An Open Swimmer

by Tim Winton

  ‘You little barsted!’

  Rosa screamed. As he backed away, Jerra knew that Al was not there; he had an idea where he would be. He groped along the side bench for a weapon. Anything. As the big man straddled the counter, Jerra fumbled up a cold bottle of Coke, feeling the teeth of the bottle-top in his palm as he slammed it down onto the overalled shin. Another scream. Not Rosa. The man purpling. Blood from the arm. Jerra pounded him frantically on the buttocks as he continued dragging himself over. Very scared now, Jerra retreated behind the chocolate shelves where he caught a glimpse of Al, scuttling and locking.

  Something shattered. Rosa screaming again.

  ‘He’s got a bottle!’ she wailed.

  As the bloody sleeve appeared, the teeth of glass held like a knife with many blades, Jerra moved back further, wanting to be sick and ready at the same time, backing into the dimness of a corner with a thirty-cent Coke chilling his palms. Overalls. He sprang out, rammed the bottle hard and high between the man’s legs, and kicked wildly in the same place and others as the legs bent like paper straws. A hand went around his throat but opened as the man fell. Grunting and gargling, the body pumped on the linoleum, twitching, sucking in air.

  ‘Rosa,’ he called, very quiet, shaking.

  ‘Is he dead? Where’s Dad?’

  Jerra kicked the broken bottle-neck from the writhing man’s fingers. It slithered into a corner.

  ‘Dad orright?’ Rosa came.

  ‘He’s just locking the strongbox.’ That bubbling noise sickened him.

  Al appeared.

  ‘Got a smart-arse, eh?’

  ‘Oh, shit, Al.’

  ‘Watcher make trouble for?’

  ‘Oh, come on!’

  Al went back behind the shelves. Jerra leant against the counter, staring around the empty shop, keeping an eye on the stricken factory man. Al came back with the strongbox, unlocking it again.

  ‘See you were lookin’ after things,’ Jerra sneered.

  ‘Rosa was right. You’re real stupid!’ He flung the box open and snatched out a few twenties and some smaller notes. ‘Here.’ He dropped them on the counter. Jerra saw the sweat coming out of him. ‘That’s your pay, thassall!’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Silly bastard,’ muttered Rosa. ‘Yer crazy.’

  He snatched up the money and went carefully round the back, past the sweaty, vomitty thing. Near the back door, he stopped and peeled off a two-dollar note.

  ‘Hey, Al!’

  Al’s head showed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Money for the Cokes.’ He dropped it, swaggeringly, near the head on the floor, hand trembling. ‘His is on me.’

  ‘Hey,’ called Al. He looked nervous. ‘What about him? You can’t just leave him there!’

  ‘Your fuckin’ customer,’ he cried, eyes full, ashamed. ‘Serve him.’

  Al threw something on the floor. Rosa was sneering.

  ‘Bastard! What am I gonna do with him now, eh?’

  ‘Lock ’im in . . . in —’

  Out the door. The stench forced fingers up his nostrils. He leant against the bricks. He wanted to vomit, but there was nothing.

  ‘Crazy bastard!’ From inside again. ‘Thinks he’s tough shit now.’

  He pulled jerkily into the driveway. The man next door was harvesting dog turds. Jerra went upstairs, smelling cold pies and roos and puke, thinking of all the caustic one-liners now it was too late. And there was tonight.

  ‘How can they see what they’re eating?’ she murmured. She seemed happy.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothin’.’

  Picking her way, the waitress came with the wine, reds jiggling thickly in the bottles. The little gas lantern on the table glimmered on the glass. He couldn’t read the label, though he didn’t try hard.

  ‘Hope you like Shiraz.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The wine.’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’

  She pulled back her hair.

  ‘Not the full biscuit tonight, are you?’

  He put an elbow on the tablecloth.

  ‘Gimme some plonk. I’ll cheer up.’

