The Octopus and I

by Erin Hortle

  ‘Fucking early season to be this big, ay, but,’ his uncle Pete slurs—to his daughters?; to his brothers?; probably to anyone who’ll listen—as he drains his can of Cascade Draught.

  Jake’s father finds him later that evening sitting on the beach by himself, tracing shapes in the sand with a stick.

  ‘Come out fishing with us tomorrow, ay? Get you a tuna,’ his father says, squatting next to him and clapping a warm hand on his shoulder. ‘Make a man out of you. Whaddaya reckon?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ Jake replies, a pleased smile tickling the corners of his mouth.

  ‘I know it’s hard, but you’re gonna have to toughen up, mate. Don’t let them get to you.’

  Jake swallows and nods.

  His father’s hand stays firmly on his shoulder as they make their way back up to the bonfire in the backyard where a plate loaded with fresh bluefin and potato salad is waiting for him. Jake knows it’ll be followed by pavlova and summer pudding, made with the berries from the garden.

  ‘Jakey’s going to come fishing with us tomorrow,’ his father announces.

  ‘That right? Good onya, Jakey boy,’ his uncle Rob says.

  His mother beams at his father.

  ‘Dad, Dad! Can I come too?’ Emma asks.

  ‘Sorry, Em, tuna fishing is men’s business.’

  From behind their father’s back, Jake gives her the finger.

  Before first light, Jake’s father sneaks into Jake’s bedroom and gently shakes him awake. Thick with sleep, Jake fumbles into his clothes, down the hall and out into the car, where he’s handed a stack of peanut butter toast and a life jacket. At the jetty, his breath hangs in steamy clouds while he watches Rob reverse the boat into the water. It’s a Bar Crusher. Brand-spanking-new. It’s quite possibly the coolest thing Jake’s ever seen.

  His father gets the motor started while Rob parks the car. Once they’re all in, they motor around the craggy headland, and slice their way out into the Tasman Sea, squinting into the sunrise.

  After half an hour gliding over glassy folds of swell, they reach a lonely knuckle of granite. Hundreds of gulls and cormorants are perched on the rock, squabbling raucously in the morning sun. His father lets the motor idle. The steady burr blends seamlessly with the cries of the birds and the slap of ocean on rock.

  ‘Might as well try for tuna again,’ Rob says. As he’s talking, he opens his tackle box. Its contents glint in the sun like a box of chocolates wrapped in cellophane and foil. He fishes out a gaudy lure, easily as long as Jake’s hand and adorned with three monstrously barbed hooks, and clips it onto the swivel tied to the line of one of the fishing rods. He then hands it to Jake, and begins rigging up the next rod.

  Jake thumbs the lure carefully before whipping it up into the air. It falls in a loose arc, shattering the surface of the sea, distorting the watercolour of granite and sky. His father puts the motor back into gear, and begins cruising slowly. The splashes of his uncles’ and father’s lures ring out as Jake steadily reels his line in, jerking it occasionally in what he imagines to be a seductive pattern.

  ‘Nah. Leave ’er in, Jake. We’ll troll,’ his father instructs.

  Jake flicks his lure back into the water, blushing slightly. Seeing what the grownups have done, he lodges his rod in the holder next to him, line and lure still extended. They begin to work the ocean, methodically tracing long lines; their lures darting through the water in their wake. Above them, gannets scan the ocean and drop like bombs whenever baitfish rise to the surface in a flurry of spray. Every now and then, a bird swoops close to the boat to investigate the lures.

  ‘Want a doughnut?’ his uncle Pete asks after some luckless time.

  ‘Yeah, thanks,’ Jake replies, taking one from the packet proffered.

  Pete also hands out beers to Jake’s father and Rob. ‘It’s like Christmas: the PM rule doesn’t count when you’re tuna fishing, Jakey,’ he says with a wink.

  Jake doesn’t really know what to say to that so, instead, he points to the small dark birds that are gliding a metre or so above the surface of the ocean, rising and falling with the rolling swell, and swerving and veering with the slightest tilt of their wings. ‘What are those birds?’ he asks.

  ‘Them? They’re mutton-birds. They’re migratory. Disappear around Easter time.’

  ‘Where do they go?’ Jake asks.

  ‘Dunno. Somewhere near Russia, maybe?’ Pete says with a slight shrug.

