An Open Swimmer by Tim Winton Page B

longer. I thought you liked fish.’
    â€˜I do.’
    â€˜Better still, you liked catching the buggers. Not often you’d be disappointed on the boats. Caught a pile. Or you said so in your letters.’
    â€˜It’s not the same.’ He was spraying the pickets of the fence, long lashes on the rough boards, for the sake of the kangaroo-paw. ‘It’s the skill. Learnt that, if nothin’ else. Like you used to say, the touches on the line, or like divin’ for ’em on their own terms, not hauling them in by the ton with a winch. That’s like . . . mining, or something.’
    He heard the quiet breathing over the spray of the hose. A dog cleared its throat.
    â€˜Yeah. Not the same. But you can’t expect —’
    â€˜Sure, nothing’s all roses. But it’s just not right. Nothing seems to be right.’
    â€˜When I was your age —’
    â€˜Dad —’
    â€˜Orright, just listen. Younger than you, I was, and your grandmother came home one day, pulled me in by the ear, and said —’
    â€˜â€œYer an apprentice boiler maker”, I know.’
    â€˜And that was it.’
    â€˜Easy.’
    â€˜No choice.’
    â€˜And no big decision.’
    â€˜It’s never just one decision. But I went.’
    â€˜But time —’
    â€˜Seven years.’
    â€˜Then what?’
    â€˜I shot through.’
    â€˜Convincing me of the wrong side, Dad.’
    â€˜But you got a choice.’
    Jerra stamped his feet.
    â€˜I ended up doin’ a million things.’
    â€˜Ever happy?’
    â€˜Sometimes. There’s always something else.’
    â€˜Then, there was. This is now. It’s different.’
    â€˜Maybe.’
    â€˜Be easier if I had something to inherit.’ Jerra grinned. ‘Then I could just take over when you went dribbly.’
    â€˜Sean?’
    â€˜Yeah. No problems, eh?’
    â€˜No choice, either.’
    â€˜Choice is nothin’ when there’s zero to choose from. A shop with one product. That’s choice?’
    His father kicked the grass.
    â€˜Take it away, and that’s what you’d want most.’
    â€˜Well, what made you settle down?’
    â€˜Dunno,’ said his father. ‘Got tired, I s’pose.’
    â€˜Not satisfaction?’
    â€˜Maybe that’s one o’ the things you stop worryin’ about.’
    â€˜Where does that leave me , then?’
    â€˜Maybe you’ll find something. I thought you might finish Uni, like young Sean, and get qualifications.’
    â€˜And end up like him? A degree to be a clerk for his old man. In a shirt business? Working out the pay and the collar measurements. What a life!’
    â€˜He could’ve got a job elsewhere.’
    â€˜Dad, BAs aren’t worth a piss in the river these days.’
    His father turned off the hose. It went limp and Jerra threw it down. The pickets shone.
    â€˜I don’t care what you do, as long as you find something you can be satisfied with.’
    â€˜Take me till I die.’
    â€˜I thought that once.’
    Jerra looked at the greying man, the loose skin around his neck, the pitted palms he remembered gloved in pollard.
    â€˜Not the same,’ he said, certain.
    â€˜I’m not so sure.’
    City streets were cold in the mornings where Jerra wandered, squinting into shopfronts, sitting with the hungover drunks and the picking birds in Forrest Place, walking mornings without recall, looking dully into the brown froth of the river, over the shoulders of bent old men who fumbled with empty hooks, muttering. They spat on the water, the gobs floating out in the viscous current, like jellyfish. He might have spoken to them, but they just looked over their shoulders, as if to accuse him of scaring the fish away. He could have told them that there were none left, only their jellyfish. They muttered, and cricked their knuckles.
    Jerra