Tide (4 page)

So, I said, to break the ice, it's a gift …? Like some people can read minds, or bend spoons?

No, he said.

He was sitting in front of me, and the sun was low in the sky behind him. He was burnt into the sea, like a shadow puppet. I have to admit, it really looked like he had a halo. But he still stank. And I mean
stank.
I was pretty sure he'd shat himself, and the other guys thought the same, I could tell.

One of the mothers walked past to pick up her towel and gear from nearby. She'd been keeping an eye on it and the kids, and on our friend. I hadn't noticed till then but she was almost hot-looking – for a mum. She bent over, her arse towards us, shook her towel more than it needed shaking, folded and packed it into her bag, stretched, then walked really close to whisper something in our friend's ear.

He didn't move. Then she added, And you really do stink. She flicked us a look, and went off with her kids.

What did she say? What did she say? Come on, tell us!

Nothing, really. It's not important, he said.

We're all mates here. Come on, we'd tell you!

He rocked in and out of the sea, the sun. Gulls arced over his head and called violently into the sea breeze, which was picking up.

She said,
I know, I've seen you.

What does that mean? Come on!

It means she has seen me fly somewhere. Maybe another town. Maybe she was one of a crowd who made me leave, move on to the next town. Maybe she's the vanguard. Maybe she's an avenging …

… angel?! we said stupidly. We were really pissed.

No, no angels. It's nothing to do with angels. They're mythic, and such an idea would be delusional, he said.

I was a very practical youth. I only ever flew when necessary. I got out of practice quickly. I had other things to do. Landings are difficult at the best of times, but when your hormones are, as they say, raging, a landing is just dangerous. What's more, my mother went through a religious crisis, and bundled us off to Sunday school and church services every weekend, and even after school some days. That short-circuited my flying urge, as well as my flying abilities. Scripture convinced me there was no point in flying, and almost convinced me that I couldn't fly – even that I had never flown at all. Deep down, I knew this was rubbish, but the mind will believe what it wants, and, sadly, what is drummed into it.

Then my mum lost God as fast as she'd found Him, and I had total recall. But I still remained hesitant. The first flight after such a long break was actually painful. I ached for a week and could barely eat. I developed a fever of 108 and almost died, cooked from the soul out. When I was well again, my mother decided we'd move to a different state, and we packed up and I flew in a plane for the first time. It was like being on the ground. Looking out the window was like watching television. It's a fraud, a hoax.

He was either going to fly or he wasn't. There was nothing more we could do or say to make it happen. We just waited.

Then he said, or intoned, Launching from low places, and sea level is the epitome, it is as interesting as from high places. Though falling is not part of the take-off, of course, and that's a negative. But the kindling of will-power, the sheer energy to launch, is more than compensation.

My mates were silent – which is a rare thing. Transfixed on this filthy vagrant who'd found us under the wharf and made the afternoon pass faster than any afternoon of our lives. Even the grog had worn off, and we were much higher than it could ever have made us. Then I realised I'd not even asked him a thing about his life. How did he survive? Had he worked? He was what my mother called ‘well-spoken', if a bit ragged around the verbal edges. And he had a way of being in your head without being invasive, of hanging around without being intrusive. I could learn from this guy, and so could my mates.

I could see they were thinking the same thing. After all, we'd stayed in town, but the action was four hundred k's down the coast, and maybe much further away than that. What kept me in town, really, what kept me – us – from flying? My mind was racing as I fixed on his silhouette, the sun now setting.

And then he was gone. He'd flown. I can't tell you how it happened, or what happened. I barely remember, or don't remember at all. I was lost in my thoughts, gazing, gazing, gazing, and then when I snapped to, he was gone.

Did he walk off? I asked my mates. I was annoyed.

What? Uh? Na … nup. No. They were as bemused as I was.

He was there. I was watching him. He didn't walk anywhere. He just wasn't there. Did he fly?

