by Claire Zorn
‘Oh. Thanks.’
‘You’re bloody welcome.’
*
When they made it to the edge of Sydney, Sam directed Lorraine through the back streets and they came to the beach with a car park already half-full. Flags and banners with sponsorship logos flickered in the breeze. A TV broadcast van was setting up. People milled about and pitched positions on the sand. Lorraine pulled the car into a space next to Shane’s van and lit a cigarette. Sam got the impression she didn’t want to be around him for the moment so he left her and got out of the car.
When Minty opened the door to the van a bunch of surfers he knew whistled to him. He didn’t even wave. He put his hands in his pockets, head down, and wandered to the edge of the car park, looking out toward the beach. The other surfers watched him. Some called out to him, but he ignored them.
Shane opened his door and spat on the asphalt. ‘That’s a start,’ he said. ‘You can’t psych anyone out if you’re all buddies.’ Shane started unloading the boards and Sam followed Minty down to the beach. The wind whipped their faces.
Minty locked his eyes on the horizon. ‘There’s a fucking grandstand.’
‘Whatever, Mint. Block it out. Look at the swell. What do you see?’
‘Northerly current. Shallow sandbar. It’s small. Grovelly. Not awesome.’ Minty looked over his shoulder where more people were arriving and suiting up.
‘Ignore them. Go down the beach.’ Sam handed Minty his Walkman and Minty stuck the earphones in. Sam slapped him on the back. As Minty walked away, people tried to talk to him and he ducked around them, head down.
Sam couldn’t help but think of Minty as a little kid, tucked into the big bed with the blanket pulled up to his chin, desperate not to go home. The contrast was stark between the eager-eyed daredevil in the water and the small boy who wet the bed and flinched at loud noises.
31
The sponsor’s tent was set up with chairs and eskys full of cold drinks. There was a massage table and racks of boards. Lorraine parked herself in a folding chair on the outskirts, her face hidden behind her oversized wrap-around sunglasses, a tattered cowboy hat on her head, strap done up tight beneath her chin so it wouldn’t blow away. Family members of the other competitors milled around, but Lorraine didn’t attempt to mingle with any of them. She rapped her nails on the arm of the deck chair and watched the water. Shane and Sam carried Minty’s boards down from the car, slotting them into place on a rack reserved for him. Shane ran a hand down the smooth edge of a board. ‘He should take this one in: light, wide, skim on the surface of a smaller wave. Lot of people won’t like these conditions, waves are gutless, shore wind chopping it up. Mint’ll use that. He’ll go for some air the way these older guys won’t. You know Mint. He’d surf in shit creek if that’s what was on offer. Where is he?’
Sam nodded toward where Minty sat in the sand further down the beach.
‘He’s shitting himself,’ said Shane.
Sam didn’t answer. He didn’t want to acknowledge out loud that his invincible cousin was anxious.
‘He should be,’ Shane said. ‘This is the real thing. Go to the rego tent. Get his rashie.’
No one looked at Sam twice when he gave Minty’s name. He fitted the scene without trying anymore. He was handed Minty’s rashie: lime green with logos and a big number on the back. ‘There y’are,’ said the steward. ‘Minty Booner, boy bloody wonder. Can he live up to the hype?’
Sam just smiled. He was heading back to the tent when he saw the familiar figure of Ruby, up on the dunes, back from the beach, watching with her arms folded. He approached her and she tilted her chin in greeting.
‘Didn’t know you were gonna be here,’ Sam said.
‘I’m not.’
‘He’d want to know you’re here.’
‘Don’t care what he wants.’
‘Then why come?’
‘I want to see him win. I want to see the moment his life takes a whole different direction from mine.’
Sam held the rashie in his hands and listened to the fuzzy growl of the waves hitting the sand.
‘You could go in the same direction.’
