by Malcolm Knox
‘She wants to know if ya’d talk to her about him.’
‘Yeah and what’d ya say?’
A papery creasing round Mo’s jaw.
‘I said: He’d say yeah . . . but no.’
Wipe my mouth. Orange Tarax in the ends of my moustache bristles. Don’t want to talk to her about Rod. Not her and not her neither.
Lisa can’t surf but she done everything else with you. Get up at dawn and drive you round the breaks, surf check. Driving more efficient than walking, she said. Sure was, for Rod anyway, sitting in the back with his gammy leg going through the motions.
Not that it made him like her. Rod was different that year, after the leg: quiet.
Lisa was all about improving your efficiency. She’d have you eating your muesli in the car as you drove round. Lisa rolled the doobs and smoked them with you. Lisa helped you plane yourself down into the machine you became.
Like his mother Rod didn’t go much on Lisa. But her driving him round and feeding him and rolling his doobs too, what could he say.
What could he do eh.
Basil just give her the cold shoulder.
You smoked a bit of grass them days and people said you was a dealer. Exaggeration comes natural to some. You didn’t really deal, you shared and sometimes give it away as contra. But you weren’t like a dealer.
Sometimes you’d need to throw people off the scent. A group of well-known surfers come up from Sydney, scoped you out and invited you over to their bonfire on Point Danger looking down on D-Bah. All excited to be meeting you. One of them pushed a big fat doob in your direction. Like you DK was this legend smoker.
You give him a look so cold it made his balls shrivel.
I don’t do drugs, you said. And I don’t have anything to do with ones who do eh.
Then you walked off.
Good way to get them to quiet down their party.
•
You and Lisa and Rod and Mo and Basil turned up at the screening of this flick when it come to Coolie. On a big outdoor screen. Breeze puffing out the screen like it was a sailing boat. Night-time. Lisa holding your hand. She done some of the music. Apparently.
They were everywhere, the people, in the big football field where the screen been set up. Once they saw you there was a bit of a mob-type effect. DK, DK, DK . . . And they hadn’t even seen the flick yet.
Which was all about you.
Everyone there, grommets, plumbers, butchers, teachers, priests, coppers, mums, dads, that type of thing.
Milling round.
Closing in.
Gotta go, you said to Mo.
Lisa looked at you with horror movies streaked across her face. Her big round beautiful face a screen for horror and terror.
Come on Den. She took your hand.
You’d given Mo your other.
Two of them, one hand each.
What was Rod gunna grab onto, your bean?
Rod disappeared into the crowd with Bas. Bugger you, he was going to enjoy being DK’s brother, celebrity enough for what Rod wanted out of it.
But you, you were on a cross like the J-man: one hand nailed by Mo, the other by Lisa. They better not start pulling.
You’ll enjoy it, Lisa said.
Mo said nothing.
Relax, man, Lisa said.
Mo said nothing.
People everywhere, you’re pepper in a mill.
Screen bursting like a sailing boat sail.
Gotta go.
Mo drove you home. You went down the shaping bay and lit a doob and got back to work.
Lisa stayed at the flick. Apparently it was a knockout. She took a bow at the end, for her music, apparently.
Next morning she was up with you and giving you maximum efficiency.
•
You heard later, Rod stayed at the movie cos he brought a big petrol tin full of moths.
Yeah—moths.
And after this big Bells scene with DK in it, Rod took the lid off his tin and released the moths so they all fly at the projector.
The screen filled up with giant moth shadows.
They had to call the movie off for fifteen minutes. Too many surfing moths dropping in on the waves.
Last scene before the moth storm was the one with DK.
Before she moved in, Lisa lived with her parents, the Mr and Mrs Exmire. DK only met them once. They lived in a brick house other side of Coolie, up closer to Burleigh. Nice spot on a hill with a view and a looked-after garden.
So, Dennis, you like, er, surfing? said the Mr Exmire. He was bald. Some kind of businessman. Or publican, public servant. That sort of thing.
So, Dennis, you have a business selling—surfboards? said the Mrs Exmire. She was bringing you a big pile of food that had no meat. She was vego. That sort of thing.
DK too gone to say nothing.
Lisa gone too, but kept up both ends of the conversation.
At the end of the night, Lisa driving you back to Saga, tears on her cheeks.
DK too sad to say nothing.
That was the night of the ghost.
You and Lisa got home and Lisa didn’t want to sleep in your room. You didn’t have a fight or nothing. You never did. Her dimple just went soft and shallow.
Want to be on my own tonight.
She went to the sleepout.
DK didn’t stand in her way. DK went downstairs and got out the sander. Make some noise for his head.
Some time later, don’t know how long, you heard a scream upstairs. It could of been going while you had the sander on.
You raced up the stairs and Lisa was running out of the sleepout. Shivering. Arms crossed against her throat like she was praying. Fingers knit together.
Eyes wide like flying saucers.
She fell in your arms and bawled her head off.
Something was stroking my hair . . . something in there . . .
You stroked her hair, rub it out.
You put your mouth on the crown of her head and the tips of her ears.
You held her close.
