From Under the Overcoat (9 page)

Or maybe it did. Kyle ended up okay. The feeling came back to his foot once the swelling around his spine went down. His leg mended, but he was stuff ed for running and
the doctors wouldn’t clear him to play rugby. They said another serious knock could cripple him. Kyle didn’t care too much about the rugby; he could still surf. Everyone sort of forgot about the accident, except when Kyle was tired, or pissed. Then his limp would be really obvious. He said he got headaches sometimes, but nothing worse than a hangover.

THAT WINTER THE SURF AT
Pukehina was awesome. Massive storms hit the East Coast, lasting three or four days. Then the wind would die away and turn around to an off shore. The swell rolled in, the waves were like mountains — big tubes, perfectly formed, breaking 100 metres or so off the beach. The wind seemed to lean back into them, holding them up, inviting us to see each ride through to its punishing end.

Pukehina’s steep. The sandbank drops away at the water’s edge and the waves dump onto the beach. A few people have drowned there, giving it a name for being dangerous. Which, from a surfer’s point of view, is a good thing because you don’t have to watch out for nuisance swimmers and boogie-boarders.

You’ve got to be patient to surf Pukehina. You have to paddle right out the back, past the dumpers, then wait for the wave. You can sit out there for a couple of hours and only get a few decent rides — even down at the mouth of the estuary, where the break’s more reliable.

That winter, though, it was like one of those all-you-
can-eat
smorgasbords. Ryan and I gorged on that surf until we were salt-crusted, red-eyed zombies, so knackered we could
barely carry our boards back up the beach. Even then we wouldn’t come in until it was dark.

I got my restricted licence and the use of my brother’s ute. He was away doing his OE. Ryan and I kept our boards permanently on the back. Around four-thirty, Ryan would clatter up the metal driveway on his old bike. Mum and Dad were always still at work. Ryan put his bike down the side of the house and climbed onto the back of the ute. He slipped under the cover to hide from the cops. The cops had a thing, for a while after the accident, about stopping you as you drove out to the beach. They’d wait to pounce at the golf course entrance. Check your licence, whether you had a mate hidden on the floor. They never thought to look under the tarpaulin on the back.

We were greedy when we first hit the water, barely turning to paddle back out before grabbing the very next ride. Maybe we were conscious of how little light there was, smack in the middle of winter. After July came and went, though, it started getting lighter, a few minutes every day. After the first frenzy, we’d settled down into a quiet rhythm of sharing the waves.

As the light started to fade, we could just make each other out in the water, dark smudges against our white boards. One of us would give the signal to finish up and go in, but then we’d turn and see the perfect wall of water looming behind us. How could we not surf it? Eventually, we’d call it a day. I drove back to town, Ryan under the ute cover, me blinking hard to stay awake in the oncoming car lights, still caught in the quiet cold magic of being inside a wave.

Hanging with Ryan was like being alone in a lot of ways.
I mean, you don’t feel the need to talk to yourself, do you. That’s how it was. It was okay just
being
, when you were with him. There was a lot of stuff going on that year: the usual school dramas; all the noise around NCEA and teachers and girls; a lot of information that you had to try and manage in your head. You’d get told about something important, like a sports meeting you had to be at, and some other crucial thing would give up its spot in your brain. It would slip away and you’d end up in trouble for forgetting.

Ryan never talked much. I said before it was shyness, but I’m not even sure it was that. It was as though he didn’t need anyone else. When he first turned up at school, the girls all thought he was hot: long blond curly hair, blue eyes, long eyelashes, all that shit that chicks get off on. But he ignored girls completely. This made them even more interested in him. For a while, anyway. Eventually they just decided he was a freak and they ignored him back.

I don’t know why he hung out with me — whether I was just a ride to the beach, or a decoy to him being labelled a complete loser. I didn’t care. I didn’t need to analyse the waves, talk the big talk. I just wanted to ride them. I liked what I got from Ryan, the uncomplicatedness of him. I liked surfing with him. Sometimes, I’d be paddling back out and he’d be coming in, and I’d find myself staring — at the way he totally owned the wave, dominated it.

I never once went round to Ryan’s house. From the first day, that’s how it was. He never asked me, not that you
asked
people to
come round
or anything, but stuff like that just eventually happens usually. Normally I suppose I would have just turned up at someone’s place, someone I’d known
for a while — and maybe that was it. I’d lived in Te Puke all my life; Ryan had just arrived. But there was something else which made casual calling-in impossible.

It happened on the day he and his aunty moved in.

I was fifteen and it was the beginning of year ten. It was a really hot day at the end of January, no wind, the sort of day where the heat sucks every bit of energy out of you.

I was walking back from the dairy and I saw a U-Haul trailer outside the empty house a few doors down from our place. I watched as this woman carried an armload of stuff up the front path. She wore cut-off denim shorts and a bright yellow singlet. Her hair was long and black and it sort of fluttered around her face. Her arms and legs were brown as.

I watched as she dumped the stuff inside the doorway. She bent over slowly. Her shorts went right up her. She had no underwear on, or maybe she did, maybe one of those thongs you see strippers wearing in the movies.

She turned around, came back down the path for more gear.

