Tim Winton - Breath

We drove into town without speaking. The Volkswagen shuddered with every gust; its wipers were helpless against the deluge. It felt weird being pressed close in that narrow cab with a woman.

At the end of my drive we both got out but Loonie leaned back in the open door.

It was ten foot today, he said. And we rode it. Can you tell him?

Sure, she said. The moment he arrives.

What's your name? he said with mortifying familiarity.

Eva.

Thanks for the lift, then. Eva.

She revved up the old eggbeater and I pulled our bikes down while he stood there grinning. Close the door, kid.

But Loonie kept standing there in the rain while the engine sputtered and gulped. His smile was a provocation. The Volkswagen jerked forward. The door slammed shut. We watched her drive on through the downpour.

She likes me, said Loonie.

Yeah, right.

Hey, maybe your Mum's done scones.

We pedalled hard for the house.

There was always a manic energy about Loonie, some strange hotwired spirit that made you laugh with shock. He hurled himself at the world. You could never second-guess him and once he embarked upon something there was no holding him back. Yet the same stuff you marvelled at could really wear you down. Some Mondays I was relieved to be back on the bus to school.

Nothing would have made me own up to this at the time but I actually liked being in school. There was a soothing dullness in the classroom, a calm in which part of me thrived. Could be it was the orderly home I grew up in, the safety of always knowing what came next. In any case my experience of school was not at all like Loonie's. For me there was no constant locking of horns, no dangerous visibility. I liked books — the respite and privacy of them — books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free. If Loonie wasn't around I tended to go unnoticed and I suppose that in earlier years this had made me lonely, but now a bit of solitude was welcome.

After school sometimes, if there was light enough, I walked up into the state forest to wander about alone. I knew that somewhere in there, near an old sawpit, the Ag School boys had hell's own flying fox. Loonie boasted of shots across the river through the swaying crowns of trees. He talked up the roar of the cable, the sensation of your arms almost coming out of their sockets. He was forever at me to go out with him before the rangers finally found where it was and cut it down, but I was leery of the Ag School crowd and in truth I preferred to be out in the forest alone.

Whenever I went up through that timber country I made sure to keep the fact from my parents. It was another deception that became routine, for they were like all the other old folks in town in that the forest made them as uneasy as the sea. Locals might venture out in gangs for felling, but no one seemed to like to go alone, and certainly not without a practical reason to be there. Nobody ever said they were scared, but that's all it was and I could understand it, for there was stuff out there that creaked and thwacked and groaned. Any kind of breeze up in those karris and tingles made a roar that set the hair up on the back of your neck. You walked around in that crowded landscape and some part of your brain refused to accept the fact you were alone. I liked to wind my way up the ridges until Sawyer was obscured by trees and not even the distant sea was visible. Then I'd plunge over into the back-country where only the morning sun penetrated and I never saw a soul. I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet.

We rode out to the coast one sunny morning in spring and climbed the drive at the hippy house to get our boards and saw that Sando was back. In those days we still didn't even know his name. He looked up from the board he was buffing across two sawhorses. He was bareback in the mild sun. He let the machine hang by its cord at his side. His dog charged across the clearing towards us.

Well, he said. If it isn't Heckle and Jeckle. Eva limped out onto the verandah long enough to see who it was before going back in again.

You timed it perfect for a lift, he said running a hand across the glossy gel-coat of the new board. Just going down to try this out. He turned the board over. It was small and disc-shaped with twin keels. He'd tinted it banana yellow.

Wax this up for me, willya? Be back in a minute.

Loonie and I found blocks of wax beneath the house. We returned to the sawhorses and stood each side of the spanking-new board, speechless with wonder. All we could do was run our hands down its shiny-smooth rails. It seemed improper to soil such a beautiful thing with wax and when Sando came back downstairs with his wetsuit we were still standing there awestruck.

There was only a small swell running that day and nobody was out at the Point except us. We took waves in turns. The water was clear and the rip was mild. Sando skated around on his little yellow disc, pushing it about, experimenting in the waist-high waves. There was a casual authority in the way he surfed, a grace that made all our moves look jerky and hesitant. He was a big, strong man. The tight wetsuit showed every contour of his body, the width of his shoulders, the meat in his thighs. Water shone in his beard. His eyes were steely in the glare. In the long lulls we bobbed either side of him, our feet pedalling idly. We were bashful in his presence.

The missus says you blokes had a bit of a swell while I was gone.

Loonie filled him in about the storm and those waves cranking in from outside the headland. He talked about the Angelus crew and our epic rides across the bay. Once he got going there was no turning him; everything in his telling got bigger and gnarlier — our courage was unfathomable, our style in the face of danger something to behold. Sando laughed indulgently, sceptical. He said Loonie talked a good game and this only drove Loonie on to telling him that we'd driven out along the ridges and cliffs to see the bombora breaking.

Ah, said Sando. Old Smoky. That's what it's called.

Has anyone surfed it? I asked.

Sando studied me a moment. Well, he murmured. That'd be telling, wouldn't it.

It must have been twenty feet, said Loonie.

It's a big, wild coast out that way, said Sando. All kinds of surprises out there. Fun and games, for the discreet gentleman.

He had an odd, dreamy way of speaking and we sat alongside him mesmerized until a small wave popped into view and Sando whipped around and dropped in without even paddling. I watched the yellow blur of his board through the glassy back of the wave. I saw the flash of his hands, his arms cast up. He was dancing.

Loonie and I were out at Sando's a lot that spring. We came and went with our boards, hoping he was home or down at the Point, but often as not his place was deserted. If he was around and in the mood, he showed us how to read weather maps and predict swell conditions, or he'd teach us to use fibreglass and resin to repair the dings in our boards. Yet there were days out at the Point when he wouldn't even acknowledge our presence, especially if the Angelus crew was over. He sat out beyond everybody, waiting for the intermittent sneaker, the wave of the hour, and when he caught one he came flying by the rest of us, his big, prehensile feet spread across the deck like something strange and immoveable. On those days his eyes were glassy and distant, with not a flicker of recognition.

Some afternoons in the shade beneath his house he told quiet stories of the islands: treks through paddies and palm groves to cliff villages and caves; the smells of incense and drying fish and coconut oil; reefs that villagers paddled him out to in outrigger canoes, and waves that wound perfectly across acres of coral.

Sando made some boards for himself, planing them into shape out there in the yard, though now and then new boards were delivered to him wrapped in the cardboard of old fridge boxes and bound with gaffer tape. He wouldn't tell us what the deal was or who sent them, and on more than one occasion I slipped behind the shed where he stacked the packaging before he shredded it all for compost, and furtively scanned the senders' addresses in Perth, Sydney, San Francisco and Maui. There was one from Peru, another from Mauritius. Boards came and boards went. He rode some and others simply disappeared.