Skid

by Keith Fenwick

  “It’s a wonder to me why those dogs stay with you, the way you treat them.”

  “You can look after them if you want.” That’d be a shock to her system, Bruce thought.

  “Here boy, here Can!” Sue called the dog over to pat her. “He’s a horrible man, isn’t he?”

  “He’s a she, can’t you tell?” Bruce laughed as Can jumped up at Sue’s chest, almost knocking her over in her excitement at receiving some affection. Not wanting to miss out on the action, Punch and Cop were not far behind and overwhelmed her.

  “Oh, you horrible things,” she bleated weakly, pushing the dogs away.

  While Sue was occupied, Bruce got up, took off his shirt and slipped down the bank and into the water. Once the water lapped around his waist he leant forward and struck out across the sluggish current.

  “Shit, it’s cold!” he exclaimed as he stopped halfway across and trod water, goose pimples breaking out over his body. Still the chilly water was a pleasant respite from the almost oppressive heat of the Skidian day. “Jump in Sue, its great!” he called, as she tentatively dipped a toe into the water and withdrew it quickly.

  “It’s too cold!”

  “Balls!” Bruce replied, trying not to let his teeth chatter too loudly.

  “Oh, alright.” Sue half turned, drawing her robe over her head. Slightly embarrassed and not knowing where he should be looking, Bruce looked away. Needlessly, as it turned out, for underneath Sue wore a T-shirt and bikini style pants.

  “Is it deep enough to dive?” she asked from the bank.

  “Yeah, no worries. Look.” Bruce stood on the bottom and the water lapped at his chin.

  Sue dived in; her olive colored body contrasting with her light clothing as it gracefully arced through the air.

  Bruce flipped over and tried floating on his back, but the sluggish current tugged him downriver. He flopped over again and swam underwater to where Sue trod water. He surfaced directly below her unsuspecting form and threw her out of the water.

  “Jaws!”

  “You pig!” Sue squealed and laughed for the first time Bruce could remember, her unhappy mood vanishing in an instant. “Leave me alone.”

  Bruce moved away a little, turning his back to her so she could try to dunk him. She failed dismally, and Bruce held her underwater for a moment to prove who was the strongest. When she emerged spluttering, they wrestled, trying to dunk each other. He grabbed her around the waist, his fingers making contact with the skin of her lower back. He froze, his body tingling and his groin suddenly warm and throbbing.

  Bruce felt as though a light had been switched on somewhere in his head. Slowly he leaned forward to kiss Sue on the lips, asking himself why he hadn’t thought of doing that before.

  “No!” Sue wriggled from his embrace and swam quickly to the bank. Sheepishly Bruce followed.

  “Sorry,” he said, climbing out of the water and sitting awkwardly by the chilly bin. “I don’t know what came over me,” he added untruthfully. Good old-fashioned lust, that’s what. He wiped his face dry with the edge of the robe he had spread on the ground earlier and stared moodily at the river while Sue busied herself behind him.

  “Don’t turn around,” she said. Bruce could hear the rustle of cloth, the soggy slap as waterlogged garments hit the ground. More rustles, then another and a grunt as she finally tugged a dry robe over her head. Outwardly composed, but apparently keeping her distance from Bruce, Sue sat on the other side of the chilly bin.

  “Have you ever been married?” she asked, delving into the bin and setting out various containers on the ground. “Are you now? No, of course you are not. I remember.”

  “Almost once,” he replied, after a moment.

  “Oh, what happened?” Bruce wasn’t used to this sort of openness with strangers or with people who were almost strangers; Sue’s forwardness made him uncomfortable. Should I tell her? he wondered.

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” he grunted.

  “Sorry.” Sue dropped the subject, wishing she could discuss Bruce with her mother. She handed him a spoon and a bowl of synthofood. “Thanks.”

  “Beer?”

  “Yeah.” Bruce took a healthy swig and addressed himself to the synthofood with little enthusiasm. “Stuff this.” In disgust he tossed the bowl and the spoon as far out into the river as he could.

  “That’s all there is to eat. I am sorry. I can’t help it,” Sue said defensively.

