Stillways

by Steve Bisley

  We drove home slowly, the smell of the sea still in the car, damp towels on the seat, all of us caught by what might have been. That night my father’s life runs through him like sand, and he counts every breath till dawn.

  In another bedroom, I lay awake and imagined life without him.

  Frazer Park was treacherous, but so was every beach, on the wrong day. Snapper Point had a rock ledge that jutted out from the bottom of the cliff face into the sea. It was a haven for rock fishermen. On a good day the sea sat a good nine feet below the ledge. On a bad day it was anyone’s guess and you were a fool to trust it, but there’s plenty of fools out there.

  They’d arrive with their buckets and rods and boxes of hooks, jigs, lures, sinkers, prawns, pilchards, weed and squid. Weatherproof windcheaters and a box of beer and a mate. You might luck out and get a feed; you might go home with nothing – it’s all part of the game. Every now and then something dark would stir way out in the deep blue, something would shift, a different thing. A current that met another current that wasn’t usually there. Wind shear off a distant cliff face that stalled one wave as it formed and drove it deep into the one behind, a cross current, a fluke, a freak, call it what you will. Out of nowhere, out of a calm blue sea it would come, a blue-green monster of a thing.

  When it hit it detonated like a bomb, the rock shelf blasted clean of everything. Two men in the dark water, the beer cans bobbing like bright beacons, the morning’s catch, an hour dead now, floating on the surface like real fish do. The busted men, face down in the water, float like real men don’t. Big things listening from the deep. Dark shapes circling, spiralling up and up. A nudge first, followed by another, looking for signs of life, then bigger things coming, rising from the gloom to look. A nip, just to make sure. Then the first bite, blood in the water and all hell breaks loose, small slithering things strike like arrows between the sharks that rip and tear and gnaw and gorge. The marrow from the split bones floating through the strewn current. Torn hair drifting in the swell as small things suck the follicles loose.

  Then the sea calm and quiet again.

  The wave gone like a bleak memory.

  Peaches

  I spend as much time away from home as I can these days. Weekends I have a job picking peaches and nectarines in the Carters’ orchard. I love the work. Climbing the tall ladders in the avenues of trees. Feeling the soft furry skin of the delicate fruit nestled in my hand. Freeing them with a slight twist. The weight of the calico bag growing heavier as we strip the laden branches. Emptying them into the bins in the trailer behind the tractor. Tea from a thermos at mid-morning and then back to work again till lunch. Looking behind me down the rows with the plucked trees shimmering. Only four till the end now and the race to finish and a sense of achieving something worthwhile. My body tired from the effort of good work. Dollars in my pocket on the way home, a bath from heaven, and sleep, warm and deep.

  Back again on Sunday, the ladder against the first tree of a new row, the peaches dewy to the touch before the orchard warms and the fruit comes easy to the hand. Talking and laughing between the trees, racing for fun, fruit fights with the rotten ones, sorting in the packing shed and Sunday slipping through our sticky fingers and the stripped orchard darkening in the dusk.

  When the fruit was finished I got a job at the local fitness camp. It was run by the education department, the people who brought you warm milk and free ink. There was one on the southern end of Lake Macquarie, only a bike ride from home. My scoutmaster, Mike Collins, worked there and he got me a job in the kitchen. The head chef was an old poof and used to try to feel me up in the coolroom. I’d be in there struggling with boxes of produce when these meaty hands would encircle me. I started carrying a knife in my work boot. We fed two hundred hungry kids three meals a day for two weeks. Five hundred eggs at breakfast, mounds of bacon, tubs of baked beans, cereal for days and gallons of milk.

  When they weren’t being fed, the kids were in canoes on the lake or on the archery range or doing gymnastics in the sports hall. At night they’d twist sticky dough around green sticks like I used to do when I was twelve and cook the damper over the campfire. The teachers would lead them in songs like ‘Ging Gang Goolie Goolie Wash Wash’ and ‘Youth is Calling’, rousing songs guaranteed to make you fit just by singing them. Ghost stories around the dying fire, and more songs and quizzes and stories and talent quests. Sometimes I’d stay late and join them around the fire. Young faces golden in the firelight, the wonder still in them, secure, safe and happy.

