by Carmody, Sam
She eyed him as he neared her, then she looked south towards the bluff. She stretched her left arm out in front of her, straightened it out, then wedged her upper arm against her chest with her right forearm. He saw the swimming goggles wrapped around her hand.
Senior Sergeant Harvey, he said when he got to her.
Fred, she replied.
She swapped arms, holding her right arm out in front. Shoulders freckled.
I’m Paul, he said. I came in to the station.
I know. Elliot Darling. I told you to talk to the Missing Persons Unit.
So you’ve read the report?
Fred pulled the rubber strap of her goggles over her head and pushed the goggles up to her forehead. She looked at him. They’ll tell you if they find anything, she said. As soon as they’ve got anything solid.
She pulled the goggles down over her eyes.
Can I come? he asked.
Fred scanned him, head to toe. You swim? she said.
Yep, he said. This wasn’t untrue. Both brothers had taken after their mother’s gift with technique. But it had been a long time, perhaps years since he’d swum any real distance in the ocean.
You don’t have goggles.
Don’t need them.
Fred looked down at his yellow board shorts. Be like swimming with a parachute wearing those, she said.
Paul looked down at them. Be fine, he said.
I swim out a fair way. South towards the point, about halfway. Right down to where the reef starts. It’s a good mile there and back.
Paul looked down the beach, took in the dark beyond the sandbank. Okay, he said.
I’ll be going my pace. Not waiting around.
He nodded. The woman looked puzzled by him. He was puzzled by himself. What the fuck was he doing?
Fred inhaled. She stepped into the sea.
After a pause, Paul followed. Water foamed around his ankles, cool. His breath went as each churning wall hit his legs and waist, the waves small but loud, rumbling from within, whooshing and sighing as they passed.
Fred stepped through each one, comfortable. A swell above head height reared in front of them. Paul took in the green dark within it as the wave flexed on the sandbank, glimpsed the ocean beyond it, opaque, like looking through a window when the lights are off. Paul stopped where he was as the wave broke in a clean uniform arc ten metres in front of him, a blade coming down. Then the boom and thump of water, the synchronised upshot of vapour, suspended in front of them. Fred slipped under it. Paul crouched on the sandbank. Waited the half second for it, eyes closed. Gripped the sand with his fingers. When it hit him he felt the weight move over him, through him. It took his legs from the sand.
When he came up he had hoped the wave had washed him back towards the beach. He hoped Fred had continued on without him. But she was there, looking back at him, turned on her back and adjusting her goggles, the now-quiet sea smooth as fish-oil slick.
Before Paul was level with her Fred rolled over, put her face to the sea, hunched her shoulders and kicked out in one movement.
Her skin glowed in the murk. Salt hot in his nostrils. He tasted it at the back of his mouth. They were only just beyond the breakers but Paul was surprised at the depth of the sea. The sandbank fell steeply away and he ignored the trench it disappeared into and the misting dark and instead took his breath on every fourth stroke, when his head was turned towards the beach. The dunes bobbing in his vision, looking further away than he expected.
So he watched the rippled bottom beneath him and the whiting that hovered over the sand, the fish almost transparent but given away by their thin shadows. Closed his eyes on each breath.
He looked down along his pale abdomen. Saw how his board shorts glowed in the murky sea, a beacon.
Then he stopped and threw his head to the surface. Tried to settle his breath. He was aware of his dangling legs. Saw blood in the water around him. There was the overcoming surge of adrenalin and then he was all animal, crazed limbs and short breaths and a bleating sound that shamed him as he heard it but that he had no control over. He kicked out towards shore and felt the sand under foot, the water still at his neck, and began bounding towards shore.
In the shallows he felt relief and defeat. The world had been restored to normal dimensions. The surf was small and the channel beyond the sandbank no longer seemed so far out. The sun had come through the clouds and the sea was shining and green and clear. But his nerves were shot and there was no going back out.
Paul stood on the beach with his towel around his shoulders. He watched Fred go off down towards the reef, felt some opportunity go with her. He thought of waiting but then left.
