by Malcolm Knox
Hep A, B or C, never worked that out. Multiple choice eh.
Three weeks in hospital with hep.
Weight from thirteen stone down to nine.
You went home to Mo a scarecrow, cold turkey in your bedroom at Anga.
Hot turkey, cold turkey.
You lived on lollies and muesli and walked with a walking stick. Dave thought he died and woken up in hell as a guide dog.
Soon as you were well enough to walk you were back on it.
Nobody wrote about you in surf mags now except to ask where you were. Or report a sighting. Someone seen you rip up ten-foot Angourie doing switch-footers. If it was you it was you it was you was it you. But nobody could find you to ask, for you to reply:
Well yeah . . . but nah!
You’d of needed sponsors’ invites to go in comps.
The invites came and went unanswered
what else am
in them first years they thought you’d still turn up, even in Hawaii they waited on the edge of their seats thought you DK was gunna materialise out of the never-never and clean them up—
Still spooked by The Great Man—
You were never more dangerous than when you weren’t there—
But you weren’t there.
Invites stopped coming.
Cops, cops, cops. Tailing you up and down the coast. Poisoning your water. Putting electronic satellite surveillance on you. The full James Bond trip. Cops cops cops. Bad cops. Bad you. You carried a wig, blond as Frank Johnson, white-blond, and if you saw a cop make a mistake—let you see him—you pop on the blond wig and stroll along in safety.
You bought a bear trap.
You measured diagonals all day long.
You didn’t surf and didn’t think.
When you looked round your head, you saw that order was well and truly established, couldn’t have been more orderly in there if the Queensland police was running it:
No Lisa nowhere.
The end of the seventies:
You owed coin to the underworld.
You nodded off in your muesli.
You walked past old surfing mates in the streets of Coolie and didn’t know them.
You walked past Mo in the streets of Coolie and didn’t know her.
Then you went off again, nobody knew where or how long.
Least of all you.
You lived in your boltholes, your safe houses.
You lived in Greyhound buses. Packed Dave into cages in the luggage hold.
Your tough solid good ones up and down the coast.
Seventies surf towns, strictly locals only. They worshipped DK and opened their doors to him, but soon they found you, you, inside their houses instead, scarfing their macrobiotic food, smackies were all into the health food diets, only organic vegies and no food combining and no toxins, and shooting their junk and hocking their stuff.
Hard core.
Then you be kicked out and onto the next in your mobile home, the Hound of Grey.
To the next hard-core bolthole.
Start out fresh behave yourself this time.
But still couldn’t hang on to friends.
First night in any new place you sit up talking with them all night and you show a snap of Mo you carry round with you and a snap of Basil. The women fell for you. The blokes already had.
You cook for them, but you don’t really know how to clean. Back home Mo or Rod always cleaned up for you. You cook but burn food onto the bottom of their pans and hide them in a cupboard cos you didn’t know how to scrub it off. Or you set their kitchens on fire or leave their fridges open and the macrobiotic health food rot all night and that wasn’t the problem, the problem was you were so embarrassed and ashamed about what you done that you cover it up you lie about it blame someone else for it, you always had to cover it up and make it worse, till things blow up and complicate and they have to ask you to go now, please just go.
No good out of water . . .
Or sometimes, they knew how freaky you was about germs, they cry out they seen a cockroach, just pretending, but you don’t know that, you’re out the door, out of there, onto the next place . . .
Meanwhile:
FJ world champion—
Tink world champion:
The rich.
The end of the seventies.
December 31, 1979:
Somewhere down the south coast of New South. Far South New South. Bucketing down. You and Dave living in a caravan with a tough old friend and his wife and twin babies:
Heavy.
Good hammer but.
And they kicked you out the day of New Year’s Eve.
You took your board and walked out and surfed two-foot onshore grovellers.
You fell off your board. You couldn’t cut back. There was other guys in the water and you thought they might know you. You didn’t want to try cutting back in case you fell off again.
You got scared of making a move.
You just stood up on them waves and trimmed along.
Like a kook.
Like a longboarder.
Like a beginner.
You couldn’t turn your board no more. Too heavy or too light, one or the other or both.
You got going on a set wave and tried to turn back into it:
Couldn’t.
Could but wouldn’t?
Nah. But yeah.
Couldn’t.
And you been kicked out of your good tough solid mate’s caravan and don’t even know what his surname was to ring him up when you got out the water, he was just Doghead to you and his missus was Mrs Doghead, and so you don’t know what you were gunna do and you’re broke and it was New Year’s Eve and
still: not the first NYE you spent on your own
but the first in Far South New South and couldn’t do a simple cutback.
Couldn’t turn your board.
You might fall off.
Frozen solid.
Gone.
No Rod.
Rod.
Rod.
Lisa.
Rod.
You.
Mo.
