Human Torpedo

by Tim Winton

  ‘Frogs. They drive me crazy. And my brother wets his bed.’

  ‘Violence?’

  ‘No, not even roses. It’s a pretty scungy garden.’

  John East sighed. ‘Tell me, Lockie, how are you liking school?’

  Lockie shrugged. ‘Did you like primary school?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What . . . now this might sound funny . . . but what kind of student were you at primary school? Were you different somehow? Can you tell any difference in how you feel?’

  Lockie put his sweaty hands together. This was getting creepy.

  ‘I got good marks. I was quiet. Sir, I was a suck.’

  ‘Really?’

  I’m packin’ crap every day, that’s what’s different, he thought, but I can’t tell you that. He shrugged.

  ‘You like being the class clown?’

  ‘It’s mostly by accident, sir. I’m nervous. Maybe . . . maybe I’m getting to like it. I dunno.’

  ‘You get respect from it, you think?’

  ‘Maybe, yeah, I reckon.’

  John East pulled his feet off the desk and made some more notes. Maybe a quick half-dozen with the cane’d be better than this, thought Lockie.

  ‘Your best subject?’

  ‘English, I s’pose. It’s too early to tell.’

  ‘Best sport?’

  ‘I hate sport.’

  ‘You look fit. You must be doing something.’

  ‘Surfing, sir. I surf.’

  ‘A grommet, eh?’

  ‘It’s fun, not sport.’

  ‘What’s sport, in your opinion?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Running round in circles. Hitting balls, wearing numbers and getting shouted at. That’s it.’

  John East laughed. ‘Well. Surfing is a sport, too, Lockie. World circuit, big bucks, sponsorship, numbers, teams. What kind of board you got?’

  Lockie smiled. He’s trying to get in with me, the wally, he thought. He wouldn’t know a damn thing about it. It made Lockie mad somehow.

  ‘Can I go now, sir?’

  The Guidance Officer’s smile went away. Oops, thought Lockie, that stacks it.

  ‘Yes. Go.’

  Lockie headed for the door.

  ‘And Lockie.’

  Lockie turned. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Pull your head in for a while.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  •

  After school Lockie walked downtown just to look in shop windows and wander along. Kids shuffled along in packs, fagging and cracking jokes. A few bikers hung out in front of the Wildflower Cafe, and panel vans full of yobbos cruised up and down looking for action. The harbour stank of algae and effluent from the woollen mills, and the breeze brought up farty gusts of it. It was ripe.

  Lockie ate an apple he’d been saving. He went into Boans and flicked through a few records. They were playing u2 in there. He liked it but it made him feel sad. From there he went down to the newsagency where a girl they called Fat Maz worked. Fat Maz looked at him like he wasn’t there. Lockie leafed through Surfing World and Tubes, putting them carefully back on the rack before Fat Maz’s old man, the one with the wonky leg, came huffing down the aisles. He shrugged as he passed Fat Maz again, as if to say ‘Sorry, but I’m broke’, but she didn’t seem to see him. People were bored to death in this town. He wished the Sarge hadn’t brought them here. He wished they’d just stayed home in North Beach and kept all their old friends in the same old streets, and he could have gone on being the old Lockie Leonard who everybody knew and nobody much minded. He hardly even knew himself anymore. He felt like he was making himself up as he went along, as if he’d started over and couldn’t be the same person. He felt pushed, trapped.

  Before it rained he headed home. He could hear the frogs already. And tomorrow was his birthday. Thirteen. It felt unlucky.

  ell, you’re finally a teenager, Lockie thought to himself as he sat waiting for a wave with the water glittering around him in the chilly afternoon sunlight. Thirteen years old. Well, maybe it wasn’t much, but being twelve and three quarters was truly miserable.

  He rubbed the arms of his new neoprene vest. It was a beautiful thing, this wetsuit. Smooth, sleek, in fluorescent yellow and green, Australian colours. Okay, it wasn’t absolutely what he’d hoped for, not like a full top-to-toe steamer, but the Sarge and his mum weren’t exactly made of money. And it was making a big difference: he’d been in the water an hour already and he was only now beginning to shiver. A couple more waves – he’d go in soon.

