Jack Read online

  his friend get them

  from … New York.’

  He waits for me to show

  suitable awe, which I don’t.

  ‘Show it to me.’

  Reluctantly he hands over

  the one he’s reading from.

  The front cover is dog-eared,

  the date of issue, 1930.

  Betty Grable in a hoop skirt

  smiles through perfect teeth.

  Just as I thought, Yankee pulp.

  I toss it back. The pages

  flap like a bird with an injured wing.

  ‘Waste of time and energy

  if you ask me.

  You’d be better off

  learning your times tables.’

  Too Close for Comfort

  ‘Get out of the way, Clive!’

  He’s weaving round

  my legs again

  like a mangy cat.

  There’s no room to

  swing one

  but I’m tempted to try.

  My claustrophobia digs its claws in

  measuring the dimensions

  of the lugger in my mind,

  10 tons and only 30 feet long.

  And there’s even less space

  below decks

  with Takemoto and me sleeping

  aft on the bunks and

  the rest of the crew

  for’ard, near the hold.

  As the weeks go by

  that space will fill with

  more and more shell

  and they’ll have less and less space

  to lie down

  not to mention

  more companions

  drawn by the stink of shellfish.

  Those boys will have to wear

  a piece of rag

  over their open mouths at night

  if they don’t want mice

  climbing in

  and having a feed of their tonsils.

  Exasperated, my foot connects

  with Clive’s skinny shanks.

  ‘For Chrissake

  get out of the bloody way.’

  Rose-in-the-Mist

  It’s true I haven’t spoken to her

  since the crew came on board

  but I didn’t think she’d miss me.

  It’s dawn,

  I’m standing

  with my first coffee

  staring out to sea,

  the morning’s new edge

  tickling the hairs in my nose,

  when I see her

  swimming in her white dress

  just under

  thick mist.

  The gossamer material’s

  pressed flat against her skin

  and her eyes are black holes.

  But she’s so close

  and calling softly

  ‘Jack’

  just before

  the day’s new sun

  pulls her gently apart.

  Takemoto’s Tender

  He collects his bowl

  of dinner rice

  then scurries back

  head down

  to the compressor.

  I turn to Takemoto

  who’s about to join him,

  raising my eyebrows.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?

  He looks like

  a bit of a dill to me.’

  ‘He orright,’ Takemoto

  says defensively.

  My upper lip curls.

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘He orright,’ he repeats.

  ‘He frightened of your eye, that all.’

  He points to the glass one.

  ‘He think if he look at it

  he have bad luck.’

  ‘Does he, now?’

  I put my dinner plate down

  on the engine casing

  and approach the tender,

  clearing my throat.

  I catch a glimpse of

  glittering eyes

  and twitching lips.

  ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Morishita Iwaki, Captain san.’

  He’s still not looking at me

  and his voice is breathless.

  The breeze is cool on my face.

  I don’t feel like a one-eyed ogre at all

  ‘Well, Morishita Iwaki,

  have you tendered on a lugger

  before Matilda?’

  I hear Takemoto’s huff

  of annoyance behind me.

  The tender looks frantically

  around me, to Takemoto.

  The diver grates out

  something to him in Japanese

  and Morishita rattles off

  half a dictionary’s worth of words

  in reply.

  Takemoto translates

  ‘He say, yes.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  The tender’s head

  goes down again.

  He shovels in another

  spoonful of rice.

  I shake my head in amazement.

  ‘Better you than me.

  If the compressor

  seizes up while you’re diving

  and it takes him as long

  to send down a signal

  as it does

  to give

  a simple

  yes or no answer,

  you’ll be dead

  and through the torii gates

  before he can manage

  his first tug

  on the lifeline.’

  My Books

  All thinking men search for the meaning of life

  and I’m no exception.

  But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out

  I’m too smart to be searching

  on some cockroach-infested barge

  in the Coral Sea.

  Blame it on the Depression

  or the fact

  the old man left me out of his will.

  Or just as easily say it was both

  those things

  or neither

  and somewhere along the line

  I just lost the energy

  to make something of myself.

  Still … I have my books:

  Shakespeare’s plays

  and those conjuring poets

  I so admire.

  They comfort me,

  the way they ask all

  the big questions,

  then fake the answers.

