by Sofie Laguna
‘Want to go down the beach, Jimmy? Have a swim?’ Uncle Rodney asked.
‘Can Ned come?’
‘Can Ned come? Of course he can come! Can you imagine if I didn’t bring Ned? He’d never forgive me!’ Uncle Rodney sounded as though he was speaking through a loudspeaker. I saw grey fillings at the back of his teeth when he spoke. I saw more of Uncle Rodney’s mouth than I’d ever seen of Dad’s.
When Uncle Rodney picked up Ned’s lead Ned ran around us in circles, his back end throwing the front end in a different direction. Uncle Rodney caught him by the collar. ‘Easy does it, Neddy, settle down.’ It was the same thing everyone said to me! The same thing!
‘Go put your togs on, son,’ Dad said.
‘Okay, Dad, togs on,’ I said.
Uncle Rodney took me and our suitcase to the room I would be sharing with Dad. I opened the case and took out the togs. I pulled off my shorts and put on the togs over my underpants. I put a t-shirt over the one I was wearing and went back out to Dad and Uncle Rodney.
‘Ready?’ Uncle Rodney asked me.
‘Ready,’ I said.
‘You can take Ned, if you like,’ said Uncle Rodney, handing me Ned’s lead with Ned on the other end. We walked out the front door, Ned pulling me along the hot street. His power travelled through the red cord and into my arm – I could hardly hold him back. Ned was the leader from the animal kingdom. He only knew one language; there was only one world for him.
‘Careful crossing the road, son.’
I waited for Uncle Rodney and Dad to catch up and then the three of us crossed in a line together. Ned pulled me down to the beach.
At home the beach on the other side of the wetlands was flat. Here the waves rose up as if an enormous hand was underneath, pushing the water back and forth. The waves transfixed me; I couldn’t move. They rose up one behind the other, curling over themselves and breaking into white foam as they raced towards the shore. They were fuelled by the earth’s refinery, steaming and boiling at the core, forcing wind and pushing up water through the cracks like a blowhole.
Uncle Rodney unclipped Ned from his lead and he ran down ahead of us. Uncle Rodney went after him. I wanted to follow, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the powers.
‘Go on, son,’ said Dad. ‘Jimmy, go down to your uncle. Come on, son, he’ll think you’ve never been to the beach before.’
But I hadn’t, not a beach like this.
Ned ran back to me, swinging round and knocking me over. He dropped a wet green ball beside me, his fur dripping water onto my legs. Uncle Rodney came up just behind him. I looked down to the water and saw a line that had been drawn across the sand where the last wave ended, like a boundary.
‘You better throw that thing for him or he’ll make me do it.’ Uncle Rodney stood over me in his red and yellow togs with his chest covered in pictures as if he were the pages of a book.
I picked up Ned’s ball and threw it as hard as I could. Ned raced after it as the waves kept coming and breaking and stopping and rolling back. They were always in the background of everything that happened and would happen. I ran up and down the hot sand throwing the ball to Ned and Uncle Rodney while Dad sat on a towel in his trousers and shirt. I ran faster and faster, big circles getting smaller. Then straight lines, then sideways lines, back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down, faster and faster sky sand waves dog sky sand waves dog sky sand waves dog faster and faster and faster.
‘Easy does it, son.’ Dad called out. ‘Easy!’
‘He’s alright, Gav. This is the perfect place for a kid to go nuts. I don’t know who’s worse, him or the dog.’
One of my circles got so small and fast that I dropped onto the sand but I kept my legs turning me on my back, my legs kicking me around, spraying sand into the air. Ned barked. When I stopped I saw flashing rainbow lights. My heart pounded. If it exploded I’d die like Pop Flick. We went to his funeral. They put him through a tunnel and set him on fire. Dad kept some of the ashes in a silver eggcup with a lid and said, One day I’ll scatter them, but Mum said, That day will never come, Jimmy, just between you and me.
I saw my Uncle Rodney laughing. Each puff had wings that carried it out over the ocean. Uncle Rodney brought over a bottle of water and splashed some of it over my face. ‘I think Ned is going to like having you around, you’re as crazy as he is.’
