One Dead Seagull

by Scot Gardner

  ‘Quick, ring an ambulance!’ Kerry whispered as she punched her pillow into shape.

  I burst from sleep in the late morning, puffing and shaking from violent dreams that I couldn’t remember. I peeled my sleeping bag off and darted out the door. It wasn’t much cooler outside but the air was moving; and that was the only thing—the Humes had vanished. I freaked. All of the heat and dark dreams and the Humes not being there rolled into one panic that sent me darting back inside the tent for some clothes. I dressed at a million miles per hour and as I shot through the door of the tent again I saw a note pinned to it—in such an obvious spot that you’d have to be an idiot to miss it. Or freaked.

  Good morning, Wayne. Or is it afternoon? Hope you had a good snooze. Mum has made lunch for us all and we’ve walked around to Chestnut Bay. It’s not far. Follow the signs from the main ramp on Mars Cove to the end of the beach and up over the point. Just bring your towel.

  Love Kerry and the humorous Humes

  I flicked the note into the tent and jogged to the beach. I had forgotten my towel so I jogged back and grabbed an orange while I was there. I walked to the beach a second time, with my eyes scrunched shut to cut down the glare and my ears ringing with the chorus of a thousand cicadas. I peeled my orange and pitched each little bit of skin under a tea tree on the side of the track; no one would find it there. The signs were easy to find—the first one on the beach said ‘Chestnut Bay 2.7 km 1.5 hr’ and pointed down the beach to the granite boulder that Kerry and I had been sitting on last night; I’m sure it was the same one. Right up in the soft sand near the end of the beach was the second sign: ‘Chestnut Bay 1.9 km 1 hr’. The walking track rose from the beach sharply and it wasn’t until I looked back that I noticed how many people there were down there. Hundreds of little specks and coloured umbrellas dotted the shoreline and the shallows. A bit further out, a few black-suited surfers sat on their boards waiting for the big waves, and the sharks.

  The track snaked amongst some enormous chunks of granite to a point, then wound back down to sea level at Chestnut Bay. There were a few families and groups scattered along the white sand—none that I recognised, so I just kept walking. Chestnut Bay looked bigger than Mars Cove and there were fewer people. I thought I could see Den in the distance, and when I waved he waved back then cartwheeled down to the water. It was Den all right. I started jogging again, this time with a bit more purpose. Misguided purpose. It wasn’t Den and the Humes but a family of wogs with milky white skin and coconut sunscreen. I had almost sat down at their towels before I realised and, in a quick recovery, I asked if they’d seen the Humes. Lots of smiles and head-nodding as I described the family. Eventually the man spoke through a neatly trimmed black beard.

  ‘Not speak English very good. You look for friends? I think I seen them maybe bit further and further that way.’ He pointed along the beach and I thanked him. There were only a few groups of people between us and the rocks at the far end of the bay and none of them looked like the Humes.

  ‘Hey. You watch bit further and further along some people with not clothes on. Okay? Bit funny not clothes on.’

  Nudists? All right! I thanked him again and certainly kept my eyes out for naked bodies. After another five minutes of walking—past an older couple reading books and a group of girls in bikinis watching a shoal of blokes on boards bobbing in the swell—I was ready to turn back. I had promised myself I’d go to the next group of people then give up, but halfway there I found them.

  All along the beach the steep edge of sand that marks the high tide line was unbroken, except for one small sandy gorge, not big enough to drive Dad’s ute through, that opened into an eroded area of soft white sand. Fresh footprints leading through the gorge drew me in and I didn’t know where to look. Bare bums everywhere. Well, not everywhere but it was a shock to see my best mate’s bum, his mum’s boobs and his dad’s penis resting against his thigh. And his sister’s . . . well, everything. I thought they’d see me and scramble to cover themselves but I was wrong. They weren’t embarrassed—I was. I should have guessed and a thousand thoughts crammed into my head all at once. Are my friends sick? A bit kinky? If they don’t cover up then what am I going to do? What if I get a hard-on? I’m not taking my clothes off. I might just look up at the dune until they’ve finished getting dressed. They’re not getting dressed. What, do they all have sex and stuff too? What if it wasn’t me that came in for a look, they’d all get caught naked.

