Blueback

IV

Every day he could, Abel swam with Blueback at Robbers Head. Some days the fish didn’t show. Other days he was nervy and distant, but often he was simply bold, even mischievous. Abel kept him a secret but as spring became summer it wasn’t safe to keep it to himself.

Every year boats came into Longboat Bay on their way around the coast. They were a long way from any harbour. Yachts pulled in to shelter from bad weather, sometimes, but mostly their visitors were tuna boats and sharkfishermen who anchored for a rest overnight and came ashore to say hello and trade supplies. Some skippers let their crews snorkel off the boats to spear fish or catch crays. And every year Mad Macka the abalone diver worked his licensed patch around the coast. Sooner or later someone was bound to run into Blueback and that someone might be quick enough to spear him. Groper were good food; they fetched a big price at the market. The old fish was wily, but a good spearfisher might put a shaft through him if he was patient.

So that season as boats came and went, Abel’s mother told each skipper that there was a big blue off Robbers Head, a monster fish they should leave alone. Fishing people respected Dora Jackson. They talked about her with a kind of awe. They took notice of what she said. When she told Mad Macka he smiled and said he knew all about it. They needn’t worry, he said, old Blueback was safe with him.

‘That fish!’ said Macka. ‘Cheekiest fish I ever saw. Steals everything. Eat the wetsuit offa ya if ya stayed still long enough.’

So Blueback stayed on at Robbers Head without being hassled. Skippers talked about him now and then and stories grew about the kid and the fish. Abel took sailors and deckhands out to see him. He figured his secret was safer out in the open but he wondered if one day Blueback might be so well-known that some deadhead would come out there just to kill him and make themselves famous for five minutes. Abel knew all about fishing for food but he couldn’t understand people who wanted photos of themselves beside huge dead fish, fish killed for fun. One season grew into another and Abel grew old enough to take the dinghy out on his own. He swam with Blueback whenever work and the weather permitted. Some days he collected rock crabs on shore and fed them to the gluttonous old fish. Crabs were clearly his favourite. Just the hint of crab in the water sent Blueback into a darting, shivering frenzy.

Some afternoons Abel sat on the jetty to watch Macka work his way across the bay. His yellow boat throbbed with the sound of the air compressor. From the compressor the orange hose coiling out into the water took air down to the seabed where Macka worked out of sight, pulling abalone, taking a few from each seam, leaving plenty behind for next year.

‘It’s not safe out there alone,’ said Abel’s mother. ‘Not like that, using a hookah on your own with all that abalone meat in the water. He should have an offsider. He’s crazy.’

‘Guess that’s why they call him Mad Macka,’ said Abel.

It was a lonely sight, that was for sure. An empty boat drifting, tugged along by an invisible diver at the end of an airhose. Nothing moving on deck except that flapping blue and white diver’s flag. A few years ago an abalone diver had been bitten in half by a great white shark further along the coast. Divers usually worked in pairs for safety. But Macka didn’t want an offsider; he liked it on his own. Every season Macka came, Dora Jackson made the diver welcome in the bay, but Abel often saw his mother shudder apprehensively at the sight of that lonely yellow boat on the bay.

One season, the year Abel turned twelve, he came out of the vegetable garden with an armful of sweet corn and, looking out across the bay, he realised that Macka’s boat was silent. It had been thrumming all morning and now it hung there quiet on the still sea. The orange hose was out, Macka was underwater but the compressor had stopped. Abel knew it meant something terrible. He dropped his bundle of corn.

‘Mum!’

The pair of them raced to their dinghy and tore across the bay. They tied up alongside the abalone boat. Abel’s mother stripped off her jeans and jumped aboard. She snatched up Macka’s spear gun and opened his toolbox.

Abel watched anxiously as she fitted a power head to the spear. Her hands shook a little.

‘Toss me my fins and mask,’ she said.

Abel threw them across. Macka’s boat was eerie. The only sound was the crackle and flap of the flag.

‘He’s out of fuel,’ said his mother.

That could only mean two or three things and none of them meant Macka would be coming up alive. Abel looked at the powerhead his mother screwed onto the spear. One of those could blow a hole in the side of a boat. But could it stop a great white?

‘Stay in the boat,’ said his mother. ‘Do not get in the water, Abel.’

She plunged into the water and Abel watched her follow Macka’s airhose down into the steely deep. Her red fins flashed like a siren light. Abel’s heart beat so hard it hurt. He’d never seen someone dead before. Oh God, he thought, don’t let a shark take her too. Abel couldn’t imagine life without his mother.

A few seconds later Dora Jackson spouted beside the boat. She unscrewed the powerhead and passed the speargun up. She pulled off her fins and climbed the ladder into Macka’s boat.

‘Was it a shark?’

His mother began to pull on the hose. ‘No. There isn’t a mark on him. I think he’s had a heart attack. Maybe he just couldn’t swim back to the surface. Poor man probably just lay on the bottom helpless until his compressor ran out of fuel. Get a grapple, love.’

‘So he’s dead?’

She heaved on the hose and it coiled behind her. ‘Yeah, mate. He’s drowned. He’s gone.’

Abel jumped across and helped her haul poor Macka in. A cloud of gulls hung over the two boats. The sky was wide and blue above them and the bay was quiet, so quiet.