  I still worked around the farm. There was always something to do. Fences to mend, a bit of ploughing, always something. It wasn’t producing anything anymore. Not that it ever did really, but Dad liked to think he was a farmer. He’s not drowning cats anymore; we’ve run out of them. We ate the last of the chooks and the horses have gone to greener pastures. He spends a fair amount of time in his new recliner in the lounge room. He likes it that much he’s spending less time in his other place at the head of the table. Anyway, there’s nothing much left to be head of – everyone’s gone except Mum and me and one cow in the paddock.

  So there he is, horizontal in front of the cricket, a longneck within reach, praying it won’t rain so he can stay in front of the telly for a full five days. He’s still teaching others the things he can’t teach us.

  He’s on auto a bit these days. I’ve never seen him teach. Never had the chance. He never let any of us attend a school where he was teaching. I always thought it was an ethical decision and believed that for years. Now I’m not so sure. Without us there, he had absolute freedom to do whatever it was he didn’t want us to see. More secrets.

  A view from the bridge

  I’m in Robbie Ihlein’s car and we’re nicking off from school at lunchtime. It’s another market day and it’s raining so the whole thing’s been a washout. I’m in the front seat with Robbie; Gary Attenborough and Dicky Dunn are in the back. We’re going to The Entrance, just to hang around and see what’s happening. Sometimes something does. Sometimes nothing does. Today it happens! It happens big time!

  We’re driving to Gosford over The Entrance bridge. The rain is falling in grey sheets, the sky is low and heavy. We check out a couple of beaches on the way, but there’s no one around because of the rain, so the plan is to get to The Entrance and hang till it clears. No one’s talking much in the car. Rain can do that to you. It has a way of dulling people into a state of quiet reflection. So we’re just cruising, the muted sound of rain on the roof, wipers on the windscreen, the swish of tyres on the wet road.

  ‘Fuck, check this out! Pull over, Robbie – pull over now!’

  Confusion in the car. ‘What? What’s the matter?’ asks Robbie, the car slowing and the rest of us suddenly alert, but not knowing why.

  ‘Pull over now!’ Gary’s already got the door open, the car’s stopping in a no-stopping place, horns blaring from behind, cars swerving in the wet to avoid other cars swerving in the wet. Us all out now, the rain pelting us and Gary at the railing that spans the bridge, pointing down into the deep grey.

  Now we all see it through the rain, down in the grey speckled water. We’re at the very top of the crest of the bridge, but even at this height, with the rain in our eyes, we see the thing down there in the water. In the centre of the channel that funnels the water under the bridge is a small boat. It’s leaning heavily to one side, straining against the anchor rope that slants down into the water from the bow. There is a man in a sodden grey suit and tie in the boat. The top part of his body from the waist up is underwater. He is lying on his back with his arms outstretched like some floating crucifix, his head fully submerged. His hips are balanced on the side of the boat and one of his feet is caught under the single seat, his body rising and falling in the current. We dive back into the car and Robbie guns it off the bridge, hangs a sharp left at the bottom that leads to a boat hire place on the edge of the water. We bang on the door but the joint’s closed because of the weather. The hire boats are bo
bbing beside the bleached jetty, all chained up and padlocked. We find one untethered beside the workshop; there’s a crack in the side of the hull, it’s being readied for repair, the wood freshly sanded.

  We lower it off the jetty and get in. There’re no oars so we all paddle madly by hand, two a side to even the strokes, the water seeping in through the cracked hull. The stricken boat’s three hundred feet away and we’re paddling by hand against the tide and the driving rain. We’re soaked to the skin from the rain and the waves breaking over the bow. Finally we make it to the stern of the tilting boat and Robbie latches on to it to stop us from drifting away. At first nobody moves. Nobody wants to.

  None of us is prepared for what we’re about to see.

