Then, on his father’s instructions, the son turned the ignition again and the engine fired into life. The sergeant lurched to the wheel, pushed his son aside and said, Hold on, everyone! He faced the boat into the pitch of the waves and started towards the shore, rubbing the top of the boat’s compass as if it were a talisman. He called to his son to look for the flares in the front of the boat, and have them ready.
Serge and the other boy were clinging to each other, then Serge vomited and vomited. Dylan noticed Serge had literally turned green, but he didn’t find any satisfaction in it. He just stayed still and stared into the place where the sun should have been, where all life came from. He thought of the desert sun, the inland sun he’d grown up with. It could burn you alive in no time, but he missed it.
The sea had become the smallest place in existence: it wasn’t vastness, just weight, crushing weight. It felt as if it was going to break through the hull at any time. Water was sloshing through the cabin. Soon, with the sergeant’s son, he was working the bilge pump, unsure who had told him to do it or how he knew what to do, or even what it was. Serge looked like death, and Dylan feared him. The other boy held Serge tight and Dylan thought it’d be nice to have a friend who cared so much. He’d had friends like that out in the desert and yet had been to eager to leave them. To go somewhere, anywhere. Africa. Africa Reef. His friends had been closing in on him. He’d felt he was losing the key to the vastness, the space.
They broke through the edge of the storm, and the sea began slowly to settle. The sergeant looked at Serge’s vomit but not at Serge. To his son he said simply, You can clean up that mess when we get home. Should have done it over the bloody side. There was shame everywhere. Dylan thought of saying, I’ll help, but knew that it was better to say nothing. He wasn’t trying to win friends, and he wasn’t trying to make enemies.
When they’d got back to shore and had managed to hoist the boat up onto the trailer, Dylan wondered about Hilda, the sergeant’s wife. He’d met her a few times and she was so beautiful and soft. He wondered how it would have all gone if she’d been on the boat, rather than just her name.
The sergeant spread plastic sheets over the seats of his car. He said to Serge, You should really walk home, but when Serge started off on trembling legs, covered in vomit and soaked to the skin, he called, I was joking! Before allowing the boys to get into the car, he said, Look out at the sea, boys. Never take it for granted.
And they did look. Dylan saw another waterspout, but as no-one mentioned it, he assumed that he alone could see it, and kept his mouth firmly shut. A new town, a new way of life. He pondered how the waterspout’s grey-white reminded him of the dust devil’s red-white swirl in the desert, spouts of dust joining desert and sky. And Dylan knew the sea and the sky had reasons for sharing or not sharing their secrets.
ORBIT
Two-stage rocket with capsule equals: two forty-four gallon drums, the side of a packing case, fencing wire, switches from an old country telephone exchange, wooden fruit boxes and a pram seat. A gantry made from fence pickets and nails, looking like a ladder but being so much more, and a blast area of grey sand with tufts of wild oats (green), with mission control (manned by a cardboard box, pineapple-tin-legged robot with red globes for eyes and two batteries series-circuited together for innards) the great brick and concrete shed his father used for servicing cars and trucks.
Launch time was straight after breakfast Saturday. Preparations had been over a couple of weeks, though no-one had noticed. His dad was away, maybe forever, and his mum had the baby to worry about.
He’d acquired a roll of tinfoil. Where is that foil? his mother had asked herself, not even glancing in his direction. Then the baby cried because it had ‘done a nappy’. He needed the foil to protect him from the rays. Deflection. He went to his dad’s rag bag in the shed and took as many as he thought he could get away with: insulation.
