From Under the Overcoat (10 page)

‘What, you mean Kyle and Cru and them? They’re okay.’

‘Nah, they’re not. They’re not okay. They’re babies. They’ll come out here with all their piss and their fantasy talk about mezcal and worms and who they’re fucking, a bunch of douche bags. Why would anyone want to go on a trip like that?’

The wind played across the water, the sun warmed the back of my neck. Above us, a seagull stalled, like a kite on a string,
then dived into the water after a fish. It surfaced with an empty beak. It soared and was gone.

I blinked salty water out of my eyes. I’d assumed Ryan felt the same way about surf as me. Not the company of those particular guys, but that he’d leap at the chance to just fall out of a tent if the waves were good and go for it. To eat and drink when he felt like it, to surf from dawn ’til dusk.

I looked across at him. He was still belly down on his board, staring out at White. His chin jutted out. I squinted at him in the sun. He looked older, his forehead creased, mouth a thin grim line. I wondered what he thought of me, wanting so desperately to go on the trip. I felt silly, like I was a sulking kid not allowed a bag of lollies. Then I felt angry at him, for his silence, his unwillingness to share anything of himself with me, his stupid selfish refusal to be a part of anything. Everything.

‘What’s wrong with just doing things the way we do them now?’ he flicked his right hand through the water, kicked his feet, and his board turned towards me. It was as though he’d read my thoughts. ‘What’s wrong with just driving out here, enjoying the sea, then leaving it be? Heading back to town? It’s like, if you want to belong to a
team
, go play rugby, or basketball or something.’

‘Just once, it’d be alright though, I reckon … you know, for a change. I mean, we can still come out as usual, before and after Easter … that side of things doesn’t have to change.’

An idea rushed at me then; if I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t have opened my mouth. But there it was: out.

‘Is this about your aunty? Won’t she let you come … is that the problem?’

It was the first time I had mentioned his aunty to him. Ever. I still didn’t know her name. But now that the words were out, it was as though she was there in the surf with us, lying on my board in front of me.

I fell forward on my board. Ryan’s top lip curled up in a sneer and he laughed, and right then I felt as though there were years and worlds between us, gaps that would never close.

He was about to say something, but he stopped himself. For a moment, he looked as though the whole world sat on his shoulders. He looked like an old man — not one of those gnarly cool old surfing guys, but a really old man.

‘The worm does nothing to you, by the way,’ he said. ‘It’s a marketing gimmick. Moth larva off the agave plant.’

He switched paddling hands, edged himself back to face the waves.

How did he know this stuff? I wanted to ask him, but there was a nice set coming in. In a flash he was on his feet, crouching low, disappearing into the O of the perfect tube.

IN THE END, THE
tension over the Easter surf trip sorted itself out. Ryan left Te Puke just before school went back in the new year. His aunty had got another job in Auckland.

When he told me they were on the move, my first thoughts were about her, not him. About a week earlier, I’d had a dentist’s appointment in town. I was going past Ryan’s place, purposely looking the other way, when there’d been a tapping noise. I’d glanced at the house and right there, at the window nearest the footpath, was Ryan’s aunty.

She was mouthing something through the glass, but I
couldn’t make it out because of the reflection. It didn’t look as though she was shouting or anything, just as though she was having a normal conversation with me. I stopped, looked behind me to see whether she might be talking to someone else. I closed my eyes, my face hot. When I opened them again, she was gone. I wondered whether I’d imagined it.

The morning they left, Ryan biked down to say goodbye. We said we would text. I told him he could come back anytime he felt like a surf and stay. He said
Yeah, sweet as
and rode away on his bike. That was about it.

That weird day out on the water had changed things between us anyway. Early on, our friendship had felt full of possibility: the silences representing beaches we might discover together, breaks we would conquer. Well, that’s how they felt to me — and I’d assumed Ryan felt the same way. By the end of that summer, those quiet times had become awkward opportunities for disagreement: over the Easter surf trip, over other silly little things that seemed to scream out I was still a kid and he somehow older than me.

