Tim Winton - Blueback

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Abel. ‘It’s big enough to eat your arm off.’

‘He must be old to grow that big,’ said his mother as she pulled on the starter rope.

‘He’s so blue.’

‘And smart,’ she said. ‘He knew what he was doing. We’re lucky, you know, lucky to see such a thing.’

They skimmed back around into the bay across the slick green water toward the jetty and the shack that was their home.

Abel Jackson had lived by the sea here at Longboat Bay ever since he could remember. His whole life was the sea and the bush. Every day was special, his mother always told him this, but it all became much more precious the day he first shook hands with old Blueback.

Even while Abel helped his mother shell the abalone and trim the meat for freezing that first day, he was already planning to get back out to Robbers Head to see the groper again. His mother set up a drum of seawater on a gas flame to boil the empty shells clean. People in town bought the shells as souvenirs. It made them a few dollars. As Abel carried the abalone meat up to the freezer shed an idea came to him. He’d call the fish ‘Blueback’. He didn’t know why but it seemed right. He had never seen anything so blue in all his life, not the sky nor the sea. Blueback. Yes.

‘Will it be there again tomorrow?’ he asked at breakfast.

‘Gropers are territorial,’ said his mother dishing up the eggs. ‘That means they stay in the same area most of their life.’

‘Can we go tomorrow?’

‘There’s school tomorrow. Besides, we have enough abalone now.’

‘We could fish off Robbers Head. There’s jewfish out there.’

‘After school, then. If the weather holds.’

After breakfast Abel carried seaweed up to the fruit trees. He filled bags of washed kelp and heaved them up the slope from the jetty to the orchard. The ground up there really stank. Every year Abel and his mother netted pilchards and salmon to dig into the sand for fertiliser. The whole bay would stink for a week as they chopped the fish into the rich compost they made from tree bark, vegetable scraps and seagrass.

Abel laid the kelp around the fig trees and the apricots. There were orange and lemon trees in the orchard as well as olives and mulberries. Every row of trees jangled with bells to keep away the birds. After emptying each bag, Abel looked out over Longboat Bay and thought about seeing Blueback again.

Abel and his mother lived off the sea and the land. Jacksons had been living here like this for more than a hundred years. The land at Longboat Bay had been theirs since whaling times and all the land around them was national park. Behind the orchard, where the bushland and forest began, there was a little family cemetery, a patch of white crosses and headstones to mark all the Jacksons who had lived and died here. There was a cross there for Abel’s father but no body was ever buried beneath it. On their own now, Abel and his mother fished and grew fruit and vegetables. They kept ducks and chooks for meat and eggs and had a goat or two for milk. There was no mains electricity out at Longboat Bay, no water except rainwater and no TV. It was hard work sometimes, living the way they did, but Abel had never known any other life. He roamed in the forest of the national park and swam in the sea every day. He was lonely sometimes but he liked being with his mother.

Some nights he stood on the back verandah to watch the kangaroos gather in the orchard. They came in large groups to graze in the open. Looking at those roos he wondered what it would be like to live in a big family like one of theirs. He figured it would be crowded and noisy but probably a lot of fun as well. When I’m older, he thought, I’ll have a family of my own. I’ll make sure we’re a crowd, a real mob.

When Abel got back to the house he could hear his mother clanking around in the shed. She was working on the diesel generator with grease all up her arms. His mother was a good mechanic. She kept the truck and the outboard going on her own. She said every engine was just a puzzle to solve.

‘Mum?’

‘Yep.’

‘Let’s not wait till tomorrow.’

‘For what?’

‘To see Blueback. The groper.’

‘Blueback, is he? I must say, you’re keen, love.’

‘It’s Sunday. We could go back out to Robbers Head after lunch.’

His mother thought about it for a moment. ‘Okay, why not. If the weather holds.’

‘Oh, yes!’

After lunch Abel and his mother anchored the dinghy off Robbers Head and dived into the luminous water. Brilliant red schools of nannygai parted before them as they slipped down. They found the patch of abalone but Blueback was nowhere to be seen. Above them, on the rippling shiny surface, the boat hung like a kite; it tugged on its anchor rope and turned to and fro.

Abel’s mother swam from one rock crevice to the next, looking for the big blue groper, but couldn’t find him anywhere. Abel glided along behind her, following her gaze. In a dim cleft they came upon a big, twitching crayfish. Abel’s mother reached in and dragged it bucking and flapping out of the cave and both of them kicked up toward the surface. Quite suddenly, Blueback was above them. He swooped down and took the bucking cray in a single swipe and was gone in a flick of the tail.

‘Well, he’s a crafty old thing, I’ll give him that,’ said Abel’s mother as they floated, puffing and blowing, on the surface. ‘I was looking forward to a crayfish dinner.’

‘Let’s go back down,’ said Abel, still tingling with excitement.

So they dived again but Blueback was holed up somewhere scoffing crayfish and wouldn’t come out. In the end the water got cold. They headed home.

Abel caught the bus into school next morning. He kept Blueback to himself, a secret from the rest of the world. The school bus rattled along the Longboat Bay road, spitting gravel and raising dust until it reached the highway.

‘Gettin’ any fish out there?’ called Merv the driver.

‘A few,’ said Abel.

Merv laughed. ‘You Jacksons have been sayin’ that for a century. Ha, ha, a few. You always get a few.’

They picked up kids from farms along the highway and the school day began.

All day Abel daydreamed about Blueback. He wondered how old that fish must be to have grown to such a size. Just imagine all the things he’d seen! All the creatures that had come and gone around him all those years, the boats and people and time that had passed out there at Robbers Head. Even the reef would have changed in that time.

Abel knew that if you cut down a karri tree you could see its age by the growth rings in the timber. You could even tell the changes in seasons, see the droughts and the good years written into its heart. People spoke to each other. They told stories and remembered. But a fish was different. All its years were secret, a mystery. He wondered if a fish even remembered. When a fish died, did all those years just vanish? Abel thought about it for hours. He got into trouble with the teacher for daydreaming again. He was given a hundred lines:

I must not daydream in class

I must not daydream in class

I must not

But after fifty lines or so he went back to thinking about Blueback and never actually finished. The teacher sent him home with a hundred more.

After school Abel collected the eggs and changed the ducks’ water. The ducks swam in an old pink bathtub. Their water went greeny-black after a few days and stank to high heaven. Bailing it out was a messy job but he liked to hose the ducks down after the bath was refilled. They stood with their chests out as he drilled them with hosewater. They looked like silly fat businessmen in white suits. They shook their heads like bankers.