  ‘Hey Wayne,’ Den said, and Gracie looked up from her book.

  ‘Poor kid. Look at his face,’ she chuckled.

  ‘We can put our clothes back on if you like, mate,’ Baz said, pulling his sunglasses off and standing up.

  ‘No we can’t,’ Kerry said as she ran up the sandy hill to where I was frozen. She grabbed my hand and dragged me into their camp. ‘Bare bodies won’t kill him.’

  Den flopped onto his bum and took two handfuls of sand, letting them cascade onto his pale thighs. Gracie just watched me with a sympathetic look on her face. Her boobs were the same colour as the rest of her body, all sort of heavy and gold–brown.

  ‘Come on. Let’s go for a swim,’ Den said, and bolted past me through the gap. When he ran, his knob jumped about. Kerry dragged me back out onto the beach where I felt even more embarrassed for them. What about the people down there—the old couple and the girls—what will they think? Didn’t cross their minds. They just went barrelling into the water and I crashed in with them, with my footy shorts and T-shirt still on. It was cold enough to make me suck in a sharp breath and my stump ached for a few seconds. I was hoping it would be like a cold shower.

  ‘Get them off,’ Den shouted.

  ‘Yeah, come on Wayne. I’ll give you a hand if you want,’ Kerry said gently. She helped me drag my wet shirt off,

  God knows that’s hard enough with two hands.

  ‘Take your shorts off?’ she asked gently.

  I think I was pressured. ‘But what if I get, you know . . .’

  ‘A hard-on?’

  I nodded and looked up and down the beach.

  ‘You probably won’t and even if you do, who cares? Sometimes Den gets a bit excited when he first gets his gear off . . .’

  I think I was conned. ‘What if someone sees us?’

  She laughed. ‘So what? You reckon they haven’t got bodies of their own?’

  ‘Yeah but . . .’

  ‘Whatever,’ she said, and dived under a wave that nearly bowled me off my feet.

  Oh, this is bullshit. In a moment of wildness I ripped off my Hawks footy shorts and my jocks and heaved them clear of the water. I can’t even begin to describe how luscious and naughty it felt to swim without clothes on, the water peeling off my body so softly. When I dived through the waves after Den and Kez, my willy would flap and rattle deliciously but I didn’t get a hard-on. It wasn’t really a sex feeling at all—just wild. We crashed and tumbled in the waves for a while then swam to deeper water where I had to struggle to stay afloat. Treading water is hard with one hand. Hard but not impossible.

  I could see Kerry’s breasts bobbing as though they were floating. I had to battle to keep my eyes off them.

  ‘Yeah . . . Cool huh? Breasts float! And penises,’ Kerry said, and I felt like a pervert.

  ‘Hey! White whale!’ Den shouted and duck-dived so his bum cheeks were the only part of him sticking out of the water. Kerry giggled and did the same. Their bums were different shapes. I had a go myself and nearly drowned thinking about what it must look like from the surface.

  ‘Wayne, we said you should take your shorts off,’ Den said.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Yeah? Doesn’t look like it . . .’

  I looked at my loins through the water. The tan line at the top of my thighs looked like it had been painted on. Ha ha. I dived on him and pushed his smiling face under the surf. His skin was silky-slippery-smooth. Kerry dived on me and I took a lung full of water with a wild laugh. Coughing and spluttering, I crawled to
the shore and up onto the dry sand. The others followed, Den rolling like a puppy until he was coated with sand except for his face.

  We had sandwiches for lunch—with real sand—and I got to thinking that the Humes are my family. I do more stuff with them than with my own mum and dad; they take me as I am. No hassles. With the sun scorching my shoulders and neck, and the white, white cheeks of my bum resting on the warm sand, my life felt perfect. Just for that minute, everything was as it should be. All the stuff with Mandy and Phil felt like a bad dream—there was the sore spot on my right ribs and the feeling in my nose like I’d had a cold for a week and blown it until it was raw, but that was nothing. Somewhere inside me, something had been cut open, all the shit had fallen out and now I was getting on my feet again after the operation.