He knew the risks he was taking, but he was prepared. He’d given his mum an extra-big hug after his porridge, and she’d looked surprised. But there was no reason a cosmonaut couldn’t show affection to his mother. It made him no less brave. He even tickled the baby under the chin and felt warm when it laughed. Irritating thing. But it was, after all, kin. His dad, well, he’d shake hands with him on his return, if either of them made it back. No point making a song and dance before something was done. When his father had injured his back in his fourth big-time league football match he’d said to his son, See, if I’d made a song and dance about getting in the team, I’d look ridiculous now. I’ll never play again, son, never. I’m washed up before I’ve begun. But at least I didn’t humiliate myself. His father had squeezed his hand so hard when he said this, the boy had almost cried. He would never cry, not even if he started burning up on re-entry. After all, the pain and fear wouldn’t last long. It’d be over in an instant. What you don’t know about won’t hurt you. Don’t cry over spilled milk. You’ve got to be in it to win it. The mantras followed him all the way to the launch site.
Scaling the gantry, he thought of the apricots just about ripen on the tree by the hedge. Don’t eat too many of them, or you’ll get collywobbles. He risked taking three or four. He also had a glass bottle in the capsule, in case he needed to take a piss. His pockets were sticky with wine gums he’d saved from his afterschool Friday treat. Space food.
He stepped into the capsule and pushed the gantry away. There’d be no going back. The countdown was at T minus five and counting. He closed the hatch with tinfoil and wedged some rags in around the gap between his seat and the foil. He stored his supplies. Settling in to the seat, he drew a strap across his waist. He pushed the motorbike helmet (cracked – a gift from an uncle after a near-fatal accident) over his head. He flicked the toggle switches in front of him, and ran through his checklist. There was a dodgy reading in the port thruster so he tapped a gauge. It came right. The Soviet space program had to make do with what they could dig up, but it usually came through. Solid, he reassured himself.
Then there was a moment of genuine alarm. A red light. A bell sounding. What was it? He pulled off his helmet to listen. It was his mother calling him from the back step. Gee, she was loud. He could hear her over the brooding engines. Once they ignited in a few minutes, tens of thousands of pounds of thrust would eviscerate the surrounding area. His mum could be irritating, and she was always crying or yelling, or cuddling him, but she was one of the reasons he was doing this. She needed to know that at least one of her men could make good, would leave and return a better person. She would be proud of him. She was calling, Come to the phone, your cousins want to know if you’d like to go for a swim. Where are you?
And then she was gone. He was always vanishing. He was always wandering down to the beach. He wasn’t allowed to swim on his own, but he was allowed to pick up shells and make sandcastles and wander the shore. He liked that. They weren’t too far away. And he’d learnt to swim early. He was the best swimmer in the world for his age. He could swim the entire Indian Ocean if he needed to. He could rescue a full-grown man from the breakers which smashed incessantly on the beach, filling his ears and his bedroom endlessly. He looked forward to the silence of space. The vacuum. His mother had been a swimming teacher and though she lived by the sea she was always saying to his dad, I wish we had a pool, I could give lessons. Don’t be daft, woman, he’d say, we’ve got half the world’s water on our doorstep. You can’t teach lessons in surf, she’d say.
The ocean was central to his plan. After re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, he’d splash down just beyond the breakers and surf his way in. The beach was deserted at this time of year so he wouldn’t get busted or land on anyone. True, there’d be no witnesses, other than the gulls and the dolphins, but he’d know, and his mother would believe him. She always believed him. And she’d tell Dad, and if he didn’t believe, Mum would insist and he’d either believe or leave again. How many times had he left? This time, though, he said, I’ll be fucked if I’m coming back! Don’t sw
ear in front of the boy, she’d cried. But the boy knew every swearword. The boy knew every word that’d ever been written or said. He knew why he was on earth. He had a purpose. He had a mission.
Helmet back on, he continued the check. T minus two and counting. The engines were hotting up and the whole launch vehicle began shaking. Just for a second, he wondered if it’d hold together, if he hadn’t been a little hasty joining the two stages. He was briefly concerned for the integrity of the vehicle. But it was too late for doubts.
FLIGHT
We met him under the wharf. We were drinking Brandivino, and he asked for a swig. We didn’t mind because he was about ten years older than us, and we figured we could make use of him for a bottle-shop run. I was the eldest of our trio, about three months short of my eighteenth birthday. He also cadged a couple of cigarettes off us, smoking them cupped in his hand because the draught swirls down there, coming in between the ships and the pylons.