Dad stood up, pulling off his shirt and trousers. His boxers had stripes that went straight across – blue white blue white blue white blue white. I watched those stripes walk down to the water. Dad didn’t stop to test the temperature with his toes, he just kept going and the waves parted, divided by his force, and went rushing past. I didn’t take my eyes off him; the white skin of his inner body, the red of his outer, the green pictures on his muscles – maidens and anchors and birds with hearts in their beaks – the scar from the mower blade, the dark of his head.
‘He’s a good swimmer, your old man,’ said Uncle Rodney.
I didn’t know my old man could swim. I’d never seen it.
Dad held his hands in a high prayer above his head, then hooked his body over and went under.
I ran down to the boundary line. ‘Dad! Dad!’ I knew he couldn’t hear me. The world under the sea had no sound. Whales spoke to each other by sucking the silence around them into the shape of what they wanted to say, then blowing it towards the other whales. My dad would never understand it, no matter how much he prayed.
I held my breath.
A dark circle tore through the froth. It was Dad’s head. His body followed, and his stripes, lower now, as the water tried to take them from him. I could breathe again.
‘Watch him catch a wave, Jimmy,’ said Uncle Rodney. ‘He was always good at it – better than any of us.’
I sat beside Ned and Uncle Rodney and watched a wave building behind Dad. He started swimming in front of it. The wave grew bigger; Dad’s arms were propellers churning through the water at top speed, carrying him forward just in front of the wave, as if he was trying to beat it. Then the giant wave rolled forward and tipped over onto Dad, but instead of sinking him, the wave carried him towards the shore, all the bubbles of silence bursting up around him with the message of the whales. I had never seen my father’s mouth so wide. He beamed as if the sun was inside him.
‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ Uncle Rodney looked down at me. ‘He always was.’ Uncle Rodney was Dad’s younger brother. Then came Ray the raper. Last came dead Steve.
‘Yes, Uncle Rodney. Yes. Yes, he is good. He is good. Very good. My old man is good.’
‘You want a swim?’
I looked out at the waves building and rolling and breaking. ‘No thanks, Uncle Rodney, no thank you, no thank you.’
‘Come on, kid. We’ll show your dad how it’s done,’ said Uncle Rodney.
What could I show my dad?
‘Come on, Jimmy. If Ned can, we can.’ Uncle Rodney threw the ball out deep. Ned plunged out to where it floated, crashing through waves, his body covered by water. ‘Come on, I’ll be there to keep an eye on you.’
Uncle Rodney held out his hand to me. It was brown and beneath its surface I saw pale blue crisscrossing ropes. I put my hand in his and we walked into the water. ‘Ooh, bloody cold that. We must be mad.’ Uncle Rodney jumped up and down as if he could get away from it. I held his hand tight as the cold stiffened me. The ends of tiny pipes tried to poke their way through my skin. ‘You okay, Jimmy? That’s not too bad is it, kid? You okay?’
I shook my head. No no no not okay no no not okay no no.
‘We don’t need to go any further if you don’t want to, mate. We can just stay here. We’ll get used to it in a minute and then we can see if we want to go deeper, okay?’
Dad caught another wave, his eyes bright as he sailed past.
‘You right to go under now, Jimmy?’ Uncle Rodney asked me.
‘No thanks, Uncle Rodney. No thanks. Not ready. Can I get out now, Uncle Rodney, can I? It was a great swim, thank you.’
Even that made Uncle Rodney laugh.
‘Sure you can, kid. Next time we’ll go deeper. By the end of the week you’ll be catching waves with your old man, you wait and see.’ He led me back to shore and left me with Ned, then he joined Dad in the water.
I sat with Ned on the towels, salt drying on my skin, prickling under the sun, one hand on Ned’s wet warm coat. Even though they didn’t speak or shout across to each other as they flew along the water, there was a language between Dad and Uncle Rodney made of waves.
When they came out of the water, Uncle Rodney just behind Dad, I saw that they were both branches from the same tree. Uncle Rodney was taller but they both walked leaning back, legs happy to get there but the rest of them not so sure. Both had thick dark hair, and both had the same words written across their chests:
RIP MOTHER
BELOVED
After they dried themselves we walked back along the hot road to Uncle Rodney’s house. Ned’s head hung as he loped, his gums over the green ball between his teeth, the lead loose in my hand. The house we were walking to wasn’t the one Uncle Rodney lived in with Shirley on the Gold Coast – she took that one after the split. The house Uncle Rodney had now was a smaller one that he bought after Shirley left him with hardly any dough. There weren’t any of Shirley’s flower paintings in this one; only photos in frames of Uncle Rodney on boats with giant fishes in his hands.
