by Carmody, Sam
So many of them, Paul said, looking back at the water and his reflection, the shark gone, a familiar caution in the face staring back at him. Gives me the creeps, he said. It’s like they’re following us.
Michael hunched as he lit his cigarette, shielding the flame. They are, he said.
The pot hit the tipper and Michael slid it to Paul. Paul pulled weed from inside it, threw untouched bait into the sea, carried the pot to the back of the boat.
Paul was exhausted by the conversation, by the shifting sea. He had worn the thought of Elliot, too, ever since he woke up that morning. Paul didn’t mention that it was Elliot’s birthday. He had considered it; had felt the urge, like it needed to be announced, just stated and left there. But he didn’t want the conversation that might follow. Michael would feel obliged to ask him questions and the risk of that was enough to make Paul keep quiet on it.
Elliot would have been twenty-one. No doubt their mother would have thrown a party. Paul had been to a twenty-first party once, for one of the cousins, Anna. The table for presents. The speeches. It was like a rehearsal for a wedding. Elliot had got out of coming to it, and he would have hated any party his mother organised. Paul felt a passing relief, as crazy as that was, that Elliot had escaped it.
He was never one for birthdays, seemingly oppressed by the performative demands of receiving gifts and responding to the obligatory attention that came with them. To Elliot it was all an elaborate harassment, a day when all the separate strands of a life choreographed to close in on him. A birthday meant fuss and noise, being singled out and made to stand up in front of people. It meant being repeatedly drawn to comment on how he felt, or what plans he had for the coming year, having to make declarative, positive statements that satisfied the enquiries of their grandmother, the neighbours or the friends of their parents, to anyone who might ask him how old he was or where in life he was going, which on a birthday seemed to be just about everyone. He knew their parents didn’t understand just how his brother was tortured by it. But when that spotlight locked on Elliot it seemed like an intrusion. It came to look almost aggressive, an opportunity for others to pry, to scrutinise a life that on every other day of the year enjoyed a necessary privacy.
There are things out there that are worse than your sharks, Michael continued, as Paul returned to the shade of the cabin.
The White Whale? Paul said. UFOs?
Michael tilted his head. An airliner disappeared in the Indian Ocean. Gone, you know. Lots of people disappear. There are ghosts in the water, here.
Michael went across the deck, kicked a large ball of seaweed, like a soccer ball or a head, towards a drain gap in the boat wall. Forced it through with the toe of his boot, into the sea.
Who? Paul said. Who disappeared?
Does it matter? Michael said. No one in Stark seems so interested about history. Michael was looking west towards the haze of the horizon line.
Who are you talking about? Paul said, shivery.
Who? Michael turned to face him. You have seen all the posts in the water? All those sticks standing up in the middle of the sea?
Yeah.
Isolated danger markers. They tell you of something in the water. Maybe a coral head. Most of them are for wrecks.
Shipwrecks, Paul echoed.
Hundreds of sailors in this water drowned or cut down, Michael said. Fed to the fish and the birds. Just last month they dug up another skull.
Paul had read about it on Michael’s computer. Batavia, and the Dutch massacres on the Abrolhos Islands three hundred years ago. A team of archaeology students from the University of Western Australia had uncovered the skull of a small girl on Beacon Island; other bone fragments and musket balls had been found in the sand around her.
And people come here to swim on beaches, said the German. No idea about all the ghosts. They should not want to look too close at the grains of sand on their feet, they might find bone.
There was silence.
Arthur’s boat, Paul said. Roo Dog and Anvil.
Deadman? Michael said. What about it?
They are pretty interested in it, whatever is out there.
Michael swept his hair across his face. I do not imagine they are sightseeing, he said.
I’ve been going up the inlet to watch it. Deadman. And it’ll just sit there, for days, not going out.
You should not go up there.
And now it’s not there, Paul continued. I haven’t seen it for a week.
Michael was silent.
You don’t believe me, Paul said.
I believe you. A week. So? Michael paused. They have gone longer.
