The Life

by Malcolm Knox

  You had a C-1.

  Got any more?

  Her voice up behind the van, almost made you jump out of your skin. Your blue skin.

  She put her arms round you, not another word. You were froze solid. It was like she been waiting your whole life to come up here and give you what you needed but she had to wait and wait and wait till you needed it most.

  The warm of her heart, the warm of her arms.

  She thawed you out all by herself.

  After she had one, she lay back and blew out and said:

  Man, you’re still grey. You need more cuddles.

  She pushed Basil out the van. Hate at first sight. Like she was jealous of him. Normally when someone didn’t like Basil, you catch up to them in the surf and kick your board at them. You didn’t tolerate ones who were mean to your beagle. Cept her.

  He give a snarl and a yelp and pissed off to look for Rod. Reckon it was then that Bas started seeing you as a fair-weather friend.

  Lisa. She altered your state.

  First time you seen her since that morning back at Greenmount. Turned out Lisa’s band been booked as bar entertainment up at Torquay. She hadn’t known you were in the conness, she just wandered down, see what’s going on. Her swaggering chunky gym rat’s walk and hair feathercut over ears and neck, like a duckling, brown and gold.

  Her walk: the thing about her. When she walked she rocked from side to side . . .

  I saw your heat, she said. You were insane, man. And that stunt mooning the judges—so totally rad, man!

  Come last. And I didn’t moo—

  Ar fuck that, she said. You were miles ahead. All those other guys, smooth as silk but lazy, you know? They just cruise down those waves like they’re doing a ballroom waltz. But you, man, you were like jazz, you were rock and roll, you were, I dunno, you were just doing so many things, so much, you looked like you were fucken epileptic or something, you know?

  Come last.

  In whose eyes? Just some bunch of old has-beens? Don’t worry, man, you’re ahead of your time. You were so far ahead of your time nobody knew what to make of you. You made them all look like they were on Valium, man, and you were on, like, whiz. You were so much better, you had so much more power, like you were, I dunno, taking the mickey out of all of them, they were doing some kind of Hawaiian aloha Elvis thing and you were doing Deep Purple, so rad when you mooned them . . .

  You wanted her to hear you—Come last, didn’t moon no-one—but she was laughing, all arse, like she knew better than the judges and you knew better and yous both knew better and yous were looking back on this day from years ahead, when you was world champion and she’s still your bird and yous can look back on when the sport still hadn’t caught up with you, and she was that confident, that super-sure you were ahead of your time, and . . .

  . . . yeah . . .

  Butting in:

  You spoiling the moment:

  If you don’t come back to Coolie with me then we’re done.

  Lisa stopped laughing at the judges, stopped looking back on this day from twenty years on, and looked at you.

  You didn’t look back.

  Yous were lying side by side in the back of Gary Trounson’s shaggin wagon.

  You didn’t know where you’d left the aviators.

  You got up and went through your gear. Stubbed your toe on the wheel well.

  There they were, on the dashboard.

  You come back and sat with Lisa on the tailgate and pushed the aviators up your nose. There. Rubbed your toe. Black and blue your whole life.

  I live in Coolie, she goes.

  Soft. With that gentleness she had when you were inside her face and she was inside yours.

  You thought she’s pulling your leg. Always pulling your leg, this girl. You grunted and packed another billy.

  It’s true, she said. Still tender. I didn’t want you to know it cos I wasn’t sure how deep I wanted to get in this.

  You pass her the bong. Stop her talking.

  She put her hand on your knee.

  Dry land just doesn’t suit you, eh Dennis Keith? You should have a sign on you.

  What sign?

  She had this dimple, just one, in her right cheek. Like her grin was reaching out for you.

  Just add water.

  Easter Monday 1969. Rod and Basil let the two of yous drive back to Coolie alone.

  Her and you. She took the wheel in both hands and left her band behind.

  Rod stayed at Bells. He’d made some new friends. Bas stayed with him, keep an eye on him.

