The escort pops his head up some distance away, a spy-hop, the huge dark glassy eye and ribbed lower jaw, the long-lipped grin. Flinch knows he’s being assessed. A gentle observation. He cannot imagine the wrath of Melville’s white whale in this species, with their haunting, elegant songs and fins like snow-white wings. These whales may have passed through this region during the harpooning seasons, may even have been pursued by the whaling boats and eluded them by diving, camouflaged by the darker depths. Perhaps these ones are the offspring of those that managed to escape his keen sight. Yet they return to their timeless path harbouring no fear or malice, as if they know that their long, slow journeys are part of some eternal plan.
He longs to know their secrets.
He slides down the railing and lies flat on his stomach, his face over the boat’s edge, so that he can look deep into the water. The glare off the surface a bright white shield. Spray up the sides of the boat when the swell rises. Flinch tastes salt water and licks his lips. He tries to think about what Nate would want from him. How to reconcile. He tries to recall the prose on the pages at which his worn copy of Moby-Dick fell open. Only one sentence returns to him.
Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better.
Another loud blast of sea water from the whale startles Flinch, and he slips a little towards the ocean. Seeing the watery chasm beneath him, feels something akin to vertigo, temptation, lust. His hand is slippery on the railing, the sweat on his palm like a lubricant, making the slide towards the surface all the easier.
He hangs his head further over. His hair and scalp wet as the current licks the side of the boat. It fills the cavities in his ears with watery whispers. Good, Flinch. Let it go. You can’t carry it around anymore. Leap from the boat is still better.
The calf rises to the surface and lets out a soft wet breath, like the sigh of a child. Flinch lets go.
The immersion, the sudden chill of the water sucking the breath from his lungs, white foam and bubbles and his shirt billowing around his neck. Flailing he bursts to the surface, paddles in circles until he sees the whale, the black boulder of her head just visible. She hasn’t moved. His performance nothing more to her than the splashing of some insignificant fish. He realises that he is probably smaller than some of the remoras that attach themselves to her belly, hitch a ride with her through the waters of the Pacific.
He treads water for a while, just watching her. Every now and again he allows himself to sink under the water and he hears the song of the male, feels it resonate in his bones, the pitch and volume rising and falling like the swell of the ocean itself. The water still and glassy. Even from under water he can make out the grainy outline of the whale, her dark shape at an angle, her tail stretching into the depths. A smaller shadow, the calf, slips in and out of sight, circles her, retreats below to suckle, rises again to lie across her back and on her head. As curious and playful as a puppy.
The current leans on the Westerly. She drifts very slowly further away from Flinch. His legs and arms grow tired, he begins to feel he is churning through mud instead of sea water. Lets his head sink a little lower, the water rise a little higher, so that it is at his chin line. His shirt bubbles in front of him. He plunges beneath the neckline and shimmies out of it. Sheds his shorts as well. He feels a little lighter. His clothing sinks slowly beneath him. He holds his breath to watch it disappear into darkness, as if it is falling in slow motion down some deep well.
His arm and leg movements slow. He tilts his head towards the sky. The water laps around his cheeks and scalp. Water and whale song fill his ears. He takes one large breath and sinks below the surface. He hangs in the water, allows himself to float, to rest his heavy limbs. He scans the water in front of him for the whale and calf. They are gone. He allows himself to sink further. From above, shafts of sunlight slice through the water like blades. This is his journey, he tells himself. His lungs tighten. That old, familiar taste of sea water, the element of his destiny, seems to well up from the inside.
Right in front of him, a small dark shape rises vertically, propels itself upwards. It hovers before him, pectoral fins stretched wide in a gesture that looks like a welcome. The calf. It circles him slowly, hovers beneath him. The sun through the water revealing it to be grey, almost black, the colour of wet stone, a broad patch of white on the underside of its tail when it rolls and tumbles in front of him as graceful as a dancer. It comes almost within touching distance. Flinch knows himself to be a curious thing, even more so in this underwater universe, to this young creature.
