Death of a Whaler

by Nerida Newton

  SEVEN

  To Flinch, his life is not a seamless continuum as other people’s lives seem to be. There is no progression. No evidence of that cycle of birth, schooling, job, marriage, children, retirement. That path of an average life, which ends with long pointless days drinking cold beer from ten in the morning until nightfall, and the odd weekend fending off the grandkids. The job-done-well-enough period to which most of the town’s blokes aspire.

  In Flinch’s life there is the moment that cuts through his existence, separating it into two sections, neat as an axe through a block. The before and after periods. He sees examples of before and after photos in the newspaper. Men with fat, sagging bellies. Before. The same men grinning like fools, flexing bulging muscles and swivelling lean torsos. After. He wonders whether, if someone had taken a photo of him before and after, it would have showed, if it would have been revealed in his grainy black-and-white visage. Man. Before. Murderer. After.

  When he steps outside the pastel house, he sees whales. At least once a day anyway. It’s well into the season. They’re hugging the coastline, following that cold Antarctic stream until it meets, with a tidal clash, the warmer Pacific current, creating a whirlpool in which the jetsam and flotsam and marine life from two different spheres intermingle, the water just tepid enough to keep both ecosystems alive.

  He figures he can’t help but spot them after spending his days in the crow’s nest for so many months. During that last season they’d been out on the water for one hundred and forty-four days in a row, hour upon hour, but the number of whales they could sight and kill diminished regardless.

  He knows what to look for. First the blast of fine spray from the blowhole, like some watery volcano erupted. Then the black metallic back and jagged fin above the water, the graceful arch of the leviathan. Occasionally the spy hop, the huge pointed head upright above the surface, just to have a look around, gauge what might be hovering in the strange world above their own. Flinch wonders if they remember the shores from which they crawled into the ocean sixty million years ago. They seem almost joyful when they reach the warmer waters, breaching and crashing in an explosion of white water. They rise two storeys out of the sea, propel themselves up and curve backwards, their pectoral fins like sails, exposing their huge white bellies, ribbed like accordions. Almost airborne. On quieter days, just the flukes rising out of the water like the static wings of some great bird. Leaving footprints on the surface as they dive; still, glassy ovals flecked with the creamy slivers of whale skin. Flinch is always surprised to see them at play, see them take themselves so lightly, especially in the waters that would have been their graveyard little more than a decade ago.

  For weeks after his visit to the commune, he wanders the pastel house in a fog, losing things like car keys and cutlery only minutes after putting them down. Unwilling and unmotivated to leave, he eats his way through the pantry — baked beans, tinned tomatoes, cocktail onions, asparagus and peaches. He misses the six pm radio news, forgets his nightly routine. A stack of books lies untouched near his bed, the top one marked with the rings of coffee mugs and swollen with the damp. The corners of the photo of his mother turn up at the edges. The dust on every surface remains undisturbed.

  He tries to sleep but his back aches, his spine feeling as twisted as wrought metal, his right hip bone grinding against his ribcage. But it is more than just that. He is unsure of what it was about his visit to the commune that has made him feel so disjointed. So dysfunctional. He often finds himself awake for hours in the night, irritated without reason. Some mornings, he wakes terrified and claustrophobic and exhausted, as if he’s been buried alive and has spent the night scratching at the inside of a coffin.

  When he eventually runs out of tins of food, he realises he will have to venture into town. Milly, unused for weeks, is recalcitrant, but he thuds the accelerator with his good leg until she turns over, and speeds off down the hill, revving the engine in case she has second thoughts.

  At the grocery store, he stocks up on all the food he’s been through and a whole lot more that he suddenly craves. Tins of tomatoes, rosella jam, hot English mustard, three loaves of fresh white bread, a side of corned beef, lemonade. When he takes his basket to the counter, he realises he hasn’t brought enough money for it all.

  The lady behind the counter sighs. She’s old, about as old as Audrey would have been had she still been alive, sitting on a stool reading a magazine. Her eyes are enlarged by massive glasses that remind Flinch of butterfly wings, sharp points at the outer edges.

