by Malcolm Knox
Sam give a full-on bark like he seen a cat. Mo looked down at him, me too. This was how we looked at each other: both look at the dog. But he was still asleep.
Den love?
She thought I couldn’t hear her but I could, it was just I had to get out there again while it was still offshore, combing nice grooves of corduroy. Sweet! Even if it was small there was rides to be had.
I left her at the milk bar, Sorry Mo they’re going begging.
Went home for some dry boardies. Ran.
I get out there again that day, had a blinder on the Surfoplane. It was still offshore, but the tide had dropped. Shapely
There’s four of them and they look like Zorro: black hats, black capes, black pencil moustaches, black masks over the eyes.
She’s asleep in her room, white nightie, curled up on her bed.
The four masked men whisper to each other, wave their swords, nod in her direction.
They got wicked snarls.
They close in round her. The end.
One of them, him.
Once you had the salt on your skin you liked to let it dry by itself in a crust. You don’t shower for days. The sea felt cleaner than fresh water. Most nights you went to bed salted like a hot chip. Your face crackled when it moved.
You controlled it so it wouldn’t break. Didn’t smile, didn’t react:
Dennis Keith as a kid.
Yeah . . .
Kept watching from the beach, from the classroom:
How waves had a peak and a shoulder.
How the peak was the sharpest take-off, the hardest place to stand up, but also gave the most speed across the next section and everyone had to get out of your way, off the wave.
How the shoulder was fatter and easier but someone else might get the wave first.
How the rips were good for paddling out.
How there were little ones that drew a bit of water give a better longer ride.
Can’t remember being a kook the first time round. Nobody can just pick it up and get on it and ride waves, it’s like anything, swimming say, someone throws you in a pool and watch you sink. You must of been a kook but it’s like you can’t remember how you learnt to walk.
Late fifties, early sixties. Gold Coast.
Someone would of laughed. At you.
Someone would of shouted. At you.
Someone would of waved a fist.
At you.
At him.
At me.
But I learnt and I forgot, I forgot and I learnt.
What you didn’t forget was how you want to keep the learners out of the water. They’re pollution. They create waste. You don’t want them. I didn’t want them. They waste Gawd’s gift, perfect waves. You can’t stand to see waste.
But you must of started as one of them.
Rod was braver than me, not keener but definitely braver. Was dying for a go on a real surfboard. He just needed to do stuff so bad, Rod. He follows Frank Garsky round.
Don’t know why Rod picked Little Big Shit, and when Frank come in, drug his whopping great redwood longboard behind in the sand, Rod tag along after him and go, ‘Ya gunna gimme a go today?’
And Frank walk along like he’s thinking about it and then after a long while goes:
‘Nup.’
And that was it, day after day after day. We nick off to the pinball parlour, Funland, where Mo hands out change, or we wanted to steer clear of her we go to the Lazy Jay and play the slot cars. We spent hours in them joints and was unbeatable. Then Rod get a whiff that Little Big Shit was coming in again and so it’s down to the beach and Rod:
‘Eh Frank, gunna gimme a go now?’
And Frank walking along again like he’s thinking about it and then after a long while:
‘Nup.’
And it was a bit of a joke on Rod but he get shirty if I bag him.
‘Least I’m having a crack, Den.’ He’d say it with a sneer. Like I expected everything to be served up on a platter.
Rod pinched hire foam boards from next to the surf club, big floaty Coolites, and thrashed his way out there. He was always bigger than me, whoever my dad was must of been a total weed cos I was narrow-chested and spindle-legged and slow-growing while Rod was big and robust like our Mo.
Also Rod was more trial and error. I had to understand something inside out before I had a go. I had to live and breathe it, think about it day and night, work it all out, head-surf a billion waves before I touch a board. Rod just went and had a go.
Maybe I never was a kook.
Rod was. He get caught in rips and washed out till the other surfers had to paddle him over to a safe little whitewater one and push him in on his chest. Or if it was bigger he get smashed by the shore break, have to come back in to fetch his board. He thrash about for a frothball wave, lurch halfway to his feet and fall off, lose his board again. Thrash, fall off, lose his board, fetch it, paddle back out. Thrash, fall off, lose his board, fetch it, paddle back out. I get knackered watching him.
All I was doing:
Watching.
Then one day completely out of the blue, Little Big Shit thought about it for a bit and went:
‘Yep.’
