They let their bikes fall on their sides on the front lawn of Billie’s house under the big Jacaranda tree and went inside. Billie’s Mum was up making a cup of tea with one arm and cradling Little Tom in the other. She smiled as they came in. “Hi Riley.”
“Hi Kath,” Riley blushed. He always blushed near her. He’d never get used to using her first name like she made him. “Wanna put some air in your mat?” Billie asked.
“Yeah,” Riley replied hastily and followed Billie to his room.
Billie kept his board in the corner of his bedroom. He could see it at night there.
Before they left, Billie’s Mum cornered Billie and applied toxic smelling blockout which dried on contact with the skin with a sting and hurt like hell when it got in the eyes. She got hold of Riley as well and he stood there limply and embarrassed, not knowing where to look as she applied it to his reddening face and rubbed it on his shoulders and back.
They set off on foot with their surf gear under their arms and towels around their shoulders. Billie pointed out the pine tree lookout to Riley. On the front lawn of the house behind the tree, the Ellen sisters were already bouncing and tumbling around on the trampoline in their bikinis. They waved at the boys in mid air and giggled as they passed shyly by.
A few houses further down, a black dog with a wide-jawed head barked and growled menacingly on the other side of the high fence and worked itself into a leaping frenzy when Billie teased a stick at a run along the corrugated iron. On the next street, a short, grey-haired bloke with peppered whiskers wearing khaki stubbies and a taut white singlet pulled down as far as it could go half over his barrel belly, was bent over his overgrown front lawn. He slowly straightened up as the boys approached and, levering one hand on the knee of his scrawny leg, creaked stiffly up and greeted them with a wincing grin, brandishing the Sunday paper he’d unearthed from the shin-high barley grass.
At the bottom of the hill, they passed the last of the fibro shacks and entered the bush along a dusty limestone track which wound through the sand dunes in a low valley of gum trees, acacia, bottlebrush, grass trees and other bush. On the way, two magpies called out to each other in a hollow melody and, as if in reply, a kookaburra laughed on its perch on a lone dead branch, silhouetted against the rising sun in the east. Dragonflies darted across the track, hovering in front of them from time to time in mid-air and then droning off into the bush. Cicadas screeched rhythmically with all they had. At the base of the dunes, the vegetation became rampant pig face, low tufted grasses and tea green coastal rosemary which clung bravely to the exposed sand, battered day in day out by the wind rushing in from the sea.
They ran up the dunes and paused at the top. The ocean stretched out immensely before them as far as they could see. The island sat low on the horizon out to the west. Barely visible. Waves rose up in the foreground and momentarily reflected the golden glow of the morning sun before breaking on the shallow sand banks. Away up the beach, a surfer paddled and leapt to his feet in a fluid motion and glided across the face of a wave on his long board, drawing smooth lines. Then he stepped off in the shallows and paddled back out on his knees, bent over, his arms pulling the water beside the board in long, easy, double strokes. The boys looked at each other and tore down the dune and across the deep sand towards the water’s edge, casting their towels, thongs and t-shirts off haphazardly on the way, barely breaking stride.
Riley glanced across at Billie’s board resting on the sand while Billie was putting his leg-rope around his ankle. Then they walked out into the shallow water, their hands guiding their surf craft floating beside them, cringing and arching their backs as the cold spray from the first small passing wave was blown onto their bare skin in the strong offshore wind. When the water became deeper, Billie climbed onto his board and paddled out. Riley kicked along behind him on his mat.
Billie’s board was much taller than him, even when he put his hands up above his head. It was a sun-yellowed 7-foot, 2-inch single fin with a big red lightning bolt on the deck. It was thick and tapered fairly sharply towards the tail and less so up at the nose. A proper fiberglass board. In pretty good nick except for a few old dings. One big one on the rail at the side Jack said had happened when another guy fell off his board as Jack was paddling out. Jack said that he didn’t know how the board missed his head. He had fixed the ding so water didn’t soak in.
Jack was one of Joe’s old school friends. He was a wiry, bow-legged bloke with long brown hair and a skinny mustache. Billie never knew when he was pulling his leg and when he was fair dinkum. He laid bricks and shook hands like he was going to break them.
When they were at the beach one day in the summer before, Billie had seen Jack walk over to his Mum and Dad with a board under his arm after he’d been surfing and they had stood talking for ages while Billie was catching waves on his surf mat. When Billie finally went in later on, Jack had gone but the board was still there on the sand. His Dad said that Jack had left it there for him. He had looked at his Dad with disbelief, then looked at the board and back at his Dad and asked hesitantly if he could try it.
Billie had marched proudly to the water’s edge, awkwardly clutching the board too far towards the front under his right arm, its nose pointing high to the sky and the tail dragging in the sand. He’d stumbled every now and then when his feet got caught up in the leg rope which he’d attached with the leash sticking out in front of his shin and on the wrong ankle. He had had to be waved in from the sea by his parents that day in the stiffening sea breeze. Jack had not asked for his board back since then but Billie lived in fear that he would.