  ‘It’s alright, love,’ she says. ‘You fix yourself a good meal. You can make it up next time, eh?’

  Flinch nods, grateful, and shoves the goods into a hessian sack and limps from the store, making an effort to appear stoic. Sometimes, he thinks, the leg helps, especially when it comes to people who are moved by pity to perform acts of kindness they wouldn’t otherwise be inclined to. He throws the sack into the tray and climbs into the cabin. He is exhausted by even this much of a journey, this interaction. It is as if the experience of the commune overloaded his senses, offered too many challenges, too many differences, all resulting in questions. That’s the last thing he needs. More questions. He feels a need to retreat. To clear his head. And he would be able to successfully, if only he could overcome the nagging irritation of his curiosity. To see how other people start over.

  He sits unmoving in the ute for some time, just watching the slow, steady rollover of the town. At this time, the middle of the day, it’s more or less deserted. A couple of women who look like farmers’ wives, in checked dresses and stockings and shoes and hats, chat in front of a dress shop window. A few bronzed teenage boys, all shaggy fringes and lanky limbs, lean against the bonnet of a car, trying to appear nonchalant but obviously keeping an eye out for authorities, or anyone else who might ask why they’re not in school. A surfer rests his board against a wall while he eats a dripping corner-store steak and beetroot burger. One of Flinch’s old fishing mates, a lot greyer than Flinch remembers him, walks across the street and catches sight of the ute, waves at Flinch. Flinch waves back, hoping they can leave it at that. He’s not feeling up to socialising. Especially not with old Macca. After the accident, after Flinch retreated, Macca had made quite a few attempts to bring him into town, have him to dinner, take him fishing. Mrs Mac there too, sometimes, sitting in their car parked in the driveway of the pastel house, beckoning. Tins of shrivelled meatloaf wrapped in a teatowel and left on his front step when he hadn’t answered the door. The McTavishes had been the only ones to bother, really, after the whaling days. Everyone else offering a vague nod in Flinch’s direction when they passed him in the street, but that was all. Preferring to forget about the whole damn mess. But Flinch, frightened of the everyday conversations that turned inevitably to whaling, Nate, the accident, had always turned down the McTavishes’ invitations, excusing himself by nodding towards the leg, grimacing and hobbling as if it were paining him. Something he had never done before, and did only out of a desperate need for isolation. He remembers with shame shutting the door on Macca, the expression on the man’s face, like some big old dog locked out in the cold. But even now, despite that, Macca pauses in the street and then comes over to the ute, leans in the passenger window.

  ‘G’day, Flinch.’

  ‘Yeah, g’day, Macca. How’s things?’

  ‘Y’know.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s brought you to town?’

  ‘Aw, the usual.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Macca sniffs, hawks and spits. ‘So, you seen any of those commies around here? Bloody joke, I reckon.’

  ‘Commies?’

  ‘Y’know. Based up round Nimbin. Bunch of bloody pinko lefty bastards. Wouldn’t know a real day’s work if it bit them on the arse.’

  ‘You mean the hippies?’ says Flinch.

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  Flinch coughs. ‘I think they’re just students,’ he says eventually.
/>   ‘Exactly,’says Macca. ‘Too much time to think, too little time actually earnin’ their bread. What would they know?’ He laughs. ‘World’s become a funny place, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Flinch, not sure what prompted the observation.

  ‘Well, better get on me way. The missus is expectin’ me to fix the gutter this arvo. Nice catchin’ up with you, mate.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Take care, son.’

  ‘See ya later,’ says Flinch, and hopes he doesn’t.

  When he arrives back at the pastel house, it is drizzling. The point is concealed behind a sheet of mist made up of rain and sea spray, the beam of the lighthouse flashing its warning through the grey. The goats are clustered together nose to tail against the wall of the house, looking damp and miserable.

  He has left the front door unlocked but closed, and is curious to see it ajar as he nears the house. Expects a wily, slit-eyed goat has eaten the toilet roll off its holder and shat hard green pebbles in the kitchen. His hands full with the sack of groceries, he pushes the door open with his hip. In the kitchen a newspaper is laid out on the table, next to a cup of steaming tea. He recognises the grassy scent.

