An Open Swimmer

by Tim Winton

  All the stuffed men? ‘Stuffed’ was no good; not poetical enough. ‘Pushed’? ‘Cut’? He thought of whaling and fishing for a moment, and the old man’s song that he couldn’t really remember. Bollocks. Bollocks to the rowlocks. That’s how he felt: balls to the wall. He tried the poem again.

  NO

  All the severed men.

  As Jerra turned again to walk back, the old man tumbled down the dune at the end of the beach. Jerra could hear the rattly breath.

  ‘Son! Son! Aren’t you gonna come back home an’ see yer Mum? She’ll be pleased, orright. Geez, you’ve grown. “Born of . . . fire”, eh.’

  ‘What?’

  He really stank this time. His hands were filthy, covered in heavy black flies.

  ‘She’ll take me back, she’ll forgive me, no one will laugh, she’ll love —’

  Jerra stood back. The old man was peering into his face, but the eyes weren’t there. Focused elsewhere. He stomped, moving around and back, slapping his thighs.

  ‘You orright?’

  ‘They’llcomesoonif yerdon’t comeandseeer she’llbe surprised we’llbe altogetherbutwegottahurry!’ The eyes were gone. There were pieces of bark in his beard.

  ‘Who’s coming?’ Jerra laughed. ‘Must be a gala thing every time somebody turns up.’

  ‘Nnono! Yerdoanunnerstan! Sheelbringitallback, floatitagain!’

  ‘Who? Float it? Who?’

  ‘Quick, quick.’

  Jerra kicked at the shells and the little air holes. The old man was hobbling up the dune after somebody else. Jerra had his own problems.

  ‘Alistair MacLean?’ Sean asked, smiling dryly.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Thought you’d like him.’

  ‘Alistair Mac-bloody-cLean?’

  ‘Makes millions.’

  In a tree this time. Sleeping in a tree, wedged in the fork beneath the umbrella of twigs and leaves. He decided not to go close. The old sod might fall, he thought.

  ‘I just can’t understand it.’

  They argued about Alistair MacLean again.

  ‘Am not again.’

  ‘Same plots shuffled differently each time.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘Same faces.’

  Jerra drew joining triangles in the dust on the roof. A diamond. Grains settled on the blanket.

  ‘Nothing changes. It doesn’t get any better – or worse.’

  ‘Just talked yourself up yer own arsehole!’

  ‘Bullshit. How?’

  ‘What’s history? You read that, and stay awake a lot of the time. Don’t talk to me about repetition!’

  Sean fell back on the pillow. Jerra switched the yellow light out. Probably was crap, he thought, but you had to say something. Anyway, he’d seen repetition, and the bastards had gotten away with it, like father like son.

  . . . A tart I knoo a ’undred years ago . . .

  He knew that line.

  Next day, he dived in the bowels of the wreck.

  He came up with a writhing cray in each hand, heavy tails punching water. Near the surface he let them go. They spidered down, straight for the slit, disappearing into the black, feelers last. It was too much like grave-robbing.

  Late in the afternoon, he went in search of the old man; he needed to talk, and probably to listen. The humpy was empty, showing no sign of being slept in for a while. The coals were old. Jerra saw the magazine pictures – National Geographic – stuck on the walls, yellow, ragged things with touched-up teeth and gums.

  The bunk had blankets. A tin full of whale oil stood on a box in the corner, and bent hooks, knots and twists of nylon and gut hung from nails in the beams which held back the ply walls, which, in turn, were clawed by weeds from the outside and grizzled with the skeletons of mussels and barnacular flakes like so many scales. A sliver of mirror stood against the windowsill, half obscuring a brown curlicue of lace; it cast a blade of light onto the Perspex window. The window, distorted only slightly, was caked with fat and fingerprints.

  Out on the little beach, gulls huddled white in the sand. Jerra sat on the mouldy bunk and picked up the empty spine of a Bible, the cover of which was soft and green with mildew, with the blue vein of a marker still intact. Inside, catching on the seam of the binding, were a few tiny slips of paper, fragments cut crookedly which Jerra smoothed with a thumb.

