Tim Winton (15 page)

Did I miss anythin? he asked. No swell?

I shook my head.

Far out, he said abstractedly. He sat on my bed and flipped through the social studies book lying there.

So, I said. How was it?

He put the book down and pursed his lips. Fuckin unbelievable.

When'd you get back?

Last night. The old man's gone spastic. Hey, cop this.

Loonie pushed up the sleeve of his windcheater to reveal a long, pulpy wound.

Uluwatu, he murmured. It's insane.

What happened?

Just the reef. That coral rips the shit outta you.

For half an hour he told me stories of lonely waves and temples and paddies, of monkeys and offerings and incense smoke; how Sando and he ate turtle meat and coconuts and rode out to reefs on outrigger canoes. I felt a stubborn refusal to be impressed. The more Loonie talked, the less I responded. I could see it puzzling him. He reached for bigger stories, wilder moments, to little avail.

I brought you this, he said, setting a tamped wad of foil on the desk beside me. It was no bigger than a .22 rifle cartridge.

What is it?

Hash, mate.

Jesus, I murmured.

Well, don't have a baby.

I heard the old girl coming before she had time to open the door. The little foil bullet fell into the drawer and Loonie met her on his way out.

Things were different after Sando and Loonie returned from the islands. If there was a swell big enough they might come by on weekends. We all surfed Barney's several times in late summer and even saw its terrible namesake, but for the most part I found myself on the outside of whatever it was the other two had going. Loonie's time in Indonesia had granted him a new kind of seniority. He'd seen animal sacrifices and shamans and walked on black, volcanic beaches. He'd climbed down the legendary cave at Uluwatu and paddled out, bombed to the gills on hash. Yet here I was, still a schoolboy.

Sando was distant now, preoccupied. He seemed suddenly closed off from me. I began to sense that there were secrets between him and Loonie, things they kept from me with grins and furtive glances.

When we surfed they gave off a physical arrogance that might simply have been confidence born of experience, but I felt cowed by it.

Now I understood the looks that the Angelus crew shot me. It was how they saw us - the little Brahman circle.

I didn't see much of Eva, but when I did she was drawn and unhappy. A new current of antagonism flashed between her and Sando. She did her best to act as though Loonie didn't exist.

I woke to a rumble that caused the house stumps to vibrate. If you didn't know any better you'd have thought a convoy of tanks was advancing up our drive and into the forest behind us. It was a low, grinding noise, a menacing pulse that didn't let up for a moment.

I got out of bed feeling queasy. I packed a towel and wetsuit into my school bag, ate a couple of cold sausages from the fridge and waited for the dawn.

A

monster storm showed up before autumn even arrived. On the forecast maps it looked like a tumour on the sea between us and the southern iceshelf. The moment he saw it Sando began planning our attempt on the Nautilus. On the Saturday and Sunday before the front arrived the swell in its path hadn't yet gathered momentum. We'd have to wait for the passage of the storm and catch the swell in its wake. Which meant I'd have to wag school if I wanted to make the trip.

Before the wind had even stirred the trees I knew I wasn't ready for the Nautilus. On the night the storm descended I lay in bed feeling the roof quake, wondering how I could plausibly avoid the whole endeavour. For two days black squalls ripped in from the sea and rain strafed the toads and paddocks and forest. On the morning of the third day, while it was still full dark and spookily still, I got to the bus stop outside the butcher's about a half-hour early, figuring that if Sando didn't come then I'd just go ahead and take the bus to school. This morning school was an attractive option.

But a few moments later, Loonie showed up blowing steamy breath on his hands, and before we'd even begun to speak the VW with its trailer and dinghy pulled in.

It was quite a drive west through the forest and then out along fishing tracks to the lonely little beach inshore of the island. All the way over Sando and Loonie psyched themselves up, each feeding off the other's nervous energy, while I sat pressed to the window, silent and afraid.

