His eyes look at the girl and there are no dreams in them, for his Dreaming is over. Only pain and liquid shyness. He has many friends now, because Sammy Saydlaw is the tops and they are all at the bottom. That is why he continually has to improve his technique. His friends only surf on waves; he surfs on monstrous, billowing life, right on the crest where he can wipe out or cruise in to victory among the white man’s cheers.
Yet he is different from the other surfers, not just in his quietness and skin colour. He thinks differently from them about the ocean that was his ancestors’ feeding ground for centuries. He can tell you where hidden middens lie, holding the skeletons of shellfish and stories going right back to when man’s footprints first touched a truly virginal land. He can tell you where fish and crayfish reside in the nooks and crannies of a thousand jagged reefs. Unlike the white surfers, whose language is often inarticulate and sparse at the best of times (unless they are stoned when they have the chance for eloquent, drugged words, or unless, like Colin, they have been world wanderers with stories to tell) Sammy speaks of his ocean with a knowledge and love that no one, not even Ron, could hope to understand. This is why he speaks differently sometimes. Like his skin, this can set him apart from the rest of the youths, as well, of course, as the slight nasal twang that betrays his Aboriginality.
He shrugs his powerful shoulders and smiles softly at Ron.
Pretty soon now you’ll be taking over, Ron. You had some good rides today.
Oh, it was OK.
Sammy punches Ron softly on his chest.
See you round, Ron. Nice meeting you, Linda.
He wheels around and glides up the eroding cliff towards the panel van like a shadow.
Good bloke, Sammy. One of the best.
All the boongs on the farm were either drunk or in jail, and they were all no-hopers.
Well—yeah. Not all, though, baby. Sammy’s a good bloke.
You’re a better one.
They hug each other’s wet bodies and he tastes the salt on her face.
You be careful on that reef, Linda. Sammy’s right. He knows every inch of this coastline.
Ooooh, poooh! What sort of shark’s going to eat a skinny little chicken like me?
They laugh and drift up towards the car. Ron has his board in one arm and his girl on another: he is content.
For the rest of that week, Ron and Linda take life as it comes. It stretches over the horizon in a warm lazy yawn and sinks to rest in the sun-red sea at night. The boy surfs and talks to his people, and sleeps in the sun. The girl goes for peaceful walks with the boy’s mongrel: through the stunted slinking growth creeping up onto the sand dunes (but never quite getting the courage up to rush in and attack the ocean), along the innocent beach, the dog chasing birds that he never caught (and knew he couldn’t) or digging holes when he knew there was nothing to find. The girl would laugh and stroke his matted fur. She loves the dog as she loves the boy—both are the same.
She loves the reef, too, though after Sammy’s soft warning she doesn’t venture out too far. Once, in a patch of clear water, she fancied she saw a shadowy grey shape that glided as quietly as the Aboriginal boy in from the deep. She swam frantically to the shore, fear freezing her. Afterwards on the safe beach, she laughs at herself for running from shadows. She curses Sammy for turning her Eden into a hell with his words of knowledge.
It is lazy weather for the lazy people who are just lying around. Once Ron and Linda drive to the angry square town, with its littered streets and horrible constricting houses and the inevitable policeman. They wander together, oblivious of the grey wrinkled people on the grey wrinkled seats. They come to a delicatessen and brush away the fly-wire door. Ron grins.
Sweets for the sweet?
Oh yes, Ron. I’d really love a Violet Crumble—I’m crazy about Violet Crumbles, I could eat them forever.
If you don’t look out, you’ll turn into one.
Perhaps I have already.
Then you’re all the better to eat, dear Gretel, and I am about to build you a house of Violet Crumbles.
What about the witch?
Witches are out. of date, babe. Who needs a witch, anyway?
They laugh together over their secret, standing barefoot on the dusty floor, with all the people mumbling around them, about them. But they don’t care. They have each other and all the secrets of the sea.
So that’s how the days go. Every night she makes love to Ron rolled up on the sand, in blankets, beside the flickering fire and every day she makes love to the sun. She becomes brown and glorious and happy.
