Blueback (3 page)

Before the summer holidays Abel's mother wrote to tell him that a new abalone diver would be working their part of the coast this season. She was worried because she'd heard bad things about him. People said he was a reef stripper. But she had good news as well. Mad Macka's family had decided to give his boat to Abel. Boat, trailer, the lot. All his. Abel counted the days.

On the first day of the summer holidays, Abel's mother met the bus out on the highway. He saw her waiting in the truck on the gravel and he ran to her with his bags flying.

The moment he saw the green sea again his skin prickled. As they came out of the forest and onto Jackson land he hooted and crowed. The pair of them laughed all the way to the house. That night he stood on the jetty and breathed the salt air.

Next morning they dived for abalone off Robbers Head and Blueback flitted around them, insistent as a dog at the dinner table. Abel chucked him under the chin and felt the current the old fish made in the water.

That afternoon Abel stood on the beach beside Macka's big abalone boat. It was a five-metre catamaran, wide and stable as a house.

‘I did some work on the motors,' said his mother. ‘Four-stroke fifties. They're good outboards.'

Abel climbed up and stood on the deck. He tried not to think about the last time he was in this boat. The dive flag hung limp.

‘You can clean it up yourself,' said his mother. ‘We'll take the compressor off it today. We won't be needing the hookah.'

‘What a boat,' said Abel.

‘Let's get to work, then. Empty that icebox.'

Abel took it slowly with the boat. His mother showed him how to handle it, how to use the echo sounder and the radios. He learnt how to trim the outboards in different sea conditions. For a few days they stayed in the bay. Then they moved out to Robbers Head and finally they took it out onto the dark, open sea. Abel steered them out across the sloping backs of oceanic swells as the land shrank to a long smudge behind them.

All afternoon they drifted for snapper, trailing heavy handlines with baits of squid. The snapper and morwong came up, flashing from the deep. Abel laid them in ice and felt the wind in his hair.

About three o'clock a huge, terrifying snort went up beside their boat. Then another across the bow and two more off the stern. A foul mist rose over them and Abel saw the glistening backs of right whales all around.

‘Look at that,' said his mother. ‘We used to hunt them. Your father's family, the Jacksons, came here as whalers. Used to sit up on the ridge in a lookout and when they saw a pod of whales come by they'd row out in longboats and harpoon them.'

‘I wonder if they remember, the whales.'

‘Who knows. I hope not.'

Abel and his mother stopped fishing and just watched the whales.

‘I used to feel bad about it,' said his mother, ‘even though it was before our time. But the sea has taken its fair share of us. I think we must be even by now.'

Abel thought of all the crosses up behind the orchard.

A whale cruised past with its mouth wide. It strained water through its baleen, rolling as it fed.

Abel laughed. ‘Glad I'm not plankton, that's all I can say.'

That summer, as his skill and confidence grew, Abel took his boat up and down the coast exploring the long lonely stretches that made him feel small. Land and sea were so big he became dizzy just imagining how far they went. He felt like a speck, like a bubble on the sea left by a breaking wave, here for a moment and then gone. He pulled into tiny sheltered coves and swam with his mother in turquoise water beneath streaky cliffs and trees loud with birds. Some days he sped close in to long sugary beaches. He stayed just behind the breakers and was showered with their spray and saw the great, strange land through the wobbly glass of the waves. He saw the sun melting like butter on white dunes. Dolphins rose in his bow wave and he slapped them playfully with his rolled up towel. He drifted amidst huge schools of tuna as they rose around him, feeding like packs of wild dogs on terrified baitfish that leapt across his boat.

Some days out east, he saw a big red jet boat working its way along the coast with its dive flags streaming.

‘Costello,' said his mother. ‘The abalone diver. He's a hard case.'

‘He'll be here soon,' said Abel.

‘I know,' said his mother.

‘What about Blueback?'

‘It's not just Blueback I'm worried about,' said his mother. ‘It's the whole bay. People say he takes everything he sees.'

‘So what do we do?'

‘Nothing. We stay out of his way.'

‘But Mum, what about Blueback?'

‘He'll have to look after himself.'

‘Can't we keep this bloke out of the bay?'

‘This patch of land's ours, Abel. But the water belongs to everybody. Costello has a licence to take abalone. There's nothing we can do about it.'

‘Can't someone stop him?'

‘Only the Fisheries Department. They've been watching him.'

‘But out here he can get away with anything, Mum. This is the middle of nowhere.'

Abel looked out across the moving water. He knew that when the time came he wouldn't just do nothing. He couldn't do nothing.

