Jack, p.5
Jack, page 5
is they’re just too proud.
‘It was accident,’
Takemoto says now,
patiently,
as if I’m a child that just
won’t let the matter go.
‘I very happy
you save me.’
I strain my ears for the
mockery, but don’t hear it.
Something in me deflates a bit.
‘What about your mate?
What’s he got to say
for himself? ‘I point to Morishita.
‘You know he don’t speak
velly good English,’ he admonishes me.
‘I also know he don’t tender velly well.’
Takemoto’s face turns
a deeper shade in the shadows.
‘All Japanese want Japanese tender. It right.’
‘I tell you what’s right,
safety and efficiency.
Bing Tang.’ I turn to the Malay
conspicuously.
‘I’ve changed my mind about diving.
You’ll be my tender.
First thing tomorrow we start.
And you don’t dive for a few more days,
Takemoto. Let Morishita watch Bing Tang
and see how it’s done.’
The light flickers over his predatory
cheekbones as his jaw tightens,
but he doesn’t say any more.
‘Safety and efficiency.’
I take another swig from my mug.
‘That’s what it’s all about.’
I snap my pocketknife closed.
How Hard Can It Be
to Pick Up Shell?
It’s true
I’m more used to salvage work
but I’m sure
it’s just a matter
of adjusting my grip
to fit the size
of what I’m picking up.
After all,
if I grab
a poached egg
on a thin woman
in the wilds of Borneo
or
a mango whopper
on a barmaid in Sydney
the principle’s the same.
A tit’s a tit.
Fingers
I’ve told Georgie to do it,
slick the soap
over my hands
and wrists
to make it easier
to slip
into the canvas cuffs
of the suit.
‘Between my fingers too,’
I order, a little breathless.
The lubricated tips of his own
are bliss
up and down
inside the tight space
between mine.
When he’s finished
I say
‘Again,’ gruffly.
‘Make them nice and slippery.
I wouldn’t want a
rash
now would I?’
Inside my Dirigible
Pulled into the suit on deck
I’m a giant marshmallow
trussed up with ropes,
weighed down at waist and feet
like one of those Zeppelins
I’ve seen pictures of
anchored to an airstrip
and waiting for its cargo of passengers.
There is one difference:
instead of floating
champagne socialites
above the calm and pretty Atlantic,
old Cap’n Jack
would get their feet wet,
might even get some bubbles
up their fancy dryland noses
as I take them
down
down
down
to the most exclusive view
I know.
Entry
I fling myself backwards
in an awkward
crucifixion pose,
and think
as water bursts around me
this entry
is just how
I remember
my first root:
all over
before
it had even begun.
Coming Home
Sinking through a stream
of bubbles then adjusting
the air escape valve
and falling
through blue light
green light, white light
with a touch of
yellow
flickering.
Everything outside
sways and tumbles,
all inside the suit
is still
as I touch down
with a puff of sand
feeling the burden
of my own weight again
then tugging the lifeline
to let the Malay know
I’ve hit bottom,
my one good eye
in its goldfish bowl
swimming
from side to side.
Old Injuries
You know, Ted,
I don’t really blame you
for poking my eye out
with that stick.
Kids will be kids
and you always
had a mean streak
more than kid-size
wide.
Except down here
in this Garden of Eden
I do blame you.
I can’t see it all
without turning my head.
I can’t see it all in one go:
eels slithering through seagrass,
schools of fish exploding
from corals
red, orange, green, mauve
anemones opening
and closing their petals
in ecstatic shivers.
Come-by-Chance Camouflage
On this mixed bottom
it’s elusive,
creviced
in the midst of weed and sea fern,
and I’m walking
into the headwind of the tide
to find it.
Almost on all fours,
I push off with one foot,
and then another,
facing the ground.
I’m my own worst enemy,
kicking up a sandstorm
then reaching blindly beneath it
for what was there all the time,
a half moon
mother-of-pearl shell
hiding itself
the way I’ve always hidden
under come-by-chance
camouflage.
First Dive
‘Not bad for an old bloke
on his first go round, eh?’
I’m sitting on deck,
Bing Tang has just
untwisted my helmet—
a whoof of air.
My head feels like
a train coming out
of a tunnel
and I’m blinking in the bright light
wiping away cold sweat
from my forehead.
I hold up my bag of shells,
at least twenty of them,
for Takemoto to see.
I can read ‘beginner’s luck’
in the turn of his lip,
and the narrowing eyes.
Someone should tell him
when a Jap squints
it’s doubly unattractive.
‘Orright,’ he allows sullenly.
He looks with longing
to where his diving suit
hangs on the rack
then walks away for’ard.
I turn to Sandy.
‘Get some fishing lines
down there … plenty big fish
for dinner,
bream and trevally.’
I rub my stomach and grin.
‘Lots more shell too,’ I say
half again louder.
‘I’ll take a brief spell
then go back down.
Crikey,
it’s a beautiful working ground.’
I take a lungful of bracing air.
‘Who’d be alive
and not underwater today,
eh?’
Getting Burnt
‘Please, Boss, don’t
bring that stuff up.’
Sandy’s face is the colour of putty.
I’ve just thrown the net bag
onto the deck with a spray of water
and Bing Tang’s un-suiting me.
Sandy’s gaze is nailed
to what’s sitting
on top of the shell:
a handful of skinny black
whipfern lengths.
When Dickie upends the bag
the hard-as-ebony pieces
make a satisfying clanking sound.
Sandy moans.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
I’m fast losing patience.
‘It’s only whipfern.’
He’s shaking his head.