Where? Paul said. What are they catching?
Michael looked at Paul. I would forget all that. Don’t go back up there. Don’t go looking for them.
Aren’t you curious?
Nope, Michael said, and walked back across the deck to kick more seaweed.
Pantomime
ON SATURDAY NIGHT THE BAR WAS THICK with people and noise and sweating heat. The crews and families from town. The restaurant full with older couples from the city. There were girls, hair soft, not straightened or bleached. Thin blouses and designer jeans. City girls. A couple of their boyfriends at the bar. A few of the deckhands had abandoned the TAB screens and stood circling the bar like a net. Saying nothing, gripping pints to their chests.
Michael went to the bathroom. Paul took his stool, next to Shivani. He noticed her take up her wine glass. She held it near her mouth, as if shielding her face. They hadn’t spoken since he had moved in to the house. Not a real conversation. Just brief exchanges, navigating around each other in the hallways or in the kitchen. He wasn’t sure what she made of him, if she liked him being there, sharing a thin wall between bedrooms. He knew he had a knack for scaring her, his timing somehow always off. Stepping out of a room the moment she was walking in, or slipping up on her when he hadn’t meant to. He had taken to walking louder around the hallways to warn her of where he was, slapping down his forefoot on the tiled floors as he went, feeling like a ghost with drop foot.
He sipped his beer and watched the crowd. It was still loud but he noticed a number of the deckhands had stopped talking, concentrating instead on some action nearer the bar. Paul couldn’t see clearly what it was for the bodies in front of him.
It is like watching evolution in reverse, Shivani said to him above the music and chatter, leaning towards him.
What? Paul asked, surprised at the sound of her voice.
Shivani put her wine glass down on the table. She then curled her arms in front of herself like a bodybuilder, face soldierly blank.
I don’t understand, he said.
Look at them all, she said. Throw some girls in the mix and they devolve. Quicker than usual.
Oh right, Paul said. Early Man.
She smiled, briefly, then looked at the crowd. It’s fucking dangerous, she said. Those tourists, they shouldn’t be in here.
Probably not.
Shivani turned, watching him now. What are you doing here? she said.
What do you mean?
It is just a curious thing, after your brother and everything. That you would come up here. Live in Stark. Work on Jake’s boat. Come to the place where he was lost. Be around the same people.
You think it’s curious?
Yeah, I think so, she said, looking back towards the crowd for a moment. It is like swimming in the same undertow where a person was last seen. Most would stay away.
Paul didn’t answer.
None of my business, Shivani said eventually, then reached for her wine.
There was a shout. Paul stood when he heard it and saw Anvil standing at the bar amid the city boys, his forehead pushed against the brow of the tallest of them. Anvil and the boy stood like that, leant into each other, arms straight at their sides, making a sort of pointed arch. The girth of Anvil made more obvious in comparison. The boy was rakish, handsome. Anvil was half a head taller. He had to pull his chin to his neck to e
ye his opponent. One of the girls, blouse billowing under the fan above the bar, tugged on the arm of the boy. But he didn’t flinch, held the huge deckhand’s stare as if he knew by instinct it would be dangerous to take his eyes off him. And all the time Roo Dog stood behind Anvil, watching. A sick look on his face, like hunger. Bottle of Jack Daniel’s Whisky & Cola in his hand. Paul saw the bottle was empty. Figured the boy saw it too when he threw the punch at Anvil. His only chance. The punch hit Anvil under the cheekbone. Made a wet sound, a slap of flesh. And it rocked Anvil back onto his heels.
Then Roo Dog made a wild sound and pushed the bottle into the boy’s face. The base of the bottle sheared away on the first strike. On the second swing Paul saw the jagged stump of the broken bottle catch in the boy’s cheek. Roo Dog twisted it, without hurry. The girl screamed and it was only then that the boy seemed to understand the damage being done to him. His eyes widened. He pushed Roo Dog away and the bottle fell to the floor. The skin underneath his right eye hung, cut, like thick pastry. The two men held each other by the collar. Roo Dog grinned. Blood greased under their feet, streaked with dirt, spilt beer. They pushed through the doors to the beer garden. Anvil followed behind, a childlike bounce in his step.
