Floundering (7 page)

Get off me, he says.

I spit the sand out of my mouth. I try disentangling myself from him but he kicks my legs until we are both sitting in the sand across from each other, finally out of reach and sore. I rub sand in my eye, out of my eye.

You are so annoying, he says from across the sand.

Loretta’s not back still, I say. I see him take a big breath. I think we need to go and get her, I say.

How?

We can ask the old man to drive us?

Nah.

But there’s no one else. I’ve already asked him.

What did he say?

No.

He rolls his eyes at me and pulls his long limbs together to stand up. He shakes sand all over me. You shouldn’t do stuff without asking me first.

You’re not the boss.

I’m older.

Not by enough.

There’s no enough. I’m still older.

I sit there in the sand as he walks away. I watch the sun and it burns my eyeballs, but I look at it just to see if I can see it falling.

At the caravan Jordy’s having a drink of water. The bottle is nearly empty.

Can I’ve a sip? I say. He pegs the bottle at me and I drop it. The water pools in the sand, not soaking in. I stoop down to rescue the bottle and save the last mouthfuls. I try to get the sand out of my mouth, swirl the water around, but sand still crunches in between my teeth.

Be careful, he says like it was me who chucked the water in the sand.

It’s going to be dark soon, I say. We stand across from each other under the awning.

Fine. Wait here, he says.

He walks across the road and knocks on the old man’s door. The old man doesn’t answer the door, though, he looms around the side of the caravan. I try to yell to Jordy to warn him, but it comes out of my mouth a whisper. I see Jordy jump when he notices him there in the shadows but then they’re talking. The old man disappears again and when he returns he’s swinging his keys in his hands, he grabs them, swings them, grabs them, swings them. The sound of the jingling carries over to me. I think of Santa’s sleigh bells.

Jordy motions for me to come over and we go and stand near the ute.

Get in, Jordy says quietly, like if he said it loudly the old man would change his mind.

Jordy climbs in after me. The old man stuffs around with the radio. Can only get one station all the way out here, he says. Scraps of voices come clear, then it’s fuzz. What’s ya names then, eh? I look over at him and there’s a drip of sweat running from his temple down the side of his face. He clicks the radio off. Damn it.

Tom, I say, and that’s Jordy. Jordy’s hanging his arm out the window ignoring us.

I’m Nev, he says.

I’m squashed in the middle. I try not to touch him. The ute kicks into life after a couple of rattles. I scratch gently around my sandfly bites, bite by bite. I’m careful not to break the skin again. We drive slowly on the road between the caravans. A cloud of dust hangs behind us. Nev drives out of the camp. Driving away from the falling sun, into the electric
blue of the late afternoon. The corrugations rattle my teeth ‘til they ache.

Did you get anything for Christmas? I say.

No. Santa stopped coming my way a long time ago.

Were you naughty?

He laughs.

I didn’t get anything either.

He laughs again, but it’s a different kind of laugh to the first one.

How many k’s to the highway? says Jordy.

Forty.

Jordy sighs.

Nev puts the radio back on and a country song warbles out at us. Some guy with gravel in his mouth. I put my fingers in my ears.

Take them fingers out of your ears, he goes.

What? I say.

Take them fingers out of your ears. I pull them out and look up at him.

In my car you listen to this, and you app-re-ci-ate it. Alright?

I stare up at him, not knowing what to say.

Alright?

Okay, I say and he looks away first. I pick at my sandfly bites and creep up against Jordy.

Piss off, Jordy hisses and tries to push me back. You’re making me hot, he says.

Nev starts tapping his hand in time. He opens his mouth and it’s the smell of old man.

As we drive into the roadhouse I can see Loretta standing,
leaning against Bert. In the carpark there are bugs swarming around her, like she’s the light. She’s smoking a cigarette and the ground around her is covered in butts. She’s staring at barrels full of water next to the tap. There’s a road train parked opposite. Nev drives up to her and stops the ute. She looks at us like she’s looking at strangers.