  Kerry kept looking at me. Maybe it was me looking at her. Her nipples were sticking right out when we got out of the water, now they were soft and the same shape as the rest of her breast. She had hair in her armpits, like me; I’d never noticed that before. So did Gracie, soft and almost white. I thought women didn’t have hair there. I know about shaving and all that but I thought it would grow different or something. I dunno. Mum always shaves her legs and armpits and stuff. I guess that’s what the shavers are for. I found them in the shower when I was little and I just assumed they were Dad’s and then one day, maybe two years after Dad had left, I noticed they were still there so they had to be Mum’s. I shivered at the thought of seeing my mum naked. Yet seeing Gracie naked was no big deal. Seemed natural. Normal even, just part of who she is. But Mum—that is a whole different story. I’ve never even seen her in underwear. When she hangs her undies out on the line, she hides them in between other stuff so you could never see them even if you happened to be Mr Velo and you looked over the back fence. Mum hates the water, too. And Dad will go on it but never in it. Baz and Gracie roughed and tumbled like kids and floated together in the surf for hours while we mucked around in the sand.

  We had to keep topping up the sunscreen and Gracie made a running joke about having to put lots and lots of sunscreen on the bits that didn’t normally hang out in the sun. She offered to rub it into my bum for me with a little smile. So I let her. She got embarrassed and did a botchy job of it—slapping me on the cheek when she’d finished.

  We were making a sculpture on the beach; it turned out to be half man, half woman. Den was hell-bent on making breasts and Kez was determined to form a dick in the sand. Kez went hunting through the high-tide line for some seaweed pubic hair and came back with a dead seagull pinched at arm’s length. It had all its feathers and there was still colour in its beak but its eyes were just holes.

  ‘We can call him Brutus,’ she said. ‘Brutus the budgie.’ She threw it down near the sculpture’s bulky shoulder and I started to arrange it like a pirate’s parrot. The bird only had one foot. I dropped it and sat back.

  ‘Phwoar. It stinks,’ Den said.

  ‘Get a grip. You can hardly smell anything,’ I said and started digging a hole.

  ‘What are you doing, Wayne? Don’t bury it! It’s part of the sculpture.’

  ‘Nah. It’s my brother. I’ve got to give him a proper burial.’

  ‘Your brother?’ Kerry poked the bird with her toe.

  ‘Poor thing.’

  She danced back up to the high-tide line and came back with two sticks bound with a ratty piece of blue plastic rope to make a cross. We had a short ceremony where Dennis wished the bird well in its next life. He said he hoped it came back as a real chicken that laid eggs and ate earwigs on a farm instead of a coastal chicken that had to eat rubbish and be bossed around its whole life. It was a touching ceremony and Kez managed to contain her laughter.

  ‘Do you guys ever think about what happens after you die?’ Kerry asked as we walked along the beach back to camp, with our clothes on. (It was a horrible experience getting dressed, feeling the clothes sticking to my salty skin made me want to rip them off again and go crashing into the surf.)

  ‘Yeah. You die and then you rot,’ Den said flatly.

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I’ve been dead,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah and he came back as a coastal chicken.’ Den added.

  ‘Nah. Seriously. When I had my accident. Mum said that I died. Beeeeeeep.’

  ‘No shit?’

  ‘What was it like?’ Kerry asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I was dead at the time. I don’t remember much.’

  Den laughed.

  ‘But I did have a few freaky dreams while I was in hospital.’

  I told them about the blackness and yelling out for Mum and not making a sound. And being scared—that horrible scratching, moaning and the girl with the voice of little bells.

  ‘Freaky! They weren’t dreams. You were dead and doing stuff out of your body,’ Kerry said. I looked at her and the softness in her eyes was amazing. She really believed it.

  ‘Bullshit Kez. You listen to too much drug music,’ Den said.

  ‘That’s a bit harsh,’ I said.