  Nat won.

  Lisa come and moved in with you at Shaga. Only another letter’d fallen off. Now it was: Saga.

  You won.

  The BFO scopes me coming out the bathroom. Why’s she still here? What’s Mo telling her?

  ‘What you done to your eye?’

  I’m standing in the hallway of this retirement unit and I’ve left my aviators in the bedroom.

  Clap me hand over the eye.

  The BFO isn’t surprised I’ve locked myself away from her for three days. Not annoyed about the time of hers I’m wasting.

  I don’t trust Mo.

  Why’s this one still here?

  I go: ‘Walked into a door.’

  Shuffle back to my room to listen to the radio. Turn it up.

  Her sniffy laughter behind me, like we’re in someone else’s joke together.

  The all-time winter: 1969. You get warmed up on that number. Five big swells end on end, right-handers breaking Snapper to Kirra. Waves so long blokes would jump off cos their legs got tired or they got bored.

  You never jumped off. Your legs never got tired or bored. Never let a one go to waste.

  Longboarders let the best part of the wave go to waste. Criminal. Take off when it was big and fat, cruise through, but when it hit the sandbank and started to wall up and barrel they kicked off, boards flying into the air on the offshore, and . . .

  . . . criminal.

  For you the wave didn’t really get started till it hit the sand and got real fast and the longboarders bailed out, you tucked yourself into a ball and drilled into the pit down and through till the barrel spat you out the other side. Crowds on the beach and point cheer and whoop.

  Surfers sit on the beach till their heart rate come back down and they can feel their arms again. When it was big like this they couldn’t get back out.

  You were the only one. Your stamina. You sucked up the white pain of that paddle.

  This was the summer you made your name: the cult hero DK.

  In the barrel.

  Where none of them could see you.

  That year you became DK, you became he.

  DK stories in Tracks, in Surfer, in Surfing. Pictures, loads of pictures. Couldn’t take your eyes off DK. And films they made: DK’s trademark hand chops, like whipping a horse. You didn’t know that. Best waves of your life, on film. You become a flick buff as long as you were in it. And then they tell stories, in the flicks, the pics, the mags. How everyone knew Basil, like you were partners in crime. Just when Bas had give up on you and signed up with Rod. But when you read about you and Bas in the magazines, you believed it and had a big bust-up with Rod when you couldn’t ever find Bas.

  You took up reading. How Tink and FJ said they idolised you more than Nat or Midget. You didn’t know that. How DK’s brain worked so fast that even when he was ripping down the line on an eight-foot right-hander, his arms chopped round like he was impatient, waiting for the wave to catch up with his brain, and when it did he pull one of these massive cutbacks to give something back to the wave, let it catch him, then turn away and rip off down the line. Tricks like this on waves nobody else could catch.

  The cutback defined: when th
e surfer’s brain works too fast, his body works too fast, he’s outrun the wave, outsurfed the wave, defeated the wave, so what does he do? He jams down his back foot, turns his board, and goes back to the wave to let it have him again.

  Generous. Give something back to the wave. A big bucket of spray fired out of your tail block, like your board was a spraycan and you were the graffiti artist painting your tag on them shiny green walls—

  And that surfer, the original cutback surfer, was DK.

  You.

  Him.

  You never thought of it in so many words.

  DK, DK, DK . . .

  They never dropped in on DK no more. They hardly even caught waves. They paddle up on the shoulder and look deep in the barrel and listen for the Scream in Blue.

  DK, DK, DK . . .

  Had them spooked. He drove up to Burleigh with his mates and paddled in his first wave and disappeared in a ten-second barrel. The Burleigh boys’ chins hit their chests.

  Who was he?

  He was DK eh.

  Ar so that’s DK eh.

  They admired him. They wanted to know him. They welcomed him to their break.

  But when the Burleigh boys come down to Kirra, in their flash Holden Toranas and Ford Fairlanes and VW Passats, you and Rod sit out the back and hassled them till they left.