•
You waited in the surf till dark. Waves were crap. But you were scared to go back on land cos you didn’t know where you’d go then.
And Mary Mother of God be praised there was an Oi from the water.
Dennis Keith?
You squinted in the direction of the voice. Old crusty sitting up floating on his longboard in the dark.
Dennis?
He’s paddling over.
A cop, a cop, a cop—
They’re everywhere—
A plumber—
A butcher—
A newsagent—
A teacher—
A priest.
Dennis, is that you? Jesus Christ, you look shockin mate.
And he looks familiar but not really.
You couldn’t clock him.
You look like the fricken Grim Reaper, DK. What’s gone on?
You start to paddle away.
Knew you shouldn’t of gone surfing again. Too dangerous!
Don’t tell no-one.
Say nothing.
Eh Dennis!
Longboarder after you—
Familiar face—
A cop, a cop, a cop—
They’re everywhere—
A plumber—
A butcher—
A newsagent—
A teacher—
A priest.
You stop paddling. Buggered. Bloke’s faster than you. About thirty years older, late fifties, still faster than you.
The end of the seventies.
End of the world.
You don’t recognise me, do you! He laughed like he was pleased with this.
Father A?
You squinted at him. Couldn’t help yourself.
Ex-Father A, he said. One of the great unwashed now.
You said nothing.
Eh, what you doing tonight, Dennis? Who you celebrating with? A bevy of local beauties you wanna bring over to my place?
Tell no-one.
Son, I can’t believe I ran into you here of all places. Kept shaking his head.
What freaked you was that he was burnt now. Father Aplin, who never got burnt no matter how long he spent in the sun. Now that he was in Far South New South, all that Queensland had finally caught up with him. Even in the semi-dark you could see lumpy moles on his forehead, pink burnt-off patches on his cheeks, white bits and grey bits and even greenish bits falling off him. He looked like a poster in a skin doctor’s room.
His burnt head. Shaking it.
And he’d cut off his comb-over. That was what spun you out as much as the skin bits. No more comb-over. Just a shaved head. And somehow now he’d lost the comb-over he didn’t look so bald no more.
Lucky I still believe in miracles, eh Dennis? Well let me tell you something. Why don’t you come and see in the new year with me and my old lady.
Not me, you go. Not me.
Yes, Dennis, he said. You.
But you and Dave was walking up the dunes with him. Eight in the evening, New Year’s Eve, you didn’t know where else to go. Father A yammering away.
Spose you’re down here in training for the Straight Talk Tyres.
Eh?
He laughed. Don’t stress, your secret’s safe with me.
Eh, Father A?
Ex-father, Dennis.
Eh right. You got any smack?
He laughed again. Always laughing whether he was Father or ex, this one.
Dennis we gotta sit down and have a long talk, son.
The Straight Talk Tyres—
The eighties.
In the Chariot she drove me.
Didn’t hassle me about it.
Didn’t cheer me up.
Didn’t say we’d try again.
Didn’t take the mickey.
Didn’t change the subject.
Didn’t make light.
Didn’t play mind games.
Back over the causeway. Through the toy roundabouts. In the car space behind the Sandman panel van sprayed purple and orange.
Salt water drying on me. Crusting up and crackling on my face. Haven’t felt this for a while and I’m unbelting myself and ready for her to come in the unit but I don’t hear nothing from her side of the car and look across and there’s this shine on her cheeks. Her chin’s crinkled up like a rip current pulling through it.
The moment’s sitting there and I dunno what to do with it.
It goes on a while.
She takes some breaths, wipes the snot off her nose with the back of her arm. Won’t look at me.
Then:
‘Of course you didn’t do it, Dennis.’
‘Eh?’
‘It happened on New Year’s Eve. Somewhere round midnight. That’s how I know it wasn’t you.’
‘Not me?’
She looks across the cabin of the Chariot and hits you with:
The dimple. She got it. Just she doesn’t bring it out much not with you anyway.
‘You were out surfing in the dark, right Dennis? New Year’s Eve?’
Your head shakes.
Girl smiles through the tears. ‘I look at you today on that board and I think about, fuck it, Dennis, it’s so fucked. Made me think about what you were.’ Wipes her nose again, it’s streaming, probably salt water trapped in her sinuses. ‘You were so beautiful.’
Now she tries looking at me but can’t.
‘Yeah,’ I go. ‘But nah.’ What I mean is, I got to be in my room now.
‘Dennis—’
‘Ta for the lift.’
Out of there, up the stairs.
Grab the rail.
In the kitchen.
In me room.
Turn on the news radio.
Sit down for some reading.
It took me a long time to find out anything about my mother. I was raised by my grandparents, Lionel and Maureen Exmire, who Dennis Keith met once. They were always nice to me but it was a very quiet and sad house we lived in. Very ordered, very clean. Cold. I was a difficult kid and must have been a handful, especially as a teenager. I wasn’t very warm or loving, and that must have been tough for them. They put a lot in without getting much back.