‘No thanks.’ She looked at Sam, squinting in the glare. ‘He’s gonna take off, you know that, right? If he gets this.’ She laughed in disbelief. ‘And I never thought he would, but if he’s actually put his head down and worked for it, he’ll win. He might get a wildcard to an overseas comp. Boom. Gone. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘You gonna ride on Minty Booner’s coat-tails?’
‘It’ll be fun for a while.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh yeah? You having fun?’
Sam shrugged. ‘See ya, Rube.’ He left her on the dunes and trudged across the sand to Shane and the sponsor’s tent.
‘There talk?’ Shane asked.
‘What?’
‘They talkin’ about Minty?’
‘Oh. Can he live up to the hype? That sort of bullshit.’
Shane folded his arms. ‘He can and he will as long as he doesn’t let the nerves get to him. He needs to use it.’
Shane explained the system to Sam: three surfers in each heat of the first round. Thirty minutes on the clock, they had to get as many waves as possible and score as high as possible on each wave, the two highest wave scores combining to make a final score. There was a priority order, first gets top priority of waves, anything he passes up is open to the other two. Minty, being the most junior, was not the priority surfer. He would have to take whatever was left over. It was definitely not what he was used to.
Minty’s first heat was early: 8.30 am. He was up against Seb Tyler and Xavier Dunn. Seb had priority, was older and well known. He had fans and Minty was definitely the mythologised underdog. Xavier was somewhere between them: on the circuit a few years but not quite established. The three competitors stood between two big flags metres from the shoreline. A horn sounded and they sprinted into the water. Minty took a different line to Seb and Xavier: he headed north, paddling furiously and letting the current drag him up and out. He nosed through the whitewater and Seb had already got a wave before Minty was even in the line-up.
‘He’s losing time,’ Sam said.
Shane shook his head. ‘He’ll be okay.’
Seb had a long ride. There were cheers and whistles from the beach, but Sam didn’t think he’d done anything spectacular: a few turns, that was about it. He finished and bailed into the white wash as Minty sat on his board and waited for a wave. Seb was back out in the line-up by the time anything rideable came around. He took priority and paddled into it. If Minty was stressed, he gave no sign. Xavier took the next wave. Another wave rolled in, small and messy, but Minty paddled for it. He seemed to pull speed out of nowhere and the watching crowd hooted and whistled.
‘See,’ said Shane. ‘He’s got speed without bouncing, lower centre of gravity. He can surf behind a breaking wave. No one can do that, not many anyway.’
Sam watched as Minty drove the nose of the board to the crest of the wave and flicked the tail over the back. It looked like he would fade out but he surged through the flat into the next pocket of water.
‘He’s linkin’ the flat sections. Not grabbin’ the rail. He can do so much with so little.’
The wave petered out and Minty bellied down onto the board, stepping off it into the shallow foam near the shoreline. Shane whistled. Lorraine, hugging herself, kept her expression neutral.
‘You watch,’ he said to Sam. ‘These other two, they’re gonna get frustrated. This isn’t what they want. They’re too precious. Minty’ll take anything and make it shine.’
The rest of the heat went the way Shane predicted. Minty took anything he could and milked it, keeping speed where the other two dropped off.
The siren sounded and Minty caught one last shitty wave in and jogged up the sand between the flags. Sam watched his cousin as people crowded around him, slapping his back, whistling. Minty looked like a startled
animal, buffeted by the acclaim. The announcer’s voice sounded over the loudspeaker and a hush fell. The scores were read and Sam didn’t even hear Minty’s before the cheers started. He had won the heat and would progress to the next round. Minty’s eyes found Sam and he grinned, although the furrow didn’t quite lift from his brow.
The quarter- and semi-finals played out in the same way: Minty eliminated his competitors, big names whose pictures he had stuck to his bedroom walls. Between rounds he sat in a fold-out chair next to Sam and Lorraine, earphones in, his left knee bouncing uncontrollably. He didn’t seem to be watching the other surfers or listening to the scores. Sam couldn’t tell if he was enjoying himself or not; either way, he ended up in the final.
