‘Call me Flinch,’ he says to the goats in the morning when he steps out to face each long day. He knows that if Nate were around, they’d both have a laugh.
Flinch has spent a lot of the past decade thinking about obsession and madness. Recently he has decided that he is depressed.
It’s not depression of the dark or suicidal kind. More like a sleepy malaise. A discontent with which Flinch has grown so familiar he might feel uncomfortable or underdressed if it were lifted. It’s a feeling that he’s meant to be elsewhere. That he’s missed a bus or an important appointment. Just a small, cold, consistent panic. He has stopped wearing watches because he had found himself checking the time with such frequency that he developed a tic in his wrist. It did occur to him that he might fill the day just by watching the time tick away. But it only seemed to slow it down.
Hardest of all, perhaps, is just the plain old emptiness of his life. The something missing. On windy days he would swear he feels the cold breeze pass through him and whirl around the spaces inside him. He feels himself filling up with dust and debris. At nights, there are the hot pangs that wake him in the early hours. That have him stand still as stone under a hot shower, hard pellets of water scorching his skin while he sobs against a mouldy tiled wall. Walking outside too many mornings with that sliver of hope that he may find Nate asleep in the dinghy in the yard. The sliver like a slender blade, his disappointment as sure and sharp as a piercing.
And still there is the question of the sea and its lessons and his destiny. He sleeps with the sound of it in his ears, the waves smashing against the cliffs. The screech of gulls like alarm bells every morning. Some days he feels its siren voice calling his name and he longs to set himself adrift, just to feel the force of the currents rocking beneath him, to have that space above, below and around.
Even though he hasn’t set foot on so much as a raft for the past decade, Flinch can see the stain of the sea on other men and he knows that those men can see it on him. When he bumps into them in the pub, or on the beach, they watch each other, looking for an indication of that urge to head to the water, to find a vessel, and when one moves towards the docks the others gravitate towards them also. Like the dogs of Flinch’s childhood — a series of dirt-yellow mongrels — who would growl when they heard other dogs bark, even in their sleep, the men react instinctively to the water that they sense in each other’s blood. It is an understanding that they don’t share with others, though the disdain in the term ‘landlubber’ is obvious to the tourists who stroll past the fishermen on the docks, even when said with laughter.
NINE
The day after the healing ceremony, Flinch sleeps for hours longer than usual in Karma’s orange tent. In the afternoon, the sun blazes across one side of it and the heat through the canvas causes him to wake sweating, feeling drowsy. Karma is not there. Through a gap where the tent flaps hang partially open, he watches the activity of the commune. There seems to be a kind of haphazard sense of duty. A woman is planting seeds in the vegetable garden and two small children guard its perimeter, chasing away the persistent chickens that are scratching at its edges. A few men are stringing up a tarpaulin between the branches of a fig tree. From somewhere nearby, the sound of an axe splintering wood. Fires have been lit, the smell of wood burning thick and blurred against the damp odour of the hinterland.
The inside of the tent feels like some sort of cocoon. Flinch is reluctant to emerge. He’s more comfortable with caterpillars than butterflies.
He leans back on the pillows. One of the bull ants bites him on the base of his palm and he recoils. He is scratching at the bite and swearing when Karma pokes her head through the tent flap.
‘Itchy palms, eh?’ She smirks.
‘Bloody ants.’ It’s the best he can come up with.
She flicks on the single gas cylinder and waits a second before striking a match. She holds the match over the gas and a blue flame bursts to light with a small pop.
‘Not really very safe, you know,’ says Flinch.
‘Safe enough. Do you want some tea? Peppermint? Chamomile and honey?’ An old tin kettle balanced precariously over the flame.
‘No. Thanks.’
She shrugs. ‘Have it your way. But you’d feel better, you know.’
‘I do, though,’ he says. Like a reminder. Hoping she won’t start again on the business of healing him.
‘Now, darl, since you’re staying, we’ll have to work out what you can do around here to contribute.’
‘What?’ says Flinch.
The kettle whistles and she removes it. From a small jar she scoops some dried leaves, and filters the water through them into a mug.