Mo come out. No Rod. You didn’t know if Rod come home that night.
When Mo heard Lisa talking about something in there, Mo tut-tutted about frightening everyone and shuffled back off.
To show Lisa there wasn’t nothing in there, you led her back in the sleepout. She was still shaking.
Nothing in there, you said.
Lisa said: There’s a ghost . . .
She believed in ghosts.
Deadset.
Lisa wouldn’t sleep in there no more. She went in your room then, moved right back, wouldn’t let you go.
Lisa had to go off and do her singing gigs. Her band was doing all right. You didn’t go much—didn’t dig them creeps played instruments behind her, didn’t go much on the way they scoped you. Didn’t dig pubs and clubs. Too many people knew DK.
You were busy shaping, surfing, surfing, shaping. Eating. Smoking. Surfing.
Busy busy.
Busy doing surf trips. Easter ’70, you went down south to free surf Bells. Left Mo behind to look after the shop. Stopped at Pam’s Rivermouth: six foot, offshore, clean, only two out at a break that went off about once every five years. You was with FJ and Tink. Just for fun you smeared butter on their boards before sun-up. So you could get there first. You surfed six hours straight.
Killing them.
They couldn’t believe you were hassling, dropping in, surf ratting them, snaking, at this pristine break down middle of nowhere. You chased the two locals out the water.
What ya doin DK? Snot a conness or nothin eh!
You didn’t care. If you couldn’t surf in comps, it didn’t matter. Everything was a conness.
/> You surfed six hours and went up the campsite to fry a steak. Buggered. But while you fried your steak you saw FJ get one okay barrel.
Be getting ideas about himself.
You pulled the steak off the fire and crawled in your soaking sticky wetsuit. Bones rusted together after the six-hour session but you slogged down the shore and paddled back out.
Dropped in on blondie, scored a better barrel.
Hey DK—you went in eh! What ya doin?
Couldn’t let him be getting ideas about himself.
•
You stole their birds too. They knew you had the most beautiful chickie on the whole east coast, the coolest too, this amazing bird so far out of their league they couldn’t imagine even talking to her. But on surf trips, or while Lisa was off on one of her tours, you snake in on the boys’ birds.
It was expected of The Great DK, that sort of thing.
FJ or Tink would pick up some dolly in a pub, and you had to do your duty. On behalf of DK.
Not that you made the girls do nothing. All you wanted was lure them away from Tink or FJ and spend a few hours with you.
All you do with them was smoke doobs and listen to music.
You never made them do nothing. They tried, but you weren’t playing that game.
You DK was playing another game.
All you asked was they made sure Tink or FJ knew who they been with.
You free surfed Bells the same fortnight they had the Australian titles. Easter ’70. Bells was everything surfing was not meant to be: jumpers and five-mil steamers, icy rain and mud everywhere, the smoky shut-in Torquay pub, the big cliffs over the break that set the crowds up like the Colosseum looking down on you, clapping your waves. Public had to pay a fee to stand there and clap the surfers. What crap. You hated it all. You hated the promoters, all the Rip Curls and whatnot they had down there flogging their gear and paying surfers to wiggle their bums like clothing models, all the commercialism that sprung up there before it really took hold in the civilised part of the world, Queensland.
The cold went in your bones and never left. But still free surfed eight hours a day. Meanwhile the Bells comp was getting started: Drouyn, Neilsen, FJ, Giblet, Lynch, Cairns, Warren, Peterson. All waiting for you to enter the conness. Expecting you to shrug your shoulders at the last minute and go, fake reluctant, Well I gotta do it, and blitz them all. They thought DK was some kind of actor, some kind of prima donna, that sort of thing. You lurked in the sandhills freaking them out. You went up to Winki Pop and free surfed. Everyone expected you to bob up in their heat. Driving themself mad. FJ was progressing through the rounds but telling everyone DK had some kind of wildcard exemption through to the finals . . .
Yeah bugger them. Sidelong you watched the heats, the judging. Registered the point.
Always good on numbers.
You had it worked out sweet.
They were catching up to you but not there yet.
So there it was:
Australian titles, Bells, final rounds, FJ, Peter Townend, Drouyn, Terry Fitzgerald, Neilsen, cream of the crop.
But most of the crowd round the corner watching DK free surfing Winki alone. Smoking barrel after barrel.
You got surfer’s ear from the cold water. Surfer’s ear is when them bones round your eardrum swell up to protect the eardrum against the cold. Makes as much sense as bricking up a fourth wall round your garage to stop anyone nicking your car. But that’s the body eh. You went deaf, left ear only. Got a spare one eh.
Kept on free surfing.
On the last day you entered the bodysurfing conness.
Made the semis.
This article:
While the national titles proceeded to their anticlimax, enigmatic Gold Coast surfer Dennis Keith made an appearance in the bodysurfing contest. The organisers failed in their efforts to contact Keith and invite him into the main contest.
That boy. You didn’t know what to do with him.
But he must of been a surfer. Stood to reason. That genius had to come from somewhere.
Yeah.
