An Open Swimmer

by Tim Winton

  ‘Further than I thought,’ said Jerra, oozing sweat.

  ‘We’ll end up at one of those two dots on the map.’ Sean dragged the jerrycan through the sand. ‘Gawd knows what the bloody hell we’re doin’ this for.’

  Up ahead, a log in the shade of a rattling wattle.

  The log was rough and wobbly. Through the jagged leaves, sunlight mottled their skin. The bay stretched away, a hook, brilliant in the intermittent sun. Inlets and coves melted into the haze. The sea boiled on the cliffs. The Cape loomed like another continent.

  They didn’t say anything. The sweat and the view let Jerra relax for a moment, and for that moment, it was like it had always been before, with nothing in his head that wouldn’t fit.

  Jerra thumped his mate. He was his mate. The log wobbled. The dry leaves of the wattle shook.

  NO, said the tree as they passed. Jerra ignored it cheerily.

  Tough grass grew through the fissures in tin and timber, worming up under the boarded windows, and trees had elbowed their way in through the roof, flexing, bending upwards and out, growing inside and almost ready to lift the roof off. Grass penetrated the crust of the truck. Holes in the roof left warm pools on the fermenting upholstery. Jerra saw. It was like the hulks he had seen gaping in the bush where he had wandered after school, watching carefully for snakes and spiders and dirty things. It would have made a good hideout, with holes to shoot through and bayonet the Japs. A good hideout, he thought, guiltily. He still looked for hideouts, despite his age.

  ‘God,’ he whispered. ‘It looks like a skeleton with eyes still in it.’

  ‘You can hear it rusting.’

  All was intact, but disintegrating.

  Behind the shed, the water-tank was rusted through at the rim. Jerra thumped it. Little freckles flaked off. Gutters fallen into the undergrowth, the rain had continued to fill, falling through the rusted cover.

  Jerra felt the cold greenish tap. A stack of bottles winked green and brown.

  ‘Hey, you reckon we should be knocking it off like this?’

  ‘No one’s been here for ages. Who’s gonna mind?’

  ‘You mean who’s gonna know.’

  ‘Ah, come on, hold the can.’

  It filled with a cold, loud rush. Jerra tightened the spout.

  ‘Here, grab an end.’

  ‘Nuh-uh. Not in the contract. I carried it up.’

  ‘Rotten bugger.’

  ‘It’s downhill.’

  NO the sheoak was congealing.

  ‘Shall we add an S and a T?’

  ‘Waffor?’ asked Jerra, pulling the jerrycan, trying not to notice it.

  ‘SNOT.’

  Jerra looked at him and gave him a kick. ‘Don’t let the employees hear you saying things like that. Give ’em the impression you’re the wrong kind of material.’

  During lulls in the flames, shadows creased their lips, holes opened where eyes had been. Sean farted and stretched.

  ‘Really quite full.’

  ‘Shows how hungry a bastard can be, when he can eat baked beans and nearly admit to enjoying it.’

  ‘Don’t get any better, do they?’

  Sean burped a long bark, ‘Rrruth.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘My bladder creaketh.’

  ‘Piss.’

  ‘If I must.’

  ‘Must or bust.’

  ‘Back in a sec.’

  ‘Watch the possums. Never know what you might catch.’

  ‘They should be worryin’.’

  Things breathed in the fire. Carefully, Jerra watched the dew appearing. It came silent on the rocks, on the softness of grass, on sticks, ropes, beading brown on the blade of the axe and, unless you watched for it, it came without your knowing. Until you moved. Or ran a hand over something. He chafed his hands together over the fire.

  Twigs and leaves moved.

  ‘That was quick.’ He turned.

  It wasn’t Sean.

  ‘Shit!’ he cried, almost going into the flames. ‘Who the hell —’ He saw fire in the beard and eyes.

  ‘Where you from?’ the old man asked.

  ‘The city,’ Jerra admitted.

  ‘Campin’, eh?’

  ‘Where you from?’ Jerra asked, tremulously.

  ‘Around.’ A vague wave.

  ‘A shack?’ He was choking.

  ‘And tank.’

  ‘Oh, Gawd, we ah —’

  ‘Nobody got claim on the clouds. Least not me.’

  ‘Just thought —’

  ‘It’s orright.’

