Tide

TIDE

JOHN KINSELLA

TIDE

JOHN KINSELLA

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

www.transitlounge.com.au

Copyright © John Kinsella 2013

First Published 2013
Transit Lounge Publishing

All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

Front cover image: Philip Schubert
www.philipschubertphotography
Cover and book design: Peter Lo
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

A cataloguing entry for this title is available from the
National Library of Australia:
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

978-1-921924-58-3 (e-book)

To Tracy, as always

The author wishes to acknowledge
the traditional owners and
custodians of the land he writes.

CONTENTS

Tide

Africa Reef

Orbit

Flight

Dumpers

Dive

Flare

Guilt

Flying Fish (Counterpoint)

Argonaut

Bay

Ferryman

Brick

Touch

Mesmerised

Magazine

Bonfire on the Beach

Loading

Whaleworld

The Unfinished House

The Bouquet

Tarping the Wheat: The Wages of Sin

Snow

The Bet

The Tale of Ferguson's Folly

Misnomer

A Long Stretch of Nothing in the Middle of Nowhere

Falling

Extremities

Inner City

The Favoured Son

A Seaside Burial

TIDE

The sea was gone, and the wet that filmed the mud was something else. It wasn't the sea, it was the bottom of the sea. But the sea was gone and the silver of the horizon was only light, a bright concentrated light full of sun and sky. It was the bottom of the sea and they were walking out over it, further and further out into its bubbling weirdness.

The two boys moved out from the fetid shade of the mangroves and made tentative steps into the wide-open expanse of the mudflats. They wore sandshoes because they knew about the sting of cobblers stranded in the mud, and then there were the great clawed mud crabs and even sea snakes that might have forgotten about the tide, floundering about. The smell was of salt and rot, and they thought the insides of mud crabs must be rotten, too. The mud bubbled and spat at them. Early in their walk, the mangroves that edged the beach wouldn't give up, and stuck up stems with growths on them that quickly crusted with salt in the harsh sun. Each step they took further out to the horizon, where the sea should be but wasn't, the thirstier they became.

Their shoes went thwock thwock in the mud. Sometimes they sank and stuck; other times the mud seemed as hard as a footpath and they almost skated over it, half running and stumbling. Each seemed to enjoy the other's successes but also to relish his difficulties. The older, taller one laughed loudest when the younger sank and couldn't pull his shoe out, the grey and black squirming around the bare ankle and sending its grit and ooze down around the foot, the toes. It was foul and strangely addictive. But they both tired fast, and when they stopped to look back at the mangroves' opaque, dark-green rigging, they felt even more tired. The green was starting to look like the horizon and the horizon started to make a ring, a halo.

The older boy said, We'll be in trouble when we get home.

The younger boy, marvelling at the breadth and volume of the sky, said, It'll be worth it when we reach the horizon.

The older boy smiled. He was half-proud of his little brother's wisdom. His little brother knew about nature, though he as the older one shouldered most of the blame and got into more trouble.

Occasionally the distance between them grew as the small boy lagged and the older one raced ahead, because he could. And just when the younger boy was on the verge of tears, the older boy would stand still and call out, Come on slowcoach, we're almost there!

No, we're not, said the small boy when he caught up. The horizon never gets closer.

Yes, it does, it's closer than when we left. Look back – the mangroves are like a mirage, and are turning into horizon. That means the horizon where the sea was has to be something we can reach.

The small boy, who was smart, listened to his brother's sophistry and believed only because he was excited to be out of the world he knew, and in this almost imaginary world where the unexpected and the unknown seemed part of the fabric of the eternal mudflats, the mundane repetition of each step. He was thirsty and tired, and shook his head in confusion. He wasn't sure what he was thinking. Only that though each step seemed the same, and the world looked the same with each step, that anything could happen. That sameness meant a surprise was inevitable. He sucked salt off his arm, making him both relieved and thirsty at once.

I wish we'd brought a drink, said the younger boy.

Yes, me too, said the older boy. I think we need to head back home, and come out tomorrow with some food and drink.

Yes, said the small boy. And a camera.

A camera? laughed the older boy. Why? There's nothing to photograph.

But there is! said the younger boy. It's
everything
out here.

What's everything? said the older boy, pushing his brother into the mud.

Don't! said the younger boy. That's mean. You always spoil things.

