by Claire Zorn
Minty grinned, bobbing his head with enthusiam. ‘Sick.’
‘Not so much if you live in the Cook Islands. People are probably gonna die. But sick for you, sure.’
‘I’m surfin’ El Niño, baby.’
‘I’m working,’ said Ruby.
‘What? Here?’
‘Bakery.’
‘Piss off.’
‘It’s called a job, Minty.’
‘So? Come first thing. Six.’
‘Start at six.’
‘You’ve changed.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Minty shrugged.
‘Five years, Mint. Five years I’ll be gone, I’ll be in New York or London or some shit, and you’ll still be here, getting pissed, screwing around, chasing the Bombie.’
‘No break in London.’ Minty frowned. ‘Wait. They got beaches there? Fuckin’ pebbly ones, ay.’
‘Next time you’re wondering why I won’t do you, Minty,’ she popped a chip in her mouth, ‘that’s your answer right there.’
Sam felt all wrong and out of place in the space between them. He wanted Minty to make a wisecrack and break the tension but Minty just folded his arms and looked away. Ruby was either oblivious or didn’t give a shit about the awkwardness of the moment. She leaned across the table and picked up Sam’s Discman. She put an earphone in and pressed play, made a sour face and ripped the earphone out.
‘Skater punk shit.’
‘Hardly. Beastie Boys.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Ruby only listens to Led Zeppelin,’ Minty said, tuning back in. ‘Nothin’ else.’
‘Nothin’ else worth listening to.’
A couple of tradies wandered into the chicken shop. Ruby uncrossed her legs and stood up.
‘See ya,’ said Minty.
‘Later, dickhead. Say hi to El whatsi for me.’
Minty watched her saunter past him and into the shop.
‘She seems nice,’ said Sam.
‘She’s a nightmare.’
‘I can tell.’
‘Wanna come tomorrow?’
‘Surf? Yeah, I do.’
Minty laughed. ‘You’ll probably die.’
‘Good.’
‘Didn’t know you were such a nerd, brah. You hide it well.’
‘Thanks.’
That night Sam waited until he was sure everyone was asleep, then he got out of bed and crept across the lounge, into Lorraine’s room. She was snoring, lit by the streetlight through thin curtains. At the foot of the bed was the Grace Brothers bag she had carried from his apartment two nights before. He took it back to his room, tipped it out and picked through the contents: passports, bank stuff, Centrelink letters, Medicare, insurance papers for a car sold ages ago. Anything that looked important he took, including the chequebook, a letter from a solicitor, the Centrelink stuff and her keycard and licence from her wallet. He still had her little address book where every name and number she needed to know were carefully printed in her neat cursive handwriting. He’d taken it from her bedside drawer on that last night, as the paramedics had strapped his mother to the gurney. The Booners’ old Bankstown address was struck out in firm sharp biro lines. There was no Archer Point address noted down. Only the phone number. Sam had felt the address book in his back pocket while he sat with her in the hospital. He’d resisted calling that number until the very last moment when he knew for certain she wasn’t coming back and he had no choice. He’d known that phone call would pull him, as if through a black hole, into the past. Now he traced her handwriting with his finger, feeling the faint bumps in the paper like braille. He put the address book and all the important stuff in a plastic bag and stowed it in the gap under the shelf in the corner of the room. Then he returned the Grace Brothers bag to its place in Lorraine’s room. She would notice things missing. He would deal with that when it happened.
5
They left before first light. Sam had been awake until three, then slept heavily and now was hopeless and bumbling in the dark. Minty was chirpy, eyes too bright for 5 am. He was zipped into his wetsuit and ready to go before Sam had even woken up properly. Shane was out the front waiting. He looked Sam up and down but said nothing.
Minty whistled to himself while he walked. Like Pop used to. He tried to explain how catching a wave was about anticipating the movement of the swell, becoming part of it, coaxing it to allow you to join. Speed and timing were everything. He talked about it the way a horseman might talk about breaking a horse. ‘You can skate, brah. It’s the same. But better,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing like fuckin’ skateboarding,’ Shane grunted.