  Finally Gary hauls himself over the high side of the leaning boat. The weight of him causes the boat to right itself and the effect is catastrophic. The top part of the sinking man rears up like some watery phantom, arms outstretched, and collapses face down onto the floor of the boat. The weight of him causes the leg that is trapped under the seat to snap and poke out of the side of what now looks like a sodden bundle of a man.

  We leave him where he is, pull the anchor up and use his oars to row us all to shore, the death boat trailing in our wake.

  By the time we get back a small crowd has gathered on the jetty at the boat hire place. People crossing the bridge had seen the recovery; there’s nothing like a death to draw a crowd. Someone’s called the cops, so we tie the boat front and back to the jetty and wait. Sudden celebrities, we wait in an awkward huddle in the rain; it doesn’t matter now. Someone’s got fags and somehow we get them lit in the wet. The gawkers don’t come near us. They just watch and wait for something to happen, something else. The cop arrives in his own car; apparently they’re short-staffed or the sarge has gone home early with the squad car or whatever – I’m not really listening. He takes our names and asks us what happened. He scrawls it all in his official notebook. He’s probably wondering why we’re not at school but he lets it slide, under the circumstances.

  I want to ask him why he thinks the guy was in a boat in a suit and tie on a shit-awful day like this, but I let it slide as well, under the circumstances. After a quick look at the dead man, he gets some bigger blokes in the crowd to help him bag up the body and lug it to the car park. They put the body in the boot, on top of the spare tyre, and it takes three goes to get the lid closed; it’s something to do with the bloating. I didn’t see it but the copper reckons the prawns had eaten the eyes out of his skull and something bigger had removed an ear.

  Afterwards, we were worried that we might be sprung by the school, since we’d given the copper our names, but nothing ever came of it. The following week the local newspaper covered the incident on page six, just before the greyhound racing results. It said there had been an accidental drowning and a man’s body had been recovered from The Entrance Channel. The police stated there had been ‘no suspicious circumstances’.

  I agreed, apart from the suit, the tie and the rain.

  Trapped

  Back at school the talk’s all about leaving. Who is, who isn’t. There are guys in my class talking about apprenticeships down the mines or at the power station. To call Lake Munmorah home for life. To marry here and every night stare across the lake at the winking power station, or spend your days a mile underground chipping away at the coalface. Another rusting boat in another carport. Your childhood sweetheart feeding the baby in the highchair. Saturday morning you’re too crook to get off the lounge because you drank the housekeeping money last night in the pub with your mates who you’ve known since birth. The baby’s crying, your wife’s twenty-two and sick of you already. She doesn’t know what she wants and she probably never will but she knows she doesn’t want you – that’s the only thing she’s certain of. Your old man in another grey fibro house in the next street. His wife doesn’t love him either, she hasn’t for forty years, but it’s too late to go, for everyone. You’ve got everything you ever wanted, because you’ve never wanted anything.

  I’m not saying this life is wrong. I’m not saying it was all like that. But there was enough of it that was, and it frightened the hell out of me.

  The Brothers Grim

  ‘Come out here, you weak bastard!’

  I’m standing in the middle of the yard between the house and the shed. It’s Saturday morning and Mum and Dad have gone shopping to Newcastle and won’t be home for hours. Good thing, because I’m going to kill my older brother. I’m going to murder him.

  I’m going to dump his body in the creek, but not until I’ve tortured him with fire and electricity and petrol and a stock whip. I haven’t got the other stuff, but I’ve got the whip, coiled and stuck down the back of my pants so it can’t be seen from the front.

  ‘You wear a bra and panties and everyone knows you’re a girl!’ I yell, trying to prise him from the house. Nothing stirs. I know he’s in there. He came into my bedroom earlier and ripped up two of my comics, then punched me really hard on the top of my arm. He says he knows that I’ve taken one of his girlie magazines and if I don’t give it back in ten minutes, he’s going to tie me to a bull ants’ nest and put honey on my balls.

  That’s when I went to the shed and got the whip. I’m really good with a stock whip; I practise a lot. I put small bits of paper on the lawn and crack them with the lash. I never miss. I got my cousin Peter, who lives across the creek, to hold some paper in his mouth. He was so brave and you can hardly notice the scar.

