An Open Swimmer Read online

  She was still looking at him, an eyebrow up.

  ‘You have been a busy boy.’

  ‘The fish might survive the hook and the exposure and take off. Or he might be weakened and be easy prey for a bigger fish, or he might die in a couple of minutes, just from shock.’

  ‘So, the fish decides its own fate?’

  ‘Sort of. Maybe the fish’s strength, or something else; but whether he lives or dies won’t be decided by throwing him back.’ There was nothing to him like that grunt of surrender, the gentle collapse from deep within, and the mate rolling off into the deep at the precise second. Nothing. Like knowing or believing in subtle defeat.

  She smiled.

  ‘So, what does it all mean?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  She was looking around, her lower lip uncurling, tongue pushing from behind.

  ‘Geez, this is a weird joint.’

  ‘Lost in the sixties.’

  ‘Yeah, the sixties.’

  ‘You’d hardly remember.’

  ‘An’ you admit remembering?’

  ‘Oh, bits. And pieces.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t remember. Bit young.’ He drank his cider. It was rotten stuff, really, sweet enough to make you sneeze. They drank it at school parties, hidden in their greatcoats, cold and hard against their chests. A bottle left them flat – stung, on the back lawns of mates whose parents were away. Chundering in the long grass, against the rickety pickets.

  ‘Don’t they sell beer?’

  ‘Awful stuff.’

  ‘This is worse.’ Dugite phlegm.

  They watched each other. She was making a lot of enjoying the cider. The bubbles in the glass were like raindrops falling up instead of down.

  ‘He’s playing bloody Bob Dylan, again,’ Jerra said.

  ‘Falling back on the party favourites.’ She ran the edge of her hand along the grain of the pine. ‘So, by putting the fish back, feeling you’ve done a good thing, you could be killing it, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Gets a bit hard to tell right from wrong.’

  ‘I s’pose it hits you sooner or later.’

  ‘I don’t know your name.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Oh, Jerra. Jerra Nilsam.’

  ‘Jerra?’

  ‘Jerra.’

  ‘What sort of name is that?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Sounds like wood.’

  ‘Yeah, they reckon.’

  ‘I’m Judy Thyme.’

  She got up and bought drinks, jeans tight against her calves.

  The music lapped around them, smoke and noise producing a closeness that half-stifled, half-excited him. He studied her face, her tiny freckles, the crack in her thumbnail, the way she moved him through an endless series of conversations, breaking them down, word by word, tracing back tiny links that became new topics themselves. He loved being guided, and went whichever way she did.

  At closing, they picked their way through the fallen bodies and tables, and onto the street, where the cold air fronted them, the gutters wet, and the take-away menus from next door plastered soggily to the footpath.

  ‘You got a car?’ he asked as he rubbed his hands together. It was colder than it had been for a long time. Parking meters gleamed.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Swanbourne. Too far?’

  ‘No worries.’ His toes were numb; he had only worn thongs. The cold air was making his nose run, and he sniffed quietly.

  In the alley between the wine bar and the opp. shop there was a figure up against the wall, someone wheezing as if having just run a long stretch. He looked again and it was two bodies, one rasping the other against the damp wall, feet shifting as the gutters trickled, seeping.

  . . . my Jeramiah.

  The VW stood alone in a parking lot by the railway line. A train passed, slow and brightly lit, with no one inside. A procession of lighted carriages rocking through the city. Jerra wrenched the door open.

  ‘How long have you had this?’

  ‘A few years.’

  ‘Given you trouble?’

  ‘First country trip I ever took it on. Got as far as Williams and it passed out.’

  ‘What was wrong?’

  ‘Country air, I s’pose. Hay fever or something. Funny ol’ bus.’

  The upholstery was cold and the beaded windscreen misty with breath. The roads in town were glistening, lit red and orange in neon flickers, and it was hard for him to keep his mind on the blinking reds of the road and talk as well. The river was black, awash with the lights of the freeway and the brewery. Passing the Uni with its stopped-clock tower lit against the black of night, he felt a hand on his leg. It could have been on his knee, but it was difficult to pinpoint. He didn’t look, and it was harder to drive. She was closer and the cab had warmed. He didn’t feel much like talking. He watched the slick, glistening road, listening to the muted roar of the engine.

