Floundering

by Romy Ash

But.

  No buts.

  But.

  What did I say?

  Walking past him I see a dead fish in his bucket, the scales still there, shiny, and at the mouth of the fish, blood.

  I’ll gut you, he says and makes a motion with his hand from bellybutton to neck – splitting himself right down his middle.

  I run. I look back and stumble, but he’s no longer there. The caravan looks exactly the same, except now I know that he’s somewhere behind the square windows. I run into our caravan and jump on Loretta’s bed – safe.

  The scrape on my arm is red, but there’s no blood. I spit on my finger and smooth it over the scratch. I wait for Jordy for a long time, but he doesn’t come back.

  The toilet door is open and Jordy’s not there. I close it and hook the string back on the nail. Walk the path over the dune to the beach. The ocean is there, big and stupid. The beach is busy with fishing. I look for Jordy and see him slouching further down the beach. I slide down the dune, my feet sinking deep in the soft sand, and walk towards him.

  I’ve been looking for you.

  He rolls his eyes at me. Whatever, he says.

  But Jordy –

  Leave me alone, alright, he says.

  A wave, with a line of spit-white foam at its edge, runs up to my feet. He walks away but I don’t let him go. I follow five steps behind. I feel our caravan, empty as a cicada shell behind the dune. I smell the stench of fish.

  Quit following me, he says.

  I’m not following you. I’m going this way.

  I said, fuck off.

  You fuck off, I say, but there’s no force in my words.

  We’re both standing on the hard edge of the beach, alone. Jordy walks across the sand and back up the path to the caravans. I sit down and hold my knees and draw my fingers through the sand. When I look back for him the dunes have swallowed him up. I uncurl from a ball and walk the other way, past the jetty, towards the river mouth.

  Here is the only place where the scrub turns tall. There are trees along the riverbank but there’s no water. The bank crumbles at my feet. It feels cooler in the scrappy shade, but there’s the hot hum of insects here. Looking up I can see the sky through the leaves and great big hunks of dead wood still standing. It makes me dizzy and I steady myself against the heat. I can see a gum across the dry riverbed and one of its branches is shiny like something rubbed for good luck. There’s a rope hanging out there, thick, with two big knots, one for your hands and one for your feet. There ain’t no water, though, it swings into nothing.

  I slide down the riverbank to where the roots hang out over the sand. They’re dusty. I climb in under there, hug my legs to my chest and stare at the spiders’ webs that look like they’re holding it all together. It’s cool under the roots. The wide sandy river shimmers in the heat, almost like water. I get out of there.

  The sand slithers over my thongs and burns my feet. There’s a line of ants right across the river. The rope dangles above me and I’m in the shade again. I lift my hand, see if I can touch it, but it’s out of reach. I use the exposed roots to climb up the bank and then it’s easy to climb the gum, its trunk sloping out, reaching over the river. I lie out on the smoothed-off bark. I hang my arms and legs over the branch like I reckon a sloth would and I feel the smoothness against my cheek.

  I spit over the edge. Cockatoos whirl around me, and one lands on the limb opposite. Then they’re all landed, screaming yellow. A cockatoo looks at me with one eye, and all the others are screeching, jumping up and down, their heads bobbing, like they’re laughing. They rip leaves apart and the shreds drop on me. I scream back. They fly up and all of them in a smooth arc land back in the tree to laugh at me again. I nearly fall off the slippery branch so I inch my way back down the limb to the bank. I find a good stick and switch the grass as I walk, following a trail that’s been flattened in the dry grass. The paperbarks are ripped and clawed. I dig my fingers into them as I pass, try to find the hard inside the tree.

  There’s a pool of black water. I fling the stick down the bank, jump after it, jarring my legs. Pa says that heels are like a crab’s shell, hard but secretly fragile, that they can shatter into a million pieces, just like if you tap a crab’s shell with a hammer. I always try to jump soft.

  There are rings in the dirt all down to the water where it has shrunk and shrunk. The hottest days have the biggest space between the rings, like years on a cut-down tree trunk. I find a rock and throw it into the water and the wake circles out to the edge of the pool to meet my toes. My feet sink into the slimy soup and I feel little things slip over my toes. I step in further, hold my arms out to steady myself.

