Nam Le - The Boat

The ocean seethed and sighed in the dark. So this was where you ended up, sick in sleep. Your night a beach and all sorts of junk washing up on shore.

***

AT SCHOOL NEWS OF THE FIGHT HAD SPREAD. Monday at last. Everyone watched him and no one looked him in the eye. Even the teachers seemed to leave him to himself, steering their voices around. The semis, the assembly — all of it seemed long gone, preserved elsewhere. He was being quarantined. He'd seen it before. You were dead space, you were off — limits-until afterward. Nothing malicious in it. What made it strange for him was the incongruous buzz around school-everyone getting fired up for the holidays and, in particular, the grand final that weekend. First time in five years, and against archrivals Maroomba too. The tension brinking on hysteria.

Recess he spent in the C-block toilets. What was the grand final to him? He tried to throw up but couldn't.

Lunchtime he saw her. Her friends clustered in the concrete corner of the downball court where, as one, they turned to look at him, opening apart, unfurling like some tartan-patterned flower, and there she was, leaning against the wall with large concentric targets painted in white behind her. She held his eye for a second and then the circle sealed shut. He realized he was holding his breath.

Vague impressions of classes rolled on. Each period ending with teachers saluting the team, rallying everyone for the big game. Jamie felt exhausted. Time pushed him forward. His mind wound out, one point to the next.

"C'arn, Halfies!"

He spotted Dory just before final period. Taller than everyone else. Like a dockworker in his school uniform — shirtsleeves high on his biceps, shorts tight across his quads. His eyes too close together, his hair flaxen, floppy. Like some sick cartoon of a dockworker. The corridor packed and noisy. A few people saw them, made space, straggled, but Dory disappeared into a classroom. Lester was behind him, of course, and from a distance Jamie could see his face, pinched up in anger, yelling something out.

"Fucking retard!" he seemed to be yelling.

Jamie opened his mouth.

"Fucking retard mum!" he was yelling.

Of course he couldn't be saying that. Jamie shook it off — the bog-like feeling that accompanied the thought of his mum. There was his mind again, groping at anything but what was right in front of him. In front of him — wherever he went — Dory. Huge and hard, a thing of horror. He'd been dumped on the beach by his folks. He'd bashed up this guy, hospitalized that guy. He'd killed a Chink with his uncle.

The teacher talked on as Jamie watched the clock.

You had to shut it out. You could see it on players' faces, how they approached him, ready to take damage. You could hear it in your parents' voices. You had to shut it all out, otherwise it would sprout in you like weeds.

The bell rang.

He was headed for the lockers when his geography teacher flanked him, escorted him wordlessly to the principal's office and dropped him off there.

"Go on," said the secretary. She looked up. "Go on. Mr. Ley-land's waiting."

Jamie knocked, cracked open the door.

"There he is," a voice boomed. Coach Rutherford. He was wearing trackies and a Halflead T-shirt, a whistle around his neck. He stood behind the principal's desk. Where was Leyland?

"I was just coming to training," Jamie said.

"Good," said Coach. He waved him inside. Then Jamie saw Leyland — on the couch obscured by the door. With him was Jamie's dad. His mum in her wheelchair. His mum — what was she doing here? Jamie stood in the doorway and didn't move. All these people. All day he'd been waiting-all those days since Thursday night's party — and now it felt as though time had pushed him forward too far, too hard. Everything collapsing into one place.

Coach said, "But today, you get a rest." He smiled curtly and closed his fist around the whistle, shaking it like dice. Jamie's dad stood up and thanked him. He was wearing work clothes, his jeans smeared with oil and sawdust. Then he turned and thanked Leyland.

"Well," said Leyland, rising to his feet, "our students, our business."

Coach left the room. Jamie didn't say anything. He was thinking of Dory, the rest of them, waiting for him on the oval. What they must be thinking. He felt airy in his own body. What they must be saying. He remembered Lester's words in the corridor.

"It's not your business," his mum said quietly, but Leyland didn't hear.

His dad moved to stand behind her chair. "Come on, Jamie."

"It's between the boys. It's not their business."

"Maggie," his dad said under his breath, "we talked about this already."

Jamie couldn't bring himself to look at them. He sensed that to witness a drama between his parents here, now, might wreck him completely.

"Jamie," said Leyland. His voice took on added weight: "I've talked to Dory. He understands — there's to be no trouble whatsoever."

His dad pushed the wheelchair out of the room.

"Alright?" Leyland asked. "It's over."

***

Even from the car he could see Dory. Even at that distance. Tallest in a line of green guernseys, the one moving slower, as though to a separate beat, while the others jogged in place, ran between the orange witches' hats between whistle bursts. Sprint exercises. All the way home Jamie said nothing.

When they pulled up, he got out and unfolded the wheelchair.

His dad said, "Help your mother into the house."

"Bob, I'm okay."

His dad looked at Jamie and then at the house. "I said help your mother."

The front door opened and Michael came out. He stopped — transfixed and tense — as soon as he saw Jamie, staring at him without any of his usual bashfulness. Something like concern, deeper than concern, all through his expression. Then he went over to their mum and took hold of the wheelchair handles.

"I'm going down the jetty," Jamie told his dad.

His mum turned to him with a strange, clear-eyed face. "You're allowed. You're allowed to go. You can go."

***

HE WALKED, ALONE, down to the jetty. It was clogged with tourist families who'd arrived over the weekend. All along the walkway were canvas chairs, Eskies, straight-backed rods thick as spear grass. A mob of fluoro jigs hopping on the water. He found a spot and sat. Someone had a portable radio and music streamed into the air in clean, bright colors. The bay a basin of light.

Could that really be the end of it? Leyland talking to Dory? What would he have said to him? That the school needed Jamie fit for the final? That Jamie's dad had begged Dory to spare his gutless son? That his mum, in that wheelchair, was dying? He sat in the midst of the jetty's hurly-burly, watching and listening. He felt the need of explanation. Here's what he could say to Dory — no, he could say anything, all the right things, and it still wouldn't be enough. Maybe things could be normal again. He'd finish school, run onto the field on Saturday and run off two hours later. He'd take up the job at the fish plant, or, better yet, he'd talk to John Thompson. His dad would take the sheets in. Stop. They'd pot the ashes under the waratahs; leave a handful for the bluff, throw it up and the wind would probably shift and putter it into their faces. She'd like that. No — you didn't think of that.

He got up and started walking. He'd sat there long enough — training would be done by now. He walked down the main street and past the wharf. At the tidal flats he took off his shoes and kept going. He had an idea where he was going but nothing beyond that. Sand spits sank into ankle-deep shoals. The night had been cold and the water chilled his feet. The sky flat and blue with mineral streaks. He passed the rock pier and started picking his way through the sedgeland — sharp, rushlike plants grazing his legs. At every step he dared himself to turn around, but he didn't. He followed a rough trail marked with half-submerged beer bottles, clearings where blackened tins from bonfire rockets were set into the dirt like sentinels.