  “Bollocks!” Bruce declared. “There’s heaps of food here. We just have to get off our backsides and get it.”

  Bruce stood and peered into the river. A couple of fish flitted in and out of the weed along the bank. He figured that if the river hadn’t been fished for several thousand years it ought to be teeming with unsuspecting fish. He grabbed his agar from the ute’s dashboard, rolled a cigarette and thoughtfully resumed his appraisal of the river.

  “Right!” Bruce flicked the butt away decisively. “Grab some wood for a fire, woman. I’ll have a go at trying to catch some fish.”

  “How are you going to do that? Where’s your rod?”

  “I’m going to tickle them.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Bruce shrugged. “Watch this then.”

  Sue’s skepticism didn’t faze him. He hadn’t actually tickled trout before but he’d seen it done on the television. Bruce lay on his stomach, head and shoulders hanging out over the water. As luck would have it, two fish hovered directly below him, their tails moving with just enough power to hold them against the sluggish current.

  Carefully Bruce dipped his right arm into the water, reaching out as far as he could so that his hand would come up beneath the so-far unsuspecting fish. To his surprise the fish seemed to view the descending arm with curiosity rather than apprehension and moved closer to investigate. He positioned his cupped hand below the rearmost fish, stretching out his forefinger and running it along its underbelly.

  As it settled onto his fingers, Bruce firmly grasped it behind the gills and scooped it out of the water in one rapid movement. “Grab it!” he yelled as the fish landed momentarily stunned beside Sue.

  “Ooh, how?” Sue finally managed to pick up the slimy creature with the help of a bowl and tipped it into the food bin.

  “Put the bloody lid on so the dogs don’t get at it.” Bruce could hear the fish thrashing around as it turned back to the water for its mate. To his astonishment it was still there, totally unconcerned about its companion’s sudden departure.

  “How’d you do that?” Sue asked incredulously. “I thought you were kidding me.”

  “Years of practice,” Bruce said, privately amazed at how easy it had been. In quick succession the first fish was joined in the bin by its mate. And then, within five minutes of moving a little way down the bank, so did two more.

  “That’s enough,” he said looking at the fish flapping around the bottom of the chilly bin. They were quite small and looked like small speckled mullet.

  “Okay. I caught them. While I organize a fire, seeing as you haven’t bothered, you can clean them.”

  “I don’t know how.” Sue regarded the fish with disgust. Bruce did not actually mean to eat them did he?

  “Let’s have a look then.” Bruce prodded one of the fish and looking around for something he could use as a knife, his gaze settled on the ute’s wing mirror. Bruce picked up a rock, smashed the mirror, and carefully picked out several large slivers of glass. He used cloth ripped from the robe they’d been sitting on to make a makeshift handle for his crude knife, then he gutted each fish and laid them carefully on the chilly bin lid. He sniffed and decided they smelt, well, fishy. What did he expect?

  “Got the fire organized yet, woman?” he called over his shoulder.

  Sue hadn’t. She had been too engrossed in Bruce’s preparation of the fish, and trying not to be sick in the process, to find some firewood. Bruce quickly collected an armful of dry leaves and twigs from among the trees and built a fire.
<
br />   “Lucky one of us smokes, eh,” he commented as the fire started. “Otherwise you’d have had to rub some sticks together.”

  Sue ignored the attempted sarcasm, secretly marveling at Bruce’s survival skills as he quickly conjured up a rotisserie using a few sticks, threaded the fish on one of them and then squatted contentedly beside the fire, happily sipping a beer.

  Nineteen

  Bruce picked a little flesh from one of the fish and threw it over to Can who quickly snapped up the dirt-soiled morsel. After watching the dog carefully for several minutes, Bruce picked off another sliver of flesh and popped it into his mouth.

  “You’re not going to eat that are you?” Sue asked incredulously.

  “Yummy,” Bruce replied, pretty certain he wasn’t about to poison himself. “Try some. It’s good.” It wasn’t particularly, but that was neither here nor there. The bland flesh was hardly more to his taste than the synthofood. But at least it was real food.

