Jack, page 7
as the fire snaps
and grows monster shadows.
Dickie’s got some of the fat in a jam tin
and he’s showing Takemoto how to rub it over his skin.
‘Make you suntan … you get black.’
Takemoto seems unimpressed with the opportunity.
He’s trying to swat the Aboriginal boy away.
Sandy’s playing his guitar. Some traditional song
about Island fishermen who sail too far from home,
and Georgie’s lying down, resting on his elbow
staring into the fire. Sand clings to his forearm.
The white in his hair is growing out.
It looks like snow on top of dirt.
I shift my weight, make some ball room in my shorts.
I can’t help myself. I reach over,
touch his head and tease softly.
‘What happened to my albatross, eh?’
‘I not bird. And I not yours, Boss.’
He sits up, suddenly fierce,
and pulls away from me.
The glint in his eyes
is burning two holes in my brain.
I smell the bush rising in the still air,
hear the gentle lap of water on the shore
and think to myself … we’ll see.
I Tell Georgie What I Know
about the Birds and the Bees
‘Have you had a woman yet?’
He blushes
and I roll my eye.
These boys are just babies.
I reach out
quick as a wink
grab his cock.
He jumps like a startled rabbit
then starts swelling
under my palm.
‘You’ve seen what a rabbit trap
can do to a foot?
You want to hold onto this thing?’
I dig my fingers in
for emphasis.
‘Cunts are like rabbit traps.
If you poke around in them
better make
damn sure
you don’t get caught.’
I’m Not Without Culture
I get my love of reading
from my mother.
Poor mother
stuck in the canefields
with a rough-as-guts husband
who only knew
The Bastard from the Bush
and nothing to console her
but Wordsworth and Pope
and even they
took months to arrive
by steamer from England.
Little wonder
she took a shine to the man
who delivered the books she ordered
in his smart new buggy.
He had an Irish-treacle drawl
just perfect for reciting poetry
and her legs fell open
at his first touch.
I was eighteen when I found out
I was sired by a stranger
on the front parlour settee,
between Canto I of Rape of the Lock
and ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud’.
Why I Like Blake
It’s the end of the first day
back at work.
We’ve sailed to near Gaba
and set anchor.
Now the boys are too tired
to do anything
but yawn
and listen
like sponges
soaking my words up
as I read aloud
from innocence and experience
then explain
the cautionary tale:
how Jesus made the lamb,
the little black boy
waits
to become the lamb,
and while he’s waiting,
the Tyger eats him
chomp
chomp
chomp.
Uncertain Grounds
I’m unsure of the grounds here
and the tide’s not telling me much.
Takemoto and I are standing at the bow
considering the shelling prospects.
‘Have you dived this ground before?’
I ask him.
‘I dive the other side of Mabuiag.
Not this side.’
I sniff.
‘You mean Old Ground?’
I refer to it the way the natives would.
‘Japanese don’t give it that name.’
‘That might explain some of your problems
with the Islanders.’
He shrugs stiffly, dismissing me.
‘When you lot are here in the Torres Strait
you should have enough respect to give
working grounds their local names.’
I turn away from him in contempt.
‘Clive, go and get the lead line.’
He takes off on his spindly legs
and fetches the line and the bar of soap.
I rub soap all over the lead weight
then drop it over the side.
I wait till it hits bottom
then pull the rope back up.
The soap’s covered in sand and shell.
‘Mixed bottom,’ Takemoto says
and I nod, halfheartedly.
‘It’s worth a go. I may as well
get suited up and see
what’s down there.’
The Bends
I’m forty-five,
my lungs have had it.
What the hell am I doing
still diving?
I’m only down a few fathoms
when I start to feel the old symptoms.
A nest of hot ants is squabbling
in my chest
and I’m starting to sweat.
I can hear the cluk clak
of the compressor above
but there’s a brick wall
between me
and a good breath of air.
The edges of light
start to fray.
