An Open Swimmer

by Tim Winton

  Rain fell constantly the next day. Jerra sat inside, listening to the pattering on the canvas, drops making animal scampering sounds, trickling softly to the ground down the sides of the annexe, and ate sloppy things cooked on the stove. In the afternoon he made rigs, stringing together hooks and swivels, tasting the whale oil as he held them cold and brassy in his teeth. He decided to fish the lagoon, but turned back, thinking of the drizzle and the cold granite and blue hands. He sat inside, knotting line.

  Clover tickled his ears. They couldn’t see each other, it was so deep. Above, the tree spread thick and green against the sky, the scratchy gumleaves shining in the sun. Jerra sucked the sweat from his upper lip. He held his thumb tight.

  ‘How’s yours?’

  ‘Orright,’ said Sean.

  ‘Hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mine neither.’

  ‘Hot.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They looked up into the scabby boughs.

  ‘What if a maggie swooped us ’n’ pecked our eyes out?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s okay here.’

  ‘Too hot for maggies.’

  ‘Ya couldn’t see, anyhow.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Jerra wiped his thumb on the clover, big flat leaves smearing.

  ‘Gonna tell anyone?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Jerra.

  ‘Secret.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What if we got different blood?’

  ‘Nah, same blood.’

  ‘Is now, anyway.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Here.’

  Something cold landed on his chest. A closed safety-pin. He put it in the pocket of his shorts.

  ‘Like Indians,’ said Sean.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Our Dads did.’

  ‘Dad told me.’

  ‘Mates.’

  ‘Yep.’

  Stringing hooks, thumbs on the barbs . . .

  His father’s face, soft in the lamplight . . .

  He was reluctant to go out at all the next day, under the dull skies. Although there was no wind, the air was cold and sharp. Jerra walked down to the beach. The sand was wind-smoothed in flat hummocks and ridges, the sides of the dunes ribbed and fluted on their bald patches. The bay was calm, the water dark. He looked down towards the rocky end of the beach. There were no footprints. He went back up to the clearing, threw some gear into the hessian bag, screwed his spear together, and made for the lagoon.

  The water was clear and cold. He floated, stunned, on his chest, letting the streams shoot up his arms and legs inside his wetsuit; he clenched his teeth, head aching, pushing along the almost oily calm of the surface, and under him brown, green, yellow weed stood upright, lank and motionless. The water quickened him, making his movements easier as he felt his arms come alive with gooseflesh. His head burnt and his breath burst sharply from his snorkel. He sucked in the air, burning his throat.

  Everything below in sharp focus. Fish hung in thick clusters, like knotted weed. Jerra wafted through the shallows, pulling himself, with his fingers dug in, along the sandy patches of the bottom. Tiny whiting darted away, almost invisible against the sand, and as they went he could see their veins and gut showing through their transparent bodies. He ran his fingers through the sand as he glided along, turning every now and then to see the billowing clouds settling behind. For a few yards he slid along the bottom, nudging the sand with his chin. A garfish passed on the surface above, snooking along with its bill out like an icebreaker.

  Following the declivity of the bottom, Jerra moved out to the reef. He surfaced, bffing the water out of his snorkel. He felt it on his legs. Ruts and potholes opened in the carpeted rock. He dived along a gently sloping bank of turf, soft under his hands. Pomfrets scattered, flashing silver and gold. He could have caught one, wide-eyed in his hands as they passed. The trenches in his palms were darkening, and little welts lifted in crinkles where he had swung the axe.

  He kicked out to the hulk and hovered, looking hard. Even knowing, it was difficult to see where rock and timber separated. He swam out to the edge of the reef, a hundred yards further out, and floated over, looking down into the pale blue. It was too deep to see bottom, great schools of buffalo bream patrolling, thirty, forty feet further down. He turned back over the reef.