  Sue looked at the fish, wondering if Bruce really expected her to eat some of it.

  “A bit bland, perhaps,” he began, “but … aggh.” Bruce clutched his neck, rolled over onto his side and began to throw a fit.

  Sue, about to reach tentatively for a small piece of fish quickly withdrew her hand and screamed. “Bruce! What’s the matter?” She panicked as he writhed and moaned on the ground, frothing at the mouth. Visions of a life without Bruce on Skid flashed through her mind and she knew she was lost. She would never survive long by herself.

  “Nothing. Just testing!” Bruce said sitting up with a stupid grin, in time to catch the fish before they fell into the fire as Sue stepped back and dislodged one of the forked sticks that formed part of his rotisserie.

  “You bastard!” Sue screamed at him. “What a stupid thing to do. I was so worried.”

  “Why?” Bruce asked ingenuously. “You should have seen the look on your face. Wish I had a camera.”

  “I, I …” Sue hesitated. “I can’t handle the idea of living here on this godforsaken planet by myself. So don’t ever scare me like that again!” She shook angrily. Or thought she did, as she suddenly discovered her feelings towards him were not all that she had imagined previously.

  “No worries. Here, have a piece of fish. It’s not that bad, really.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now that’s what I call a halfway decent feed,” he said polishing off the last of the fish and throwing the scraps into the river. “Not that I’ve ever been partial to fish, and we didn’t have any chips,” Bruce said as he watched the plate float slowly away.

  “This is a nice spot, don’t you think, Bruce? So green and peaceful. Is this the sort of place you’d build a house?” Sue asked wistfully.

  “Not right here, exactly. It might flood and then we’d be in the shit. Up the hill there may be.”

  Sue swiveled round and stared where Bruce pointed casually, not having given it much thought.

  “I’m going up to have a look.” Sue continued to stare at the low ridge. “Coming?”

  “Oh yeah, I suppose so.” He got to his feet slowly and followed her, rolling a cigarette as he went.

  Bruce had to admit the view was fairly impressive from the ridge. A slash of green foliage contrasting with the drier, lighter hue of the surrounding grassland marked the meandering course of the river as far as the eye could see in both directions.

  “Hey look, there’s a herd of ivops.” Far out on the plain, accompanied by a cloud of dust, the herd moved steadily across their line of vision. “Nice and handy,” he muttered, deciding this place would be as good as any.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Are you blind as well as deaf, woman? I was just saying to myself this would be as good a place as any to knock up some kind of house.”

  “Yes,” Sue sighed. “It’s so nice here,” she repeated dreamily for what seemed to be the umpteenth time, which made Bruce decide once and for all that the scenery back home couldn’t be up to much.

  Bruce sat on the ground, gazed down at the sea of grass that stretched away towards the horizon and conjured up an image of a homestead. A garden, close to the water, a set of yards down the other side of the hill below them. Paddocks; Bruce could already picture ivops grazing contentedly down on the plain. Lost in his thoughts, he hardly registered it when Sue sat beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. He hung his arm loosely around her neck and for a while they sat in silence.

  After a few minutes Bruce began to wonder what Sue was expecting from him. He sensed their relationship, whatever there was of one, had undergone a fundamental change in the last few minutes. It was as if they had been totally oblivious to an entire courtship ritual that had taken place in the space of a few minutes and suddenly here they were nervously contemplating the next step. Well it wasn’t quite like that, Bruce thought. It wasn’t as if they had actually come out and said anything, either of them. Maybe all he felt was just good old-fashioned lust.

  Sue waited with a strange expectancy and nervousness for Bruce’s next move. She did not really know what she wanted, except for some strange reason she suddenly needed to be with him. Always and forever. Well, as long as they were on Skid together, and that was going to be forever. She could not endure another moment facing the prospect of being alone, whatever it took.

  “You’ve heard all the stories, fantasies really, where a man and a woman are marooned together on an idyllic island somewhere in the South Seas?” Bruce asked unexpectedly.

  “Yes,” Sue nodded warily. “I’d like to have had my choice of man, though. Di Caprio, Pierce Brosnan, Brad Pitt, a hunk like that.”

