’t know what language you’re talkin.

  You’ll be out there, thinkin: am I gunna die? Am I fit enough for this? Do I know what I’m doin? Am I solid? Or am I just . . . ordinary?

  I stared, breathless, through the broken light of trees.

  That’s what you deal with in the end, said Sando. When it’s gnarly.

  How does it feel? I murmured.

  How does what feel?

  When it’s that serious.

  You’ll find out.

  Like, I mean, twenty feet, said Loonie subdued now.

  Well, you’re glad there’s no stupid photo. When you make it, when you’re still alive and standin at the end, you get this tingly-electric rush. You feel alive, completely awake and in your body. Man, it’s like you’ve felt the hand of God. The rest of it’s just sport’n recreation, mate. Give me the hand of God any day.

  Shoulder to shoulder in the cab, Loonie and I exchanged furtive looks. There was something of the classroom about Sando, the stink of chalk on him when he got going, but my mind was racing. I’d already begun to pose those questions to myself and feel the undertow of their logic. Was I serious? Could I do something gnarly, or was I just ordinary? I’ll bet my life that despite his scorn Loonie was doing likewise. We didn’t know it yet, but we’d already imagined ourselves into a different life, another society, a state for which no raw boy has either words or experience to describe. Our minds had already gone out to meet it and we’d le
ft the ordinary in our wake.

  I DID MY SHARE of whining when the new school year began, but in truth I didn’t really mind going back. There was no more swell that summer, no opportunity to test myself any further, and the days began to hang heavy. Within a week of the term commencing, I rediscovered the aisles and recesses of the Angelus school library. There was nothing like it in Sawyer and the only other collection of books I’d seen was out at Sando’s. During my first year of high school I’d turned to reading as a kind of refuge, but that second year it became a pleasure in its own right.

  I started with Jack London because I recognized the name from Sando’s shelves. After I saw Gregory Peck gimping across the poop deck on telly I tried Moby Dick, though I can’t say I got far. I found books on Mawson and Shackleton and Scott. I read accounts of Amundsen’s race south against the English and the ruthlessness that made all the difference. I tried to imagine the Norwegian eating the very dogs that hauled him to the Pole – something harsh and bracing about the idea appealed to me. I read about British commandos, the French Resistance, about the specialized task of bomb disposal. I found Cousteau and then mariner-authors who recreated the voyages of the ancients in craft of leather and bamboo. I read about Houdini and men who had themselves shot from cannons or tipped in barrels over Niagara Falls. I fed on lives that were not at all ordinary, about men who in normal domestic circumstances might be viewed as strange, reckless, unbalanced. When I failed to get more than sixteen pages into The Seven Pillars of Wisdom I thought the failure was mine.

  It was there in the stacks that I met the girl who decided without consultation that I was her boyfriend. She was a farm girl from further out east and she boarded at the dreaded hostel. Like me, she came to the library to escape, but she was already bookish. Her name was Queenie. She was handsome and wheat-haired, with the slightly intimidating shoulders of a competitive swimmer, and there was plenty about her to like, yet I suspect I only really liked her because she liked me first. Although I did very little to encourage such baffling interest, I somehow got used to it, and even came to expect it. She slagged off at my books of manly derring-do while I razzed her for her taste in stories about crippled girls overcoming cruel odds with the aid of improbably gifted animals.