  The black water thrashes and I see the sharp triangle of a shark fin, then the water is still. I stumble back and fall, cracking through the dried mud. I perch on my heels and wait, but the surface of the water is unbroken. I’m so silent a kangaroo with its hop-crawl comes and drinks from the water on the opposite side. I’m not as tall as a kangaroo. My legs begin to cramp. I stand and point my stick at the kangaroo like it’s a rifle. The kangaroo faces me, chest puffed out, before it bounds away. Bang, bang, bang. I shoot that kangaroo dead. I poke the stick in the water and I can see something shifting. It’s a good k of dry riverbed to the sea, and I don’t know if a shark could survive that long out of water. The sky is huge with only a fart of a cloud near the horizon. The pool of water shrinks.

  The mud has dried on my legs, but it comes off when I scratch it. I stand up and follow my footsteps in the dirt, back up to the bank, the stick resting on my shoulder.

  Walking back over the dunes I see the caravan. It’s like the grass has grown further up around it. There’s no Bert. I aim my stick and blow out the windows of the caravan with it. I go look in the front door and Jordy’s not there. I lean my stick against the hot tin, open the screen door to get a water. I lift the containers, they’re light as balloons full of hot breath.

  Jordy? I say, looking around for signs he’s been here. His school shirt is down there, under the table, curled and discarded like snakeskin. Jordy? I say.

  The step creaks with my weight and I let the screen door snap shut. I can’t see anyone over the road, but the ute is there, waiting patient at the side of Nev’s caravan. I walk around the side of his caravan, dragging my stick behind me. The shadow of the caravan looks sharp enough to cut. There’s no one out there. The glass buoys twist in the slight breeze. I stand on my tiptoes to look through a salty window. I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The hot tin of the caravan is burning my palm. I realise I’ve been blocking the hum of the generator out. The sound has been there all the time. I hear it now and I can smell the diesel belch.

  My eyes come good. Jordy’s chest looks concave. His fringe hangs way over his face. It’s like he’s standing there alone even though there’s Nev with his pants off, sitting on the vinyl chair, looking at him, jerking off. Me standing there, my hand burning onto the tin, like if I moved it I’d rip the skin right off my palm. Nev’s thighs look totally hairless and whiter than everything else. He’s still got his thongs on his feet. He’s gripping Jordy’s arm. But he lets go, wipes his face with his forearm and turns his watery eyes to me. I see his penis slowly droop. I see the red marks where his hand has been on Jordy’s skin. Nev’s eyes look full of tears. His head bumps to his chest. Jordy looks at me. He closes his eyes and it’s like a cloud passing over the sun. I rip my hand from the tin and run.

  11

  I can feel the heat of an ant bite blooming on my neck. I’m way in deep under the roots of the riverbank. I dig away at the surface sand until it’s cooler and I put my hands there, feeling the secret temperature. I can hear my breath, and I try make it come slower. I count them. Where my hands are becomes hot. I dig my fingers in deeper until I can feel hard dirt right up under my fingernails.

  I see Jordy’s feet land with a cloud of dust. They’re chopped off at the calves. He has the skinniest ankles ever. I’m quiet. I see them twist around as h
e’s looking. He starts to walk away. I’ve lost count of my breaths. I make a noise that is a cough or a sob. His feet pause, he comes back, leans right over and I see his face. Two dark eyes. He crawls in under the roots, their ends are as soft and fine as spiders’ webs. His pockets tinkle. There’s not enough room for us both under here. Little bits of the ceiling crumble. I rub my eyes. He’s holding a soda machine like the one Pa had on the liquor cabinet. It’s old with a silver handle and wire mesh. He’s trying not to sit too close. His legs are stretching out into the sun.

  Go away, I say, but it comes out as a whisper.

  He pulls little silver bulbs out of his pockets. Here, he says and passes the soda machine to me.

  I don’t want it, I say.

  He presses it into my hands, but my hands don’t work and it falls and rolls in the sand.

  Where did you get it? I say. He pushes the machine back into my hands and everything now is covered with a fine silt of sand. But I just hold it.

  Look, I’ll show you, he says and grabs it back off me.