  – innocent blood –

  – the guilt of –

  – in your land –

  – careful –

  – cities of refuge –

  Jerra turned them over. Only half-words on the back. He closed the empty spine, thoughtful, and put it back on the floor. What floor there was to the place was deckboards, he knew. A shattered, watermarked compass, big as a head, stood on a crate by the bed. The fireplace was a cairn of limestone poking through the roof where splinters of light pierced the warped, black tin.

  He waited. The old man did not come.

  ‘I came over yesterday,’ said Jerra, unbending the wire.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Around. What’s that?’

  ‘Wire. I found it on the beach. Thought you might want it.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The loose tin.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’ll leak, this winter.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll caulk it up, somehow.’

  Jerra tossed it next to the old man. It coiled again, how he found it.

  ‘Why didn’t you want your ringbolt?’

  ‘How would you like livin’ with a corpse?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Look, son, you know what I’ve done. They’ll come out an’ get me sooner or later. You can’t do somethin’ like that an’ expect to get away with it.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Confessed a million bloody times, but no one’s ever heard it. Heard nothin’. The screams, the boards crumblin’ and the roof groanin’ . . . but I’m not gonna just let ’em take me. Orready done me time, I ’ave. I got burnt, too, you know. Standin’ there all night. Pouring diesel on. Just white an’ black when the sun come up, again. Smell of diesel, clothes . . . can’t give ’em what they want most . . . they ruin what yer have . . . that boat was our marriage. Only thing bindin’ us. Then you ruin what’s left once yer alone with yer conscience. So. I’ve said it.’ He laughed and bit the heel of his thumb.

  Jerra would have spat.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to tell anyone. I promise.’

  ‘Arr.’

  ‘Bloody beans,’ muttered Sean. He tore the label off and put the can in the flames.

  ‘Eatin’ like the poorer classes, eh?’ Jerra said pointlessly.

  ‘Like eating rabbit shit.’

  A crash in the bush.

  ‘Close,’ said Sean.

  ‘Should’ve brought the .22.’

  ‘Even beans are better than roo.’

  Jerra poked the can with a stick. The fire was feeble.

  ‘I’m thinking of leaving soon.’

  ‘What? There’s a week left.’

  ‘Yeah. Well I thought we might move on.’

  Sean was shaking his head, red eyes laughing.

  ‘In the morning.’

  ‘Shit, why not tonight?’

  ‘Plenty of other places.’

  ‘The old man of course. Geez. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You know how ol’ blokes like that are.’

  ‘Yeah. But do you?’

  The fire smouldered, smoke easing from between the teeth of coals. Sean dragged the black can from the ashes.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it’s gonna get any hotter without wood,’ he said, rolling it in the damp leaves at his feet.

  ‘If you want some wood, there’s plenty o’ bush,’ Jerra said. ‘If yer not sure, the dead stuff usually burns best. You’ll probably find it lying on the ground.’

  Sean slapped beans onto the buckled plates.

  ‘Here, smart-arse. Mind the bon
es.’

  Sean was calling, asleep in the VW. Jerra couldn’t stand it. He felt like going in there and throttling him. He sat by the circle of blackened rocks, scraping the soot away with a stick. The limestone showed dull white, bone, beneath. Dew settled on the back of his neck. No wind. Not a leaf moved.

  He left the fire. It was too late to bother about more wood. He stumbled down to the beach in the moonlight. The white flickered through the trees. The sand was loud. Footsteps crunched, the broken teeth of shells. Walking near the still shore, he saw the buried beam, longer and whiter in the moonlight.

  Difficult on the rocks. Shadows made it impossible to judge blackness as solid rock or air, and he fell a few times, opening an elbow and a shin. Feeling his way over the surfaces with his palms, he came upon the gulls, crowded, sleeping in a hollow. He avoided them, climbing closer to the water, slipping on the damp felt of algae.

  Orange and red, the fire lit a circle in front of the humpy, rippling shadows across the sand, lighting the eyes of the old man, squatting, staring in.