When they arrived at the headland, Minty and Shane dropped their boards on the grass and joined the handful of surfers standing, arms folded, gazing out at the ocean. There was a solemn unwavering reverence among the group.
The sky had brightened a little, ready to welcome the sun, but the water was a heaving, dark mass: roaring, rumbling, swelling in peaks and engulfing the rocks in spluttering foam. Flumes of spray rose from the tops of the waves, white veils caught in the whipping wind.
‘You still in?’ Minty asked.
Sam nodded.
Minty took the board under his arm and jogged down the goat track just as the sun crowned the horizon, throwing light into the sky, rippling orange and candy pink over the water. Sam copied him. He could imagine how it would feel to be scared of the water. If he flicked his mind back to before his mum died he knew he would have been wary. Now he felt nothing. He ran across the rock into the whitewater, knees high. He pushed out, landed stomach down on the board. A monster wall of water rolled in and he put his head down, slipping under like a seal.
Minty was hanging back, waiting for him. A wave built and Minty shouted at him to take it. ‘Go hard, brah. Paddle!’
Sam did as he was told. He felt the moment that he united with the wave, like when the wheels of a plane leave the tarmac. It surged behind him. Minty was shouting instructions but Sam couldn’t hear him. He tried to spring onto his feet the way Minty did but as soon as he shifted his weight onto his arms and tried to move his legs up, the nose of the board dipped into the water and the next thing he knew he was being flipped down the front of the wave. Water surged up his nose, through his throat, scouring his insides. It took what felt like an age to find the sky and air. He came up spluttering, just in time to see Minty slide past him, languidly drawing patterns on the wave. When he was done he dropped into the water and then turned back toward Sam, motioning to him to come in to the beach.
It wasn’t until Sam was sloshing through the shallows toward the beach, lugging the board under his arm, that he realised he hadn’t had anything at all in his head when he was in the water. The snapshots that crowded his mind and blocked out the light had all dissolved and, in those moments when he was trying to catch the wave, he had felt a lightness that he hadn’t felt since his mum passed out in his arms. As soon as he made the realisation, the snapshots shoved their way back in, like a reel of film being changed.
Minty spent the next half hour with him, board on the sand, instructing him on how to ‘pop up’. He drilled him again and again, his zeal unrelenting, until – arms and chest aching – Sam finally got the hang of the movement. Minty then took him into the breakers, where the water was waist high and Sam lay on the board while Minty pushed him onto wave after wave and Sam tried to stand up.
After another hour in the water Sam’s muscles felt as though they had melted. He caught a wave in to shore, finally standing up for three seconds, his personal best. Minty whistled as he followed him onto the sand. Sam dropped the board, yanked his arms from the wetsuit and sat down, waiting for more oxygen to find its way to his head.
‘Going back to the point,’ Minty said and Sam nodded.
He watched the surfers in the water. Most wrestled with the waves. Minty danced with them. It was absurd, his elegance, the calligraphy lines of the board across the glassy faces of the waves. He d
ecorated them in flicks and swirls. His board sliced the water, speeding, hurtling, yet there was nothing quick or urgent about his movements. His left shoulder and arm were relaxed by his side, palm waving occasionally in the air, his torso tilted into the face, right arm trailing behind, smooth. Balletic.
Sam’s gaze followed the curve of the beach around to the southern point. A figure was running along the sand, a girl in Speedos sprinting toward him. She came to a stop about ten metres away. Her body was a smooth, compact hourglass shape. She wasn’t skinny, but toned and athletic. He tried not to openly stare at the curve of her thighs and bum. She turned to face the horizon, her hands clasped behind her head. She had caramel-coloured hair, a mass of curls pulled back into a messy knot. A stray curl clung to the nape of her neck. He pretended he was watching the waves until she turned and sprinted away again, toes flicking sand behind her. He watched her until she was a blurry dot in the distance then he picked up the board and headed for the house.