The older boy, feeling contrite enough to help his brother from the mud, told him that his white T-shirt looked like a Collingwood footy jumper.

Does not! said the smaller boy, who did not barrack for Collingwood.

Hey, look! Where you fell over there's a crab flicking at the mud. Look at the size of its claws. The older brother kicked at the giant crab, and a steel claw latched onto the edge of his shoe. It didn't crush his toes because his shoes were a size too big (as were all his clothes – he would never accept the size he really was and demanded ‘the next size up'), but it gave him a hell of a fright. Yow! Ouch! Hell, hell, hell! Bastard crab. He shook his shoe in the air but the crab wouldn't let go.

If you stop behaving like a clown, said the younger boy, and put your foot back on the mud, it will probably let go. It doesn't like you and probably wants to get away as much as you do.

The older boy, who had been dancing in the end because he liked the drama and watching his own foot performing its antics, suddenly stopped and put his foot down, and they watched the crab let go and submerge back into the mud.

It looked repulsive.

It was camouflaged.

I am so thirsty, said the younger boy. I'm going back. And with that he turned and started tracking his own footprints. He dared not go any other way because the mangroves truly were a horizon now.

The older boy stared at the sea horizon they'd been aiming for. As the sun dipped close to its surface, it looked like it was bleeding red. A red sea. He said, The sea is coming back. It's coming back fast.

The older boy ran past his brother, who was standing still, looking at the sea covering his shoes. The horizon has broken, he said. We're in a bowl and the horizon is spilling into the centre.

Run, said the older brother. If we don't run, the tide will catch us and we'll drown.

The young boy, who was so smart, didn't really understand. This was a new experience. They'd only just moved to this far northern place where their father had gone after the divorce. Six months in the tropics, six months in the cold of the deep south. That horizon – the
water
– was rising so fast. He said, It wouldn't be like drowning. It would be as if the world had gone back to the way it always was.

Stop being a little idiot and run!

The small boy wondered about his brother far ahead. The water was around his knees, and he was tired and thirsty, and every step was a slow, struggling slosh slosh slosh. He wondered about the mud crabs. And the sea snakes would be coming back, the ones that hadn't been stranded. They have tails like oars and kill you quick. He couldn't see horizon in either direction now because horizon was all around him. It was dark and light and shaded and bright. It shimmered and stung his eyes. He kept walking, steadily, slosh slosh slosh.

He couldn't see his footprints from the journey out, but every now and again he glanced up at his brother, still far ahead. Slosh slosh slosh. The water was up at his waist and he swore that next time he would bring a bottle of water because you can't drink the sea. You're not
allowed
to drink the sea.

AFRICA REEF

Dylan had heard that it was called Africa Reef because it was halfway to Africa. It was a long way out to sea, out in the open ocean, a weird protrusion surrounded by deep waters. Maybe an island that hadn't yet formed, or had been swallowed by the waves. He wasn't sure, and when he asked he got no more than the usual story, though more often than not it was said ‘halfway to bloody Africa'.

He did know, though, that this new town he was living in was on the ‘shipwreck coast', where for hundreds of years ships had come to grief. And out at the Islands there had been mutiny and mass murder. The local museum was full of relics from the early days of European exploration and the watery graves of fate. With apprehension and excitement, he pieced this together in his head, making a narrative that compelled him to accept his new best friend's offer to visit Africa Reef, Saturday afternoon on his father's boat.

At least it compelled him to ask his mum, who rang his best friend's father and talked it over. After ascertaining that the father was a police sergeant and all passengers on his boat would wear life jackets, she gave a nervous, cautious ‘okay'. Two former best friends of the sergeant's son would be shipping out as well. The boat would be back at the marina by dark, and they'd all be home soon after that. The weather was still warm and soothing.

The boys were all thirteen. Dylan was excited to be living in a new place, but the other boys were keen to leave their coastal town and go just about anywhere else. Eighteen miles out to sea, straight out into the wide ocean, certainly qualified as ‘anywhere else', and though they considered themselves too old and too sophisticated to say they were embarking on an adventure, they all secretly felt that they were.

Dylan had just started reading
The Old Man and the Sea
for English, with his usual lack of enthusiasm, but now he decided to get stuck into it, as well as the book he'd seen on his gran's shelf,
The Cruel Sea,
though he knew nothing about that one and couldn't pronounce the author's name.