  ‘Oh!’ she says, coming out of the bathroom, plaiting her hair. ‘There you are! I was hoping you might be home soon.’

  Flinch stalls in the doorway, too surprised to move.

  ‘Well, come in!’ she says. ‘Don’t get a cold!’

  He shakes the wet from his hair, wipes his feet and enters the kitchen.

  She’s cleaned it. The dishes are drying in the drainer. There are fresh tea towels folded over the oven door. The benches have been wiped, revealing the speckled grey laminex.

  ‘How did you know where I lived?’

  ‘Oh, easy,’ she says. ‘People in town seem to know you. Well, when I described you anyway.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Walked.’

  Flinch puts his groceries on the kitchen table.

  ‘You left without saying goodbye,’ she says. ‘We were worried.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Karma takes a sip of her tea.

  Flinch, awkward and unsure, looks for something to do, starts putting away the tins. Takes extra care to turn the labels out.

  ‘Anyway. We’re having a healing ceremony tomorrow night. We’re, you know, channelling the positive energy of each other. It’s going to be really cool. It’s a full moon as well, which means really amazing things might happen. I thought you might like to come.’

  ‘Oh. Right,’ says Flinch. ‘I might be too busy.’

  ‘Too busy doing what?’

  ‘Um. Stuff. And fishing. I’m thinking of getting another job. Bit low on cash at the moment.’

  ‘You could still come! You seemed to enjoy yourself last time.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I did. It was good.’

  ‘Good? Is that all? I thought you were getting into it. Letting go.’

  Flinch stiffens. Was he? Over the years, he has fixed himself to so many things, nailed himself to one place with Audrey’s criticisms, Nate’s death, a life of getting by in the pastel house. He knows the way around his thoughts and memories, around his guilt, because he knows where those fixtures lie; they are the landmarks by which he maps himself. Letting go of them feels as reckless as setting himself adrift in his leaky dinghy without a rudder.

  ‘It will be fun,’ she says, after a moment.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he asks.

  ‘I wanted to see you.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because you’re my friend.’

  ‘I hardly know you.’

  ‘But you were friendly to me. And you looked like you could do with some company.’

  ‘I have company.’

  Karma looks around the room, raises an eyebrow. ‘Goats in the garden don’t count,’ she says.

  He sighs. ‘I don’t know what you want.’

  ‘Do I have to want something?’

  Flinch doesn’t say anything.

  ‘It’s part of my belief, Flinch. You could almost call it my duty. I sense that you’re tending a wound somewhere inside you, and I want to help. It’s part of a lifestyle I chose a long time ago. To heal the world in the ways I could.’

  ‘You sensed that about me?’ Flinch is sceptical.

  ‘Well, I guess recognised is closer to the truth.’

  ‘So I’m your cause of the week?’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  Karma sighs and sips her tea. She flicks over the page of the newspaper. Flinch notices bruises around her wrist.

  ‘Is Jed going?’ he asks.

  ‘Probably,’ she says. ‘I don’t know. I don’t have much to do with him anymore. He kinda drops in and out of the commune these days but he doesn’t stay around. Busy saving the world, is Jed.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Flinch.

  Karma folds up her newspaper, brushes her hair out of her eyes and, with a gulp, downs the rest of her tea.

  ‘Well, have it your way. I’d better be getting back.’

  ‘No,’ Flinch says. ‘Um, I mean, I’ll come. Why don’t you stay around here, go to the beach in the morning or something, and then I’ll drive both of us out there tomorrow.’

  She smiles. ‘Cool,’ she says.

  When he stands at the entrance to Audrey’s room, sheets under his arm to make up the bed, he notices Karma has already unpacked a few of her things onto the dresser. The room has been cleaned but otherwise left untouched since his mother died. He sleeps in the room of his childhood, on the lumpy single bed under a quilt of faded cartoon characters, despite the more comfortable double bed of Audrey’s, unused in the next room. He has never been able to claim that space, it’s still as much hers as if she had been standing in the doorway, scowling, a lit cigarette in one hand.