  He pierces a bulb and then wraps his singlet over the spout of the machine and presses the leaver down. He sucks it in, holds it, then blows it out slowly. His face is too close to mine, and under here it’s too dark for me to see what’s happening but I think he closes his eyes and leans back for a couple of seconds. Then he’s laughing.

  Here, he says. Here.

  He passes me the machine again, and a new little silver bulb. I put my Pooh shirt over the spout, pierce the bulb and then breathe in a huge breath. My lungs go freezing cold. I try breathe it back out as quick as possible but then it feels like I’m falling into the riverbank. The earth opens and closes again over the top of me and I’m in there with the roots and the bones and the spiders. There’s humming in my brain and even though I’m in there way too deep it’s okay.

  I hear cicadas first. The tendrils of roots come back into focus, and I feel the sand under my fingertips and Jordy beside me. I’m sitting there exactly the same as before. I gasp and a tear escapes. I feel it run down my cheek and drop to my leg. Jordy grabs the soda machine from my limp hand. I look at him suck it through his singlet with a loud hiss and close his eyes. The silver bulb falls. They’re like spent machine-gun cartridges. I feel weird and cool on the inside. There is a headache waiting to boom, but it’s hiding in the back of my head for now.

  I wriggle out. Tendrils brush against my face. I go look at the water that’s thick and smells nothing like I expect the bottom of a river to smell. I feel Jordy come stand beside me.

  There’s a shark in there, I say. I point to the water. Jordy doesn’t say anything, but I hear him sigh. There is, I say.

  There is not, he says reluctantly.

  Go for a swim then.

  He shrugs his shoulders as if to say, whatever.

  I raise my eyebrows at him. There is a shark.

  He looks at me, then slips his thongs off his feet. He jumps up and down. The sand is hot. He walks on tiptoe to the edge of the water then curls his toes into the mud.

  This is fucken gross, he says. But his feet are in the water now and he’s walking deeper.

  Hey, I say, there really is a shark. Really. He rolls his eyes at me and walks deeper. Jordy, there’s a shark. Stop. He rolls his eyes again. Come out, come out, come out. He walks in deeper. I look around for anything to chuck in the water. Jordy, I say. I stand on the edge of the mud. A little lizard slithers away through the muck and Jordy flinches, then walks deeper. The dried mud cracks under my feet. I lean down and, keeping my eyes on him, like if I look away it will get him, I feel around in the mud for anything to throw. I find a small branch, the bark crumbles under my fingers. I pull it from the mud and throw it past Jordy, into the water. The black water rises up and the fin breaks the surface. Everything is fast. The shark thrashes in the shallows and Jordy stumbles back and onto his bum in the mud. The black water creeps up into his shirt. I don’t laugh. He pushes himself further out of there, leaving gouges.

  Shit, he says, and lets a little laugh escape his chest.

  We got to catch it, I say. But I mean, we got to save it.

  Gulls circle above us. They’re eyeing us off. The sound of the generator makes me queasy. I can see Nev’s buoys turning in the wind. We’re down in the scrub. Little sticks dig into me.

  I don’t want you to, I say.

  Just be quiet, he says, it’ll be okay. He’s not there.

  But – and I feel an ache in my throat that’s more than being thirsty, or crying.

  I’m just going to get some fishing gear, he says.

  No, I say.

  He’s not there.

  But what if he comes? I start to cry. I’m trying so hard not to, but Jordy’s there like nothing’s happened. I see my tears land in big drops in the dust. They just sit on the top of the sand, perfect, whole and round.

  Do you want to get the shark or what? Don’t be a fucken baby, he says. But he puts his hand on my back and rubs three circles there before standing up and walking into the yard. His long hair blows out. I put my head in my hands and don’t look. I can see my feet. They’re orange with dust. Ants crawl over my toes. I count my breaths, and I’m up to eighty-seven when I hear bushes rustling. I look up, holding eighty-seven in. The sun is so high in the sky that Jordy doesn’t even cast me into shade. Our shadows are there, cowering at our feet.

  Come on, he says. Quick.

  He’s got a handful of sparkling metal fish and a handline threaded on his arm like a bangle. A gaff hanging from his wrist. I trail him. We walk back down to the beach. Crabs scuttle at my feet.

