Read Online Death of a Whaler by Nerida Newton - Free Book Online Page B

sees them this way, knowing them for what they are. Frequently flooded, muddy cow paddocks full of weeds and brambles.
    â€˜We’re a tribe,’ she is saying. ‘The Aquarians. The Alternatives.’
    The commune, sluggish and silent in the afternoon, is now gently humming and seems to have a pulse of its own. As people drift back from the town, the field, out of their tents, the commune starts to awaken, like some nocturnal creature stretching and scratching as darkness falls. Lamps are lit, small bonfires struck alight, someone thumps out a soft-sounding rhythm on some drums and, as if in answer from across the field, someone else strums a guitar. Flinch feels inexplicably light-headed. When he breathes, feels a little like he is gasping for oxygen but instead inhales the exotic smell of the commune, a rich, smoky scent, a combination of incense, spices, grilled meat, burnt rice, the odd whiff of tobacco and marijuana.
    â€˜Do you need a shower before we eat?’ Karma asks him.
    Flinch realises that he must still stink of fish and sweat and ocean.
    â€˜Yeah,’ he says. ‘I have a towel in the ute.’
    â€˜Cool. Okay, well if you want to go and get that, you can shower over there.’ She points to a square, open-roofed bamboo room at the bottom of the sloping paddock. ‘You just use a bucket and a sponge. The buckets are over there already.’
    Flinch has had to bathe like this before, once when he worked on the fishing boats and the crew were forced to camp overnight on a remote point due to inclement weather, but he hasn’t heard of anyone washing like this unless there was no alternative.
    â€˜When you’re done, head over to that big tent there. I’m on cooking duty tonight. I’ll save you a meal.’
    â€˜Fish?’ he asks as she walks off. Though not far from him, she doesn’t turn to answer.
    In the shower room, there are a couple of bush showers — waterproof canvas bags that can be filled with warm water, which then filters out through a nozzle. Flinch decides to try one. Nearby is a fire, over which buckets of water are boiling. He uses his towel to grab hold of a bucket’s handle, and pours some hot water into a cold water bucket until the temperature is suitable. Spills almost half of it before he’s even reached the shower room, sloshes it up and over the edge, wets his trousers at his crotch and thinks, That’d be right.
    The showers have no partitions. It is fairly dark, though, and Flinch, aware of the laughable sight of a man whose willy hangs longer down one thigh than the other, is grateful that there is only the dim light of a nearby lantern by which to bathe. In the corner, under the lantern, another man is bathing with water from a bucket, using what looks like a sea sponge as a loofah. He notices Flinch staring, and smiles at him.
    â€˜Beware the ulcers,’ he says, and points to some open wounds on his ankle. ‘Bloody tropics. Everybody has them. Spread like bloody wildfire.’
    Flinch dries off and dresses quickly, then heads back into the thick of the commune. The damp crotch of his pants clinging to his thigh, the seam sticking to his bare skin promising a rash.
    When he gets to the food tent, Karma is nowhere in sight. A young woman with fair hair in a plait to her waist is scrubbing a pot. She seems fixated on it, moving the cloth in a slow circular movement over the same spot.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ says Flinch, ‘where did Karma go?’
    The woman looks up at him and wipes her brow with her wrist. Her eyes are a very pale green and have a glaze over them that reminds Flinch of a fish.
    â€˜Karma?’
    â€˜Yes,’ says Flinch. ‘She has wavy brown hair and it’s long, not as long as yours but long, and she’s kind of tanned but a bit freckly, and she’s on the thin side and—’
    â€˜I know Karma,’ says the woman.
    Flinch waits but she says nothing