Just before I slip away,
Ted floats up
and I think
you’ve come a long way, old son
with half your face gone.
A quarter moon of teeth
with no mouth
to hold them in place
grins at me
through the helmet glass.
The Treatment
This is the second night
of two days and two nights
I’ve been hanging
on the buoy anchor
like a giant bait
on a giant hook.
The boys only let me back on deck
for a few minutes at a time
—a drink, a mouthful of rice—
then I have to go back down.
It’s the only way
to absorb
all those blood-bending bubbles
still circling inside me.
Now,
the ooze I see in dark water
could be Rose’s hair,
green,
luminous,
around and over me,
the phosphorescent slime
of witches.
All the hags are flying tonight …
those who can swim, at least.
I’d drown them all
but I can’t let go
of this hook.
It’s my horse,
it’s my mother.
Sometimes I want
to bite through metal
and taste the blood
she makes.
Swish, bright towel flick
in the corner of the eye
shark!
Piss is warm
down my canvas leg.
Takemoto Rubs It In
‘Japanese don’t get bend
as much as white man.’
He’s yakking away at my back
like a bird pecking at a rhinoceros.
I’m burning the ends
of some frayed rope
with a match
and re-tying it round the cleats.
My joints still ache.
I feel as if I’ve been hit
by an underwater truck.
All I need now is an oriental
boasting session.
‘No doubt about it,’ I say heartily.
‘You’re fucking miracles,
the lot of you.’
‘Japanese not worry
how deep we go,’ he agrees.
His laughter scratches
my poor
battered ears,
then merciful silence
except for the sound
of his chest inflating.
Just let him bring up the fact
he collects more shell than I do
these days,
twice as much.
Just let him do that
then I’ll bite his head off.
‘Ah, I not so good,’
he sidesteps into fake modesty.
‘Those Shinomisaki diver are best.
They go thirty fathom, Darnley Deep.’
His voice has become a reverent whisper.
‘What’s so special about Darnley Deeps?’
I ask in spite of myself.
‘Best shell,
beautiful too,
but lot of diver throw their helmet down there.’
He puts his hands up in the air,
three inches from each side of his head
and makes a turning motion.
‘That place, diver go crazy,
unscrew helmet
then drown.
Darnley Deep full of ghost.’
‘Right-o,’ I drawl,
nipping his amateur theatrics
in the bud. ‘I get the picture.’
With a perfect sense of timing
a cloud slips over the sun.
But the elements and some
yabbering Jap
will have to come up
with a better story than that
to impress me.
I’m not afraid of ghosts.
My whole family
have passed over,
Mum and Dad
Rose and Ted.
You might say
communing with the dead
is my speciality.
I Admire the Tenacity of Cockroaches
They keep coming back
to have a feed of toejam
or to chew on the skin
in that soft, moist place
behind my ears.
When this happens
I hear a crunching
hissing sound,
and pick one off me
in the dark cabin.
It scuttles and squirms
between my fingers.
I know I’ll kill it
I just don’t know how.
The eye-for-an-eye
part of me
wants to put it in my mouth,
see if the sound it makes
when I crack through its shell
is the same sound
I heard
when it was trying
to crack through mine.
Have to Keep Moving
Over a month out,
the hold’s three quarters
full of shell,
you’d think Takemoto would
give me a break.
It must be in the Asian blood,
this determination to have it all.
‘Why you bring us to Stephen Island?’
he grumbles.
‘Why not?’
He shrugs. The wind rakes his hair.
‘We get good shell at Gaba.
Sail here,
sail there,
all the time, sail.
Why not stay one place
and work ground out?’
He stares sulkily across
the expanse of water.
I humph.
‘That’s the way your mates do it,
is it?
Leave nothing
for the poor bastard following
along behind.’
I’m applying my
you-lot-wouldn’t-understand
tone.
‘There are more important things in life
than money and
competitiveness,
son.
Us Australians know all about it.
It’s called giving a cobber
a fair go.’
