Tim Winton - Blueback

‘What a boat,’ said Abel.

‘Let’s get to work, then. Empty that icebox.’

Abel took it slowly with the boat. His mother showed him how to handle it, how to use the echo sounder and the radios. He learnt how to trim the outboards in different sea conditions. For a few days they stayed in the bay. Then they moved out to Robbers Head and finally they took it out onto the dark, open sea. Abel steered them out across the sloping backs of oceanic swells as the land shrank to a long smudge behind them.

All afternoon they drifted for snapper, trailing heavy handlines with baits of squid. The snapper and morwong came up, flashing from the deep. Abel laid them in ice and felt the wind in his hair.

About three o’clock a huge, terrifying snort went up beside their boat. Then another across the bow and two more off the stern. A foul mist rose over them and Abel saw the glistening backs of right whales all around.

‘Look at that,’ said his mother. ‘We used to hunt them. Your father’s family, the Jacksons, came here as whalers. Used to sit up on the ridge in a lookout and when they saw a pod of whales come by they’d row out in longboats and harpoon them.’

‘I wonder if they remember, the whales.’

‘Who knows. I hope not.’

Abel and his mother stopped fishing and just watched the whales.

‘I used to feel bad about it,’ said his mother, ‘even though it was before our time. But the sea has taken its fair share of us. I think we must be even by now.’

Abel thought of all the crosses up behind the orchard.

A whale cruised past with its mouth wide. It strained water through its baleen, rolling as it fed.

Abel laughed. ‘Glad I’m not plankton, that’s all I can say.’

That summer, as his skill and confidence grew, Abel took his boat up and down the coast exploring the long lonely stretches that made him feel small. Land and sea were so big he became dizzy just imagining how far they went. He felt like a speck, like a bubble on the sea left by a breaking wave, here for a moment and then gone. He pulled into tiny sheltered coves and swam with his mother in turquoise water beneath streaky cliffs and trees loud with birds. Some days he sped close in to long sugary beaches. He stayed just behind the breakers and was showered with their spray and saw the great, strange land through the wobbly glass of the waves. He saw the sun melting like butter on white dunes. Dolphins rose in his bow wave and he slapped them playfully with his rolled up towel. He drifted amidst huge schools of tuna as they rose around him, feeding like packs of wild dogs on terrified baitfish that leapt across his boat.

Some days out east, he saw a big red jet boat working its way along the coast with its dive flags streaming.

‘Costello,’ said his mother. ‘The abalone diver. He’s a hard case.’

‘He’ll be here soon,’ said Abel.

‘I know,’ said his mother.

‘What about Blueback?’

‘It’s not just Blueback I’m worried about,’ said his mother. ‘It’s the whole bay. People say he takes everything he sees.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Nothing. We stay out of his way.’

‘But Mum, what about Blueback?’

‘He’ll have to look after himself.’

‘Can’t we keep this bloke out of the bay?’

‘This patch of land’s ours, Abel. But the water belongs to everybody. Costello has a licence to take abalone. There’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘Can’t someone stop him?’

‘Only the Fisheries Department. They’ve been watching him.’

‘But out here he can get away with anything, Mum. This is the middle of nowhere.’

Abel looked out across the moving water. He knew that when the time came he wouldn’t just do nothing. He couldn’t do nothing.

Abel swam with Blueback every chance he had. He tempted him with squid and cray legs. He felt the broad blade of the fish’s tail against his chest and touched those flat white teeth with his fingertips. Abel held his breath and stared into the groper’s face, trying to read it. Blueback swam down to his crack in the reef and looked out with moon eyes.

It was dawn when Abel heard the jet motor burbling into Longboat Bay. He climbed out of bed and found his way to the verandah. His mother was already there. The red boat slid in around the point and drifted with its motor off. An anchor splashed in the quiet. Then the compressor started up and two divers went over the side.

Abel’s mother watched through binoculars.

‘Things aren’t the same, Abel. It’s getting harder to hold on to good things.’

‘Let’s go out and cut his hoses,’ said Abel.

‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘Well, we have to stop him somehow.’

‘We don’t know that he’s doing anything wrong.’

‘And what happens when he starts doing wrong?’

She sighed. They went indoors.

At breakfast Abel’s mother looked sad and thoughtful. All these holidays he’d been feeling bigger and older. Now that he looked properly he saw that his mother was ageing too. It was a surprise. To him she had always seemed the same age. In a year or so he’d be as tall as her.

‘I’ve been wondering,’ she said. ‘Do you think I should sell up?’

Abel was speechless.

‘I mean, I could buy a house inland,’ she said. ‘We could be together more.’

‘But, Mum.’

‘I suppose you’re used to the hostel now. Living with your mother wouldn’t be the same.’

‘I hate the hostel,’ said Abel. ‘But you can’t leave here.’

‘But what if it’s the best thing?’

‘For who?’

‘For you, Abel. Wouldn’t you like more money? If I sold this place you’d have more chance to have things. We wouldn’t have to work so hard fishing, planting, mending. Aren’t you tired of being hard-up for money?’

‘Mum, I don’t care about money. And I love the fishing and growing stuff. This is what I want, the house, the land, the water. This is my life. I never want to leave.’

‘But you’ll have to leave sooner or later. There’s a whole world out there. Believe me, Abel. You’ll leave.’

‘But not for good. And what about you? What would you be like away from the sea, Mum?’

She pushed her egg around the plate and chewed her lip. ‘I’d be okay.’

‘Tell the truth.’

‘Abel, I always tell the truth.’

‘Mum.’

‘Oh, all right then, I hate it inland. I can’t bear the towns and cities. Of course I want to be here. I’m close to everything in Longboat Bay. All our memories. Your father. This is my place.’

Abel poured the tea. ‘Are you lonely here on your own?’

‘I miss you,’ she murmured. ‘I miss you terribly. But no, I’m not lonely. Sometimes I feel I should be. But this place is a kind of friend to me. Maybe I’m a bit odd.’

Abel thought about that. It was true, she wasn’t like other people. She certainly wasn’t like his schoolmates’ mothers. Other mothers bought fashionable clothes and drove flash cars and chirped like birds. Abel’s mother was quiet and tough and sun-streaked. She did things differently. Her hands were lined and calloused. She looked like the land and sea had made her.

‘I want to stay here, Abel. I want to die here.’

‘Mum, you’re not that old. Don’t talk like that.’

‘Like what? I don’t intend to die tomorrow. I plan to kick the bucket as a very old lady. But I want to do it here, not in some awful town away from the sea.’

Abel laughed. ‘Well, that’s okay then.’

He got up and went to the window. The jet boat had worked along the bay a few hundred metres. Abel picked up the binoculars and saw a diver hoisting up a huge bag of abalone. Another bag came up. Then a string of bleeding fish wired to a red buoy. Abel began to sweat.