I felt fabulous, completely charged. I was not a coward or a kook. I knew what I was doing and it wasn't within a bull's roar of being ordinary.
In retrospect I know I should have sat there glorying a bit longer, given myself a full soak of fuckoff vindication until I got over myself and had a laugh at my own expense. Then I could have gone about the business of putting the act back together, gathering my thoughts, returning to some method. But I was so amped and eager I just wheeled about, paddled back into the impact zone and picked off the first wave of the next set. Compounding the first mistake with a second, I rushed at the thing instead of letting it come to me, and so I never quite got into position and had to scramble to get momentum. As the wave peaked I dug hard and felt myself pitch forward, teetering at the crest, surging for a few yards only to feel the wave forge ahead without me.
I knew before I even sat up and looked back over my shoulder that I was in strife. I'd left myself bang in the path of the following wave — which was bigger again and already breaking. In the seconds left I sprinted for the channel but I knew I'd never get there. I pumped myself full of air, hyperventilating hurriedly, and at the last possible moment, as the crashing white wall came down, I stood on my stationary board and speared deep as I could get. I kicked hard but in an instant the whitewater smashed in, blasting me sideways, hurling me down. I saw hazy outlines of rocks. Kelp flew by. My ears hurt badly but I couldn't equalize, and then I was pitching end over end across the bottom, glancing off things hard and soft until slowly, like a storm petering out, the water slackened around me and I floundered up toward the light.
I broke the surface in a drift of foamscum and barely got a breath before another tower of whitewater crashed over, and this second hold-down was worse. I'd started with less air and got worked harder, longer. When I kicked up it was into the path of a third wave, and then there was a fourth. Each breath was more hurried, each dive just a bit shallower than the last. I got so strung out and disoriented I ploughed headfirst into the seabed, thinking I was headed for the surface. Burns and tingles shot up my legs. I saw light where there was no light. My gut began to twitch. Things went narrow — it was like looking out through a letterbox — and out there, at the other end of the slot, the white world was trying to kill me.
But when the sea let go and the water cleared I clawed up into the sky. For a moment, at the surface, it seemed my throat was jammed shut. I couldn't make myself breathe. And then wretching spasms overtook me and bile and seawater poured out and the air burnt down sharp as any regret.
There was no sign of the yellow Brewer. Once I got control of myself I saw I'd been bulldozed, mostly underwater, for four hundred yards. The only way home from here was to swim.
It took me an hour or so to reach the cliffs and maybe another thirty minutes to make it up them. I got seasick treading water in the moiling backwash. And at the end, when I wondered if I had the strength to hold out much longer, I came in on the back of a huge, blunt roller which set me down on a ledge from which I could crawl, very slowly, to safety.
When I got back to Sando's I tried to keep clear of the house but I so badly needed a drink. Eva caught me gulping from the rainwater tank.
Pikelet?
I'm just goin, I croaked.
Saw your bike. Where you been?
I shrugged, but I was standing there in my wetsuit and my knees were crusted with blood.
I gotta go.
Come up here.
No, I'm off.
You heard me. Jesus, look at you. Get up here.
I stumped slowly up the stairs and onto the verandah.
You went out there on your own, didn't you?
I lost his Brewer. The yellow one.
You mean you swam in?. Let me look at you.
I'm just thirsty. I feel bad about the board.
Oh, forget the goddamn board. Sit down and I'll get you something.
The moment I sat I felt overcome with fatigue. I must have dozed because when I looked up she was there already with a Coke and a plate of sandwiches. I ate and drank greedily while she watched.
You take him too seriously, she said at last.
Who?
You know who. I'll get something for those gashes. Stay here. But I didn't stay there for fear of falling asleep again. I followed her into the house and propped myself up against the kitchen bench while she rummaged in a cupboard.
Sit down before you fall over, she said. You'll have to wait until they get back. You're in no shape to ride home.
I can ride, I said. I had no intention of still being there when Sando got back.
Will you just sit the fuck down. I did as I was told. Suddenly I was close to tears. He tell you they're heading to Java? I shook my head, unable to speak.
It's just not funny anymore. I don't know if I'll be here when he gets back.
She wielded a fistful of cotton balls and a bottle of something nasty-yellow. I blinked.
Jesus, why'm I tellingj/o «this? I could only shrug.
Hey, she murmured. Pikelet, you won't say anything, will you? No.
She looked at me appraisingly, and when she unscrewed the bottle and poured antiseptic into the cotton her hands shook. She took me by the chin and tilted my head up to press the scouring stuff cold to my brow and I tried not to wince.
She put the bottle down and fingered through my hair a moment to find the divot in my scalp. I looked at the pale hairs around her navel where her windcheater rode up. You'll live.
She was a foot away. She smelled of butter and cucumber and coffee and antiseptic. I wanted to press my face into that belly, to hold her by the hips, but I sat there until she stepped away. And then I got up and left; I didn't care what she said. I rode home slow and sore and raddled.
That evening, while the day's warmth leached into the forest shadow, I sat against an ancient karri tree to smoke the hash Loonie brought me. At dinner I ate my chops with elaborate caution, anxious at every quizzical glance. I felt transparent, light, uncomfortable. In the night I dreamt my drowning dream. There I was again, head jammed tight in the reef, and when I woke, touching the tender parts of my brow and scalp, it took a while to believe it had only been a dream.
You've been in a fight, said the old man at breakfast.
No, I said.
Look at you. You may's well tell me.
It's nothin, Dad.
Face like a bird-pecked apple, said the old girl.
What the hell d'you get up to? he said with more dismay than anger in his voice.
I fell on the rocks, I murmured.
Out the coast?
Yeah.
How many times have I told you —
Tell me about Snowy Muir, I said. The old man snatched up his hat and his workbag. You never told me the story, I said more gently. Some of us have got work to do, he said. He kissed my mother, stuffed his hat on his balding head and made for the door.
i oonie was outside the butcher shop in the drizzle when I got off the school bus. He had the fading remains of a black eye and his lip was split in a whole new way. I didn't need to ask. I knew it'd be his old man. Loonie had told him he was going away again.