C'mon, she murmured. You knew it had to stop somewhere. I can't do this shit with a baby coming.
Is it mine?
Don't be absurd.
I tried to count back but I didn't even know which numbers I required.
I can't believe it.
Well, believe it. It's true.
Even as I lay there I felt my shock becoming relief. Not so much that the child was not mine, but that I'd been delivered. A new force had stepped in to present her with a defining choice.
Eva went back down to the bathroom and wiped the steam-fog from the mirror and brushed out her hair while I stood in the doorway to watch. I considered her wide shoulders and broad back, her narrow waist, the square, womanly buttocks and the way she favoured one leg even while dragging a brush through her long, wet hair. I felt strangely bashful, as though we'd been restored to our proper roles. Here I was again, a visitor in her house, a schoolboy standing unbidden in the doorway to a grown woman's bathroom. The plain light of Saturday afternoon was everywhere in the house.
You want me to chop some wood?
No, she said. Thank you. Go home.
On Sunday I surprised my father by joining him at the back fence to slash the winter weeds and burn what couldn't be hacked down. He seemed hesitant, almost fearful in my company. At day's end as we tended the smouldering edges of the firebreak with bag and hose he cleared his throat and spoke.
I had Loonie's old man here yesterday.
Oh, yeah? I said.
You know he's not my sort of fella.
I know what you mean.
But he's been talking about the people you see out the coast. Says Loonie's gone off the deep end. Won't listen to reason. Son, he used to be your mate.
Yes, I said.
I don't understand it. But I don't think you should go out there anymore.
I nodded. If you like.
He smiled and I felt cheap about how easy this was to concede to him when a month ago I would have told him to mind his own business.
Good boy, he said, wiping ash across his stubbled chin. Good lad.
Little more than a week later Sando returned. He came running out from the BP servo in Sawyer and I nearly shat myself. He looked dark and grizzled and happy.
Hey, he said. I'm gunna be a father.
Far out, I said. I thought she looked different.
Incredible, eh.
Yeah. Man, congratulations.
We shook hands awkwardly.
Shit, he said, holding my hand with a grip just short of painful. You chopped a bloody lot of wood out there, mate.
Well, I said. Not much swell.
Didn't want you to think I don't notice these things.
I laughed uncertainly. I couldn't read him. I wondered if the smudgy bruises on Eva's neck had lingered, or if I'd left something out there to give myself away. It occurred to me later they could have fessed up to one another about their weeks apart, and perhaps this was their way.
Hey, how was the trip? I stammered.
Lively.
Did you get waves?
Jesus, we got everything. Seasick, shot at, seen off, spiderbitten, infected, deported. And yeah, honkin waves.
Haven't seen Loonie, I said.
You and me both.
You mean he's not back?
Little prick blew me off. Took a boat to Nias.
What happened?
Didn't wanna come home, I spose.
Man.
Wilful little bastard, isn't he? Fuckin nuts, actually.
At that moment Fat Bob the mechanic sidled out from the shadows of his workshop. Sando slapped me on the shoulder.
Hey, keep an eye on the weather. We'll do Old Smoky, eh?
Orright.
Gotta go. Come out sometime.
Okay, I'll do that.
But we never surfed Old Smoky together again. Nor did I visit his place while he was there. I did my best to stay away.
There are spring days down south when all the acacias are pumping out yellow blooms and heady pollen and the honeyeaters and wattlebirds are manic with their pillaging and the wet ground steams underfoot in the sunshine and you feel fresher and stronger than you are. Yes, the restorative force of nature. I can vouch for its value — right up to the point of complete delusion. I go down sometimes on leave to cut the weeds and burn off the way my father did, to surf the Point and collect my frazzled wits. But I've learnt not to surrender to swooning spring. In spring you can really ease offon yourself, and when diat happens you'll believe anything at all. You start feeling safe. And then pretty soon you feel immune. Winters are long in Sawyer. A bit of sunshine and nectar goes straight to your head.
I saw Eva in the general store. It was October and she was in a long skirt and sandals. She stood in the narrow aisle considering a bin full of mousetraps. She was fuller in the face and her hair was held back with barrettes. At the sight of her pot belly I felt a tiny stab of lust. I wheeled around and heard her say my name as I slipped out of the shop and into the sleepy street.
In November Frank Loon confronted Sando in the street and took a swing at him but the younger man was too quick. There was a bit of push and shove outside the bank during which Mister Loon uttered threats. From then on it seemed that Sando and Eva did their shopping thirty miles away in Angelus.
I wasn't sleeping much. Some nights I got up and slipped out to the old man's shed to sharpen his tools. One morning my mother found me asleep out there with the axe at my feet. She asked me if I had some troubles but I said that I didn't. I probably thought I was telling her the truth.
I rode out to the coast some weekends to surf. Several times I hiked up behind Sando's place to hide in the peppy scrub and watch the house. I stayed downwind for fear of alerting the dog and though it found me one time it didn't give me away. I saw Eva pegging out laundry in the sun, saw the shine of her bare belly, saw the bras and undies she was hanging up and felt like a dirty schoolboy for watching. I had an urge to wait a while until no one was about and then creep down to press my face into her damp underthings or slip beneath the house and beat off at the thought of her swollen breasts. But I never did.
I all but failed that year of school and I was shamed by the haunted look on my mother's face. The school report recommended that I leave and seek a trade apprenticeship, but I told her I'd stay on and get my act right. Over the Christmas holidays I found every book on next year's syllabus and read late into the night while the old man snored and stopped, snored and stopped, like a man grinding away with a blade at a whetstone.
The new year was weeks old when I found myself surfing beside Sando one morning at the Point. Bareback in nothing but his Speedos, he was noseriding an old tanker from the fifties. He looked fit and tanned as he kicked the board out of the wave and settled down beside me.
Pikelet, he said.
What's with the budgie-smugglers? I asked.
Dog ate the arse out of my boardies. Anyway, what's wrong with Speedos? Son, they made this nation what it is.