‘No … It’s God’s fingers got burned
from smotin all them sinners …
He cool them down
in the water.’
I make a grunting sound
in the back of my throat.
Those fire and brimstone Sunday Schools
have a lot to answer for.
Takemoto’s laughing
as Sandy edges his way
around the pile
as if, any minute,
the whipfern will scuttle over
and grab him round the ankles.
But I’ve had enough
of his nonsense.
There’s enough real things in the world
to send a man to the giggle house
without inventing them.
‘Don’t be so flamin silly.
If anything
He’s put them down there
to hide his own bungling.
Who’d believe in a God
who can’t even manage
a halfway decent blaze
without burning himself?’
She’s Better than Real
The air in the cabin’s close and hot,
gritty and stinking
from all the snoring, farting men,
and I’m buggered
from my first day’s diving.
But not so tired
I don’t wait for the swish
and crackle of Rose’s dress.
When she appears at the edge
of that patch of shadow
near the hold,
she flutters like a moth’s wing
in the porthole moonlight.
She’s teasing me,
moving in and out
of my vision’s hungry grasp.
She comes closer and then
it’s not unwashed men
I smell
but all the aromatic dusts of the East.
Tell me why I should care
those spices are meant
to preserve the dead.
They waft into my open mouth,
onto my willing tongue,
like the sweetest cinnamon.
Rambling Rose
‘What she like?’
Georgie fondles the photograph
as if touch alone could call up
something solid through the glass.
The afternoon sun falls like a plank
at our feet.
I’m torn between telling him
to keep his hands off her,
and an apathy
that makes my limbs feel
as if they’re wading through mud.
I gently take the picture.
‘When we first met
she said her mother named
all the daughters after flowers.
She had skin like alabaster,
lips like pale petals,
breasts that smelt
of ironbark honey in the sun.’
I put her back on the shelf.
‘What happen?’
I meet his gaze.
‘I couldn’t hold her in the end.
She spilled all over and under me,
I was the broken fence
she grew wild on.’
‘That a sad story.’
Although he probably hasn’t understood
a word I’ve said,
his brow creases.
He gives a slow nod of sympathy.
His hands lift
palm up
in resigned acceptance
of life’s inevitable
slings and arrows.
He’s practising his acting.
If there was a mirror in the cabin,
he’d be checking his stance.
I shrug.
I’m bored with my own
flowery lyricism,
bored with a woman who’s six feet under,
bored with Georgie’s hammed-up emotions.
My voice is colourless.
‘She was nothing special,
just a common white rose.
You see them everywhere
up the East Coast,
choking backyard dunnies,
usually.’
The Naked Neap
Like any dedicated
peeping tom
I’m hanging uncomfortably
over the bow
salt spray
stiffening my hair
just to watch
the ocean
while it’s naked
and breathing,
transparent water
all the way
to the bottom.
Jellyfish
‘Can’t go down,’
Takemoto says.
One minute the water
was clear and now
a hundred or more jellyfish
are dragging themselves
and their poisonous tentacles
alongside the lugger.
For a minute I can’t take
my eyes off their
deceptive beauty,
veins visible
through upended cups,
the faintest quivering.
‘Back in Japan you eat them
as tucker, don’t you!’
As I say it, I try to imagine
the taste of see-through rubber.
‘No!’ He’s as vehement
as if I’ve just suggested
he roots his mother
every Sunday after prayers.
‘We eat trochus meat though,’ he
concedes. ‘It like Japanese abalone.’
I straighten up.
‘This ground’s just about cleaned out
anyway, thanks to your overzealous mates.’
I choose my next words carefully.
I don’t want him to know
I’m unsure of myself.
‘It’s a while
since I’ve been in the Torres Strait.’
Try thirty years!
‘Are there any working grounds
you laps
haven’t had a go at yet?’
‘West of Badu still good,’
he says,
and by his
‘batten down the hatches’ tone
I know I’ll get no more
than that.
Still,
it’s enough.
I turn away and yell at the boys
that we’re headed for West of Badu.
Suspicions
The lid is off my biscuit tin,
the one that holds
my silver coins.
I’m sure
I left it on
tight.
It’s not that I’m compulsive
at checking,
or a hoarder.
I just like to keep a handle
on the few things
in this world
I have left.
Fathers
Sandy’s and Georgie’s fathers
used to work on the same
trochus boat.
Now they’re talking
about the old blokes
with affection,
swapping stories.
‘What about yours, Boss?’
Sandy asks.
For a moment I can’t think
of a single thing
to say about my father,
except he wasn’t.
I trawl my brain.
‘Let’s see …
He would let things
breed in the cane for months
before setting it alight
then he’d pick off the snakes
and rats with a shotgun
when they came streaming out.’
I don’t tell them about
the half-bottle of rum nights
when he would pretend to fall asleep
then wake,
and tighten his fists,
his soused eye falling
on me,
the bastard son.
‘Yep,’ I say,
‘my old man taught me
patience and timing.
He taught me to harness
the element of surprise.’
Shaving
There is one advantage
to being a bastard.
At least I don’t have
to see
my father’s face
as I slide the soapy blade
vertically down one side
from hairline to beard
then up the other
from beard to cheekbone.
It’s the glass eye
I like most
reflected back at me.
It has no memories
of the man
I could have been
and no way to accuse me
—unlike my good one,
that hopeless sentimentalist,
staring back from the shaving mirror
bewildered.
Sweet Nothings
Rose is starting to appear
at odd times
through the day
so I just catch a glimpse
of her smile,
or her dress,
up against the sail
as she hangs on
