The Big World - Tim Winton
BIG WORLD
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, not even
summer itself. Week after week an endless misting drizzle
wafts in from the sea. It beads in our hair and hangs from the
tips of our noses while we trudge around town in the vain
hope of scaring up some action. The southern sky presses
down and the beaches and bays turn the colour of dirty tin.
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. Cheryl
Button gets into Medicine. Vic Lang, the copper's kid, is dux
of the school and doesn't even stay for graduation. And suddenly
there we are, Biggie and me, heading to work every
morning in a frigid wind in the January of our new lives, still
in jeans and boots and flannel shirts, with beanies on our
heads and the horizon around our ears.
The job mostly consists of hosing blood off the floors.
Plumes of the stuff go into the harbour and old men sit in
dinghies offshore to catch herring in the slick. Some days I can
see me and Biggie out there as old codgers, anchored to the
friggin place, stuck forever. Our time at the meatworks is
supposed to be temporary. We're saving for a car, the V-8
Sandman we've been promising ourselves since we were fourteen.
Mag wheels, a lurid spray job like something off a Yes
album and a filthy great mattress in the back. A chick magnet,
that's what we want. Until now we've had a biscuit tin full of
twos and fivers but now we're making real money.
Trouble is, I can't stand it. I just know I won't last long
enough
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, not even
summer itself. Week after week an endless misting drizzle
wafts in from the sea. It beads in our hair and hangs from the
tips of our noses while we trudge around town in the vain
hope of scaring up some action. The southern sky presses
down and the beaches and bays turn the colour of dirty tin.
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. Cheryl
Button gets into Medicine. Vic Lang, the copper's kid, is dux
of the school and doesn't even stay for graduation. And suddenly
there we are, Biggie and me, heading to work every
morning in a frigid wind in the January of our new lives, still
in jeans and boots and flannel shirts, with beanies on our
heads and the horizon around our ears.
The job mostly consists of hosing blood off the floors.
Plumes of the stuff go into the harbour and old men sit in
dinghies offshore to catch herring in the slick. Some days I can
see me and Biggie out there as old codgers, anchored to the
friggin place, stuck forever. Our time at the meatworks is
supposed to be temporary. We're saving for a car, the V-8
Sandman we've been promising ourselves since we were fourteen.
Mag wheels, a lurid spray job like something off a Yes
album and a filthy great mattress in the back. A chick magnet,
that's what we want. Until now we've had a biscuit tin full of
twos and fivers but now we're making real money.
Trouble is, I can't stand it. I just know I won't last long
enough