  He was tired but buzzing with pleasure. What a day it’d been. Right from the moment he woke up. It was sunny this morning, and Phillip’s bed was dry. Everyone at breakfast was happy. They sang ‘Happy Birthday’, and then the wetsuit came out. He went to school with a great daggy smile on his face like he’d come half-stoned from the dentist’s. School went fine. There was a forcefield of bliss around him. He was in a trouble-free zone all day. All the girls were crying because Daphne had died on ‘Neighbours’. In Maths, Old Squasher was truly vile and gave Lockie heaps, though Lockie didn’t let it affect him. For two whole Woodwork periods he rubbed away at his block of pine with Borax breathing down his neck - not a problem. The sun streamed onto the lunchtime grass and through the hedges and the hair of conscientious girls doing their test notes.

  Great day. He let his hands trail in the water. A set came hissing in.

  Lockie caught a left-hander with a serious late takeoff that left him sideslipping with the foam until he braced into a turn and raced back up the face – only to see some rotten sod dropping in on him. He was big, no kid, and he was good, dammit. Lockie stayed in behind as this drop-in made a whole pile of radical moves, turning with real power, riding like he really meant business. Lockie worked up high, gaining on him. He was smaller, lighter and a little quicker off the mark. As he got close, the other rider seemed familiar. Suddenly Lockie was on him and hooting, and in one nice re-entry he overtook the big bloke and pulled out before the final bonecrushing shorebreak.

  ‘You little prick!’ the other bloke said with a grin, floating down into the still water next to him. ‘You can surf.’

  ‘Sir!’ Lockie gasped. It was the Guidance Officer, John East.

  ‘Sir, you rotten mongrel! Next time I’ll put a hole in your head.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  They paddled out again together.

  ‘New wetsuit?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Should have got the one with the zip.’

  ‘It was a present.’

  ‘Come and see me tomorrow.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Guidance.’

  •

  Lockie surfed until his arms felt like secondhand sausage. The sun was on the hill overlooking the town and everything seemed set for a cold night.

  Fancy seeing the old John East, officer of guidance, Lockie thought, walking up the beach with his leg-rope trailing behind. The air was colder than the water and his teeth were doing first year Typing like they’d never heard of Liquid Paper. There were a couple of people still on the beach: a girl he couldn’t quite see and a couple of old joggers so wrinkled they looked like they needed an ironing. He heard a dog bark.

  When he got to his towel and started to get his wet-suit off – well, try to get it off – he understood what John East had meant about the zip. He pulled up from the front and got his arms pinned to his chest. No good. He pulled the vest down again and tried reaching back behind him and he ended up looking like a dumb thirteen year old pashing-on with himself inside a bag. In the end he managed to slip his head inside the neck and shove around in there long enough to get the new wetty knotted up over his head with his arms tied round his ears.

  Out of nowhere, some slavering, crazy mange of a dog started snapping at his heels. Lockie lurched all over the beach completely in the dark. He could hardly breathe in there and the more he baulked around, the worse his own breath seemed to him. And the more he moved, the crazier the
dog got. Lockie looked like a ‘Doctor Who’ mutation, and he sounded like one every time the dog butted him in the tricky bits. He couldn’t protect himself; he was about to have his groin and future manhood gnawed away.

  Someone was laughing, he could hear it now. Blimey, they’d have to be laughing loud for him to hear because it was like the Darth Vader Disco in there.

  ‘You alright?’ someone said.

  Lockie stood still. He didn’t know who it was, but he was fairly sure it wasn’t the dog.

  ‘Hey, can you hear me in there?’

  ‘Yeph!’ Lockie yelled, with an arm in his mouth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeph. High gan ear ooh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Helph!’

  Lockie felt himself ready to faint or die or become a Maths teacher. Maybe he could chew his way out. If the dog didn’t chew its way in first, that is. All of a sudden there was movement. Lockie felt his head separating from his ears and his arms tearing out of his body.

  ‘Oorgh croant do aht!’

  ‘Hang on, you dill.’

