It’s January in Bali, the rains heavy and a sixty one year old ex-surfboard builder puts his next cigarette in his mouth. It’s dry and stale. The filter sticks to his upper lip. At ten cigs a week, he doesn’t smoke enough of the things to keep a pack fresh. The flame from his Zippo is big and it picks off a few stray eyebrow hairs. No matter. He sits on a stool, his elbows resting on the bench of a small cafe facing a wet, backstreet shortcut for most of the scooters of Kuta. A motorcade of silky hookers, leftover schoolies, pimps, hustlers and families of five roar past on two wheels. A river of humanity. Mechanised. He watches it all like an adult would watch a full rollercoaster. Amused. But not in the way that makes you hop on.
Sixty one now, his thirty years in the surfboard factory back in Oz; a blur. Retired now. If you could call it that. More like just plain tired. But not in such a bad way. Maybe the way a soldier who survived, who got out of it with his skin intact would feel at his age. And not a soldier who balanced any ledgers, earnt a handful of medals or nothing, but a soldier who just did his job and didn’t get clipped. Yeah, don’t expect any thanks neither, ain’t no gold watch waiting for nobody. That’s the surfboard industry for you. Like any army, it took the real men and women to do all the dirty work. To build a good surfboard took its toll in toxic factories of resin, fiberglass, and cruel chemicals and choking dust. A job that left permanent grooves in your nose and cheeks from the years of wearing cinched down industrial respirators. It was stoop labor. Sweat toil. But surfboards don’t make themselves and everybody needs their toys. He still had six of his own. Real beauties too. This thought makes him scratch a drop of sweat off the groove on the bridge of his nose.
Christ, the monsoon’s hot this year.
His cigarette has burnt halfway down. He ashes it out. Considering it. He had jumped into the surfing world at around nine years old. Jazzed on the whole freedom thing, he took it on. He’d been a stylish surfer, had even taken second place at the Queensland state titles as a nineteen-year-old. But the pro career dreams had fizzed out. He was never a competitive animal. Surfing had always been so easy for him, such a natural act, that the anxiety and accolades of competition never put the hook in him. He had fiberglassed surfboards all his life instead, just to stay in the water. The money was steady, his debts were those that an honest man could pay. His role as a craftsman that had kept to himself had kept him in the game for enough decades to win the race. He looked at his hands now. Thought about what they had done over the years. He smiled to himself. He had been good at his job. Probably still was, really. That craftsman thing. Knowing the tools. The tricks. The pride in strong, beat up, capable hands.
Another scooter zips by, a ladyboy in war paint for a busy night down on Poppies one. The ex-surfboard builder just raises his eyebrows at this, orders another beer. His has gone warm. No matter. He didn’t drink much these days, either.
The usual crowd was here in the bar. Most around his age. Some a decade younger. For an expat bar in Bali, you could always find a pretty good conversation at this place. Intelligent. Even provocative at times. Tonight, a loud American, three outback Aussies, the Frogs, the Poms, the sun burnt surf charter captain and that real nice blonde lady from Perth, too tanned, neck like turkey, but with a set of blue eyes that must have driven the boys crazy back in her day. Then there was the beggar and the thief and the swirling female Balinese staff. He liked listening to it all. He’d still never talked all that much. A way of his that worked for him.
The Balinese bar girl sways up to him with another bottle of beer, it hisses as she levers the rusty cap off it. He takes it in his hand and looks at her and thanks her quietly in her language. He’d picked up a few phrases from the side of tourist map that was lying around.
He’d first come to Bali in 1975. Just after that second place finish in the titles. Bali blew his brains out. He’d raced back to Mooloolaba and grabbed his girlfriend and his best mates and brought them back to the island to show them the miracle. His girl lasted a week. A record for those times. After watching the look in the boys’ eyes as they scampered down cliffs, chattered with the locals, pinballed around the Uluwatu cave at high tide and laughed at their reef cuts and good fortune, she knew she could never change him. You’re like a heroin addict in a poppy field! He’d never forgotten that girl. About the only one he’d never forget. He’d loved her. Still did, he supposed.
A raucous story has been told next to him and the whole bench is howling. He turns his head toward the sounds and grins dutifully. The bar girl catches him at it and smiles. He nods back, his beer getting warm again. He had spent a lot of his life coming back to Bali. Then age set in and the island became something else altogether. An escape route. He returned, time and again. He’d had a few kids back in Noosa, coupla wives, but none of it stuck. And that was all right with him. He never meant to bother nobody. That was another reason the bar girls here dug him. His surfing had slowed way down. Back injury. And that was okay, too. He knew who he’d been. He’d sold up back in Oz, grabbed his super, put his dough in a safe place and moved in with a pal in the middle of Kuta. Where else would he go?
Just then, someone lit up a clove cigarette. He lifts his own pack of cigarettes, shakes it once and selects one with his lips. The bar girl comes forward and strikes a wooden match from an old matchbox. She cups her hands to protect the flame of the match and offers it, looking not at the tip of the cigarette, but into his eyes. He inhales the smoke and exhales off to the side without ever letting his eyes leave hers.
Then he thanks her. In her language.
Home.