  He was cutting with little scissors, a pair of women’s nail scissors . . . neighbours’ landmark, which the men . . . of old have set. Fifteen: A single . . . wit . . . ness shall not prevail against . . .

  Rolling, rolling the stuff between his fingers.

  . . . or see this great fire any more, lest I die . . .

  Jerra jumped from the last rock.

  . . . And the rest shall hear, and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among . . .

  The old man, without a shirt, stood up and backed away.

  ‘No, not me. Go away. I had to!’

  Jerra stopped.

  ‘No, hang on, it’s me.’

  The old man hobbled into the darkness of the humpy.

  ‘Not all my fault. Don’t, no burning. Please!’

  ‘Hey, it’s only me. It’s orright,’ called Jerra, going over to the hut.

  ‘She sank it on purpose, you know. She ever tell you that? Did you ever . . . were you ever with her? Eh? Must’ve been the only one left in town, then. Was it yours? What she had in her? Not mine, oh no. Couldn’t’ve. Not that she’d know. A single witness . . . go away.’

  ‘I am,’ said Jerra, annoyed. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘No. Go now. I loved, that’s somethin’.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Been waiting, you know. Hard to find, eh? Have to get me twice if yer countin’. Two!’

  ‘I could meet you up at the shack, tomorrow.’

  A confused muttering from the darkness. Short laughs. Something scraped on the floor. A piece of wood fell in the sand next to Jerra.

  ‘I’ve ’eard yers talkin’ about me in me dreams . . . send n’ fetch him . . . an’ fetch . . . can’t drag me down there to burn. Arr, yer bastards!’

  Climbing the rocks, Jerra could hear the hollering, a flat echo off the rocks.

  The VW hawked, then started with the old clatter, and the exhaust blew dust and scales from the grass behind. Sean slopped some water on the windscreen and got in, slamming the door. It fell open again. He cursed, slammed it again.

  Jerra turned in the clearing. He gazed a moment at the windblown beach and the cairn of blackened stones.

  Rain had hardened the sand. It was darker and packed in the ruts.

  ‘Anti-bloody-climax,’ murmured Sean, against the window.

  ‘Veedub’s mine. We all have our moments of power.’ He slid into the bends, frightening birds into the air, and the shack came into view. Jerra pulled over.

  ‘The last farewell,’ Sean sneered, glancing at Jerra’s grazed elbow.

  Jerra went over to the hut and hit the wall. He thought the old man might have come up to say goodbye.

  ‘You there?’ Bubbling of the VW. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Might’ve slipped to the other side. You know, psychically.’

  ‘Pass some paper.’ Holding the paper against the window. ‘Ah. Hadn’t thought —’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘His name. Can hardly write anything if I don’t know his name.’

  ‘Jekyll?’

  ‘For shit’s sake!’

  ‘Seen it all before. Movie, perhaps.’

  ‘Bugger it,’ said Jerra, climbing in and slamming the door. He yanked the handbrake. ‘Let’s just go; that’ll be enough.’

  He gave it a little. And missed second with a crunch.

  PART TWO

  what you’d want most

  SUDDEN COLD days of autumn. Jerra felt the dull hardness of the bedroom walls as he overlooked the prim tablecloth of the garden next door, its zig-zagged edges, hem-stitched borders with bougainvillaea and little drooping mauve things that clung tight; seeing the same things that had excited him in those early years when it was like living in a tree-house looming above the silky oaks, being higher, even, than the jacaranda clouds that were now an old, hard purple, and thick enough, it seemed, to walk on. The two-storey house in Nedlands had been an abrupt change, he remembered dimly, from the weatherboard place at North Beach. Night times, when he couldn’t sleep, Jerra would lie listening to the tide coming in at Cottesloe; it was six miles away, his father said, but he could hear it, anyway. Now all he heard was the traffic on Stirling Highway and the long breath of the downstairs air conditioner.

  Sunlight was a neat square on the shag. There were books and photographs on the shelves, dents in the wall from bats and balls, and, above his pillow, a small footprint that wouldn’t come off.

