Max Stanley's Portfolio

'The Blood of the Land' - Short Story Excerpt

"When I grew old enough, some mornings I caught the school bus with the shabby rows of school children that made the hour-long journey past the miles of bush each day. The bus puttered through the morning light that fell across the road in webs. Where the sloughing white skins of melaleucas spilled onto the road some of us realised how close to school we were and tried to finish our homework on our laps in spidery handwriting."

"I sit where the water-beaten banks of the river surrenders to a sandy shore, the forest-green sun warming the blood in my chest. Under the green skin of the river, schools of pygmy perch swim circles around my ankles until the twitch of a toe scares them off. The flow of the river carries down the last of autumn leaves and where they get caught at sunken logs the silence of the river is interrupted by a gush. I write the names of my family with my index finger in the air and wonder why the wood on matchsticks isn’t long enough to stop you from getting burnt. Smiling until my sun-split lower lip bleeds against my teeth. For hours I would sit in the shade of an elder melaleuca tree, the song of the river becoming the lessons of my father or the hum of my mother."

'The Diver's Tide' - Short Story

I lie almost asleep in the dusty linen of our summer cottage; the out dated generator kicks in and whirs above the sound of my mother and father sleeping. Outside a high tide cracks against the sandbar at the river mouth and my stubbed toe throbs under the lightness of the sheets. I am drifting, falling and rising in the early currents of sleep before the sound of my father scrabbling for his torch pulls me from my dreams. The beam of torchlight flashes on and strays drunkenly around the long room of iron bedsteads and cast off furniture before finding the emptiness of Poppy’s bed in the corner of the L shaped room. Mesmerised by a helpless wife numbed by his daughter’s death, the light lingers against her bed sheets and flashes off. Dad twists on the kerosene lamp and walks shadowed into the kitchen. A closed fist in right, and a flickering light in the other. He doesn’t allow for himself to grieve the death of his daughter. I pull myself from under the kapok blankets of my iron bedstead and drag my feet along the cold floor lined with sand and dust. Under the eyelid of the veranda the morning sun rises and shines the silhouette of coastal shrubs and kangaroo’s onto our small shack.

“Looks like it’s going to be another reef day today son, check out the shelf,” he points at the brimming pits that are left exposed by the low tide. I open a tin of Tim tam’s with a butter knife and grin to myself.

We jump in at the edge of the reef where the waves curl and surge.We take a deep breath and dive steep into the warm tropic blur to roll onto our backs and let the waves blot out the sun. The sea rings and clicks. Warm tears mist dad’s cold dive mask. Lifting its seal he let’s seawater in, bathing his face, erasing his sadness. Under our speared hands the country unfolds beneath us. The tawny coarse sand reef opens up. I pinch my nose and dive steeper, the white tipped tail of a flounder flashes by me and vanishes in a stir. My heart thumping double time.

How his precious little Blondie loved her fillets. Twirling her salt blonde locks watching old Disney movies; she ate the cold meat in white bread with her fingers. Her faultless features made human by a clumsy lisp.She use to heave up the pots of crayfish with mum from the still blue inlet that was hidden behind the rocks, while Dad and I dove for catch. “I found you a new sister,” she laughed while hanging the twisting creaking crayfish in front of me.

A strenuous hour gone – no result. Dad had the remainder of his family to feed, and he’d refused the dole. Hitting choppy water, we surface;I suck in air and shiver.

Behind the silver dunes the shack sits nobly in a lake of green lawn pelt. Mum dusts the rat chewed lounge chairs and cries softly to herself. She searches for a swill out of the whisky miniatures amongst the knick-knack’s and ashtrays of the pub trade that consume the kitchen.

We dive again. Reeds now formed a barrier from the breakers.We glide together into the pond like environs. Finning rhythmically. I look into his foggy goggle’s and we both smile around our mouthpieces. The water running over my skin like a tremor of lust. Below lays a sea grass over hang, dotted with pink reef. We knew that fish sometimes congregated to hide from the turbulent waves. We close in on the overhang. I drift beneath the cave. In the green blue half-light of the water, I adjust my eyes, signalling to Dad.

Four butterfish swim fin to fin beside one another. They freeze, their fins fanned out enough to stop the swell from moving them against the algae wall. Two larger fish form a line in front of a smaller pair. Dad opens up the sling, he stretches the elastic vice over the trigger. He fires- a body shot. A clean kill.

We push our flippers hard against the seabed and swim to the crashing waves above. The red blur of the 4-kilo butterfish towed on his spear line. The three surviving fish follow, circling the dead. The frantic spin around the dead body dreadful in its uncomprehending sorrow. I swim down, the two elder fish aggressive and still defensive. Barbed in the steel vice hook, the smallest of the four, a child, a daughter, a sister. I felt hollow.

At the end of the day we stare breathless through the broken light of the bay, underfoot the sand is still warm and rippled from where the tide had been and gone. Mum cuts an arm off of the aloe Vera plant that sits on our windowsill and lectures me about sunscreen. My smile a suppressed mirth from Mum’s pedantic’s. My soul colder from transgressing one of nature’s greater laws: thou shalt not destroy companionship.