The Life

by Malcolm Knox

  Mo said I grew in the water, I was a mermaid man. When I got cut or hurt I always healed quick. Mo said it was cos I was the son of a starfish. Sea Monkey. Just add water.

  Swim classes in the ocean baths at Snapper Rocks, the porpoise pool out on the end of Rainbow Bay. Sharky Jack Evans aka The Man of the Sea kept his dolphins there, you can swim with them and everything till the council made The Man of the Sea move the whole show to his Jack Evans Porpoise Pool and Sharkatarium over the hill behind D-Bah. Me and Rod swim in them pools, mucked about on the inner tubes and chuck huge bombs throwing ourself off the rock ledge in the deep end one knee tucked up under the chin and the other stuck straight out. Made tidal waves, scared hell out of the swimming lessons. Then we go to that suicide hole in the lava rocks on the edge of the pool, hurl ourself in when a swell was coming, duck in behind the rocks it poured over us like a waterfall. You weren’t nobody till you done the suicide hole.

  I never needed to learn to swim. Mo said I already could. Was born with it. Don’t need teaching, she said to Mr Turnip, just throw him in and let him go. Pure natural genius.

  Can’t say I took to the discipline of being a junior clubbie but. You get loads of privileges being a junior clubbie. Like the privilege of going to the shops buy ice creams for the older blokes, or the privilege of digging a huge deep hole in the sand for them while they lower the level on their keg of a Sunday afternoon, then let yourself get pushed in while they rained beer, wee and chunder on you for their amusement. That was how they initiated you and if you really really wanted to be a clubbie you put up with your privileges

  yeah nah them clubbies

  me and Rod didn’t. Me and Rod didn’t go much for the clubbies or their rules full stop. They took themself and their patrol duties too serious. We couldn’t get that worked up about it. When we were on patrol me and Rod chuck jellyfish at the girls to scare them and yell out SHARK when they’re doing their wading. Only I wasn’t that scary because I’d get all spun out in my pokie machine head and call out BARK or LARK or DARK or MARK and nobody paid any attention or got scared at all, so Roddy generally took over the yelling part of it until Mo caught him and then so she bundled him back off to the hospital for a few hours hard labour.

  Neither of me or Rod got into the flags and the sprints or for that matter any of the sandplay. What we dug was staring out past the mob of Nippers to the point, Snapper Rocks, where men on their big long logs were slicing up the lines of water breaking across the bay.

  Must of watched them waves for years before I rode them. Must of sat in the classroom fly-catching driving poor old Mr Turnip mad with my inattention, just watching them, watching them, for years before I rode them.

  Second love. After The House:

  How the lines formed up outside the bay and marched in like an army. I counted numbers. How sets come in threes, three waves per set, three sets per sequence, three swells a month, like there was some god or lord out there, some gawd, who could only count up to the magic number, three. Third wave in a set was always the biggest. And the third wave in the third set—the ninth wave—biggest of the lot. I work this out from my classroom window. You can’t knock a good education eh.

  Offshore wind was good, onshore not so good. Offshore combed the lines up like ripples of ladies’ hair in one of them setting eggs they have. When they got big they stand up and feather and keep standing up right till they met the sandbank, then the wind keep holding them up so they broke from the inside and just kept peeling, walling up out to the shoulder

  yeah

  how do you know that Den?

  Just do eh

  onshore wind made them crumble all over the shop, and plenty of days back then it was the least bit onshore there be nobody out, not a sausage.

  Late fifties they were lucky bastards, choosy and all.

  And but see there’s just something about the shape of a beach: the green headland, the black rocks, the yellow sand, the sea which is blue or grey or green or even red and every shade in between, and the foam which is white, and the way they’re all just set up like that, like it’s this perfect arrangement of nature.

  What I mean is, everything you can ever want is there in that setup of green bush, black rock, yellow sand, blue water and white foam. I get mad with happy stomach butterflies thinking about it.