You saw a pack of them: Windansea types, from up north, full of themselves and their money and looking down their noses at Kirra and Snapper boardriders. Windansea was some fancy-pants club in America, branches all round the world. They wouldn’t dare set one up at Coolangatta, but they felt safe among the ponces up at Surfers Paradise. You saw them ride down into Coolie in their spruced-up yank tanks, Buicks and Cadillacs, the only ones on the coast, with their Left Hand Drive and hair slicked back and their loggers on their roof. Down to pinch waves and birds from the Coolie kids.
Windansea types, educated, fully year-12, two parents apiece. Rulers of the world.
In the waves one minute, the next run out of the joint like they’d went in the wrong pub. Tails between their legs. Spoilt brats, back on shore, spewing over the way they been treated.
End of war bloodbaths:
Coolangatta full of returned soldiers.
Windansea mob, beaten to a pulp, working up their outrage. Revenge fantasies. They can’t take on any of the local blokes, so being cowards they take it out on the birds.
And here she comes: alone, home from work.
‘Hey, darling, what brings you out on a night like this?’
‘You come here often?’
All charm, these Windansea types. Educated. Athletic. Just got their arses kicked. Heads full of revenge.
Him. Some of them could really surf. Him.
Them two years, ’69 and ’70, when yous went down to Bells, Rod and Bas didn’t come back with you. Thick as thieves them two. Rod saw himself spending the rest of his life lying in a beanbag eating chocolate. Bas pictured the rest of his life exact same way. Soul mates, same dreams and aspirations.
They come back later and when Rod come back he come back with some new friends.
Some friends called Harry in little baggies.
Better part of Rod never come back.
You been trying the full smorgasbord, not just dope and hash. One afternoon in late summer of ’70 you driven with Lisa up the Pigabeen hinterland after a thunderstorm.
There was no surf. Flat tacky. She said you could pick mushies.
You’d never had mushies. You climbed over a fence into a field and tromped round. Lisa said they grew in cow pats. You picked a few out of cow pats but Lisa said they was toadstools. You tromped round some more and smoked a C-1. You tromped round and Lisa found something. She called you over. Mushroom with a brownish cap and white stalk, black gills. When she broke the stem it bruised blue.
That’s how ya know, she said with this devil in her dimple.
She slipped it in her pocket.
It took you two hours in a bunch of different cow paddocks but you collected six mushies, what Lisa said would be enough. She had them in her pockets and drove down The Other Side, the big open windswept beach with no buildings.
Safer in New South, she said.
Everyone knew Queensland coppers was the most bent in the nation and the drug laws so strict you could be put away for life for having a tiny little ounce of weed, so if you were gunna do serious trips it might be a good idea to pop across the border.
Also you weren’t gunna see no-one on The Other Side.
You ate three, she ate three. You didn’t like the cold dirt taste but pushed them down. Then in the car Lisa rolled this big doob, twinkle in her eye, you passed it back and forth and waited.
Nothing.
You looked at the no surf. ‘Flat as,’ you said to make conversation.
‘You’re kind of an addict, aren’t ya?’ Lisa said. ‘Surf addict.’
‘Yeah well I’m in withdrawal now.’
‘Like a caged lion.’ She pinched the top of your thigh. Was always pinch
ing you, Lisa. Them strong guitar fingers. ‘You get wild when there’s no surf. And but you’re even wilder when there is surf.’ She sang, like it was a line of a song she was making up right there: ‘Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.’
Still no effect from them mushies. ‘Can’t live with it, can’t live without it,’ you repeated, speaking but, not singing.
‘Same as with me eh,’ she said, showing her dimple. ‘You can’t live with me, can’t live without me.’
‘Yeah right.’ Then you thought a bit. ‘Except for the first bit.’
Lisa thought about that, and when the penny dropped she said: ‘That right?’ And she was so stoked, these tears come to her eyes, stoked that you told her you could live with her, just couldn’t live without her. Nearest you come to an admission of like . . .
She could see you struggling.
‘Salright Den, I know.’ She squeezed your hand. ‘I love ya too.’
That was it, that was the moment to go for it, go after her like paddling for the big set wave, commit. That day in the car on The Other Side was when you should of asked her to get hitched or whatnot. Only you couldn’t handle the thought. Couldn’t handle the idea of being up there in front of a big crowd, centre of attention and that. If you could do it here in the car, nobody else knowing, you’d of done it.
Yeah. Nah. Couldn’t say it but.
She’s still looking at you and her eyes was full up. Car reeks of dutch oven dope smoke. You wind down the window. Lisa’s still gazing at you, stroking your shoulder and dragging her finger all the way down to squeeze your hand. She’s so stoked by what you said and what she knew you was thinking. And you were stoked by how much she was stoked. You never knew what she saw in you. When it was clear she did see something, you couldn’t believe your luck.
Yeah but driving you crazy and now your hands, where she squeezes them, your hands are numb and pins and needles in the fingertips.
‘Let’s take a dip,’ she goes.
The water was body temperature. Lisa wearing her T-shirt wet, then pulled it off. You took your boardies off and you’re both frolicking in the nuddy.