  At the entrance of a long, low cave, a group of scalyfins twitched and banked nervously. He came down from behind them, but they were too quick, their green and black flanks gone under the ledges. He poked his head into the cave, no bigger than a forty-four gallon drum. A small cuttlefish, all bulbous eyes, floated against the back wall. Nothing to cook it properly with, he left it, quivering, turning its big eye.

  Without sunlight, the water was an oily colour, and the reef was dull with even the most flaming reds and oranges of weed appearing cold and faded. A large bream floated over a weed bank. It was harder to see without sun, without silver flashes. The bream was feeding or asleep. Jerra sank to the bottom, letting out quiet burps of air as he stalked through the weed. About five or six feet away, he aimed for the spine behind the gills. The spear flashed, the fish baulked and avoided the prongs. He tried again, but the fish streaked into open water.

  It was cold and his jaw ached from clenching. He took out his knife and prised a couple of abalone from the reef, peeling them off with quick flicks that left them twitching for a grip. He held them in his hand as he swam for the flat rock where he had left the gear. The shellfish twitched, their flesh writhing in spasms. He swam without holding them after a few moments, big discs sucking, welded to his palms.

  Steam hissed on his shins as he stood closer to the flames, wood cracking and popping. His hands and face and feet were numb, pricking with blood as the fire warmed him. In the bay, the water was still flat as ice.

  He gouged the meat from the shells and threw gobs of guts into the flames, watching them sizzle. He found a clean rock and bashed the meat on it with the flat of the axe. Wiping the dust from the pan with his sleeve, Jerra dropped in a pat of butter and melted it over the fire, flames wrapping back and forth. He could smell the hair singeing on the back of his hand. It curled off in little wisps. The pan hot, he dropped the abalone in, watching them buckle and turn in the butter. He fried each side until the milk oozed out and they were the same colour as the butter.

  He heard it faintly, but clear.

  Out in the longboats, then sailors.

  Put your backs to the oar.

  Mind a big bull don’t come up an’ nail us,

  Or we will be sailin’ no more

  – We will be sailin’ no more.

  There was no surprise this time; he had been waiting. Jerra saw through the trees but pretended.

  ‘Smells good.’

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘So you came back.’

  Jerra scooped the abalone out onto a plate. The pan fizzed on the grass.

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Only need one. Be a waste.’

  The old man scuffed. Jerra went in and got him a stool.

  ‘There you go.’

  The old man sat.

  ‘Looks cold, the water. Dunno how you could stand it, this weather.’ His hair was thin and plaited with knots, his beard seemed greyer. He wore an oilskin, dried and cracked in the creases, open at the front, stinking of fish. There were two buttons on his shirt, which was bleached almost white.

  ‘Not too bad once you’re in. Gets to you after a while, though.’ He looked at his purpling hands.

  A stink of burning meat from the fire.

  ‘Rotten smell,’ said the old man, chewing. ‘Never get it out’ve yer clothes.’

  Eating, squeezing hot butter out with each chew.

  ‘What you been doin’?’

  Jerra cut a slab of bread and buttered it, giving it to the old man.

  ‘Went back to get a job.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Got a jo
b an’ now I’m back.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound too good.’ He moulded his rubbery lips around the bread, butter glistening on them.

  ‘Worked in a deli.’

  ‘Why’d you chuck it in?’

  ‘They chucked me in. Or out, the silly bastards.’

  The old man chewed slowly, his feet rocking inside the crusty boots. His face was dried hard with sun. His eyes were moist and clear under the dry lids, moving from object to object in Jerra’s new camp.

  ‘How’s this place?’

  ‘’Asn’t changed. Colder with the winter, and wet, but still the same, jus’ the same.’

  ‘Hut holding up orright?’

  ‘Leaks a bit, but I fixed the roof with a strip of wire. It’ll last long enough.’

  Staring into the fire.

  ‘Where’s yer mate?’ he asked, holding his hands to the heat. His oilskin steamed.

  ‘Working.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Orright, I s’pose. Dunno, really.’

  ‘Any different in the big city?’

  ‘Just the same.’ Jerra grinned. ‘Still full o’ big-mouths.’

