An Open Swimmer

by Tim Winton

  He went out into the sunshine.

  Hands had been softer, and drier. There was breathing and the exhalation of weeping trees. Glass tinkled, falling like shells and jagged stones. The brace moved on his chest. Fingers bit into him – twigs. Cold flatness on his cheeks; he was floating up against the ceiling. A cough, bubbly with phlegm. Hot breath on his forehead. Ribbons of grey floated past in the breeze. Still outside. Thunder of surf. Then – now and then – a painful travelling. His body contorted, manhandled.

  Coughing racked the grey silence again. He might have remembered a lurching dinghy, a boy crying, face turned; but it did not fit. Something solidified under his back.

  ‘Son?’

  It shifted the black. The blanket folded back.

  ‘Yer awake?’

  The blanket ruffled. More coughing. The overcast lightened.

  ‘Yeah.’ Throat dry. Blood, tasting the way it smelled.

  ‘Hurtin’?’ The voice reverberated a little.

  ‘Dunno. Yes. Something holding me round the guts.’

  ‘How’d you get in? Annexe’s a bit of a mess, I think. Bit of a blow last night.’

  The old man coughed, apparently uncomfortable.

  ‘Your shack hold up orright?’

  A strange twilight. Windows were higher. Only cracks of light coming through. Jerra felt odd.

  ‘It opened up an’ blew away,’ said the old man.

  ‘What? Gone?’

  ‘I felt water on the bunk first, in the blankets. The roof was leakin’ in a few spots an’ then it was pissin’ down the insides of the walls, down the chimney. Heard that go later. Went outside and the whole lot blew away like a tent. That ol’ drum was rollin’ around, sprayin’ everythin’.’

  ‘Come here to get out of the rain, eh? Thought I heard some noise. Find a blanket orright?’

  ‘You what?’ The old man’s voice sounded strange again, as if he was taking another crazy turn off on his own.

  ‘Hard findin’ yer way in the rain?’

  ‘Bloody oath. Water was up to the sandhills. Thought I was gonna get sucked in, a couple o’ times there. In the bush, stuff tumblin’ everywhere. An’ gettin’ you up the track with all the water comin’ down, like wadin’ upstream.’

  He coughed, rattling. ‘Heavy bastard you are, too.’

  ‘Hang on —’ It was crazy talk to Jerra who did not understand.

  ‘Oh, you —’ The old man laughed.

  ‘How’d you get here in all —’ Jerra became impatient.

  ‘Stumbled into the tree. Bloody great tree stickin’ through yer bus. Crashed through the roof, pinned you. Bloody mess. Bit of a shame about yer bus. An’ yer a bit knocked about by the looks of it. Nothin’ busted, I don’t think.’

  What the hell?

  ‘So where are we?’

  ‘The old hut. Up the hill. Nowhere else to go.’

  Jerra lay, going through it again. Then the VW is gone, he thought, or maybe the old coot is exaggerating. He decided he would have to see for himself. He could feel the old man next to him on the dusty boards. It hurt under the damp blanket.

  ‘Dawn soon,’ Jerra murmured. ‘I’ll go down an’ check the damage.’

  The old man wheezed, shuckling up some phlegm.

  ‘Night’s only just come.’

  Jerra listened to the gentle burr of bark on tin, his back aching. He thought he caught a word or two, but they were gone. It was all beyond him.

  ‘Will you stay here, now the other hut is gone?’ he asked a bit later.

  ‘Have to think,’ breathed the old man.

  ‘Not much timber around. To rebuild.’

  ‘I got this one. Last as long as needs be.’

  ‘Pretty safe up here. No one’s gonna look for you.’

  ‘Just can’t fight ’em any more, that’s all. Just keep goin’ till I can’t.’

  Ocean hammered in the distance.

  ‘Don’t s’pose there’s anything to eat,’ said Jerra. ‘Thirsty as hell, too.’

  Old man scuffing around in the dust.

  ‘Went down this afternoon and found some things. Matches . . . knife . . . here, some biscuits. Soggy, I expect.’

  Jerra ate a couple. They might have been gingernuts.

  ‘Saw that groper, too,’ the old man said, carefully.

  ‘Mm.’ Jerra closed his eyes.

  ‘Stuck up in the rocks, above the watermark. Crabs been at it.’

  ‘Made a mess o’ that. Didn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah, a mess.’

  ‘Nearly took me with him.’

  ‘Did good to beat him, I s’pose.’ Cough coming from deep within him. ‘But not good enough, son.’

  ‘Beat him, didn’t I?’ said Jerra, suddenly arrogant.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Some things you can’t get around. Your words.’

  ‘Yer can have anythink and it’ll likely be no good. It’s how yer get it and what yer do with it, that’s what counts. Havin’ it’s nothin’. Everybody’s got things. It’s nothing.’ The old man paused and spat. ‘Go to sleep. Some water here if you need it.’