She looked like she was in her thirties; her face wasn’t pretty but there was something about it. This immediate picture got into my head; we were in bed and she was showing me the things she knew. I could see her face as she did things to me.

I’d never had these thoughts before; well, not like this. They were vivid and hot. There were plenty of pretty girls at school — sure, I’d thought about them but not in this way, not this intensely. I was inside a movie, not walking down the street in Te Puke.

Next thing, I’m blinking in the hot sticky sunshine and she’s staring back at me.
Take a picture
, she said.

She was looking me up and down slowly. Her eyes were like a deer’s, with dark make-up around them. They travelled down to my shorts, then they stopped. She smiled and looked me in the face again.

Take a picture, why don’t you
, she said again. Her voice was unbelievably soft. I walked off, my face burning.

I didn’t see Ryan that day, which was just as well because I wouldn’t have coped with the embarrassment. I would have just ignored him. I met him on the first day of school, about a week later. I was walking along the footpath and he came out of their place in front of me.

We said hi to each other. I’d seen a surfboard under his front porch so I asked him how long it was, whether it was a fishtail. We talked surf, east coast versus west coast, and further down the road I got brave enough to ask:
How many in your family?
My heart was thumping hard against my ribs, so hard it ached. He told me then about his parents both being dead.
I live with my aunty,
he said.
My mum’s younger sister
.

AT THE BEGINNING OF
the following summer, the sea storms let up, and the surf went back to being its usual unreliable self. You’d get maybe one or two days a fortnight when there was a decent break that would hold up ’til late in the day. But usually the onshore wind came up and flattened everything out, or chopped it up messy. The good surf never seemed to happen in the weekend.

A whole lot of us were eating lunch one day in the quad, just before end-of-year exams started. The girls were having
a full-on debate over whether or not hummus was fattening. They talked about eating constantly, but never actually ate anything. When they did it was a couple of mouthfuls and then
Oh my God, I’m SO full
.

By then I was sort of going out with Amelia Drysdale. By that I mean I sat next to her when we were in a big group, and we’d go to a movie now and then, when there was no surf. She’d nestle in to me in the dark cinema, reaching for my hand. I kissed her. It was nice, but every time it was the same story. I’d think of Ryan’s aunty, her bending over with her back to me. Amelia would morph into Ryan’s aunty and I’d get such a shock, I’d pull back. Amelia took it that I was respecting her, which was fine by me.

Anyway, that day in the quad, Ryan as usual was ignoring the girls. It was hot as, I was leaning back against the wall with my eyes closed, letting the sun soak my face.

‘You two interested in the Easter surf trip next year?’ Cru Davis had wandered over and was standing in front of me.

‘For sure,’ I said. I always thought we’d be asked, being year twelve next year. Still, it was good to hear the words. ‘We are, eh, Ryan.’

‘Choice,’ said Cru.

‘Yeah. Choice. Sweet as,’ I said.

‘So it’s still on, then.’ Ryan had his head down, studying his sandwich.

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ said Cru.

‘You know, after the accident and that.’

‘Course it’s on,’ said Cru.

‘I thought the parents might have banned it.’

‘Nah, they’re cool about it.’

‘They still might, it’s a while ’til Easter.’

I looked at Ryan and wondered what the hell he was on about. Mentally I told him to shut the fuck up. He was still totally absorbed by his sandwich. The others were right; he was definitely weird. I rolled my eyes at Cru.

‘I’m in, mate. For sure,’ I said. I nodded towards Ryan. ‘He will be too.’

‘Sweet as,’ Cru said.

Straight after exams we got a few weeks of mean surf. School was finished; we could go out to the beach whenever the waves were good. I’d broken up with Amelia — she told a few people that I was addicted to surf, that she could never rely on me to turn up anywhere if there was a wave. I was cool with the rumour. The shit in my head that turned Amelia’s sweetness into porn involving Ryan’s aunty had got to me.

Ryan and I were on our boards one day, waiting for a set. It was a scorcher. White Island in the distance billowing smoke. There were days when you couldn’t see the volcano, others when you’d swear the mother was about to blow once and for all.

I looked over at Ryan. He was staring out to sea but there was nothing coming for the moment. He must have felt me looking at him.

‘What?’ he said.

‘How come?’

‘How come what?’

‘How come you don’t want to go on the Easter surf trip?’

‘Who said that?’

‘No one, but you’re pretty negative when it comes up.’

‘Crap, man.’

‘It’s true. You keep talking about the parents banning it. You’re the only one saying it.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘No it’s not. It’s not bullshit. And the more you keep saying it, the more likely someone’s parents are going to decide that banning the trip’s a good idea.’

‘What, so you’re saying that parents would be taking any notice of what
I
think?’

‘They won’t give a shit what you think. But sooner or later, someone will go home and say
Is it true the Easter trip’s been banned because of the accident?
And some parent is going to start thinking about it and decide it’s not a bad idea.’

Ryan didn’t reply.

‘And then they’ll get together and do that whole
It’s a joint decision
thing, so that none of the weaker ones will be picked off by their kids.’

Ryan ignored me.

‘So is that what you want?’

He leaned forward flat on the board. He looked like a sleek seal in the sun, all shiny black. ‘Okay, if you really wanna know, dipshit, I couldn’t care less about the Easter surf trips. I can’t stand those guys.’