Tim Winton - The Turning

Wasn’t that all he was doing here, hungry and tired and a bit chilled now at White Point — getting into Max’s face, showing him he didn’t care when it just wasn’t true? Just having Max within arm’s reach made him boil with memories. The time Max had tried to suffocate him in the dunes, bury him alive. The day at school when he shat himself and was locked in the dunnies while Max marshalled the laughing mob outside. Christ, if Max was shamed by last week’s fiasco then why not enjoy his discomfort? But it felt poisonous. It took too much effort to keep it up. What he felt like was a cup of tea and about fifteen doughnuts in the warmth of Max’s van. He wanted to see his girls. They were small, still; they’d smell of clean pyjamas and honey on toast.

Max paddled up beside him and cleared his nose horribly.

Won’t surf either, eh? You’re a case, Frank.

You still in the old man’s van?

Took it to the tip.

Keep anything out of it?

Not much. What, did you want something from it?

No. Nothing. Hey, tell me about your missus.

Max scowled.

Raelene, that her name?

His brother nodded.

I was thinking of dropping over.

Don’t, said Max.

It wasn’t my fault I could play footy, Max. It wasn’t my fault Mum did what she did. This is just stuff that happened to us.

You make me sick.

How come you’re not working today? The cray season’s not finished.

I got put off the boat.

Shit.

That’s women for ya.

I really wanna meet her.

Don’t come over.

Relax. I won’t say a thing about you. Just had this urge to connect. You know?

Don’t come. You can’t come.

There was a strange note of urgency in Max’s voice. Along with the fury there was a kind of pleading that Leaper couldn’t believe.

Max?

Fuck off. Leave me alone.

Max paddled away a few yards as the dark lines of another set piled up in the distance. Leaper followed him out of habit, a reversion to old ways, until he caught himself and sat up. He was too tired for this, there was no point talking to him. Maybe he should just paddle in and go see Raelene despite him. But why bother? He didn’t even understand the compulsion to meet her. Was it just to piss Max off or was he really curious about meeting the woman who’d married the bastard and was now family?

A surge of turbulence passed between Max and him, a sudden fattening of the water that caused Leaper to blink. His brother had his back to him, was still paddling away, when a bronze flash jerked him sideways on the board and drove him high in the water, spinning him round so that Leaper saw his open mouth within the streaming beard and the shark moiling beneath him. A second later he was all flailing arms that went under a moment until he surfaced in a pink smear.

Leaper didn’t move. Max’s teeth were tobacco-stained. His eyes were white. The straining cartilage of his nose was white. He sucked in a breath — it was as though he’d only just remembered how — and began to shudder before the whaler broke off and twisted away.

Leaper sat there.

Max groped for his board. It looked too short; it was half a board. Leaper saw the rest of it drift up the face of a wave that rose, tottered, and rolled past them unbroken.

You fuckin pansy! screamed Max. What’re you waitin for?

Leaper hesitated.

Frank?

Leaper paddled into the spoiled water and took Max by the beard, tried to haul him onto his own board, but Max wouldn’t be parted from the remains of his own, so Leaper towed him a way by whatever handful he could get of him, trying to get him into a stretch of clean water, but Max jerked and lashed so much that the sea churned with whorls and streamers of blood.

Frank?

Jesus, Max.

Leaper made himself get off his board and into the soup that Max was making.

Let go, he said. Max, let go of your board.

But Max wouldn’t let go, couldn’t let go. Leaper took his own board and wedged it beneath his brother. When he turned him shoreward he saw that one leg was too long and kicking out of sync, that below the knee it was hanging off him by a hank of neoprene. The wetsuit was slippery with blood.

Stop kicking! Stay still.

Leaper unstrapped his board leash and seized Max’s thigh. While the rest of the leg went pendulous and heavy and half in the way, Leaper tied the thigh off as tight as the urethane cord would go.

Frank.

Just hold on, he said. I’ll get you there.

Frank.

The shark’s gone. We’ll belly in across the reef.

Leaper held him by the buttocks and began to kick them shoreward. Max’s head rose once, twice on his neck as if he was trying to look back.

I can do it, said Leaper. You’ll be right now, you’ll see. I’ll show you.

Leaper saw Max’s head ease down on the board. His brother’s body shook beneath his own and he felt sick with triumph, with anger, from love. The water was thick as sand. Out past Max’s head the tower showed through the spray of breaking waves. Swells overtook them. The tank was bleary, unblinking, above the dune.

Max trembled like a spiked snapper.

It was you, said Leaper.

Max said nothing.

You, he thought. When the grass went suddenly hard underfoot, and the ball forever out of reach, it was you lurking at the back of my mind. That’s what fucked it, that’s why I started to care. There you were, bro. Just the thought of you was a weight in my legs, and the more I cared the worse it was.

A bigger wave came upon them. Before Leaper could surrender to it he had to earn it. He kicked so hard he felt poison in his legs. But he got them the wave. Max’s head was loose on his neck.

They bellied down the long, smooth face and beneath them the reef flickered all motley and dappled, weaves of current and colour and darting things that were buried with Max and him as a thundering cloud of whitewater overtook them. The blast of water ripped through Leaper’s hair and pounded in his ears. The reef was all over him but he held fast to his brother, hugging him to the board, hanging on with all the strength left in his fingers, for as long as he could, and for longer than he should have.

YOU LIE AWAKE AND LISTEN to the rumble of talk through the fibro wall as it thins out into pent-up whispering. From the old man’s sighs and your mother’s patient murmur, you know that nothing’s going right. The job, the town, the transfer, everything’s off somehow. At school there are new boundaries you can’t even see, lines between farmkids and townies, black-fellas and whites, boys and girls, gestures you just don’t get. And they’re all looking at you, the new copper’s kid, as if you already know too much.

You pine for the city, the spill of suburbs you left behind and the way they absorb you, render you ordinary and invisible. But then you pull yourself up, knowing that longings like that are useless, as weak as wishing you’d never left primary school. You’re not a baby. If you don’t try to make a go of it then things will be worse for everybody. So you shut up and stop bawling. You go to school without whining and afterwards you walk alone to the beach or the harbour and try to keep an open mind.

But town is full of looks and nods and elbows in the ribs as though the place is too small to contain a surfeit of information. Locals have a way of talking across you, rather than to you. Adults raise their eyebrows and ruffle your hair with their teeth showing. You can feel their curiosity, their wariness, and it sets you on edge.

From the house at the crest of the hill you can see the whole town at a glance: the harbour, meatworks, cannery, grain silos and the twisted net of streets with their chimney-plumed houses. The longer you look out on it the more you sense it all staring right back at you.