Hey, says Jordy.

Hey, she says. She grinds her half-smoked cigarette out.

Nev sighs and turns the engine off, pulls the handbrake on. Are you kidding me? What are you doing out here? he says.

Nothing.

How long have you been standing here?

I don’t know, a while.

Her face looks like she’s just woken up from a dream. She jiggles her leg, winds her hair around her finger how little girls do.

She says, He asked me if I wanted a hand, and I was like, nah, mate, I can lift them myself, but then I tried to lift them, and they were too heavy and then I’ve been waiting for him to leave so I can drag them to the car without him watching, but he’s still in there, he won’t leave me alone, she says all in one long breath. All around her the bugs are going crazy. It’s like it’s got properly dark since she started talking and now the bugs are all around the truck too. They smack into the windscreen and fly off.

Who? he says.

The guy in the truck, she says.

Are you serious?

Yeah.

From the ute I can see a dent in Bert’s door in the exact
shape of Loretta’s hip. I’ve never noticed it before.

Can I get out? I say. Jordy opens his door and jumps. I tumble out after him. The ground is further away than I remember and I fall. Jordy stands there. I go lean near Loretta and touch my hand to the back of her leg. She ruffles my hair and puts her hand under my chin to have a good look at me.

You’re burnt to a crisp, she says.

Her saying that makes my face feel tight as drum skin.

I hear the ute door slam. Nev is standing there. I shrink up against Loretta’s legs. He looks too tall and I get a weird vision of him in the light, what he would have looked like young, and strong, and mean. Before the wind and the sun got to him. I turn my face away.

I drove all the fucking way out here, he says. And the
guy in the truck
is probably asleep in the fucking cab.

I feel Loretta shrug. It’s like he’s the crazy one. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or why he’s angry. She laughs. Whatever. She says it just like Jordy would.

Jesus, he says and walks off towards the roadhouse. Walking, he’s old again. His wrinkly arms hang out of his blue singlet.

Loretta shrugs again and we all follow Nev. Loretta doesn’t even look at the road train again. She lets the heavy roadhouse door swing shut. A man with tatts poured over his arms stares at her. She tugs her short skirt down.

Nev’s at the red plastic counter waiting. A girl with long golden hair wound up in buns over her ears asks him, Can I take your order? She has an accent that makes her words round and honey but at the same time she sounds a bit retarded. She’s wearing a Santa hat and flashing earrings.

Nev orders us all a meal without asking what we want.

The girl puts a number on the counter and turns away to plunge frozen chips into bubbling oil. I wonder what the girl thinks of us.

Sit down, boys, says Nev.

They’re my boys, says Loretta.

Hey lady, I don’t give a shit, okay.

My name’s Loretta.

Through the window I can see the water barrels still out there next to the tap. There is a cow standing out by the highway. Just one lonely cow. We all sit down at a plastic tabletop shiny with grease.

Loretta pours salt onto the table and makes patterns in it with her long fingernails.

I knew a truckie, says Nev, he had his kids for the weekend, took ‘em with him, and they were asleep in the cab while he was driving. He fell asleep at the wheel. When he woke up there was nothing behind him, just air. The rest of the semi and his kids were spread out across the road, but he was just sitting there perfect in the front seat like nothing had happened. Course he didn’t sleep very well after that.

What’s that supposed to mean? says Loretta.

I’m just sayin, he’s asleep in the cab.

Loretta sweeps her salt patterns to the floor. Whatever, she says again.

It’s like we’re all three his children. The girl with honey in her mouth comes over with our burgers and chips. Her pale skin is red and blotchy at her cheeks and she gives us a smile that looks like it hurts. Merry Christmas, she says. Walks away.

Loretta squirts tomato sauce all over her chips and puts them in her mouth one fat, soft chip at a time. She licks her
fingers and scrunches up a heap of napkins into balls. I take a bite out of my burger and burn my mouth. I spit it back out onto my plate – wait until it cools, then eat it.