  Fire twisted. The blood cracked in his ears.

  ‘Well —’

  ‘Would’ve scared youse off.’

  Undergrowth parted.

  ‘Ah, thought I took a wrong —’

  ‘Sean, this is someone from up the hill.’

  Sean was stiff.

  ‘Hey look, we didn’t take anything. The old joint looked —’

  Jerra sat over the fire. It burnt his cheeks.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the old man, squatting in the warm. Sean began to say something, but Jerra silenced him with a showing of teeth.

  Rims of water glistened in the old man’s eyes. His cheeks were red in the firelight.

  ‘Smoke?’

  Sean shook his head ungraciously.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jerra. ‘Don’t smoke.’

  ‘Gawd. Nothin’ to be sorry about, son. Bastards ’ave never done me any good. Jus’ more pins in the b’loon. Still, they’re somethink.’

  A doughy wad was rolled across the palms, fingers the colour of scorched twigs. A rolling tongue followed the movement.

  ‘Put the billy on, Sean. We’ll have a brew.’

  Jerra watched the tobacco rolled into a brittle sliver of paper. There was print on both sides.

  ‘How do you like your tea?’ asked Jerra.

  ‘To chew, like real baccy. But as a bev’ridge – dark an’ black.’

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Nah. Rots yer guts.’

  Jerra smiled faintly, picking the black bits out of the powdered milk.

  ‘Thought it was teeth.’

  ‘No problem there.’

  Sean lowered the billy into the flames. Drops on the outside turned to steam.

  ‘How long you been here?’

  ‘Maybe twenty years, give or take a war.’

  ‘In the shack all that time?’

  ‘That an’ the shed on the beach.’

  ‘On the beach?’ said Sean. ‘There isn’t one on the beach.’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Sean.

  ‘Burnt down. A long while back.’

  The old man was looking right into the orange twists. He drew out a stick, lit it, watching the flame all the way up to his face and back.

  ‘What sort of paper is that?’ asked Jerra.

  ‘Bible.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Ran out of papers. Years ago. Still ’ad a couple of old Gideons we knocked off from a fancy motel. Last one, this. Only just warmin’ up on it. You cut ’em up the columns and whack off a few verses.’

  It stank. Jerra tried not to grimace.

  ‘Where you up to?’ grinned Sean.

  The old man chuffed smoke. You could hear him suck on the paper.

  ‘Deuteronomy. Eighteen? Nineteen. Tough goin’. Cities ’n rules. Verse thirteen: You shall be blameless before your God. Fourteen: For these nations . . . er . . . bugger, I can’t remember.’ He kneaded the hard of his crusty hands. ‘What do you do for a livin’, son?’

  ‘I’m a clerk,’ said Sean. ‘Of sorts.’

  ‘For a company, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, sort of.’

  Jerra made a face.

  ‘School before that?’

  ‘Uni, actually.’

  ‘The Uni, eh?’ The old man grinned. ‘They tell yer anything at the Uni?’

  ‘I majored in history.’

  ‘History. Learn a pack from the past. Yer can too. Ever
learn you anythink?’

  Sean looked into the fire, lips compressed. Heat ticked in the billy. Wisps weaved through holes in the lid. The old man looked at Jerra.

  ‘I’m out of work.’

  ‘Got a trade?’

  ‘No. But I’ve worked on the fishing boats back along the coast, last year. Things got a bit rough. A tough season. I got laid off.’

  ‘Yeah,’ sighed the old man. ‘Things’d be rough. Like the boats?’

  ‘It was rough. But okay. I liked the fish.’

  Sean, perched on his log, rolled his eyes, scalloping a hole in the dirt with his heel.

  ‘Ah, yeah,’ said the old man scuffing his hands together, little greenish flecks of tobacco catching in the hard cracks. He expanded a little. ‘Fish. The things a fish’d know, eh?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Know anythink about fish?’

  ‘’Bout all he does know,’ said Sean.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jerra, ignoring the sarcasm. After all, it was true enough.

  ‘What about one f’every letter of the alphabet?’

  ‘He can do two at least.’

  The old man looked at Sean.

  ‘Can he now?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jerra.

  ‘Okay, start with A.’

  Jerra looked up at him.

  ‘A . . .’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Shit, nothin’ starts with A.’