  At other tables, leaning into the yellow gravy light, people tilted glasses, pausing with the glint of cutlery in their hands. The music was thin. Jerra filled his barren throat with wine, watching her neck as she drank. She wore a thin, brown shawl of coarse wool, an open shirt and boots. He felt the hard toes against his jeans. Her eyes were different. Make-up, perhaps, he guessed. Freckles, dusty and fine, glowed on her forehead. No, it wasn’t make-up; he had seen those shadows in eyes before; he ignored it.

  The waitress returned.

  ‘What are you going to order?’ Judy asked, touching his cold fingers.

  The waitress held a torch to the menu. It was all a bit silly, and they must have made a mistake with the prices. Whatever happened to the Chinese joints with tile floors and sweet and sour pork for $3.50?

  ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Umm. Veal Whateveritis. Sounds good.’

  ‘Yeah, but how does it taste?’

  ‘Very good,’ said the waitress.

  He nodded politely, wondering what the hell about the veal.

  ‘Rack of Lamb. That sounds gruesome enough.’ He wasn’t hungry.

  The waitress snapped her little notebook shut and went off into the darkness.

  ‘Should’ve had cray, I suppose.’

  ‘Know anything about crayfish dishes?’

  ‘Not much. Only cray a la boil-bust-and-bog-in.’

  ‘Awful things. To look at, I mean. Tell me about your friend.’

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing to say, really. Fathers close friends. Grew up together. Best mates. Us the same. You have many friends at school?’

  ‘Not really. Girls aren’t really friends at school – just bitches waiting to get you back for this or that. Girls don’t make friends; doesn’t do much for our image.’

  ‘S’pose you’d know.’

  ‘Yes. I would.’ She eased her head back, showing the soft white beneath her chin that ran in a parting curve between the buttons shining like teeth. Her breasts quivered. ‘Bet you spent your childhood in the pinball shops on the beachfront.’

  ‘Oh, off and on. Surfing was big, then.’

  ‘Peroxide your hair?’

  ‘I tried lemons every summer, but it didn’t work. Walking round, smelling like Air-O-Zone. Doesn’t get a bloke anywhere, somehow.’

  ‘Not much school, eh?’

  ‘Why? Do I seem stupid?’

  She put her glass down.

  ‘I was joking,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Tell you something about crayfish seeing’s you’re so fascinated by them.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You can float along in a boat some days – a calm day – and sometimes, if you lift a big piece of floating weed, there’ll be a cray underneath, using it for shelter. They migrate during the growth season or something, under bits and pieces that give them shelter. If you keep a shadow over it, the cray won’t notice the difference, and you can just scoop him up into the boat. No one seems to know much about those buggers. Reckon they travel hundreds of miles. Like pilgrims, or sumpin’.’

  She was watching his hands move, he noticed.

  ‘Ever been crabbing?’ he asked, brightening, suddenly self-conscious.

  ‘Oh, God, yeah.’

  ‘Get bitten, eh?’

  ‘No, but I dreamt it a million times.’

  ‘Great fun, though.’

  ‘Marvellous.’ She didn’t appear convinced.

  ‘Really hot nights, the mud stinking like an excavated graveyard, the lights on the beach, people laughing and talking. Great.’

  ‘Sometimes, even crabs.’

  ‘Boilin’ ’em up in big drums on the beach. Cooki
n’ spuds on the fire. Beer. A girlfriend from school.’

  ‘With braces.’

  ‘Him or her?’

  ‘Both, no doubt.’

  ‘Her Dad and others out with the nets. A quick grope on the beach with the Tilley down low. Mud squelching under the tarpaulin.’

  ‘Mm.’

  The imprint showing perfectly when packing up to go. Parents’ eyebrows. Drop the tarp back down for a sec – shoelaces, yeah, just do the old shoelaces up. Looking down at thongs. The girl giggling nervously.

  ‘Bet she was a younger girl.’

  ‘They.’

  ‘Oh, they? All crawling after you, eh?’

  Catching only the distant silhouettes out in the water. Hearing her talk, back on her elbows, brushing mosquitoes, hair lapping back over her shoulders near his feet. Wishing, wishing. Watching all the way up from those little feet, brown thighs shining in the lamplight, to the snug, white shorts. Wishing. And hating that glint on her hand. Imagining the broader mould they would leave, wider scoops in the mud from her buttocks. Sand forced under his toenails. Seeing hers, white shells in a neat row. Wishing she had braces. That she wasn’t Sean’s mum.