One day, while she is sleeping in the sun by her reef, a wavering shadow covers her. She looks up with a smile on her lips for Ron. She sees silent, soft Sammy, who squats down beside her.
Oh, hello.
She turns her back on the hunched powerful, dark form.
Hello, Linda. Sorry I woke you. I see you still come to the reef.
Yes. I like it.
He stares out at the turmoil with gentle eyes.
Can I offer you a cigarette?
No, thanks.
You don’t like boongs, do you?
The quiet question spears her. She wriggles on the ground, like a captured bardee grub; fat and juicy and ready to be eaten, soul and body, by this boy with the awful silence. The calm green eyes pierce her now, reading her disgust.
No.
Neither do I much.
She stares at him to see if he is lying. But there is a faint cynical smile on his lips and pain in his eyes.
My mob used to hang around me like flies. Every prize I’d win, the whole tribe would be in for their share. There’d be none left for me. One day I had a big brawl and told them all to clear off. I shifted over east for a few years and haven’t looked back since.
But there are always the jagged rocks waiting for him below the surface, below the wave he rides so well. So he can smash into them and they will tear his beautiful black body apart.
Ron’s my best friend. I hope I will be your best friend, too.
He glances up over her head.
Here comes Ron now. We’re going fishing.
He raises a hand in welcome, pink-nailed, a little yellow on the criss-crossed palm. Ron leaps down the side of the sand dune. Linda smiles at him as he slithers beside her and solemn Sammy.
Sammy found you, then?
Sammy gives a mocking smile.
Set an Abo to track anything down, he’ll find it.
Got a cigarette, Ron baby?
Sammy’s got the fags today.
A dark hand holds up a white packet of cigarettes. She takes one tentatively. Dark fingers strike a match and cup it from the wind.
Thank you.
It’s all right.
Well, come on, people, let’s go hassle these fish. Sammy and Keeley are coming over to tea tonight, honey.
Then we’d better catch plenty of fish.
They set off down the beach, Ron with Linda, Sammy with the rollicking mongrel.
That night, Sammy and Keeley and some others looking for a free feed come over to Ron’s camp for tea.
Ron and Sammy have caught many fish that day. Sammy has caught a rare wobbegong as well. Keeley has brought some steaks. Gren Woolley has brought some marijuana.
They sit around the fire that flickers across their faces and draws out their souls to dance with the pungent wood smoke and frying fish smells evaporating into the night sky.
Hey Ron. Still got that old plank you call a board, I see.
Don’t knock it, Keeley. A guy gets to love a board and it’s his whole life, know what I mean?
Wally, the wise old-young youth with the sparse beard, is speaking. His mate, Billy the kid, grins.
Yeah, man. Doesn’t matter what sort of board it is, as long as you can ride it. It’s just the same as a woman, really.
Sammy smiles over at brooding Linda.
Let’s not talk about boards tonight. Linda must be bored.
Bored with
boards, eh, Sammy?
Ron laughs happily and hugs Linda close to him. She smiles up, full of love.
Gren’s slow voice creeps over the fire. Heavy-lidded brown eyes gaze at Ron dopily.
Hey, Ron, Piglet’s coming down soon, man. He heard you were hanging out here.
Piglet?
Now that’s one guy I can’t handle.
Who can, Billy? He’s a spoilt little brat.
Not so much of the little, man.
Yeah, how can a guy that size handle a board?
What’s it matter to him, Charlie? If he breaks a board his old man will buy him a dozen more. He only owns half of Australia, after all.
Yeah, I remember once when he got a little dent in his board and he went right out and bought a new one. A hundred dollars, man.
That’s nothing, Billy. What about when he didn’t like the colour of his board? I mean, there was nothing wrong with it. Just that Ian Cairns had a cream board or something. So Piglet bought a cream board.
I mean, he can’t even surf, man.
Laughter mingles with the smoke and disappears. Ron has sat silent throughout the conversation, with Linda staring up at him, trying to read his mind.
