The Life

by Malcolm Knox

  They got him, and he confessed—

  A confession, so:

  No trial.

  Rod.

  Rod.

  Lisa.

  Rod.

  Rod.

  You:

  Gone.

  All over the news it was, all over the Coast, all over the country, round the world to Hawaii . . .

  World Champion Murder Scandal.

  Nahnahnahnahnah—

  The girl in the fibreglass grave.

  •

  Mo went awol a few weeks, wouldn’t talk to you after Rod’s sentencing. Told you she had to go to hospital. You was on your own.

  Sink or swim, DK.

  Everyone talking about you. Couldn’t step out the front door still less walk down Kirra or Greenmount.

  DK, DK, DK . . .

  Gone.

  Painted on the rock at The Pit:

  Only one thing could save you:

  Only one thing you loved:

  All your loves killed off, burnt back:

  Down to the last one:

  The thing you needed:

  The thing that would save you:

  Your redeemer:

  Rod’s mate.

  There goes the seventies. Jimmy Carter, hostages, ayatollahs, test-tube babies, disco, punk, petrol rationing, Afghanistan—you pretty much missed it all.

  Most of the eighties too, turned out.

  Your last mate on this earth put his jaws round your leg and took you down with him, down down down down down—

  It wasn’t you done so much of it. There was others done much more, bigger hell men, and they died. Lot of them died. Lot of funerals you didn’t get to, you’d be seen and it’d turn into a circus, that kind of thing, but there was a lot of funerals. Ones got left on the street, in the car, in the shower by their own mates too busy doing a rail or a shot to notice their buddy dying. Just neglect. Just too much going on to think of mates.

  You were lucky: a one-shot screamer. You never built tolerance. Small amounts done the trick. Piss-weak. Probably what saved your skin.

  •

  Cops cops cops. Always following always watching. But now Rod was away, now they had their way with you they didn’t seem interested in nabbing you. They just wanted to scope who you hung with who you met where the gear was coming from. You were their canary down the mineshaft.

  Bad bad shit.

  You wouldn’t let them take you inside again.

  They talked to you about people.

  You too scared not to talk back.

  It was said you grassed up.

  There was a lot that was said.

  You never let them take you in again, the cops. Never again.

  Bad bad bad.

  No more Kirra Boardriders Club: talent was either in jail or dead or something in between, like you. In jail and dead.

  Meanwhile Frank Johnson become world champion in ’76, slayed them in Hawaii. World champion in a points system of his own devising.

  Meanwhile Glenn Tinkler become world champion in ’77, slayed them in Hawaii and California and Brazil. They said Tink was so aggro these days, there was stories about him jumping up and down shadow-boxing before his heats, psyche the other bloke out.

  Meanwhile the Aussies were ‘bustin down the door’ in Hawaii. Whoever did good in a conness, they shout all the others the ten-dollar smorgasbord at the Kuilima Resort. They was a team, they was mates, they was Aussies together . . .

  Ian Cairns slayed them at twenty-foot Waimea Bay. Tink got accepted like one of da boyz. Even started beating outsiders up. Like, now that you were gone, Tink could finally be the big man he always wanted.

  Well bully for him eh.

  Loved telling stories about themself that crew.

  You weren’t interested.

  Meanwhile the new crop, Mark Richards, Cheyne Horan, little South African prick Shaun Tomson, Martin Potter, you didn’t keep up with the names you lost interest in that world tour rubbish. Surfing sold out. Too much coin in it. Kids on thousands of bucks a month from these new companies, these Quiksilvers and whatnot.

  Simon Anderson put three fins on a board and everyone said he changed the face of the sport.

  You tried a three-fin board back in ’71. No future. You didn’t give a rats anyway.

  But they was still out there trying to beat you. Still trying to be better surfers than DK. You felt sorry for them to be honest.

  You travelled, saw the world:

  Got on buses to Newcastle, Sydney. You disappeared, went for walks and met new ones in pubs. You crashed at mates’ houses and tried to climb into bed with their missuses. You crashed at mates’ houses and flogged their boards for coin. You crashed at mates’ houses and used their gear. You crashed at mates’ houses and brought strangers with you in the middle of the night to party.

  Cronulla, Dee Why, North Narra—

  The good tough breaks—

  The good tough ones—

  Sydney: Disneyland.

  Cronulla, Dee Why, North Narra: rows of red-brick and yellow-brick flats marching back off the beach, plain box houses, workers’ cottages, auto shops and board factories and petrol refineries. Blue collars in the waves. Drop in on a wave, get back to your car it’s got no windscreen. Blokes likely as not to get finished off in a pub fight. Smack and coke ripped through these places like the great fire, like the black fricken death.

  You said you were surfing but you weren’t.

  Most of the surfing inside your own head.

  You got into coke, in Sydney. That was good for you. Brightened you up. Went for more surfs. Sometimes five-minute micro surfs: one power wave then back to someone’s flat, someone’s car.

  You had friends everywhere.

  Good tough ones—

  Nothing wasted cept the waves—

  Too much wasted.