So what’s your story? says Loretta.

He looks her over. I ain’t got a story, lady.

Oh yeah?

He leans over the table. What’s
your
story then?

We’re on holiday, says Loretta smiling.

He seems to lose interest, leans back in his chair and pushes his burger, half eaten, away. I eat everything on my plate, even the end bit of bread that’s soggy with beetroot juice and sauce.

This is a shitty place to come for a holiday, he says from way back in his chair.

You live here, Loretta goes.

I like the quiet life. It’s my sunset years. He wipes his mouth methodically with a napkin. Folds it, puts it under the edge of his plate.

I like the quiet too, she says.

Oh yeah, well, merry bloody Christmas, he says to us and gets up, goes outside to his ute.

Coming? asks Jordy. I shrug and get up. The waitress floats over. Loretta gives me a smile and scrapes her chair back and gets up too. Jordy pushes through the glass door but doesn’t hold it open for me. I look back at the waitress and she’s piling our plates one on top of another, but taking a long time, like she’s trying to figure out the best way to do it. I push on the door, leaving a greasy handprint on the glass.

Nev is already in his ute with the engine on. Loretta lights a cigarette and we all look at him as if waiting for instructions.

You gunna get them? says Nev.

I look at the water barrels and Loretta says, Give us a hand, Jordy.

They lug them to the car and put them in the back seat. There’s bags of shopping in there too. Nev revs his car.

Can you take one of the kids back? says Loretta.

No, says Nev, I’m not taking them.

I don’t want you to take them, I just want you to take one of them. There’s no room – can you see room? She points with a flourish to Bert stuffed with bags. You brought them all the way out here, you can take one of them back, she says.

I’m not taking them. Don’t tempt me, lady.

My name is Loretta. She stands with her hands on her hips.

I’ll go, says Jordy after taking a look at me. He gets up into Nev’s ute. Jordy sits there staring off into the distance, but sitting as far away as he can get from Nev. I see Nev swear under his breath. But he puts the car into gear and drives off, showering Loretta and me in gravel.

Thanks, she says and I can’t decide if she’s being sarcastic or not. She gets in the car. The road train is still there but Loretta seems to have forgotten about it. I look up at the service station lights. The bugs swarm them. They seem big and fat enough to be shot down. They come swarm around me. Loretta honks the horn.

You coming? I get into Bert too and Loretta accelerates out of there, fast.

I look at the dark road straight ahead. Jordy is gone. I’ve got shotgun. I pick at the stuffing of the seat. I don’t know what to say. I can’t remember ever really being alone with Loretta.

When we get back to the caravan the headlights show Jordy.
He’s sitting on the step alone with his arms wrapped around him. He stands up, shields his eyes against the light and walks out, blindly stepping towards us. When Loretta turns off the lights he says out of the dark, You’re home? Like he didn’t think we were going to be.

I wake up to the smell of burning. From my bed I can see Loretta at the stove. Her bony legs poking out of an enormous jumper, but it ain’t really cold, just dark. She turns off the flame and catches me watching.

You’re awake, she says.

I close my eyes.

I saw you, she says, I know you’re awake.

She scrapes the beans onto three plates.

Wake up, Jordy, she says. Tom, I know you’re awake, wake up, Jordy.

I hear him rustling, and I pretend to be asleep. Dead still. She nudges my feet and puts the plates on the table.

You hungry? she says. You hungry?

I sit up and she laughs at me. See, you are awake. She scrapes
the little stool up to the table and starts spooning baked beans into her mouth. Hot, she says, and blows on them. I wonder if I’m dreaming a boring dream.

I try to open my mouth to say something, but it’s stuck together. I try again. It’s the middle of the night, I say.

Dinner, she says.

I rub my face hard.

Jordy, she says, dinner.