Undertow
ARCADIA TRACKED SOUTH OF THE CLIFFS, along the beaches. Shallow enough you could see the bottom, light rings of limestone, weed-covered.
Onshore it was bays. Each one like the one before. You could see the gleaming heat in the sand and dirt and rock. It hurt his eyes to look at it.
Paul had read somewhere that a landscape itself has no meaning. That it was more a mirror and anything you saw in it or felt were your own thoughts or feelings being reflected back at you. But in the long dehydrated hours spent with the land there in the distance he could swear sometimes that it was saying something. Offering a kind of warning.
Ten thousand kilometres. That was the length of the state coast, from the Territory border at the north, right around the coast to the South Australian border. Ten thousand kilometres of coastline. Michael had told him that. The distance from Stark to Stuttgart. He had never considered the length of it before. What reason would you have to think about it? Until you’re looking at it from some sort of distance. Until you’re looking for something. Tracking it. Eyeing it, like Paul did each day. Haunting it from sea. And then? Then it seemed endless.
Locksmith
AS HE ATE, PAUL WATCHED KASIA, just like Michael and the other men. He liked to think there was something different about his staring, but he’d seen his face in the mirrored wall behind the bar, the strung-out redness of his eyes, and he would look down in shame whenever she walked by. He could sympathise with the others in some way, as ugly as they all looked lined up like that in the mirror, like the row of them had been struck simultaneously by lightning, faces drawn tight and almost expressionless with sunburn, hair stiffened by salt. At the end of a day on the boat, just the sight of the girl was medicinal.
Michael had taken to the beer garden for a cigarette when a large man took his chair, setting himself down next to Paul in a rush of exhalation.
Hey, son, he said to Paul. Name’s Jungle.
Paul, he replied. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jules smirking behind the bar.
Jungle thumped him on the shoulder and smiled. Paul had seen Jungle in the bar a number of times, overheard his long stories, but never spoken to him before. Up close the man had a huge head, and his eyes seemed to follow individual lines of sight, neither of which fell on Paul.
Who you working with? Jungle said.
Arcadia.
Ah, he said, licking his lips. Captain Jake. Poor old Jake, eh? He let out another big lot of air through his gritted teeth. Don’t know why he keeps at it. If it had been me I would have left this bastard place, that’s for damn sure.
Jake the snake, said Noddy, seated further down the bar. Fucking scum.
Paul almost asked Jungle what Noddy meant by that, but the deckhand had shifted his attention towards the bar, waving down the older barmaid with a big red arm.
How you going, Jules?
Good thank you, my boy, she replied. What you having?
The usuals, he said. The usual suspects.
How’s the lady? Jules asked.
Spending all my money, Jungle said, giving a slow wink and elbowing Paul in the ribs. Had to get a locksmith out the other day. Now, that’s a joke. And I thought strippers cost money. Was thinking I should maybe give it a go. A locksmith. Sounds fancy, too.
Jungle turned towards R
ichard, the veteran skipper of Hell Cat sitting to his left. Richard had a stubby beard, and his short dark hair was peppered white in the way of an ageing blue heeler.
Imagine being a locksmith, Richard. Imagine learning that. What would you call that? Locksmithing? Locksmithery? I mean, where does that happen? At a college? Do you do a course?
Jungle, do I look like I give a fuck? Richard said, eyes squinting with the words. The men further down the bar laughed.
We had a guy come out the other day after we got locked out, Jungle continued. Zach, the silly prick, dumber than his old man, has dropped my car keys through the jetty. So I call this bloke. Never seen him before in my life. Guess how much it cost?
Jungle looked up the bar as the men ate their food. Cost me a hundred and fifty bucks, he said, and shook his head as though reliving the shock of it. He turned again to Jules behind the bar. A hundred and fifty just to get into me own house! Isn’t that a joke? But with the reno and everything, the house is all so fucking new and watertight. You’d have to break a window. Courtney made us get this big fucking front door, you know. Looks like fucking Alcatraz. You’ve seen it, Noddy?