  Makes me think there’s nothing

  more to it

  than that.

  Buying a Dog

  ‘You haven’t been diving yet,’

  Takemoto points out

  as if I’m past it or lost my nerve.

  ‘All skipper go diving.’

  ‘Not all,’ I say dryly.

  ‘Just the Japanese ones.’

  I’m thinking of the monopoly

  of the Japs in the Torres Strait,

  how on most Jap-run luggers

  every member of the crew

  is somebody’s relative

  and every one of them goes diving,

  stripping the waters of shell.

  I stand up with the wrench,

  hoping my spit and baling wire

  have fixed the compressor.

  I won’t give him the satisfaction

  of pushing a fist against

  the ache in the small of my back.

  ‘I’ll dive for shell

  when and if I feel like it.’

  I meet the ocean’s glare in his eyes.

  ‘The point is I pay you to do it,

  and if I’ve gone to the trouble

  of buying a dog,

  why would I bother to bark myself?’

  Possibilities

  ‘Any luck, boys?’

  It’s automatic

  that whoever’s opening

  sticks a finger in

  and pokes around

  feeling for any hardness

  lurking

  i
n the soft muscle

  of the oyster.

  ‘No luck, Boss,’

  Sandy says.

  The boys find it hard

  to get a grip on the slippery shell.

  I close my eye and hear

  their tomahawks,

  Sandy’s and

  Bing Tang, the Malay’s,

  chip, chip, chipping

  the coral and barnacles away

  and then

  the scrape, gloop,

  twist and plop

  as they creak each hairy shell open,

  poke around,

  cut the oyster meat loose

  from its gelatinous ties

  with the tips of their knives

  and flick it overboard.

  It doesn’t seem to matter

  the chances

  are only one in a thousand.

  The world is full of long odds

  that payoff.

  Any minute now

  I’ll hear a pause,

  an inturned breath

  and look

  just in time

  to see Sandy’s smoke

  fall from his full-lipped mouth

  as he holds up

  the slimy

  marble

  of a pearl.

  Creaking Sails

  It could be the inside

  of my head

  I’m listening to

  this night,

  lying on the bunk

  as moonlight

  floods through the porthole

  and the boys snore

  and grunt around me.

  That slow

  creak, creak

  of the sails

  like an unoiled

  dungeon door

  opening and closing.

  Nothing comes through

  but it doesn’t stop me

  staring

  at the closed hatch

  just in case.

  Teasing

  Those Papuan boys understand

  tokboi,

  a kind of pidgin English

  you might use

  with a two year old

  and they can parrot back

  more complicated phrases,

  but they really

  don’t have a clue.

  So who

  could blame me

  for my bit of harmless

  teasing?

  Calling their mothers dingoes,

  watching them smile and nod

  then repeat it back to me.

  Ah May’s full of gloom and doom,

  his pigtail wagging,

  which of course

  just encourages me.

  ‘You shouldn’t muck around like that, Boss.

  Those New Guinea boys

  are powerful fellas,

  you get a curse stuck on you

  you don’t watch out.’

  The Warm Water

  Makes Them Rise

  We’re bringing Takemoto up

  through a nest of sea snakes

  tiger-banded

  tying themselves in knots

  around the lugger.

  I’m mesmerised

  by the pattern

  repeated

  by the tight-packed

  greasy muscles of them

  whipping,

  the wet

  ricocheting

  flap of them.

  The suit’s thick enough

  he won’t get bitten

  and they fall away like streamers

  back into the ocean

  as he’s raised,

  except one

  which curls around the lifeline

  and leaps onto Bing Tang

  on deck.

  He squeals and jumps

  hysterically

  ‘Oi! Oi! Aiyee!’

  It lands

  with a wet slap

  at my feet.

  With the tomahawk

  I cut

  and cut.

  Still

  the small bits writhe.

  TEN DAYS OUT

  … NORTH OF MOA …

  If It’s a Dream,

  Don’t Let It End

  I don’t know if I’m awake

  or asleep

  but I’m hard as a hammer

  and aching to pound something

  when I smell Rose’s perfume,

  that scent I never liked

  she bought from the

  travelling salesman.

  It’s as cloying

  as the locked-up flowers

  in a carriage hearse.