  Den flashed a glance at me that was filled with ice, shrugged and trotted off to catch up with his mum and dad.

  ‘What was that about?’

  ‘He’s a bit undecided about the death thing. Listens to all this devil worship, “kill, kill, kill” music and it confuses him,’ she said, and I thought she sounded like Gracie.

  ‘Mum and Dad both believe that our soul lives on after we die. I think it is true.’

  ‘My mum thinks that God is a game show host and my dad . . . my dad thinks God is a beer additive. Or maybe living on the ocean floor somewhere.’

  ‘That’s sad.’

  ‘It’s true. No wonder your family gets on so well. You believe in stuff. My folks don’t believe in anything.’

  It took us hours to get back to the camp. The others disappeared up the hill and we sat in the warm shade and talked. Some of it was heavy. She told me that her dad had killed someone in a car accident when he was at university. He was drunk but the other bloke had run a red light and slammed into the side of his panel van. It was in the days before breath testing so the other bloke was seen as completely at fault. And an uncle had sexually abused her mum. I couldn’t believe that.

  How come some parents talk about that stuff all the time and others, take mine as a fine example, are flat-out discussing the weather without having an argument?

  I told Kerry about my dad’s little secret: my dead sister. She clamped her hand to her mouth and moaned.

  ‘Your dream! When you were dead ...I bet that was

  Carrie. She’s probably, like, your guide or something.’

  I huffed air through my nose and shrugged. Whatever.

  ‘That’s so sad, Wayne,’ she said. ‘You would have been such a good brother.’

  ‘I think that’s a compliment.’

  ‘Yeah. It was supposed to be.’

  She looked at me for the longest time and I had to struggle not to blush—think about water, think about dead seagulls, think about Den.

  ‘Den’s an all right brother though, isn’t he? He’s like a brother to me. I’d never say that to him though.’

  ‘He’s great most of the time. He gets PMT though. Really moody and black for a few days before his period.’

  ‘Get off! You’re full of it.’

  ‘Fair dinks. Well, he does get moody and snappy,’ she said and, after a moment of thought, added, ‘Why wouldn’t you tell him that he is like a brother?’

  ‘I dunno. I guess it sounds a bit fake or something.’

  ‘You love him though, don’t you?’

  ‘Get stuffed! I’m not a poof.’

  I think it was the ‘L’ word that set me off, and reacting like I did splashed in our calm puddle of conversation. I wanted to apologise, let her know that I liked Den a lot but the ‘L’ word was reserved for other people. People of the opposite sex. People like her. The words didn’t come together and it was Kerry who broke the silence.

  ‘
Why haven’t you got a girlfriend, Wayne?’

  ‘Well, I did have but she doesn’t like the fact that I can’t clap hands.’

  ‘Who? Mandy?’ she grunted. ‘She’s twisted and I think she’s been hurt.’

  I went quiet as those feelings of being absolutely hated by Mandy washed over me and made me weak. I looked across Mars Cove. I got up and pulled Kerry to her feet and hopefully changed the subject. I felt hungry.

  ‘Mum and Den are making burgers for tea,’ Kez said and I must have looked at her a bit strangely. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. I was just thinking about food.’ She laughed. ‘Get used to it. I’m psychic.’

  The burgers were great. Juicy and loaded with stuff— tomato, lettuce and satay sauce. No meat, again, just mushed-up veggies and something from a can that looked like dog food. Tasted okay to me. Hendo came over after dinner and Kez dragged us all, Baz and Gracie too, to the top of the dune to watch the sun go down. I mean sunsight. Sunclipse. Whatever.

  Hendo nearly died getting to the top of the sandy hill. He and Den shared a smoke discreetly while the rest of us struggled on through the sand. Baz looked around and smelled the air. Maybe it was wafting up the track. I couldn’t smell it but then again I think my smell glands have been burnt out. The air was as still as one of the wombats we saw on the way up. Three streaky clouds gave the sun something to reflect off as it set.

  ‘We’re going to get a thunderstorm,’ Gracie said, rubbing her nose furiously.