Flight is elevation. That's a truism. Mostly, rather than soaring through the firmament, ranging the globe, I hover – I tread water in the sky, hang in the air. Strangely, I've never been much of a swimmer and am not fond of the water. Some of you might blame the shark and my sisters, but I don't. I just don't like the sensation of liquid on my skin. I like air. I try to avoid flying in rain, though I will if needs be. But then, clouds are a different thing. The water vapour clings rather than washes. And I want all my sins, all my positives, to stick to my skin. I carry them with me and would not like to think they'd spill down over those I fly above. It's a gross thought. Each flight is a tattoo, speech written into my skin. The silence is a book of flesh. Sun, ‘look not so fierce on me'! It burns to fly. Though I cannot help myself.

She's only eight years older than me. Her kid is five. We're driving all the way to Sydney, the other side of the country. Four thousand kilometres from here. My mates have already left. One is in London working in a pub – his dream, he tells me – and the other is at TAFE in Perth. I'd like to tell you I am training to be a pilot, but I am not remotely interested. Flying in a plane is not flying at all.

When I saw her downtown one day, I had to ask. I said, You won't remember me …

I do, she said.

You whispered something in his ear, before you insulted him. What was it?

I said to him, ‘Faustus is gone. Regard his hellish fall …'

What on earth does that mean? I asked. And she said, Fuck me and you'll
fly.

Terminat hora diem; terminat auctor opus.

DUMPERS

On Long Beach, which ran down one side of the peninsula town, the waves were considered temperamental. Serious surfers rarely bothered, but beginners mingled with bodysurfers and boogie-boarders most days whether the surf was ‘pumping' or not. It was a wind-driven shore break, without a spot of reef around, so the direction of the wind made all the difference to the shape of the waves. And when it wasn't ‘working', Long Beach was a washing machine, a grind of foam and sand and crushing dumpers. It was also notorious for savage rips that would cart swimmers way out into the bay and then on to deep ocean. You would never call it a family beach, but nonetheless families wandered down over the dunes and spent whole days there on weekends. During the week, other than a few kids wagging school and the odd neophyte surfer willing to take on anything, it was pretty well deserted.

But during the warmest weeks of the school year, the senior sports master, Mr Rush, would walk his upper-school students across the dunes to Long Beach for ‘beach activities'. This would include swimming if the water was considered ‘safe' enough, as well as beach cricket and volleyball. For two hours on a Thursday afternoon, the Pacific gulls and seagulls would vie with Mr Rush's whistle for attention.

It was difficult to get inside Mr Rush's head. From outside, he seemed a brutal and brutalising man. A Korean War veteran who, though nearing retirement, was in perfect shape, with the body of a man twenty years younger, he unsurprisingly encouraged and protected his sports stars, and was harsh with the failures. He would turn a blind eye to hazing, and would laugh with his stars about the pathetic flailing of the ‘weaklings'. Yet there was more to him than this, and even the weaklings who suffered under his reign knew it, and feared him all the more for it.

Some of them suspected he despised the stars even more than he despised
them.
They couldn't say how or why. It was something to do with the way he stared at them, looked at them when the stars weren't around; the occasional impatient gesture of hand lifting from hip to indicate something was
almost
right.

Andy Bright was one of the ‘weaklings'. Because he was mediocre at his studies, but capable of being top of the class if motivated enough, he was nicknamed Brighty. Maybe they would have called him Brighty anyway. It seems the default setting. Though not a total failure at sports, he wasn't well built and was a late developer, that greatest sin among boys. But if he liked a sport he could do well enough to avoid a pummelling from the ‘stars', who might still grab his balls in the changing rooms where he tried to change under a towel close to the door (escape hatch) as quickly as possible.

On one occasion Dag and Mutt, the two star full-forwards of the school, had dragged him out of the change rooms semi-naked and dumped him in front of the girls' change rooms, watching as he writhed in humiliation. The girls didn't actually laugh much, though Mr Rush grabbed him by the ear and dragged him back. That was justice Mr Rush–style.