  But Karma breezes past him and Audrey dissipates like smoke in the wind. ‘This room has an amazing view. How could you ever be unhappy, waking up to this every morning?’

  Flinch doesn’t even try to explain.

  Karma cooks dinner for them. She soaks beans, rinses rice until the water runs clear, chops up more types of vegetables than Flinch has ever eaten at once and throws them all into a pot with a tin of tomatoes. She adds one fresh red chilli, a clove of garlic and some sweet-smelling powdery spice that Flinch doesn’t recognise. He is engrossed by the care she is taking to prepare the meal, her involvement with it. Audrey used to bang a frypan on the stove, throw whatever meat she could find in the fridge into it and remove it only when she smelt it burning.

  ‘It smells good,’ he says.

  ‘It’s nothing really,’ she says, but he can tell she is pleased.

  After dinner, they play backgammon under the exposed fluorescent kitchen light, on a dusty board that Karma has found under the bed in Audrey’s room. Flinch had discovered it only when Audrey died, along with an old photo album, from which he’d retrieved the photo of her that he uses as a bookmark, and a stack of empty wine bottles that rolled and clinked when he shoved the broom under. He had forgotten it was there. A few of the white pieces are missing, so they use dried broad beans as replacements. She beats him. Twice. But he’s a good-natured loser. He’s always taken pride in that fact. Had a lot of practice.

  During the night, he has underwater dreams of being tangled — in fishing nets, in the tentacles of octopuses and jellyfish — and he hears whale song, like a dirge, growing steadily louder. He wakes near dawn and gets out of bed, heads to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of milk. He hears her snoring lightly from the other room, and leans around the corner of the doorway to look in on her. She is sleeping face-up, her hair matted around her neck, one arm flopped over the side of the bed. He wonders if she sleeps so soundly in her orange tepee, on the hard floor of the earth, being bitten by angry bull ants.

  He doubts it.

  When he wakes again later in the morning, she is gone. There’s a note stuck to the fridge with a magnet advertising th
e local bait and tackle. Scrawled on the back of a used envelope in what looks like ruby-red lip liner. Maybe one of Audrey’s, Flinch thinks, because he’s never seen Karma wear makeup. Gone to beach for swim. If not back by dark, get worried. But still go to healing ceremony! Doctor’s orders. Ha ha. See you soon. K.

  Flinch cooks himself a massive breakfast — three fried eggs, a T-bone steak, a piece of bacon, a tomato, a tin of baked beans and two pieces of toast. He eats quickly, making sure to wash the frying pan and air out the kitchen before she returns. Covers the evidence of his carnivorous feast by burying the T-bone in the backyard, like some dodgy cop-show killer. When he comes out later, it has been scratched up but neither it nor the goats are anywhere to be seen.

  Karma is gone for almost the whole day. Flinch makes her a lunch of tomato sandwiches on white bread that grows soggy over the course of the afternoon. He eventually throws them out the window for the goats. She comes back at dusk. Flinch, bored with waiting, is napping on the couch when she returns.

  ‘Hey,’ she says softly, grabs his foot and shakes it. It’s his short leg. He always sleeps curled up on his good side. Flinch awakes with a start at the shock of being touched on his malformed leg, and recoils to the edge of the couch.

  ‘Not there,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s alright,’ Flinch says. ‘I just got a fright.’

  They sit quietly. Flinch rubs his eyes.

  ‘I was dreaming,’ he says. ‘Must have been kind of a nightmare.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says.

  ‘Did you have a good day?’ Flinch asks after a moment, still blinking.

  ‘Yeah, I did! I went for a swim, then some of the others were in town so I grabbed lunch with them, then I walked all the way up to the lighthouse by myself and just sat there, you know, taking in the vibe. And then, just as I was feeling really, like, peaceful, these whales appeared right out in front of me. They rose up way out of the water. It was awesome!’ Her eyes are shining. She is flushed.