Read Online Tide by John Kinsella - Free Book Online

out for information. Why would there be? There’ll be an explanation. Something will turn up, or they’ll be forgotten and it won’t matter, not really.

ARGONAUT
    Not a beachcomber. No. Never. Not really. The collection and collation of flotsam and jetsam, the pocketing of shells, the skimming of pebbles, polished by the earth-roll, into the waves. No. Incidental.
    Also the torn shirt flapping in the breeze. The gnarled, salt-and-pepper hair on head and chest. The frayed denim shorts.
    His shack not far over the dunes, with their drift bringing them closer. Casual work, few hours here and there. Not much required for upkeep. Why bother? No need for electricity. Sun-up sundown. Night day. Diurnal nocturnal.
    A young woman had been there. In the shack. On the beach. Surfing, smoking his dope, moving on. That’s okay. Come and go, come and go. When she’d been right around the coast, the whole trek, the entire country, she’d drop back in. Older. Maybe she’d stay and inherit. Who else would he leave to? How long ago was that? Two, three months? Years?
    You sound like a teacher, she’d said. I was. A teacher. Can you guess what I taught?
    Nah, you just sound like a teacher. Teacher of anything. Like you know something that others don’t, that you want to tell them but hold back. Until it’s time. Until it’s due to be taught.
    Curriculum?
    Yes, that’s it.
    There’s a sea eagle, nests on that old lookout. People don’t swim here now. Sharks. Surfers. Rips. But once they tried. Surfers leave it alone for the eagle. You leave it alone.
    Yes, Teacher.
    Right time, right place. Or wrong.
    On the raft of pickets, fencing wire, and forty-four gallon drums, a sheep. A golden merino sheep in its prime. A ram. A mighty beast with curling horns and a bleat that was a bark. Catching the smallest of the set of waves, until until until. The raft crashed into shallower waters and the ram managed to remain on board and upright, the raft holding together in the surf. It didn’t cling but stood firm, hooves braced.
    The sea ram was close enough to the shore to leap down, though its hooves sank and it struggled in the soft sand. Assist? Watch from a distance? Marvel?
    Venture closer. No recoil. Steam out of the nostrils. Snorting, stomping in the froth, fighting hard to keep upright. Horns down, to butt, to ram?
    Run back and get an old leg-rope to use as a lead? Lead it up from the ocean’s edge, up through the hills, to the dry land. The paddocks. Sheep lands? Sheep were a fair way inland. Mainly cows in the district, and vast distances between them. Not sheep country. Not the land of the Golden Ram. But out there, goats, and camels, even. And the shooters who hunt them as monsters. Who’d hunt the Golden Ram. What to do?
    Ram treads steadily up the shore, arresting its slide, imbalance. It glances back at the raft, struggling in the foam. In and out, back and forth. Secure. Grip, pull, drag, up the beach, hunched back ache. Up up so it doesn’t slip back with the tide’s searching sweep. Ram seems happy with that. Making oneself useful. The gulls approve and settle on its gunwales. Cuttlefish navigation markers in the sand, glinting with sun setting orange to say weather of a different sort is on the way, and the rest of the world held to account.
    She could be anywhere now, surfing big waves or complex waves. Shacked up. But then again, she could be close by, almost back. Done the circuit. The big loop.
    You should see the stars out here. More than anywhere else.
    Out at sea there are more: in the sky and on the water. And you can find your way if even one shows its eye through clouds.
    Old salt. In every port. Won’t hang around long, I guess?
    I’m older than I look. I have fathered many offspring, but none recently. It wouldn’t be right, this kind of life. I’ve done my time roaming, now it’s time to stay put. Is this settling down? Settled.