An Open Swimmer by Tim Winton

Author:Tim Winton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742537368
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia

Jerra’s hands were numb on the wheel as he pulled into the rutty dirt patch. He switched off, looking at the STAFF ONLY sign with the footprint in the middle. There were tears of dew on the frosty blisters of paint. The engine was cooling with that clicking that people made when they slept on their backs. He slammed the sucked-in door of the VW extra hard; it was getting a bit tough to close. A car started somewhere, a grinding whirr of starter motor, a brief fart, and silence. It started the second time, wheezing, the choke out six feet. Sixty feet, he thought.

He pulled his coat off as he went in through the back door that connected with Al’s house. The dunny was between the shop and the back door, probably a security measure; he wondered if they had the septic on, or if they ever emptied it, though he never dared find out. A generation of thick turds packed into one confined space, behind that peeling door. Even the paintwork felt it. It was a relief to escape into the stench of sweets and cold meat pies.

Al met him at the Coke fridge, rubbing his hands on the apron that was stiff with filth. His hands were blue.

‘Two mornings, an’ not late, eh? I don’ belief it.’

‘Said I would be on time, didn’t I?’

Al didn’t look much like an Italian. It was the moustache, Jerra decided; he didn’t have the moustache. And he was probably taller than five one. He could have been forty, he might have been fifty.

‘Pies in the oven,’ Al said at his blue hands.

Jerra separated the frozen pies and piled them onto the tray. Could have dropped one and broken a toe.

Then there were the sausage rolls, the pasties, and then the frozen red frankfurters he dropped like pink fingers into the big scummy pot. Rosa came in as he was piling up the mountains of potato chips in their loud orange packets.

‘’Ello, Jerra,’ she said, finding something in her teeth as she crossed to the till. ‘Big test today.’ She laughed. ‘Sat’dee makes yer or breaks yer.’

‘Can’t wait.’

Al was watching, cleaning his hairy ear with the rubber end of a pencil.

Rosa was fat, a distended, turgid hot-dog about to burst its red skin. Her hands often strayed over the open boxes, smelling of the hard sweetness of lollies. Jerra pretended not to notice.

At nine Al went out the back to read the paper on his stinking dunny. Jerra heard the noises that disgusted him.

Rosa began at him again. She thumped him on the shoulder, and he could feel her mouth stinging his cheek.

‘Two years of Uni,’ she said laughing, ‘for this?’

‘Yep.’

‘Dad took me outta school when I was thirteen.’

‘Why?’

‘Said it would be better leaving to work for him, than go on with school and end up on the dole.’

‘Hmph.’

‘Maybe he was right, I dunno,’ she said, sucking something red, round and sweet. Her dress seemed to belong to someone else. Like the bags they put the fruit in, fruit always soft and a bit bruised.

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