When we got back Uncle Rodney took sausages and bread and salad and sauce out of the fridge for a barbecue. Uncle Rodney and Dad cracked beers outside. We went onto the verandah. There were three long chairs covered in soft squares. The garden stretched green before us with a birdhouse on a tree in the middle. The garden surrounded the tree. All points from fence to tree were equal.
‘Take a seat, Jim, stretch out,’ said Uncle Rodney. I climbed on one of the long chairs and put the towel over my face to block out the rays. I hung my hand down so I could touch Ned’s head as he lay on the deck next to me. The heat outside the towel was melting my outer coating. Uncle Rodney and Dad kept laughing at things while they fried the sausages and drank the beer. It was as if the waves and the sun had unblocked their valves. I liked the music it made – better than Merle Haggard.
I put tomato sauce on my sausages and bread. Uncle Rodney said, ‘You want some sausages with your sauce, mate?’ and laughed. Dad laughed too. Why? Sausages with your sauce, sausages with your sauce.
‘Uncle Rodney,’ I said into the heat, ‘Robby left. He went away on a boat.’
There was a pause, then Uncle Rodney said, ‘Is that right, Jim?’
‘That’s right, Uncle Rodney. That’s right. That’s what our Robby did. We’re going to miss him, aren’t we, Uncle Rodney?’
‘Is it true, Gav?’ Uncle Rodney asked. ‘Has Robby pissed off?’
I pulled the towel from my face and saw Dad head for the esky. ‘Yep.’
‘You never said anything.’
‘Didn’t have to. Jimmy’s done it for me.’ Dad pressed his finger hard into his beer can. I heard a snap.
‘Well I’m glad he has told me,’ Uncle Rodney said. ‘At least someone talks around here.’
‘We can’t ring him, we can’t write him a letter and Mum doesn’t know when he’s coming home,’ I told Uncle Rodney. ‘You have to ask the fish, ha ha! Hey, fish! Fish! When is our Robby coming home? Any ideas, fish? Any ideas?’
‘Good one, Jimmy. Ha! I like that. “Ask the fish!” Ha! At least you haven’t pissed off. Not planning on leaving your old man, are you?’
I looked at my dad. For a moment he had left Uncle Rodney’s yard and was searching for Robby through binoculars somewhere over the fence. Then suddenly he turned to me. ‘You better not bloody leave me, kid.’
Sparks hit the sides of my bone cage. ‘I better not, alright! I better not, Dad! I better bloody not! No way! No bloody way!’ I jumped off my chair, then over it and back again.
Uncle Rodney and Dad laughed, their faces turned to me, as if I was the source of their delight. Me, Jimmy Flick!
After lunch we lay in a row of four, a long loose wire running between us, mingling our thoughts.
Me: yellow sun, grey fur, blue wave.
Dad: blue waves, yellow sun, Paula’s brown eyes.
Uncle Rodney: yellow sun, grey fur, brown beer, Shirley’s blue eyes.
Ned: green ball green ball green ball.
Soon all we saw as we lay there in the hot sun were colours, one on top of the other, mixing at the edges like one of the fridge paintings I did when I was small.
That night I lay on the guest bed while Dad and Uncle Rodney sat up and drank beer and talked. I heard Uncle Rodney say Steve’s name.
‘Oh mate, were you surprised?’ Dad sounded as though there were tiny nails in his voice, little weapons to keep him safe, but from what?
‘I guess not.’
‘What I want to know is who the fuck came up with that much bail?’
‘The last time I spoke to Steve he said none of the gear was his. It was the only time and he was doing it as a favour for somebody.’
‘Bullshit. He was working for whoever paid his bail.’
‘Oh shit. Poor bastard.’
‘Poor nothing. A dozen fucken shot guns and a bucket full of speed. I could’ve been charged too. I already had Robby by then. Fucken idiot.’
‘I know, I know.’ Uncle Rodney sighed out.
‘What the hell was he thinking?’
