Tim Winton - Breath

The dog followed me all the way out to the road and stood in the drive while I pedalled off. It looked at me dolefully, as though I'd abandoned it to its grim mistress.

For weeks I smarted with a feeling of having been overlooked — forsaken, unchosen — and the shock of it was all the greater because of how much I'd lately come to imagine an advantage over Loonie. I thought Sando and I had a special bond, a kind of intellectual interest, something Loonie, for all his animal energy, couldn't match. And now I felt like such an idiot.

I left for school and returned again sullen enough to irritate the old folks. At night in bed I conjured up the knowing smile Margaret Myers shot me that day in the pub and I jerked off morosely while the wind poured through the trees and the house creaked on its stumps.

Queenie took up with the captain of the school football team. He had a car, and sideburns like Peter Fonda.

At day's end I slumped in the bus, overcome by ordinariness.

Some evenings I swam in the river where the primary-schoolers bombed off the old plank. Once or twice I clung to roots on the bottom and deluded myself into thinking that up on the surface the little kids' wonder was turning to panic, but I doubt anybody even remembered I was there.

The next Saturday, I surfed the Point with the Angelus crew who seemed a little leery of me, but Sunday was hot and the sea mirror-flat so I spent the hours spearing fish behind the headland. I filled a hessian sack with queenies, harlequins and boarfish, and it was some business humping it back with my gear to the bike. Well before I drew up at the Sandersons' drive I knew I had no hope of riding the full bag home. I didn't want to go up there. But I couldn't bring myself to start slinging good fish into the bush.

Eva seemed unusually pleased — to see me. While I filleted the snapper in the shade of the killing tree she came downstairs with Cokes. Her leg was strapped and her limp was still severe, but she seemed more sanguine than I'd seen her for a while. I cut the red meat from the fish's shoulder and gave it to the dog. Eva sat in the shade and passed me a glass.

I had Loonies father out here today, she said. Man, is he pissed.

Pissed? I asked. Like, drunk?

No, pissed as in pissed off. He expected Loonie back Friday.

Friday? Is that when Sando said he'd be back?

Oh, who knows. When he's away the schedule's kind of open-ended. Seems the old man wasn't so happy about Loonie going anyways. Man, you can see the son in the father, huh?

I shrugged.

They have a way of looking at you, she said. Like you're some kind of… abomination.

Because you're American?

Naw, because I'm a fee-male.

Oh.

He's on his own, huh?

Um, I dunno, I said, tempted to broach the subject of Margaret Myers.

Guess I should feel sorry for him. But I don't.

I figured that my knowledge of the publican and Margaret Myers might include some awkward details, so I left it alone.

Do you miss it? I asked.

She looked at me. Miss what, exactly?

The snow. Sando told me about freestyling.

Of course I miss it, she said. Kinda dumbass question is that?

She drank her Coke and banged the glass down on the plank beside me. I trimmed the fillets and set them on the plate for her, determined to clean up and leave as quickly as I could.

How can you get em back on the farm once they've seen Paree.

Sorry? I wiped blood and scales from the knife.

Once you've had a taste of something different, something kind of out there, then it's hard to give it up. Gets its hooks in you. Afterwards nothing else can make you feel the same.

I nodded, understanding finally.

I guess I miss the buzz, she said. Boy, we did some scary shit up on the mountain. But, you know how it is, time wounds all heels. Your moment arrives and just slips away. Kinda cruel, huh.

Maybe it'll just get better on its own.

Yeah, and maybe Santy Clause is a Jew.

Stung, I slunk across to the watertank to wash my hands. The dog licked the salt off my legs.

I've never seen snow, I said.

White, she said. And cold. Thanks for the fish.

She had a way of making you feel small and stupid, even when she was in a good mood. I remembered again how little I liked her.

The week before Sando and Loonie finally returned, brown and shiny-eyed from Bali, I went back to see Eva. I had no fish; I was bored and lonely, fed up and spoiling for a blue. I was ready to tell that fancy Yank what I thought of her.

Months previous, Sando had rigged an exercise contraption on the verandah, an arrangement of weights and pulleys for Eva to use to strengthen her leg. I'd never known her to use it, but when I mounted the stairs she was cranking the thing without let-up. She saw me but didn't stop. She was mottled, slick with sweat, so fierce in her pain that it took me aback. I felt a chill of apprehension.

But I stood there, trapped by her gaze, all the wind gone from my sails. I felt I'd stumbled into something private. It was awkward but I didn't dare leave. She went on a full five minutes before pitching back, totally spent.

Throw me a towel!

I was affronted but hapless.

Gimme. The fucking. Towel!

I saw that a towel hung from the verandah rail beside me. I pulled it free and bunched it a moment, then hurled it with more force than was necessary. She caught the thing and buried her face in it. Her chest heaved so sharply I wondered if she was weeping, but I was more curious than sympathetic.

A breeze stirred the chimes around us. I didn't know why I stood there; it was my chance to bolt.

Oh, she said at last, wiping her boiled-looking face. I need a shower.

I'm off, then.

Stay, she said. I'll make coffee.

I don't bloody drink coffee.

Okay, Coke. We'll talk. Hey, I haven't fed the dog. The sack's still in the car. D'you mind?

I went down into the yard with the dog and found the big pack of dog food and poured out a dish on the ground. When she came out onto the verandah, Eva's hair was slicked back and her eyes were bright. Barefoot, in a sleeveless cotton dress, she seemed calm. It was as though the storm of pain had passed. She flopped into a hammock and swung there.

I'm hungry, she said. Can you cook?

I shook my head.

Didn't think so. C'mon, let's make burgers. I got supplies this morning.

For an hour or so she bossed me about in the kitchen and eventually we ate in silence off the benchtop. We sat on the stools Sando had made from bushwood. It was odd, this making-do. Neither of us was the other's first preference for company. We were stuck with each other.

Once she'd eaten, Eva became unusually talkative. We went back out onto the verandah and slouched into hammocks and she told me about growing up in Salt Lake City, about Mormons and mountains and her dead mother. Wryly, she explained the business of college scholarships and the starding advent of the angel Moroni. She told me stuff about new religion and new money that I couldn't quite grasp, and the longer she went on, die stranger America seemed to be.

On TV Americans were so soft and sentimental, all happy-go-lucky and forever safely at home. But the way Eva told it, her countrymen were restless, nomadic, clogging freeways and airports in their fevered search for action. She said they were driven by ambition in a way that no Australian could possibly understand. They wanted fresh angles, better service, perfect mobility. I tried to picture what she meant. She made her own people sound vicious. Yet God was in everything — all the talk, all the music, even on their money. Ambition, she said. Aspiration and mortal anxiety.

It was hard to negotiate the tangled crosscurrents of pride and disgust in Eva's rambling account, but it gave me plenty to think about. Here in Sawyer people seemed settled — rusted on, in fact. They liked to be ordinary. They were uncomfortable with ambition and avoided any kind of unpredictability or risk. There was a certain muted grandeur in our landscape but it seemed that power and destiny did not adhere to bare plains and dank forest. There were no mighty canyons and mile-wide rivers here. Without soaring peaks and snow, angels seemed unlikely and God barely possible.