‘Smell,’ she says, puts the mug underneath Flinch’s nose.
‘Nice,’ he says.
‘Bliss in a cup,’ she replies. ‘Sure you don’t want some?’
‘Sure.’
‘I was thinking maybe you could catch fish once a week or so, that seemed to go down well with the meat-eaters, though I have to admit I don’t entirely approve. But it’s against my nature to force my beliefs on others. We’re not evangelists here, that’s not the point. Live and let live. At some stage you have to decide whether you’ll save your own soul or run about saving the world. That’s the dilemma, isn’t it? I know they’re not mutually exclusive goals but very few human beings have the spiritual energy and wisdom for both. The Dalai Lama maybe. Or some of the Indian swamis, but I don’t think many of them are all they’re cracked up to be. Each to their own guru, I guess.’
Her voice washes over him, Flinch swept back by the flow. He waits to snag on an understanding of something that she is saying but she may as well be speaking another language. She takes a sip of her tea and looks at him, as if for a response.
‘I’m not staying,’ he says.
She furrows her brow and takes another sip of her tea. ‘What do you mean?’ she says, swallowing. ‘I thought we’d been through all of this.’
‘I had fun, like you said, and it was good. Very … um…’ Scrambles for something that will impress her enough to release him. ‘Rejuvenating.’
‘I see,’ she says.
‘Thanks for, you know. And everything.’
She nods and turns her back on him.
The air in the tent stales.
Flinch crawls out through the tent’s opening on his hands and knees.
Milly refuses to cooperate, as if she is holding a grudge.
‘Aw, c’mon, you rusted piece of shit.’ Flinch slams his foot on every pedal, to no avail. ‘Please, Milly.’
A man Flinch hasn’t seen before walks slowly towards the ute. ‘Now, Milly, now,’ he begs from between clenched teeth.
‘Hey dude, what’s the problem?’ The man is American. He leans in through the window and grins at Flinch, a little slack-jawed. Some of his teeth are missing. One of the remaining teeth in the front is gold. He is burnt brown, the skin on his forearms and the back of his neck the colour of cut redwood. Baggy clothing hangs over a lean, wiry frame as if over a coat-hanger, takes no form.
‘Aw, yeah. It’s nothing, mate, she’s just a bit rundown,’ says Flinch.
The American laughs out loud, snorts. A few people look over in their direction. Flinch slides a fraction down the seat and pulls his collar up closer to his ears. He wonders what he said that is so funny.
‘Jesus, you Aussies.’ The American wipes tears from his eyes. ‘How do you say it? Goo-day.’He offers his hand. ‘I’m Drew Daniels, Grover Beach, California.’
Flinch notices the man’s hand is shaking. When he takes it in his own, it’s as clammy as damp cloth.
‘Flinch,’ says Flinch. ‘I’m from around here. Kind of.’
‘Cool, man,’ says the American. He looks around the paddocks, then up into the trees, as if expecting to see Flinch’s house perched there.
Flinch sits quietly for a while, pretends to fiddle with knobs on the dashboard, hoping Drew will go away. But when he looks up again, he is still s
tanding there outside the ute, nodding and grinning.
‘Well? Dude? You staying around or what?’ he asks. Louder than necessary.
‘I was on my way back to the bay, actually. Sorry.’
‘Man, you ain’t going nowhere right now in that pile of junk.’
‘Yeah, guess not,’ Flinch sighs.
Drew smiles broadly.
Flinch opens the door of the ute and swings his legs through it.
‘Hey man, one of your legs is shorter than the other.’ Loud enough to cause Flinch to wince. Exclaimed, as if Flinch may not have noticed.
‘Yeah,’ says Flinch. Thinking, Well there’s the bleeding obvious. Wondering what is coming next.
‘Lucky bastard,’ says Drew.
