Tide (8 page)

They are reported missing at around the same time as the car is towed into town. The engine has been cooked. There is no trace of the Boys. Their passports can't be found but there is no record of them having left the country. The travel agent hasn't seen them. No, not at all. Their mothers insist they were going to see the travel agent, to book their trip.

The fish flew out of the sea and landed on the steel decking of the ferry. What do you reckon they look like inside, girls? he asks as he picks it up, wriggling, placing his fingers under the gills and bending the head back until the neck snaps. Must be a complex organism. Don't be an arse, Perry, can't you see it's upsetting the girls? Upsetting them? Doesn't bother them much to bump off a few
capitalist pigs
in Italy, does it? You're losing it, mate. Come on, girls, leave him. He gets like this. Don't worry, we'll go through with it. You can count on us. We're convinced.

It is the strangeness of it all. That's why they're missed. It doesn't make sense. Everyone knows they were in the car. The car broke down. Then they vanished. No-one saw anything, no-one knows anything. It was the end of the harvest and people were thinking about Christmas and New Year's and spending their wheat cheques. The next working year, the next school year. The dams drying up, winter creeks dried to their bones. Town swimming pools overstocked with slippery children, frazzled adults. Waiting for the heat to subside, the first rains to come, seeding … making hay while the sun shone. Old accents grow a little fainter, the dirt and dust work on the sound of voices. There's no reward out for information. Why would there be? There'll be an explanation. Something will turn up, or they'll be forgotten and it won't matter, not really.

ARGONAUT

Not a beachcomber. No. Never. Not really. The collection and collation of flotsam and jetsam, the pocketing of shells, the skimming of pebbles, polished by the earth-roll, into the waves. No. Incidental.

Also the torn shirt flapping in the breeze. The gnarled, salt-and-pepper hair on head and chest. The frayed denim shorts.

His shack not far over the dunes, with their drift bringing them closer. Casual work, few hours here and there. Not much required for upkeep. Why bother? No need for electricity. Sun-up sundown. Night day. Diurnal nocturnal.

A young woman had been there. In the shack. On the beach. Surfing, smoking his dope, moving on. That's okay. Come and go, come and go. When she'd been right around the coast, the whole trek, the entire country, she'd drop back in. Older. Maybe she'd stay and inherit. Who else would he leave to? How long ago was that? Two, three months? Years?

You sound like a teacher, she'd said. I was. A teacher. Can you guess what I taught?

Nah, you just sound like a teacher. Teacher of anything. Like you know something that others don't, that you want to tell them but hold back. Until it's time. Until it's due to be taught.

Curriculum?

Yes, that's it.

There's a sea eagle, nests on that old lookout. People don't swim here now. Sharks. Surfers. Rips. But once they tried. Surfers leave it alone for the eagle. You leave it alone.

Yes, Teacher.

Right time, right place. Or wrong.

On the raft of pickets, fencing wire, and forty-four gallon drums, a sheep. A golden merino sheep in its prime. A ram. A mighty beast with curling horns and a bleat that was a bark. Catching the smallest of the set of waves, until until until. The raft crashed into shallower waters and the ram managed to remain on board and upright, the raft holding together in the surf. It didn't cling but stood firm, hooves braced.

The sea ram was close enough to the shore to leap down, though its hooves sank and it struggled in the soft sand. Assist? Watch from a distance? Marvel?

Venture closer. No recoil. Steam out of the nostrils. Snorting, stomping in the froth, fighting hard to keep upright. Horns down, to butt, to ram?

Run back and get an old leg-rope to use as a lead? Lead it up from the ocean's edge, up through the hills, to the dry land. The paddocks. Sheep lands? Sheep were a fair way inland. Mainly cows in the district, and vast distances between them. Not sheep country. Not the land of the Golden Ram. But out there, goats, and camels, even. And the shooters who hunt them as monsters. Who'd hunt the Golden Ram. What to do?