  The old face creased, whitening in the wrinkles.

  ‘Come down to do a bit of fishin’?’

  Jerra nodded, filling the billy.

  ‘Might do a bit.’

  ‘Not much round, really. Buggers ’ave pissed off on me. Nothin’ decent for a while.’

  ‘Couple of whiting around.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘What about crays? You could make a couple of pots and sink them in holes in the reef.’

  ‘Too dangerous, walkin’ out on that reef.’

  Jerra put the billy into the flames, hands stinking of burning hair.

  ‘At low ebb, you could wade out and drop them over.’

  The old man was looking on, watching the steam rise from the blackened outside of the billy as the metal handle glowed gold and blue and green, pfffing quietly.

  ‘Like a woman,’ he murmured.

  ‘The fire.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Dunno. Just is.’

  Jerra wondered. Other things, too. Like men and boys.

  ‘Saw a few fish today.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I was too slow, though.’

  ‘All slow down a bit, this time o’ year.’

  ‘What you been living on?’

  ‘Rabbits. A roo every now an’ then. There’s carrots, radishes, spuds.’

  ‘Wouldn’t think anything’d grow in ground like this. Bit sandy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ah, there’s a rich patch behind every shed.’ The old man laughed. ‘Been ripenin’ a while.’

  Jerra smiled.

  ‘Bury rubbish, anythink that rots. Makes orright dirt. At first it’s a bit hard to eat what grows out’ve yer own shit.’

  Jerra laughed.

  A SHIT SANDWICH.

  ‘But it’s the best stuff,’ said the old man.

  ‘Eating the same thing over and over.’

  ‘Right. But it doesn’t do too badly. When you’ve got nothin’ else, there’s still things that grow out’ve shit. Doesn’t taste so bad, if it’s yer own.’

  A light wind was dribbling in off the bay.

  ‘Hard living.’

  ‘Brought it on meself.’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone.’

  ‘Some people got bad in ’em. More ’n most.’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘I mean —’

  ‘But I do. Yer can’t burn it out’ve yer on yer own. Some days I’ve got along the beach with a stick, squashin’ crabs on the rocks, poor little bastards. Jus’ pin ’em down an’ shove the stick through. Crack, an’ out comes the froth. They still bite, though, the buggers, even when yer rip the nippers off the body they still get yer an’ won’t let go. Crazy buggers.’

  Jerra poked the billy with a green stick. It would boil soon.

  ‘We all get that,’ he said. ‘But there’s good things.’

  ‘Maybe. Some things are too bad to let any good come any more.’

  ‘Some people never do anything at all. Maybe it’s better doing something bad than never doing anything all your life. At least it’s trying. You make blues. You gotta try.’

  The billy began to rattle in the flames. Holding the stick through the handle, Jerra drew it out and dropped in some tea, watching the brown stuff spread on the water. He poured it into the mugs, a scum of leaves floating on the top.

  ‘Had a mate, used that as a motto. Said yer gotta hit a good patch, sooner or later. It was north, in me younger days. He was jinxed as a three-legged dog, but he kept at it. We was superstitious bastards. He died broke.’

  ‘Maybe he just wasn’t any good.’

  ‘Never fished with ’im.’

  ‘Why don’t we make a pot and try for the crays?’

  ‘Bloody reef. It’s a devil.’

  The tea was hot. Jerra stirred lots of sugar into it, seeing it dissolve in the coppery stuff.

  Quickened by the wind, the clouds had darkened out in the bay.

  ‘Rain tonight,’ he said to the old man who was hunched over by the fire, sucking the hot tea.

  He breathed into his mug and finished it.

  ‘I’d better get back.’

  ‘Want some supplies? Plenty of tea, sugar, flour, tinned things.’

  ‘I’m orright.’

  Wind ruffled his trousers as he went.

