Nam Le - The Boat

"Let's open a bottle."

***

THE NIGHT WAS WINDY. Clouds hung low and fat, lit up by the massive bonfire in the backyard. People were feeding it anything they could toss a couple of meters: furniture, textbooks, beer cans and bottles, even their clothes. Farther back from the fire the darkness was crumbed with cigarette ends, glowing, fading, each time seemingly in different spots. People might have been dancing out there.

Cale quickly ditched him for some surfie mates-the bloke could trace a sniff of mull through a dust storm.

"Hey, Jamie!"

Someone lifted a bottle to his mouth. Jamie hurled his head to the sky.

"Jesus," he said, coughing, laughing as a hand thumped his back. He spun around and saw Billy Johnson — left half-orward flank, an ordinary player, but one of those blokes everyone got along with.

"Hell's that?"

"Bourbon, I think," Billy said, teeth gleaming widely.

"Fuck you," said Jamie.

"Stole it from my sister's room." He held it out like a handshake. "Have some more."

Jamie took another swig. The burning rushed through him, mixing with the fumes from the fire. He felt deeply awake.

"Thanks," he said. "Thanks a lot, man."

"Ready for the game next week?" He tossed the bottle back to Billy. "What game?" he jeered.

By midnight, the party was peaking. She hadn't arrived. He sat in a tight pack with the other Halflead High kids, drowsing in their cheap deodorant. Norsca and Brut and Old Spice. They had the next day off — curriculum day — and everyone was going balls out. They drank. They drank and talked about the upcoming game. Jamie watched the bonfire, gusts of wind playing havoc with the smoke, people gliding in and out of its thrown light.

Cale rocked up, off his face. He started making toasts-to footy, to cunt, to mates, to getting fucked with your mates — each word swerving in the smoke-dark wind. At one stage he threw himself to the ground. Everyone watched as he did a strange, simian dance across the lawn.

Jamie drank. The wind moved through the tall purple grass, sifting the light of an arriving car's high beam. Like the wind was made of light. Next to him one of those UV bug lights thrumming purple above a pit of carnage: skeletal legs, carapaces, wings.

Cale held something up: "Got it!"

Then he saw her. Trying to light a cigarette, her face in the brief flare of a struck match. White skirt and a boob tube. She looked somehow smaller-figured in the night. On an instinct she turned and met his gaze and then, bold as you like, started walking up to the group. Tammie and Laura close in behind her.

He looked away.

"Got a light?"

But she was talking to Cale, the twenty-dollar bill flapping between his fingers. Billy rifling through his pockets, striking, restriking the wheel of his lighter, hands cupped, body swiveling to shield the flame.

The girls waited and then walked off, giggling.

Cale whispered to him: "So?"

But he couldn't speak. His head teemed. It was late and he sensed all around, in the shadows, mouths straining against each other as though to breach, to break through to a clear feeling.

"So what?"

"So you gonna score with her?"

"What, are you stupid too?"

She was waiting out front. Cross-legged on the trunk of an old Holden, cornered by a chaotic blockade of cars and bikes. Someone next to her in the darkness. As he came closer, he saw that it was Tammie: she flicked down a cigarette, whispered something into Alison's ear before leaving. Under the cloud-strained moonlight Alison's skirt was hitched up past her gleaming thighs. Her two legs interlocked.

"You look different," she said.

"You too," he replied. He wasn't lying. Closer up, the light wasn't kind to her face. Makeup moved like a tight gauzy screen on top of her skin.

"Most of these things," she said, "no one even talks to me."

He nodded. Laughter spilled from the backyard. Then the smash of a breaking bottle. He spun around.

"Dory's not here tonight," she said.

He deflected it, the cold edge held up to his warm drunken cocoon. From the house came the rising scud of voices. Then the wind shifted. They were alone again.

"He hates these high school parties."

He said, deliberately, "You can talk to me."

She looked at him without smiling. "You're funny," she said. "But seriously, all me and him do is talk. How his uncle's gonna get an abalone license one day. How he's got friends in Fisheries. Remember that time with the Chinese poacher?"

The chill came back, darting through every fissure in him. He remembered. The young woman's body they found in the swale — within shouting distance of where Dory lived with his uncle. Its blank, salt-soused face. The cops at school, pulling Dory, and later Lester, out of the classroom. After they were released from questioning, Lester had pantomimed the whole thing in the school paddocks. Jamie was too far away to hear anything, but saw the circle of boys reshape itself as Lester knelt down-he was Dory now, straddling the woman's body. Punching the ground like a piston. Dory himself standing aside, watching on without a word.

Alison soured her face. "His uncle — he's a nasty piece of work." She quickly looked behind her, then swung back around. His heart pounding his skull as she considered him. He took a long breath.

"So are you and Dory together or not?"

She bounced her shoulders. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder if he's a poofter. Seriously, Tammie cracked on to him once, the slut. And, you know."

"Yeah?"

"You know. He didn't do anything."

"He didn't do anything."

"I even asked, but you know him. Won't talk to save his life."

Her conversation was like surface chop, trapped in the same current, backing over itself. It made him seasick. He realized she hadn't answered his question. He was about to ask again when he heard her name being called out. The front door of the house banged open and a figure surfaced from the red rectangular glow, coming straight at them, trailing a small wake of commotion.

"Fuck," Alison muttered.

"A — lison." A singsong tug, stretching out the first syllable.

His stomach rose up thick and rancid. He swallowed, breathed it down. Here it came. "Who is it?" he asked, as if he didn't know-as if asking were proof he didn't care. Always there were the rules, plying, pressing in around you.

"Alison?" The voice affected surprise now. Two black shapes — then another two — their shadows scrambling ahead of them across the yard. One by one the faces came into sight. "Dory's been worried about you."

"Fuck you, Les," said Alison evenly.

In response Lester dipped his head and lifted his bottle above it. Then he turned and leered to the person who'd accompanied him out: a tall, lanky mullet-head who'd dropped out of school last year.

A few steps back Tammie tottered against Cale. They seemed engrossed in their own windy drama. Both held their beers out in front of them like candles.

"I'll pass that along," Lester said.

"Sure," said Alison, "once you pop his cock out of your mouth."

Lester's tall mate started snickering. "Slut," said Lester. He was unfazed. "You think you're top shit now? After one fluke goal?"

In a single moment Jamie realized that Lester was talking to him and that Alison was watching. He prepared himself to say something. The words, however, snagged deep inside him.

"We'll see you at training on Monday," Lester went on. "He's gonna fuck you up." He shook his head in amazement. "You're fucked." He turned to Alison: "Remember your old loverboy, Wilhelm?"

Alison stayed quiet. Her face stern, narrowed, like she was trying to light a cigarette. Cale took a step forward. "Come on, man." He sounded unsure — and unsure who he was talking to. Lester's mullet-headed friend watched him steadily.