  Jerra closed his eyes.

  ‘I was after the pearl, you know,’ he whispered. ‘It didn’t have one.’

  The old man chuckled in his throat.

  ‘Keep tryin’, boy. You ’ad the wrong fish. Spear an open swimmer, they’re the ones. Cave fish see nothin’.’

  ‘An open swimmer.’

  ‘They’re the ones.’

  Morning was a long way.

  . . . or see this great fire

  any more, lest I die

  THE POOL of yellow slag was dry and hard beside the blanket left in a crumpled ball. Green, fleshy leaves protruded through the tin. Out the window, the sky was the colour of dead skin.

  Pain was more distant than he anticipated, much of it from lying on the wooden floor so long. His back was tight. On his forehead there was open skin, hard already with drying, and he found grazes on his arms, and a thin pain – like little barbs – in his hip. He limped out into the pale light.

  Guttered with washouts, the sand track wound slowly – NO faint and puffy wound in the bark – until he saw the knotted masses of foliage in the clearing; a shred of canvas impaled on a branch; vomitty flour pooled on the mud. Wide black puddles reflected the thin clouds. The VW, toppling on its side, was fused to a thick gum, fenders crushed. Unmelted hailstones of glass lay on the ground. He peered in. The steering column a splintered tangle; panels buckled; boxes spilling. Black blood, stinging scent of eucalyptus, wet blankets. He reached in for his shoes. He found two oranges and his coat. Matches. The shoes might have been anywhere. He put the oranges in the pockets of his coat. The old man will be hungry, he thought, wondering where he might be.

  Weed and shells were strewn up on the sand; heaps of piled weed, buzzing with little insects. The bottoms of the dunes were eaten away and deep gouges ran part of the way up the beach. Jerra heard the gulls. The old man was not here.

  He went up the track, stumbling barefoot in the deep open veins in the mud, pulling his coat tight around him, the shit-stink following. Bird noises. He thought perhaps the old man would be back at the shack. Gulls hahed high in the trees. Others were skirting the treetops, crowding in.

  ‘Ah, bastards.’

  He cut into the bush.

  The gulls moved back without blinking when he came close. The old man’s face was in the mud, feet in the air, ankles pecked raw where his trousers had crept up, skin open, sunk with piano wire that gleamed dull. A little puddle of blood and mucus bathing the old face. The ringbolt on the ground, next to the puddle.

  Jerra sat keeping the birds away for a while. He knew what he would do.

  A single witness shall not prevail . . .

  On the beach, he wrapped the old man in the tattered canvas sheets. He tied his diving weights around the middle, threaded the ring through. He undressed. He took the old man’s boots off the cooling feet. He waded out to the shallow part of the ree
f, the icy water gripping his shins. Beneath his numbing feet, the fur of algae yielded softly. He steered the bundle out stopping every few moments to unsnag it, until he manoeuvred it over a hole, using the ring at the waist as a handle, and lowered it over the edge, watching it sink slowly into the green, grey hole. The water stung his cuts. He watched the green.

  Seagulls were gathering on the water as he pulled his clothes back over his blue limbs. The old man’s boots were rank, but soft inside. He went up to the clearing. Digging into the mess he found sultanas, and socks for the boots. Packets, boxes, coils, blankets spilling. Birds in the trees, mostly gulls, were showing their pink tongues, one close in the fallen tree that crushed the VW. It laughed at him with those red Sean-eyes, squinting, edging closer.

  ‘Bugger off, yer bastards!’ he yelled.

  The gull came closer. Blinking.

  Jerra lit a match, smelling the dead breath of its smoke, dropped it into the fuel tank and ran.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to offer my thanks and respect to Michael Henderson and Denise Fitch for their patience and assistance in the writing of this book.

  The lines from ‘Diving into the Wreck’, from Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972, by Adrienne Rich, copyright © 1973 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., are reprinted by permission of the author and W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tim Winton has published twenty-one books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-five languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.

  ALSO BY TIM WINTON

  Novels

  Shallows

  That Eye, the Sky

  In the Winter Dark

  Cloudstreet

  The Riders

  Dirt Music

  Breath

  Stories

  Scission

  Minimum of Two

  The Turning

  For younger readers

  Jesse

  Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo

  The Bugalugs Bum Thief

  Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster

  Lockie Leonard, Legend

  Blueback

  The Deep

  Non-fiction

  Land’s Edge

  Down to Earth (with Richard Woldendorp)

  Smalltown (with Martin Mischkulnig)

  Plays

  Rising Water

  Signs of Life

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Allen & Unwin, 1982

  First published in paperback by Picador, 1983

  Published by McPhee Gribble/Penguin, 1991

  This digital edition published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2012

  Copyright © Tim Winton, 1982

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Cover design by John Canty © Penguin Group (Australia)

  Cover photograph by Pete Seaward

  ISBN: 9781742537368

  penguin.com.au