Tim Winton - Breath

The wave reared as though climbing the obstruction and then sagged drastically at each end before the yawning lip pitched forward with a sound that made me want to shit.

Fifteen foot, said Loonie.

Yeah, Sando replied. And it's breakin in three feet of water.

In fact there were times when the wave broke over no water at all. Every set brought a smoker that sucked everything before it as it bore down, dragging so much water off the rock as it gathered itself that when it finally keeled over to break the granite dome sat free and clear before it. At these moments the trough of the wave actually sank below sea level. It was a sight I had never imagined, _ the most dangerous wave I'd ever seen.

We watched a couple of sets and then anchored up at a distance before Sando dived in and led us out. All three boards were Brewers — long, heavy Hawaiian-style guns. They were the same equipment we used at Old Smoky and Sando kept saying how good and solid they felt. He kept up the usual inspirational patter, but I was sullen with fright. Every time he tried to make eye contact I looked away, paddling without conviction until he drew ahead with Loonie at his elbow going stroke for stroke.

They sat up together outside the boil while I hung well back in deep water. Behind us the dinghy yanked at its rope, disappearing between swells. Sets came and went but everything passed by unridden. The waves were big but even at half the size I thought they'd be too sudden, way too steep, and the shallow rock beneath made them unthinkable. True, it was an awesome sight but the whole deal only broke for fifty yards or so; it was hardly worth the risk. I watched Sando and Loonie out there, right in the zone, letting wave after wave go by as if they'd come to the same conclusion despite themselves.

Then a wide one swung through and Sando went for it.

I saw the distant flash of his teeth as he fought to get up sufficient speed. A moment later it was vertical and so was he. As he got to his feet it was obvious the board was too long for the contour of the wave; he was perilously slow to turn. The wave hurled itself inside out. Sando staggered a moment, almost falling out of the face altogether. But he kept his feet and cranked the Brewer around with a strength I knew was beyond me. The fin bit. He surged forward as the wave began to lurch and dilate, reef fuming and gurgling below. The lip pitched over him. He was gone a moment, like a bone in the thing's throat. And then a squall of spume belched him free and it was over. He skidded out into the deep, dead water ahead of me and let the board flutter away.

I dug my way across, retrieved the Brewer and steered it back to where he lay with his knees up and his head back.

Jesus, he murmured. Oh Jesus.

I sat beside him, holding the big board between us. He slowly got his breath back but he was wild-eyed.

When you go, he said, go wide and early.

Don't think so, I muttered.

He took his board, checked the fin and got on.

You get half a second, that's all; it's brutal.

I shook my head.

C'mon, Pikelet. You know what's what.

That's why I'm stayin right here.

I didn't bring you here to watch, did I?

I said nothing.

It'll put some fizz in your jizz.

I felt plenty scared but not panicked; this time I knew what I was doing.

Shit, he said. I thought I brought surfers with me. Men above the ordinary.

I shrugged.

Pikelet, mate. We came to play.

He was grinning as he said it but I felt a sort of menace from him then. I didn't give a damn. My mind was made up. He wheeled around in disgust and I watched him paddle back out to where Loonie scratched uncertainly between looming peaks.

When Sando sat up beside him Loonie straightened a little, as if fortified by his presence, and only a few moments later he took the place on. But the wave he set himself for was a shocker. It was wedge-shaped and rearing — butt-ugly — even before he got going. As he leapt to his feet you could see what was about to happen. Yet the next few awful seconds earned Loonie honour in defeat. The wave stood, hesitated, and then foundered with Loonie right at the crest. He'd assumed his desperate crouch, pointed the board to the sanctuary of the channel, but he was going nowhere but down. The wave subsided beneath him, sucked him with it. Great overpiling gouts of whitewater leapt off the reef and the most I could see of Loonie was a threshing arm. Half his board fluttered thirty feet in the air. For a horrible moment the granite dome of the reef was completely bare. Then all that broken water mobbed across the rock, driving Loonie before it, boiling off into the deep ahead of me while I sat there, rigid. The air was hissing, the sea bubbled underfoot, and I knew Loonie was down there somewhere in the white slick having the shit kicked out of him, but I didn't move until I heard Sando's furious yell.

It was whiteout down there. The water was mad with current. It was like diving blind into a crowd, and I groped, hauled off at angles until I saw the bluish contours of the seabed below. I dived again and got nowhere. I hit the surface, saw Sando — still yards off- hauling himself my way, and then I heard Loonies gasp and turned to see his upraised arm. He was twenty yards behind me, even closer to the boat than I was.

When I got there I swept him up onto my board and listened to him puke and breathe and puke some more. The back was out of his wetsuit and there was skin off his shoulders. His nose bled, his legs trembled, but by the time Sando reached us he was laughing.

I was gutted by that day at the Nautilus. A small, cool part of me knew it was stupid to have been out there trying to surf a wave so unlikely, so dangerous, so perverse. What would success there really mean — perhaps three or four or even five seconds of upright travel on a wave as ugly as a civic monument? You could barely call such a mad scramble surfing. Surely there were better and bigger waves to ride than that deformity. Yet nothing could assuage the lingering sense of failure I was left with.

The others didn't mention it. All three of us celebrated Loonie's moment of defiance, but the gap had widened between them and me. He who hesitates, as I discovered, is lost indeed. I began to feel that their delicacy on the subject of my cowardice only made things worse. At first I was grateful, but soon I wished they'd just come out and call me yellow and have done with it. I hated the coy looks, the sudden gaps in conversation that reinforced my sense of relegation.

Loonie and Sando planned new assaults on the Nautilus using shorter boards — two only — shaped for the purpose. We never broached the subject of whether I'd accompany them. God knows, I should have been relieved, but I was inconsolable. I knew any reasonable person would have done what I did out there that day. Which was exactly the problem: I was, after all, ordinary.

For a few years as a teenager in Sawyer, it seemed I had control of my own life. I didn't understand everything going on around me, but for a brief period I had something special that afforded me a private sense of power. It let me feel bigger, more vivid than I'd been before. Although I was no leper at school I never really made much social headway. Classmates thought I was standoffish. Some said I was up myself and none of it worried me because for a couple of years I went home from Angelus every day harbouring a consoling secret. I did stuff other people couldn't do, things they wouldn't dream of. I belonged to an exclusive club, drove around with a full-grown man and a mate who spooked people.

Even among surfers we had enigmatic status. When we deigned to paddle out at the Point you could sense everyone else's deferral. Older, vaguely threatening blokes like Slipper were grudgingly respectful, especially in the presence of our mentor. Whenever some mouthy grommet started quizzing us about Sando he would be quickly silenced by one of the older crew. They knew by now that he'd surfed Old Smoky on his own for years. He was in his own league; we'd all sensed it instinctively. Sando radiated gravitas. And I got used to the power of association.