Tim Winton by Breath Page A

minutes while Sando took the next wave. He made it look easy and suddenly it did feel easy. I couldn't even wait for him to paddle back over. I paddled up to the impact zone and in a moment of overblown confidence put myself in the path of something the size of the Angelus town hall. I didn't understand how wildly I'd overreached until the moment I got to my feet and felt the whole edifice bulge and mutate beneath me.
    For half a second I saw the shadow of the reef far below. The heavy board fell from under me like a leaf and I sprawled down the hard, unyielding face without it, bouncing from hip to hip, unable to break the skin of the water. I was falling down a staircase - one that never seemed to end, which collapsed on me and shot me skyward before snatching me down again so its rubble-spill might drive me headlong across the reef, rattling and wracking me all the way. I bounced and pinged and shot, winded and half blind, across the shoal, and when the reef fell away the turbulence ploughed me so deep and so fast I barely had a chance to equalize to save my eardrums. I knew not to fight it, but I was nearly gone when the sea let me go. I came up choking, sobbing, kicking at the surface BREATH
    as though I could climb into purer oxygen.
    By the time Sando reached me I'd regained some composure but he'd seen it all. I was two hundred yards from where I'd caught the wave and my shorts were gone entirely.
    Well, he said with a grin. That one rang your bell.
    He pulled me onto his Brewer and said nothing about my bare arse. My board lay bright in the distance. He let me lie there a while before he swam off to get it and when he came back he called it a day.
    I paddled in after him and hoped there had been no witnesses.
    We didn't go looking for Loonie that afternoon, but we knew he'd show up eventually. Eva fed us fish burgers and let us prattle until fatigue overtook us and we lapsed into stupefied silence. As the storm-front darkened the sky, we hung in hammocks on the verandah where the wind was eerie-warm. I was sore and so drowsy I kept falling asleep. The sound of magpies and wattlebirds was a conversation going over my head, a kind of chatter I felt I'd understand if only I kept swimming up from sleep towards wakefulness.
    Later in the day the dog barked and Loonie came stumping along the rutted drive. It was raining by then. He pushed the dog away and hesitated before coming across the yard to the verandah steps.
    The plaster cast was slung like a weapon across his chest.
    Come on, called Sando. Get outta the rain.
    Loonie just stood there.
    Don't be such a goddamn punk, said Eva, swinging out of her hammock.
    She stared at him a moment, hands on hips, before limping inside, and only then did Loonie come upstairs to stand against the verandah rail. His sunbleached hair was flat on his skull and the calico sling wet through.
    Eva came back with a towel. He took it without acknowledging her.
    Well? he said.
    Eva snorted and went inside. She closed the French doors a tad too firmly. Sando considered Loonie for some moments and then lay back to swing a bit. Loonie glanced at me. I averted my eyes.
    All this time, said Sando. Surfing the place on my own. Watching it, biding my time, keeping my little secret. Funny, you know, but it was nice to share. A real surprise but it felt good. So maybe the best part about having a secret is letting someone in on it. Eh, Pikelet?
    I shrugged, unable to keep from smiling.
    How big?
    Sando sighed. Big enough to make it interesting, he said. Big enough to rip the boy-wonder's shorts off.
    Twenty foot, I said.
    Fifteen, maybe. You rode it at fifteen, Pikelet, eighteen tops.
    Well, he got waves, said Loonie dully.
    Yeah, he made two. He did good.
    Loonie stood there and took it in.
    I shat meself, I said. I took the worst floggin. I freaked.
    But he did the deed, said Sando. Made himself a little bit of history.
    It took me a moment to absorb what he'd said. For if Sando was the first to