Flinch walks slower than usual back towards the commune. He hopes Drew will go on ahead, so that he might sneak back to the ute unnoticed, hide in the back while he decides what to do. But Drew just circles him, talks loudly and constantly, walking backwards occasionally so he can address him face to face. When Flinch pauses, Drew takes the opportunity to act out the scenario he is describing. Wild hand gestures, rubbery facial expressions. Flinch finds him amusing and laughs despite himself.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ she asks without smiling.
‘Hey Karma, this dude is, like, stuck here.’ Drew nods when he talks, as if everything he says has to be reaffirmed.
‘He must be,’ she says.
‘Hi again,’ says Flinch. Tries on a sheepish grin.
‘We’re having a singing circle tonight.’ She looks at Drew when she speaks. ‘Starts at sunset.’
‘Cool, man,’ says Drew. ‘Dude, can you sing?’
‘Um. No. Not really,’ says Flinch.
‘Hey, cool, neither can I.’ Drew bursts into raucous laughter, more snorting.
Karma walks away.
Flinch knows he can’t sing. Even when he’s drunk. Even when Nate insisted that together they were melodious. Lying under blankets in the dinghy while it drizzled down upon them. Drunk as vicars, Nate had declared. Ten straight minutes pounding on the door of the pastel house before Flinch had awoken, a couch cushion over his ear. Nate strangling a bottle of rum in each hand and two long-necked bottles of beer under his armpits.
‘We’re on early shift tomorrow,’ Flinch had said.
‘We’ll manage.’
‘Mate, I dunno.’
That sly grin, the raised eyebrow. Nate had already had a few.
‘Come on, captain. Live a little.’
And later, both of them singing an unstructured melody that consisted of the choruses from a jumble of songs.
Oh Danny Boy
The pipes, the pipes are calling.
O whim o whey o whim o whey
The lion sleeps tonight.
In the jungle, the mighty jungle
The lion sleeps tonight.
Oh Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy
I love you so …
The goats roused from where they napped near the house, moving off down the hillside and into the thick silence of the scrub.
Flinch remembers waking in the morning with dawn. Wincing into light stark as ice. A pain between his brows that he felt would crack him right open. Nate sprawled across the plank seat in the dinghy snoring and immovable. And he remembers the singing. Joyful, ardent and painful even to his own ears.
Flinch spends the remainder of the afternoon in Drew’s tent. It is one of the tents shaped like a pod. Drew has sewn camouflage army fatigues on the inside, over the entire sheeting.
‘Welcome to the jungle,’ he says as they crawl inside, and laughs.
The sleeve of a jacket that has been sewn to the roof has come loose and hangs like a limp arm, brushes the nape of Flinch’s neck as he crawls underneath it and sends shivers up his spine.
Drew flicks on a torch that hangs by string from the wall of the tent. The inside of the dome is cluttered. Blankets, mismatched clothing, tins and tins of Spam, jars full of odds and ends, thread and needles. A woman’s tiny beaded slippers. Drew takes a safety pin from a jar and pins the loose sleeve back onto its jacket. Over the place the wearer’s heart would be. Flinch notices the other sleeve is pinned out from the jacket, bent at the elbow as if saluting.
‘Insulation,’ Drew says. ‘Courtesy of the United States Armed Forces.’
Drew sleeps on a bundle of clothes.
‘This is comfort, dude,’ he says, taking a sock from the bundle and stroking it like it was a pet. ‘You should have seen how we slept in ’Nam. If we got to sleep, that is.’
He laughs again, and Flinch laughs along to be polite, but still doesn’t understand the joke.
Drew swings the torch as he talks, absentminded, like a habit, lighting up different objects at random. One jar full of bullet cases. Another full of what looks like blonde human hair. Pinned along one side of the dome, hanging evenly and reflecting the light when it catches them, seven army dog tags.
From one of the containers, Drew takes a pinch of weed, deftly rolls a joint and hands it to Flinch, then lights one for himself. Flinch lies back on a clump of clothes that smells like a mixture of other people’s sweat and smoke.
‘It’s a funny place, this corner of the world,’ says Drew, and sighs.
‘Yeah,’ says Flinch. Coughs. The drug is strong. It goes straight to his head and he feels the tent start to spin slowly, taking his body with it.