I drag the plate towards me over the sandy tabletop. The sound gets inside me and makes me squirm. When I taste the beans they’re smoky with burnt.

Good, hey, says Loretta. Jordy, she says, it’ll get cold, eh.

I blow around the beans in my mouth, swallow and say, Hot.

Jordy pulls the sheet over his head and turns to the wall. Loretta holds his foot in her hand, but he pulls it away. She puts that hand palm up in her lap, spooning beans with the other.

Next, we’ll go north, she says. All we have to do up there is drink beer and watch out for crocs.

Seagulls scuttle on the caravan roof, fighting over something. I lick sauce from the corner of my mouth.

Are seagulls nocturnal? I ask.

Nocturnal’s a big word.

But are they?

Hell, sweetie, I don’t know.

I can hear them, I say.

Well, that’s your answer then.

I guess so.

I worry we woke them up. And I wonder what they’ve got to fight about up there. I spoon more beans into my mouth.
Drips fall from my spoon to the table.

I’m full, I say. My beans still half eaten.

Okay, she says.

Should I go back to sleep?

Yeah, why not?

I lie back down on my seat but I can’t sleep. After a while there’s pink light at the windows. And then the light goes white. I sit up. Loretta’s still at the table. She hasn’t eaten much, she’s mostly pushed the beans around on her plate. Jordy’s plate is cold and the sauce looks hard.

Morning, she says.

Morning, I say.

I push past her, put my dirty plate in the little sink. Through the salty glass I see the girl ride past with her new bike, but it looks old. It’s rusting already.

The morning’s hot enough for us to be sweating pools onto the tabletop. Jordy’s out front flicking flies away with his fringe, like a horse with its tail.

Loretta’s got an opened-out beer carton and a Texta. She writes ‘Haircuts $10’.

Here we go, she says.

The plastic of the bench farts as she gets up, and I laugh – she crinkles her nose at me and goes outside with her sign. She leans it against the side of the caravan, stands out on the gravel and admires it. Stoops back under the awning, touches Jordy’s hair.

Don’t, he says. Can you even cut hair?

Yeah, she puts her hands on her hips.

Your sign’s on a beer carton.

I used to work in a hairdresser’s.

Oh, yeah.

You don’t know everything about me.

She sits down in the wobbly canvas chair to wait. I stand at the screen door letting the flies into the caravan.

Put the kettle on would you, Tommo, she says.

I turn around and fill up the kettle from the water bottle. I light the gas carefully, but still I smell burnt hair. I wait for the whistle. Just that little flame makes the caravan hot as an oven and I get out of there.

Jordy stands and walks down the little path towards the toilet, Where are you going? I say.

Nowhere, he calls back to me without looking around.

Loretta goes to me, Well, you wanna be me first customer?

Alright, I say and let a smile break out on my face.

Okay, she says, getting up. Sit down, Mr Customer.

I sit in the chair, balancing on it so it doesn’t tumble.

She gets a towel from inside and tucks it around my neck.

Got to find my scissors, she says and goes and leans into Bert. She holds them up, triumphant, the silver glinting in white sunlight.

The towel is scratchy and stiff from salt. Loretta runs her fingers through my hair.

Don’t know where you inherited this from, she laughs.

Gran says her dad’s was like this.

Loretta scoffs, What would Gran know?

I look in my lap. My hair starts to fall around me. The snips of the scissors seem loud.

How short, Sir?

I dunno, I say.

Hmmm, well, we’ll just make you look like a movie star then, huh? I can smell her, standing so close. I must smell too, but she smells so strong I want to hold my breath. Loretta goes, Lucky you ain’t a girl. It’s much harder to cut a girl’s hair. With you, I can just measure off the horizon. She laughs. I listen to the snip, snip of the blunt scissors.

The kettle starts its whistling scream. She snips my ear and I jump out of the chair.

Ow, I say.

The chair collapses. I touch my ear and my fingers come back bloody.

Loretta, I scream at her.