He crouched on the narrow gangway and rocked back and forth. If it’d been night we probably would have been a little scared of him: filthy, in an army surplus greatcoat, matted hair becoming dreadlocks, a crazed beard, and eyes that burnt somewhere between brown and grey. He didn’t speak much but when he did it was kind of forceful – emphatic. And then he almost knocked us from our tenuous perches over the surging green water. He said, I can fly.
It was the way he said it. We knew straight away that he didn’t mean he could fly in a plane, or even fly a plane, or hang-glide or paraglide or perform any other assisted method of flight. In his eyes he said it as well: he could fly!
We believed him the moment we perceived what he was saying. Immediately. We saw it simultaneously in our slightly buzzed collective mind’s eye. Under that greatcoat we knew he had the wings of an angel or a devil, or both.
We asked if he could fly for us. For us to see – to witness.
He was a funny bugger. Not under here, he said, I am not as small as those swallows darting in and out of the pylons.
We all laughed, and took deep swigs, and thought about the bottle ending soon. We handed him the last drop as a gesture of solidarity and goodwill.
If we give you the money, will you pick up another couple of bottles from the pub down the road? Sure, he said. Not a problem. And we all hauled ourselves from the watery underworld of below-wharf, and climbed the steel ladder facing the sea, up into the above-wharf light. It was actually a warm day, though you wouldn’t have known it below-wharf. The sun had a pleasant heat to it. Gulls and terns wheeled overhead, and a sailor on the stern of a ship moored alongside the wharf watched a large gob of his spittle fall far down to the sea. You could imagine small fish rising to the bait. I’ve seen that happen before. Maybe that’s what the sailor was doing – amusing himself in a time-honoured way.
Will you fly after we’ve got more grog? we asked.
I will, he said, though after I fly I will have to leave town. No community tolerates me being among them once they’ve seen me fly. Once airborne I soar high and always attract attention.
I first thought I could fly when I was six. Not in that run-of-the-mill Superman-ofF-the-shed-roof way, but literally. It started in my dreams – I would fall off a mountain and be crashing to earth, and then I’d pull up just before impact and find myself soaring towards treetops and clouds. Then a few years later I was standing on the beach and saw what I thought was a shark fin, and my sisters were swimming and not looking. I called to them and they couldn’t hear, and the fin was getting closer. I just crouched and leapt into the air, and then I was flying over the waters and plunged down at the fin and splashed the water and the shark snapped at the air, missing me, and I drove it out to sea and then flew back to the shore. My sisters said nothing. No-one said anything and the day at the beach went on as before.
Last week I had sex with a girl I’ve been lusting after for a year. I think I really like her. We went to the Year 12 ball together but nothing happened. Most of our classmates went down to the city for university but we both stayed on here, planning to head down in a year or two. My close mates had all left school at fifteen and got work on the cray boats or on farms, and I wanted to be around them, drinking and partying. We kind of had a band going as well, so maybe that was it. Anyway, I’ve been in town and still drinking with my mates on weekends. They wanted every gory detail of what went on with Alice, and I told them. Our new below-wharf friend looked uncomfortable and kind of lagged behind as we made a beeline for the pub. But I could tell he was still listening.
An orgasm isn’t flying.
Okay, he said, give me your money and wait down the street. He went in and came straight out with two bottles. He gave us the change. He knew how to win trust. Or maybe he was just trustworthy. Let’s go and drink in the park by the Moreton Bay fig, one of my mates suggested. Yes, good launching spaces there, we laughed. Our new friend followed.