At the end of the day, when Minty was announced as the winner he didn’t seem to quite comprehend it. Shane spoke to him, hands on his shoulders and then Minty dropped to his knees in the sand. It was a few moments before he looked up, his face breaking into his trademark smile. Lorraine was looking around in disbelief, her hands over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Sam couldn’t account for the empty feeling in his chest. His cousin’s life had changed. He should have been happy for him, but if he scraped below all the encouraging words, all the support, all Sam felt was fear.
The day finished around a bonfire at the reserve. Ruby had turned up without letting on once that she had been at the comp. Minty had hugged her tight and now they sat side by side with the firelight on their faces. The big newspapers had been on the phone; Minty was the grommet made good, they wanted to send photographers and journalists. There was talk of a feature article in the Saturday papers. Shane went from coach to press secretary, screening requests because Minty said yes to anybody and anything.
‘You go see Nana?’ Sam asked.
‘Yeah, she wanted to come up for the comp, ay, but Mum did her nut.’
‘You didn’t need that distraction anyway, brah,’ said Shane.
‘She said she listened to it on the radio,’ Minty said.
‘She stoked?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You just qualified for the national titles, Mint,’ said Shane. ‘You know that? You could get a wildcard to California … You’re gonna do it. I told you.’
‘Twenty-five grand’s enough to get to Hawaii.’
‘You’re not gonna go to Hawaii, Mint. You gotta keep goin’. You could join the World Qualifying Circuit.’
Ruby chewed her lip and listened without comment.
‘Shane, brah, chill.’
‘I’m serious, Mint.’
‘You know the biggest wave I ever got? Five metres. That’s nuthin’ compared to what’s out there.’
‘Minty,’ said Ruby. ‘You know you gotta do this.’
‘I don’t have to do anything. I got a cheque for twenty-five grand. I’ll buy you a ticket to Hawaii.’
Ruby shook her head and didn’t return Minty’s smile.
‘Either way,’ said Sam. ‘You’re not gonna be in Archer Point forever.’
‘Damn straight.’
At some point in the early hours, sleep took each of them. Sam was last of all. If anyone had the excuse to throw away his life and do nothing but surf and drink, it was Minty. If Sam were to table the hardship of his own life against his cousin’s, Minty would come out as the one with the odds stacked against him, the licence to piss it all away. And yet here he was, twenty-five grand richer, the press knocking on his door, the whole world opening up before him. Sam lay on the grass watching the sky and thought of his body, stuck there on the ground, while the earth spun and spun and spun.
*
In the morning they were back in the water, Sam’s feet numb with the cold despite the steamer Minty gave him. Across from Sam, along the line-up, Ruby sat straight-backed astride her board. She ribbed Minty gently and he took it the way he always did. You didn’t have to know her to see how proud she was of him.
Later they rinsed off up on the concourse, the cold water from the showers warmer than the ocean. Ruby pulled her arms from her wetsuit, Minty watching her.
‘Goin’ to Toomelah next weekend,’ she said. ‘Aunty Violet’s taking me.’
Minty didn’t say anything.
Ruby took a deep breath. ‘I had a plan. I was gonna get out of here. I hate it. I mean I love the water, but, it’s weird, I just know this isn’t my place or whatever. I’m not supposed to be here. I want to go overseas … but now I might be this whole other person.’
‘You’re still the same person,’ Minty said.
She shook her head, ‘Nah. That’s not how they see it.’
‘Who?’
‘The blackfellas. I’m one of them. That’s how they see it, that’s how they see me.’
‘How do you see it?’ Sam asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘It must be good to feel like you’re really connected to something, to people,’ Sam said. ‘Anchored like, and you were all along. You just didn’t know it.’
Ruby nodded. Minty gripped his board and looked out over the water, his jaw tight.
‘You goin’ with anyone else?’ Minty asked.
‘Um … maybe … not sure yet.’
He put his board down and folded his arms. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You’ve got the nationals.’