  ‘What about amberjack?’ said Sean, smiling.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jerra, embarrassed as hell. ‘Abalone?’

  ‘Not a fish,’ said Sean.

  ‘Plenty of Bs. What about bastard-of-a-big-barramundi?’

  The old man laughed.

  They talked names for a while, wandering off the alphabet when cobia came up. Then it was just big fish.

  ‘Nothin’ else worth lookin’ at, once you’ve seen a big fish. Thrashin’ and jumpin’ and thumpin’ on the deck, spreading ’is gills like wings.’ He watched Jerra nodding. ‘Bloody sad business, too, seein’ a big fish die. That’s somethink else, boy. Ever seen it?’

  ‘No,’ he lied. ‘I always clubbed ’em before they suffered. Didn’t like to see ’em die.’

  Hard silver and black, flat against the boards, laced with salty pearls, glistening. The gills lifting ponderously, straining, lifting, falling. A fingertip on the smooth eye. Short, guttural death-grunts. Tears of blood tracking the deck. The sleek silver of scales, sinews in the tail wearing to a feeble spasm. Every big one on the deck looked at him the same way as that turrum, dying open-eyed when they were ready. Jerra always left them there, stalling, his back to the other deckies.

  ‘Strong lad, you must be.’

  Jerra shrugged. The old man pulled on the stinking sea-slug of a smoke.

  ‘Any deep stuff?’

  ‘Not much further than the shelf. We used to pass the whalechasers on their way in. Seagulls stuck to ’em like shit to a blanket.’

  With the catch bubbling eyes and gills in the holds, tails flailing, mucous spittle raining, he would wait at the rail as Michaelmas Island came into view, and opening the sea with sneezing jets the dolphins would cut diagonally for the bows, waiting for bait scraps, running back on broad muscular tails, arching in flourishing sweeps with open mouths, eyes entreating laughingly. Then they would catch up and wait for a whack from Jerra, taking turns at presenting their backs to the flat of the oar.

  The morning he was thinking about other things, he hit too hard and the leader squealed. They never came again.

  ‘Sometimes we’d take white pointers following the whales being towed in. Big as whales, too. Tearing great hunks of blubber out of the whales.’

  ‘Catchin’ them bastards is somethink.’

  ‘Just as they came up on the gaff, I’d have to shoot. A couple of times. To be careful.’

  Gaping, writhing in their own spray. Pink sheen. Thud-thud-thud of the tail against the stern. Gulls waiting.

  ‘They’re tricky buggers, orright. Mate o’ mine, years back, lost a foot to a bronzie. An hour out of the water it was. Red took to it with a cleaver.’

  ‘You worked on the boats.’

  ‘Oath. Did the salmon all along the coast. Sharks when it was bad. Small stuff, herring, snapper. We even went to abalone, one or two bad seasons.’

  ‘Who’s we?’ asked Sean.

  ‘Me an’ the wife.’ He dragged tea with sucking lips. ‘How long you stayin’?’

  ‘Got about three weeks,’ said Jerra. Abalone. That’s what his lips looked like; wet an’ rubbery.

  ‘Can’t see anybody wantin’ ter stay that long.’

  ‘Pretty good here,’ said Sean.

  ‘Lots better places,’ said the old man.

  ‘Good coast,’ said Jerra.

  ‘Little bus, eh? All set up.’

  Jerra nodded.

  ‘Move around a bit yourself?’

  ‘Not for years. Been to Perth. Bad times we drove up and sold straight to the rest’rants. Rabbitin’ for a spell. Got away quick, though.’

  ‘Didn’t go much on it?’

  ‘Too many big mouths. Bigger’n nor’west blowies.’

  ‘What about smaller places around here? Albany, Ongerup?’

  ‘All the same. Wherever there’s a pub an’ people to jabber they just go the same.’

  ‘Albany’s orright,’ said Jerra.

  ‘Yeah?’ said the old man. ‘What’s it like there now?’

  ‘Always seemed the same to me.’

  ‘Probably too young to know it any different.’

  ‘I s’pose so.’

  ‘Bugger of a place, I reckon. Sailors’ town. Yanks and Wogs walkin’ round with the local girls. Make yer sick.’