Ram treads steadily up the shore, arresting its slide, imbalance. It glances back at the raft, struggling in the foam. In and out, back and forth. Secure. Grip, pull, drag, up the beach, hunched back ache. Up up so it doesn't slip back with the tide's searching sweep. Ram seems happy with that. Making oneself useful. The gulls approve and settle on its gunwales. Cuttlefish navigation markers in the sand, glinting with sun setting orange to say weather of a different sort is on the way, and the rest of the world held to account.

She could be anywhere now, surfing big waves or complex waves. Shacked up. But then again, she could be close by, almost back. Done the circuit. The big loop.

You should see the stars out here. More than anywhere else.

Out at sea there are more: in the sky and on the water. And you can find your way if even one shows its eye through clouds.

Old salt. In every port. Won't hang around long, I guess?

I'm older than I look. I have fathered many offspring, but none recently. It wouldn't be right, this kind of life. I've done my time roaming, now it's time to stay put. Is this settling down? Settled. Settlement. The kernel of belonging. Flag up. Claim?

Never alone, really. A special place, a ripping left-hander when it fires. And the beach curves like an altar. I sacrifice myself to its new moon. Its old moon. At night the crabs scuttle out of their burrows in the deeper wet sand. Like burrs in wool, they are part of the sand. Part of the world's covering.

Accepting that it's not satisfactory, no way of life for a proud and mighty golden ram. Why hang around? In the struggle to get home to loved ones, distractions are just ageing. And who is to write it up, record? How much research would be required to chronicle? How to find witnesses, collect their stories? Trapped under the spell. Wolf in sheep's clothing. Welcome to the table. Lambs to the slaughter.

Any idea of what the information, the code of my body, is worth? So much wool. So many folds to carry the extra. Caulk the planks, secure the wiring. A week's fodder and fresh water and the gods will reward. If they no longer tell stories, they still dish out favours. Just no song and dance about it. It all having been killed off. I have learnt that the world is an abattoir. The ocean a cauldron of blood. Our blood. Our shared sacrifice. After rest I will set off. A pleasant if insignificant port of call. No rocks hurled at me, no storms whipped up in anger or frustration. I have left no-one short.

Except for the shooters. They drop by to harass every now and again. Look for surf chicks. But not many come this far out. Mainly young men in vans whom I wave to in passing. It's a secret place. Some have given it a name but I have forgotten. I was a teacher once.

Help me with this. Down to the sea, a foot up (or two), all secure. A push out past the breakers, which are gentle now. Not surf season. Remember me. No return. No looking back. I am not an explorer.

The smell of wet wool. A second sun rising and setting. The sea eagle due back any day. Its partner. To nest. Mating for life. Waiting it out. Fish in talons.

Not a beachcomber. No. Never. Not really. The collection and collation of flotsam and jetsam, the pocketing of shells, the skimming of pebbles, polished by the earth-roll, into the waves. No. Incidental.

BAY

He'd lost his car key in the sand between the car and the great granite boulder that jutted into the sea at low tide; surrounded at high tide. He cursed himself for removing it from the key ring so his new girlfriend could use the house keys. He was going to get another set cut the next morning; his son had the others. It wasn't a big expanse of beach, and he could probably focus the key's ‘drop zone' to a straight, thick line, zeroing in on the place he'd been sitting near a rocky ledge, but there was still enough sand to mirror the infinitude of the cosmos. He was in no mood for appreciating the irony of this place being called Little Bay.

Yet it was an exquisite place. It was where he most enjoyed being. If it were possible, he'd live on the beach. It was isolated, and there were rarely more than a handful of people on its brilliant white crescent at any given time. But this was a warm day, and school holidays, and everyone who knew about it, plus tourists who'd found it online, seemed to have turned up. In the time he'd been down there – what, an hour? – how many people could have trampled the key, the solitary key, deeper into the vacuum?

He thought about the rest of his keys as he began slowly and methodically to retrace his steps, from the car back down to the beach. He thought about them being in Ania's oversized handbag, sloshing around in the bottom with other keys, lipsticks, a compact, used cotton-buds, stale cough lollies. He shuddered under the warm sun as sunblock melted on his nose. He could taste the chemicals in his mouth. Ania wasn't much tidier than his seventeen-year-old son, who'd be waiting for the car, looking out of the window for the car, playing the stereo louder and louder as he got more frustrated. Pissing the neighbours off, for sure. He was a kid with no respect.

