There were lots of days like that. Antarctic days.
Mr. Wilkins said he’d tell us a story about the sea if we liked. So we stayed inside.
“What’s the most dangerous thing about being at sea?” he asked.
“Storms!” a girl called Mary said from down the back.
“Wrong!”
“Big waves?” Nicholas Perkins said.
“Wrong!”
Silence.
No one could think of anything, or they were too afraid to say something stupid, like me. My mind was going round and round. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t look at Mr. Wilkins. I kept seeing darkness, cold dark water. I could feel it. I was sinking, heavy in the night, being pulled down. I thought about coming here on the ferry in the dark, how the big waves had sounded like they could tear the ship apart. I thought about rounds of oil on the surface of water—slick and shiny, fuel, diesel. I thought about fire. Fire burning on the water. But I didn’t say fire, I opened my mouth and said, “Land.”
Mr. Wilkins jumped up from his desk.
“Good girl,” he said. “The most dangerous thing about being at sea is the land.”
Sounds came from the room, groans, pushed-out breath that said, How the hell are we meant to know that?
“Just listen to the story,” Mr. Wilkins said.
The wind came in under the door and through the gaps in the old window frames and it felt as if it even came through the old, thin glass itself. The wind came in and blew through our hair and we pulled our gray blazers around ourselves a little tighter as Mr. Wilkins sat back on the edge of his desk and talked about leaving the cold of Tasmania behind and sailing his yacht toward the bright sun.
“My girlfriend and I were never going to come back,” he said.
There were tropical islands and the long coast of South America. Coconuts collected from beaches and pierced open with a screwdriver. There were crabs as big as small tables to eat and juice squeezed from raw sugarcane to drink, and all of it was bathed in sunlight, pure and warm and sparkling—the water calling to them to move on. Keep going. The Caribbean waiting on the other side.
During the long wait at the Panama Canal, their tiny yacht was dwarfed by supertankers, by reefer ships, by the giants of the sea that moved goods around the world. Incredible ships, as big as islands, manned by hundreds of humans working day and night, moving around the earth in nonstop motion, never staying anywhere for long. Moving, moving. The earth spinning on.
Finally they got their turn at 4 AM, and in the dark they began the series of locks. A pilot came on board to steer them, friendly, funny. Two deckhands as well, sleeping on the deck. Then they were through. On the other side. They had left the Pacific and were on the Atlantic side. Luminous green water. White sand. It was bliss.
They slowed down, planned to move around the hundreds of islands over as many months as it took. In no hurry, they were where they were meant to be. They were taking it all in.
And on a whim, with the shadowy mass of Cuba just visible when they looked hard at the horizon, Mr. Wilkins asked his girlfriend to marry him. It had not been planned. He’d never wanted to marry. It was a stupid thing really. They were fine as they were. They were happy and the sun shone down on them. But he did it anyway, he grabbed her up in his arms and said I want to marry you. And she said Yes.
They drank a bottle of champagne in the sun, one that had been in the fridge, given to them by a friend when they pulled away from the dock and down the Derwent River. All that time ago—a lifetime. A world away.
When the night came they were heading slowly for Cuba. Steady. Mr. Wilkins’s girlfriend went to sleep but Mr. Wilkins stayed up and checked the course every fifteen minutes, knowing they were heading in the right direction, heading straight for where they were meant to be going. The path clear. He set an alarm for every fifteen minutes just in case he fell asleep.
“I woke to a terrible screeching sound,” he said.
There was not even time for them to get their life jackets on, the yacht went down so fast. In twenty seconds, they were in the water. In the water in the dark. Complete darkness with only the stars above their heads. But they could stand. They were standing on a reef, but they could see nothing.
They clung to each other there in the dark, the water swirling and moving around them, and they stayed, not ever speaking, just clinging to each other and trying to keep their feet touching the rock—the reef, this earth. Just before the sun rose, after the longest night, they saw land just fifty meters ahead. They followed the reef all the way to the small spit of sand. An island, a cay, very small, but land.
Their yacht was only ten meters down under the water, broken in half almost, but there. Mr. Wilkins was able to get bottles of water, the first-aid kit and the flares out from inside the punctured cabin, and he and his girlfriend sat on the beach and set off the flares. They sat waiting on the beach, not clinging to each other now.
Knowing it was over.
After the rescue, Mr. Wilkins’s girlfriend flew to Los Angeles and Mr. Wilkins traveled down through South America. They didn’t see each other for five months. When they did, it was like they were strangers. When they did, there was nothing there. It was like it had all happened to two other people, like it had been a movie they had watched on a plane. Easily forgotten—lost in time.
The bell rang and I was sitting in an old building at school. Hobart. Tasmania. I could feel the wind and the cold again and it was time to get up and move to my next class. Advanced math.
“Just a crazy dream,” Mr. Wilkins said quietly.
A dream.
HOT DOGS
The house was quiet. The house was dark. I stood in the hallway and listened for the TV.
“Hello?” I said.
My brother was on the couch in the living room, just sitting there in the dim light.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything.