Oooh, cool it, you guys. Piglet’s OK.
Well anyway, I was only telling you.
Billy, eager to get some free enjoyment out of life, nudges loose, sleepy Gren.
Well I’m telling you, Gren, you freaked-out drug dealer, let’s have these reefers you promised us.
Gren’s fingers roll the joint expertly. It is the only thing he can do half right. He can’t even surf properly. He is only there because he knows where he can buy cannabis and hashish or even heroin or cocaine. One day he will get caught, like his cousin, and maybe sent to jail.
Ladies first, man. Never let it be said that Grenwall Woolley is not a gentleman.
Oooh, wow—three cheers for our man, Gren.
You’re just a big poofter, Gren!
Amid the muted laughter, Ron hands the girl the joint.
Look at that lovely creation. You can count on Gren to roll a first-class joint.
No thanks, Ron.
Go on. You can’t be a proper surfer’s chick if you don’t have a puff of grass once in a while.
Ron hugs her reassuringly, so she is tempted. Across the fire Wally winks at her with his wise eyes.
Go on, Ron’s girl, where’s your form?
And amid the laughter of her people, she takes her first puff, at the beginning of the trip into Ron’s world.
So they sit around the formless fire that is their God when the sun goes down (for everyone needs an idea to huddle up to when everything else is dead) puffing sedately at the joint and handing it around, like a tribe of wandering unwanted Indians smoking their peace pipe. When the first joint is finished, Gren rolls another and yet another—until it is all gone and he can sink back into oblivion for a while.
Words and laughter tangle together like lovers. They drift outwards in the air and cover the fire, the boys, the girl and the sleeping dog so they are all in one world of their own making.
Linda huddles against Ron and listens to him telling the others about his job on the crayboat. His drugged eyes sparkle as he tells of the one big thing that has happened to him in his tattered life. She glances over at Sammy and sees he is watching her, hidden in the shadows that the flames throw away. She is embarrassed and pulls the blanket around herself.
At last the youths straggle away to wherever they camp. The boy and girl make love on the midnight sands beside the dying coals and sleeping dog. They create love all that night and sleep in for half the next blue day.
Piglet comes in the afternoon. He hurls down the track in a brand new Rover with two new surfboards gleaming on the rack. He pulls up with a flourish between Ron’s old station wagon and Billy’s flowered panel van.
He is huge and white like an exposed, wind swept sand dune, with medium length sandy hair and round blue eyes in a fleshy pink face.
He peers suspiciously in, at dreaming untidy Billy and Wally, then strides down to the beach. Clean well-cut trousers adorn his long legs and a gaily coloured Hawaiian shirt flaps around his heavy body. He raises a meaty hand and roars, like the ocean.
Hello, men. What’s the surf like?
None of the surfers answers him. Tiny Charlie, the wedge-faced Chinese boy, mutters, Oh, I think you could handle it, man, with a little help from your old man—God.
Piglet tries again.
Scarbs is flat.
Yeah, it would be, Big Boy. Coming out today?
Sammy is speaking. Piglet is one of the rocks that Sammy must ultimately dodge or smash into. Piglet hardly glances at him as he speaks to Keeley.
Yeah, I might go out for a ride. Is Ron Doorie around? I saw his car.
He’s not surfing today, Big Boy. He’s off in the scrub, making it with his chick.
His chick? This I have to see. I’ll wait around.
He pulls out a packet of cigarettes.
Any of you guys want a smoke?
No one appears to hear him. At last Gren speaks.
No, man, I’m going out in a minute.
I’ll have one, Big Boy.
Sammy’s green eyes stare into Piglet’s pink face, amused at his discomfort at having to give the Aboriginal boy a smoke.
Here.
Thanks, Big Boy. Got a match?
No answer as Piglet sticks a cigarette disconsolately between his big rubbery lips, and lights up, then blows out the match.
Sorry. Windy day, you know? Wind blew it out.