  Don’t yous remember us? the Burleigh boys said.

  You and Rod looked at each other and then back at this pack of Burleigh drongos.

  Piss off, this is our wave eh.

  Had to make sure nothing got wasted.

  Had to be some order in the world, some rules, some respect.

  Nineteen sixty-nine, Summer of Love, Pet Sounds, Sergeant Pepper’s, Woodstock, Altamont. A man walked on the moon and Hawaii had its all-time biggest swells and Keiths Surf Boards opened up in the mini-mall on Marine Parade. Had to be some connection.

  Prime possie. Gary Trounson passed his lease to you, paid out six months. The blokes you done shaping for like Chook Draper and Joe Larkin give you stock on consignment. You were set up. Nineteen years old and a self-made businessman. Bought a rack of Anthony Squires suits. Put some kids on the payroll to glass and sand your boards and stand in the shop and rake in the coin.

  Spent a bit of time in the shop yourself: the main attraction. You were doing fashion as well: tie-string canvas boardshorts, Jesus sandals, psychedelic Indian shirts, puka shell necklaces. You were raking it, raking it, raking it in. An article said you were gunna be surfing’s first millionaire.

  You took up reading:

  DK’s thousand-yard stare.

  When DK enters the water, it’s like Moses parting the Red Sea.

  DK doesn’t need to talk. Fifteen-second barrels speak for themselves.

  You’d like to meet this DK. You’d like to see him carve. You’d like to drop in on him, scare him out the water, take him on. He sounded like he was getting big for his ugg boots.

  All this and since Bells you hadn’t been in a single conness. Bugger them.

  Lisa was living in the Queenslander with you now and behind you all the way. She and Bas snarled at each other. She whispered over the pillow how Mo was jealous of her.

  Lisa’s dimple never lied.

  Rod done his leg that year. Riding cyclone waves wrapping round Point Danger into D-Bah, big sucky one threw him down against the breakwall. Said he felt like he been punched in the leg, nothing worse. Swam to get on his board and felt something hit him on the back of his head.

  And I looked round to see what hit me, and it was me own foot!

  Then he passed out. Lucky someone—not you—found him floating and drug him in, took him to hospital. Busted femur bone. Busted in two.

  The pain changed Rod. Spent the whole season in his room with his leg in a cast. Stewing about all them waves he wasn’t catching.

  Mo come in every morning, tidy up his room, make casual remarks about how Dennis was carving that day on clean offshore eight-footers behind the lava rock.

  He’s gunna be world champion Rodney, just you wait.

  That was one thing Rod, lying on his bed in his cast, could do:

  Wait.

  Felt a lot of pain and needed to press it down.

  If there was a lull and you knew you wouldn’t be surfing at dawn, you and Lisa sat up all night. She done most of the talking. When she talked about music, the way songs had a natural fall line, a rhythm of pits and rises, you saw waves. She could play slack-key Hawaiian guitar, which you really liked. She bit the guitar neck while she played a song so the music flows straight into her soul. When she played slack key, she took you in the posters on your wall, Sunset and Pipe and Waimea.

  Mo pop her face in the door and cop a look and shoot one at you:

  Bird knows what she’s doing all right. Gotcha ya dill.

  Mo and Lisa, at each other guerilla-style, Viet Cong in Saga.

  Lisa started to write songs based on ‘the similarity between music and waves’, music with pits and barrels and shoulders and ramps, and when she played them you could see what she meant, you could see waves with your ears. That might of been the only way she could get through to you but get through she did.

  Music’s so much like surfing, she said.

  Yeah right, you said. Once you’ve done it it’s gone.

  She looked at you funny and thought for a minute, then said:

  But the big trick is to find out how to hold that last note.

  And she looked at you a long time, so long that eventually you had to look back at her, and that was the last note, she was saying, that was the last note and you have to hold it or else nothing ever means nothing.

