Tim Winton - The Turning

And she’s right, you know, I’m not as stupid as I make out. It’s a survival thing, making yourself a small target. But even now, feeling kind of euphoric, buzzing up the highway, I know I’m stuck in something that I can’t figure my way out of.

You see, back in first year, right at the beginning when Biggie was my saviour and still doing his two weeks’ suspension for busting Tony Macoli’s nose, I kept notes for the full fortnight and more or less wrote Biggie’s essays for him when he got back. He didn’t care if he passed or failed but I wanted to do it for him, and so what began as a gesture of gratitude became a pattern for the rest of our schooling. I made him look brighter than he was and me a little dimmer. His old man preferred him to be a dolt. My mother expected me to be an academic suckhole. Most of the time Biggie couldn’t give a damn but sometimes I think he really got his hopes up. I feel responsible, like my ghost work stopped him from learning. In a way I ruined his chances. For five years I worked my arse off. I really did all our work. Out of loyalty, yeah, but also from sheer vanity. And the fact is, I blew it. I got us both to the finish line but ensured that neither of us got across it. Biggie hadn’t learnt anything that he could display in an exam and I was too worn out and cocky to make sense. We fried. We’re idiots of a different species but we are both bloody idiots.

At New Norcia we pull in to fuel up and use the phone. Biggie decides that he’s not calling home so he sits in the VW while I reverse the charges and get an earful. My mother wails and cries. I’m vague about my whereabouts and look out at the monastery and church spires and whitewashed walls of the town while she tells me I’m throwing my future away. I hang up and find Biggie talking to a chick with a backpack the size of an elephant saddle. She’s tall and not very beautiful with long, shiny brown hair and big knees. She thinks she’s on the coast road north and she’s mortified to discover otherwise. Biggie explains that this is the inland route, shows her on the map. She wants to get to Exmouth, she says. I can see Biggie falling in love with her moment by moment. My heart sinks.

There isn’t really even much consultation. We just pull out with this chick in the back. Meg is her name. I know it’s hot and she’s had a tough day but she’s on the nose. She’s got a purple tanktop on and every time she lifts an arm there’s a blast of BO that could kill a wildebeest. Biggie doesn’t seem to notice. He’s twisted around in his seat laughing and chatting and pointing and listening while I drive in something close to a sullen silence.

Meg is as thick as a box of hammers. It’s alarming to see how enthralled Biggie is. He goes right ahead and tells her about life in the salmon camp every season when all the huts are full and the tractors are hauling nets up the beach and trucks pull down to the water’s edge to load up for the cannery. All the drinking and fighting, the sharks and the jetboats, the great green masses of fish pressed inside the headlands. He doesn’t tell Meg that it’s all for petfood, that his mother cries every night, that he’s given up defending her, not even urging her to leave now, but nobody could hold that against him. Meg, this mouth-breathing moron, is staring at Biggie like he’s a guru, and I just drive and try to avoid the rear-view mirror.

I get to thinking about the last night of school and the bonfire at Massacre Point, the beginning of that short period of grace when my very limbs tingled with relief and the dread of failure had yet to set in. Someone had a kite in the air and its tail was on fire, looping and spiralling orange and pink against the night sky, so beautiful I almost cried. I was smashed and exhausted; I suppose any little thing would have seemed poignant and beautiful. But I really felt that I’d reached the edge of something. I had a power and a promise I’d never sensed before. The fact that the burning kite consumed its own tail and fluttered down into the sea didn’t really register. I didn’t see it as an omen. Biggie and I drank Bacardi and Coke and watched some lunatic fishing for sharks with a Land Rover. Briony Nevis was there, teeth flashing in the firelight. I was too pissed to go over to her. I fell asleep trying to work up the nerve.

We woke by a huge lake of glowing embers, our sleeping bags damp, the tide out and our heads pounding, but it was the smiling that hurt the most. Biggie wanted to stay a while in that tangle of blankets and swags but I convinced him to get up with me and swim bare-arsed in the cold clear water inside the rocky promontory before we stole back through the sleeping crowd towards my mother’s car. That was a great feeling, tingling, awake, up first, seeing everybody sprawled in hilarious and unlikely pairings and postures. The air was soupy, salty, and as we padded up the sand track with birds in the mint-scented scrub all round, I just couldn’t imagine disappointment. The world felt new, specially made for us. It was only on the drive back to town that our hangovers caught up.

While I’m thinking about all of this Biggie’s gone and climbed over into the back and Meg’s lit up a number and they’re toking away on it with their feet up like I’m some kind of chauffeur. The country is all low and spare now and the further we go the redder it gets. Biggie’s never had much luck with girls. I should be glad for him. But I’m totally pissed off.

In the mirror Biggie has this big wonky grin going. He sits back with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his Blundstones poking through the gap in the seats at my elbow. Meg murmurs and exclaims at the beauty of the country and Biggie just nods slit-eyed with smoke and anticipation while I boil.

Late in the day, when Biggie and Meg are quizzing each other on the theme tunes to TV sitcoms, we come upon a maze of salt lakes that blaze silver and pearly in the sun and stretch to the horizon in every direction. I begin to have the panicky feeling that the land and this very afternoon might go on forever. Biggie’s really enjoying himself back there and I slowly understand why. There’s the obvious thing of course, the fact that he’s in with a big chance with Meg come nightfall. But something else, the thing that eats at me, is the way he’s enjoying being brighter than her, being a step ahead, feeling somehow senior and secure in himself. It’s me all over. It’s how I am with him and it’s not pretty.

The Kombi fills with smoke again but this time it’s bitter and metallic and I’m halfway to asking them to leave off and open a bloody window when I see the plume trailing us down the highway and I understand that we’re on fire. I pull over into a tottery skid in the gravel at the roadside and jump out to see just how much grey smoke is pouring out of the rear grille. When Biggie and Meg join me we stand there a few moments before it dawns on us that the whole thing could blow at any moment and everything we own is inside. So we fall over each other digging our stuff free, tossing it as far into the samphire edges of the saltpan as we can. Without an extinguisher there’s not much else we can do once we’re standing back out there in the litter of our belongings waiting for the VW to explode. But it just smoulders and hisses a while as the sun sinks behind us. In the end, with the smoke almost gone and the wiring cooked, it’s obvious we’re not going anywhere. We turn our attention to the sunset. Meg rolls another spliff and we share it standing there taking in the vast, shimmering pink lake that suddenly looks full of rippling water. We don’t say anything. The sun flattens itself against the saltpan and disappears. The sky goes all acid blue and there’s just this huge silence. It’s like the world’s stopped.