  She steps out

  of the shadows,

  parts the skirt of her

  flowing white dress,

  and mounts me.

  She’s wet already,

  her muscles grip the tip

  of my cock,

  as she slides down

  just like a greased monkey

  down a pole.

  You Get Talking

  ‘You know, Boss,

  when Island boys are born

  they turn

  like baby turtles

  to the sea.’

  Sandy’s always chatty.

  There’s not much else to do

  after dinner

  but talk, drink, and play cards.

  He’s playing a slow Island song

  on his battered guitar.

  Smoking my pipe,

  I’m savouring

  the sun going down

  in a showoff blaze,

  that smell of soy sauce

  so much more exotic

  wafting up the twilight nose

  than on the tongue,

  but most of all

  the thought

  that Rose

  might come again tonight.

  Sandy’s music is loosening

  some old knots in my head.

  ‘My mother, in the middle

  of the Queensland dry,

  used to dress Ted and me

  in sailor suits,

  starched white collars,

  breeches, shined shoes,

  the whole bit,

  then drive us in the buggy

  to the neighbours

  for afternoon tea.’

  I don’t know why I’ve said this,

  why it’s important,

  but he laughs,

  his mouth a cave

  rimmed with teeth.

  He plays another chord,

  the deck beneath me shifts.

  ‘Ted … that your brother?’

  The lantern on the mast shakes

  a little in the breeze.

  ‘He drowned,’ I say.

  The silence seems to ask

  for something more

  so I add

  ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  My Sheepdog Conscience

  Trouble is

  I’m no sheep

  and although sometimes

  it circles annoyingly

  and nips at my heels,

  my sheepdog conscience

  is more persistent

  than clever.

  It can round me up,

  it can even

  pester me

  into a corner

  but it hasn’t yet

  figured out

  how to nudge

  the gate shut.

  Weighing Georgie Up

  What goes on in your head, son?

  I watch you pour buckets

  of water over the deck

  clearing off the shell shards

  and weed,

  brown arms twisting

  in the heat-oiled sun.

  I know you’re lost

  in your lustrous Hollywood

  of the page,

  the stills of Yank movies

  and movie stars

  you’ve never seen

  galloping

  through your head

  like Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik

&nbsp
; on his dusty way

  to a swooning Agnes Ayres.

  As if you hear me thinking

  you look straight up.

  I turn away,

  busy myself

  adjusting the jib.

  I wish I could remember

  what I’ve hoarded

  from way back when I

  was your age.

  No fly-spotted gossip

  about who’s shook on who

  ten thousand miles away.

  Instead, in Tommy Waynetta’s

  weighing shed on TI,

  I learned how to tell

  the weight of a pearl shell

  within an eighth

  of a pound

  and the quality within

  half a degree,

  with my bare hands.

  How would I grade you, Georgie?

  A double-A

  or a fair-to-middlin C?

  From so far away

  it’s hard to tell.

  And if I can’t touch,

  I can’t judge

  just how you weigh up.

  Full Moon

  I tell them

  there is no demon,

  there is no mouth

  in the sky

  to swallow them whole.

  Still the Papuans

  beat empty jam tins

  on deck

  and wail their fear

  into song.

  It’s not the fullness

  that scares them

  but what takes up

  an equal space

  on the dark side.

  I sit in shadow

  watch them turn

  their black

  bat faces

  to the moon.

  What is loose

  inside me

  swells to fill

  a perfect circle.

  Social Niceties

  I thought I would know

  the smell of the authorities

  anywhere,

  but I’m not sure about

  this bloke.

  Ever since

  he stepped on board

  from his dinghy

  my nose has been

  prickling,

  trying to pick up

  his scent.

  ‘My lugger’s anchored

  in the cove at Bourke Island,’

  he says and points to where

  a tiny speck

  bobs in the distance,

  green mountains rising behind it.

  ‘Lucky you came along

  and my boy saw you.

  You wouldn’t

  happen to have

  any spare

  compressor bearings?’

  He’s been checking out

  all the gear since

  he came on board

  with sly,

  speculative

  kinks of his head.

  When I don’t answer,

  just stand in front of him

  like a block,

  he starts nervously chattering.

  ‘We were going to work this patch