An Open Swimmer (12 page)

‘Reckon I shoulda gone on, you know.'

‘Yeah?' The pies were softening. He wondered if they really were roo meat. They stank like it.

‘So many oppertunities.'

He felt the pastry warming, the juice melting out of the meat. They probably picked them up off the side of the road, he thought, smiling.

‘No opportunities, really.'

‘Oh, carm on,' she said, scratching. ‘You don't appreciate what you could of had.'

‘Arr.' If the customers only knew why they tasted of duco.

‘No. You could of done somethink.'

‘What?'

‘I dunno. There must of been somethink. Yer mad if yer can't find somethink to do wuth yourself.'

‘I have. I work here.' He unbolted the door. The bell clunked.

‘Arr, yer mad. You must be stupid, or yer haven't looked.'

‘How the hell would you know?' He slammed the liquorice allsorts onto the Laminex. ‘Shit, Rosa, what would you know?'

Rosa fiddled pasties onto a tray, thick steam rising into her face. She lifted the damp hair out of her eyes. Her face was pink.

‘You're weak as piss, Jerra.'

The bell clonged, a turd hitting the water. He braced behind the counter.

The deli was on a street corner. There were houses neatly spaced along the street, and in the next street there was a school. A street or two down, there was a factory that made doors. As lunch time neared, the mountains of potato chips crumbled, the milkshaker screamed without stopping for a breath, and aniseed balls scattered and clattered as more black-toothed children, smiling through their gaps, came and went on the lino that gripped their thongs, tacky with Coke.

Al scowled at all the customers, young or old, slamming their pies down on the counter in their brown bags, rattling the lollies into little white bags with careful underestimation, baring his teeth to the children humming and hahing over two for one, three for five or how much can I get for two cents. Jerra knew it didn't matter a damn to Al, who gave them all the same and said he wished he was a dentist.

They worked under the tinny snaffle of the transistor that perched high on the back shelves. Jerra poured the thickshakes, watching the stuff unwind and settle like castor oil. He sorted ham and salad, sneezed wrapping curried egg, and slapped the beef and pickle together. He felt the coins, hot from the customers' hands, and cursed the twenty-dollar notes passed over, with Kingsford Smith smirking, for a Mars Bar or chips. All day. All day. All day. Then wiping the Coke from the floor, and scraping the coagulated sauce from the counter.

He gave the old Veedub a kick, feeling the notes in his pocket, and spun her out of the dirt patch, hopping it off the kerb with a chirp.

‘Why doesn't anyone tell him the truth?'

‘It's between Sean and his Dad,' said his mother, pegs between her teeth.

‘Someone's gotta tell him!'

‘He wouldn't listen, Jerra.'

‘No, he wouldn't,' he admitted.

‘He thinks his father's right. That's all he's got left.'

‘And it's worse than nothing.'

She bit on the pegs, shaking her head.

‘And he doesn't want to find out, Mum. Why doesn't anyone want to find anything?',

‘They get old,' she said spreading a heavy, gently steaming sheet on the line, holding it with an elbow and pegging one end. ‘And Sean's got old too soon.'

‘No. It's giving up. No one gets old too soon.'

‘I figured it out,' he said, putting two ciders on the table.

‘What?' She seemed distracted.

She was wearing jeans and a quilted coat; the same stuff they made the old sleeping bags out of, he noted. Her boots were freckled with mud. A singer was howling about a big brass bed and the smoke poured on itself, boiling to the low ceiling. A different singer, all beard and eyes.

‘Your theory.'

‘Oh, that.'

‘Yeah. I figured it was wrong because there was a . . . what do you call it? . . . a variable. The fish.'

‘Eh?' She glanced at him over her glass.

‘The fish. You said you had power over it; but it's not really true. Put him in the bag. Fine, he's dead; you scale him, gut him, eat him. But if you throw him back there's no guarantee he's going to live.'

She was still looking at him, an eyebrow up.

‘You have been a busy boy.'

‘The fish might survive the hook and the exposure and take off. Or he might be weakened and be easy prey for a bigger fish, or he might die in a couple of minutes, just from shock.'

‘So, the fish decides its own fate?'

‘Sort of. Maybe the fish's strength, or something else; but whether he lives or dies won't be decided by throwing him back.' There was nothing to him like that grunt of surrender, the gentle collapse from deep within, and the mate rolling off into the deep at the precise second. Nothing. Like knowing or believing in subtle defeat.

She smiled.

‘So, what does it all mean?'

‘Dunno.'

She was looking around, her lower lip uncurling, tongue pushing from behind.

‘Geez, this is a weird joint.'

‘Lost in the sixties.'

‘Yeah, the sixties.'

‘You'd hardly remember.'

‘An' you admit remembering?'

‘Oh, bits. And pieces.'

‘Maybe I don't remember. Bit young.' He drank his cider. It was rotten stuff, really, sweet enough to make you sneeze. They drank it at school parties, hidden in their greatcoats, cold and hard against their chests. A bottle left them flat – stung, on the back lawns of mates whose parents were away. Chundering in the long grass, against the rickety pickets.

‘Don't they sell beer?'

‘Awful stuff.'

‘This is worse.' Dugite phlegm.

They watched each other. She was making a lot of enjoying the cider. The bubbles in the glass were like raindrops falling up instead of down.

‘He's playing bloody Bob Dylan, again,' Jerra said.

‘Falling back on the party favourites.' She ran the edge of her hand along the grain of the pine. ‘So, by putting the fish back, feeling you've done a good thing, you could be killing it, anyway.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Gets a bit hard to tell right from wrong.'