Yeah. Tell us about your new board, Big Boy. You don’t mind if I sit with you, unna, koordah?
Sammy adds the last two words sarcastically and contemptuously, for he lives in a white world now and his people are in the past—except to someone like Piglet.
I’m going for a walk. Get some fresh air.
The mountain rises and lumbers off back to his new car.
The bastard grows a foot every time you see him.
Pity his brain doesn’t grow.
See his face when he had to give Sam a fag?
Yeah, you showed him, Sammy.
I wish I didn’t have to show anybody anything!
Sammy gets up quickly and wanders off, just as he has always done since he was a child, when he was being moved and pushed around with his family. Always being blamed for the stolen sheep or car, seeing his uncle taken away, accused of being drunk, seeing his older brother punched up behind the police station in one small town, just another cheeky boong who got what he deserved—or a bit of fun for the bored white men, hearing about his aunt who was raped by two of the local cockies’ sons. No justice there, and he cried into his mother’s faded, crumpled lap, the only comfort he knew in those young years. His father was always drunk because he had given up. His cousins and brothers were always stealing, getting as much fun as they could out of their second-rate lives. His sisters were always pregnant and whining. So Sammy’s music was the crying and the whining and the swearing and the fighting and the complaining, and when it all got too much for him he would wander away, disappearing for days into the bush and letting the harsh peace rub into his tormented soul. He promised himself he would be better than his family and his music was the rolling, curving, crashing tune of the sea. And he knew that one day he would be famous and everything would be better than the life he was forced to live. Now he is almost famous—but everything is the same. So he wanders as of old, brushing angrily past Wally, who has finally made an appearance.
What’s hassling Sambo?
Nothing, Wally. He’s just an unpredictable boong. Doesn’t matter how famous a guy gets, he’ll still go walkabout like any other nigger.
Cool it, Yo-Yo. Does Sam ever call you a Chink? Uh? Or a yellow gook, like Big Boy would? And did, too, man—remember?
AH, Jesus, Keeley, I can see right through you, man. If Sambo was a shit surfer, you wouldn’t be giving him a ride in your wheels now, would you? I�
�m honest, like my Jewish mama, God rest her soul.
Little bandy-legged Yo-Yo picks up his board and goes down to the water. Then he is shooting swiftly out towards the breaks. The others stand around on the hot sand that is bubbling and heaving in the wind like a volcano, ready to erupt into more violence on this sweltering, sultry day.
Linda and Ron have gone down to Linda’s reef. The jagged green teeth grin evilly from the water and swirling white saliva drools through them in mad joy.
They run into the flickering surf and dance with it. She screams happily as the water rushes over her, claiming her. They are clutched lovingly to the cold salty breast and sucked out into the deep by the next wave. They roll and tumble in the surf, laughing with love—for themselves, the sea, the sun and life. The waves lick over them as an animal licks its babies, so that the babies stay clean and warm and alive.
Out of the shining water they burst, and up onto the soft dry sand that clings around their wet bodies warmly. They sit cross-legged like two Buddhists praying for salvation, crying out upon the lonely beach and watching the falling sun. Ron stares moodily up at the sun.
Clouds coming up, sweetheart. Tomorrow might be a bad day.
For surfing, maybe. Not for other things.
He smiles slowly down at her and runs his fingers through her lank yellow hair and across her thin, peeling face.
He leaves to do some surfing while she explores the rock pools she knows like her own mind now. Small striped fish swim around in frantic circles: round and round, all day, until the tide comes in. Crabs scuttle busily over the rocks. She wades out until the ocean whips around her tiny waist. The wind whips her hair around and covers her with its salty breath. She is so far out and so alone in the sea, with the whole ocean salaaming at her feet, that she truly feels like a goddess of the ocean.
She sees a rare porpoise drifting out of sight into the green water at the end of the reef, like a thought too gentle for the cold dark world it is entering. She sees several huge, grey, slow fish. Then the deep frightens her, as though she is standing on the edge of two worlds. One little step and she will hurtle down, out of the sunlight forever.
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