‘Hey man, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’ Drew says it as casually as he might if he were asking Flinch his favourite colour.
‘What?’
‘C’mon dude.’
Flinch registers panic, subdued by the drug but rising steadily. He feels like prey lured unaware into a trap. Drew holds the torch under his chin, lighting up his face, demonising his features. The drug is making Flinch feel untouchable, as if he is floating in a bubble. Safe and far enough away from the world to confess.
‘I killed my friend.’He’s never said it like that. Out loud. Not since the police reports. Though the local constable, first on the scene, had quickly convinced him not to say ‘killed’ or ‘murdered’, and had even crossed out ‘manslaughter’ as a cause of death. The report was filed under ‘Accidental deaths’. Everyone had agreed in whispers loud enough for Flinch to overhear that he had a tough enough life already.
‘Whoa! Really? Like in a murder? Was it over money?’
‘No,’ says Flinch. ‘It was an accident.’
‘Heavy.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did you say to his mom?’
‘I never knew his parents. He never mentioned them.’
‘I have to say a few things to various moms when I get back to the States one day. Guys I had hardly known before they were shot to pieces begged me. Here,’ he says, emptying another container full of shredded bits of paper. ‘Here’s where everyone’s moms live, and what they wanted me to say to them.’
Flinch picks up a scrap of paper.
The writing on it is scrawled, almost indecipherable.
Jerry Simons, it says. Mayville, Chautauqua, NY.
Love you mom and just want you to be proud and don’t be sad for me because no more pain where I am now.
He picks up another one.
Another name and address. But an almost identical message.
A third (David Dougherty, Fort McPherson, GA) reads: It’s in the back of my closet, tap for the loose board and you’ll find it.
But when he unfolds a fourth it reveals the same sentiment as the first two. A message to a mother.
He wonders if Nate wanted to say these things to his mother as he lay dying. Things that appear to be universally what young men say on their deathbeds when their lives are cut short. Flinch has always worried that Nate’s family never received the priest’s letter. He thinks perhaps that he should find the family, to tell them what became of their son. Makes up his mind then to do that. He will return to the pastel house tomorrow and prepare for a journey. He’ll endeavour to make thi
ngs right, in some small way.
Drew takes a long drag on his joint, breathes out very slowly. His eyes watering.
‘Well then, what does yours look like?’ he asks, between exhalations.
He sidles closer to Flinch and leans near enough to hear a secret. His breath rich and rank with stale smoke. Strings of pasty white spittle form when he opens his mouth to speak. Up close, the thing behind his eyes that Flinch thought might be the drugs looks more like a long-standing panic, something that may have fused there permanently.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ says Flinch. He looks around the tent, tries to shuffle away, but the dome is small and doesn’t allow for much movement.
‘Yes, you knowwhat I mean.’Drewraises his voice.
Flinch clears his throat. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks.
Drew snorts loudly and starts chuckling. Tears leaking down his face leave glistening streaks.
‘I’ll tell you,’ he says, in the tone of a conspirator. Suddenly serious. ‘I’ll tell you what mine looks like. It has horns. Big as a bull. It’s black, but it has red eyes. And — get this. It hunts me, man. I can feel it all the time. Stalking me.’
‘Do you want some water or something?’ says Flinch.
Drew appears not to hear him. ‘I think it’s like a jungle spirit, or something. At least that’s where it started hunting me. The fucker followed me right down to the swamps, all the way to the Mekong Delta. I saw it once right behind our boat, just its horns, poking out of the water. And the water, dude, it was boiling. All around it. That’s how I knew where it was.’
Flinch nods but doesn’t look at him. The stench of his breath when he exhales his words almost overwhelming.
‘Everyone who killed someone got something like that following them around. Not everyone admits it but I can see they do. That’s just what mine looks like. Nasty fucker.’
He seems almost nostalgic now. Shuts his eyes. Almost in slow motion, he tips sideways and collapses onto Flinch’s shoulder. Flinch leans over and pushes him gently away and he falls backwards onto his pile of clothes and lies still.
Death of a Whaler Page 9