Holding Ginger Rogers
Thank God for Georgie’s resilience.
He twirls through the light
and shadow
of the lamp,
moving like a dream.
He used to belong
to the Jubilee Party Dance Troupe
and when he’s had a few drinks
he holds an invisible partner
and sways round the deck.
His hips wave from side to side
like a coconut tree
caught in a gale,
his eyes are closed,
one hand on his chest
the other arm held straight out
with an open palm
as if he could pluck a star
from the low-flying sky.
‘Look at me, Boss,’
he croons
and I melt,
‘I’m Freddy Stare,
that new dancin bloke
at the movies.’
Advice
‘You not dive
so soon after bend,’
Takemoto says.
I lift my suit down
off the wooden crucifix.
The heavy canvas
thumps on deck.
My back is to him
and he can’t see me wince.
‘And you not tell
your skipper what to do,’
I respond mildly,
then feel my mouth
as it always does
twist around the sour lemon taste
of him.
‘Someone’s got to bring up
a decent load of shell.’
I cast a pointed glance
over to the small pile
Sandy and Dickie are opening.
‘If didn’t know better
I’d think the great
Takemoto Izabura
was losing his touch.’
The fat hits the fire
in his eyes.
‘That hold
almost full of shell,
time to go home.
You such good skipper?
You give your cobber fair go, eh!’
He throws my words
of a couple of days ago
back at me
then stomps off.
‘Don’t get maggoty with me, Charlie,’
I yell at his retreating back,
‘just because you’re off your game.’
I pick up the helmet,
and shake my head.
Trouble with these Japs is
they’ve got
no sense of humour.
Nose Bleed
Inside the helmet’s
raining red,
spraying
hot meat,
buttered metal,
scorching
the back of my throat.
I open the spitcock,
draw in a cool mouthful
of water
then spit.
Still it burns and burns.
Hell’s not fire
and wasteland,
it’s a red river
bursting its banks
in the cold,
cold sea.
Stigmata
‘You stubborn man, Boss,
you bloody big mess.’
It’s twilight,
Ah May’s clicking
his tongue,
dipping a rag in the bucket
then wiping my face.
The water’s turning a pretty pink,
just like the sunset.
‘My leg … ‘
I remember just before
Mt Vesuvius erupted
in my nose,
brushing up against some coral,
a corkscrewing
pain.
He gets down on his knees
and peers,
‘Swelling,’ he says. ‘Could be stingray.
Wait.’ He squints
closer.
‘Look like spine.’
Starfish Spines
Georgie sucks my thigh in the dark.
He’s on his knees
before me.
His head turns now and then
like a swimmer
to spit
a streaky oyster
of pus and blood.
His lips are the pull
of the surging tide,
the anemone’s
dark flowers.
All my wounds are tingling
with hot stars tonight.
He picks the spines
from his teeth
and grins.
Lonely
The wind’s blowing in explosive gusts,
the rigging moans.
I know he’s awake,
shielding a lantern with his blanket,
reading about his histrionic Hollywood.
I’d leave him to it,
but Rose is nowhere to be found
and anyway
I need solid flesh for company tonight.
‘Georgie,’ I say softly, so as not to wake the others.
The blanket moves. The light shifts position.
‘Georgie,’ I say more insistently.
‘What, Boss?’ the blanket mumbles.
‘Come over and talk to me.’ I hear a sigh.
He stands up in the small space,
his head almost touching the overhead,
straightens his lava lava and shuffles across,
lantern in one hand, Movie Mirror in the other.
His back is huge as he bends over …
a gigantic shadow writhes above me.
It’s all my childhood nightmares coming true
—the boogie man
come to get me.
I shiver with delight.
‘You crook?’ He sits on the bunk
his brown thigh inches
from my fingers, puts a hand on my forehead,
picks up my wrist
copying Ah May’s mother-henning.
And I think,
except for every bone in my body
having gone through a meat grinder,