When he left the headland and turned onto Minty’s street a darkness passed through Sam, a pulling pain in his chest that felt like the black hole had opened up inside him and everything was being sucked in.
Swim little fishes, way down below.
Wiggle their tails
And away they go.
6
Sam spent the afternoon hours curled on the camp bed, earphones in, Jeff Buckley on repeat. Jeff sang about the clouds pulling him into the sky and taking him away. The delicate notes and then the soaring wail, it sounded like flying, like being above everything only to crash down to reality again, over and over. They had laughed at him if he cried at school. Seven years old and wanting his mum so much his lip trembled. He, like any boy, learned early, earlier than he could even understand, not to show it. Not to show the raw feeling. But Jeff laid everything bare. It seemed you were allowed to if you could sing on a stage with a microphone and a guitar.
Sam couldn’t play guitar and he couldn’t sing.
At some point he made his legs work and went to the phone in the kitchen. His fingers knew the pattern of Luke’s number; he’d been calling it since he was ten. The phone rang and rang until it was answered. The familiar sound of his friend’s voice carved the hole deeper in his chest.
‘Sam! Dude, where you been? I been calling you. New Year’s was a joke. There was like, no beer left after ten. You didn’t miss anything. How ’bout you?’ Luke laughed. ‘You watch the fireworks on TV?’
‘No.’
‘Where are you anyway? We’re goin’ to the half-pipe tonight. I got new trucks, dude—’
‘My mum died,’ Sam blurted out the words.
‘What?’
‘My mum died. On New Year’s. She had a massive bleed on her brain. Burst aneurysm.’ He said the words exactly like the doctor had, like he was telling Luke what he’d had for lunch. There was a silence. ‘She’s dead.’
Luke’s voice was quiet. ‘You serious?’
‘Yep. I’m at my aunt’s near Wollongong.’
‘Shit. Are you okay? What? Are you coming back?’
‘Don’t know. Look, I gotta go.’
‘Tell me when the funeral is.’
‘Sure thing. I gotta go.’
‘Sam—’
‘Later.’
He hung up on Luke, went out the front of the house and picked up his skateboard.
Sam stopped when he came to a bus stop on the main strip. A sign told him the city shuttle would be by in ten minutes. He waited. When it came, the bus was scattered with pensioners and mouthy locals who looked like they’d just come from the methadone clinic. He didn’t know what to expect of Wollongong. Fifteen minutes later he found it was six blocks’ worth of office buildings, a library, town hall, a couple of bowling clubs, an RSL and an RTA. He rode the pavements, gliding between business people, women with strollers and tradies on smoko. Along the main strip of shops he came across a newsagent. He flicked the board up and went in. The shopkeeper eyed Sam as he scanned the garish magazine covers: shiny, lipsticked models pouted on fashion magazines, New Idea had exclusive news about Princess Di, Dolly offered dating advice and a Backstreet Boys poster. Sam found the music section and picked up a copy of Rolling Stone, a picture of Jeff Buckley on the cover. He flicked through the pages.
‘You can buy it, you know,’ said the shopkeeper.
Sam looked up and smiled. ‘No thanks.’
He left the shop, magazine in his hand and stepped onto his skateboard. The shopkeeper ran out after him, yelling. But Sam was already down the hill and across the intersection. Mum wouldn’t have liked it. She would have told him that the owner of the newsagent was just a guy trying to make a living, putting his kids through school, dreaming of a holiday on the Gold Coast. He deserved the money for the magazine.
But she was gone.
She had left him alone among the shattered remains of her family. She had left him without any answers as to why she’d cut them off all those years ago.
He had nowhere to direct the anger, the fear, the rage. He was angry at her for dying. So he spat it back at the shopkeeper and the universe in general. She was a good person. She tried to do good things and live in a way that was fair and decent. She taught him the definition of the word ‘integrity’ before he even started school. And the universe decided she didn’t deserve a place in it anymore. So screw the universe. And screw the shopkeeper.