  I could see how the take-off near the rocks was the tricky part of the wave and none of them log riders dare paddle where it stood up vertical right behind the black granite. Instead they sit out wide, on the shoulder, where the take-off was more level, wait till the peak of the wave had already broken and then paddle into it, their legs cycling round in the air like they were riding invisible bikes, and then they’re up, crabbing up and down the board, drawing their lines up the face, down the face, up the face, down the face, slow and easy, always pointing the nose out at the fat shoulder of the wave, up the coast to Kirra.

  We knew these men the local butchers, plumbers, chippies, teachers, police, shopkeepers. Don Conn was one. Kevin Levin. Ted Thurle, whose missus was Merle. Sometimes their boys surfed too but they were also working men, apprentice butchers and whatnot. There was no surfie bum culture back then, the late fifties early sixties on the Goldie, not that I was aware of anyway. These were the working men of our town and this was what they done on their mornings, their afternoons, their weekends, whenever it was glassy or offshore, this was the priority, get out there and go dancing with them waves.

  So many went to waste too. Waves.

  Drove me mad.

  Me and Rod weren’t no good as clubbies. Had to wear dick-stickers and clubbie caps. With our long hair we looked like nongs. We had the longest hair in the school, which was beaut there it showed the teachers couldn’t rule us, but once we was wearing them little lifesaver string caps, the hair halfway down our backs just looked stupid.

  Tourists come to drown at Greenmount and I’d of let them. If they get in trouble and I had to swim out to them I wouldn’t wait for a lull between sets to bring them in, like the clubbies did. I swim them into the gnarliest section so we both get belted on the sandbank.

  No point saving them without teaching them a lesson too. Scare the hair off them so they won’t go in the water no more, ever. Prevention’s better than cure eh.

  Me and Roddy had to do one patrol a month. We were so useless they picked out small days for us, no rips, no dangers. On big days when there was any threat of a tourist getting washed out they put us on suntan oil duty. Ladies shell five shillings to be sprayed with suntan oil. Rod sell the suntan oil for profit and fill them cans with cooking oil he pinched from hospital. Not that they knew.

  Least I hoped it was cooking oil.

  Only reason to put up with the patrol was you got a hot shower and a locker in the clubhouse. Sell your soul for a hot shower and a locker. So you more or less set up camp there all summer. Me and Rod grew scales. Lived there

  on the sand in the water on the sand in the water.

  When we didn’t want to do patrol Rod come up with this third guy, ‘Sam Johnson’. We put down his name to do our patrol for us. For a few weeks them dumb clubbies really thought Sam Johnson was watching the tourists while me and Rod went walkabout. They never figured out Sam Johnson was our ruddy beagle.

  Rod made up the Johnson bit. Sam didn’t really have a middle name.

  You was allowed dogs on the beach them days. Sam hung out with us, first beagle in the world trained so he wouldn’t run away. Sat there with a big smile and tongue hanging out and as long as we give him water and ice cream he wouldn’t go for people’s fish and chips.

  I won all the swimming races even though I was such a weed. Something about water smoothed me out. Clumsy bugger on land, fish out of water, gasping for air.

  In the water I was genius, pure genius.

  •

  Bloke called Gary Trouns
on had a surfboard hire stall on the beach just down from the club. Sixpence an hour on a Surfoplane, ninepence on a polystyrene Coolite funboard, shilling on a nine-six logger. Swell get up, me and Rod go missing from patrol cos we’ve nicked a couple of Surfoplanes to throw about in the shore break. They were white and slippery, cheap as buggery. Surfoplanes were surfmats: no fins to steer, just rubber handles to hang onto while you fly down a wave.

  The other thing they were good for was, Gary let local companies paint their names on the Surfoplanes for adverts. So when they were propped up on the hire racks the Surfoplanes also told you useful information like

  COME NAKED TO COOLANGATTA, BILL STAFFORD WILL DRESS YOU

  or

  ROTHWELLS COOLANGATTA FOR YOUR BEACH WEAR.

  Big money in adverts, big coin.

  Soon Gary Trounson had us working for him. Drag the loggers down from his shop to the stall, take the Coolites, take the surf skis, take the Surfoplanes and blow them up with the air pumps, then chalk numbers on them so he can keep track.