  ‘Did you ever have braces?’ What was he saying?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perfect teeth all your life, eh?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Jerra sliced down the bone, stripping away the soft brown meat. He still wasn’t hungry, but the wine had hollowed him out, reminding him of how little he had eaten. And the vomiting.

  ‘So where did you go to school?’ he asked.

  ‘Methodist Ladies’.’

  ‘Wonder your oldies didn’t give you braces, just to show they could afford it.’

  ‘Aren’t we the righteous one!’

  ‘Sorry. Was it a girls’ school?’

  ‘Girls only at a Ladies’ College. You are bright tonight.’

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘You don’t like it; you afford it.’ She smiled.

  ‘And what did your parents do to get you into a private school?’

  ‘How, not what. They’re both doctors with separate practices. Probably didn’t know what else to do with their money. Got sick of buying and collecting, and decided to put a few shares into me.’

  ‘Just like that.’

  She speared the veal.

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Did you pay off?’

  ‘Oh, I topped classes and everything, but I think they were expecting something else.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Love. Respect.’

  ‘No chance?’

  ‘I remembered their birthdays and things, but they’re hard to love.’

  Jerra continued to slice and eat. He was feeling a little better now, stronger, the wine burning in his stomach.

  ‘Are they still together?’

  ‘They go by clauses.’ She pressed a fingertip against the bottle. ‘Still, there’s always a way round what’s on paper.’ She drank more wine.

  Their faces rippled and wavered. Jerra picked at the label on the second bottle and noticed his nails, white in the blue tips of his fingers.

  ‘Be running dry, the way we’re going.’ He was feeling sad, a little sorry for her, a little sorry for himself.

  ‘Plenty at my place.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So. You had a friend. Be good to spend a childhood with a special friend.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s like putting all your eggs in one basket.’

  Outside it had begun to drizzle, slow, floating wisps of moisture settling in the fibres of hair and wool. The VW was only a block away. She kissed him on the neck as he unlocked the door. He could feel the steamy heat beneath the buttons; the shawl was rough on his neck.

  ‘Taking me up on the coffee?’

  It was an old, solid house with white stone walls and a large open veranda, like many of the old Cottesloe-Swanbourne fortresses of the forties. The veranda was cluttered with hanging pots, ferns, picture-frames, a rusty tricycle, and a six-foot oak table, buckling in the centre. The outside light was on.

  He followed her inside. A long carpeted hallway. On the left, with a lamp in the corner, was the living-room, strewn with mats and cushions. Other doors along the hall were closed. Jerra watched the swing of her hair. The kitchen was long and wide. There was a big combustion stove with swing doors, and a long window near the sink which must have overlooked a garden. Twigs and small boughs clawed the glass.

  She went to the sink and filled the kettle, dropped wood into the slow-burning fire that murmured when she opened the door, then took off her shawl and threw it over a high-chair.

  ‘Come into the living-room. We can light the fire.’

  In the living-room there was a large red-brick fireplace, with pine kindling and large pieces of split jarrah on the hearth. Over the fireplace was a mounted rifle, a weathered Lee-Enfield. Judy knelt at the hearth, sprinkling the wood. Jerra heard the pfff of the wood igniting as he ran a hand over the calloused stock.

  ‘That’s better,’ she sighed, rubbing her hands. ‘Pooh, this kero stinks. Just go and wash my hands.’

  When she came back, a glass in each hand, she noticed him running a finger along the rusted sight.

  ‘Like it?’ She gave him a glass.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘The rifle.’

  He sat by the fire.

  ‘Nice ’ol thing. Can’t get ammo for them any more.’

  ‘My father gave it to me with the place. Used to take me shooting, sometimes. Took us to the Territory once, shooting buffalo. Shot donkeys once.’

  ‘Shooting as well, eh?’

  ‘When Dad was charitable with his time he used to do lots of things with us.’

  ‘Hunting. Like it?’