Sam was stepping off the bus, about to head back to Minty’s when a girl’s voice yelled out to him. He looked up and saw Ruby sitting on the squat garden wall of a house just down from the bus stop.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Got a smoke?’ Ruby asked.
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s useless. What’re you doing?’
‘Went into town to have a look around.’
‘Ah, see it’s obvious you’re a benny because you just called Wollongong “town”. To people round here, that’s “The City”.’
‘It’s not a city.’
‘No shit.’
‘What’s a benny?’
‘Only a benny would ask that. Minty said you were bereaved. What, your dog die or something?’
‘No. My mum.’
‘Bloody hell. When?’
‘Wednesday. No. Friday.’
‘So you’re staying with Mint?’
‘Yeah.’
Ruby didn’t say anything else, staring at Sam, squinting in the light.
‘What’re you doing?’ he asked her.
‘Finished work. Was gonna bum a ride home, then go for a surf.’ She craned her neck, looking up the road past the shops. ‘But no one’s come by. My board’s back at my place. Hey, you gotta key to the Booners’?’
Sam felt in his back pocket for the spare key Lorraine had given him.
‘I can see your undies, skater boy,’ Ruby said with a smirk. ‘Like, I get that you guys wear your pants all like, low and shit. But that’s farkin’ ridiculous.’
‘Whatever.’
‘You gotta swap those denims for boardies if you wanna fit in here, bud. And pull ’em up for God’s sake.’
‘Who are you? My grandmother?’
‘I’m the coolest girl in town. You gotta pay attention. Mint in?’
He figured she must have meant in the surf. ‘I think so. Was before. He’s pretty good, hey?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m better.’
Sam laughed and she glared at him, dead serious. ‘I am. But I gotta work. And I don’t wanna compete. I’m comin’ with you back to the Booners’, grab one of Mint’s boards. Go from there.’ She started walking and glanced back over her shoulder to Sam. ‘Come on, slowpoke.’
Sam followed her, thinking about how ‘slowpoke’ was a word used by mums, not long-legged girls in combat boots.
At the house Sam unlocked the door and Ruby went ahead of him to Minty’s room. Sam shadowed her, unsure if he should have let her in. She ran her fingertips along the rack of Minty’s boards, making her selection.
<
br /> ‘He gonna be cool with you using that?’
She turned to face him with a look like he was the dumbest guy she’d ever met and didn’t bother with a reply. She took a board and leaned it against the wall, looking it up and down.
‘Where’s he get them all from, anyway?’
She pointed to a large Rip Curl decal. ‘Sponsorship.’
‘He’s got sponsorship? How much?’
‘No cash. Just gear. He’s got a shaper further down south. Rip Curl pays for ’em to do his boards.’ She motioned to the wetsuits. ‘Hit him up with all these. It’s made him piss weak, but. You get him in the water without his wettie and he won’t stop whingeing about dick shrink.’
Sam laughed. ‘You’ve known him a long time?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. He’s a dickhead, but he’s my best mate, you know? Everyone loves Minty.’ She took the board under her arm. ‘But he loves me the most,’ she said with a sly smile. ‘You comin’ down?’
‘Nah. Tell Mint I’m just gonna hang here.’
She nodded and watched him with an intensity that made him blush. ‘You alright? Not gonna top yourself or nuthin’?’
‘Not yet.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
Dinner was a barbecue chook and a tub of coleslaw in front of Home and Away. Minty and Shane slumped, quiet and glassy-eyed, on the couch. Lorraine gave them each a kiss on the top of the head and a can of no-name cola. From what Sam had gathered he knew that Lorraine had a job in the kitchen of a retirement home. She wore a pale blue smock for a uniform and now she perched on the arm of the couch holding a drumstick with her purple-lacquered fingernails, like talons.
‘Has Minty been looking after you, love?’
Minty grunted.
‘Gonna have to sort a funeral,’ she said.
Sam nodded.
‘Never thought I’d be the one picking her casket,’ she mumbled. ‘Shows you never know, s’pose. Called the hospital today ’bout a death certificate. Need it to access her accounts, you know.’