The mother’s shadow looms large in the distance. She draws nearer, growing ever larger. Flinch’s mind cannot comprehend her size; he feels as if he is watching her gradual approach through a lens.
As she glides in front of him, the calf returns to her side. She passes so close to Flinch that he sees her eye, the size of a saucer, roll slowly over him, and he knows she is watching him, watching her. Recognises the protective mother, the sea monster. The eye is soft and knowing. A huge fin like the wing of some angel passes over his head. She glides by him, a wall of speckled grey. He sees nothing else beyond her. He forgets, momentarily, that he cannot breathe under water. He is left in a stream of bubbles, in the wake of one long slow undulation of her tail.
His lungs ache with a sudden piercing pain and with some effort he struggles towards the sunlight, fingers spread, legs churning. He bursts to the surface and gulps down the air, panting and shaking. Above the water, the same warm stillness as before, the arcing sky.
Flinch floats for a moment while he catches his breath, then remembers the glassy-eyed sharks that used to follow in the paths of whales and their calves, hoping for an opportunity to attack the young and the weak and the weary. Spluttering, he swims in the direction of the Westerly, half dog paddle, half freestyle, all churn and white water and rising panic. He stops every few metres to check his direction. The boat is drifting slowly away from him, but he propels himself forward, imagining behind him the ruthless curve of a shark’s metallic fin, and makes up the distance.
By the time he reaches the stern, he is exhausted, wheezing like a dying man. He can hear the whistle in his own breath. His lungs burn, he can feel his heart beat in his temples and vague, dark patches blur his vision. He manages to haul himself from the water and onto the deck. He covers his eyes with his arm. He feels touched by the divine. As if he’s been witness to something mortals were not meant to see.
With the last of his energy, he sits up and drags himself over to the motor. It switches on, uncomplaining, chugs patiently. He grasps the tiller. As Flinch points her towards shore, towards the distant speck of Mt Warning, the Westerly turns neat against the current, bounces slightly over her own wake.
NATE
I am beginning to peel away from my body.
But my anger is heavy and it grounds me to the flensing floor. It is thick and sticky like syrup. It traps me here. There is no way to escape it but to plunge through.
Through the days I loved you.
At the end of our street of dirt and gravel, in the dust of a vacant block, a cricket ball thuds against the earth and knocks over the aluminium rubbish bin and it rolls clanging towards the road.
‘What a shot,’ you say, and laugh and tuck the bat under your arm, and Eleanor beams from behind our makeshift wicket because I beat you, I got you, and you’re proud of me for doing that, for once.
Through the days I hated you.
Home from school, through the front door, the torn fly-screen, the shattered cup and a fresh cut across Mum’s cheek, the bruise around her eye spreading before my eyes like a blossom. Your spoor. I could track you by the destruction you left in your wake. The mantelpiece cleared with one backhand sweep.
The smashed radio won’t speak.
My model airplane in pieces nearby. I had known better than to grow attached to it but I feel a bit of myself break off regardless
.
The stains left inside me by you now rise to the surface like oil on water, leaving splotches that I fear will reveal themselves through my skin as rashes. I am so cold I feel ensconced in ice. When I open my eyes I see my hand on my chest has turned purple, each finger a bruise. Inside I burn hot and white like seared metal.
‘Consider yourself lucky,’ you would say, panting. Exhausted after another lesson. My nose bleeding.
My nose bleeding. My breathing does not sound like my own. Wet, choked. I might be crying.
You weren’t a drunk who slurred your words. They were always as clear as cut glass, razor sharp at the edges, aimed precisely to slice through our confidence. If you kept us weak, you had us.
I cannot feel my hands or my feet.
You had a tough life, you old bastard. Your own father used to beat you around, knock sense into you, you said. It was the way things were done back then. You would joke about it and Mum would offer a silly little chuckle and leave the room. You kept a mental record of your scars and what you’d learnt while your skin was healing over. You pointed them out and described them to us as if they were tattoos you’d picked up during adventures at sea. You never tried to understand it, just accepted it as the way life turned out.