  He pulled into the driveway she pointed out, leaving the motor running.

  ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said without letting go his leg. ‘Coffee?’ Her face was green in the light of the speedometer that never worked.

  ‘I’d better be off.’

  ‘I can make it with whisky.’

  ‘Some other time, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’

  He leant over and kissed her clumsily on her mouth or ear, he couldn’t tell, her hair in his face.

  ‘Ring you?’ His lips were cold, and hard to get around his teeth.

  ‘No phone. I’ll ring you.’

  He mumbled the number and she climbed down. He shoved it into reverse and the van shook a little as the headlights lit her. She went up to the front door, lit sharp in the shadows. She waved.

  The sheets took a while to warm, and the pillow stung his ear.

  A lot further down this time. Deeper than he had anticipated. Strands of weed brushed his cheek in the dark, and as he felt his way down the rock bit cold on his hand. There was nothing. He went in darker and found something soft. It trembled, the skin almost tightening. He rolled it over, the legs fanning wide, and saw the open slit reflecting green on the backs of his hands. Scars of old slashes gathered, pale on the flaccid pulp. Navel a stab-hole. In a dowdy gown, she was arching pathetically, spreading her speckled hair, clutching, and he was saying Baaaaaaastaaaaarrrrrds! inside; and she wanted him to say something nice because nobody did any more. But she wasn’t her. Just a bald slit and light showing through. They hadn’t made her different, or even someone else; just nothing. And he was smiling, hand beneath the open neck that was once curved like a beach, kissing. It giggled, then groaned like dying, but she was dead already, before the butchery, and he wished he was now. He hated himself because she wasn’t properly aware, because she couldn’t tell half the time, and he was no different from the others taking advantage, helping to destroy, helping her in the delusion.

  NO

  EACH MORNING, Al’s dunny was worse. Jerra could smell it easily from the dirt of the parking lot, as if each turd was calling out for a septic tank, dying from claustrophobia. He had never been in there. A whole day’s wait was nothing to what must lie behind that fly-caked door.

  ‘There he is,’ called Al, almost friendly. ‘The early boy. Ready to work hard, eh?’

  ‘Dying for it,’ he replied, watching Rosa opening a new canister of ice-cream. The shop was warm from the ovens, but never warm enough to take the blue out of your hands.

  Jerra stacked the fridge with Coke, and clacked together blocks of pies. His hands wouldn’t warm, even when slushing hot water over the floors. Rosa was silent. You have to feel a bit sorry for her, hiding those chockie drops in her puffy palms like that, he thought to himself.

  Having his lunch break once, Al sat next to him smoking a putrid Italian cigarette, leaving Rosa with the after-lunch mob.

  ‘Rosa tell me you been to the Uni.’

  ‘Couple of years.’
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  ‘Why quit? Not smart enough, eh?’

  It was on again.

  ‘Didn’t seem worth sticking at.’

  Al sucked on his cigarette. The smoke knotted around the room.

  ‘So you were smart enough. But not enough to stay. Leaving so smart?’

  Jerra shifted on the boxes. KIT KAT stamped on the one under him.

  ‘Thought it was the smartest thing to do.’

  ‘Knockin’ back the chance?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To be somebody.’

  He felt the corrugations in the sides of the cardboard, ribs under his fingers.

  ‘Nothing to do with it.’

  ‘So you work ’ere, in a shop that I have to run to be somebody. Al the Ding. He runs the deli down the road. You waste time doing things like this.’

  ‘Not a waste.’

  ‘How would you know? You done nothink! Got brains – so you work in a lousy shop.’

  Jerra bit. The gristly mince was going cold. He swallowed quickly, trying not to taste duco.

  ‘You work in a lousy shop.’