  “Huh,” grunted Bruce, a little hurt. “That’s nice.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Sue gasped, remembering where she was and whom she was with. “I didn’t mean it,” she turned, squeezed the hand draped across her shoulder and stared frankly into his eyes, “to sound that way. You know what I mean. I have fantasized about such things, you know, with certain men in mind. Just like men do, I imagine?”

  “Yeah, me and Katie Holmes.” Bruce held her gaze for a moment and then looked away.

  “I am sorry, Bruce.” Sue realized to her surprise that she meant it.

  “Though never in my wildest dreams did I ever think it would happen.”

  “So now it has, what do you think? Is it like you imagined?”

  “No, not really, not at all. Ya know, apart from all the sexual fantasy stuff, what really used to interest me was the practical side of things, you know?” Bruce lied. “Do you know how hard it is to climb a coconut tree for instance? What about clothes and food? All that sort of stuff.” His voice trailed away. If the truth were known, all he had really fantasized about was the lurid and erotic. Alone with a beautiful woman, she couldn’t help but fall for him. For comfort and protection, if nothing else. The funny part about it was that here he was alone with a good-looking woman and sex with her hadn’t really entered his mind until a few seconds ago. Though if he was being honest with himself, sex on tap was all he really wanted from Sue.

  Bruce knew he shouldn’t say anything about that to her, she wouldn’t appreciate it. Not yet, anyway. It was just as well, because Sue still sought from his impassive face some indication of his feelings towards her as he gazed into the distance.

  Guiltily Bruce shook himself, as if that would dislodge the sudden erotic image of him and Sue, all bare limbs and breasts, from his brain and stood up.

  “Come on. Let’s P O R.”

  “P O R?”

  “Press on regardless.”

  Sue sensed a sudden change in Bruce, as if he had changed into another mental gear. She could almost see his brain moving off on some new tack, which she feared momentarily, might not include her. She really had no desire to be cast off and forgotten like a piece of driftwood washed up on some foreign shore and felt prepared for almost anything to ensure he did not run off on her.

  Bruce took her hand, tugged her to her feet and strode quickly down t
he hill.

  “Slow down a minute, please.”

  Bruce was deaf to her plea and she had to skip to keep up. Sue broke Bruce’s grip and circled his waist with her arm, which caused him to frown, but he slowed nonetheless.

  Hips and thighs touching, a warm, pleasant sensation overcame Bruce. He reveled in the closeness of her body, as he draped an arm across her shoulder, not wanting the walk to ever stop, lacking the confidence to tell her what he suddenly felt about her, what he wanted from her.

  Surely she would soon notice something. What was she after? Sue leaned on him even more heavily, further slowing their pace. The ute was only meters away now. He wished it were a mile off so he had more time to think. His brain seemed to freeze and the words he wanted to say were stuck in his throat.

  With her free hand, Sue flicked a stray lock of hair from his forehead and then, as Bruce tensed, ran a finger down the center of his forehead and onto his nose and chin. She paused, then the finger dropped to Bruce’s bare chest, lingered for a moment and then continued downwards almost casually caressing the flat plane of his lower belly before returning to twine itself in the hairs of his chest.

  They stood beside the ute breathing heavily. Once the present spell was broken, Bruce knew the moment might never be repeated. Was she? Did she? There was only one way to find out.

  “Here!” he said swinging Sue around so that she was facing him, her backside resting on the bonnet of the ute.

  Sue started to lean forward, eyes closed, willing that which she knew was coming, but still not sure she wanted it. She gasped as Bruce thrust his tongue between her lips and began to probe her mouth, not expecting such a direct challenge. She ignored the stale taste of cigarettes and beer on his breath, his hands on her body and pushed against him, thrusting her own tongue into his mouth.

  “No!” She decided at the last moment, half-heartedly struggling to escape Bruce’s embrace. She had vowed never to have anything to do with anyone that smoked. What was she doing? Then hugging him tightly she relaxed and allowed Bruce to lower her to the ground, his face buried in her neck.