You never stood a chance.
I think.
I don’t think.
I don’t think you meant to hurt us.
At thirteen years old, I recognised the self-hatred in your eyes as you tore up my favourite book. At that age, I could still feel pity.
And now that I feel myself eking away like the waning tide, I don’t know why I wished death upon you. It is not the punishment I imagined it to be.
With each slippery minute it feels a little more like freedom. As it would have been for you. The perfect escape, quick and clean and final, leaving no scar of the life you lived, leaving behind the things that haunted you like belligerent old ghouls. That monster in the bottle, the dreams like shipwrecks, your own grotty past where the kid deserved what he got, the bullying and the fisticuffs and the small part of yourself that remained, that place you retreated to, crying with regret, when the anger subsided and your family lay all around you in tatters.
I wonder if you are dead. King-hit in a pub brawl, hitting the curb at a bad angle. A mining accident. Your car wrapped around a tree on the way back to Mum’s on a Friday night. Heart or liver packed in.
Will you be waiting for me, then? They say a family member waits to greet you, some ghostly welcome party, on the other side, wherever that is. I’ve seen no tunnel, no bright light. Maybe I’m not going anywhere just yet.
Flinch is back. I can hear him sobbing my name into my ear through a fug of darkness and I feel his forehead resting on mine, and as he rests his hand on my shoulder, I can feel him quivering as if he were cold.
I am sinking, I tell him. I sink to a seabed that is murky with forests of kelp and as I swim among it the kelp tangles around my ankles and hands and throat and the blood that gushes behind me leaves the water dark in my wake. When I spin around, I am engulfed in this darkness and I find myself more tangled than before.
Looking up towards the surface I see Flinch leaning over a boat, reaching down into the water, his hand reaching for me, so far over that the boat is tilting. I reach upwards and our fingertips brush but I can’t hold on.
I can’t hold on.
I yell it at him.
He yells something back at me but the water in my ears distorts his voice.
I can’t hold on.
The words come out of my mouth as bubbles that pop when they reach the surface.
EIGHTEEN
Flinch lies in his bed shivering, fading in and out of consciousness. He feels the talons of a fever clutching him like a brace around his torso. Through half-opened eyelids, the room appears to be filled with mist, sea spray, frequented by visitors. Audrey in a bright red dress, leaning over him, unsmiling. Nate, by the window, looking out at the view through the part in the curtains. The lighthouse keeper standing in the corner of the room, smoking a pipe and rubbing his eyes. Karma, sitting on the edge of the bed, looking concerned.
‘Are you hot or cold, Flinch? Hot or cold?’ she asks him.
Flinch doesn’t answer her, partly because he can’t distinguish how he feels and partly because explaining that is too exhausting.
In the sticky blackness that is sleep, Flinch dreams feverish dreams. Whale song fills his ears, mournful resounding bellows that he thinks will split his eardrums. Then wind whistling in and out of his head, the roar of the ocean as it crashes over him, a murky underwater dream where he is entangled in a net, only to realise that it is made up of bluebottles that sting him over and over.
He opens his eyes for a second to see Karma dabbing him with a warm cloth.
In a quieter moment, he is standing on the cliff near the lighthouse. The waves lap at the rocks below and, except for the lull of the sea, everything is still, silent. He hears someone cough behind him and turns around to see the lighthouse keeper, rubbing his eyes, never removing his hand from his face, as if sand were lodged permanently into his sockets. Without looking at Flinch he walks straight up to him, grips him by the wrist, and takes him to the doorway of the lighthouse. Flinch thinks he is going to take him up the stairs, to the top, but instead the keeper points to the door. Flinch sees letters etched into the glass there, something is spelt out, but he can’t read it. The lighthouse keeper opens the door to the lighthouse and enters, and when Flinch tries to follow he slams it in his face. Flinch wakes up with his heart pounding to see the door of his bedroom creaking open and slamming in the breeze.