  It was like getting born. Everything gave and slucked back off him. His nose flattened like a meatball and in a strange moment he thought his skin had come off. It was suddenly cold and Lockie went wheeling back onto the sand and wound up with a big toe in his ear and half his Speedos up his nose. Air. Sky. Sand.

  ‘I’m alive.’

  ‘You’re a spack is what you are.’

  Lockie looked up. It was a girl talking, a girl he knew.

  ‘I’m dying again.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Vicki Streeton.

  ‘No, it’s true.’

  She walked away in the sinking twilight and Lockie made a startling recovery. He got dry, dressed and going, board under arm, before she even reached the dunes. His heart was shaking his ribs like a mad parrot in a cage.

  Aaaargh!

  He ran like a Bondi tram, only cleaner. No stops please, three to a seat, all out, now or never.

  He knew it.

  He was in love.

  ockie caught up with her in the caravan park behind the dunes. Dogs were howling for their Pal and TVs were pumping out the National Nine News and someone was flushing out the toilet block as he reached her.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Horses eat it. I’ve got a name, you know.’

  ‘Vicki,’ Lockie panted.

  ‘And you’re Lockie, the Kylie Minogue boy.’

  He laughed, though he was deeply insulted. ‘I don’t look anything like her.’

  And then she sang: ‘Lockie-Lockie-Lockie, I should be so Lockie . . .’

  ‘Very funny.’

  They walked for a while a little breathless, until they got to the road. Lockie watched her from the corner of his eye. She wore an old pair of Levis and an old sweater too big for her, its sleeves pulled up to her elbows. And she had that ducky dancer’s walk. Lockie started breathing like he was inside that wetsuit again. Just now he could have eaten those Levis – no salt, no sauce, no sweat.

  ‘So you’re a surfer, eh?’

  A few cars passed with headlights on.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lockie swelling a bit, ‘I surf.’

  ‘Well, I’ll try to overlook it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Surfers by and large are the dumbest males around. They think they’re so hot, they think everyone else loves them the way they love themselves, but I tellya Lockie Leonard, it’s just not possible. Surfers are dorks.’

  ‘So you’re not impressed I take it.’

  ‘Not by a surfboard and not by someone who can only talk about awesome barrels and rad reos. Ugh.’

  ‘Then give it to me straight,’ Lockie said, offended to the absolute max. ‘Why are you talking to me?’

  She didn’t say anything for a while. He waited.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Life is full of mysteries.’

  ‘Aargh!’

  ‘What?’

  Lockie swapped arms on the board. ‘There’s only one thing more boring than clever boys.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Clever girls.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m clever?’ she asked, a hint of laughter in her voice. ‘That would be flattery, you know.’

  ‘Well, I s’pose the world is full of mysteries.’

  Vicki stuck her thumb out and before Lockie noticed, a ute pulled over. They threw the board in and climbed in the back.

  ‘You look like you’ve never hitched a lift before in your life,’ Vicki said, her hair blowing in his face.

  ‘I haven’t. My old man wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘Who’s he, then?’

  ‘The new cop.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Yeah. Aha. He thinks I’m gonna get abducted.’

  ‘Who’s gonna abduct you?’

  It was dark when the driver, an old wharfie, dropped them off at the crossroads below the school.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Vicki asked.

  ‘Down there.’

  ‘In the swamp?’

  He laughed. ‘Yeah, more or less.’

  ‘I live up on the hill.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘This is halfway then.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They stood for a few moments, half-looking at each other.

  ‘You won’t expect me to sit on the beach like some dumb adoring surf-chick, will you?’

  ‘No, I . . . but I don’t . . .’

  ‘Good.’

  She reached over and kissed him on the mouth. She tasted like vanilla icecream and smelled like strawberry topping. Lockie’s lungs went off work for the day.

  ‘Now don’t go thinking you’re a real spunk, or anything. I can’t stand male pride. You’re still Lockie Leonard who can’t get out of his wetsuit and has obviously never been kissed by anyone but his mum before.’

  Lockie’s mouth moved, but all the air was long gone from his shut-down lungs.

