The distant mutterings of gums In the daylight, the clearing was another place. Last night it had been as big as a paddock, now there was just enough room to turn the VW. Poking the ground with their spears, they turned over the leafy crust, revealing a moisture which could survive the heat. The musty damp clung to the soles of their feet. ‘Fire’s nearly out,’ Jerra said, dropping the gear in the shade. Sean scuffed his feet into the leaves. Jerra went for some wood. The fire nipped at their knees, spitting. Jerra sat feeling the roughened edges of his hands. ‘Sore?’ ‘Just not used to it. Haven’t used ’em for ages. Never liked peelin’ leatheries, anyway. Dad always used to do it.’ ‘Yeah, your dad.’ ‘S’pose he did most things for me, eh?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘How’s your ol’ man?’ Jerra asked as if he was interested. Probing. ‘Into Westam at the moment.’ Catching red emperors, thought Jerra. From the boardroom table. ‘Westam?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Sean. Fat congealed, the fire subsided. The late breeze was in when they awoke, sprawling on the thick foam mattress, sucking teeth, farting, hearing the gums bend and unbend. ‘Slept in this ol’ bus a few times,’ said Sean, peering through the sparse hairs on his chest, letting out a long bark. Jerra gazed at the insect squash-marks on the ceiling, ran his finger through the patina of gravel dust. ‘Lots.’ ‘How many trips?’ ‘Lost count.’ ‘Wish you’d stop farting.’ Jerra grinned. It was like lying in the park after school. He could feel the flat leaves of clover under him, see the scabby trunk above bearing all the open-mouthed maggies that chased them to and from school, and he rubbed the little scar on his thumb. Shadows appeared on the granite spill. Black holes and shafts opened and wavered. Jerra and Sean hopped and stumbled out to the headland. Within an hour there would be no daylight. A breeze tumbled in cool ripples from the sea, and gulls bumped in the currents, up, around behind them as they stepped out to a smooth ledge and began at the tangles: loop, under, side, pull through, BUGGER! . . . bite it off halfway. ‘Should’ve put this bait in water,’ Sean said. ‘Ooh, ripe.’ Jerra flicked his baited hook out. ‘A cast at last.’ ‘Rhymes.’ ‘Eh?’ Squatting on the warm, grey rock, they felt the air cooling towards twilight. You could feel it, next to the water. A peculiar smell, wet granite. Dark as the distant mutterings of the gums. Against the small flanks of stone came the glugs and laps of the dark water. The nylon was light on their fingers, rising and falling in the drowsing swell. ‘Fish,’ murmured Jerra. ‘Hmm?’ ‘Catching an’ eating the buggers.’ ‘Why else would you sit on a rock getting a sore bum?’ Jerra looked into the greenish-black. ‘Dunno.’ ‘Only good when there’s something down there interested in getting hooked.’ ‘Arr.’ ‘Easier at a fish market.’ ‘Eating’s only half of it. Less.’ ‘It’s something.’ ‘The waiting. Like this.’ ‘Bloody frustrating.’ ‘Like when we were younger and Dad took us. His fault when I didn’t get anything.’ Jerra remembered the endless mornings anchored on a mirror-calm stretch of water, when Sean was like a real blood-brother to him, when there was nothing but herring on his mind. ‘He never missed a bite.’ ‘Hated him for it. Wish you could fix up the dumb things you do when you’re young.’ He was unsure what he was really saying. He wondered what Sean was thinking. ‘Getting dark.’ Sean had packed his gear. ‘Let’s go.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘What?’ said Jerra. ‘On the beach.’ Jerra stopped walking and peered in the bad light. ‘Looks like a dog or something with four legs.’ ‘Probably a wild one from up the bush.’ It was gone and so was the light. Dark. They lit the fire. Something mushy was fired in a can, and they sucked tea from tin mugs, spitting tea-leaves into the fire. Bloody tea bags; Jerra knew they were around somewhere, but he gave up and they brewed it in the billy. They went to bed as the dew came settling on their backs. In the night, Jerra woke to the sounds of movement outside. The food was safe. It was probably the dog they had seen. He slept. Before dawn, Jerra climbed over Sean and went stiffly out into the half-light and the long crackling wild oats. Dew was ice between his toes, the breeze roughened the skin of his shoulders. He tossed a few sticks on the warm ash, pulled on a shirt, and went down to the beach. He scuffed along the sheltered meniscus of the shore. In the middle of the bay, waves peeled off in long, smooth folds, crumpling on to the banks, spray wafting from the crests as the swells flexed and collapsed on themselves, rumbling. There were footprints and scuff-marks in the sand, he noticed. Handprints not footprints. Something had been carved into the sand, but the tide had softened it to a few grooves and channels in the mushy shore. After breakfast they argued over the swell, avoiding each other’s face. ‘Come on! This is the first surf we’ve had for ages.’ ‘Thought you wanted some fish,’ said Jerra, dropping the hessian bag. ‘Fish are always there,’ said Sean. ‘The swell might be gone tomorrow.’ They stood kicking the dirt with the balls of their feet until Jerra shoved the diving bag under the car in surrender. ‘You can go diving if you like.’ ‘Better stay together.’ Brilliance held the lids against their eyes. Sun beat them into the sand. Gulls slid about as they paddled out and sat in the rolling shimmer, straining their necks, watching for the sets that bumped up on the horizon, the biggest feathering early and a long way outside. That sink and pull in the guts. They fidgeted in that time between seeing the horrie begin to break and deciding where to wait. In the midst of the set, swells back and ahead, there was no horizon, no beach, only the shush of water falling from the crests and the aqua fluting on the hollow troughs. They felt the breeze and the bite of spray. It seemed a long way to walk back when they could paddle and take off no more. Halfway back along the beach, a beam protruded from amongst the crackling weed and sand. ‘This’d be good on the fire,’ said Sean. ‘Jarrah, too. Burn like hell.’ ‘Here,’ said Sean, kneeling on the hot sand. They pulled at the exposed end. Nothing would move it. ‘A hell of a long way up the beach to be buried that deep.’ ‘You know the weather in July this far south.’ ‘Plenty of wood near camp.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Jerra. ‘Not as if we have to excavate fossil fuel.’ Flinging their boards to the ground in the shade of the Veedub, they might never have been wet. For tea that night, they ate long slabs of sweep and thick abalone steaks prised from the reef, the fire throwing a pale, flesh-coloured circle, a wavering ripple in the black bush. ‘Thought what you’re going to do?’ Sean blinked, his eyes lit red. To Jerra, sometimes, they were like the eyes of a fox drilled in a spotlight. ‘Ah, who knows?’ ‘Have to decide, eventually.’ ‘How does a bloke decide, these days?’ ‘I never had much trouble.’ ‘You were set. All you had to do was get old enough. Yer biggest hassle was buying the blue tie.’ ‘Hardly.’ Jerra smelt the singed hairs on the back of his hand. He felt that deadness in him when he felt like picking up something heavy, an axe or something, and heaving it into the ocean, just to hear the splash. ‘That job with your old man was waiting for you.’ ‘So is yours.’ ‘Ah, bullshit.’ It really was, he thought. They all feed you bullshit. ‘Just a matter of growing up. They were all expecting you to finish at Uni.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Your oldies and your grandfather. He put a lot of time into you, you know.’ ‘Hey, how come you’re so respectable all of a sudden?’ ‘You grow up.’ ‘When you get a job.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Yes.’ When you get a job. Jerra remembered the first day Sean went to work, crisp and aloof. It wasn’t long afterwards that he left to live in a townhouse in South Perth subsidized by the corporation. Jerra let the feeling of it pass over him as all those things did now. ‘Ah, come on.’ ‘You’ll see.’ ‘I do now.’ ‘Everyone goes through it.’ ‘Through what?’ ‘You know what I mean.’ ‘Like getting pubes on yer dick.’ Sean smiled, shaking his head. ‘Mine are still there,’ said Jerra. ‘How’s yours?’ ‘That’s piss-weak.’ ‘Talk about something else, then.’ ‘Given in to corruption, have I?’ ‘Ah, I dunno, Sean.’ ‘You gotta live,’ said Sean, tossing a sappy log into the flames. Jerra turned from the smoke. Sean slung the tepid tea into the bush. The moon was a pale splash on the bay. He lay still. Sean breathed steadily. Outside, sap hissed in the veins of the green log. Bitter smoke seeped into the van, clouding the windows. The breeze strengthened. Only vaguely could he see the shadows of the bitching trees, contorted in the moonlight. Just as Jerra was about to sleep, Sean rolled on to his side and said, ‘Mum.’ He would never have said it, awake. Jerra could have hit him. He was awake for quite a while after that. It scared the hell out of him, and he couldn’t help but wonder how much Sean knew. An animal coughed in the night, hacking indifferently.