Tim Winton - Breath

I don't know how long I lay there in my hammock, ruminating on all this, before I realized that Eva had long since stopped talking. A light drizzle began to fall. Hauling up onto an elbow I saw she was asleep. Her hair had dried in a snarl beneath her. The tightness was gone from her face. Now and then her eyelids twitched and fluttered. She gave out a light, intermittent snore. Where her dress rode up her legs were pale.

It seemed wrong to stare at Eva like this, but I'd never been able to properly look at her before. I'd only ever known her in glances, from glimpses snatched in moments when I thought I was safe from her scalding glare. I eased myself out of the hammock and crept up beside her. She smelled of shampoo and fried onions. I studied the scars on her misshapen knee. The freshest suture line was fat and angry, a centipede imbedded in her flesh; it overlaid its predecessors, a silvery nest of them like a fossil record. There was stubble on her shins. For a moment, while she slept, she had gooseflesh on her arms.

I had the sudden and perilous urge to touch her. I wanted to feel her ruined knee and I didn't know why. I reached out. Don't hurt me, she said.

I flinched and stepped back, knocking a chair against the wall. Eva sat up, confused and awake.

What is it?

I shook my head. I gotta go.

Loonie showed up one night while I was failing to do my homework. I could see the mixed look on my mother's face as she ushered him into my room. She was fond of Loonie but her old wariness was back. She pulled at his strawy hair a moment and squeezed his shoulder as she left.

Did I miss anythin? he asked. No swell?

I shook my head.

Far out, he said abstractedly. He sat on my bed and flipped through the social studies book lying there.

So, I said. How was it?

He put the book down and pursed his lips. Fuckin unbelievable.

When'd you get back?

Last night. The old man's gone spastic. Hey, cop this.

Loonie pushed up the sleeve of his windcheater to reveal a long, pulpy wound.

Uluwatu, he murmured. It's insane.

What happened?

Just the reef. That coral rips the shit outta you.

For half an hour he told me stories of lonely waves and temples

and paddies, of monkeys and offerings and incense smoke; how Sando and he ate turtle meat and coconuts and rode out to reefs on outrigger canoes. I felt a stubborn refusal to be impressed. The more Loonie talked, the less I responded. I could see it puzzling him. He reached for bigger stories, wilder moments, to little avail.

I brought you this, he said, setting a tamped wad of foil on the desk beside me. It was no bigger than a.22 rifle cartridge.

What is it?

Hash, mate.

Jesus, I murmured.

Well, don't have a baby.

I heard the old girl coming before she had time to open the door. The little foil bullet fell into the drawer and Loonie met her on his way out.

Things were different after Sando and Loonie returned from the islands. If there was a swell big enough they might come by on weekends. We all surfed Barney's several times in late summer and even saw its terrible namesake, but for the most part I found myself on the outside of whatever it was the other two had going. Loonies time in Indonesia had granted him a new kind of seniority. He'd seen animal sacrifices and shamans and walked on black, volcanic beaches. He'd climbed down the legendary cave at Uluwatu and paddled out, bombed to the gills on hash. Yet here I was, still a schoolboy.

Sando was distant now, preoccupied. He seemed suddenly closed off from me. I began to sense that there were secrets between him and Loonie, things they kept from me with grins and furtive glances. When we surfed they gave off a physical arrogance that might simply have been confidence born of experience, but I felt cowed by it. Now I understood the looks that the Angelus crew shot me. It was how they saw us — the little Brahman circle.

I didn't see much of Eva, but when I did she was drawn and unhappy. A new current of antagonism flashed between her and Sando. She did her best to act as though Loonie didn't exist.

I woke to a rumble that caused the house stumps to vibrate. If you didn't know any better you'd have thought a convoy of tanks was advancing up our drive and into the forest behind us. It was a low, grinding noise, a menacing pulse that didn't let up for a moment. I got out of bed feeling queasy. I packed a towel and wetsuit into my school bag, ate a couple of cold sausages from the fridge and waited for the dawn.

A monster storm showed up before autumn even arrived. On the forecast maps it looked like a tumour on the sea between us and the southern iceshelf. The moment he saw it Sando began planning our attempt on the Nautilus. On the Saturday and Sunday before the front arrived the swell in its path hadn't yet gathered momentum. We'd have to wait for the passage of the storm and catch the swell in its wake. Which meant I'd have to wag school if I wanted to make the trip.

Before the wind had even stirred the trees I knew I wasn't ready for the Nautilus. On the night the storm descended I lay in bed feeling the roof quake, wondering how I could plausibly avoid the whole endeavour. For two days black squalls ripped in from the sea and rain strafed the roads and paddocks and forest. On the morning of the third day, while it was still full dark and spookily still,

I got to the bus stop outside the butcher's about a half-hour early, figuring that if Sando didn't come then I'd just go ahead and take the bus to school. This morning school was an attractive option. But a few moments later, Loonie showed up blowing steamy breath on his hands, and before we'd even begun to speak the VW with its trailer and dinghy pulled in.

It was quite a drive west through the forest and then out along fishing tracks to the lonely little beach inshore of the island. All the way over Sando and Loonie psyched themselves up, each feeding off the other's nervous energy, while I sat pressed to the window, silent and afraid.

For any soul with a taste for excitement the mere business of launching Sando's dinghy should have been thrill enough for one day. The cove was a maelstrom with waves breaking end to end across it and the shorebreak heaved down with such force it sent broken kelp and shell-slurry into the air. We hauled the boat bow-out, timed our launch between waves and got the motor going, but we almost came to grief as a rogue set rumbled into the bay. By that stage there was nowhere for us to go but out, so we headed straight at those looming broken lines of foam with the throttle wide open in the hope they'd green up again before we reached them. We grabbed any handhold we could find. I felt the wind rip at my hair. And somehow we made it. As we slammed up each in turn we were airborne and the prop bawled before we landed again with a shattering thump. Loonie hooted like a rodeo rider; he'd have flapped a hat had there been one available. We found safe water, but it wasn't a good start to my day at the Nautilus. I rode the rest of the way rattled and sweating in my wetsuit. The granite island and its clump of seals were awash. The sea beyond was black and agitated.

We pulled up near the break during a lull and stood off in deep water to landward just to wait and watch before anchoring. There wasn't much to see at first except a scum of spent foam on the surface. Ocean and air seemed hyper-oxygenated; everything fizzed and spritzed as if long after the passage of previous waves there was energy yet to be dissipated. The land behind us was partly obscured by the island and a low, cold vapour the morning sun failed to penetrate. Nothing shone. The sea looked bottomless.

Only when the first new wave arrived did I see what really lay before us. It came in at an angle, just a hard ridge of swell, but within a few seconds, as it found shallow water, it became so engorged as to triple in volume. And there at its feet lay the great hump of rock that gave the place its name. The mass of water foundered a moment, distorting as it hit the submerged obstacle.