Shit, she says, it’s bleeding like buggery. She has the scratchy towel in her hands. She clamps the towel to my head.

I hate you, I say and pull away from her. She drops the bloody towel. The kettle still screams. I run down the path to the beach. The ghost crabs scatter. I put my feet in the water. It foams up around my ankles. I feel my ear, the scabby blood. I try not to cry. Jordy’s there then, standing beside me.

What happened? he says.

Nothing, I say and hold my ear.

There’s blood.

Loretta cut my ear.

He raises his eyebrows at me, Really? Laughs and says, Jesus.

I can’t figure out what’s strange about him. I realise he’s not wearing his school shirt. He’s wearing a huge white singlet that falls off his shoulders. I can see the bones in his back. I’m not wearing my shirt, it’s scrunched up like a used tissue somewhere in the caravan.

Where’d ya get that? I say.

From Nev.

He let ya have a singlet?

Yep.

When?

He gave it to me.

That’s not fair.

Jordy shrugs.

I look down at my hollow chest and figure I’m burning. My shoulders already feel too hot. A breeze blows at me and flutters my uneven hair. It’s long all to one side. It settles back on my sweaty forehead.

We walk along the hard bit of wet sand. So many fishing lines stretch into the water. They’re streaming like a party. Lures and pilchards catch the sun. I wonder if I stand behind a fisherman when he’s flicking the line behind him, ready to swing it in a big curve into the sky and it makes that noise of the line unfurling from the reel, if the hook could catch right into my face, through my cheek. I’d be too heavy to be flung like the lure is, into the sea. I’d just be caught on the beach.

Pa used to drag an orange bag full of guts, bones and fish heads along the beach, looking for worms. They’re long and they stick their heads up from the sand. He’d pull them up, thread the hook through their mouth, then push it right the way along their whole body. See the black hook through the skin.

There he is, I say. Not Pa, Nev. Down here he don’t look so much like an old man. He leans his arms back and flings the line in a smooth arc out past the breakers, then starts winding it back in quick. Jordy touches my arm.

Let’s – he says, but stops because Nev turns to look at us
like he can feel us standing there. We keep walking towards him. He reels in the line. Then we’re close enough to smell his cigarette smell. He pulls a little puffer fish in on the end of his line. It flaps around on the wet sand.

He doesn’t say hello. He says, They ain’t good eating, but they ain’t good for nothing.

He puts his thong over the breathing body of the fish, pushing against the poisonous spines and removes the hook from the side of its fish mouth. It gasps.

Here, he says. He passes the hook and line to me. I step forward and hold it between my fingertips. He rolls a cigarette, lights it up and looks us each in the eye. I wrap the line around my finger too tight.

He takes his foot off the puffer. When I seen puffers slip through the shallows they were little, but it’s starting to puff right up on the beach. He kneels down in the sand. A wave threatens to foam over us, it wants the fish back. He sucks in deep on his ciggie, ashes it beside him then sticks the filter of the ciggie in the little fishy mouth of the puffer, between its barbed teeth. The fish puffs up with smoke. There is a spot of blood on the wet sand. It’s puffing smoke right into its belly. The ash on the end of the cigarette stays whole like it does when Gran’s friends forget to ash them. Little puffs of smoke escape but most of it goes inside. Its body gets huge and round, its fins sticking out like branches. I test the sharpness of the hook on my thumb and scrunch my feet into the sand.

The puffer fish loses its shape. Its beady eyes are pulling inside its skull. Nev steps back. We lean in. It bursts. It makes a popping sound. A little bit of gut gets on my knee. Shiny and slimy. There are flappy bits like burst balloon around the
fish. Smoke comes out of the holes. He laughs. The butt’s still gripped tight in the fish’s teeth. I lean down, pick the butt from its lips and put it in my pocket. I rub the guts off my knee.

See, he says. He pulls the line from my hand and the hook scrapes against my palm.

