Death of a Whaler (24 page)

‘And she's beautiful, underneath. I mean, she's not, she looks kind of strange at the moment, you probably wouldn't see it, but she has an internal beauty,' he enthuses to Karma while they drink beer and watch the sunset from the garden. Sitting in the dinghy, pushing the goats away with gentle shoves when they come too close.

‘You know what it sounds like to me?' Her head to the side, hair falling over her eyes.

‘What?'

‘It sounds like you're rebuilding something else, Flinch.'

‘What?'

‘Yourself.'

‘Aw, shit, woman, not that again.'

He hides his recognition of the truth in a long, cool swig of his stubbie.

‘Wood's still the best stuff for boats, y'know,' says Macca. He stands back from the frame of the boat, snaps the measuring tape back into its container. ‘Has one of the highest stiffness-to-weight ratios of any material in the modern world. Graphite is rubbish to work with in comparison. It's just that wooden yachts are hard to mass-produce, that's why the big shipyards don't use wood anymore. But that's why this old girl is going to stand out from the crowd.'

Flinch suspects Macca has done some reading beyond the racing guide. The way he talks reminds him of Nate, the confidence that comes from spouting something that he has seen written down in black type.

While Macca does some of the hard grind, Flinch practises tying sailing knots with pieces of leftover string. The slippery hitch, rolling hitch, figure eight, bowline, sheet bend, reef knot. Occasionally gets one right. More often, ends up with the string tied in inexplicable loops around his thumb or fingers. Has to cut his left hand free of it at least once with his pocket knife. He takes a few feet of rope home to practise throwing a loop around a dock mooring, imagining himself bringing the boat in after a day at sea, something he was never in charge of on the fishing vessels. Waits until a night that Karma is out with friends from the surf shop. Recalling all too easily the embarrassment of forced participation in school sports days and his guaranteed ineptitude. He starts by aiming at a stump in his backyard. When he gets good at that, he tries lassoing the goats, to try his hand at moving objects. Manages to get the rope over the necks of a couple of the slow ones, until one of the bigger bucks turns on him and butts him in the kneecap. Later that night, he rests his foot on the couch, ice wrapped in a tea towel over a shining bruise. Drinks a cup of ginger tea, which has healing properties, or so Karma had told him once. He's unsure if it applies to bruises. Washes it down with rum, his own home medicine, just in case.

‘Come to the pub for one?'

Friday. Macca finding tradition hard to break after years of a working man's shifts, the retreat to the bar, a few cold beers under the whirr of the fans, all the blokes at knock-off slumped forward on their elbows, smirking and sweating and grateful for the simple fact that it's a Friday afternoon, the demise of the working week.

‘Yeah,' says Flinch. ‘Yeah, can't see why not.'

They walk up Jonson Street under the shop awnings, snatching shade. The tar on the road shimmering like water in the heat of the afternoon. As they pass the grocer's, the air is dense and syrupy with the perfume of mangoes and bananas and pineapples, all ready to burst their skins in the heat. Expectant fruit flies hover. Someone is cooking a curry in a back kitchen. The breeze carries murky green scents of brine and seagrass. The whole afternoon overripe and soupy with humidity, the almost-tropics.

They pause at the end of the street, wordlessly climb the sand dunes towards the beach, sharing the sea-dog's lust for a glimpse of the ocean. Main Beach, its sweeping arc, the crests of waves as they roll to shore streaks of white. Some way out Julian Rocks, the spray as the ocean flattens itself against them. And the sky, enormous and smooth blue, the horizon the promise of things eternal.

A Nankeen kestrel wheels graceful circles above them, wings outstretched and perfectly still. A pelican soars steady and low and purposeful over a dark gutter in the ocean, its head tucked back into its body, reminding Flinch of a big old warplane, a fish-focused B52. The gulls at their feet gather, appraise them with a canny eye for the possibility of food or bait.

‘Seems almost too good, some days,' sighs Macca.

The back room of the pub, cool and dark with shadow, smelling like stale beer and ashtrays. A radio behind the bar cracks and whistles with the commentary of summer cricket matches.

‘Score?' Macca takes a seat on a stool.

‘Three for seventy. Chappell out for thirteen.' The barman snaps the tap on the barrel and plonks two small cold glasses of beer in front of them.

‘Shit.'

‘Reckon.'

‘It's recoverable.'

‘Could be.'