  ‘Huh,’ Jake says. Seems a long way for a little bird to fly. But then, their wings are doing an amazing job of harnessing the air. Maybe it’s easy. They barely even flap. He watches as one dips beneath the surface, probably after a fish, and he wonders if they ever get eaten by sharks.

  ‘Do you see many sharks out here?’ he asks Pete.

  ‘Good shark fishing,’ Pete says with a nod, in what Jake supposes is a kind of answer. But before he can ask Pete if he ever catches sharks, Pete adds, ‘That’s one of the reasons the peninsula was such a good prison.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Convicts couldn’t swim away. Even if they escaped, no one in their right mind would’ve swum. Even more sharks back then, ’pparently. And they had the dogs across the neck.’

  ‘Dogs?’

  ‘Yep. They chained a line of dogs across the neck, so the place was basically an island. Near impossible to escape. You ever noticed the statue of the dog there, to show the tourists how it was?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Jake says. ‘I never knew what they were. It’s so creepy down there,’ he continues, his thoughts drifting down the coast to the ruined penal settlement. ‘We did a ghost tour with school. I wasn’t scared, but, like, all the girls were.’

  ‘Down at Port Arthur?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s got that feel, like bad stuff happened. Specially now.’

  ‘Why specially now?’ Jake asks.

  ‘You don’t know?’ Incredulity curls Pete’s tone.

  Jake shrugs in reply, self-conscious.

  ‘Leave it, Pete,’ his father mutters.

  ‘Leave what?’ Jake demands.

  ‘Yeah, come on, Shayne, he’s old enough,’ Pete says, then turns back to Jake. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I’m eleven,’ Jake says, sticking out his chin.

  ‘See? He’s eleven.’ Pete smiles to Jake’s father, who shrugs in reply.

  ‘Bloke killed some people down there a few years back,’ Pete explains.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Shot ’em.’

  There’s a moment’s silence as Jake rolls this new piece of information over in his mind.

  ‘How many?’ he finally asks.

  ‘’Bout thirty or forty.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Crazy.’

  ‘That’s what happens when you let mad bastards have guns,’ his father adds with a nod.

  There’s a grim silence.

  ‘At Port Arthur?’ Jake asks his father.

  ‘Mostly.’

  The adults start to talk then, about that day—about what happened, about watching the reports pour in on the evening news. Jake frowns as he listens. He can imagine the tourists wandering around the park, clutching their slick cameras. He can see them, shaking their heads in horror as they read the information signs that talk about the men who were ‘condemned to lives of hard labour’, of the bodies that were ‘dismantled by curious surgeons’ and the convicts who were ‘driven mad by stints in solitary confinement’. The hairs on the backs of their necks would’ve been standing on end; they would have been keeping an eye out for ghosts around every corner. But instead of harmless ghosts they would have been confronted by a man with a gun. Jake can imagine him, striding down the hill, blank faced, heavy boots leaving prints in the damp grass, gun cradled lightly in his arms …

  ‘It’s all right, mate. They got him. He’s locked up.’

  Jake opens his mouth to say something, but forgets what because at that moment his rod violently bows. With a yelp he leaps to hi
s feet and jerks the rod, making sure the barb of the hook grabs. Whatever has taken his lure tugs back in fierce retaliation, nearly dragging Jake out of the boat. His uncles hoot as his father flicks the motor into neutral, then jumps up and claps a hand on Jake’s shoulder, grounding him in the boat. The spool whizzes, line zooming out in the fish’s wake.

  ‘Just hold it,’ his father instructs, ‘it’ll slow, it’ll slow.’ And sure enough it does. The tension goes out of the line; the spool grows quiet.

  ‘Now, bring ’er in.’

  Jake starts to wind the reel, firm and even, but laborious.

  ‘Maybe you should take it, Shayne,’ Rob murmurs, and Jake can hear his unspoken meaning: he’s too small, too young, not good enough.

  ‘No,’ Jake’s father says. ‘Jakey boy’s got this, haven’t you, mate?’

  ‘Yep,’ Jake blurts proudly, yet anxiously, because he isn’t sure he does. The fish feels massive, and his arms are puny.

  ‘Right, mate, pull the rod up and then wind as you let it back down. It’ll make it easier,’ his father instructs. ‘Now, when it tries to run, ease off—let it tire itself out.’ As if on cue, the fish begins to pull with all its weight. Jake braces as the spool screams until, once again, the fish pauses to recuperate.