Ow, I say.

Come on, says Jordy. He pulls my arm. Nev is still laughing, shaking his head. A gull flies down to peck at the carcass and screeches at us to get away.

Come on. I’ll show you something, Jordy says. We walk away from Nev and when I look back he’s not following us, he’s just staring out to sea.

Further down the beach, there are tons more people. Jordy walks towards them and I follow him, stepping in his footprints in the sand. I have to jump between them because his legs are longer. When we get to the people I don’t look any of them in the eye. I look at their legs standing in the sand, their thongs and brown feet. Hear the sound of fishing rods coming away from the spool, then the clicking of them being wound back in. We walk under the lines stretching into the waves. They say G’day to us, and Jordy scowls. I pick at my ear scab and it starts to bleed again. I put spit on it to try make it stop and the blood on my fingers tastes like metal. In the wet sand I can see the patterns the little snails make. I follow Jordy up into the hot sand, the dunes shrugged up around us, then back onto the gravel road. There are tents everywhere. Kids screaming and running. The drone of cricket announcers from a radio somewhere. We walk past the tents. All their awnings opening towards the road. We walk until the tents get sparse. The road becomes skinnier and then Jordy walks into the scrub that the
tents turn their backs to. We walk until the point where the white sand around the camp turns to red and loop back around so we’re headed towards the back of the camp.

I’m hot, Jordy, I say.

Don’t be a pussy.

My shoulders are burning.

I see it. It’s just standing. Jordy’s magicked it there. A kangaroo as pale as white sand. Jordy whistles between his teeth and it cocks its head at us.

Is that what you wanted to show me? I whisper.

No.

We creep past it and it stares at us the whole way. When I look back, it’s gone and I can’t even picture where it was standing.

Do you reckon you could have a kangaroo as a pet?

No way.

Why not?

What do you reckon?

I don’t know.

They’d go bad. You couldn’t ever tame them properly.

Really?

Really.

You think you know everything.

Do not.

Do so. I hear him take a huge breath and sigh.

Remind me why I let you come? But I can tell it’s a joke.

You asked me to come.

Whatever.

From here we can see the backs of the tents. The bushes scratch at my bare legs. Jordy nudges me and we walk closer towards them.

Be quiet, he says.

I am quiet.

Shhh.

You’re the one talking.

He punches me hard in the shoulder. Corks me bad, and I have to gulp in breath to stop myself crying out.

He whispers, Look, but I’ve got no idea what he’s talking about. Go get us some beer.

What? I say. I see a huge esky now, beside the tent. No.

Don’t be a pussy, pussy.

I don’t want to, Jordy, I say. We’re so close I can smell him, different to Loretta, and coming from his singlet is the smell of laundry powder. It reminds me of at Gran’s how our clean clothes would always be in a neat pile at the end of our beds, warm from the iron and smelling of fresh.

Come on, don’t be a pussy.

I’m not being a pussy.

Yeah, you are.

Shut up.

Useless, he says and shuffles towards the tent. I shuffle backwards. It’s a huge triangle tent with crossbars at the back and front. I can hear people in it. I see Jordy at the esky and I hear the plastic creak of the lid opening as loud as if it was right beside me. He pulls out a bright six-pack of cans – held together with those plastic things that get around penguins’ necks and they starve to death ‘cos fish can’t fit down their throat.

He grins at me. He rests the beers in the dirt for a moment, pulls a shirt off the guy-rope – there’s washing pegged along it. Grabs the beers again and runs.

Here, he says and throws the shirt at me. It’s warm. Come
on, he hisses and runs back into the red sand. Beside me is a flower, bright as fresh-spilt blood. I run after him.

We sit on the sand so far along the beach the tourists are anty. Jordy cracks one of the beer cans and it foams over his hand. He gives it to me, and I’m so thirsty I skol it. It’s luke warm and horrible in my mouth. He cracks one for himself and leans back on his elbow as he gulps it down.