He told Rod he has to swim out on his own. Frank’ll paddle the board out the back then give it to him. So that’s what they did. I stood on the beach and watched Frank paddle out, Rod swim out, then Frank give Rod the big wooden board and stayed there talking to him in the water, and then Frank left him alone and bodysurfed in, and I was standing there watching when a good wave come and Rod just sitting there rooted to his board, didn’t know how to turn it round and start paddling. Besides there was another bloke already riding the wave. This bloke come down the face doing this big soul arch and Rod just squatting there in the impact zone and there was mayhem, Frank’s board popping up in the air like a penny bunger and the other surfer falling off and screaming blue murder at Rod, and the next thing I know Rod’s dumped Frank’s board, bodysurfing in on the next wave, the board’s washed in on another, the other surfer’s paddling back out, and Rod gets to the sand and doesn’t even stop to talk to me he’s just bolted in his trunks dripping wet up the hill and up the street to Shangrila, and Frank’s picked up his stick and he’s not cut up, he’s having a chuckle while he checks his wooden board for dings. And I’m standing there like a wombat and Little Big Shit looks at me like I’m gunna ask him for a go, that’s what Keith kids do, isn’t it, but no way, if Rod can’t do it I can’t either so I turn round and run up the hill back home after me brother.
•
But then one day, can’t have been too long after, Rod got hold of Frank’s board again and stood up on a whitewater wave and I mean, we had a lot of fun them days but the look in Rod’s eyes was different from anything I ever seen, he was a long way away, he had this look of breakfast with the angels, and I’ll never forget it that quiet stare of his and the half smile on his lips, he wasn’t even turning it on for me, he was someplace else, far far away . . .
. . . yeah . . .
And told me something I never forget.
Den, he goes, that is much more fun than it looks.
Yeah?
Yeah. And it looks like heaps of fun.
So I made up me mind. Buggered if I was gunna let him get away from me.
One thing I learnt, from watching:
It was all about how fast you paddled. Riding along the wave was the easy bit. Everything swung on how fast you were going when you stood up. The faster you were moving the easier it was to stand, the better position you were in to slide across the face. So it was all down to the one thing:
Paddle like there’s a shark at your feet.
Get fit so you can always paddle like there’s a shark at your feet.
Then the next wave, paddle again like there’s a shark at your feet.
When you can’t paddle no more like there’s a shark at your feet, come in, take a rest, you won’t catch good waves.
You just gotta be the fastest paddler in the water and the maddest:
What I learnt from watching.
. . . the dark, the light, does it in the dark, nobody watching, nobody listening.
The hour when the young die
nah when the young are found glassed in.
Washed up by words come 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.
Stick back in the bush, on the chopper, through the stink of frogs and mangroves, back over the causeway, back in—
And snap.
The bike. The chopper. Fork went, wheel bent. Only so many times it could take an eighteen-stoner.
Gone, done.
Kick it off the side of the road in the sandy scrub.
Kick sand over it.
Got it up, check it again: the fork, the wheel.
Sit on the seat.
Fork spread like legs doing the splits. Wheel like spag bol.
Pick it up, hurl it in the sandy scrub.
Get it up, check it again: the fork, the wheel.
Sat on the seat.
Over shoulder, spear throw, in the sandy scrub.
Walk home. Over causeway, in town, sky starting to bruise up purple, quick step in the village, in the unit, past her room, wash hands, in bed sticky and panting from the walk.
It’s still dark.
The radio turned off.
Swallowing hard.
On dry pride.
The chopper, my chopper.
Mo bought it for me.
We’re in for it now.
You remember the wave.
Rainbow, clean one-foot day, Sam on the beach, squat there arse thrown out to one side, tongue out, give himself a bad back.
You pinched a longboard from Trounson’s and gone out with Rod and caught that wave that day.
Little fat ones, offshore, high tide, you must of paddled but you can’t remember that, can’t remember getting up, what you remember is being up, up and away, look down all that green glass in front of you and can’t believe you were going, going, hang on! keep on going, yer flying, high in the sky and the wave rolled out in front like a magic carpet, this crease of darker green wrinkle up ahead, the nose of your swiped board glide and slide, glide and slide, your knees bending to stay with it, you going too fast getting ahead of the wave so you stand up tall again and slow down, and the wave catch up with you and the darker green creases out ahead again, on and on and on and on, and when it was done with you you threw a somersault off the board and cracked your head on the sandbank and stood up laughing like a loon arms in the air like you was Nat Young at Sunset, laughing so hard it broke your mouth, wooing and yooping and yeahing and Roddy’s out there smiling back at you and he’s so far across, not so far out, but across, which means you come that far across to get from there to here, which means you really caught that wave, you didn’t just skid down the front straight-handed, you come across, across, across . . .
You took flight. Bird on liquid air.
The way it just kept forming up ahead of you, giving itself to you, giving and giving and giving and you took what it give, and these ten seconds where what—
Everything, everything after that, every littlest thing, was up against . . .
•
Yeah! End of story.