  Jerra nodded politely. He had friends in Albany once. Most of them had either gone to the city, were in gaol for dope, or had died driving big cars.

  Smooth stones clicked. Bitter smoke mingled with the steamy breath of coals. Sean yawned, rubbing salt and smoke from his eyes.

  ‘Fire’s out.’

  ‘Better let youse lads get some sleep.’

  ‘Haven’t finished your tea,’ said Jerra.

  ‘Gone cold, anyway.’ He rose stiffly.

  Nodding, the old man went slowly up the track, wrinkled khakis merging in the green-black night. Only the single red eye of his cigarette winked. That soon faded too.

  sea-junk and amberjack

  MORNINGS. AFTERNOONS. It was pointless counting. How could you count the warbles in the grey, colours in the fires, thuds in the bush, keep record of the morse of cicadas, seeds, sap, stems? Fishbones burnt to white powder, and scales clung to bark and licks of grass. Feet burred, nails caught, faces rimed with salt and smoke and dirt.

  They cruised on the surface, listening to the breath in the snorkels. Jerra clamped on the rubber bit, feeling the gooseflesh creep along his arms, and saw a long slit at the crest of a hump of rocks and weed that crouched on the bottom. Sean dived across at a small goatfish, away from it. Jerra hovered. He kicked and sank into the weediness of the hole, pulling down the rubber. Prongs glinted. A twilight. Down. He cleared his ears, and the space widened as he kicked. Blennies and pomfrets poked their heads from fissures. His lungs pushed against his chest as he settled on the silt. Corroded things lay half-buried, twisted formations knotted on each other, furred with algal turf, as if the hole had collected the debris of many storms. He peered along wrinkles and ledges. Morwong shot, with lips of congealed blood, from hole to hole, and specks of light showed through the walls. There were other entrances, fresh currents on the bottom fed from somewhere back in the darkness that went further than he dared to go. His mask distorted: the walls seemed to curve. Breath short, he turned for the bar of light. And froze. Pugnacious jaws opened at him, peg-like teeth phosphorescent behind the blue lips. The pectoral fins quivered, balancing. It was as big as him.

  He kicked upwards, hard, pulling at the water, making for the fluorescent bar, then through, into the silver, crashing the surface,
gasping the warm air.

  Sean surfaced.

  ‘God, I thought you’d gone for good!’

  Jerra floated onto his back, pushing the mask back.

  ‘Thought you must’ve drowned or something. Didn’t even see you go in.’

  Jerra spat the blood that came to the back of his throat.

  Dripping gobs of butter, the fillets were sweet and firm. The white flesh broke off in their fingers.

  ‘Lots of fish,’ said Jerra. ‘Sea-junk.’

  ‘How deep?’

  ‘About thirty.’

  ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘Ears.’

  ‘Risky.’

  Jerra did his best to ignore him. He was thinking.

  On his back, Jerra drifted in and out. Sean read a hard-covered book. Jerra opened his eyes. His hair felt like unravelled hemp.

  ‘Buggered if I can sleep.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What you reading?’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Catchy title.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He flicked a page. ‘Seen Ben Gunn since his midnight meeting?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Old Man and the Sea. The wino from up on the hill.’

  ‘Oh, him.’ Jerra got up on an arm. ‘How do you know he’s a wino?’

  ‘Did you see his face? Weathering the years, and more. The more is the piss. He’s as mad as a cut snake.’

  ‘Seemed orright to me.’

  ‘’Cause he talked about fish.’

  ‘Held a conversation.’

  ‘Flittin’ amongst the tombs.’

  ‘Got him sewn up, haven’t you?’

  ‘You saw him.’

  ‘You’re a bloody cynic.’

  ‘Try it.’

  ‘Must get a prescription.’

  Sean went back to the book, smiling as he recognised one of his own lines. Jerra lay back.

  ‘You must admit, though, he did look pretty wild. The shirt held together with nappy pins, the gummy smile.’

  ‘Wonder where his wife is.’ So many things were bothering him.

  ‘Probably dreamt it up.’

  ‘He was dinkum.’

  ‘Got you fooled.’

  ‘Least I didn’t make an arse of meself.’

  ‘Who says you didn’t – amberjack.’

  ‘I would’ve remembered.’

  ‘He wouldn’t know himself, probably.’