I let my heavy schoolbag fall off my shoulder and it thudded on the ground.
“Is the TV busted?”
He shook his head, then got up off the couch and walked into Mum’s room. It was off the living room, and only big enough to fit her bed. There were no windows, just four stone walls and a small built-in wardrobe.
I watched my brother open the wardrobe door and get out the white wooden box where Mum kept her special collection of fifty-cent pieces. The paint was chipped in places, on the corners and along the sides, and underneath the paint, the wood was dark and warm and red. Inside, the coins moved across the bottom of the box and clunked into the sides.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” my brother said, and he handed me the box. He looked like he might cry, or maybe he had been crying—the way his cheeks were a bit red, a bit puffy.
I opened the latch and lifted the lid. There were nine coins inside. Nine silver fifty-cent coins. There should have been fifty-three. I had counted them many times. I knew the total came to $26.50 but Mum said they would be worth more than that one day. She told me the one dated 1966 was already worth $11 because it was the first year of this kind of coin. But she didn’t want to sell it. She was going to hold on to them all until they got to their top value.
I looked at my brother.
“I nearly got hit by a car when I got off the bus,” he said.
I opened my mouth to speak but he kept talking.
“It wasn’t today. It was before. I got off and I walked behind the bus and a car came around really fast and hit the edge of my schoolbag. I ran home but no one was here, and there was no bread or anything to eat and I thought about all the coins because at the shop near the bus stop the hot dogs only cost ninety-five cents.”
He stopped talking then, bit his bottom lip.
Fifty-three coins.
Nine left.
That was twenty-two hot dogs.
I wondered what he’d done with all the five-cent pieces. They added up to enough for another hot dog.
Twenty-three hot dogs
.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about them,” he said.
He told me that the woman at the shop thought it was strange that he was suddenly buying hot dogs after school when we never had any money, but she served him anyway. He said she watched him when he left, out of the window, so he always hid around the corner and ate really fast.
“I don’t remember taking so many,” he said.
He blinked his eyes.
“I just get really hungry.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I got hungry too.
I looked at the coins in the box and I picked a few up. The 1966 one wasn’t there anymore. I shut the lid.
“What are we going to do?” my brother asked.
I didn’t know what time Mum was getting home. She was at uni, maybe at the library. Sometimes she didn’t get home until late.
“Maybe she won’t notice,” I said.
Mum used to look through her change every day for collectible fifty-cent pieces, like the 1982 Commonwealth Games one, or the 1981 Royal Wedding, but she hadn’t done that for ages. I went into Mum’s room and shoved the box under a pile of sheets and pillowcases at the bottom of the wardrobe.
“We just won’t say anything,” I said.
I told my brother that he couldn’t have any more hot dogs but I would show him how to make two-minute noodles by using the water boiled in the kettle if he couldn’t wait for me to get home. That way he wouldn’t have to worry about using the hot plate.
“What if Mum looks in the box?” he said. “What if she goes away?”
Sometimes Mum would get fed up with us, if we’d left the door open so all the heat got out, or if we were arguing about what TV show to watch, or who got to eat the crusts of the white bread when we had toasted sandwiches, because they were the best and went all crispy in the grill. She’d grab her keys, slam the door and drive off. I don’t know where she would go, and sometimes she’d be gone for a long time. My brother would ask me over and over if she was coming home.
“Do you think she’ll come back?” He couldn’t sleep until he heard her keys in the door. Then he’d get up and go out to the sunroom and say sorry—sorry for fighting or sorry for leaving the washing on the line, sorry for whatever it was that we had done wrong.
I’d hear him out there, hear him speak in a small voice, and Mum would say, “That’s okay, love,” and maybe she’d pat his hair and he’d sit by her for a while before she’d tell him to go back to sleep.
I’d stay in my bed and look out at the cold night, and I’d think that we shouldn’t have to be sorry for any of it. We should never have to be sorry.
“What if she finds out I spent the coins?”
But Mum never said anything. Maybe she stopped collecting fifty-cent pieces—or maybe she just forgot about the box. The hot dogs became a memory, a story we shared, but chose to forget.
Bornholm
June 1987
My home
No fences
One side the forest, the other—the sea
The deer in the garden
Eat my grandmother’s roses
Eat the snowdrop berries
Rest down beneath the bushes
I try to get close
To reach out and touch them
But they see me
They run
My home
No fences
The forest and the sea
There is lots to do now, suddenly. To get done.
I hurry to pull the rowboat up onto the beach. It feels heavy on my own in the wet sand and it takes time. The paint is starting to flake away. I will need to sand it back and repaint, but there is not time now. No time. It will have to wait.
Orange and sky blue. Orange for me, and blue for my father. The colors it has always been.
I am small. I don’t know how old but it’s time—the end of summer.
My father and I pull the rowboat up the beach. He pulls it. I think that I am helping, my small hands trying to grip on tightly, my feet moving one foot after another in the heavy sand. I can hear my father breathing. He is strong and it is easy for him—but still I can hear how he strains ever so slightly.
