Free Death of a Whaler by Nerida Newton Page A

the bells around their waists tinkling as they move. The drummer speeds up the pace of the beat, and the women dance faster and more erratically, dipping and swaying and swirling their skirts. Flinch can see the glistening perspiration on their arms and torsos. They appear to him preternaturally luscious, as shiny and desirable as forbidden fruit. Dizzy with the effect of the joint, intoxicated by the movement of the dancing women, Flinch feels that he’s stumbled on some kind of oasis. Though squeezed between the others, he feels totally alone, an explorer wandered out of the desert and into a culture he is immediately drawn to but can’t understand. In the atmosphere of the yurt, he feels forcibly immersed, as if his head had been pushed underwater and he is meant to emerge baptised.
    Next to him, Karma is swaying in rhythm to the drums. Her eyes are shut. Every time she leans in Flinch’s direction he can feel the soft brush of her hair against his shoulder.
    â€˜Here,’ says Matt, and hands him a fresh joint.
    â€˜It’s amazing,’ Flinch says. Before he can stop himself.
    Karma opens her eyes and nods, puts an arm around him.
    â€˜Told you,’ she whispers.
    â€˜You should come to the cliffs,’ he says, overcome with a need to prolong the experience, to repay in kind. ‘Come see the whales.’
    Jed moves the hookah to one side. He leans towards Karma and takes her chin in his hand and kisses her hard on the mouth. She pulls away sharply.
    â€˜Not now,’ she mutters.
    â€˜Have it your way, baby,’ says Jed, and laughs.
    Flinch is quiet.
    Later, he wakes in the same place he has been sitting. It is dark and, except for the croaking of frogs and the sound of someone nearby snoring, it is quiet. The stage, now black and bare, makes him question for a moment if he had imagined the entire show. He can’t remember falling asleep. Someone has covered him with a light woven rug. His head is thick with a woolly fog, his mouth tastes like dirt and he is thirsty beyond anything he has previously experienced. He looks around. Next to him, he can make out the shapes of Karma and Jed, her head resting in the crook of his arm. Matt is asleep behind him, wheezing when he exhales. Flinch had been dreaming that he was standing on the cliff, near the lighthouse. Someone had been walking up behind him but he was unsure whom and he had woken before he had found out. The soft vibrations of a whale song had been reverberating in his ears.
    He lies awake, uncomfortable, until the crisp predawn when he decides it is best to leave. He folds the rug, then crawls over the pillows, around other sleeping bodies, and out through the open doorway. In the burgeoning light, Flinch makes his way along the pathways that have been trodden between the tents and hay-bale houses. He stumbles over one small vegetable garden and clutches at a trellis to steady himself, squashing a tomato in his fist. Awoman emerges froma tent, brushes her forehead with her arm. Anaked toddler clings to her skirt. Outside a tepee, the remnants of a pig on a spit cool over a shallow pit. A little further on, the muffled sounds of people waking slowly, the dawn chorus of magpies and the whip-crack of a stormbird. Fromone of the bale houses, Flinch can also hear a soft chant, like a benediction, some sort of praise for the birth of a new day.
    Back at the ute, he drinks all of the water that he usually reserves for the engine, then takes a swift shot of rum. He sits in the cabin watching the sun rise over the paddocks, tinging the grass mauve, then pink. From somewhere on the other side of the commune, he can hear hammering and someone singing, baritone. A couple of cows wander to the edge of their paddock and stare at him with placid curiosity. When his head has cleared a little, he turns the key and the ute chugs to life, sounding a little worse for wear.
    â€˜You and me both, Milly,’ he says.
    On his return to the