‘I s'pose it hits you sooner or later.'

‘I don't know your name.'

‘What?'

‘I don't even know your name.'

‘Oh, Jerra. Jerra Nilsam.'

‘Jerra?'

‘Jerra.'

‘What sort of name is that?'

‘Dunno.'

‘Sounds like wood.'

‘Yeah, they reckon.'

‘I'm Judy Thyme.'

She got up and bought drinks, jeans tight against her calves.

The music lapped around them, smoke and noise producing a closeness that half-stifled, half-excited him. He studied her face, her tiny freckles, the crack in her thumbnail, the way she moved him through an endless series of conversations, breaking them down, word by word, tracing back tiny links that became new topics themselves. He loved being guided, and went whichever way she did.

At closing, they picked their way through the fallen bodies and tables, and onto the street, where the cold air fronted them, the gutters wet, and the take-away menus from next door plastered soggily to the footpath.

‘You got a car?' he asked as he rubbed his hands together. It was colder than it had been for a long time. Parking meters gleamed.

She shook her head.

‘Swanbourne. Too far?'

‘No worries.' His toes were numb; he had only worn thongs. The cold air was making his nose run, and he sniffed quietly.

In the alley between the wine bar and the opp. shop there was a figure up against the wall, someone wheezing as if having just run a long stretch. He looked again and it was two bodies, one rasping the other against the damp wall, feet shifting as the gutters trickled, seeping.

. . . my Jeramiah.

The VW stood alone in a parking lot by the railway line. A train passed, slow and brightly lit, with no one inside. A procession of lighted carriages rocking through the city. Jerra wrenched the door open.

‘How long have you had this?'

‘A few years.'

‘Given you trouble?'

‘First country trip I ever took it on. Got as far as Williams and it passed out.'

‘What was wrong?'

‘Country air, I s'pose. Hay fever or something. Funny ol' bus.'

The upholstery was cold and the beaded windscreen misty with breath. The roads in town were glistening, lit red and orange in neon flickers, and it was hard for him to keep his mind on the blinking reds of the road and talk as well. The river was black, awash with the lights of the freeway and the brewery. Passing the Uni with its stopped-clock tower lit against the black of night, he felt a hand on his leg. It could have been on his knee, but it was difficult to pinpoint. He didn't look, and it was harder to drive. She was closer and the cab had warmed. He didn't feel much like talking. He watched the slick, glistening road, listening to the muted roar of the engine.

He pulled into the driveway she pointed out, leaving the motor running.

‘Thanks for the lift,' she said without letting go his leg. ‘Coffee?' Her face was green in the light of the speedometer that never worked.

‘I'd better be off.'

‘I can make it with whisky.'

‘Some other time, eh?'

‘Yeah, fine.'

He leant over and kissed her clumsily on her mouth or ear, he couldn't tell, her hair in his face.

‘Ring you?' His lips were cold, and hard to get around his teeth.

‘No phone. I'll ring you.'

He mumbled the number and she climbed down. He shoved it into reverse and the van shook a little as the headlights lit her. She went up to the front door, lit sharp in the shadows. She waved.

The sheets took a while to warm, and the pillow stung his ear.

A lot further down this time. Deeper than he had anticipated. Strands of weed brushed his cheek in the dark, and as he felt his way down the rock bit cold on his hand. There was nothing. He went in darker and found something soft. It trembled, the skin almost tightening. He rolled it over, the legs fanning wide, and saw the open slit reflecting green on the backs of his hands. Scars of old slashes gathered, pale on the flaccid pulp. Navel a stab-hole. In a dowdy gown, she was arching pathetically, spreading her speckled hair, clutching, and he was saying Baaaaaaastaaaaarrrrrds! inside; and she wanted him to say something nice because nobody did any more. But she wasn't her. Just a bald slit and light showing through. They hadn't made her different, or even someone else; just nothing. And he was smiling, hand beneath the open neck that was once curved like a beach, kissing. It giggled, then groaned like dying, but she was dead already, before the butchery, and he wished he was now. He hated himself because she wasn't properly aware, because she couldn't tell half the time, and he was no different from the others taking advantage, helping to destroy, helping her in the delusion.

E
ACH MORNING,
Al's dunny was worse. Jerra could smell it easily from the dirt of the parking lot, as if each turd was calling out for a septic tank, dying from claustrophobia. He had never been in there. A whole day's wait was nothing to what must lie behind that fly-caked door.

‘There he is,' called Al, almost friendly. ‘The early boy. Ready to work hard, eh?'

‘Dying for it,' he replied, watching Rosa opening a new canister of ice-cream. The shop was warm from the ovens, but never warm enough to take the blue out of your hands.

Jerra stacked the fridge with Coke, and clacked together blocks of pies. His hands wouldn't warm, even when slushing hot water over the floors. Rosa was silent. You have to feel a bit sorry for her, hiding those chockie drops in her puffy palms like that, he thought to himself.

Having his lunch break once, Al sat next to him smoking a putrid Italian cigarette, leaving Rosa with the after-lunch mob.

‘Rosa tell me you been to the Uni.'

‘Couple of years.'

‘Why quit? Not smart enough, eh?'

It was on again.

‘Didn't seem worth sticking at.'

Al sucked on his cigarette. The smoke knotted around the room.

‘So you
were
smart enough. But not enough to stay. Leaving so smart?'

Jerra shifted on the boxes.
KIT KAT
stamped on the one under him.