An Open Swimmer Read Online Free PDF Page A

one!’ Sean stabbed with the chipped blade. ‘Oh, what a fucken waste.’ He hurled the shabby things out onto the water.
    They picked their way back through the rocks, pollard and scales clinging to their palms. Birds bickered on the water.
    Sean strode ahead, muttering and looking up towards camp. Carrying the fishing bag, Jerra glanced down to the other end of the beach where he saw the tiny figure of the dog again. It got up on two legs and walked into the dunes.
    Later in the day, after a depressing tinned lunch – pork and beans and a Big Sister self-saucing pud (cold) – Jerra went walking – for wood, he said to Sean who looked at him with curiosity – and he found himself heading back up the hill on the rutted track.
    The grey ruts had smoothed in the afternoon winds. A rabbit scuttled across the track. The breeze blew his hair forward into his face. His hands smelt of fish. His jeans were crusty with pollard, sauce, blood, and scales.
    Nothing was different. Only the crumbling footprints and drag marks from the jerrycan. Twenty-eights tittered in the movement of the trees.
    Up at the shack, he stood for a while observing the silence until he found the courage to call out without unnerving himself.
    â€˜Hullo! You there?’
    He tapped the door.
    â€˜Anyone there?’
    He picked his way round the side, past the webs and rust of the tank, through the grass, flecked with hard old scales, past the brown and green bottles, until he was at the door again. Through cracks and knots in the shutters he could see a dim desolation, a fur of dust on the floor, broken glass in the corner, webbed, fluffed with dirt. Nothing lived here, he knew it.
    As he trudged down the track, something thumped in the bush. A roo or perhaps a rabbit.
    NO said the tree in scars and clots. He agreed, whatever it meant. NO sounded fair enough. Until you thought a bit.
    He sat on the crest of a dune overlooking the crescent of the beach, the sun pummelling his back, and wondered about fishing. He wondered about the waiting his father said was so good. Dad’s still waiting, he thought sadly. Geez, what’m I waiting for? To grow up?
    He told himself to bugger off and started a poem, the sun on his back.
    â€˜All the men . . .’ he said aloud, and nothing else came. ‘All the men . . .’ Stupid talking out loud, anyway. He gave up.
    His grandfather was stuffed in the head thinking he would ever write poems. Jerra tried to remember the lines he had learnt but all he could remember was the deep mirror of water by the brewery and his little feet looking up at themselves.
    Then he remembered Gran bringing cups of tea, all afternoon, tending Granpa’s foot, hearing him whine, calling her out to the back yard.
    Remembered his own feet looking up at themselves as he hung over the retaining wall by the brewery, trying to learn C. J. Dennis, and catch tailor on the scummy night tide of the Swan River.
    He had forgotten the wood. He would get some tomorrow.
    Sleep came slow. Sean breathed a metric rhythm. Dying fire flickered on the windows. Surf rumbled, coming, going. A cricket began, then faltered, started, stopped again. Jerra rolled onto his side.
N . . .
O . . .
no
oranges
not
old
needy
orientals
nok
off
neighbour’s
oxen
Nag
O’Sarkey
nourishing
octopus
NO el
NO el
now
oracles
    NO said the scar-faced tree, in his blackness of sleep.
    Hovering. This wasn’t waiting. He hesitated, plunged into its diamond side. It tore the spear from him. He went for the opening. It fled, jammed half-way, flexing, writhing, tearing. The water clouded. No breath, and the entrance was obscured.
    Sean stirred, talking again.
    The beach breathed deep.

fish and women and bollocks
    B LEACHED WHITE as the sand, the beam wouldn’t be moved. Whiskers of weed had caught in its coarsened grain. Bare white sticks, spindly crooked things, were all he