Tim Winton - Breath

the rip and into the bay to aim for the bar at the rivermouth, but that would put me right in the path of the oncoming sets and I'd be buried in whitewater. I knew that once I lost my board I'd be at the mercy of the current and I didn't like my chances. There was no way around the fact that I was buggered. I was so frightened I genuinely thought I could shit myself at any moment.

Slipper called a heads-up as another set began to bear down on us. It was much further seaward of where we were but it looked ready to break even that far out. In such a depth of water the very idea of this was stupefying.

You're not gunna pike on me, are youse? Slipper bellowed over his shoulder. You won't choke now, willya Snow? Piss off, said Loonie with a sick grin.

Just remember, I'm givin youse a wave. Don't usually hand out freebies to little snot-nose grommets, but I'm in a good mood, so take it while it's goin.

The first wave of that set was lumpy and malformed but Loonie turned and went anyway as I knew he would. The soles of his feet looked yellow and small, and his elbows stuck out as he paddled. I sat, rearing a moment, as all that water welled up beneath us. And then he was gone.

Slipper hooted. But in a moment another wedging peak was

upon us.

Carn, kid. No guts no glory.

I don't think so, I said.

It's the only way home now.

I said nothing.

Ya mate'll know you're a sook, a fuckin pussy.

But I didn't go. I just barely made it up the face of that wave and freefell out the back so hard I had the wind knocked out of me. Slipper paddled up close and snarled in my ear.

I take the next one, sport, and you're out here on yer own. Get it?

By then I was addled and breathless. Loonie's wave was spilling itself across the rivermouth already but there was no sign of him.

The third wave began its slow left turn towards me. It looked as big as the pub and as it began to break the sound rattled my ribs. With Slipper right up beside me I turned my little stubby Hawke around and paddled. I paddled, I must add, without vigour, and in a moment the wave was upon me, its mass overtaking me so fast that it felt as though I was travelling backwards. All about was seething vapour. I hung right up in the boiling nest of foam at its very peak, suspended in noise and unbelief, before I began to fall out and down in a welter of blinding spray. I only got to my feet from instinct, but there I suddenly was, upright and alive, skittering in front of all that jawing mess with my little board chattering underfoot. It was hard to credit the speed, the way the wave hauled itself upright in my path as it found shallower water. All I could do was squat and aim in hope. Yet for all this mad acceleration there was still something ponderous about the movement of the water. On TV I'd seen elephants run beside safari jeeps, pounding along at incredible speed while seeming to move in slow motion, and that's exactly how it was: hectic noise, immense force driven up through the feet and knees, all in a kind of stoptime.

For a fatal moment, now that I was unexpectedly on top of things, the whole enterprise seemed too easy. Within three seconds

I went from saving myself from certain disaster to believing I was a thirteen-year-old hellman.

I never did see the great slab of water that cut me off at the knees. Loonie said it came down behind like a landslip and simply flicked me away. I didn't even get time to draw a breath. I was abruptly in darkness, being poleaxed across the sandy bottom of the bay, holding onto the dregs in my lungs while the grit blasted through my hair and my limbs felt as though they would be wrenched from their sockets. When I burst back to the surface my board was long gone, and before I could begin the swim in another rumbling pile of foam bore down on me so I dived and took another belting. It seemed a good while before I finally came up in a spritzing froth in the shallows, sinuses burning, shorts around my thighs, and by then Loonie was already up on the beach, grinning like a nutter, with my board stuck tail-first into the dry sand beside him.

Slipper came in on the wave of the day. He wound his way across the bay in long, arrogant swipes, flicked out in front of the river-mouth and walked all the way back up the beach as nonchalant as you like. But as he reached us he gave a gap-toothed leer, tossed his board onto the flatbed truck and motioned for us to throw ours on as well. We didn't hesitate. We climbed up beside the Angelus crew, basking in their new and grudging respect, and as we ground up the track a monster set closed out the entire bay behind us, shooting foam against the dunes and brown stormscum high across the scrub of the headland. It was carnage. And yet the swell still appeared to be building.

The truck reached the dirt turnaround where our bikes lay, but it didn't stop. We veered west into a set of wheel ruts that traversed the ridge of the headland and crossed into heath country — spiky, wild scrub dotted with granite boulders and washouts. Boards and tools and bodies slammed back and forth across the tray until we pulled up a mile or so further on at a basalt knoll above the sea cliffs.

Everyone stood and leant on the roof of the cab, staring seaward. I didn't know what we were all looking at. And then I saw the flickering white bombora in the distance.

When the bay shuts down, said Slipper, it starts to crank out there.

A mile out, a white smear appeared on the black sea. A moment later the sound of it reached us. It was like a thunderclap; you could feel the vibration in the chassis of the truck.

How big is that? I asked.

Everybody laughed.

Well, I persisted, how big was the Point today?

Too big for you, sport, said Slipper.

Eight foot, maybe, said someone. Ten right there at the end.

So what's that? I persisted. Out there. What size?

Slipper shrugged. Can't tell, he said. Twenty?

Bigger, said a wiry little bloke.

Does anyone surf it?

Nobody spoke.

Fuck that, said Slipper at last. It's sharky as shit out there.

The sea was dark now and the sky even blacker. Vapour hung in shrouds above the cliffs. Quite suddenly and with great force it began to rain. We jounced back towards the Point in the downpour and I looked at Loonie and saw that no amount of rain could spoil the day for him. His lip was split from grinning. He'd ridden his wave all the way to the beach. There was a glory about him. He was untouchable.

From the shelter of her big verandah the American woman looked down at the pair of us. We stood sodden and shivering in the mud of her yard.

I guess you better come up, she said.

We stashed our boards under the house and slopped upstairs to find that she had some old towels out for us and when we were more or less dry she let us in through the French doors.

Inside the place smelled of incense. A fire snapped in the hearth and there was music playing.

Coffee?

We nodded and she told us to stand by the fire.

It sounds big down there, she said without enthusiasm.

Ten foot, said Loonie.

Huh. Too big for you guys.

We handled it, said Loonie.

Oh, sure you did.

We got witnesses.

She half smiled and poured us mugs of coffee from a glass jug. Through the windows you could see the storm descending on the coast. Sawyer and the forest were obscured by rain.

You're from America? I asked.

California, she said. Before that, Utah, I guess.

Calafawnya, said Loonie in crude imitation. Yoo-tar. So how

come you're here ?

Hey, I ask myself. Drink up and I'll drive you back to town.

We're orright, said Loonie.

Sure. But I'm going in anyways. I guess you're from Sawyer,

huh?

Neither of us said anything to this and I thought about how obviously local we must have looked in our flannel shirts and Blundstones. I took my cue from Loonie and slugged back the coffee as best I could. No amount of sugar could make up for the oily bitterness of it. We Pikes were strictly tea drinkers; this was the first coffee I'd ever drunk.