by Malcolm Knox
FJ looked at yous sitting out there on your boards, and you knew you knew you knew that white-blond corporate pretty boy, that ex-world champion, that convicted drug felon, was shitting his boardies. His lower downs letting go.
Letting go.
Couldn’t look at DK.
So scared of you he didn’t dare paddle for a wave while you were in the line-up. He only went for waves after you got one, while you were paddling back out.
You kept paddling back out.
You waited for last wave each set.
You knew FJ only get rubbish waves at best.
•
Thank Christ I’m here.
Rod’s best mate taking care of you
yeah caramel
the relief—
Rod—
Sunday March 23, 1980, Straight Talk Tyres, forty thousand faces. But a nice three in that date—
Unfinished business/unfurnished witness/untarnished bigness/unvarnished wigless/—
It was starting and you can’t stop it—
You took Frank Johnson apart master class, they said. All them crowd and competitors on their feet. Awe. They talked about a barrel you caught was all sand, not even no water just a shocking ugly five-foot dredger by the ocean baths. A barrel so dark it was night in there.
Where they couldn’t see you.
Father A in tears. Mo breaking through the back of the Marlboro scoreboard to give the judges an earful you
yeah you never found out what for.
Five scoring waves: You beat FJ 43 points to 15.
But now they could see you, were all round you, people people too many people.
You asked Father A for your works and gear.
You give him the Skywalker.
He give you your works and gear. It’s Sunday. Church day.
You went in the dunny block, the old clubhouse. Reek of piss in there. Surfers was animals. You never liked none of them.
Locked yourself in a cubicle.
Thank Christ . . .
He is due but he is not here yet.
My Mo has made her mind up. She wipes her hands on a tea towel and loops it over the rail of the oven. She is wearing her best pale yellow floral house dress.
She got me on me own. Her big old meaty face with its square jaw and its blue eyes slouched in their shiny red hammocks: the vertical line down her brow: the grooves from the corners of her mouth to the line of her jaw:
Father Aplin said only the truth sets us free, eh love?
In her face I can count the lines I cut.
And she has me backed in a corner and my feet in the air to miss the bad diagonals and I cannot move.
Push my aviators up my nose (still there, still there).
She sighs. Breath whistle through her nose.
She leans close and starts a whisper in my ear. She is careful and deliberate with every breath and every word.
My aviators fall on the floor. Right across a bad diagonal.
My Mo:
Do anything for me.
Did anything for me.
Rod:
Do anything for us.
Did everything for us.
So I could be the champion of the world.
. . . the dark the light you do it in the dark, nobody watching, nobody listening, the light so dark you DK is the only one who can see and even then I can’t . . .
. . . Hawaii . . .
Still no Lisa.
Rod back today. Last night you snuck into Mo’s room. BFO was sleeping over, on the couch. You waited till you heard her snoring. Got into Mo’s and:
Told her.
BFO’s grand plan.
‘She’s not my BFO. She’s a AFA!’ You whispering so hard your voice’s cracking, you’re shivering.
‘Eh love?’
‘She’s the Ass Fricken Assin. She’s waiting for Roddy to get out and then she . . . you know, get him back for all that . . .’
In the lamplight Moey looked at you for a long long while, the longest long while yet. Her hands drier than the rest of her.
‘Ya having a nightmare, love. Hop in.’
Me Mo. Take care of everything.
You slept like her baby.
. . . radio on all night while I’m waking while I’m sleeping, your dreams are the dreams of important events where it’s light, where you’re dark, eyes are closed . . .
. . . yeah . . .
Markets, terrorists, killers, earthquakes, tidal waves, numbers, sentences, waves of words.
You like the radio.
I fish out my up time, three am, swing my legs, knee-free tubes, hairy calves, lard arse, over the edge of Mo’s bed and plant the feet—yeah!
. . . standing up straight I can’t see my thongs, can’t see nothing beyond the peak of my stomach, too fat and full, too fat, too full . . .
A Thing . . .
Don’t listen to what they say, I know where I am and when I am and what I am, that is me genius . . .
. . . yeah . . .
Don’t! listen to what they say.
Don’t!
Up out the room, seventy-five-year-old ladies don’t sleep well, they sleep with their eyes open, their ears open, probably knows and hears but is turning a blind eye.
Turning a blind eye: her genius.
BFO’s gone. To paradise. Where’d she go? You thought she was here last night to sleep over but—
This nightmare unit:
Rails aren’t even metal, they’re white plastic. Wouldn’t hold me up not if I grabbed them on the way down. Them diagonals all wrong.
Not sure I’ve even woke up.
Out into the dark, has to be the dark, not a light not a sausage.
Walking morning.
Thing under the arm. Then on the head.
Walking.