Either side of the sandy track sloping down to the beach, a thick screen of vegetation threw shadows across the path. A southerly breeze was picking up, producing a strobe effect of shadow and light on the sand as melaleuca and wattle worked against each other. A red-eared firetail made itself known; his senses were overloading almost to the point of shutdown. He kicked at the sand, which was an annoying greyish colour at this point on the climb. Why am I trying to start over again now? A ‘new life' – what a joke! he said out aloud, scaring a couple of young girls traipsing up to the car park, with their parents hand-in-hand a few metres behind. The kids were still wearing ski-diving masks with snorkels dangling at the sides of their heads. Their parents looked painfully happy, leaning against each other, walking a three-legged race with poise and equanimity.

She really
is
too young for me, he suddenly thought. I mean, she's over twenty-five, but I've still got fifteen years on her. Fifteen long bloody years.

And then he thought he saw a silver glimmer. The key catching the sunlight. He fell to his knees and sifted the almost dirty sand. Shit, only a bottle top. Makes you sick, people rubbishing such a beautiful place. Should be some serious punishment for littering a national park. Not just the pat on the wrist they give out, when they even bother at all. He was feeling vindictive. He wasn't usually that way; it wasn't how he saw himself. He continued to crawl on his hands and knees, wanting to bite the ankles of curious passers-by who had been churning up the sand ahead of him.

Pulling himself to his feet, he scanned the bay, as much out of habit as anything else. He was at the point where the beach joined the track, his favourite spot. He loved coming here in the early mornings and looking out at the sun sparking the ocean. In all weathers – even winter, when great breakers lifted from the deep and sucked the sand away, replacing it with another cycle of sand laundered on the most heavy-duty wash. It would be good to have someone sharing the running of the house. She wasn't doing much yet, but she was still settling in, making friends with the boy as he lazed around, slouching. He said, Dad, she's too hot for you!

Where the greyish sand of the track mingled and blurred with the pristine white of the beach. A nexus. A decision had to be made. He needed to be systematic. He'd always been that. Meticulous in his habits.

He shaded his eyes with one hand and surveyed the sand. I've never noticed how
messy
people make the sand. He thought of the long jump back in his school days, his delight in raking the pit flat, ironing out the impressions of the previous jumper. The satisfaction. How indecisive people are on beaches. Back and forth, wandering around, pushing it one way, then the next.

The sand scratched his toes as he slowly moved forward. He would never delight in bare feet on a sandy beach again. The great granite boulder beckoned. Already, small waves frothed around its sea edge. The light blue shallows with their moody patches of weed were changing. The tide was ever so slowly returning. The dark blue of what quickly became very deep sea was lapping and gurgling forward. The southerly would bring the chop and waves that would help propel conical shells up with the swell, surging onto the beach to glint pointedly in the sun. Sometimes it brought weed, but mostly that was sucked back as it left the clear shallows where King George whiting darted around, camouflaged by light and rippled sand.

He gently parted the sand with his feet, half forming letters and numbers, then rubbing them out. He yelled at a teenage boy, who ran past laughing, to have some respect and stop churning the beach up like a trail-bike. The kid ignored him or said something like Fuck off … but he couldn't discern, because it merged with the sibilance of the breeze.

As for his ex-wife, she would have been chewing his ear off. Wouldn't she
love
to see him now, desperate for the key. That's why I left you, loser, she'd say … it's why I married a better man, one with the foresight to own a metal detector! Yes, he thought, but what good would that be, locked in the boot with no key to get it out. He laughed, pulling up short with another thought: his supervisor at work … No point keeping your desk so orderly if your work is never done on time. We have deadlines, deadlines, deadlines to meet! It's got to add up, it's got to balance out. The supervisor was full of platitudes like that.

A plastic blow-up beach ball bounced its harlequin course in front of him, and he gave it a hard kick. It bounced down to the beach and into the water, tapping at the shore cocooned in a bed of froth. Hey, mate! someone yelled. That was a prick of a thing to do.