He is aware of his surroundings only long enough to notice that he is in his bedroom in the pastel house, but he can’t recall how he came to be here. When he shuts his eyes he glimpses images that seem more like shards of some other reality. Macca and Karma standing on a jetty, waving him in. Blue. Blue. Blue. Being rolled back and forth on the hot vinyl in the cabin of a ute. White walls of a room that is not his own. The watchful eye of a whale under water.
The lighthouse keeper taps on the glass panel of the door to the lighthouse. Flinch inhales the smoke billowing from his pipe and coughs up something wet.
‘For Christ’s sake, get over it would you, boy,’ says Audrey.
Nate, sitting slumped against a wall, looks up from his open copy of Moby-Dick and chuckles.
A woman’s hand warms his own.
‘Karma,’ he says.
‘Eleanor,’ the reply.
He remembers that there are things he would rather forget.
He wakes hot and perspiring with the sun in his eyes, feeling as if he has been dragged up from some deep, dark cave. He listens for signs of movement in the house. Hears nothing but the waves below and the cries of gulls swept to silence in the wind.
He sits up slowly, lowers his feet to the floor. His head spins with the effort. Using the wall as a support, one careful step at a time, he makes his way to the kitchen. Pots and pans have been recently washed and are lined up drying on a tea towel. In the living room, the couch has been covered by a colourful throw. A rug that looks vaguely South American lies over the worn patch in the carpet. Touches of Karma’s. No, he thinks. Eleanor’s. He shakes his head, tries to clear the confusion that surfaces when he thinks of them, the two women. Of her.
He goes into her room. It smells of her, of incense and frangipanis. There is the hint of chaos that seems to float around her like an aura, the unmade bed, clothes in small colourful piles on the floor. He stands in the middle of the room for a while and holds his breath.
The grunt and churn of Milly’s engine as she pulls up. He hurries back to his bed, his knees and back and hip joints creaking like rusty hinges. Pulls the covers up, panting with effort. Keys clink on the kitchen table. He hears footsteps approach and faces the wall. His door creaks slightly as it is pushed open. Hears her sigh, move to the edge of the bed. He squeezes his eyes tight as the bed sinks with her weight and
his blanket tightens around his shoulders. She heaves him into a sitting position, his back against the bed rest.
‘Flinch?’
He says nothing. Holds his breath.
She slaps him hard across the face. He moans and recoils but he keeps his eyes shut. Slumps back across the bed. She is bawling, he can hear her struggling for breath in between each wet gulp.
He thinks, I am under water. I am safe and still and deep under water.
She moves away.
He pretends for days. Acutely aware of where she is in the house, what she is doing each moment, the rhythm of her existence. The scrape of the front door, keys clicking over the latch. She goes to work every day. He lies listening to goat bleatings and the squawking gossip of birds. To the rise and recession of the tides. To crickets in the shrubs. Chorus of frog and toad after an afternoon shower. The wind singing secrets below the cliffs. She returns each night with the same question in her voice.
‘Flinch?’
He doesn’t know how to answer her. He pretends he is asleep. She makes herself dinner, turns on the radio, sighs often and sings less than he remembers, and, quite a few times, she sobs. She helps him to the toilet each night when she gets home and before she goes to bed and he pretends he is groggy and unseeing. He doesn’t open his eyes. She leaves him in there with the door slightly ajar. He wonders how much of him she has seen, before now. Stripped down to who he is, the crooked body, leg, the hated half of himself. Naked, he feels he is only a shred of a human. She makes him sit up and feeds him soup.
‘Good boy,’ she says when he swallows. Like a pet.
She has one-sided conversations with him before she leaves each day.
‘Wake up,’ she tells him. She runs a warm washer under his arms and over his chest. He allows his head to roll backwards. Arms limp as a rag doll’s.
‘Come back to us, Flinch. We have a lot to talk about.’
Death of a Whaler Page 20