“Lucky that Monday’s bin day,” I said.
Michael and Jamie have gone to work and Ash and I are in our usual spots on the porch. He’s telling me about the time he spent working the trawlers on the Coffs Coast and I’m just listening, trying to remember if I saw him eat breakfast before he cracked his first beer.
“It was real hard work,” he says, “Sometimes you’d get a seal up on deck. I tell you what, I don’t care how cuddly they look on
World Around Us
, they’re fuckin’ vicious, those seals. Pretty much have to bash their heads in before you can get ’em back in the water.”
I swig warm beer and wince.
“Well, you think about it…you’re a seal...you get pulled up into the sky, and next thing you know you’re on top of a mountain of fish. That’s gotta be like seal heaven, right? Would you get back into the cold water?”
“S’pose not,” I say. “Still, you must pull up all kinds of things out there.”
“Oh, yeah. You get all sorts of shit in those nets: turtles, sharks…one time we caught a dolphin. That was real horrible. Big cow, she was. Fat as anything. Poor bitch must have been pregnant. Must have dragged her around behind us for hours because by the time we pulled her up she’d drowned.”
Ash spits out his tongue like he’s tasted something bad, then he leans forward to reach for a smoke. He plants his nose in the foil, draws a cigarette from the packet with his lips, leans back, cups his hands and lights up.
“One day we hauled up this Great White. Man, they can be real big bastards. This one wasn’t though—maybe a meter… meter fifty…anyway it’s thrashing around the deck, making all kinds of mess. So I get it into my head that I want its jaws—you know how people keep them shark jaws? Hang ’em up and stuff? Well, the boss says, ‘If you can convince ’im to give ’em to you, they’re yours.’ But do you think that shark was gonna give ’em up without a fight? No fuckin’ way! Took me three hours to kill it, and I was using everything I could—an oar, this big plank I found. In the end I had to pull out my fishing knife and slice through its skull, and all the while it’s thrashing around having a go.” Ash shook his head and took a swig. “Man, I wanted those jaws,” he said. “Could have got into a lot of trouble for having them though. They’re protected now, them sharks. Vicious buggers.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“Well, I cut them out and cleaned ’em up, and they were in my house down the coast for yonks.”
“Where are they now?”
“Dunno…brother’s probably…” Ash sucks on the last of his smoke and throws the used end into the flowerbed.
Halfway through the day we run out of beer, so the two of us wander up to the bottlo for a carton.
Ash says he’s feeling generous, so he takes the carton to the counter. I don’t think to ask how he’ll pay for it. It’s been six weeks since he moved in, and there’s still no job to speak of. On the way home we take turns carrying the slab: Ash, with the box high above his head, and his short legs working hard to keep up; then me, carrying the carton across my arms, thongs slapping at the bitumen. We don’t say much. I try not to look at him when it’s his turn to carry, though the carton makes every muscle on him tense and quake.
Once we’re home Ash wastes no time kicking off his shoes, mousing into the box and twisting the cap off a warm beer.
“Shit!” he curses, shaking the spray from his hands. “Should have known that’d happen.”
He peels his T-shirt from his shoulders and tosses it behind him. And that’s when I see the octopus, a sinister creature peering at me like a shadowy trick of the afternoon sun, its dark arms encircling his shoulder.
“You’re not lying,” I say. “You’re a real fisherman—tatts and all.”
“Oh, that? That was my mate’s brother. He was training to be a tattoo artist. They always need skin to draw on, them guys. Got it free, ’cause I was the guinea pig, but it was meant to be twice as big.”
I watch him turn his arm over, tracing a wayward tentacle along his tight tricep.
“So, why’d you give up the trawlers?” I ask when we’re settled back into our spots on the porch.
“Dunno,” he says. “Got tired of it, I guess. Money was good, I’ll give you that. But there’s never anywhere to spend it out at sea, is there? And you can be out there for weeks. Pretty scary when you think about it. So far from land…”
We’re silent for a while. I watch as Ash starts picking the label from his stubbie. I can’t take my eyes off that animal. It sits on his shoulder, waiting.
“One time, when we were out in open water, I got this pain. I didn’t know what it was for a while, but then it started getting real bad, real quick. We were miles from the coast and some of the other guys were releasing the trawls, and here I am in the bottom of the cabin, doubled over, feeling about as useful as tits on a bull. I couldn’t move or eat or spew. And man, did it cane! I’ve never known pain like it. ’Ventually I made that much noise that the others started talking about turning back. And then I passed out.”
“Geez! What happened?”
“Well, they turned back. And just as well they did! My appendix had burst. I ended up in hospital for two weeks. Tell you what though, if we’d been out a bit further or we’d come back a bit later I mightn’t have been so lucky. I mightn’t have been here telling you ’bout it. ’Course the boss would’ve had us out for longer if he could have. Bosses are the greediest bastards going. When we got back to port, all he wanted to know was why we hadn’t brought back a bigger catch. More worried about the wasted fuel than my wasted appendix... That did me for the trawlers for a while. I never went out again after that. I’ll show you the scar,” he said, lowering the top of his shorts just enough to reveal the wide base of his dick.
“Pretty gnarly scar, huh? Ten stitches.”
At about four thirty Jamie comes home from work. “What have you two been up to all day?” he calls, walking up the path. “Did you look for a job?”
