The Life

by Malcolm Knox

  That’s what you heard anyway.

  You was so freaked you heard someone in your room middle of one night, jumped out of bed and threw a wild punch at what turned out to be the air-con unit.

  Nearly busted your wrist.

  Put the TV in front of the broken unit so the staff wouldn’t see it.

  First day of Pipe, you made your comeback.

  Pinned on the sea wall a Keith surfboard snapped clean in half. Someone been busy the night before. Back half of the board spraypainted:

  Good luck

  Front half spraypainted:

  DK

  A message for you: Good luck DK. On a snapped Keith board.

  All talking about you.

  Paddled into the line-up for your first heat. Heaviest wave in the world, most famous wave on your bedroom wall, and you hadn’t even went out for a practice sesh. Not even a free surf.

  Pipe getting solid that day. Fifteen, eighteen foot. There was blokes piking out of the conness all over the place. Best surfers in the world taking a look at it and fighting themself. When in doubt, don’t go out.

  You gone out.

  In your first-round heat: Ian Cairns, Jeff Hakman . . . and Tink.

  Tink hadn’t even meant to be in the event. Tink wasn’t invited. Tink was on the alternates list.

  But when Eddie Aikau had pulled out with an injury, Tink’s name been pulled out of the hat.

  ‘Glenn Tinkler, you’re in, come up, entry fee’s $150.’

  The rule was, alternates had to put up their entry money right there and then or else they were out and the next alternate got called up.

  Tink had no cash on him.

  The next alternate was Mark Richards.

  And you know what MR did? Instead of rubbing out the scungy little bastard, MR, future world champion, gave Tink his own $150.

  You were freaked by the whole thing. It went against everything Tink stood for.

  He just stood there gobsmacked. MR said, Go on, surf well. Almost had to push Tink up there.

  So that was the only reason Tink was in your head.

  In your heat.

  MR, gutless eh. Still a young kid he was. Tried to look like a terrific bloke by giving Tink his coin. Everyone knew he did it cos he was shitting his camouflage brown boardies.

  •

  So little Tink, one of the Bronzed Aussies now, red hair cut short back and sides, swimwear model, surfboard model, your little Coolie kid who you hadn’t talked to since you both been here in Hawaii.

  Hawaii.

  Living The Life.

  The posters on your bedroom walls. Both of yous.

  Out in the line-up Tink paddled away from you. You wanted to talk to him. He was ignoring you.

  Big set come and yous were both nowhere near it.

  You paddled after him. Little Tink.

  Fuck off, Den!

  You didn’t say nothing. Just wanted to sit out there on your boards together, not speaking, just taking it all in:

  Hawaii, us. Come a long way eh? Who’da thought it?

  But Tink was scared of you.

  Thought you was gunna kill him.

  He paddled into a mid-size wave, dropped down the face, pulled up, stalled under the lip, and rode this heavy dark barrel right into the channel, kicked off. The look on his face.

  Nice one Tink.

  Running second to you in the world championship points.

  When he paddled back out you still hadn’t got one.

  Only wanted to sit on your board beside him, feeling the swell under your stick.

  Here:

  Hawaii.

  But Tink kept paddling away from you.

  So, action: you get a barrel better than his one.

  You lost sight of the little bugger. Next set you paddled hard, got into position A. Just as you were taking off you looked down and there he was, little rinky Tink himself—he got inside you in the deeper part of the wave, somehow. He outpaddled you, outpositioned you.

  But you DK was committed. You gave a last thrust and got up and your wrist nearly killed you, aching from where you TKO’d the air-con unit, so you were up a little slower than normal and dropped straight down the face in front of him, cutting him off. You dug your rail and pulled up the face in your bottom turn. Shocking drop-in, it cost you an interference penalty, but you had no choice. You were committed.

  Amazing bit was, Tink hadn’t eaten it inside you. Hadn’t fallen off. You were firing down the line, hanging on for dear life, and you could hear his board chattering behind.

  Must of wanted to nut you.

  He had the better take-off so he had more speed. You heard his board right up your back.

  You felt a hand between your shoulder blades.

  The noise deafening, the barrel smashing behind you.

  Tink with his hand on your back.

  The lip about to smash down on top of yous both. Yous get smeared on the reef and it was your fault.

  Must of wanted to kill you.

  But he didn’t kill you, didn’t push you off your board. Instead he give you a firm forward nudge. He pushed you hard enough to get you through into the next section, past that falling lip, onto a beautiful twelve-foot ramp.

  Behind you, he got buttered. On the reef.

  The barrel spat you out, ages later. You raised an arm in the air, claiming the wave. Heard cheering on the shore.

  But they wasn’t cheering you. They hated you.

  They was cheering Tink, who was up on his board and paddling back out.

  Cheering him for what he done.

  You were knocked round worse than him. Didn’t know what to make of it. Felt like you were gunna spew out there. Physically ill.

  Why’d he done that?

  Tink still wouldn’t come near you.

  Best thing he ever done for you in ten years.

  Why? What was all this ‘sportsmanship’ about, first MR and now Tink?

