Tim Winton - Breath

Shit, he said as a great, green glut of water poured up at our feet. I wonder what the ordinary people are doin today.

With that, while the sea was all but upon us, he launched out with his board like a shield before him and landed smoothly and paddled briskly with the receding surge. In a moment he was out in deep water beyond the turbulence.

I looked down into the maw and waited for the surge to return. Sando sat up to wait. Birds shrieked behind me. The rocks streamed with fizz. Every crack spilled rivulets and streams and sheets until suddenly the sea came back and Sando started yelling and then I braced and jumped.

The paddle out was so long and disorientating that it became kind of abstract. I followed the cheesy, yellow soles of Sando's feet and fell into a rhythm. Half an hour later, still two hundred yards shy of the reef itself, I sat up beside him in a dreamy calm. Perhaps it was the warm sun and the exertion and the fact that we'd paddled out during a long lull, but I began to feel safe and happy. When the first wave broke over Old Smoky, all that equanimity simply evaporated.

We were in deep water, safe enough in the scheme of things, and I hadn't yet understood the scale of what I was seeing, but the sight of the thing pitching out across the bommie drove a blade of fear right through me. Just the sound of spray hissing back off the crest inspired terror; it was the sound of sheetmetal shearing itself to pieces. The wave drove onto the shoal and the report cannoned across the water and slapped against my chest.

Sando hooted. He raised his arms to it and tossed his head back. The wave sprawled and growled and finally spat its wind into the pacifying depth of the channel so that by the time it reached us it was just a massive current with a trailing scum of spindrift.

Got your bearings?

Yeah, I lied.

Had I the slightest idea of where to go, I would have paddled straight back to the cliffs and climbed out right then. But behind me the land was featureless, just a grey-black slab which disappeared between swells.

Sando paddled on up to the channel in tight to the reef where the swells humped prodigiously but did not quite break. At a loss and scared of being alone, I followed. He paddled and propped, paddled and propped, checking and adjusting his position all the time. He motioned me closer as a fresh set lumbered in. At first all I saw was a series of dark lines in the distance and then these swells became a convoy, bearing down on us, increasing in size and speed with every passing moment until they became distinct waves that warped and wedged so massively that I found myself looking uphill into great sunstruck ridges. You could feel the whole skin of the ocean being drawn outward to meet them, and it was impossible to resist the conviction that we were about to be mown down, even here in the safe depth of the channel.

We sat tight while four waves went by. Then Sando paddled over and put himself in harm's way. I stayed out wide; I wasn't going anywhere. He rose, still sitting, over the next wave, lifted into the sky without expression, and for a long time afterwards he was obscured by spray. When I saw him next he was stroking into the path of the biggest wave I'd ever seen. As the thing drew itself up onto the reef, he seemed, for all his beetling, to be sucked back up its lumpy slope. A moment later the wave broke, spangled and streaked and pluming vapour behind him, and he was up, falling bent-legged into the pit below. Despite the surface chop he kept his feet to come sweeping down from three storeys high and when he ploughed by I caught a jaunty flash of teeth and saw he was okay.

When he paddled back out Sando was singing. He slapped water my way and did his best to unseat me. His eyes glittered; he was as lit up as I'd ever seen him.

Jesus, he said laughing. God! You gotta get some of that.

Just watchin, I said, panting with anxiety.

Aw!

Yeah, I said. Really.

Doesn't come around every week, mate.

No.

Never forgive yourself.

Maybe, I said breathless.

I think you're ready, Pikelet.

Hm.

I shook my head and bobbed dumbly out there in the purple-deep ocean with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Mountains of water rose from the south; they rumbled by, gnawing at themselves, spilling tons of foam, and the half-spent force of them tore at my dangling legs. There was just so much water moving out there, such an overload of noise and vibration; everything was at a scale I couldn't credit. I began to hyperventilate. Only later could I appreciate how alert Sando was that morning. Though he sensed my panic he did not touch me. Had he even got up close, or tried to grab my board and reassure me I'd have lashed out. I was wild with fear and we were a mile out to sea, the two of us, and now things had really gotten dangerous. But he knew what he was doing.

Tell you what, he said. Let's take a break. We don't have to do this. We'll try something different.

I didn't look at him. I couldn't shift my gaze from the horizon. We were in a lull now, but that was no comfort. I sensed him paddling east but I kept looking south as though my neck was locked in position. He was gone; he was nowhere near the reef. And I was alone. On my own. The body understood before my mind caught up. I forced myself to snatch a glimpse. Sando was more than fifty yards off. He was right over in the safe deep away from the reef and he was waving and calling. There was nothing urgent in his tone. He sounded positively languid. I heard a calming authority in his voice, a familiarity that tugged at me. He looked so secure and comfortable sitting up with his hands on his thighs and his elbows out like muttonbird wings, and I felt doubly exposed out there by the break. I was caught. I stared back out to sea. I doubted I could move. Sando kept up some sort of banter across the distance, while the fear boiled up in me. I heard how nasty and ragged my breathing had become. I was lightheaded. And then, quite suddenly, I was too afraid to stay there. It was as if I'd pitched up against my own panic and bounced back. I swung the board his way, dropped flat and began to paddle. When I got there I was gasping.

Let's dive, he said casually. I'll beat you to the bottom.

Without another word he stood up on his Brewer and speared into the water between us. I sat up in a funk, alone again. I couldn't bear it; he must have known I'd follow him.

It was too deep out there to see the sandy bottom, especially without a mask, but I could dimly make out the soles of Sando's feet as he kicked down. I clawed after him and, after a few moments, settled into a steep, calming glide. I was already oxygen-soaked from all the hyperventilation and I didn't have the buoyancy of a wetsuit to contend with, so I caught up with him quickly enough, and within a few seconds I overtook him. Blood drummed at my temples. My chest felt as if it would implode. Every bubble tore at me. I felt like a dying comet. When I finally ran out of speed and conviction I levelled off, and when I looked up I saw Sando's blurry outline at some distance. Down here the sea was its usual quiet self, all sleepy-dim and familiar. Some kind of animal recognition jolted me back into myself. It was only the sea, the water. Didn't I know what to do underwater? Slowly, returning with the burning need to breathe, came the old confidence. I knew what I was doing. I had control. I saw Sando's hazy thumbs-up and pumped back toward the surface. We rose together in our cauls of fizz and light and when we hit the air a few yards from our floating boards a surge of heat went through me and I knew I was okay.

That day I went back across to the bombora and rode two waves. Together those rides wouldn't add up to more than half a minute of experience, of which I can only recall a fraction: flickering moments, odd details. Like the staccato chat of water against the board. A momentary illusion of being at the same level as the distant cliffs. The angelic relief of gliding out onto the shoulder of the wave in a mist of spray and adrenaline. Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.