Fat legs, kneeless tubes out, busted free, legs pump down past the shops, past Greenmount Hill, down Rainbow Bay, the inside section, Little Mali, sandbank for kids and their dads, fifty-eight-year-old groms, it’s darker than dark, the darkest dark where nobody won’t see
yeah this is
lights of town glowing on the water, I don’t throw a shadow in the shadows, a big blob in sleeping T-shirt and sleeping boardies and he’s off, home free . . .
Moonlight on The Thing.
A bird scatters.
But I don’t see: lapping of tomorrow’s swell, across the open stretch, up the channel . . .
I’m here. On Rainbow. Where everyone comes. Why wouldn’t you?
Only way I can
only way I can get up.
Easiest wave in the world.
The way it has to be, has to be, whatever will be, no, not whatever—DK will make it what it will be.
Step in the ink.
Got the hair for it?
Just like them New Year’s Eves:
Creatures blindness fear.
Nah:
Memories.
Paddle into memories.
Beneath his fat gut The Thing floats.
Put me fat hands under me fat boosies and push meself up into a seat and for a second I’ve got it, got it at last, but nah, not this time buster, over we go a wobble and a correction and an over-correction and over we go . . .
Wade over to get it, bung it under chest and paddle back into the one-foot peelers . . .
That shallow . . .
Paddling leaky bucket hands . . .
Kicking mouldy flipper feet . . .
And this kook, flap and fall and embarrass meself and invite all them regrets back in, open the door, all the terrible things and the waste, the waste, the waste, the waste . . .
. . . and the magnet is that seventy-five-year-old lady back there the only one who knows, right now lying awake in bed wondering if she can still pretend . . . pretending she isn’t the only one who knows . . .
. . . yeah . . .
She knows.
She’s the magnet.
Mo.
I do it.
Up.
In the night air.
I am flying.
Not long.
Long enough.
Rod’ll see.
Mo’ll see.
The bird’ll see.
I can do it, see. Fly.
There’s one not wasted.
Yeah.
Back in bed well before muesli.
Rod today.
Some light reading.
By Megan Exmire.
And so the final. Eleven am Sunday March 23, 1980. Year of Ronald Reagan. You’d heard of him. Liked him. Was on your page:
Kill them all.
Yeah.
At the keyhole you was waiting for a lull and up come your little mate, fresh from spanking Shaun bloody Tomson in his semi.
Two local kids, two Coolie kids, two Goldie boys, but when he was coming through the crowd they was telling Tink to fuck off back to Kirra, they was spitting at him hissing that he beat DK he’s a dead man, and DK was gunna kill him kill him kill.
Tink shaking like a redhead autumn leaf behind me at the keyhole:
Me and Tink standing there with our sticks:
Me and Tink fourteen years old, standing here with our sticks:
Me and Tink, all them times, all them times:
Not a word from DK:
Tell them nothing:
Give them nothing:
Tell no-one.
DK thinking about Rod:
Lisa.
Mo.
And me and Tink there.
Unfinished business.
Kill.
Forty, up to fifty thousand now. Hanging out the windows them brand new unit blocks smashing up the skyline of the coast of gold:
Thank Christ I’m here . . .
The Skywalker tight under me arm:
•
And Tink:
And Tink:
Good luck, Dennis. Hope the best surfing wins.
Half dropped the Skywalker on the rock.
Half lost it in the wash.
Eh?
I said good luck.
He caught me looking at him.
I pushed the aviators up my nose:
Not there.
No aviators in the surf.
Left them with the works with the gear with Father A.
Looked away but he caught me and he knew he had me.
Gone Gone Gone.
Hawaii—
Barry Kalahu—
Pipe.
It was when he said good luck that the penny dropped and you saw what Tink saw. Coolest kid in the schoolyard, best-looking, best surfer, the one all the chicks wanted, the bravest, the funniest, the hardest, the street-corner Messiah all the boys would of give their left nut to be, you were their general, the commander of their army, best wave rider in the world but it
but it was only a moment, only a wink, when you were that kid, when you were the bright and shiny DK what Tink and everyone else wanted to be, and now in 1980 the way he’s looking at you is like you DK was stuck back there, still hadn’t outlived that kid, still stuck in DK the boy wonder, and you being still that now was just plain sad, all the other boy wonders grew out of it, you were stuck still, still stuck, hadn’t of evolved, and what was even sadder was you couldn’t tell it was better to grow up and do what Tink done, and Tink found a life, not The Life but a life, and you hadn’t, and the upshot was, he was just standing on them jump-off rocks at that keyhole feeling sorry for you . . .
Yeah, good luck, Den . . .
•
The lull come and yous were in, Tink paddling away from you.
Yous sat out there few feet apart and didn’t talk. Music on the loudspeakers like this full rock concert. The announcer talking old mates and unfinished business and local derby and twenty thousands of dollars . . .
Tink—
I paddled over to him.