At the far end of the bar, Noddy grunted confirmation, his mouth full of mashed potato.
No shit, Jungle said. It is like a door that you’d have in a police station, in an interrogation room or something. Heavy as hell. Big stainless-steel handle, not a door knob. One of those sleek lever things. And this guy comes. I’ve never seen him before in my life. In a minute he’s jimmied the fucker open. I mean, just imagine that.
Mind-blowing, Jungle, Jules said, smiling.
Seriously, picture it in your head, you’re a budding locksmith. Imagine the very first time you do that, out in the real world. Instructor is with you, and you proper open a locked door to someone’s house. You are suddenly standing in someone’s lounge room, looking at all their things. That has to do something to you. No shit, it would be like sorcery or something. It’s fucking Harry Potter, that kind of thing. Seriously, how many locksmiths do you reckon would turn criminal?
The men laughed. Jungle seemed to enjoy the moment.
You still talking? said Richard.
The power of it, Jungle continued. Any door. Not just house—shops too, even banks. Car doors. Imagine if there wasn’t a lock in the world you couldn’t crack.
That’s not possible, mate, someone said.
And not everyone is a cunt like you, Jungle, Richard grumbled.
Yeah, laughed Jules, placing Jungle’s pint in front of him. Remind me never to hire you as a locksmith.
Human nature, said Jungle. Everyone has their limit. Their price, you know, so to speak. I’m just saying, learning to unlock doors could be it for some people.
Jules laughed and made her way to the side of the bar where Arthur and his crew were sprawled, lounging over the bar and across the tables beneath the TAB televisions with all the casual menace of pack animals. There was a ripple through them as the woman drew closer. Elbows on the bar were replaced by hands as Roo Dog and Anvil and the others leant forward. Often, when he watched Jules and Kasia at work behind the bar, Paul thought of divers in a cage, the men like sharks in orbit. Some pressed hard up against the counter, others hung back in the gloomy corners of the bar, but they were all watching. Paul couldn’t understand why Jules would run such a place. Michael had told him that Jules had worked there for twenty years, since she was seventeen. Grew up in Stark, got a job in the family tavern and never left. You could see it in her face, too, as though she had been surrounded by ugliness too long, ugly talk and ugly looks, her beauty stalked and circled by men for two decades. But in that place, amid the ghoulish faces and unhinged laughter, she was almost angelic.
Kasia was something else completely. She’d become for him like a possession. It was likely the boredom of working a boat, but when he wasn’t thinking about Elliot and his parents, he was thinking of her.
So what brings you to Stark, Paul? Jungle said, turning back to him. If you don’t mind me saying, you stood out like an upturned turtle’s boner when you first showed up.
Jules smiled, back behind the taps nearest them.
Gee whiz, Jungle cried. Never seen a less likely fisherman. He hit Paul across the back hard enough to wind him. But I hear you’re doing alright.
I’m Jake’s cousin, Paul said.
You’re Elliot’s brother?
Yeah.
He was dating Tess, Jungle said. My niece. She’s a tough kid, Tess. Had her battles, too. Got caught up in that horrible crystal meth shit. Jungle considered Paul for a few seconds. You look like him, he said. You got that look he always had, like a train’s coming.
Jungle shuffled on his stool, and Paul could see the man turning something over in his head. So, what you think of this fishing business? Jungle said eventually.
Paul shrugged. It’s alright.
It’s not for everyone. You’ve got it in your blood or you don’t. My boy, Zach, he’s got it in his blood. I can see that. He’s only just hit twelve, but first thing in the morning he’s down the beach with one of my rods or his surfboard. After school he’ll surf till it’s dark, then he fishes all night from the jetty. Poor old Courtney is always trying to whistle him back to her. He turned to Jules and winked. He’s like a fucking fish.
Jules nodded. Like his old man, she said. More brains, hopefully.
More brains than a fish or more brains than his old man? Jungle said, setting himself up, mouth open with anticipation.
Not sure there’s a difference, Jules replied cooperatively.