Abel swam with Blueback every chance he had. He tempted him with squid and cray legs. He felt the broad blade of the fish's tail against his chest and touched those flat white teeth with his fingertips. Abel held his breath and stared into the groper's face, trying to read it. Blueback swam down to his crack in the reef and looked out with moon eyes.

It was dawn when Abel heard the jet motor burbling into Longboat Bay. He climbed out of bed and found his way to the verandah. His mother was already there. The red boat slid in around the point and drifted with its motor off. An anchor splashed in the quiet. Then the compressor started up and two divers went over the side.

Abel's mother watched through binoculars.

‘Things aren't the same, Abel. It's getting harder to hold on to good things.'

‘Let's go out and cut his hoses,' said Abel.

‘Don't talk like that.'

‘Well, we have to stop him somehow.'

‘We don't know that he's doing anything wrong.'

‘And what happens when he starts doing wrong?'

She sighed. They went indoors.

At breakfast Abel's mother looked sad and thoughtful. All these holidays he'd been feeling bigger and older. Now that he looked properly he saw that his mother was ageing too. It was a surprise. To him she had always seemed the same age. In a year or so he'd be as tall as her.

‘I've been wondering,' she said. ‘Do you think I should sell up?'

Abel was speechless.

‘I mean, I could buy a house inland,' she said. ‘We could be together more.'

‘But, Mum.'

‘I suppose you're used to the hostel now. Living with your mother wouldn't be the same.'

‘I hate the hostel,' said Abel. ‘But you can't leave here.'

‘But what if it's the best thing?'

‘For who?'

‘For you, Abel. Wouldn't you like more money? If I sold this place you'd have more chance to have things. We wouldn't have to work so hard fishing, planting, mending. Aren't you tired of being hard-up for money?'

‘Mum, I don't care about money. And I love the fishing and growing stuff. This is what I want, the house, the land, the water. This is my life. I never want to leave.'

‘But you'll have to leave sooner or later. There's a whole world out there. Believe me, Abel. You'll leave.'

‘But not for good. And what about you? What would you be like away from the sea, Mum?'

She pushed her egg around the plate and chewed her lip. ‘I'd be okay.'

‘Tell the truth.'

‘Abel, I always tell the truth.'

‘Mum.'

‘Oh, all right then, I hate it inland. I can't bear the towns and cities. Of course I want to be here. I'm close to everything in Longboat Bay. All our memories. Your father. This is my place.'

Abel poured the tea. ‘Are you lonely here on your own?'

‘I miss you,' she murmured. ‘I miss you terribly. But no, I'm not lonely. Sometimes I feel I should be. But this place is a kind of friend to me. Maybe I'm a bit odd.'

Abel thought about that. It was true, she wasn't like other people. She certainly wasn't like his schoolmates' mothers. Other mothers bought fashionable clothes and drove flash cars and chirped like birds. Abel's mother was quiet and tough and sun-streaked. She did things differently. Her hands were lined and calloused. She looked like the land and sea had made her.

‘I want to stay here, Abel. I want to die here.'

‘Mum, you're not that old. Don't talk like that.'

‘Like what? I don't intend to die tomorrow. I plan to kick the bucket as a very old lady. But I want to do it here, not in some awful town away from the sea.'

Abel laughed. ‘Well, that's okay then.'

He got up and went to the window. The jet boat had worked along the bay a few hundred metres. Abel picked up the binoculars and saw a diver hoisting up a huge bag of abalone. Another bag came up. Then a string of bleeding fish wired to a red buoy. Abel began to sweat.

‘Costello's giving the bay a real hammering,' he said. ‘He'll be at Robbers Head by lunchtime the way he's going. There won't be anything left on the reef at all. It's wrong, Mum.'

His mother said nothing.

‘Mum?' he pleaded.

‘Costello's a hard case, Abel. He's a vicious man. You're thirteen years old.'

Abel put the binoculars down and kicked the wall.

After breakfast they pulled weeds in the vegetable garden. It was boring work in the hard sun. The soil was full of tiny bones that cut their fingertips. Abel saw that his hands had gone soft at school. His mother hummed a tune. As the morning wore on he grew more agitated. He kept an eye on the bay, saw bag after bag of abalone hauled up and it was like being pricked by fishbones all over.

‘Mum,' he said. ‘I can't stand it.'

‘We don't have any choice.'

‘Well, I'm making my choice.'

He ran downhill to the house and grabbed his wetsuit off the verandah rail.

‘Abel, don't!'

He stumped along the jetty. As he leapt into his boat he heard his mother thudding along the timbers. He checked his fuel and started his outboards. His mother's wetsuit dropped onto the deck. He looked up. She was casting off the lines.