  Al grubbed his smoke out on the grey wall. Small rings crept around the bulb on the ceiling.

  ‘I got no choice. There’s nothink else.’

  ‘Same. For both of us.’

  Al stood and kicked the boxes, planting a hole in a red K.

  ‘Rosa is right. You are stupid. You donna what choice is!’

  Jerra took a breath. Al was gone. He finished the pie in the smoky little room.

  Rods stuck out stiff from the granite of the mole. The sea outside the harbour was chopped by a sou’westerly. The sun was dropping quickly and, here and there, lamps began to glow. At dark there was no sound but the wind in the rocks and the slow click-click of the reels winding in. A launch passed, lit brightly. Snatches of music stuttered in the wind. Jerra saw his mother’s hands in the lamplight, the thick needles moving over the brown wool; she sat in the lee of a coarse boulder, out of the chill. Insects beat themselves on the hot glass. Next to him a reel clicked, the ratchet turning over slowly.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘No,’ said his father, hair ruffled by the wind, wisps of grey shining in the periphery of the light.

  ‘See the paper today?’ his mother asked.

  ‘No.’ He reeled in a little.

  ‘More bad news.’

  ‘Bloody Russians,’ said his father, swinging the gang of hooks up onto the rock. ‘There’ll be war soon.’

  ‘If the Yanks have their way,’ said Jerra.

  ‘Conscription, too, the way the Liberals are.’

  ‘That’d be awful.’

  ‘Could do some good. Absorb some of the unemployed, or something.’

  ‘Send ’em off to the Middle East. Vietnam absorbed a few. Like a bloody Wettex.’

  ‘Who needs a war?’ his mother said. ‘There’s kids killing themselves these days. In a phone booth, last week or before.’

  ‘It wasn’t because he needed a bloody war to go to.’

  His mother was silent. He could hear the needles clicking between gentle gusts. His father cast out, the mulie spinning out into the darkness. A small white splosh. Jerra reeled in, checked his bait, and cast out languidly, dropping just short of his father’s splash.

  ‘Bit more flick.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll get it one day.’ He laughed, glancing over his shoulder. His mother was looking down at her hands. ‘Who’s it for?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Been knitting it ever since you got back from South.’

  ‘Vee-neck?’

  ‘Course. Learnt my lesson.’

  ‘It itches my throat.’

  ‘Father’s the same. At least he’ll wear his.’

  Wham! Jerra’s rod whipped down, almost into the water. He jerked back and took up the slack, but there was nothing.

  ‘Strike?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Big an’ fast, whatever it was.’

  ‘Anything’s too fast for you two.’

  His father reeled in, chuckling. He turned into the lamplight to bait up. Jerra reeled in as his father cast out. Bait gone. He impaled a frozen mulie on the line of barbs.

  ‘More flick, this time.’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’ He flicked the bail-arm over and drew the rod back. It bowed and snapped forward, line whistling. A white pock showed, quite a way further out than his father’s.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Clowns,’ murmured his mother.

  ‘Haah!’

  Line unspooling with a whine, his father braked and dragged the big rod back.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Big.’

  The rod arched, straining to reach the water. His father stepped back and took slack. Jerra could hear his little gasps.

  ‘Get the gaff!’

  Jerra went back to the rocks, still holding his rod, and grabbed the long gaff.

  ‘Doubling back!’ yelled his father, reeling. The rod straightened. As the fish turned again, it went back into the crook.

  Jerra watched his father trying to straighten, hair in his eyes. His knees were bent and the baggy trousers were flapping.

  ‘And again. Gaff.’ He was puffing.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Lost him again.’ Straining.

  Jerra reeled in, put his rod down and stood ready with the gaff. Line hummed out again.

  ‘Wassamatter?’

  ‘Nothin’, jus . . .’

  Reel screaming.

  ‘Hold it!’

  ‘I —’

  Jerra dropped the gaff and grappled the rod away, almost losing it as his father let go and sagged back into his wife’s arms. He dragged sideways to break the run, and reeled. The rod was alive, quaking. Jerra heard his mother behind. Water broke and there was a tail-slap. Then the fish ran at the rocks and he could hardly reel in fast enough. He gaffed it, one handed, up onto the dry rock.