  •

  You got another dog, not a beagle this time just a wiry mongrel bitzer this, bitzer that, which you called Dave. You liked to have a dog with a name that wasn’t a dog’s name. Dave sat with you and talked to you and kept you company and was your alarm clock. You got to keep feeding Dave even if you don’t feed yourself much. Dave give you a reason to drop into country supermarkets to buy Pal. Dave was a smiler, a grinner, like he was the world’s luckiest dog and figured the world ought to agree with him. When you had Dave people thought you couldn’t be all bad.

  After a while but the good tough ones didn’t want you and Dave crashing in their places no more, and you went down to Melbourne—

  Where it all come from—

  Rod’s mates—

  Good tough ones from Collingwood, Richmond, St Kilda—

  And you didn’t have to worry about waves you might be missing. Waves was where you weren’t going—

  Where they talked about Rod.

  Lisa.

  You.

  Rod.

  Lisa.

  You.

  Meanwhile golden boy FJ was starring in Hollywood movies. Meanwhile Tink was world champ and had his own clothing line: fluorescent wetsuits, checked boardshorts. They was carving out The Life, only surfing when the lighting was studio quality, surf the Kodak reefs where they get snapped and get paid for it but

  but I don’t know it’s

  this was what they meant by ‘living off’ surfing. Like a tick lives off a cow. Logos on their boards and surfers’ hotels and surf tours and put their faces on board wax and leg ropes and all this was meant to be good, or good for someone anyway, good for someone. You even heard FJ was back on the Goldie talking about Being A Professional Surfer at the careers day at your old school yeah

  good for someone

  meanwh
ile surfers was saving the earth from sewage, nuclear weapons, development, themself . . .

  Meanwhile Aussies ruled it . . .

  Meanwhile the world’s greatest surfer was underground like a badger, like a wombat, like a worm.

  In Melbourne with good tough ones—

  Where no one could see you—

  Win win.

  And all them travelling days and years you never once thought about Lisa.

  And all them days you never once thought about Rodney.

  Never wrote postcards to Mo.

  Not that you didn’t want to think about them, but see there had to be order. Pecking order. Had to be civilisation and hierarchy even inside your head. Most of all inside your head. A head is like a surf break. There must be civilisation in it or else every good thing gets wasted.

  You been in a three-wave hold down at Pipe—after you done this, it’s easy not to think about what you’re not meant to think about.

  So all them nights and days and silver mornings you never once thought about:

  Lisa—

  Rod—

  Mo—

  —and you never went surfing no more. And never done nothing that might ask you to think about them people them days and

  and this was when the diagonals started to burn—

  when them words started to dance together like brothers and sisters and sons and mothers, they all start to sound the same—

  when you got into radio at night—

  when your hands always tingled with dirt and you couldn’t remember if you done them already or not

  or what

  ‘Anyway, we’re here,’ she says, swinging into a car park. It’s fricken one of them Byron beaches—Taragos, Wallows, some crap like that. I can’t believe it. She’s fricken let me down bad. She does want to kill me. From embarrassment.

  It’s offshore and fat and one foot and crowded.

  ‘The most perfect little longboard beginner’s wave you’re ever gunna see, Dennis. So good you could eat it.’

  The sun crisp and not too low.

  The water the colour of Lisa’s eyes.

  Jam-packed with kooks and spazzes and grommets and starters and families.

  Jam-packed with big soft Things.

  ‘It’s all about hiding in plain view,’ she goes, coming round and opening my side of the Chariot. ‘Nobody’ll suspect it for a second. Nobody here’s even heard of you. These aren’t surfers. These are families. These are fifty-year-old grommets on holidays. C’mon, Den, this is the safest place in the world for you.’

  I let her help me out.

  Stomach cartwheeling.

  Fricken . . .

  Big fifty-eight-year-old gibberer in boardies with his ten-foot soft-top. You’ll fit right in here, DK.

  She pulls The Thing out, and a glass longboard for herself.

  ‘Be a gentleman and carry your own board, will ya?’

  Watch her go down on the sand in front of me. Hell. Pure blinding burning hell.

  Death of DK. This is. This really is.

  Do a poo in the bushes . . .

  •

  Drag The Thing down the sand behind me.

  King of the Kooks.

  ‘And Dennis?’ she tosses over her shoulder. Waits for me to catch up to her.

  Most perfect afternoon since the early seventies and you got sand between your toes.

  ‘Dennis? I always knew you weren’t.’

  ‘Eh?’

  She puts a finger to her lips.

  We get to the edge of the water.

  She’s right. Fat old guys on soft-tops. One foot and peeling. Holiday central. I’ll fit right in.

  ‘So—yeah, nah—but so then, how come you?’

  But she hasn’t heard me. She’s paddling out.

  Follow her out through the tiny sweet peelers and even my eighteen stones doesn’t put The Thing underwater no matter how hard it wants to.