‘This is stupid and dangerous,' she said.

‘So why come?'

‘Because if you went on your own it would be twice as stupid and twice as dangerous.'

Abel throttled up and they swerved out, thumping across the bay with the wind streaming in their hair.

When they got to the anchored boat at Robbers Head Abel eased the boat down to dead slow then cut his motors so they could drift up alongside. Costello's compressor roared and his flags snapped in the breeze.

The deck of Costello's boat was awash with blood. Abel had speared fish nearly every day but he had never seen such slaughter as this. Fish lay in huge slippery mounds and so many of them were under-size. Abel saw blue morwong, trevally, sweep, boarfish, harlequins, breaksea cod, groper, jewfish and samsons stiffening in the sun or quivering slowly to death. Behind the steering console stood crates of writhing abalone and a box of illegal crayfish.

‘We should chuck the abs back over the side,' Abel said. ‘They might survive.'

‘You step on that boat, son, and you'll get horribly hurt. I won't have it.'

Abel sighed and pushed his boat clear. They drifted back in the breeze away from the dive zone.

‘Now what?' asked Abel.

Abel's mother was snapping on a weight-belt and wetting her mask.

‘I want you to stay with the boat, you understand? It's important.'

‘But Mum!'

She went over the side before he could argue any further. He watched her fins flash away into the distance. Abel had no intention of staying dry. He anchored the boat, pulled on his gear and rolled out into the clear, cool water.

He swam across to the red boat, climbed up the ladder and began emptying crates of abalone over the side. Then he dived back in and followed the bright, trailing hoses down to the blossom of bubbles that marked where the divers worked. Once he found them he swam back to the surface and watched from there. In a scattered mass behind them, falling like snow, abalone were finding their way back onto the reef. Some were dead and knots of little fish picked at them. But the divers didn't look back. They lay on the rugged bottom with spearguns.

One diver pointed something out to the other. Bubbles smoked back from his head so that he looked like a dragon. There was a blue flash ahead of them. Abel's heart sank. He knew exactly what it would be. He took a breath and dived.

He was only halfway to the bottom when he saw Blueback dart out from behind a boulder. He was as big as a barrel; he made a big target. A spear flashed silver. It flew by Blueback's head and whanged into hard rock. The fish shuddered for a moment, staring at the divers and then retreated a little way.

Abel knew why. It was all the abalone he'd tipped into the water. Blueback was wary but he couldn't resist all that food. Behind the divers, swarms of smaller fish were feasting and Blueback wanted to be in on it. Only the two men lay in his way. He flicked back and forward, excited, blinded by his appetite.

Abel ran out of air. He shot back to the surface. Blueback was doomed now, he knew it. In a moment or two a spear would hit him in the gills and the water would go pink with his blood.

Then suddenly Abel's mother appeared between the divers and the fish. She surged out from behind a rock and put her body in the way. Blueback swirled around her playfully. No, Abel thought, you stupid fish. Don't be friendly! Hole up, rack off, go away!

One diver reloaded. Then the both of them crept forward, billowing bubbles. Their spearguns glinted like shiny stings. Abel could see his mother was short of breath now. Her strength was going. The fish kept circling her, exposing its side to the spearguns. Abel began to panic. His mother would drown down there. The fish would die. These men would beat him to mush.

Then, in a blur, the fish was gone and Abel's mother came pumping and kicking hard for the surface. He swam over to where she punched up into the air. He dragged her mask off and let her heave and blow. She felt limp in his arms as he swam her to the boat.

‘Stupid fish,' she wheezed, hanging weakly off the ladder.

‘What happened?'

‘I told you to stay out of the water. And what about that idiotic business with the abalone? Abel, you —'

‘Mum, what
happened
?
He was fooling around and then – whoosh – he was off.'

‘He wanted to play. I didn't have any air left. Those fellas were determined to get him.'

‘So he got smart, eh?'

‘Not likely.'

‘Well?'

‘I biffed him one. I punched him in the head.'

‘Costello?'

‘No, Abel. The
fish
.
I thumped him one. To scare him off.'

Abel laughed. ‘Man alive! And it worked.'

‘Took off like a rocket. He won't like me anymore, that's for sure. Probably got a black eye.'

‘Well, it's better than ending up as fish fingers.'

‘Let's go, Abel. Those blokes will be a little hot under the collar. They'll need to decompress a while before they come up, so let's be off while we can.'

‘Will there be trouble?'

‘Probably. We've done it now.'

Abel helped her aboard and took her home. It was true, she wasn't your average mother. Abel decided he didn't care about average. Out here average didn't seem worth bothering with.