‘He was never much big on thinking.’
‘Too right.’
‘Did you know I’ve still got his bloody ute up behind the shop.’
‘The WB?’
‘Yeah. He wanted me to mind it. He reckon’d he was going to come up and fix it and use it on the island to haul oyster baskets or some rubbish. I told him it was too hot for fucken oysters on the island, but he said he’d refrigerate the water or some bullshit.’
‘Some bullshit is right,’ said Dad.
Uncle Rodney waited. Dad was the oldest. Dad was the one who said what happened. But Uncle Rodney was going to try telling him something new. ‘Steve copped it a lot worse from the old man than you or me, mate. Only Ray got it worse. I’m not saying that’s an excuse, I’m just saying it happened. Did you know about the time Dad put him in hospital?’
‘No.’
‘You were long gone by then, and Mum didn’t want you to know. Dad broke three of his ribs with his jemmy bar. The one he used for lifting traps. You remember that fucken thing?’
‘Yeah. I remember it by the front door in case Brian Dixon ever came around.’
‘Brian fucken Dixon. Bastard.’
‘Dad said he was always ready for the enemy.’
‘Yeah, but Steve wasn’t the enemy, Gav. And Dad fucked him up well and truly. He was never the same. And neither was Mum. She got sick after that.’
There was a long silence between the brothers – two there, two missing.
‘Do you remember Steve on that old horse of the Drakes’, Rod? Do you remember how much he loved that horse?’ Dad’s voice was softer now. There were tears right at the back.
‘I remember he slept in the Drakes’ paddock. Mum couldn’t get him inside. He had to be near that fucken horse.’
‘He used to feed it all the breakfast cereal.’
‘Is that where it went?’
‘Jesus. Poor Steve.’
They were quiet again. I closed my eyes and saw the Drakes’ horse flying over the roof with Steve hanging onto the tail.
I woke when Dad came into the room. I pulled in my resources, holding my breath until I didn’t even take up one-third. Dad got in carefully, the mattress hardly dipped. He was very quiet, only taking in the breath that he needed and no extra. The air passed easily over his voice box, back and forth unimpeded. He stayed in his first position. I change positions a lot of times before the final. But Dad took his first and stayed with it. When his breathing deepened I knew he was asleep and then in my dream I was the guard and I wore a metal hat wi
th a spear out the top and watched over my dad because that was my job and it always would be.
The next morning Uncle Rodney and Dad pulled the ping-pong table out of the garage. Uncle Rodney bashed cobwebs away with his bat.
I threw the tennis ball for Ned and he ran for it, picked it up with his teeth and brought it back. I ate my toast and threw it, I drank my juice and threw it, I brushed my teeth and threw it until Uncle Rodney said, ‘At least finish brushing your teeth, Jim. I’m drawing the line there.’ Ned was hot and shaking and wet and running running running but inside him was quiet and still.
I watched Dad and Uncle Rodney play ping-pong, puffs of laughter around their heads like the froth from the waves. Their arms were fast, their faces grinning, I saw my dad jump to the side. He jumped under, he jumped up, his arms out and his head back and then Uncle Rodney leapt and jumped and they sang out, ‘Take that! Take that! You ole bastard! Ah! Still got it! Still got it, mate! Ha! Ah! Shot! Shot, you ole bastard! Come on, little brother! Take that, ha! Ha! Nice one, ha!’
In the afternoon we walked down to the beach again. Ned raced in circles and so did I and Dad didn’t care. He was talking about boats and fish and produce from the shop. The sun shone hotly down on us as we walked along the road. Tiny rivers of sweat dripped down Mother Beloved on Dad’s and Uncle Rodney’s chests.
Oh, Gav, really, did you have to? Mum asked him the day he came home with his new tattoo.
That’s how much I loved her, Paula.
Dad wore the stripes again. In his hand he carried cans of beer, his fingers between the plastic as if they were rings. Uncle Rodney packed oranges and bananas and cold cans of lemonade.
Soon Uncle Rodney asked, ‘You been in touch with Ray?’
I sensed my Dad’s cells go stiff, as if something was caught in the spokes. My dad didn’t talk about Ray since Ray went to jail for raping. ‘Not for about six months.’
‘I spoke to him at Christmas.’