  ‘Bring ’er in,’ his father coos.

  And so the arm wrestle goes on. Jake braces as the fish runs, then heaves and reels, the tension in his forearms almost unbearable, as the fish tires. Finally, after what feels like hours, he glimpses a flash of silver in the deep aqua of the ocean. As one painstaking rotation of the reel follows another, the glimpse comes into focus and they can see the fish’s glimmering profile.

  Jake’s awed by its size. He’s never seen such an imposing fish, not even when he was snorkelling. He can’t believe that he caught it.

  ‘It’s an albacore!’ his father grins, cap askew in excitement. ‘Chicken of the sea, mate. Chicken of the sea! You’re almost there! Here, I’ll take the rod, you get him in. Get the gaff.’

  Jake’s arms feel giddy, like they’re floating, when he relinquishes the tension of the rod to his father’s firm hands. Rob gives him the gaff. The steel—roughened by rust—is cool to touch. He looks at the hook apprehensively, then leans out over the edge of the boat, dips it in the water, and tries to scoop it under the trapped tuna.

  ‘Not like that. Just stick the hook in wherever you can. In the head, if you can,’ his father puffs.

  ‘In its head? While it’s alive? But won’t it hurt?’ Jake asks.

  ‘Mate, what do you think this hook in its mouth is doing?’ his father growls. ‘Come on!’

  Jake leans out again, flailing the gaff in the tuna’s direction; but every time he comes close, it dodges away. He can’t get the angle right, so he grabs the line and tries to pull it towards him. The weight of the fish causes the line to cheese-cut into the soft flesh of his palm and he lets go.

  ‘All right, Jakey boy. C’mon. Almost there,’ his father urges through clenched teeth as he slowly levers the rod upwards, forcing the fish to breach the water.

  ‘Now, Jakey, now!’

  Jake strikes the fish with the gaff, lodging the hook in the side of its head. He tries not to look at the dark, bulging eyes.

  ‘All right, pull ’er in!’ his father gasps.

  Jake’s arms shake as he tries to lever the bulk of the tuna up and into the boat. But, before he can land it, a whiskered face bursts out of the water. It grabs hold of the fish’s flank and, for a quick moment, it seems to look right at Jake. But before Jake can properly register the glint of humour in its eyes, it begins to tug the tuna back down into the sea, yanking the gaff from Jake’s sweaty grasp.

  ‘Seal!’ Jake’s father hollers, as he fights to hold the rod. ‘Seal!’

  ‘Get out of the way!’ Pete pushes Jake aside, leans out and thumps a hefty fist on the seal’s stubborn head. Jake overbalances and falls back heavily.

  ‘Out of the way, Pete,’ Rob yells. A rifle has appeared in his hands. Pete draws back into the boat as the shock of a bullet rings out. Jake scrambles to his feet and peers out from behind Rob’s beefy shoulder. The sleek lump is already floating away from the boat; thick clouds of blood bloom after it.

  ‘See if you can grab the gaff, Jake,’ says his father, still holding the fishing rod.

  Jake looks at the tuna. It’s still dangling from the line. The gaff is still stuck in its cheek. Its eyes have quietened and shrunk back into its head. Blood seeps from its serrated flank into the water, then spirals away in loose tendrils. Jake watches as they curl through the murk of the seal’s blood. Both are cloudy and brown, he notices. But then again, how would he know what colour it is?

  ‘Jake?’ His father looks over his shoulder; Jake’s watching the body of the seal bob in the gentle roll of the swell. ‘You right, mate?’ his father barks in disbelief. When Jake doesn’t reply, his father shakes his head and looks at Pete.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Pete mutters. He leans out, grasps the pole and pulls the now still tuna up into the boat.

  ‘Well done, Jakey, you got your first tuna!’ Pete ruffles his hair.

  ‘Here, hold it up, mate. We’ll get a photo for your mum.’

  Jake tries to clear his swollen throat and straighten his wobbling lips into a smile as he heaves the fish up for the camera.

  ‘Get in there, Shayne,’ Pete says. ‘Let’s get one of you and your boy.’

  Jake’s dad wraps his arm around Jake’s shoulder and gives it a bit of a squeeze as Pete takes the photo.

  ‘Smile, mate,’ Jake’s dad murmurs. ‘You’re a man now.’

  ‘Whaddaya reckon? Might get filleting straight away?’ Rob says, eyeing the mangled fish still on show in Jake’s arms.