  But he wouldn’t let you come near him.

  You only wanted to say thanks. Nicest thing anyone ever done for you.

  He wouldn’t let you.

  Why do it then?

  •

  The sets were still coming, the heat still hot. You had to keep surfing. But no spark. You didn’t want to beat your little mate, not this time.

  You didn’t know it yet but you felt it:

  He just turned the present into the past.

  Massive Hima fricken Layas rolling in from the west. There was a north swell too in the water and sometimes the west ones and the north ones doubled up into one warped wonky peak splitting the clouds. You never seen walls of water so tall and deep, like someone was rolling skyscrapers down a slope at you. One set was so big and you were so far inside you had to turn round and scratch that hard to get out and over the crest that you felt the panic rising—you weren’t gunna make it. You were scratching your way up the crowning lip and a gust of wind come with it, flicking you up in the air, vertical—

  You lost your purchase, you were gunna come down the face backwards, sucked down the falls—

  But the gust died as you were up in the air and when you come down, the wave had went past you.

  Off the hook.

  Heart thump. They said you knew if you really wanted big waves by did your heart rate go up or down when you were out in this. With Hawaiian gods their hearts beat slower in thirty-footers. But you, your heart was going like a drag racer and you didn’t want a wave, you wanted to cry. Not liking it out here. At home, even if the waves got up to eight foot, which was big big, you wiped out you might get a sand poo in your boardies and a razz from the boys. Here, if you wipe out you’ve caught your last wave. Too much for you. Too big. You
didn’t like it here in this—

  Hawaii—

  But DK the best surfer in the world so—

  Paddled hard or pretended to for the first wave of the next set. It pitched up over the reef, all hollow inside—

  —like your stomach. You pressed up with your sore wrist, got to your feet, drove through your bottom turn, come up to stall under the lip and tuck in—

  Where nobody can see you—

  Empty inside—

  And the lip got you on the head as it come over.

  You hadn’t fitted into the tube—

  Wrong size, Dennis—

  Next thing you know you’re head first flying—

  Empty inside—

  —in the black sea, black with reef rock and seaweed—

  —still down, your leg pulled down by your leash—

  —stick caught in the reef, holding you down?—

  The wave holding you down—

  There was boulders down there big as cars, and the sea rolling them round like marbles—

  Then it let you go and you come up, dig yourself an escape tunnel up through the foam—

  Then it suck you back down again with it—

  No more air—

  It come to you: that one was the third one in the third set. The ninth wave. You forgot to keep count. Served you right.

  Your leash sucking you down in the reef. Reef licks skin off your legs, clean red sheets.

  Like a movie when it gets to:

  The End.

  No: you float up the top and time for one breath before:

  Another—

  And another—

  Colours of all pain: red, yellow, blue, black.

  Red, yellow, blue, black.

  For a second you blacked out. Then—

  You were in the underwater night. Already dead.

  Arms thrashing round the air pockets. Hands grip nothing.

  You had your eyes open but it’s all black down there. Dead. No way up, no way down. A dream.

  Tears in your chest.

  Dry tears in your gut.

  Pressure in your ears squeaking like a pair of knives—

  Empty inside. Didn’t care—

  So this is how it ends:

  Hawaii.

  They’d go: DK eh he died doing what he loved.

  But you didn’t love this. No love here in the black pain.

  You weren’t using your Scream in Blue here, not since Barry Kalahu.

  Nobody could hear you anyway. None of those ones out there, walking the earth, swimming, sleeping, flying, those ones all of them with enough air to breathe, more air than they knew what to do with and none for you.

  You just went ragdoll, empty inside. All done.

  It’s mind over matter they say.

  But sometimes there’s too much matter.

  Ya’ve seen the last of her, Den.

  She won’t be giving ya no more troubles.

  Ya can focus on what matters, Den. World tour and that.

  Nah, forget her eh.

  Roddy’s Triple Crown: the shop, the dog, the bird.

  Those last waves you saw, those big blue sets turned white against the big blue sky, big beautiful coffins wrapping you up and rolling you down:

  Beauty. The last thing you saw on earth:

  The beauty of a giant wave. How it filled up your screen on a scale you never seen before. Boils halfway up the face from sucky reef outcrops. You’d stopped paddling. Give yourself up to them. So much bigger and more beautiful than anything, filled up all your vision, no edges to it, just all blue. Blue. Blew your head open.

  You loved them.

  And now so happy—

  —you gave yourself to them—

  Never so stoked. You thought:

  Far out—

  You decided you’d do the Rolf Aurness now and

  yeah and

  the Lisa Exmire and

  yeah and walk away from it all—

  Thank Gawd I’m here.

  Mo’s back. Lets herself in the door. Didn’t need no lift, no village minibus. Got back under her own steam.

  From—

  From—

  I’m dying in me room. Kitchen like a bomb’s hit it. Me, starving to death. Must be down to about sixteen and a half stone. Puffed up like a cooking sausage. About to burst.

  Dying of hunger.

  Nothing in that envelope kept me fed.

  Bloody BFO.