For any soul with a taste for excitement the mere business of launching Sando's dinghy should have been thrill enough for one day. The cove was a maelstrom with waves breaking end to end across it and the shorebreak heaved down with such force it sent broken kelp and shell-slurry into the air. We hauled the boat bow out, timed our launch between waves and got the motor going, but we almost came to grief as a rogue set rumbled into the bay.

By that stage there was nowhere for us to go but out, so we headed straight at those looming broken lines of foam with the throttle wide open in the hope they'd green up again before we reached them. We grabbed any handhold we could find. I felt the wind rip at my hair. And somehow we made it. As we slammed up each in turn we were airborne and the prop bawled before we landed again with a shattering thump. Loonie hooted like a rodeo rider; he'd have flapped a hat had there been one available. We found safe water, but it wasn't a good start to my day at the Nautilus.

I rode the rest of the way rattled and sweating in my wetsuit. The granite island and its clump of seals were awash. The sea beyond was black and agitated.

We pulled up near the break during a lull and stood off in deep water to landward just to wait and watch before anchoring.

There wasn't much to see at first except a scum of spent foam on the surface. Ocean and air seemed hyper-oxygenated; everything fizzed and spritzed as if long after the passage of previous waves there was energy yet to be dissipated. The land behind us was partly obscured by the island and a low, cold vapour the morning sun failed to penetrate. Nothing shone. The sea looked bottomless.

Only when the first new wave arrived did I see what really lay before us. It came in at an angle, just a hard ridge of swell, but within a few seconds, as it found shallow water, it became so engorged as to triple in volume. And there at its feet lay the great hump of rock that gave the place its name. The mass of water foundered a moment, distorting as it hit the submerged obstacle.

The wave reared as though climbing the obstruction and then sagged drastically at each end before the yawning lip pitched forward with a sound that made me want to shit.

Fifteen foot, said Loon
ie.

Yeah, Sando replied. And it's breakin in three feet of water.

In fact there were times when the wave broke over no water at all. Every set brought a smoker that sucked everything before it as it bore down, dragging so much water off the rock as it gathered itself that when it finally keeled over to break the granite dome sat free and clear before it. At these moments the trough of the wave actually sank below sea level. It was a sight I had never imagined, the most dangerous wave I'd ever seen.

We watched a couple of sets and then anchored up at a distance before Sando dived in and led us out. All three boards were Brewers - long, heavy Hawaiian-style guns. They were the same equipment we used at Old Smoky and Sando kept saying how good and solid they felt. He kept up the usual inspirational patter, but I was sullen with fright. Every time he tried to make eye contact I looked away, paddling without conviction until he drew ahead with Loonie at his elbow going stroke for stroke.

They sat up together outside the boil while I hung well back in deep water. Behind us the dinghy yanked at its rope, disappearing between swells. Sets came and went but everything passed by unridden. The waves were big but even at half the size I thought they'd be too sudden, way too steep, and the shallow rock beneath made them unthinkable. True, it was an awesome sight but the whole deal only broke for fifty yards or so; it was hardly worth the risk. I watched Sando and Loonie out there, right in the zone, letting wave after wave go by as if they'd come to the same conclusion despite themselves.

Then a wide one swung through and Sando went for it.

I saw the distant flash of his teeth as he fought to get up sufficient speed. A moment later it was vertical and so was he. As he got to his feet it was obvious the board was too long for the contour of the wave; he was perilously slow to turn. The wave hurled itself inside out. Sando staggered a moment, almost falling out of the face altogether.

But he kept his feet and cranked the Brewer around with a strength I knew was beyond me. The fin bit. He surged forward as the wave began to lurch and dilate, reef fuming and gurgling below.

The lip pitched over him. He was gone a moment, like a bone in the thing's throat. And then a squall of spume belched him free and it was over. He skidded out into the deep, dead water ahead of me and let the board flutter away.

I dug my way across, retrieved the Brewer and steered it back to where he lay with his knees up and his head back.

Jesus, he murmured. Oh Jesus.

I sat beside him, holding the big board between us. He slowly got his breath back but he was wild-eyed.

When you go, he said, go wide and early.

Don't think so, I muttered.

He took his board, checked the fin and got on.