More of the surfing guys were getting their restricted licences. I was hardly ever out at Pukehina on my own. At first I hated all the hype — their hollering and high fiving and cutting in on each other. I imagined Ryan there, rolling his eyes, surfing further along the beach on his own. But I got used to it, joined in even. It was a laugh.

The parents did get together to discuss the Easter surf trip. They decided to let it go ahead. But there were new rules: no passengers in any of the cars. Either you had to drive yourself out to the beach and back, or you had to be dropped off and picked up by a parent. And no alcohol, which everyone
planned to ignore. I think the parents knew it, but felt obliged to say it anyway.

I thought about Ryan, how he’d hidden under the tarpaulin all those times. One thing we’d never discussed was what would happen if I got caught driving him out there. Other guys had a thing where if you got sprung with passengers on your restricted, you’d share the cost of the fine. I wasn’t so sure now that Ryan would have coughed up.

I DEALT TO THE
Easter homework on Thursday night, worked through till eleven to finish it. The olds had started coming down hard on me about good grades and university; it was easier to do the work, keep them happy. Good Friday morning was bright and clear and still. I threw my board on the back of the ute, a bag of clothes and a sleeping bag in the cab, and drove out to the beach to meet the others.

The camping ground gave them the same spot every Easter — right in the back corner, away from any brave families still keen at that time of the year. By the time I got there, there were four tents up in a wide circle. Jack Cleveland told me to chuck my gear wherever I liked.

The surf was flat, but there was rough weather out at sea and the forecast was for an off shore wind later in the day. We pulled our boards out of the bags and waxed them up. The promised swell came up just after three. We surfed hard out ’til last light.

THAT FIRST NIGHT WAS
still and black and cold and then the moon came up: a fat silver disc pouring a snail trail of light onto the water. The waves crept in to shore, making no noise
at all, then thumped hard onto the beach, like fast hands in a rowdy game of snap.

We’d dragged a big pile of wood up past the high tide mark before we went surfing. Cru lit it. It was so hot you had to keep shifting your body, warming one side then another like a kebab on a barbecue. Half of you was always freezing, the other half burning. There were two big chilly bins in the shadows, away from the fire. Jack and Cru and I had carried them down. They were full of beer, mezcal, bourbon and whisky. We’d all put in thirty dollars and Cru’s older brother got it for us.

Mezcal. After Ryan dissed it, out surfing that day, I hadn’t given it another thought. But I got out of the water before the others that afternoon, got back to the camping ground first. Alone in the tent, I was bored. I lifted the lid off the chilly bin, and pulled the mezcal out for a look.

It was by far the smallest bottle. Skinny — just five hundred mils — and the liquid inside was a pale gold colour. The cap had two cheerful-looking worms hanging over a silver twig.
Dos Gusanos (Two Worms) Mezcal
was printed in red on the yellow label.

The two creatures floating in the bottom looked like maggots. I shook the bottle and a bit fell off one of them.

I’D WONDERED HOW KYLE
would handle the weekend, but he didn’t seem bothered. His surfing was just the same as before the accident, except he’d changed to goofy foot to make standing up easier. As we walked down the sand dunes, he’d tackled Cam, another first-timer like me, round the ankles. They wrestled in the sand, Kyle jamming
sand down Cam’s jeans, Cam swearing at him, calling him the manic cripple. Kyle just laughed and shoved sand in Cam’s mouth.

The lid came off the chilly bin. Someone passed me a beer. I tipped my head back and drank from the bottle. I felt the burn of the fire against the skin on my neck, and the chill of the beer in my throat. I looked around at the guys, all yellow in the firelight. These were faces I’d been looking at my whole life — crouched furiously over a construction site in the sandpit in kindergarten, over group painting projects at primary school. I was warm and thirsty and the beers kept coming and I felt good.

Josh McQuinty dropped down in the sand next to me. He pulled a joint out of his top pocket and lit it. He drew hard, then held it out towards me.

‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘Send it round the other way.’

I’d only tried pot once, at a first fifteen party the previous winter. It spun me out and made me throw up. The rugby guys had given people shit if they didn’t have a toke, but these guys were cool about it. I watched as the joint made its way round the circle; a tiny red satellite tracking through the shadows and the sparks and flames from the fire.