  ‘Bonito!’

  The thin, whippy tail hit him in the shin.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ his mother said. ‘Come on, Tom.’

  ‘Hey, Dad, how’s that?’

  His father didn’t look up.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Jerra —’ his mother hissed.

  ‘Bit of a turn’s all.’

  Jerra laughed.

  ‘He did yer, orright, eh?’

  She glared.

  ‘Fifteen pound of ’im.’

  ‘Big enough.’ Jerra laughed.

  His father said nothing, grey faced, breathing short and shallow.

  ‘How’ve you been?’ Judy asked him.

  ‘Orright.’ He could never think of anything to say on the phone.

  ‘The deli?’

  ‘A ball. Make it a career.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘And what’ve you been doing?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘Dinner?’

  ‘Orright, sure.’

  Bitten fragments of talk. He hung up, wondering. He shivered. Winter would be a long one this year.

  It was so cold in the morning that Jerra wore gloves to drive to work. But he had to take them off at the shop. Hygiene, Al said. Jerra’s fmgers were bluer in a few minutes than they had ever been. They ached from working the ovens and fridges at the same time.

  Al came in off the dyke, sullen.

  ‘Move your arse today, boy. Friday they spend big.’

  The morning ached slowly on. Near lunch time, the kids and the mothers with prams, and the overalled men from the factory, began to straggle in, buying extra chips and cigs to last the weekend. The chips crackled, pies were slapped on the counter, bottle-tops jangled in the bin, and milkshakes were snorted up through straws by grimy children, arguing colour and length and three-for-one.

  At the peak, the counter was writhing with heads and hands, calling for a thousand different things,
and rattling change and lollies in bags. A big man from the factory shoved kids aside, forcing his way to the counter. A boy, short and dark, complained, glancing up at the man.

  ‘Boofhead,’ said the little face.

  The man took him by the collar and flicked him under the ear. Spilling his coppers on the floor in a shower, the boy fled. Laughing, the man scooped up a few coins, held them in his hand for the other children to see, and pocketed them. The children murmured. A lady walked out, muttering ‘Bloody oaf’ over and over. Rosa was busy at the other end of the counter. Jerra went over to the pie oven where Al tapped impatiently on the glass door.

  ‘You see that? What a bastard. Shall I serve him?’

  ‘Has he got money?’

  Jerra looked away. If he didn’t before, he has now, he thought.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s a customer.’

  ‘You can’t let a prick like that get away with it. What about the bloody kids!’

  Al opened the oven door.

  ‘Serve him.’

  ‘An’ you think I’m weak as piss,’ he muttered, going back.

  The big man was at the counter, leaning heavily on the Laminex in his greasy overalls, twiddling the straws in their chrome canister. Jerra avoided him, serving kids on either side. The factory worker tapped hard on the Laminex with a coin, that irritating, pecking sound.

  ‘Arr, carm on. Serve some bloody customers!’

  Jerra ignored him. Coaxing the little heads to speak and lingering over their orders, he fussed unnecessarily on their behalf. He was itching for something. From the corner of his eye he saw a blue arm reaching into the Coke fridge. Jerra knew now what he was itching for. He dropped his whole weight on the heavy lid, jamming the man’s arm up to the elbow. He roared. Jerra saw the corned beef in his teeth and leant heavier on the lid.

  ‘Getchafuckenandoff!’

  ‘What’s it doin’ in the fridge?’ he yelled back, smiling at the children who were more terrified than impressed.

  The face brightened in its reds and whites as Jerra pressed harder, then the other hand, out of reach, smacked the straw canister to the floor, spraying straws and children in all directions. Then, despite Jerra’s weight, the man dragged his arm out of the fridge, taking off a flap of skin, and threw a tall jar of penny-sticks onto the floor. It shattered, glass skittering on the linoleum. Jerra was no longer smiling.