  We put up a sign saying ‘Back in Ten Minutes’. Served us well that sign. We stick it up and pinched boards and went out in the water, or up the milk bar to scrounge some leftover stale meat pies kept past their use-by date. One afternoon we ate ten stale meat pies each. Gary knew we were nicking off on the job but at least he got something out of us, more than anyone else did.

  Kid gremlins running odd jobs for Gary Trounson: last time we ever worked for another man.

  There was special zones on the beach. Us kids were at the Greenmount end with the beach hire and the showers; in the middle was where the clubbies hung, the best part of the beach for swimming where the kiosk was; and then up the Snapper Rocks end was where the surfers hung, in round the park where there was sometimes magic acts and circuses and music bands and these guys knee-paddle out on their huge boards when the swells come. They were miles out of our league. Frank Garsky, who everyone called ‘Little Big Shit’ cos he had a big brother Dick who was called ‘Big Shit’, was the only one ever talk to us.

  In behind the beach was a line of stick parlours and milk bars and we could hang there long as we didn’t go on the machines or tables the surfers or clubbies were playing on. We were just ants to them, little roaches they stomp under their feet if we weren’t quick.

  There were zones up on the main road too and you had to know where to go and where to avoid. There were surfies joints, there were grommets joints, there were bikies joints and there were rockers joints. During the day everyone keep their distance. But at night, different story. Me and Rod wander down there and eat Sherbies and Choo-Choo Bars and musk sticks and sit in the rocks while all the older guys went in the places where they got plastered.

  Problem was, they all had their separate drinking places but there was only one place to dance, called Danceland. About ten pm they’d had enough to drink and all roads led to Danceland. About ten thirty the fights start. Me and Rod watched these battles rage up and down Marine Parade: surfies v clubbies, clubbies v rockers, rockers v bikies, bikies v blackfellas, blackfellas v Brisos, you name it there was a brawl for every taste. Me and Rod lapped it all up from the safety of the lifeguard tower. More they fought, the less blokes there be in the waves the next morning.

  At patrol, Keith boys as useful as ashtrays on a longboard. We go walkabout at any excuse, take out a Surfoplane and mow down the swimmers.

  Surfoplanes could only go straight but and I wanted to cut across like them boardriders out on the point. I figure out if I wore flippers I could get some steerage. One day in a cyclone swell Rod sees me cutting across, side-slipping and then cutting back up the wave face. He couldn’t believe it. But there’s no mileage in being a pioneer. Before I knew it Rod and other kids were strapping on flippers too and cutting across and getting deeper than me and stealing my waves, even getting up on their knees.

  No mileage in being too far ahead of your time.

  . . . yeah . . .

  . . . the dark, the light, does it in the dark, nobody watching, nobody listening—

  Washed up by words in waves, three am, legs over bed, plant the feet, past Mo’s room, through the diagonal security grille, down the steps (don’t grab them rails), in the garage, past the old people’s cars, on the chopper, out the toy roundabouts, over the causeway, out The Other Side, stick in the bush, on the black water . . .

  He has mastered it.

  He can sit up on his stick.

  Without falling off.

  Bit of a wobble but he can paddle in a circle and sit up and wait.

  In his head he sees a wall of green . . .

  Has to think about the sea.

  Can’t go on the sea in the dark:

  Can’t see the waves, can’t see the sharks.

  No point.

  What now?

  Hungry.

  Stick back in the bush, on the chopper, through the stink of frogs and mangroves, back over the causeway, back in town, back through the toy roundabouts, camellias and azaleas, back in the garage, up the steps, don’t grab the rails, in the diagonal security grille, past Mo’s room, back in bed.

  It’s still dark.

  The radio off.

  She’s turned the radio off.

  Here, do it again:

  Like all the truths it started with a big fat lie:

  Way before death and rumour, bad times way before the bad name:

  She never kept it a secret.

  It come out her mouth.

  Autumn Saturday, 1961.