  Under the silky oak the downy leaves were the same, crackling beneath his feet, wet in the coarse chill of the mornings. Early, the man next door tortured the mower into life and chased it around until lunch time, shouting when the soft cores of dog turds bit into his shins.

  Jerra was watering the nature strip, which didn’t need it.

  ‘Son.’ His father nodded, hands in the pockets of his loose grey trousers.

  ‘’Lo, Dad.’ The water was numbing his fingers.

  His father sniffed, staring at the kangaroo-paw.

  ‘Been thinking much?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘What you’re gonna do with yourself. Long time since you had work.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Though you might’ve stuck at the boats longer. I thought you liked fish.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Better still, you liked catching the buggers. Not often you’d be disappointed on the boats. Caught a pile. Or you said so in your letters.’

  ‘It’s not the same.’ He was spraying the pickets of the fence, long lashes on the rough boards, for the sake of the kangaroo-paw. ‘It’s the skill. Learnt that, if nothin’ else. Like you used to say, the touches on the line, or like divin’ for ’em on their own terms, not hauling them in by the ton with a winch. That’s like . . . mining, or something.’

  He heard the quiet breathing over the spray of the hose. A dog cleared its throat.

  ‘Yeah. Not the same. But you can’t expect —’

  ‘Sure, nothing’s all roses. But it’s just not right. Nothing seems to be right.’

  ‘When I was your age —’

  ‘Dad —’

  ‘Orright, just listen. Younger than you, I was, and your grandmother came home one day, pulled me in by the ear, and said —’

  ‘“Yer an apprentice boiler maker”, I know.’

  ‘And that was it.’

  ‘Easy.’

  ‘No choice.’

  ‘And no big decision.’

  ‘It’s never just one decision. But I went.’

  ‘But time —’

  ‘Seven years.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I shot through.’

  ‘Convincing me of the wrong side, Dad.’

  ‘But you got a choice.’

  Jerra stamped his feet.

  ‘I ended up doin’ a million things.’

  ‘Ever happy?’

  ‘Sometimes. There’s always something else.’

  ‘Then, there was. Thi
s is now. It’s different.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Be easier if I had something to inherit.’ Jerra grinned. ‘Then I could just take over when you went dribbly.’

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘Yeah. No problems, eh?’

  ‘No choice, either.’

  ‘Choice is nothin’ when there’s zero to choose from. A shop with one product. That’s choice?’

  His father kicked the grass.

  ‘Take it away, and that’s what you’d want most.’

  ‘Well, what made you settle down?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said his father. ‘Got tired, I s’pose.’

  ‘Not satisfaction?’

  ‘Maybe that’s one o’ the things you stop worryin’ about.’

  ‘Where does that leave me, then?’

  ‘Maybe you’ll find something. I thought you might finish Uni, like young Sean, and get qualifications.’

  ‘And end up like him? A degree to be a clerk for his old man. In a shirt business? Working out the pay and the collar measurements. What a life!’

  ‘He could’ve got a job elsewhere.’

  ‘Dad, BAs aren’t worth a piss in the river these days.’

  His father turned off the hose. It went limp and Jerra threw it down. The pickets shone.

  ‘I don’t care what you do, as long as you find something you can be satisfied with.’

  ‘Take me till I die.’

  ‘I thought that once.’

  Jerra looked at the greying man, the loose skin around his neck, the pitted palms he remembered gloved in pollard.

  ‘Not the same,’ he said, certain.

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  City streets were cold in the mornings where Jerra wandered, squinting into shopfronts, sitting with the hungover drunks and the picking birds in Forrest Place, walking mornings without recall, looking dully into the brown froth of the river, over the shoulders of bent old men who fumbled with empty hooks, muttering. They spat on the water, the gobs floating out in the viscous current, like jellyfish. He might have spoken to them, but they just looked over their shoulders, as if to accuse him of scaring the fish away. He could have told them that there were none left, only their jellyfish. They muttered, and cricked their knuckles.