  Get out the back which is only twenty yards from shore and water’s like a bath and full of kids and their dads wearing surf hats and surf gloves and surf goggles and every brand of wetty and rashie there is, all the gear that made Tink and FJ millionaires, it’s brand city out here, and you DK is the King of the Kooks and you can even sit on this Thing without falling off

  but I mean it’s just

  you wait out there King of the Kooks but you dunno what for. One of the dads or the kids gives a thrash and two-armed pull-along and they’re chesting onto a wave and ten minutes getting on their feet but they do, they do, a knee then a foot they stumble up eventually and by this time the wave’s just a dribble of white froth but they’re still moving cos these Things are like boats can move on anything and they’ve got their arms in the air, arms in the air, like they’re claiming a fifteen-foot Pipe barrel

  how stoked they are

  punching the air and whooing and their kids whoo-Dadding them too and everyone’s got a fricken smile on their face.

  And her sitting out there with you and sees you scoping:

  The smiles on their faces.

  The dimple on hers.

  ‘Oi. Oi!’

  You keep at her till she looks. Sitting on her glass board a few ripples away.

  ‘Ya know, serious, birds aren’t meant to surf.’

  Cheeky thing splashes water at me, makes me duck.

  ‘That right, Dennis? So what are you doing out here then?’

  Before you can think up anything to say her head snaps round, out to sea.

  ‘Whoo! Here’s one, Dennis—it’s got your name on it.’

  You see what she’s looking at and it’s what might be called a set wave. The water thickens dark in the wall. Might be one foot. Maybe one-and-a-half-foot face.

  You drop on your belly and thrash.

  The way the kooks do.

  Your fat legs swinging wide apart.

  Your arms go dead.

  The wave lifts you.

  You look down.

  It looks like four foot.

  You push up.

  You’re going down the wave.

  Your belly’s still on the board, your arms are propping you up:

  You push up . . .

  You push up . . .

  But nothing in them. You got noodle arms.

  Surfing always good for your weight: kept you away from the fridge for hours at a time.

  The wave collapses and pulls The Thing away, the rug from under your belly.

  Not even your feet.

  You stand up on the sand.

  Water to your hips.

  Thing floats round with the toddlers on the sandbank.

  You turn round and here comes the BFO, legs flexed trimming a clean little peeler straight past you like you’re a marker buoy.

  She whoos herself. An arm in the air.

  Patronising.

  Like this is all the stoke there is in the world.

  And you’re out of there.

  Out of there:

  Gone all over again.

  Now you remember: you were a kook once, when you was little. There was these times you come down to Rainbow not know for sure if today you can stand up or not. Worried you won’t catch a wave. Might have a no-wave surf, most depressing thing in the world. You stand on the sand and think how maybe you won’t be able to do it today.

  Then you paddled out into the water and surfed.

  Eventually it went away.

  Now it come back.

  In the Chariot:

  ‘Nah Den, it’s not you I’m gunna kill.’

  Ar bad years, bad bad, heavy years, heavy heavy . . .

  Years . . .

  No
Rod, no Lisa, you took off up and down the road. Your boltholes. Your safe houses. Christmases as a guest. Your hot turkeys and your cold turkeys.

  Seventies dribbling away in bad surf and onshore winds, dribble dribble.

  You:

  A man is an island.

  With a dog on it.

  If you need a friend, they say, get a dog.

  Dave kept you going. You couldn’t let him go same way Bas went.

  Up and down the coast, always the coast, your boltholes and your safe houses: to where there were waves and nobody knew you except your good solid tough ones with a friendly stash and music. Up and down the coast for the end of the seventies: seventies surf towns, hard core only: Crescent, Scotts Head, Old Bar, Nobbys, Sandon, Dolphin, Green Island.

  You surfed but didn’t really surf. Could only surf when you were so bombed you couldn’t remember you weren’t meant to surf. Dave sit on the beach and watched. Good judge of a wave, Dave. Sometimes you walk out and hop on a six-footer with a no-paddle take-off and blow them all away, and that does you.

  Out the water, in your bolthole, your safe house, with your good tough solid ones.

  You shaped where you shaped. Shaping: barter for hammer. Shapers offered you jobs cos of your name. They brag to their mates they had The DK shaping for them. Remember DK? Yeah! Retro boards? Whatever. But shapers had to follow directions and you couldn’t do that wouldn’t do that you shape perfect boards for yourself but nobody else can ride them and then you take off with the finished boards and flog them for coin or nick some blanks and flog them for coin, or take buckets of glass and resin and hardener and flog them for coin . . .

  Up and down between Thailand and Queensland, happier on planes now cept for the rocks in your shoes and the rocks in your arm and the rocks in your head—

  Man had to put bread on the table somehow.

  You would be the rich, like FJ and Tink were now the rich:

  Thailand—

  You parked Dave with your Melbourne connections.

  You survived till the trip when you flew back after putting 28 grams of smack in 28 frangers and swallow them all with Coca-Cola. You caught the flight with a stomach full of heroin and Durex rubber and The Real Thing.

  You got off the flight and sat on the pot and shit out 26.

  You unpacked them and piled it up. By the time you were ready to on-sell it in your boltholes, your safe houses, your seventies hard-core surf towns, you was doubled over and yellow with hep.