Tim Winton - Breath

I gotta go.

Come up here.

No, I'm off.

You heard me. Jesus, look at you. Get up here.

I stumped slowly up the stairs and onto the verandah.

You went out there on your own, didn't you?

I lost his Brewer. The yellow one.

You mean you swam in?. Let me look at you.

I'm just thirsty. I feel bad about the board.

Oh, forget the goddamn board. Sit down and I'll get you something.

The moment I sat I felt overcome with fatigue. I must have dozed because when I looked up she was there already with a Coke and a plate of sandwiches. I ate and drank greedily while she watched.

You take him too seriously, she said at last.

Who?

You know who. I'll get something for those gashes. Stay here. But I didn't stay there for fear of falling asleep again. I followed her into the house and propped myself up against the kitchen bench while she rummaged in a cupboard.

Sit down before you fall over, she said. You'll have to wait until they get back. You're in no shape to ride home.

I can ride, I said. I had no intention of still being there when Sando got back.

Will you just sit the fuck down. I did as I was told. Suddenly I was close to tears. He tell you they're heading to Java? I shook my head, unable to speak.

It's just not funny anymore. I don't know if I'll be here when he gets back.

She wielded a fistful of cotton balls and a bottle of something nasty-yellow. I blinked.

Jesus, why'm I tellingj/o «this? I could only shrug.

Hey, she murmured. Pikelet, you won't say anything, will you? No.

She looked at me appraisingly, and when she unscrewed the bottle and poured antiseptic into the cotton her hands shook. She took me by the chin and tilted my head up to press the scouring stuff cold to my brow and I tried not to wince.

She put the bottle down and fingered through my hair a moment to find the divot in my scalp. I looked at the pale hairs around her navel where her windcheater rode up. You'll live.

She was a foot away. She smelled of butter and cucumber and coffee and antiseptic. I wanted to press my face into that belly, to hold her by the hips, but I sat there until she stepped away. And then I got up and left; I didn't care what she said. I rode home slow and sore and raddled.

That evening, while the day's warmth leached into the forest shadow, I sat against an ancient karri tree to smoke the hash Loonie brought me. At dinner I ate my chops with elaborate caution, anxious at every quizzical glance. I felt transparent, light, uncomfortable. In the night I dreamt my drowning dream. There I was again, head jammed tight in the reef, and when I woke, touching the tender parts of my brow and scalp, it took a while to believe it had only been a dream.

You've been in a fight, said the old man at breakfast.

No, I said.

Look at you. You may's well tell me.

It's nothin, Dad.

Face like a bird-pecked apple, said the old girl.

What the hell d'you get up to? he said with more dismay than anger in his voice.

I fell on the rocks, I murmured.

Out the coast?

Yeah.

How many times have I told you —

Tell me about Snowy Muir, I said. The old man snatched up his hat and his workbag. You never told me the story, I said more gently. Some of us have got work to do, he said. He kissed my mother, stuffed his hat on his balding head and made for the door.

i oonie was outside the butcher shop in the drizzle when I got off the school bus. He had the fading remains of a black eye and his lip was split in a whole new way. I didn't need to ask. I knew it'd be his old man. Loonie had told him he was going away again.

You went out to Old Smoky on your own, he said.

I shrugged and hoisted the bag onto my shoulder.

Fuck, he murmured. He's pissed off about the board.

You broke two already yourself, I said. Anyway, who told you?

She did.

Eva? She told you ?

Nah. I heard em bluin and bitchin. She sorta blurted it out. Said you went on your own. And the board's gone, isn't it?

Swam in.

Fuck.

Did you do Nautilus? I asked despite myself.

Man, it was bullshit. I got three. Barrelled every time.

Him?

He got one. But he's fuckin scared of it.

I blinked at this.

Old, said Loonie.

There was something pitiless in his smirk.

And he's takin you to Java, I said.

Who told you that?

Eva, I said with a hot flash of satisfaction.

He grunted and rolled himself a fag and I realized that we were no longer friends. At the intersection, where the pub loomed over the servo across the road, we each veered in our own direction without even saying goodbye. Neither of us could have known that we'd never meet again.

Sando pulled up at the school oval one lunch hour while I was kicking a football with a bunch of kids I barely knew. It was the old sound of the VW that caught my attention. I saw him parked over behind the goalposts but didn't go across right away. By the time I relented there were only a few minutes before the bell went again.

He sprawled over the wheel like a bus driver. He had a denim jacket on, and a silk shirt of some kind of shimmering green, and his hair and beard and earrings shone in the early winter light. He raised his eyebrows as if surprised to see me. I stood there in my grisly brown uniform.

You're off, then.

Yeah, he said. Tomorrow.

I nodded and looked out across the rooftops of Angelus.

Thought you might come out for a send-off. We don't see you much anymore.

I glanced back at the kids punting the pill from pack to pack.

I can't, I said. The oldies wouldn't let me.

He nodded, scratched in his beard pensively.

Hey, someone found the yellow Brewer.

Really?

Tuna fisherman. Twenty-five mile out, he reckons.

He give it back?

Sando nodded. I kept the flood of relief and amazement to myself.

Eva said you looked pretty shabby when you got back.

It was big, I said. It's a tough swim.

Gutsy effort, he said. All of it. You should know that. It's right up there.

I shrugged.

No, I mean it, Pikelet. Hats off.

I shoved my hands into my pockets in the effort to resist his approval. There was a long, potent silence between us and then the school bell went. Sando cranked up the Kombi.

Seeya, then.

Okay, I said.

When I got home the yellow Brewer was standing up against the shed with its big black fin jutting out like a crow's wing.

He said you could have it, said my mother. The gypsy-looking fella. Said you'd earned it.

I nodded as I took it down and held it under my arm. It was a beautiful thing, made by a master.

What job were you doing? she asked.

The usual, I said. Choppin wood.

Ah, she said. And I could see how badly she needed to believe it.

week or so after Sando and Loonie left, I rode out to the coast in a funk. I was sick of the hangdog looks the oldies were giving me. I was bored and angry — as lonely as I'd been in my life.

The sea was its usual wintry mess, the beach empty. I didn't particularly want to see Eva. I half thought she'd be gone anyway, as threatened. There was nowhere else to go.

The Volkswagen was parked under cover. The dog bounced out to meet me as if it'd been starved of company. I squatted with it for a while, ruffling its ears, basking in its adoration. Maybe it's an old man's delusion but it occurs to me now that a dog like that might have been good for me as a teenager. As I hunkered there, scratching the dog's belly, I thought about taking it for a ramble up the paddocks into the forest, to let it dart in and out of the shadows chasing rabbits while I talked a load of shit to it and got things off my chest. And I wish I had. Instead I went on up the stairs.