  You and Lisa had heaps in common but one thing above all: yous dug competing and yous liked to win. Her and you could turn brushing your teeth, getting dressed, sweeping the house, into a fricken race. Made life interesting. In the evenings yous played chess, checkers, backgammon, Monopoly, Mastermind, cards. Totem Tennis. She was the only person you ever met who liked winning as much as you did. Even more than Roddy. But it never got heated between her and you. Yous had mutual respect. That was another great thing about her: she loved winning but she didn’t take losing personal. Grown-up about it. If she lost a game, she just flick her hair out of her eyes and flash that dimple and go, Best of three?

  Sometimes yous bet money, fifty or a hundred bucks on a game of poker. Sometimes yous bet favours: make dinner, give massage, do shopping, mow lawn. Once yous bet the job of picking the fleas off Basil over a game of Twister, but you had no hope, Lisa had a fire in her eyes that would never be beat on that one.

  If she surfed, Lisa would of been pretty much the perfect chick.

  Or not—if she surfed, she probably would of snaked waves off you and you’d of had to kick your board at her head or something.

  But she knew how to watch surfing. She become knowledgeable about anything real quick.

  Lisa said you were light years ahead, you proved it at Bells, you just had to take a holiday till the professional world caught up with you.

  Mo said you won Bells really, they cheated you out of it, and you should be surfing every conness.

  Lisa and Mo were always nice to each other to their face, except when it come to your surfing.

  Mo thought you should be winning all the comps.

  Lisa thought you should tell the comps to get stuffed.

  Mo saw you as world champion.

  Lisa saw you as a cult hero and an artist.

  All you saw was DK.

  Lisa talked about Rolf Aurness. Everyone knew about Rolf Aurness: won the title at Bells, collected his trophy, said, Far out!, then walked out, went bush, never competed again. Total outsider. That was supreme, in Lisa’s eyes.

  Mo said you were sulking cos you’
d lost.

  Lisa said you were doing things nobody understood yet, you were avant-garde.

  Mo didn’t speak French. Mo get up and left the table.

  Mo didn’t dig you shacked up with this singer in your room smoking dope all night. Mo didn’t dig another bird in the house. She was happy with all the rubbish Rod dragged in, but she didn’t want another bird in the house. She was happy with the cockroaches everywhere, and when she saw Lisa turning up her nose at the ants in the kitchen between the skirting board and the cereal cupboard, it was like Mo took the ants’ side. She rather have them in the house than have Lisa.

  That’s what Lisa told you anyway. Lisa said how when she tried to throw something out, old food or whatnot, Mo got it back out of the bin and put it in the fridge, right in front of her. No arguing, it just happened. Lisa said Mo wouldn’t even let her throw out Glad Wrap—had to be used again till it wore out. And Lisa couldn’t figure out why Mo always pulled the appliances’ plugs out of the walls when they weren’t on. Save electricity, you said. Lisa laughed. But you were used to Mo’s ways, Lisa wasn’t.

  Lisa didn’t get hardscrabble.

  Mo hated that Lisa didn’t get it.

  You loved it.

  Ladies eh.

  When the BFO has went and I come out me bedroom, the diagonals in the retirement unit are giving me ants in the pants so Mo agrees to drive me down the milk bar. I can’t go in: me eye. So I sit in the Sandman panel van sprayed purple and orange while she gets me pine-lime Splice and orange Tarax from Bob.

  We drive back. I keep my lips apart while we cross driveways and cross streets which is hard when you’re trying to eat an ice block and drink a can of drink.

  Out the side of her mouth Mo goes:

  ‘Not a bad bird that one eh.’

  ‘What, ya reckon I should go out with her?’

  I push the aviators up my nose (still there).

  She never said that about any girlfriend. Never said that about Lisa.

  Mo gave a grunt. She battled on well, Mo, everything considered.

  ‘Talked to her about your brother today.’

  Brother/Sister/Mother/Daughter/Slaughter, I think. But don’t say nothing.