  Mo’s in my room beside me on the bed, stroking my arm. Like she’s caring for me, thinking about me, worried about me, but she’s not really. Not here at all. She’s back where she’s been.

  The not hospital.

  The Road/The Rod/The Toad/The God/—

  My Mo don’t tell me where she been.

  I don’t know what to do.

  I don’t know what to do.

  She’s not back.

  It was Tink and Barry Kalahu fished you out.

  Alive? Sort of. Depends what you—

  Mixed blessing.

  Tink and Barry brang you in. Without your board. Coral and sand sticking to your skinned legs.

  They said you looked even worse than when Barry had ironed you out.

  All laughs.

  Barry Kalahu said, laughing but solemn too:

  What we say here is, you were touched by the Finger, DK, but the Hand moved on.

  But he was wrong, you was dead:

  Red, yellow, blue, black.

  You went to the sick bay.

  Broken jaw.

  From Barry Kalahu.

  Gashes in your knee, your back, the back of your head. Cuts down your ribs and feet. Legs done over by the giant apple-peeler of Banzai reef.

  Love from Hawaii.

  Dear DK—

  Love, Pipeline.

  You were sob city. Bursting in tears at the drop of a hat.

  Tink got the boys out of there so nobody’d see you. But some of them had and that’s how the story started:

  The Great DK left Pipe shaking, crying like a baby . . .

  You DK was out.

  Of the Pipe Masters.

  Of Hawaii.

  You died inside the posters on your bedroom wall.

  •

  Mo, Brisbane Airport. March ’75. The Sandman panel van sprayed purple and orange in the No Standing zone.

  Twenty years fell on her face when she laid eyes on you.

  In you, the black pain all on again.

  Mo.

  Salright love, yer alright.

  Shook your head over and over.

  Here comes the waterworks, sob city:

  Mo.

  Salright love, yer alright.

  You weren’t all right

  nah

  you died and went to hell.

  In the posters on your bedroom wall.

  You come back from Hawaii strung out and covered in cuts and bruises and stitched up and sick in your stomach and wired in your jaw and choking down the shame, the shame, the shame, the shame.

  And the champion of the world.

  Inaugural champion of the World Professional Surfing Tour.

  You.

  Nobody at the airport to meet you but Mo.

  You won, Den love. You won.

  Her flabby arms wobbling round you.

  Nobody remembers who come second, eh Mo? you mumbled.

  That’s the truth, Den love. Don’t you ever forget that.

  Her flabby arms. Her gold-coloured floral house dress. Her hair gone white while you was away.

  And then people start
spotting DK in the terminal, running towards him with their cameras, their banners, their autograph books, their microphones, their tape recorders, their love and their love.

  The Kirra Boardriders set up a podium and presented you with your world champion’s trophy, the dinkiest cheap little gold-painted plastic surfer you ever seen in a lifetime of dinky cheap gold-painted plastic surfers.

  Yeah thanks a lot, was your speech. And in case they didn’t realise how much it meant to you, you added: And thanks.

  They went wild. You brought the house down. World champion. You could fart and they’d of went berserk.

  Middle of ’75. Spent in pain. Rod was back home and he nursed you. Him and you didn’t talk much. Didn’t have to. Him and you had a mutual friend.

  In pain, Hawaii. Tink had bombed out at Pipeline, leaving you with the most accumulated points in the nine-leg world tour, from your wins in Australia, months earlier, the wins nobody remembered now cos all they remembered, all they talked about, was Hawaii.

  The posters on your bedroom wall.

  The TV, the newspapers, the punters in Coolie were all on about how you was world champion.

  The surfers, the ones who knew what meant what, were all on about how you been ironed out by Barry Kalahu first and Pipeline second. How Hawaii had beat you. The big one-two. How you had no respect for the home of surfing, how you’d went in there like a dumb vandal, and how Hawaii had paid you back for your disrespect. How your world title rings like an empty glass. Ding ding ding.

  Empty: you filled up on Rod’s friend.

  The world champion. The Hawaii kook who couldn’t handle big waves and big men. Small-wave bully, champion of the dribble. In the big waves, a scaredy-cat.

  Your behaviour that next cyclone season wasn’t the best to be honest. You and Rod went out and swiped cars and Rod drive them down the wrong side of the highway. Sometimes you even drove, just to get a feel for it. You be cranking on whiz and smack and grass and flying down wrong side of the highway but Rod had complete trust in you and you had complete trust in DK and you always managed to pull out the way of the oncoming car on the blind corner

  but yeah but I just can’t

  you weren’t only nicking cars and driving them. You be smoking cigarettes as you sped along. That weirded Rod out cos you never smoked fags. You dropped acid and thought two-foot Snapper was six to eight Pipe. You pinched blokes’ birds. Not that you were up to doing anything with them, but you had to keep pinching them. Had to keep breaking into their bedrooms. Their bathrooms. Not that you did nothing. Most of the time to stop them screaming out you had to tell them you made a mistake, got the wrong address, and if they kept on screaming you run away. Not that it mattered. You only did it for the PR. Had a name to keep up.