You get half a second, that's all; it's brutal.

I shook my head.

C'mon, Pikelet. You know what's what.

That's why I'm stayin right here.

I didn't bring you here to watch, did I?

I said nothing.

It'll put some fizz in your jizz.

I felt plenty scared but not panicked; this time I knew what I was doing.

Shit, he said. I thought I brought surfers with me. Men above the ordinary.

I shrugged.

Pikelet, mate. We came to play.

He was grinning as he said it but I felt a sort of menace from him then. I didn't give a damn. My mind was made up. He wheeled around in disgust and I watched him paddle back out to where Loonie scratched uncertainly between looming peaks.

When Sando sat up beside him Loonie straightened a little, as if fortified by his presence, and only a few moments later he took the place on. But the wave he set himself for was a shocker. It was wedge-shaped and rearing - butt-ugly - even before he got going.

As he leapt to his feet you could see what was about to happen.

Yet the next few awful seconds earned Loonie honour in defeat.

The wave stood, hesitated, and then foundered with Loonie right at the crest. He'd assumed his desperate crouch, pointed the board to the sanctuary of the channel, but he was going nowhere but down. The wave subsided beneath him, sucked him with it. Great overpiling gouts of whitewater leapt off the reef and the most I could see of Loonie was a threshing arm. Half his board fluttered thirty feet in the air. For a horrible moment the granite dome of the reef was completely bare. Then all that broken water mobbed across the rock, driving Loonie before it, boiling off into the deep ahead of me while I sat there, rigid. The air was hissing, the sea bubbled underfoot, and I knew Loonie was down there somewhere in the white slick having the shit kicked out of him, but I didn't move until I heard Sando's furious yell.

It was whiteout down there. The water was mad with current.

It was like diving blind into a crowd, and I groped, hauled off at angles until I saw the bluish contours of the seabed below. I dived again and got nowhere. I hit the surface, saw Sando - still yards off-hauling himself my way, and then I heard Loonie's gasp and turned to see his upraised arm. He was twenty yards behind me, even closer to the boat than I was.

When I got there I swept him up onto my board and listened to him puke and breathe and puke some more. The back was out of his wetsuit and there was skin off his shoulders. His nose bled, his legs trembled, but by the time Sando reached us he was laughing.

feel that their delicacy on the subject of my cowardice only made things worse. At first I was grateful, but soon I wished they'd just come out and call me yellow and have done with it. I hated the coy looks, the sudden gaps in conversation that reinforced my sense of relegation.

Loonie and Sando planned new assaults on the Nautilus using shorter boards - two only - shaped for the purpose. We never broached the subject of whether I'd accompany them. God knows, I should have been relieved, but I was inconsolable. I knew any reasonable person would have done what I did out there that day.

Which was exactly the problem: I was, after all, ordinary.

I was gutted by that day at the Nautilus. A small, cool part of me knew it was stupid to have been out there trying to surf a wave so unlikely, so dangerous, so perverse. What would success there really mean - perhaps three or four or even five seconds of upright travel on a wave as ugly as a civic monument? You could barely call such a mad scramble surfing. Surely there were better and bigger waves to ride than that deformity. Yet nothing could assuage the lingering sense of failure I was left with.

The others didn't mention it. All three of us celebrated Loonie's moment of defiance, but the gap had widened between them and me. He who hesitates, as I discovered, is lost indeed. I began to X or a few years as a teenager in Sawyer, it seemed I had control of my own life. I didn't understand everything going on around me, but for a brief period I had something special that afforded me a private sense of power. It let me feel bigger, more vivid than I'd been before. Although I was no leper at school I never really made much social headway. Classmates thought I was standoffish.

Some said I was up myself and none of it worried me because for a couple of years I went home from Angelus every day harbouring a consoling secret. I did stuff other people couldn't do, things they wouldn't dream of. I belonged to an exclusive club, drove around with a full-grown man and a mate who spooked people.

Even among surfers we had enigmatic status. When we deigned to paddle out at the Point you could sense everyone else's deferral.