  ‘Yeah, probably for the best,’ Jake’s father agrees.

  As they motor back to the jetty, Jake’s father and uncles groan.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Jake asks his father.

  ‘See the ab boat there?’ Jake’s father says. ‘The bloke who works it—Jem Allenby—is a real prick.’

  ‘Blood oath,’ Rob mutters.

  ‘What’s he do?’

  ‘Thinks he’s some kind of eco-warrior.’

  ‘What’s an eco-warrior?’ Jake asks, but no one answers him. He thinks it sounds kind of cool, like some kind of fishing superhero. Warrior of the ocean, fighting pirates and sharks and kraken.

  As they pull up at the wharf, Jake watches as the eco-warrior heaves crates of abalone over the side of his boat to a man, who then puts them in the back of a truck.

  He must be so strong, Jake thinks, to lift those crates. He wonders if his dad could lift them, or his uncles. Probably. Probably he will be able to as well, one day.

  The eco-warrior’s boat is the awesomest boat Jake has ever seen. It makes the Bar Crusher look tiny. Jake feels bad immediately for thinking it. But they only have one big motor and a puny auxiliary, and it has two massive Yamaha motors. It would go so fast. You could do anything in a boat like that. It’s exactly the sort of boat an eco-warrior should have.

  Rob and Pete climb from their boat to the jetty, and as Jake follows them up, he hears his father’s voice: ‘Oh here we go.’

  Jake looks up. The truck is driving off and the eco-warrior is striding along the jetty towards them. He’s blond, medium height, and has the broad shoulders and thick chest of a surfer.

  ‘G’day, fellas,’ he says when he reaches them. ‘How’d you go out there?’

  ‘Just the one albacore, ay,’ Pete says. ‘Jakey here got it,’ he adds, clapping Jake on the shoulder.

  ‘Landed a tuna at your age? That’s a bloody good effort,’ the eco-warrior says, grinning at Jake. Then he holds out his hand for a high five.

  Jake isn’t sure what to do, so he gives it to him.

  ‘Few tuna about then?’ the eco-warrior asks, peering down into the boat. ‘Give us a squiz?’

  ‘Sorry, mate, already got her filleted and on ice,’ Jake’s father says.
r />   ‘That right?’ the eco-warrior says, raising his eyebrows. Then he asks: ‘Didn’t hear anything out on the water, did you?’

  ‘Like what?’ Pete asks.

  ‘Gunshot,’ the eco-warrior says, all of a sudden looking angry. Angry and, it seems to Jake, a bit sad. ‘We saw a dead seal, washed up at Cape Hauy, and two more beside it that were still half alive, poor buggers.’

  ‘Nope, didn’t hear anything,’ Pete says.

  ‘You didn’t, did ya?’ The eco-warrior eyes them sceptically.

  ‘Nope,’ Pete says. ‘Quiet as a whistle.’

  The eco-warrior puffs out a sigh. ‘Bloody bastards, hey,’ he mutters sadly, as he wanders back to his boat.

  ‘Dad,’ Jake says uneasily, once the man is out of earshot.

  ‘It’s all right, Jakey,’ his father says, looking up at him from where he’s still standing in the boat. ‘Wasn’t us that did that. We’d never leave one half alive. That’s just cruel.’

  Jem and his deckie, Steve, had been cruising by Cape Hauy—that splintered headland of towering dolerite pillars—on their way into Fortescue Bay, when they’d spotted the two emaciated fur seals, panting on the rock ledge. Birds leered above them. If left, they would die slowly by gnawing beak, if not festering wound or gradual starvation. Jem had called up Parks and Wildlife to come and dispatch them, but still.

  But still.

  It’s not just the plain fact of the cruelty that bothers Jem, although that does, obviously, bother him. It’s also the way he imagines this cruelty was committed—the flagrant disregard for animal welfare, and for the rules that guide Jem’s interactions with the natural world, and the rules that, in his opinion, should also guide everyone else’s.

  The rules, for Jem, are implicit to the point that they’re not stated things. They’re not a document he brandishes, rather, they’re what’s buried inside him, knitted into his commonsense and his spark of self, which is what he would have called his soul, if he believed in that crap. They’re foundational to the logic of who he is, and he just can’t understand how other people cannot, or, more insidiously, how other people choose not to see the world the way he sees it and act with according decency.