It was all so silent beyond the glass, hair and clothes streaming in the dark, a windblown pantomime. A girl stomped a foot near them, mouth agape in horror and hopelessness, but there was no sound except for music and the call of the dog racing from the televisions. The men at the bar watched, talking in breaths. Someone, maybe Richard or Elmo, swore. And when Roo Dog stepped back from the body, and when the girl crouched next to it, you almost expected the world to fade to black.
Headwind
THROUGH THE FRACTURED PERSPEX OF the phone booth Paul saw an Aboriginal man pushing a shopping trolley, the sea breeze slowing his journey. Tornadoes of beach sand swept around him, and as he passed under the streetlight, Paul imagined an old man in a snow globe.
Hello? his father said.
Dad. It’s me.
Yes.
Sorry, hope I didn’t call too late.
Well, it is nearly midnight, Paul.
Paul continued to watch the man’s shuffling progress along the footpath away from him, crouched against the wind, until the image broke up and dissolved into darkness.
Any news? Paul asked.
Right, his father replied. Someone did call today. They wanted to know if we could be in a study.
What kind of study?
Profiling Elliot’s case in a study or report. I couldn’t see the harm. If they learn some more they might get to the bottom of things.
What did Mum think?
She called them back and told them to go hang themselves. Said if these people really wanted to help missing persons, they would go looking for them.
Do you think you might come up? Paul asked him.
Well, look. It’s just not a great time. It is the end of semester. He paused. We have all had a bit of a knock-around. I think it might be best if we stay down here.
Okay, Paul said.
Got something for you, though, his father said. Your mum is sending up a Chrissy present.
That’s cool, Paul said. I’ll be alright.
Good on you. His father coughed.
How are you, Dad?
I’m good, Paul. Good.
Mum sleeping?
His father paused. She’s up at Grandma’s, he said. Staying there for a bit.
What? Why?
She’s just looking after her mother, that’s all.
Oh. Okay.
We just all had a bit of a knock-around, that’s all, his father repeated, and Paul had the sense that he was speaking as much to himself as to Paul.
Michael and Shivani were in bed by the time he got home. It was after midnight but he felt wired. Overheated in his clothes, unsettled by the events of the evening, the conversation with this father. He thought of the boy in the bar and the look on Roo Dog’s face. Thought, too, about what Shivani had said. Was he really at the site of some kind of danger, being in Stark? Swimming in an undertow? He had no hope but to get thinking about what Shivani knew that he didn’t. Michael, too. And the rest of the town. He felt suspicion build in himself, the compulsion that came with it.
Michael’s computer was on the kitchen table. Paul sat down in front of it, scanned the search history. The Oxford University website, Department of Economics. He found a photograph of Michael standing under a dim sky in front of a world that looked ancient, buildings yellowed like old bone. His blond hair was darker. Shorter and combed. But his smile was the same. He wore a grey blazer and held a certificate. A Gibbs Prize for the best overall performance in three papers in Economics.
Paul stared at the photograph for some minutes, processed it all. It was always wounding, in a way, to uncover the secrets of people, however small they were. There was pain to confirming that things were not as they seemed.
Paul listened to the wind. He glanced up at the hallway.
It was a shitty thing to do, Paul knew. Poring over other people’s information. Like rummaging through drawers in his brother’s bedroom, and that same excitement. The fear of being caught, the fear of what you might find.
With Elliot, the search history was mostly surfing destinations. Remote Indian islands in the Bay of Bengal. North Sentinel Island. There were desertscapes he’d looked up, national parks in the Northern Territory. Daydreams of isolation. Elliot was rarely on the computer but Paul wondered if he had missed something, if he could uncover the necessary clue. A name. A location. When no one spoke to each other, the computer was like a sort of oracle. The great revealer.
