Eva was right about Sando and us. The box of magazines had surely been some sort of provocation, one of many things that were never really explained. Later I wondered if she'd done it to make him see what was developing between him and two boys less than half his age, to give him pause. I can't pretend to know what effect the gesture had on Sando, or how they settled it between them, if they ever did at all, but I know that those photos only served to increase our awe of him. Years on I had time enough and cause to wonder if she'd really had other, murkier motives, thoughts she didn't admit to or yet understand.
Sando pulled up at dawn with a dinghy hitched to the Volksie. It was the first Saturday of the new year. So began what he called our appointments with the undisclosed. We were, he said in a slightly thespian manner, gentlemen in search of a discreet location, and we understood, without his having to say a word, that we were also now a secret society of three.
He drove us west through miles and miles of forest. Morning light fell across the road in webs and in time we came to a small, unfamiliar bridge where Sando swung off onto a side track which led to the bank of a deep creek. Nonplussed as we were, Loonie and I did what we were told and helped guide the trailer and dinghy to the water's edge. The boat was loaded with fuel and three boards much longer and narrower than our own. When our eyes met across the gunwales Loonie broke into his split-lip grin.
We wound down the creek through a tunnel of overhanging trees until it met a broad estuary whose shores were densely timbered. There were no huts or jetties here, nothing to suggest that people came by at all, and it was obvious that none of this country had ever been logged. The landscape looked primeval.
Sando throttled up and sent us charging across the shallow inlet. When I glanced back at him in the stern, clinging to the tiller with the wind furrowing his hair and beard, his smile was cryptic, even sly.
At the plugged mouth of the river the estuary narrowed to a little cul-de-sac between high, marbled dunes and on the seaward side there was a high bar like the one at Sawyer Point. When Sando killed the motor we heard the rumble of surf but we couldn't yet see the ocean.
Where are we? asked Loonie.
This is Barney's, said Sando, already reaching for his wetsuit. This whole stretch of coast sticks out further south than anywhere, so it picks up every bit of swell.
How come the name? I asked.
Cause Barney lives here, he said with that fey grin.
Loonie and I both looked about. There was still no sign of habitation, no footprints in the sand, not even a vehicle track in the hills beyond.
Only fair to tell you, said Sando.
Lives where? said Loonie scornfully.
Sando cocked his head seaward and stood up in the boat to pull on his suit. He stepped out and we followed his lead. We helped pull the dinghy onto the sand then took up the boards he assigned us and followed him up onto the buttress of the bar where we finally saw the long sweep of the bay.
Oh, man, said Loonie. Far out.
I stared at the clean, blue walls of swell fanning down the empty beach. Each wave broke about two hundred yards out at an angle to the shore and peeled evenly east across the sandbanks into the tiny distance. I couldn't believe how long the wave was, and as if reading my thoughts, Sando explained that it was best to walk back up the beach after each ride. There was not a human mark on the beach, only wheeling birds, seaspray and the white noise of falling water.
And what about Barney? I asked with a misplaced grin, assuming that I was up with the joke.
He's not hungry all the time, said Sando. Which improves the odds.
Fuck, said Loonie. Tell me it's not a shark.
Okay. It's not a shark.
Loonie gave out a wheezy laugh of relief, and I laughed along with him.
Well, said Sando. Not your average shark, put it that way.
The laughter died in our throats.
It's not that big a deal. I've been comin here for years and look at me. Still got all me fingers and toes.
But you've seen it? I croaked.
Oh, yeah. Five, six times.
And what kind of bloody shark is this? said Loonie hotly.
Like I said. Not your average noah.
Stop pissin about and just say it, said Loonie.
He's a white pointer, mate. The great white hunter.
Fuck! Fuckin fuck!
Now you can shit yourself all you want. Pants down, son, knock yourself out.
Sando and Loonie stood there, staring each other down. You just didn't call Loonie out like that. I knew he wouldn't take a backward step now, not for man nor boy. I shrank back, feeling like the bird-chested kid that I was, and waited for something to blow.
How big is this thing? I asked, as if it made a ghost of a difference.
Aw, maybe fourteen foot, said Sando genially enough. He still had Loonie in a steely glare. Hard to tell, Pikelet. Got a big ole head, though, and a grin like Richard-fuckin-Nixon.
So — I was desperate for diversion now — why's he called Barney?
Sando laughed. I named him after Eva's old man; he thinks I'm a waste of skin. He won't eat me outright, the father-in-law, but he likes to show the ivories every now and then, just to remind me who's boss. So, Barney it is. Come on, let's hit it while the tide's in.
Loonie threw down his board. Why the fuck you bring us here for?
Make men of you, said Sando. Thought you had the nads for it. Coupla giant-killers like yourselves. Boys who say they surf Outside Point at eight feet.
We bloody did, said Loonie. And there's witnesses.
So you say. And maybe you did. But, gosh, Loon. Weren't you scared?
Piss off.
Hell, I was, I muttered.
Least you're honest, Pikelet. But scared of what? Water over sand? A bit of a sinus-flush? What's to be scared of out there at the Point?
It was bloody eight foot, said Loonie. Ten!
Sando just snorted. He turned and jogged down to the water's edge and launched himself into the deep, moiling gutter of the rip. We watched him pick his way to the deep channel that ran out to the break, paddling casually, duckdiving spills of whitewater and shaking spray from his hair.
It's all bullshit, said Loonie. He's shittin us.
I shrugged.
He's callin us fuckin sooks.
Maybe, I said.
Thinks we're just gunna sit here like a coupla girls.
Girls or no girls, I was quite prepared to do exactly that, to sit there safe and warm on the beach and watch Sando dice it out with Barney. I was already thinking about what to do if he was eaten, whether I could remember how to start the outboard. Driving the Kombi home presented a few problems, but I figured I'd tackle these lesser obstacles one at a time. But before I could get anything straight in my mind Loonie took up his board with a strangled, angry cry and ran down to the water. A few moments later, hapless and terrified, I followed him.