As shadows elongate in the late afternoon, the torpid weight of the heat lifts and with it Flinch's mood. People trickle in and out of the bar. The workers down the first few glasses then take their time, sip at the cold froth, chew their gums and offer opinions on the match. Flinch knows he's a part of this. The back-slap greetings, the casual, friendly ribbing of each other, the shared anticipation of a long, lazy weekend of sunshine, of fiddling with boats and cars and gutting fish and napping on the couch to the drone of the cricket commentator on a flickering TV or radio. Weekends around the bay.

He arrives home to find the house in darkness, a goat curled like a cat asleep on the welcome mat. He gives it a shove with his boot and it bleats, levers itself to its feet, shakes and wanders off.

In the kitchen, he switches on the fluoro and it flickers a couple of times before settling into a bright hum. He sees evidence of the beginnings of a meal. Raw chopped onions and garlic pungent on the breadboard. A saucepan on the stove, the oil in it glistening clear and cold. The cutting knife is wedged upright in the lino floor, vertical from the tip like a fallen arrow. Flinch bends to dislodge it.

‘I have to go home.' Karma has moved to the doorway as quietly as a gust of wind. When she speaks she gives him a fright and he drops the knife again and it clatters on the floor.

‘Matt dropped by a while ago. They received a message at the commune, from my folks. Some bad news. I'm needed.'

She looks hollow, as if some part of her has caved in. Flinch picks up the knife very slowly and puts it on the bench, steps back as if expecting it to launch itself through the air again. He's still wary of knives.

‘I'm going to be gone for quite a while, I think.'

Flinch nods. ‘Do you need anything?'

‘A ride to the bus stop tomorrow?'

‘Sure. Of course.'

‘Thanks. I've packed up the room. Leaving some things, though — you don't mind, do you?'

‘No, no. So you're coming back?'

‘Yeah.' She smiles, small, with effort. ‘This is where I live now.'

Flinch breathes out, tastes relief. He doesn't know what he'd do without her just yet. Feel less guilt eating red meat, maybe. But he suspects that's only the tip of it.

They almost miss the morning bus. Milly, baking in the heat of the morning, her paint cracking, doesn't make a sound when Flinch turns the key. He stomps on the clutch, sweat dripping onto the collar of the fresh new shirt he selected especially to say goodbye. Eventually the ute gives in and Flinch floors it all the way into town, to the bus stop, pulling up in a cloud of dust as the bus engine starts.

Karma grabs her rucksack and is out the door before Flinch has even turned off the engine.

‘Bye! I'll see you in a few months. Look after yourself, won't you?' She says it as if it were an instruction on a list of things that needed doing, a list that might also include remembering to turn the iron off, watering the plants. She waves to the bus driver to wait, and leans through the open window on Flinch's side of the cabin to kiss him goodbye. Her lips on his cheek soft and wet and quick.

‘I'll miss you, Flinch. Take care.'

‘Yeah,' he says. ‘Reckon.'Words failing him, as they do. She smiles and jogs off towards the bus. The doors close behind her. The bus emits a loud creak as its brakes are released, and rumbles away.

Flinch, the engine still running unsteadily, sits in the cabin looking at the empty spot next to him. The weight of her is still imprinted in the seat, the sagging foam and vinyl slow to resume their shape. He places his hand on the seat to feel her warmth. Such a sudden goodbye. He is unprepared. For a second, he convinces himself that she has just vaporised into thin air and almost panics. Instead, he revs Milly until she whines like a lost dog, turns into the white light of the morning, and heads for home.

The house, empty before when Karma wasn't around, seems even emptier still, in a way he did not realise it to be before she came to live with him. Bristling and hot with guilt, he creeps into her room and runs his fingers over the things she has left behind. A few tattered books he wonders if she has read.
Das Kapital
,
To Kill a Mockingbird
, a compilation of short stories by Hemingway, something to do with the Third Eye, a Steinbeck.

There are bands for her hair, long light-brown strands woven around them. He flicks them between his fingers and stings his thumb when they snap. When he wraps himself in the sarong that she uses for a curtain, he smells incense. Lemongrass. He takes a candle from the room, places it on a saucer, and puts it in the dining room, in the middle of the coffee table. At night, he will light it. It's a little morbid, he realises, but he hopes that rituals and routine will sustain him while she is gone.

And, of course, filling the long hours, there is the boat. He finds himself thinking about her, the curve of hull and keel, the long, smooth planks for decking, her bumps and hollows, as if she were the object of a schoolboy crush.

Macca, known for mismatched red and orange socks, lurid T-shirts sporting logos like
Aussie Blokes
are Big Down Under
alongside pictures of well-hung kangaroos, sauce and oil-stained King Gees, has, for some reason, been taken with the idea of painting the boat in traditional colours.