“Thought about it,” Ash says.
“You thought about it? Did you look?”
“Yeah. What do you think I do all day?” Ash shoots back.
They cross the doormat and the flyscreen swings back noisily.
I wait for Michael, but the mozzies beat him home so I end up shifting from the porch to the couch.
Under the yellow glow of
The Simpsons
, I can hear them moving around the kitchen, Ash and Jamie, with their complicated cooking.
“When?” Jamie says.
“I dunno…tomorrow…”
“That’s what you told me yesterday, Ash. I want to know that you’re actually going to go.”
“Hey, I said I would. What more do you want?”
“I want you to go. Tomorrow. Instead of just talking about it.”
“Oh, come on, Jay! You nag like a bitch. If I wanted to be with a woman I would.”
There’s silence in the kitchen for a while. Then as the sauce-pans begin to bubble you can hear them at it again, arguing in hushed tones, guilting each other with lists of everything they’ve given up to be together.
That night I lay awake thinking of our strange new house-mate, his seafaring tales and his poster-boy good looks. How charming and how alarming he seems to me, this charismatic stranger in the room at the end of the hall.
Ash stands on the balcony, the weary sun fading behind him, his brown eyes dancing in the twilight. His smile seems as real in my dreams as it had that afternoon, when he stood before me, bare-chested and beautiful, his brown arms folded, barring his perfect body.
In the heat of the afternoon my beer drools like melting ice cream, its sweat running down my hand, dripping and disappearing on the scorched cement. I cross to the railing where he sits sunning himself. He raises a hand to shield his eyes, and I seize my chance, driving the cold heel of my stubbie into his side.
“Ah, you dirty bastard!” he yelps, leaping high into the air. “You can be a real cunt, you know?”
He flicks the beer from his belly, stroking the warmth back into his ribs. Suddenly, he launches himself toward me, his shoulder connecting with my stomach, sending me backward.
“Not so tough now, huh?” he says, pulling me into a clinch. He has me from behind, his arms locked around mine, his biceps tense and firm, hugging my chest. I twist my body so that I’m facing him, pushing off on my elbows till his fingers give way at my back. For a second I fall free, then he latches on to me again. His shoulders slacken and tighten and that dark octopus looms in, spreading its tentacles, swiping the air.
“Ash, let go,” I say, “You’re hurting me. I’m not kidding.”
He untenses his grip. I’m exhausted and winded. I start coughing, then I start laughing. His arms are still around me. His eyes move over my face.
“I need another beer,” I say, breaking away.
“You can have the rest of mine. You spilled enough of it on me.”
He kneels and picks up the stubbie.
“Here,” he says, holding the bottle high above my head.
“You wouldn’t,” I say.
“Oh, no?”
His fingers tighten around my wrists. The bottle teeters above dangerously. I shrink to my knees, flicking my arms in all directions to break free of his grip. Suddenly his fingers burst apart like the broken ends of an elastic band and I’m tumbling backward, hurtling toward the tiles. There is a thump of water and a rush of bubbles. Curtains close on the sky above me, on Ash and his outstretched hand. I plummet into darkness and in that one final gasp of light, I can see the creature moving over him, black arms like mariners’ knots all hitched and sheep-shanked and alive.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Michael says. He’s sitting up in bed next to me, his eyes searching the darkness furiously. There’d been a great thunderclap, or perhaps a slammed door.
He swings his legs to the floor, and the bed sways back like a boat in the breeze. There are angry voices in the kitchen. The lamp on the bedside table is switched on suddenly. And I lie back and close my eyes, my mind still dizzy with sea monsters.
PALOMINO
Dale Chase
Before I caught sight of the boy I never considered much beyond the next bank job. Been outlawing since fourteen, seen many a man killed and done a stretch in Yuma Prison which adds up to a hard life, but I am not one to complain as sometimes I am able to help others less fortunate.
Harlan Crawford and me run the Crawford gang, which is down to just four now that we lost Neely in the Medford job. Deputy shot him dead outside the bank, and it was a hard loss as Neely had a wife and kiddies in Nevada.
It’s Harlan who wants a new man, and so he asked Abel Trice to join up as Abel is strong, no nonsense and a good shot, but Abel said we had to take his brother Jesse, too. And Harlan agreed, sight unseen. Then in they ride to our hideout on the Coote ranch and Jesse is but a boy. And I am lost to him because there is no word but beautiful.
He doesn’t look like Abel who is red haired, freckled, pink skinned. Jesse looks more half-breed but wears it well, and maybe it’s the mix of light and dark that has produced such a fine creature. He is shy, lets his brother speak, and I do likewise, allow Harlan to set things up among us. But I can’t stop eyeing the kid because I’ve seen nothing like him, not ever. A woman might have such beauty but a man?
Abel, who is twenty-six, says the kid is nineteen, which I find difficult to believe as he seems such a boy. No beard I can detect, smooth skin of a golden hue, palomino if he was horseflesh. His eyes give away his native side, black like his hair and eyebrows. His cheekbones are strong, jaw likewise, and he seems better put together than the rest of us.
He catches me looking and I jump into the conversation, startled at being caught. “Train next, we’re thinking,” I say and Abel nods, says he did one train job but the marshals were on board, and they got no money and lost two men. “Anymore you need somebody inside,” he adds, at which Harlan fairly beams.