The Professor was brilliant with computers, of course. But he didn’t seem to care enough to cover his own arse, to clear the search history and the traces left. It almost felt cruel, how easy it was to find things that his father would have thought he’d hidden well enough.
It was sometimes porn, softcore stuff. Cheerleaders. Photographs instead of videos. It was weird to come face to face with the Professor’s fantasies when one could have wondered if the man was even capable of any feeling or desire at all.
Paul had found other photographs his father had searched of the first gulf war. They were mostly aftermaths of Baghdad missile strikes. Gutted government buildings, hard sunlight on mounds of debris. Bodies woven within, blood bright against the powdered rubble. The incongruent collage of hard materials and then the softness of human tissue. Concrete and iron and then a body without a face. A severed hand.
The search history was a gallery of horror. All so hideous that it was sordid. And Paul had felt the puzzling judgement in himself; knew the hypocrisy of feeling the way he did. How strangely hurt he was that his father might trawl through things so awful, when Paul knew he had done just the same.
And still he’d wondered what his father was looking for, what the destruction meant to him. He sometimes wondered if his father felt he had missed out. A Combat Systems officer who never saw combat. Paul had looked it all up. Read of the Australian clearance divers who searched for sea mines in the northern Persian Gulf. Frigates on patrols, accompanying supply vessels. But he knew that the Australian navy had never fired a shot. Did the Professor wish that he had?
The President says to me one day I’ll be as tall as him but the President is the tallest fella I’ve ever seen. I’m not an old fella yet but I’m sure that I’m not getting much taller. It is in the blood and I know this cos my gran said my father was a small fella even when he was fully grown. He never had no shame about it or anything. He was a demon with a footy in his hands. A lot of fellas out Tennant Creek way were good with a football in their hands and could be quick over the grass but she said he was something that no one had seen before. So tricky he could run under a fella’s legs. I was a baby when she told me that. It is strange the things that stick in your head. So much I don’t remember. Whole years just cleaned out up there in my head. But I remember my gran.
We got so much tech
equipment out here we could be in a war. Scanning for radar. Satellite-phoning bikes ahead for roadblocks. And the President talks to those boats far out at sea. The big ones. I tell the President that he is like that Osama fella. Hiding in the desert. Running the whole show from a laptop. He says he knows he ain’t running nothing. Says you have to remember that you are never running the show and if you think you are then you will soon be running the whole shebang from a grave that you dug yourself.
Parachute
PAUL WOKE BEFORE SUNRISE EVEN without the alarm. The room was hot. He slid the window open. Put on board shorts, an old yellow pair of Elliot’s he’d brought from home that went below his knee. He stepped out of the house without a t-shirt.
Outside it was overcast but already warm, the air thick. He walked through the caravan park. Heard the creak of the annexes in the easterly. Smelt the sour whiff of incinerator ash.
The back beach was empty. He scanned the long lonely curve of it, bending three kilometres south of the town around to the bluff which jutted out, red and barren, like a quarter-moon. Several hundred metres down from where he sat he felt him, like he had been there only minutes before. Elliot out on the shelf, knee deep with his rod in hand, casting into the surf.
There had been a time once when they were all down there. It was years ago. His parents, Aunty Ruth and her new husband Bob. A picnic laid out on beach towels. White rolls and peppered ham. Tomato and plastic-wrapped slices of cheese. Choc milk. Jake was about ten or twelve, teaching Elliot to fish. They would run down to where the sandbanks gave way to reef, dark as blood under the surface. Paul looked down to the bunkers of rock on the shore where he had sat and watched his brother and their older cousin. Paul never liked the fishing but got some thrill out of watching. It was weird, how he liked to spectate. Be near goings-on but not involved. He had always been that way.
Paul turned and looked north and saw a woman in a dark blue bathing suit, one-piece, standing up away from the shoreline. She threw a white towel to the sand. It was the police officer. Paul got up and shook the sand from his hands.