  ‘See you at school tomorrow,’ she said. ‘We’ll sort out the details then.’

  Vicki headed off across the road, but Lockie managed a dumb sort of squawk that made her turn around.

  ‘What?’

  Air came back to him. Lockie moved his lips and words came. ‘It’s my birthday.’

  She came belting back across the road without even looking out for cars, and planted a kiss right on his open gawping mouth.

  ‘Happy birthday, then!’

  Aaaarrrgh! Fabulous!

  He ran home flat out. He threw the board in the laundry with his towel and wetsuit, heading through to the kitchen where everyone was already eating dinner.

  ‘Sorry I’m late!’ The Sarge eyed him dubiously.

  ‘How’s the wetty?’

  ‘Yeah, how’d it go, love?’ Mrs Leonard asked.

  ‘It’s changed me life.’

  The Sarge looked at Phillip whose eyebrows were like two Sydney Harbour Bridges. ‘I think he likes it.’

  ockie only got as far as the school oval next morning before he knew something was up. A line of girls, sitting like budgies along the fence, started nudging and pointing and carrying on.

  ‘Lockie’s in love!’ one shouted.

  He felt the great, sweet, pink bubble of joy inside him pop and stick to his insides. Why should it worry him? This morning Phillip had climbed into bed with him, wet PJs and all, and that hadn’t ruined anything. He woke feeling great. Anyway, wasn’t it true? Why did he feel ashamed and frightened all of a sudden? Talk about life having its mysteries.

  •

  First period. English. In she comes, down the aisle with her skirt drifting around her. Her hair is tied back and she has sleepers in her tiny ears. And yep, she sits down right next to him.

  ‘G’day, rubberhead.’

  Lockie felt the blood galloping to his cheeks. ‘Hi.’

  ‘You’re blushing.’

  ‘Bulldust. I’m sunburnt.’

  ‘In this town? Nobody gets sunburnt here. They reckon this is
the perfect English climate. That’s why the Poms settled here first.’

  ‘How depressing,’ Lockie muttered. ‘No wonder the convicts moved north.’

  Vicki laughed. ‘You are an ignoramus.’

  ‘Yeah, I just escaped from the zoo.’

  ‘Claaass!’ Mrs Twaddle bellowed.

  ‘None of that here,’ said someone.

  ‘Right! Who said that?’

  You could have heard a sparrow fart. Mrs Twaddle was small and round and soft like a lump of Play-Dough. Her little specs hung on the bridge of her nose like a depressed person ready to jump. She was alright really, with only a couple of sick habits.

  ‘Someone had better claim ownership to that piece of true wisdom, or there’ll be action.’

  They groaned.

  ‘No? Then I have no choice. Class, heads on desks.’

  The groaning went to moaning. They knew what was coming. She was going to give them no mercy, this old duck. Some kids plugged their ears with old Violet Crumble wrappers, while others had to just grit their teeth.

  ‘I will read you a poem.’

  Grooooaaaan!

  ‘“The Man from Snowy River” by Banjo Paterson —’

  ‘Oh, cack, sir!’

  ‘I am not sir. For that, I’ll read it twice, Wassop.’

  Moooaaaaannn!

  ‘“There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around/ That the colt from old Regret had got away . . .”’

  Lockie closed his eyes. The movie of this poem was awful; he figured they were lucky she didn’t make them watch the movie. He opened his eyes. Along the desk, with her cheek flat to the sticky black Laminex, Vicki was looking at him. He felt her ankle against his. She twined it around his leg and he thought he could die like this. He tried to smile, but with his face against the desk that way he looked like the Elephant Man impersonating a goldfish.

  •

  It went on all day, through Social Studies, Maths and Science, ankle to ankle and in a cloud. At lunchtime, Lockie suddenly met people.

  ‘Lockie, you know Melanie.’

  ‘No, I, er . . .’

  ‘And Tracy and Anne. Where’s Egg gone? And Wacker, he surfs too. Lockie’s a hot surfer, Wack. You should see him.’

  I’m somebody, he thought; I’m a somebody. Here he was with the crew.

  ‘Oh, you’re Vicki’s new boyfriend?’