‘I don’t care. I want to come.’
‘No, you don’t. You wanna say that, but you don’t wanna give up the nationals.’
‘I thought you’d be there with me.’
Sam turned away, walked a few metres up the concourse and pretended to be suddenly very interested in a ship that was out on the horizon. But he couldn’t tune out of the conversation.
‘I’m not gonna be the girl who waits for you, Minty.’
‘I’m not askin’ you to do that.’
‘Yes, you are. You want me to wait around while you do your comps and mess around with your little groupies. Screw that. I want someone who’s gonna wait for me. Us? You and me? It’s not gonna happen. You and I both know it.’
When he looked back he saw Ruby walking away with her board and Minty watching her go. When she was out of sight Minty picked up his board with both hands and let out a scream, throwing it off the edge of the concourse onto the sand. He turned, pacing with his hands clasped behind his neck. Sam approached him and, as their eyes met, Sam saw the pain on his face, knotted in his forehead.
‘Just piss off and leave me alone,’ Minty said through clenched teeth.
Sam did as he was told. He walked up the concourse to just beyond the kiosk. He could still see Minty pacing back and forth, staring up at the sky with his hands gripping his hair. Sam felt for his cousin; he loved him like a brother. But he also recognised the repulsive twinge of satisfaction that Minty couldn’t get everything he wanted. He pushed the thought aside, put his head down and headed for the caravan.
32
The school was close to the beach, like an uglier, low-budget version of Summer Bay High: boxy brick buildings with tiny windows jammed shut. Students sized Sam up as he walked across the yard. He had gum. He chewed it and squared his shoulders. The office lady looked sceptical when he said he wanted to enrol in year eleven. She made a phone call, talking quietly and keeping her eye on him like she was worried he might try and nick a stapler or something. When she hung up she told him to follow her to the principal’s office. It was a cramped, damp-smelling room with a tiny, prison-sized window. The principal lectured him about taking responsibility and stepping up. He used the words ‘commitment’ and ‘ownership’ a lot. He made Sam explain what had happened at his last school: the fighting, the suspensions, the incident when the police gave him an official caution. Sam sat in his crumpled clothes and chewed the inside of his cheek, watching a line of tiny black ants march across the peeling paint of the windowsill. He wondered what the point of it all was if you could drop dead at anytime, anytime at all, no matter if you were the greatest musician of your generation, a world cham
pion surfer or a nurse studying to be a doctor. Life was all just padding people put around the truth: everyone was going to die and they were powerless to stop it. It didn’t matter if you were a good person or not. He didn’t feel it so much in the ocean; in the ocean it was just him and the water and it barely seemed to matter if you lived or died. On land it was different. Both he and Minty knew it.
After so much time spent in the water, days in the classroom took on a dragging, wasteful feeling. Sam looked out the window and wondered what the swell was doing. Crisp, bright days were the worst. He imagined the swell to be better than he had ever seen it. Each of his teachers gave him a thick folder of notes and told him he had serious work to do. It gave him an excuse to keep to himself, so mostly between classes he sat in the study hall and listened to his Discman. He didn’t hang with anyone at school. Jono kept away from him and – despite the occasional glance – Gretchen was still a stranger. Ruby was as friendly as Ruby ever got, but she kept her distance. Every afternoon he went down to the beach and slotted in beside Minty. She never came with him.
Late one afternoon he walked up the headland, board under his arm as the sky was darkening. Seagulls sat huddled down on the grass, their feathers lifting in the cold wind. Gretchen was sitting on the little fence at the car park on the headland. She wore running gear and a grey hoodie, arms wrapped around herself. He couldn’t walk past her as if she was a stranger. The pull of her was too much and he finally gave in to it. He dropped his board and sat next to her.
She turned and looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Nothing … I just, I saw you and …’
‘Like you’ve never seen me since … ?’ She didn’t fill in the last word, just made a gesture with her hand.
‘I’m sorry.’