Under the Moreton Bay fig is an old roundabout – a merry-go-round you push yourself. When our friend plonked himself on the boards, two little children leapt off and ran away to their mothers on the thin harbour beach. He laughed uncomfortably, Kids do that. Must be the hair, he said. We laughed again. We were laughing a lot and looking to each other, excluding him more by doing so. We climbed onto the merry-go-round and propelled it with our feet, swigging and getting giddy, and risking losing the bottles which went from hand to hand. Drinking fast, we got pissed quick. The children came back with their mothers, who told us to get off and act our age. Especially you, mate, they said to our friend. One mother said to the other, Christ, he stinks to high heaven.
We laughed again – even our friend laughed – and we found a patch of grass bordering the beach, where we smoked and finished the grog. Now, will you fly? we asked. Give the kids and their old dears a treat!
Flying is intuitive, but to make good use of it takes time and craft. It’s an art form, a skill. We can all fly. Yet we not only don’t choose to – we rarely, if ever, attempt it. The risks of crashing, of losing control, are so great. But falling is the most important part of flying – its heart, and very likely its soul.
Do you need a run-up? someone joked.
No, it’s from a standing start.
You’re a helicopter!
Or one of those VTO military aircraft – a vertical take-off jet. A jump jet!
We cacked ourselves, but he didn’t seem fazed. He just said, I don’t like the military. It is an abuse of flying to use it to hurt people.
We weren’t sure what to say, but offered him another cigarette, which he took.
So, I said, to break the ice, it’s a gift …? Like some people can read minds, or bend spoons?
No, he said.
He was sitting in front of me, and the sun was low in the sky behind him. He was burnt into the sea, like a shadow puppet. I have to admit, it really looked like he had a halo. But he still stank. And I mean stank. I was pretty sure he’d shat himself, and the other guys thought the same, I could tell.
One of the mothers walked past to pick up her towel and gear from nearby. She’d been keeping an eye on it and the kids, and on our friend. I hadn’t noticed till then but she was almost hot-looking – for a mum. She bent over, her arse towards us, shook her towel more than it needed shaking, folded and packed it into her bag, stretched, then walked really close to whisper something in our friend’s ear.
He didn’t move. Then she added, And you really do stink. She flicked us a look, and went off with her kids.
What did she say? What did she say? Come on, tell us!
Nothing, really. It’s not important, he said.
We’re all mates here. Come on, we’d tell you!
He rocked in and out of the sea, the sun. Gulls arced over his head and called violently into the sea breeze, which was picking up.
She said, I know, I’ve seen you.
What does that mean? Come on!
It means she has seen me fly somewhere. Maybe another town. Maybe she was one of a crowd who made me l
eave, move on to the next town. Maybe she’s the vanguard. Maybe she’s an avenging …
… angel?! we said stupidly. We were really pissed.
No, no angels. It’s nothing to do with angels. They’re mythic, and such an idea would be delusional, he said.
I was a very practical youth. I only ever flew when necessary. I got out of practice quickly. I had other things to do. Landings are difficult at the best of times, but when your hormones are, as they say, raging, a landing is just dangerous. What’s more, my mother went through a religious crisis, and bundled us off to Sunday school and church services every weekend, and even after school some days. That short-circuited my flying urge, as well as my flying abilities. Scripture convinced me there was no point in flying, and almost convinced me that I couldn’t fly – even that I had never flown at all. Deep down, I knew this was rubbish, but the mind will believe what it wants, and, sadly, what is drummed into it.
Then my mum lost God as fast as she’d found Him, and I had total recall. But I still remained hesitant. The first flight after such a long break was actually painful. I ached for a week and could barely eat. I developed a fever of 108 and almost died, cooked from the soul out. When I was well again, my mother decided we’d move to a different state, and we packed up and I flew in a plane for the first time. It was like being on the ground. Looking out the window was like watching television. It’s a fraud, a hoax.
He was either going to fly or he wasn’t. There was nothing more we could do or say to make it happen. We just waited.
Then he said, or intoned, Launching from low places, and sea level is the epitome, it is as interesting as from high places. Though falling is not part of the take-off, of course, and that’s a negative. But the kindling of will-power, the sheer energy to launch, is more than compensation.
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