Dirt Music by Tim Winton

Author:Tim Winton [Winton, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Western Australia, Azizex666, Fishers, Hitchhiking, Middle Aged Women, Alienation (Social Psychology)
ISBN: 9780330490269
Google: Z4f7ygAACAAJ
Amazon: 1740944879
Barnesnoble: 1740944879
Goodreads: 35306
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

That night he coats himself in repellent and lies on his swag to watch the stars and listen to the tide fill the bay. He still has flashes behind the eyes now and then but not enough to keep him awake. At dawn he sees a wallaby observing him from the scrub, eyes bright, ears up. Birdsong drifts down the ridge high and gay as playground noise. The wallaby blurs away the moment he moves.

While the billy heats on the fire, Fox climbs over the rocks to where the tide has receded again. The limestone buttresses of the cape trickle and seep. With a flat stone he knocks a few oysters open and sucks the meat and liquor out. He walks seaward through the puddles and freshets the tide has left. A mile out the sea is the weirdest milky blue.

In one pellucid tidepool he reaches down for a gorgeous blue-spotted stone but he hesitates when its markings begin to move.

Blue spots morph into yellow dabs. The stone opens an eye and— fuck!—he recoils in shock. An octopus, a blue-ringed octopus, no less. And his fingers only a handspan from touching it. A bite would have killed him before he reached camp. Total nervous shutdown. Gone.

He hurries back to his fire, makes tea and eats a couple of muesli bars. The girl bothers him. Nora. He wonders what he could have done.

He’s packing his gear when Horrie hails him.

Headin to Broome, right?

Yeah, says Fox. It’s on the way.

Come with us. Didn’t realize you were hoofin it. We’re headin off after lunch. I want to fish this incoming tide. Like to fish?

Fox nods. He thinks about it. He wants to get going but by the time he makes it out onto the highway and waits an hour in the stinging sun they’ll be by anyway. He pulls out his cloth hat and accepts.

Horrie and he fish the tide in the mounting heat. It’s humid. The air is brothy. Fox casts with a borrowed rod. He sends a jig into the cloudy turquoise surge about the rocks.

Got an ambition? asks Horrie.

Fox shakes his head not quite truthfully.

Didn’t think I did anymore either, says the old man. Except catch that fifty-pound barramundi every man comes north for. Been everywhere, I have. Merchant marine.

Saw the tattoos, murmurs Fox.

But somehow ambitions are shoved at ya. You probly guessed it about Bessie. Why she doesn’t get up much. Abbreviation, eh?

Gives you a new outlook.

Fox finishes his retrieve and takes the jig in hand. Looks blankly at the old man.

You got any idea what I’m talkin about, mate?

No, he admits.

She’s on the way out, son. Cancer of the bowel. Like it’s goin outta fashion.

Oh, man.

I’m all for circlin the wagons and takin every pill and poison they give her, but she’s not havin any of it. She wants to go out with her boots on, give it the big Up Yours. You know, blaze of glory. She’s a romantic. She wants drama. Wants to drive into the eye of the storm sorta thing.

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