  He’s going to know it was us that took it, I say.

  I know, but it doesn’t matter. He won’t do anything, says Jordy.

  How do you know?

  He just won’t.

  You’re crazy, I say. Jordy just shrugs.

  Maybe I just know, he says.

  At the mouth of the river a pied oystercatcher flashes its bright red beak at us, then flies away. The sand is wide and flat here where briny seawater pools. We walk past where the water stops and the river sand begins, until we reach the shark. We stand in the sun, the mud drying and cracking around us. I’m thirsty. My tongue is starting to get fat and thick. The lure shimmers and swims, flapping its silver fins. The fish is so pretty it could lure all the birds from the sky. The pool of water shrinks.

  I’m hot, I say.

  Jordy ignores me. I watch him tie the lure to the handline and then swing it in a circle before letting it fly, the line unravelling as if from his open palm. The fish flies into the river sand on the other side and the line blows away. Jordy reels the line back in. I run around and get the lure. It glints at me, lets me know it’s there. I brush dust off it, feel the sharp tips of the hooks. I throw it to Jordy and he jumps aside.

  Hey, he says and picks up the lure.

  Remember how Pa says, the rabbit goes around the burrow, then down the hole, I say.

  He threads the line through the eye then makes a circle for the burrow and threads the rabbit through it, down the burrow, and pulls it tight. He chucks it into the soupy water and winds it back in quickly.

  Get the gaff ready, he says.

  He chucks it again and again but nothing happens. Only the ripples of water circle out.

  Maybe we need some berley, some blood, I say.

  He looks at me like he’s measuring how much I’ve got to spare. But the shark takes the bait then and the handline nearly rips from him. He grabs a hold of it and winds it in, his feet digging deep into the mud. He’s sweating, his hair sticks to his face. Bits of the shark start to show. It throws black water at us. It’d be hungry, I reckon. It must have eaten every fish in there and maybe even things that came to drink.

  Get the gaff, says Jordy. He’s straining, his arm is going to pop out of its socket, but I don’t want to get the gaff ‘cos I don’t want to hurt it. I see the square snout. I see one of its eyes looking at me before it twists and turns and is al
l grey skin and fins again. I think it looks a bit like the face of a dog. The gaff is hooked at the end of my arm and I reach in and pull it through the jaw of the little gummy. Pull it up onto the sand. It flicks around, snapping and twisting.

  Quick, quick, quick, Jordy, quick, quick. I’m yelling, jumping up and down with the shark at the end of the gaff.

  What, what the fuck, what? he screams back at me.

  We got to get it to the ocean, quick.

  It’s too far.

  I start pulling it towards the river mouth, dragging it along by the gaff, leaving a line of blood and filling the shark with sand. It’s hard to pull because the shark is heavy and wild at the end of the hook. Jordy drops the line and tries to grab the tail but it slips out of his hands. The line gets caught by the wind and floats behind us unravelling into blue sky.

  Give me the gaff, he says. I hand it to him and he runs, pulling the shark behind him. The shark grazes against my ankles and its skin is rough. I try grab the tail, but the tail is as difficult to grab as a hose turned on full. I fall into the sand and it burns everywhere it touches. I gasp with the shock of the heat, get up.

  Wait, Jordy, I say and try to run after him. Wait.

  But he’s getting away from me. I can see the muscles in his arms, tense and pulling too hard. I run after him. We leave blood behind us.

  Be gentle, Jordy. Be careful, I say, catching up to him. Jordy just pulls harder on the shark. I grab its tail and it lets me. Now, we’re more walking, stumbling after a while. I don’t look back because I’m scared of how little way we’ve come. My headache booms at me with each step. I can hear Jordy’s ragged breath. Then there’s the sea. It’s so blue it’s painful. We fall into the water and Jordy pulls the shark in after us. Blood seeps from the shark’s mouth. I wash the sand off its rough, grey skin. Jordy’s enormous singlet billows out like a parachute in the water. I hug the shark to me. It doesn’t move. The gaff hangs from its lips. The lure in its mouth shines like a new filling. We float in the shallows, on the end of a line, bumping up against each other.

  12

  Jordy is slick and dark with water.