‘Who’s going first?’ asked Josh. He had a big loppy grin.

My head was light from the beer, I was onto my third one. I didn’t know what he meant by going first.

‘Go on, Jack,’ he said.

‘Nah. My turn tomorrow night. I’ve got a good one. A true one.’

The older guys — the ones who had been on the trip before — cracked up. Kyle pushed Jack backwards, rubbed sand
through his hair. Jack kicked out at him and they scrambled around together, swearing and laughing.

‘It’s true, man. You just wait,’ said Jack, sitting up again. He pulled his sweatshirt close around him, shuffled on his arse closer into the fire. He’d stopped laughing; the smile was gone. Jack was staring at the top of his sneakers, picking at the laces. ‘I’m not kidding.’

He looked up, around the group. He looked at every one of us. Hard in the face, challenging each of us to wind him up, to laugh. The other guys looked at each other, sniggering, then back at Jack. Jack met every gaze. ‘I mean it, you arseholes. I’m not joking.’

‘What’s he talking about?’ I whispered to Josh.

‘Story time,’ he said. ‘The best story of the weekend wins you the worms.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘The worms. The mezcal worms. If you tell the best story, you get to drink the worms.’

‘What kind of story?’ I asked. Maybe Ryan was right about these guys, about them being a bunch of dorky kids. ‘Like, a ghost story or something?’

‘No, dipshit. A true story, something that’s happened in the last year.’ Then he spoke up, so everyone could hear.

‘Alright then, I’ll go first. This happened to my cousin, at the Big Day Out.’

The wrestling stopped. Cru jumped up and grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the chilly bin. He unscrewed the lid and flicked it away into the sand dunes. He took a big swig from it, then passed it on. We moved in close to the fire.

‘My cousin Liam and his mates were at the Big Day Out,’
said Josh. ‘It was the first time they’d been allowed to go.’

‘Lucky,’ someone said, on the other side of the fire, and we all agreed. None of us had been yet.

‘Yeah. It’s easier if you live in Auckland, no driving. You just get the train. Anyway. It was in between a couple of the big acts, I forget who now, and they were wandering around, checking out some of the smaller bands. There are all these little venues, you know, like little stages and stuff. And they came across this group.’

‘Who was it?’ Jack asked.

The bourbon bottle was one-third empty. I’d just had my turn on it; the sweet, sticky liquid stung my throat.

‘I dunno. Liam said he looked at his programme, checked out the timetable, and he couldn’t see this band mentioned anywhere. They went all the way through the schedule, then they started asking people standing around them. Everyone was checking out their programmes … no one could work out how who these guys were.’

‘Doesn’t sound that organised,’ said Jack.

‘Shut up, Jack,’ said Cru.

‘Anyway. There was a crowd gathering, and this band is mucking around with its gear, guitars and mikes and stuff. Tuning up. Or that’s what Liam thought.’

I passed the bourbon to Josh. He stopped talking and drank two big gulps. He didn’t flinch at the burning.

‘The crowd was pretty out of it, heaps of E and shit, you know,’ Josh went on. He leaned in close to the fire, prodding it with a stick. We all moved forward with him.

‘And so the band’s warming up, playing a few chords, doing the old
one one, two two
into the microphone.’

‘Never worked out why they say that. Why they don’t actually test it by singing.’ Jack again.

‘And then the lead singer says
Thanks everybody
. And walks off the stage. And the rest of the band puts down their instruments and walks off too. Like, that was it. The warm up was the gig.’

We were all silent. The fire roared.

‘Is that it?’ said Jack. ‘Is that your lame story?’

‘No,’ said Josh. ‘It’s not it. The band came back out. The crowd’s going
What the fuck
and the lead singer’s standing there in the middle of the stage. Apparently he looked like that old guy our parents listened to, you know, the dude that ate live chickens on stage.’

‘Ozzy Osbourne. Prince of Darkness,’ I said.

‘No, Alice Cooper. The skinny one with the runny black shit under his eyes. And the band starts pissing around with their instruments again, and the singer just speaks into his microphone. He leans right forward, Liam said, and says just one thing.
You will never know us; you will never forget us
.