Jungle whooped at the joke and slapped his thigh. Richard, slumped half asleep next to him, flinched with the commotion.
Jungle turned to Paul with a huge-eyed expression of consternation. But I’m serious, mate. Even when there’s a fucking storm going Zach will be running around in it all. Scares Courtney shitless. But there’s nothing I can do about it. Not a thing.
Paul laughed. The man seemed pleased. Paul wanted to say that Elliot was just the same, that Jungle might as well have been describing his brother when they were younger, the way he talked of Zach. There was always somewhere else he wanted to be, at the edge of a jetty or the end of a beach or a bush track. Outside, away from things. He wanted to tell Jungle how the city beaches bored and depressed Elliot unless there was a storm up, when the water shed its crowds and traffic. Paul wanted to tell Jungle all that. But the pain in the thought kept the words docked in his mouth.
You, though, Jungle said, you strike me more as your indoor recreation type. You know, on a computer. The man working an invisible joystick.
Gamer, Jules said.
Yeah, Jungle replied. That’s it.
Paul heard Noddy’s laughter down the bar. Jungle seemed annoyed by it. What I’m saying is, it’s dangerous work, all this. Even worse if you don’t care much for it. You be careful, son.
Paul saw the concern in the man’s red face. He didn’t know how to respond to it.
If you’re bored or scared, Jungle said, or just don’t want to be there, the boat will take care of that for you. If you want off, it will help you out. That’s what I’m saying. You have to have a reason to be out there, not to get lazy. You’ve got to have something to focus on. Me, it’s Courtney and Zach. It’s probably the same for everything. You’ve got to have a reason.
Jungle, Richard said angrily, sliding off his stool onto unsteady legs. What the fuck are you talking about?
Meaning of life and all that, Jungle replied.
Fuck’s sake, the old man muttered as he shuffled in the direction of the toilet.
Jungle beamed at Jules and took a triumphant scull of his beer.
Life after God
THE SCENT OF DEATH WAS SO FOUL, so choking, that he woke to the echo of his own yell in the bedroom. He had seen Elliot, naked in a shallow grave, uncovered, his body shrunken and bent like a spider’s corpse. Paul lay there in the wake of the dream waiting for Michael’s footsteps in the hall but the G
erman didn’t stir.
After a time of attempting to fall asleep he thought of praying, but he didn’t put his hands together. There was a danger in doing that, the risk of feeling nothing at all.
When Paul was younger he prayed. He prayed when the dark got to him at night. And it made him feel better. He didn’t need to keep his eyes on the cupboards in his bedroom or the window.
Some nights, Paul would instead pluck the figurine of Hulk Hogan, the wrestler, out of his box of toys and take him to bed. Just like when he prayed, clutching the figurine he knew he was not alone. The rubber Hulk, deeply tanned with knee-high red boots and white underpants, had his eyes open permanently. He could keep lookout. In a way, Paul was suspicious about that then, that God could be interchangeable with Hulk Hogan, that both gave him the same comfort. Even before he hit high school he’d figured that maybe God was just something to cling to when your nerves were rattled about something.
Elliot might have believed in God. It was hard to work out what Elliot thought about anything. His father never talked about God either, though he hadn’t ever missed a Sunday mass as far as Paul knew. A man just didn’t talk about his beliefs, Paul gathered, and no one asked him about them. You just turned up to church, crossed your name off the divine checklist, and went home.
And the whole religion thing bored Paul. It had bored him for years. But when he thought of Elliot dead, he found himself thinking about all that stuff again. When you grow out of Hulk Hogan, grow out of God, what else do you believe in?
Fever
JAKE DROVE ARCADIA HARD AT THE HORIZON. Paul could almost feel his cousin’s anger in the deck. With each drop of the bow over the wind swell he felt the jarring in his bones. For half an hour he braced his legs for each impact, every time holding his breath. He closed his eyes and saw the boat breaking apart, disintegrating, like one of those videos he had seen of a space shuttle burning up on re-entry.