  Flames lapped round the base of the chimney.

  ‘Better than fishing,’ she said. ‘Nothing much that beats stalking something big, waiting till you’re close, sight him, then bang. He’s yours for good. That’s real stuff.’

  He looked into the fumy reflections of the tumbler.

  ‘Done much hunting?’ she asked, poking something further into the flames.

  ‘Only small stuff. Never real game,’ he murmured, remembering those quiet drives along country roads with his father, waiting for a rabbit to show.

  Ears like two fingers in the air, then the full silhouette as they round the bend. His father murmurs and switches off the engine. Jerra hears the gravel moving as he opens the door, wheels of the ute still rolling. Wedges the barrel in the V-space between the door and the car. Silhouette twitches, tiny head wavering, then settling again. Dirt up behind just before the crack of the .22. His father whispers, ‘High and to the left’, and he pokes another round in, shaking, expecting the head to bob down any second.

  A hit was little different. The head bobbed down anyway. And backwards a bit.

  ‘You don’t think hunting’s all that good,’ she asked idly.

  ‘No. You’re not talking about hunting.’

  She moved over and sat next to him near the hearth. Her glass was empty on the bricks, blazing with firelight.

  ‘Time for your theory, sonny-boy.’

  He felt the breath of fire on his face. The whisky scalded the back of his throat.

  ‘You really want to hear?’

  ‘Educate me.’

  Hand on his leg. The room warming.

  ‘Animals are different alive and dead,’ he began enthusiastically, blindly.

  ‘No prizes for that.’

  No moonlight. The rock was cold and hard beneath his buttocks. His father had the whistle in his mouth, sucking quietly. Jerra held the spot, the cord running across the fence to the tractor. Little weeping, shrill sounds came from the whistle.

  ‘Okay, turn it on,’ whispered his father. ‘See him this time.’

  Coals appeared in the scrub about forty yards away.

  ‘There,’ murmured Jerra, holding the spot steady on the eyes. Like jewels. Nothing else shone l
ike that. To have one in a little bag, to look at on special occasions, that would be good. To show Sean. Not the rest of the kids. They wouldn’t know.

  ‘Off,’ said his father. He whistled again. ‘He’ll come further.’

  ‘Why?’ He switched out. The light was heavy, though not as heavy as the little rifle his Dad called the pea-shooter.

  ‘The whistle.’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘Sounds like a wounded rabbit. Fox thinks he’s got quick tucker.’

  ‘But he hasn’t.’

  He smiled. They would get this fox. His Dad was smarter.

  ‘On.’

  He switched on. Gone. No, they were closer, in the long hair of wild oats to the left. He stood. His father moved behind, resting the slim barrel on Jerra’s shoulder. He could feel his father’s knees touching the heels of his boots, and smell the oil on the barrel. His father took a long breath. He breathed with him. Crack! in his ear. The lights went out. Only the white circle like a moon on the grass.

  Judy waited.

  ‘Explain,’ she said, touching his arm.

  His palms were damp.

  ‘You said that stalking and the kill were best, with animals. Stalking is good. That’s hard; makes you work. But the kill is different. With an animal, killing changes it. With big things. Things that ripple and snort and you can hear them breathing, you’re so close.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘No use hunting a buffalo or a roo, because you’re hunting something you’ll never get. What you get, even with a good kill, is different to what you were after. A roo, I know, won’t have that hard, tough look; the eyes are different, like glass marbles. Just a sack of dead meat with blood snotting out the nostrils. A rabbit’s like a rag doll when its bladder collapses. Foxes, they’re the best thing. You hunt them for the eyes. You get him, the eyes go out, there’s just the body of a dog with the tongue out.’

  ‘Why fish? Isn’t that the same, catching a big fish?’ she said, moving in on him.

  ‘Fishing isn’t hunting, either.’ He knew now. ‘Sitting out of the water, gaffing the sods up, it’s luck with a bit of skill. Up to the fish to take the bait. All you do is pull him up, wear him out a bit on the way, and try not to get wet. The fish can rip the hook out, and his lips with it, or surrender.’