  Dennis, she said, tremble on her lips turning my name into a whole sentence. Something you need to know. Yer mother, father, all that.

  There was a Joseph and his name was Joe, and I had a brother, and Joe was the one Rod knew as Dad, but he wasn’t Dad. Got it?

  Dennis, she said.

  I was eleven. Saturday, 1961. Late cyclone season. She held both me hands so I wouldn’t float away on the offshore. We’re in Point Danger coffee shop. Wooden tables. Birdshit on the wooden seats. The dog, Sam the beagle, asleep at Mo’s feet. You were crazy for that beagle. Loyal, up for anything. No questions asked. Lived in the moment just like you. Sam was loose and old and covered in moles. While he slept he yelped and twitched and carried on like he was out hunting.

  In the graveyard for sea urchins to save.

  I’m looking over Mo’s shoulder: offshore, small, standing up nice on the outside bank. Funny how that outside bank only works when the swell’s got some east in it.

  . . . yeah . . .

  Dennis . . .

  Tears in her eyes. Mine on the waves. Only a few out. I should of been there on a swiped Surfoplane, only I been out already and come in less than an hour before. Was hosing down my brand new royal blue with yellow competition stripes nylon boardshorts, birthday present from Mo, when she drug me off to Point Danger, neutral territory. Nobody ever heard of nylon boardshorts before and mine were the ducks nuts, the pride of the coast. Never knew where she got them and there was only one pair, nothing for Rod, sorry, but it wasn’t his birthday anyway so why was he so cheesed off.

  Must of been a special occasion cos we never went to the coffee shop. She got me three chocky milks. I had the cartons all lined up edge to edge, paper straw in each. She had an instant coffee. Stirring in sugar.

  She didn’t know where to look.

  I did. Was thinking who are them bastards on the outside bank and why was it still offshore, it was meant to be onshore by now and mushing up the little ones. One them bastards trim along a nice right on his Mal, what a waste of a perfect little wave, what a waste to be trimmed off by some kook Mal rider instead of smashed to pieces by a real surfer, smash them lips, carve it to pieces, The Butcher they’ll be calling me soon I slice them up, slice and dice . . .

  Wasn’t all-time or nothing b
ut me teeth were grinding to watch them Mal riders

  yeah nah even back then it was the waste I couldn’t stand it, the waste. One wasted wave was a crime against nature.

  I knew where to look.

  But . . . yeah . . .

  How she started the conversation. Like that. Over the instant coffee. Over the three chocky milks. Me legs still wet from the hose-down. The coconut smell of Gary Trounson’s board wax in me nostrils. They say surfers are always either wet or about to be wet. DK was both.

  I nodded sort of shrugging like I knew it all and she didn’t have to treat me like a baby, a know-nothing. I was genius. I knew it all.

  Her instant coffee going cold.

  Me chocky milks going warm.

  I heard her breath as she sucked it in like she’s about to duck dive a big frothing monster. Deep breath Mo, that’s right, and down you go, dive, dive, dive, then kick down on your tail and up, up, up to the light.

  That’s how you duck dive a big one, Mo. Go on love, commit . . .

  I held her breath for her.

  She chose that day to tell me.

  Okay sure good, I said. Eyes over her shoulder. Them kooks. Them legions of the unjazzed they call them . . .

  The ruddy waste . . .

  She brought me there to get my attention but she should of known the coffee shop overlooked the D-Bah beachie.

  Bastards: two of them take off together, same wave, spoiling it. Someone should nut them both. Has to be some law and order in this world.

  Even at eleven that’s how I thought and I couldn’t even surf yet.

  Den love? Yunderstand what I’m saying?

  Her instant coffee, even the milk was from powder, never got as cold as my chocky milks at their warmest. Funny how that goes.

  I sucked them up, make a big gurgle brought looks from the other ones in the coffee shop who must of thought I was embarrassing my poor old lady so bad I brought her to tears.

  Den?

  Mo’s eyes wet. I could see what the other ones were thinking: He’s only gurgled his milk love, it’s not the end of the world love . . .