The Turning

Because I do not hope to turn again.

Because I do not hope.

Because I do not hope to turn.

I left them Misting, turning below.

There were no more faces and the stair was dark,

damp, jagged,

like an old man's mouth dribbling, beyond repair.

Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope,

I no longer strive to strive towards such things.

Because I know that time is always time.

And place is always and only place.

And pray that I may forget these matters

that with myself, I too much discuss, too much explain.

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

but merely fans to beat the air...

the air which is now thoroughly small and dry,

smaller and drier than the will.

Teach us to care and not to care.

Teach us to sit still.

Although I do not hope to turn again.

Although I do not hope.

Although I do not hope to turn.

After five years of high school,

the final November arrives and leaves as suddenly as a spring storm.

Exams, graduation, huge beach parties.

Biggie and me, we're feverish with anticipation.

We steel ourselves for a season of pandemonium.

But after the initial celebrations, nothing really happens.

Somehow our crappy Saturday job at the meatworks becomes full-time.

And then Christmas comes and so do the dreaded exam results.

The news is not good.

A few of our classmates pack their bags for university

and shoot through,

and suddenly there we are... Biggie and me,

heading to work every morning in the frigid wind

in the January of our new lives.

Some days I can see me and Biggie out there as old codgers,

anchored to the friggin' place.

Beside me, Biggie's face gets darker and darker.

When the shift horn sounds, he lurches away, his last canon half-empty.

"Fuck it," he says. "We're outta here."

That afternoon, we buy a kombi from a hippie on the wharf.

We fill the ancient VW with tinned food and all our camping junk

and rack off without telling a soul.

I can't believe we've done it.

The plan is to call from somewhere the other side of the city,

when we're out of reach.

I want to be safe from the guilts.

The old girl will crack a sad on me.

But Biggie has bigger things to fear.

His old man will beat the shit out of him when he finds out.

I can't tell Biggie this, but missing out on uni really stings.

When the results came, I cried my eyes out.

I thought about killing myself.

Biggie's results were even worse than mine.

He'd really fried.

But he didn't have his heart set on doing well.

He couldn't give a rat's ring.

In his head, he's always seen himself

at the meatworks or the cannery,

until he inherits a salmon netting license from his old man.

He's content.

He belongs.

Biggie's not the brightest crayon in the box

but he's the most loyal person I know.

He's the real deal.

We didn't meet until the second week of high school.

I was new in town and right from the start,

a kid called Tony Macoli became fixated on me.

That's how it started... a single decisive act of violence

that joined me to Biggie forever.

If you believe him on the subject,

he acted more out of animal irritation than charity.

But I felt like somebody ransomed and set free.

Biggie became my mate, my constant companion.

Friendship, I suppose, comes at a price.

There have been girls I've disqualified myself from

because of Biggie.

Not everyone wants to have him tagging along everywhere.

Right through high school, I had occasional moments,

evenings, encounters with girls, but no real girlfriend,

and mostly I don't regret it.

Except for Briony Nevis.

For two years, we're sort of watching each other from a distance.

Sidelong glances.

She's flat-out beautiful.

Long, black hair.

Glossy skin.

Dark eyes.

I kiss her once at a party.

Well, maybe she kisses me.

But there, out of the corner of my eyes,

Biggie, alone on the smoky veranda waiting to go home.

I don't go to him straight up.

I do make him wait a fair old while.

But I don't go on with Briony Nevis the way I badly want to

because I know Biggie will be left behind... for good.

We pull in to fuel up and use the phone.

Biggie decides he's not calling home, so he sits in the VW

while I reverse the charges and get an earful.

I hang up and find Biggie talking to a chick

with a backpack the size of an elephant saddle.

She's tall and not very beautiful

with long, shiny brown hair and big knees.

She thinks she's on the coast road north

and she's mortified to discover otherwise.

I can see Biggie falling in love with her moment by moment.

There isn't really even much consultation.

We just pull out with this chick in the back.

Meg is her name.

Meg is as thick as a box of hammers.

It's alarming to see how enthralled Biggie is.

And I just drive and try to avoid the rear-view mirror.

While I'm thinking about all of this,

Biggie's gone and climbed over into the back and Meg's lit up a number

and they're toking away on it with their feet up like I'm some kind of chauffeur.

Biggie's never had much luck with girls.

I should be glad for him.

But I'm totally pissed off.

We come upon a maze of salt lakes that blaze silver and pearly in the sun.

I begin to have the panicky feeling

that the land and this very afternoon might go on forever.

Biggie's really enjoying himself back there.

I slowly understand why.

There's the obvious thing, of course...

the fact that he's in with a big chance with Meg come nightfall.

But something else... the thing that eats at me...

is the way he's enjoying being brighter than her, being a step ahead.

Feeling somehow senior and secure in himself.

It's me all over.

It's how I am with him.

And it's not pretty.

The kombi fills up with smoke again.

But this time it's bitter and metallic

and I understand we're on fire.

Without an extinguisher, there's not much we can do,

once we're standing out there in the litter of our belongings,

waiting for the VW to explode.

But it just smoulders and hisses awhile as the sun sinks behind us.

In the end, with the smoke almost gone and the wiring cooked,

it's obvious we're not going anywhere.

We turn our attention to the sunset.

Meg rolls another spliff.

We don't say anything.

The sun flattens itself against the salt pan and disappears.

The sky goes all acid-blue

and there's just this huge silence.

It's like the world's stopped.

Right then, I can't imagine an end to the quiet.

The horizon fades.

Everything looks impossibly far off.

In two hours, I'll hear Biggie and Meg in his sleeping bag.

She'll cry out like a bird and become so beautiful,

so desirable in the total dark that I'll begin to cry.

In a week,

Biggie and Meg will blow me off in Broome

and I'll be on the bus south for a second chance at the exams.

In a year,

Biggie will be dead in a mining accident in the Pilbara

and I'll be reading Robert Louis Stevenson at his funeral.

Meg won't show.

I'll grow up and have a family of my own and see Briony Nevis,

tired and lined in a supermarket queue

and wonder what all the fuss was about.

All of it unimaginable.

Right now, standing with Biggie on the salt lake at sunset,

I don't care what happens beyond this moment.

In the hot, northern dusk,

the world suddenly gets big around us,

so big we just give in and...

watch.

Eenie, meenie, minie...

moe.

Arggh!

Oh, argh.

..was not presented by the May 31st deadline,

then more industrial action will be taken.

Now in a bit of the macabre, in the seaside town of Angelus,

a gruesome discovery was made this afternoon.

Just behind the sand dunes in Angelus' Madison Gully,

two boys playing at the site of a new housing development

on reclaimed swampland made the grisly discovery of human bones.

So far, two femurs and a skull have been recovered.

Police have cordoned off the site

and a broad search is under way throughout the area.

Police are yet to make identification of the bones

but believe they are the remains of a child.

At the third stroke, it will be 8:22 and 20 seconds.

At the third stroke, it will be 8:22 and 30 seconds.

Hey, look.

Hey! Wait up!

Hey, guys, look at that.

Oh, sweet!

Wicked!

Not bad!