  Sunlight glowed in the moisture on the windows. Brilliant strings of beads hung from the van and the trees. Wind rocked the leaves in little tremors and round drops pattered onto the detritus as the sun shifted through the trees, darkening the sky, browning the earth. Through the webbing of boughs and trunks, the ocean glittered, dazzling fingers of light clenching and unclenching. Frosted breath of mist hung in the bush, wavering, the colour of ash.

  Jerra pulled on his jumper and greatcoat. The cold gauze of mist burnt his nostrils. Water spilled from the canvas as he opened the flap, and droplets ran down in clusters onto the rough arms of his coat. Leaves were cold and gummy beneath his toes. A tiny bird glanced off the gilt branches of sunlight that forked and tangled in the clearing.

  He prodded the ash and coals with a stick. Underneath the ash was white and warm; he felt the heat on his palm.

  With a dirty fishing bag under his arm, Jerra stalked across the cold sand, feeling it, almost petrified with cold under his heels, remembering as they numbed the days when he and Sean would beat the sun to the beach, avoiding the morning traffic, and walk across the stiff sand with blue curling toes, surfboards cold glass under their arms. They would sit in the swell with mates, paddling furiously to beat each other to the biggest of the set, feeling the breeze on their faces as they dropped down into the trough, zig-zagging through the swimmers in the bathing area. On big days, after a cyclone had carried too far south, they would paddle out to the reefs that boiled and thundered as they neared.

  NO carved in the hard sand. Jerra kicked it over.

  The tide was lower than he had seen it. He walked out over the dry reef, over the rocks soft with algae and kelp. The drying weed was beginning to stink. He picked off a couple of small abalone and sliced the white meat from the little ear-shaped shells. Mother-of-pearl snatched the sun. Spectrums quivered as he turned it in the light. He punctured a piece of the tough meat with a hook, and cast into a hole in the reef. Green water surged as he watched the sinker and white blob of meat disappear.

  As the sun rose further, weed dried and Jerra sat on a flat rock that normally frothed with breaking waves. The hole glugged as the water rose underneath the ledges and slapped ceilings, the edges lined with fleshy clusters of kelp. Whitebait stung the surface like grapeshot.

  Wrench on the line. It trembled. He dragged in and it cut into his fingers. The fish came shuddering out of the water, scales lit in the sun. Jerra pulled the hook out, fin spines pricking his palm. The gills flapped as he held the fi
sh up to the sun with its pectorals unfurling. Breaksea cod – black-arsed snapper, his father called them – not much bigger than his hand.

  He wet the bag and put the fish in, scales and mucus clammy on the cloth. The tough meat was still on the hook. Cheap way to fish, he thought, as he dropped it into the hole.

  A crab marched slowly across the rocks, opening and closing its orange claws. It would make better bait. He held the line with his left hand, caught the crab by its back flipper, and with the knife dashed the claws off and dropped them into the hole. The crab struggled in the bag as he fished. Another bite. A sweep, big as his foot. He held it under his heel as he unthreaded the hook. The sweep was knife-thin, chromed on its tight flanks underneath the black bars. Sweep were one of the best to see underwater, quick and curious.

  Jerra sat until the sun was above the hole. Lips and nicks in the grassy rock brightened in the direct sun and, near the surface, heads retracted into the snug dark. He had caught a half-dozen small fish; sweep, some cod, and a leatherjacket. There were no more bites. He scaled and cleaned the fish, slicing neat behind the gills, disconnecting the narrow little heads of the sweep, slitting the turgid sac of the black-arsed snapper, and did what he could with the hide of the leatherjacket. The unravelling guts went into the hole. He took out the crab and put the fish in the bag. He broke it in half, an eye and battery of legs either side, and crushed the shell with his heel. Tobacco-coloured juice ran out. He took the abalone off the hook and sank the barb into half of the crab. There was probably nothing left down there, unless something wandered through, but it would have been a waste not to have used the crab.

  He lowered the bait into the hole. Before it hit bottom, the line whipped into the water, the spool chasing it all the way in, zizzing loops, vanishing in the water. He stood for a few minutes with nothing in his hands but a red welt, seeing nothing but the hole.