He ignored me, looking out to sea, thinks I come over to psyche him.
Another ploy.
Tink—
He paddled away from me.
Hawaii . . .
He paddled away and in the first wave of the first set.
I watched him. He took a big drop, bottom-turned, come up the face and stalled. In a big sucky barrel that spat him out five seconds later. On the shoulder, cut back. Arms swinging like George of the Jungle. Stayed on it. Bottom-turned, stalled in another barrel, two on the one wave. Best wave I ever saw a man surf.
Something missing in your arms when you paddled into the first one. Got on it all right but speed’s gone. Something inside you, gone. Didn’t make the barrel. Got knocked off by the lip.
Next wave Tink took the drop, bottom-turned and it didn’t barrel but he did three or four cutbacks and reos. Second-best wave I ever saw a man surf.
I paddled into a big one. Took the drop, bottom-turned, stalled under the lip but overcooked it got knocked over by the falls.
That’s how it went. Tink smashed me. Tink killed me. I see him get six, seven, eight great rides. He even pulled one of Father A’s moves, what he called a Floater. Better name than Big Dipper. You tried a couple of Big Dippers and a High Flyer but they didn’t come off. You felt the noise in the crowd go down, then rise again like it wasn’t happy it was angry:
The eighties.
•
You surfed all right for a smack addict who been on the nod in the dunnies just before the final but
just see it’s
but Tink killed you.
Father A tears in his eyes, taking the Skywalker back, his baby, thinking how was he gunna tell his missus they hadn’t got the coin . . .
Mo with a hard cold face and a square jaw:
Nobody remembers who come second.
You with the aviators back on.
You prop yourself against the stucco wall, junked out, taking a shower. Thousands in a mob crowded round you. Cheering, taking photos. Like you DK was some kind of monkey. Like your whole life been sideshow alley heroism and athleticism and madness and exploitation and tragedy and love and hate and life and death and humanity and nature, all a big show for them. Like you were for them.
Except you weren’t doing that. You weren’t no work of art. You weren’t that. You hadn’t done nothing. You just been getting through the days. You weren’t any them things. You was just you.
Why can’t they leave me alone?
Somebody turned the shower off for you.
Then:
All the Gold Coast and the whole circus, Sunday lunchtime, fifty thousand in Coolangatta, the unit blocks, the skyscrapers, the eighties, all round you while you stood on the Marlboro scoreboard beside Tink waiting for the judges’ votes to be tallied.
Tink downcast, not looking you in the face. Far as you knew. May the best surfing win.
Then the scores go up and
and uproar, bedlam, pandemonium.
You don’t remember much more the bloody
the screams
pushing Mo away rough like you don’t want her ever come near you again
someone trying to put a lei on you
Tink’s freckly back climbing down off the Marlboro
Father A on his knees with the Skywalker
the ugliness of the crowd, the fea
r, the anger, the triumph:
Got one back.
The good tough hard-core ones had got one back.
You remember Tink’s freckly back.
You remember Mo swallowed by the crowd.
You remember:
No Rod.
No Lisa.
Give you an oversize cheque and a cup. Ask if you were allowed to take this cheque to the bank now and cash it.
The chanting the cheering the ocean of waves of faces
chanting your name your initials:
You remember your speech:
Yeah thanks a lot . . . and you thought that wasn’t enough so you come back to the microphone and went: And thanks.
Wild they went. Like animals. All on your side. One back for the hard core.
The eighties.
Twenty thousands of dollars.
And last you remember, before you got your works and gear back and went into your bedroom for a month, the last thing you remember was:
Never surf ever again.
And:
None of it’s worth that much Lisa.
And:
Thank Christ it’s
I’m in me room shaking like a fricken leaf. She’s gone and I don’t know what Mo done with her. I sit on me bed and turn on the radio real loud and it still won’t block it all out and but so when I pull me hand away from the set I see a envelope under it.
Me name on the front.
This time no fart-arsing about. Fall back on the bed and tear it open, only breaking to wipe the blur out of your eyes.
Dear Dennis
There have been a lot of times, in the months since I met you, I’ve felt that Mo has been playing a cruel joke on me. She never told me ‘the truth’. She left me to work that out for myself, and like all of us Keiths I’m not the fastest thinker.
And where’s my world exclusive, anyway?
She’s been setting me up for something.
When she first contacted me, Rodney Keith’s sentence was going to end within months. Before he got out, she wanted me to know what had happened. But she wasn’t going to tell me. You can lead a horse to water . . .
I’ve fallen for her, that was my problem. Fallen for her . . .
A couple of weeks ago, I went back to the government archives, where I’d first gone to seek information about Lisa, before I ever heard from Mo. But this time I wasn’t trying to find out about Lisa. I wanted to find out about the other half of me. Which meant finding out about you lot, Dennis. Without understanding you, I couldn’t understand Mo.