I went to school in Brisbane, where they’d moved when I was little. They sent me to an all-girls school and fell over themselves to ‘protect’ me. Which meant that to this day I’ve never had a serious boyfriend. I’ve been in love a few times but it hasn’t worked out yet. I wonder why?!?!?! Maybe next time.
I was close to my Auntie Jodie. She told me she stayed at the Keiths’ house at Rainbow Bay and thought it was haunted at the time, but later she figured out that it was probably Rodney Keith creeping around in the dark. She told me just recently that she believes it could just as easily have been her, not Lisa, who
Psycho birds eh. Enough.
Father Aplin wanted you to call him John now, insisted on it but you couldn’t really come at it. He hadn’t stopped believing in miracles, he just stopped believing in celibacy. He met this bird Julie and she was the miracle that was irreconcilable with the priesthood. He quit, got married, moved down to Far South New South, earnt his bread shaping boards for locals. Holy Smoke Surfboards.
You been in the town in a caravan shooting hammer for four weeks and never heard of him.
And he hadn’t heard of you:
That was worse:
He hadn’t heard about you.
But he had you now.
Still a fisher of men, Dennis. Never lose that.
Had a laugh like a kookaburra.
He’d had a new surfing accident, Father A. In a nothing wave bellying into the shore, he speared his shortboard off the sand and into his face. The impact pushed his lower teeth through his lower lip. Tore himself a second mouth. Once they had the painkillers in it he stuck his tongue through it to give a fright to his missus Julie and the nurses. Now he had a friendly pink scar. It was always smiling.
He had you for New Year’s Eve and a few spliffs and by midnight a big grand plan, how he was gunna put Holy Smoke on the world map.
I could do with a reliable hand.
Nah not me.
We’re gunna make you a board to ride in the Straight Talk Tyres.
Nah not me.
Dennis, you want to do it the easy way or the hard way? You’re gunna say yes eventually. Why fight?
•
He lived with his missus Julie and their dogs, a chihuahua and a dachshund, and a million mozzies in a fricken fibro dump on the edge of this lagoon.
Dave got on well with the toy dogs. First time in his life Dave felt big and tough.
Father A sit you down across the upturned packing crate that was his outdoor card table.
Yous were playing poker.
The Straight Talk Tyres, he said. Biggest prize-money event in surfing history. Twenty grand for the winner. This autumn at Snapper.
You lost interest. You didn’t do surf comps no more. You couldn’t do a cutback in two-foot dribblers. You was done.
I know you’re not interested, he went on, but just in case you are, let me tell you some reasons you should reconsider. One, it’s twenty grand. Two, it’s twenty grand. Three, it’s twenty grand. Other
reasons? It’s twenty grand. And it’s up in your own backyard, Dennis, your home break. I don’t care what shape you’re in, or not in, you can ride Snapper right-hand barrels in your sleep. If there’s no waves they’ll move it to D-Bah. You’ve got it tied up, Dennis. Twenty grand!
You wanted him to play his cards. You were gunna win fifty cents off him with a pair of nines and that was the biggest punt you were prepared to take. Then you’d up the bets till you won fifty bucks off him and then you find what other coin they had in their fibro shack while they were asleep and in the morning you nick off with it and be gone before they can kick you out . . .
All the world tour guys there, Dennis. FJ, Tink, Mark Richards, Rabbit, Peterson, the Hawaiians, the South Africans, the Americans. All wondering where you are. All worried about you. And you know what? It’s a unique new format they’re trying out. It’s different from every other surf comp anyone’s ever been in. They’re making history.
What you got, Father?
He had a pair of eights. He laughed to break the mouth. You raked in your fifty cents.
It’s man on man, Dennis.
What’s man on man? You stopped raking.
The heats. They’re man on man—one on one. None of this compulsory six-man heats accumulating points. It’s one on one, you against the other bloke, nobody else in the water and the winner goes through to the next round. It’s personal.
So . . . just one bloke against the other bloke?
And everyone can see what’s happening, you take the waves you get. There may as well not be judges. It’s that easy to score. Just one bloke against another bloke.
Not the old points system?
Dennis, it’s made for you. Made for you.
He was working some kind of God fix on you, beading into your eyes.
You pushed your aviators up your nose.
They weren’t there.
They weren’t there.
Dennis, I can see you want to do it. And you know what? You’re gunna do it on a board we design and shape together. We’ve got two months to work on the board and get you fit and fed and on the road up to the Goldie. I’ll organise the sponsor’s invite. Holy Smoke’ll pay up to be an event sponsor, and we’ll make sure you get in. It’s that easy. This is the new era of surfing, Dennis, and you’re gunna go up there in triumph and you’re gunna absolutely nail it.