We get the boat to its safe place—high away from the water where the tough sharp grass begins. The sand is dry here, loose and soft as dust. I watch my father turn the boat over—its dark slick bottom still good. It will last the winter and we will not have to tar this year.
I am glad. I am better at painting. We paint the boat at the beginning of summer—orange and sky blue. The same two colors it has always been, the colors it will always be.
I paint the stripe at the top orange, my father paints the rest sky blue. “A fresh coat of paint makes the boat so happy. See how she smiles? Brand-new again.”
We mark the coming of summer and are ready.
“Go and get the oars,” my father says, and I run down to the waterline. I pick up the solid wooden oars, ones that my grandfather made with his hands. His initials are carved in the wood, above where your hands grip on. I run my thumb over the letters: HJ. He was a fisher—a fisherman. I did not know him, but here he is. I carry the oars he made. My grandfather.
I tuck the ends of the oars up under each arm, drag them behind me. I can hear the lines they are digging in the sand, lines that the tide will soon come and erase—my hard work will not leave a mark.
My father has secured the boat. He is waiting.
“What took you so long?” he asks, but he is smiling. It is just a joke. He takes the oars from me and carries both in the air so they don’t drag. He carries them with ease, as if they are just sticks. We walk together to our house, where the woodstove is on and my grandmother will be cooking something good and warm to eat. Maybe it is roast pork and red cabbage, or maybe it is something else. I do not know, but I am hungry now—the day has slipped away.
Tomorrow my father will join his ship and he will be gone.
I look back at our rowboat, upturned, high and far away from the sea. It will be covered with snow soon enough; the dark sky will sit low then—almost touching the earth—the rowboat waiting alone for the summer to come again. Waiting for the long night to be over.
Copenhagen
July 1987
I sit in a bar, a nice place with candlelight and dark wood and people. The night is coming down outside. Feet walk fast above where I sit, the streetlight there—shopping bags, dinner, home.
“Heart of Gold” comes on the stereo.
A group of young men in the corner sing along, happy drunk. It is their song. I drink my beer, my heart beats fast. The harmonica plays, the guitar keeps time, keeps strumming, then the chorus starts up again.
When I close my eyes, I can hear Soren sing along too. Loud, out of tune. Heartfelt.
I smoke a cigarette. I get another beer. The song changes. The night moves. People join me, people continue on their way. But it sticks to me, that song. Neil Young. It comes through in my dreams and I wake humming it, wishing I had never heard it.
It stays with me for the four days we are in Copenhagen. It goes round and round while I walk. Waiting to leave. Copenhagen, not Aalborg.
Copenhagen.
It’s beautiful here, the streets, and when you look up you can see all the turrets and towers and spires—gold and green dragons up high. The past.
As if in a dream, I walk the streets. I walk the harbor. I walk in big circles around this city.
“The meatpacking district,” he said. “It will be the new place.”
His town. His dream. Now, just me.
My footsteps echo on these old streets. The cobblestones slicked with rain, but I don’t mind. I keep on walking, to know that I am here, that I exist.
I keep walking.
Copenhagen.
Nella Dan is waiting.
You make it home. It’s all there is—all that exists.
A bunk—your bunk against the bulkhead. A down duvet, a pillow. A small desk, a chair, a porthole. A cupboard with little wo
oden coat hangers inside. A home.
You will be warm, you will be snug. You will sleep like a baby. You will be tired and sleep—the sound of the engine loud but constant and warm.
Constant.
When it changes, that sound, you will wake. You will open your eyes and get up. You will look out of your porthole. You might see ice. You will think, Yes, we have slowed down. We have hit the pack ice, and the white of the light will be almost blinding. You will blink your eyes, get used to the strangeness of this landscape.
You might watch for a time, mesmerized. You might see a Weddell seal, an Adélie penguin, the black, still water between the ice. You will think, Okay. Go back to sleep now. It’s 2 AM. You need to get up soon. Go back to sleep.
You will lie down on your bunk—your ship steady, vibrating, humming. You will listen to the engines and the hull cutting through the ice. You will never forget that sound. You will remember it for the whole of your life—the clink clink clink, the scraping, the sharpness.
You will think, Good ship. Good girl, you can do it. You will rest your hand against the bulkhead, her body carrying your body. You will feel safe. You will be warm. You will fall asleep listening to the engine, thinking, This is home, the only home I need, and I don’t ever want to leave.
THE LITTLE RED SHIP
They called her the little red ship, but she was big. She was huge.
Buoyed up against the wharf, pushing in against the rubber tires buffering her from the old wood of the dock. Rainbow patterns of oil on the surface of the dark, dank water.
From here, you could see all of Hobart rise up from the river, the city and the houses going up the steep hills, the mountain there, its face behind the clouds.
We were at the bottom of it all, my mother and my brother and me.
Standing and waving.
For the little red ship had come back, and she was here to stay.
For the summer at least.
SEA MOOSE
Bo told me to sit with Leo in the red booth. Big Leo with his blond beard.
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