  ‘Dick Bisley is a dickhead!’ I yell. ‘Come out here and I’ll punch your lights out, you knob!’

  The screen door opens and he’s on the verandah, looking really pissed off. Good!

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said you’re a fuckwit!’ I feel the stock whip coiled against my back; all he needs is a little shove and he’s mine.

  ‘Chick, chick, chicken,’ I yell across the yard.

  ‘Give me my magazine back, you little bastard,’ he roars, ‘or I’ll knock you out.’ He’s getting really worked up now; he’s taken the bait.

  ‘Oh, I’m soooo scared … look, I’m shaking in my boots!’

  I shake. That does it. He leaps off the verandah and starts towards me, a murderous look in his eyes.

  I reach behind my back and the whip’s in my hand in an instant, uncoiling and vicious. He sees it and stops dead in his tracks, the venom draining from his face. I smile. Now he’s in no-man’s land. I flick the whip behind me in preparation for the strike.

  He can’t go forward, he can’t go back, he’s caught like the low mangy dog he is. My left arm is still throbbing from where he punched me but I’m about to even the score. He has two choices here: he can charge me head-on in the hope that he can get inside the whip before the lash gets him, or he can try and outrun it. I don’t like his chances either way. I flick the lash back and forth a few times to help him make up his mind.

  ‘Not so tough now, are you?’ I taunt. ‘Picking on a sixteen-year-old when you’re twenty-one!’ His eyes dart around and I know he’s about to move. My right arm tenses, my hand tightens on the handle of the whip. He spins to the left and sidesteps right, hoping I’ll be fooled by the move. He’s only covered a few feet when I bring the whip forward in a whistling arc. My arm loops around my head, the whip now at full extension, then I drop my elbow and flick my wrist at the same time. The thin plaited leather snakes through the air like a scythe, the lash at the very tip turns ballistic, hurtling towards the target at Mach speed. He’s only ten feet away when the lash finds its mark. I draw the whip back behind me in case he comes again, but I needn’t have bothered. For the moment he seems to have forgotten about me. He seems more concerned with a small area on the right cheek of his arse, like it’s suddenly caught fire. His legs are dancing in an apparent attempt to outrun the burning sensation and he has just screamed like a girl at a Beatles concert. Now he heads off towards the house clutching his bum. He disappears into the laundry and I hear the sound o
f water running and I guess he’s dousing the flames.

  Then he’s back, heading across the verandah, water dripping from the back of his pants and a broom in his hands. A broom? I hadn’t really planned for this. The murderous look is back on his face and he’s coming, fast.

  I circle the whip around my head and crack the lash as a warning, but all it seems to do is make him madder. I unleash the whip again in a last attempt to dissuade him. Same action as before, arm, wrist, the sound of the thin leather whistling, the lash seeking the target. At the very last moment he lifts the broom handle above his head and the leather wraps around it like a snake on a stick. With one swift action he wrenches the whip from my hand. Something thin loosens in my bowels.

  I am standing in front of a bullet-ridden whitewashed wall in some lawless Mexican town. My bloodstained shirt is open to my waist. I am blindfolded; my arms are tied behind my back. I know in my troubled heart that I have fought hard for the revolution, but it’s come to this. I hear the sound of the rifles being cocked, I feel the wild adrenalin in my chest, the last breath ragged in my throat. I wait, and wait, and finally it comes with a … BANG!

  The punch isn’t hard but it is enough. A light flickers somewhere far, far away, trees whirl in circles above my head, and my hand reaches for something that isn’t there. I don’t think I am out for long, maybe seconds, but my jaw aches and my ears are ringing. I sit on the grass for a while till the fog lifts.

  I think the whole thing has gone rather well, apart from the end bit. One all, till next time. I head off to the house for a bit of a lie-down before the folks get home. I don’t know where my brother is and I don’t care. I stretch out on my bed. I’m already planning the next ambush; maybe next time I’ll bring a whip and a gun! I slide the girlie magazine out from under my pillow. I flick it open and you know something? The blonde on page two is almost worth the headache.