And that was it, you wanted to go straight in and curl up round the glow and cuddle that wave in your hands till the end of time.
But soon as it was over you couldn’t remember nothing about it, it was gone.
So you had to go back.
You paddle to Rod, and by the time you got to him you were up to playing it cool and not saying too much and act like it wasn’t the first time or the last time or anything special, and so yeah, don’t say nothing . . .
Rod just grin out of the side of his head and:
. . . yeah . . .
And you:
. . . yeah . . .
It was Rod wised you up.
That same first day you stood up and flew on that wave.
It just come back.
It was that day.
We caught our last waves in on the boards we’d nicked and we’re sitting on the beach and I was giving Sam a pat. He belonged to me and Rod both. We had to share. I was thinking about that wave, that wave, that wave, that wave, try to bring it back and the more I tried the more it slid away.
Something’d happened to Rod. Bob the owner of the milk bar had short-changed him on a Sunnyboy, and Rod let Bob’s tyres down.
I’d gone round telling kids about it. Now when we was on the sand, after our waves, just mellowing, Rod was not mellowing, Roddy was mad at me.
What you been saying about me and Bob?
I shrugged me shoulders. I loved spreading Rod’s stories. He was much more of a daredevil than me. Made me feel more of a daredevil to tell his stories.
Just what happened.
Whatcha mean, what happened?
Rod was like a big buried chin pimple in that part when they’re turning from red to white. Bubbling up.
I told them ya let his tyres down, that’s all.
For short-changing me, Rod said, all aggressive.
I said, tough as nuts, Yeah that’s what ya got to do when they rape ya.
Rod give me a funny look and said, quiet:
Nobody raped me, Dennis.
He never called me Dennis. I got scared of him when he said Dennis.
But you said he short-changed ya.
He did. So why ya telling people he raped me?
I thought rape meant rip someone off.
Rod explained what rape meant.
He seen me on that wave. Why he was doing this.
Rod wanted to make sure I knew Bob hadn’t raped him. That was important to Rod. He had to explain what it meant so I’d know it hadn’t happened to him. So I would stop spreading it about that Bob had raped Rod. That meant a lot to Rod.
Once he explained I could see why it mattered to him.
. . . so yeah . . .
He didn’t take the piss out of me. It was too serious to take the piss. I was blushing so bad, even worse than getting kooked out in the waves, it was the worst feeling ever, I realised what a dope and a clot I made of meself.
And Den, he goes.
I watched me black stubbed big toe trace waves in the sand.
Mo aint yours, she’s mine.
I watched me black stubbed big toe trace waves in the sand.
Yours was some other bird. Had you and took off, you got dumped at Snapper.
I watched me black stubbed big toe tracing figure eights in the sand.
Just saying what happened, Den. Why ya ended up with me and Mo. Ya didn’t come from nowhere.
I watched me black stubbed big toe digging right through the sand.
Yeah nah I know I know, Roddy, I’m not some nong.
Yeah well don’t say I got raped, right? Okay? Just saying what happened eh.
Wiped out all the good feelin
gs from catching that wave
yeah why he done it
I picked up the log and headed straight back out. Had to catch more, every wave a new swipe with a big wet cloth on the blackboard.
But you can swipe that many times and the mark hasn’t went away.
No matter how many waves.
She’s walking home on her own from a friend’s house.
It’s late at night.
Little red riding hood.
Strange old lady stops her by the side of the road, ask the way. This old lady’s a bit of a witch, wild crazy white hair and a big collie dog she’s always taking for walks.
She doesn’t have the collie dog with her this night and little red riding hood feels sorry for her
weird old lady leads her off in the bushes up this dirt track to where she lives in a caravan. So rickety this van, if the dog peed on it it fall down.
The collie dog’s barking round the caravan, it’s the middle of the night.
The weird old lady invites her in for a cup of hot chocolate.
Bird feels sorry for her.
Inside is that young bloke lives with the old lady. Even weirder than she is. Bird knows him. He’s big and fat and slow as a wet week.
The door of the caravan shuts hard behind the bird. She hears the little old lady lock it.
Heart like a drum roll.
That big fat slow kid brings out some mates of his, over for a visit. Bird knows them.
They’re all in cahoots: the bad boys, the big fat slow weirdo, the crazy little old lady. One of the boys, him. Just not the fat one.
Never a kook. Been watching them waves so long I knew what to do first up. Had it sorted. Paddled like there was a school of great whites snapping at me toes. Paddle and commit.
Throw everything down that wave. You crash, you wipe out, it’s only water.
They mastered one wave, they went after another. First they got the little ones in Rainbow Bay, then the shoulder waves out at Greenmount. Then they went for Little Mali, suck-up inside Snapper. Then there was something else always something else.