That morning, Billie and Riley found an uncrowded spot down the beach from The Point. The swell came in out of the deeper blue water and rose up, as the sand shallowed, into glistening turquoise peaks. Riley watched Billie paddle lightly onto waves with his chest raised off the board, then stand up and drop down the front of the wave and ride it into shore with his arms spread out wide either side for balance. Sometimes he angled across and rode along the blue wall. Other times he went to shore with the whitewash. Riley followed his head from behind as he shot along, the rest of his body hidden by the wave.
They stayed out in the water for hours that morning. Riley flew into shore time and again on his mat, dropping suddenly down with the breaking wave at the last minute, hands gripping the handles at the front of the mat, and then bouncing along, buried in the whitewash, his face inches from the water, exhilarated by the rush.
After a while, Billie caught a wave in to the beach on his stomach, holding the front of his board as he planed in. He walked robotically straight and stiff with cold up the beach and lay down on his towel with his face to the sun to warm up.
Riley joined him a bit later and sat down in the sand with his arms around his knees. They talked and watched the waves. People strolled along on the hard sand at the water’s edge. Tennis balls skimmed across the water in the shallows beyond them. Up towards The Point in front of the lifesavers’ clubhouse, whistles sent clubbies in budgie smugglers racing out to buoys on paddle boards and back. Junior clubbies lay on their stomachs and, on the whistle, ran across the deep sand to dive for small sticks sitting upright in the sand. On the flat sand along the base of the dunes, a group of balding men were carrying a large roller with coiled rope, marching upright and in time in the deep sand, the red-faced leader calling the shots. Everyone had brimless cloth hats clutching their heads in squares of red and yellow with white strings tied off under their chins.
All along the beach, colorful beach umbrellas mushroomed up as the offshore wind dropped away to stillness in the late morning. Riley started to feel the sun burning his skin. He looked down at his chest, raw in places from riding his surf mat and over at Billie, “Wanna go for a body surf ?”
“Yep.”
They left their gear on the sand and found a spot away from the board riders further down the beach where the waves didn’t peel as well. Out the back, they tottered on tip toes on the deep sand bank, losing and then momentarily regaining their tenuous footholds, rising and falling as the swells passed through. When a bigger one loomed further out, it was a mad scramble to kick and swim to get in position to catch it or dive to the bottom and lie flat, fingers gripping into the sand down there until it had crashed and rumbled past, sometimes pulling them with it in a whirl of bubbles and swirling sand.
They competed to ride the waves the furthest, experimenting with different styles to plane in to shore. For one, they would have both arms out in front, their bodies one long plank, streaming along to shore, heads down, relying on one big breath at the start, buried in the wave and feeling the speed of the water on the palms of their outstretched hands. On another, both their arms would be tucked by their sides and heads would be up out of the water like surprised seals, chests reverberating as the water rushed against them. Kicking after the initial burst to catch the wave was cheating. After each wave in, they ran and leapt and dived over small waves and under the bigger ones and dolphin kicked underwater to get out the back again.
“Better get back,” Billie said rubbing his hair with a towel back on the beach.
“Yeah… what time do yah reckon it is?”
“Dunno but I’m bloody starving,” Billie said, eyes slitted and face screwed up tight against the blinding whiteness of the beach in the full sun.
“Me too,” Riley said.
Half way up the dune on the way back, the hot sand started to scorch the soles of their feet and they bolted up and over it in short rapid steps, pausing fleetingly at places where the sand was cooler from the shade of a low bush to catch their breath and cool their burning feet before darting on. Then they skittered home along the hot pavement, prancing from shade to grass where they could.
Back at Billie’s house, his Mum was swinging gently in a hammock in the shade on the porch. As they came across the grass to the front steps, she put her finger to her lips and pointed at Little Tom asleep on her chest, whispered that there was some lunch for them in the fridge and suggested to Riley to call home. Inside, the radio was on. An American was over-energetically counting down the top 40 for the week and introduced “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles. Riley put the phone to his ear and started to dial, pulling clockwise with his finger in the hole for the first number all the way up to the catch and then riding the hole in fast clicks back to the start ready to dial the next one.
Billie tugged open the fridge door and stood there surveying the shelves while the cool air wafted onto his hot skin and out past him, singing along to the radio. He sculled orange juice out of the bottle and wiped his mouth with his forearm, then sat down, elbows splayed on the table and took chunks out of the sandwiches, piping in mid-mouthful for the part of the chorus he knew.
Riley had his head bowed during the call and didn’t say anything except “mm” on a few occasions and “yes Mum” obediently at the end.
“What’d she say?” Billie asked when he got off the phone. “She said I was an hour late already. She sounds pretty mad.” Riley bit into a sandwich. “Better get going in a sec.”
“Yeah sure,” Billie said getting up and opening the pantry door. “I’ll probably have to do some chores this arvo but it was worth it,” Riley grinned.
“Do yah think you’ll be able to go again?” Billie asked looking out towards the front porch and then quickly tipping his head back and squirting a stream of Ice Magic into his mouth.
“Yeah, I reckon, she gets a bit worked up sometimes but Dad usually calms her down after a while.”
This is the first of three excerpts from Into the Sea. Stay tuned for the second and third. In the meantime, check out Jay’s website here.
