Blueback by Tim Winton Read Free Book Online

sea all this time. Dora saw what must be done. Now it was time to help the sea live. She must protect the bay for all time.
    That night in the wreckage of her house, Dora Jackson began writing letters. She wrote till dawn and the next night she went at it again. She wrote hundreds of them. They were like a coral spawn, those letters, tiny white messages that drifted out from Longboat Bay into the offices of people all over the country. Politicians, bosses, scientists all ignored her, but they had no idea how stubborn she could be. Month after month the letters went out, over and over, back and forward. Photos of Blueback landed on the desks of newspaper editors. There was something about that fat blue face with its moony eye which seemed to look right into you. Abel’s mother was patient. She outlasted them all.
    Abel and Stella were diving in the warm everclear water of a rare lagoon when the fax came through on the expedition boat. Abel read it before he had towelled himself dry. He read it aloud to Stella as she peeled out of her suit. The message said that Longboat Bay had been declared a sanctuary, a marine park where everything that grew and swam there was protected by law. Stella went straight up the companionway to the bridge and called in a chopper. Abel went below to pack.
    On the plane home, high over the Pacific Ocean, Abel Jackson had a dream. In the dream his mother was dead. She floated in Longboat Bay like seaweed as he swam from shore to reach her. Gulls and terns whirled above her, wailing. As he reached her he touched her face, her old, beautiful face, and she sank beneath the surface. She tilted over and wheeled like a starfish into the blackest deep. Out of the blur came a dark shape. Blueback. The old fish followed her down into the darkness, his tail swinging like a gate as they both disappeared.
    â€˜You’re crying,’ said Stella when he woke.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Was it a bad dream?’
    â€˜No, not bad. Sad, I suppose. All these years I just wanted to know about the sea. I’ve been everywhere, I’ve studied, I’ve given lectures, become a bigshot. But you know, my mother is still the one who understands it. She doesn’t go anywhere at all. She grows vegetables and eats fish. And she’s saved a place. I’m a scientist, a big cheese, but I’ve never saved a place. She learnt by staying put, by watching and listening. Feeling things. She didn’t need a computer and two degrees and a frequent flyer program. She’s part of the bay. That’s how she knows it.’
    The jet rumbled beneath them. Stella squeezed his hand.
    â€˜But you had to leave, Abel. You had school and work to think of.’
    He shrugged. ‘But all I ever wanted to do was figure out what keeps it all together. When I was a boy I just wanted to know what Blueback thought about things. I wanted to learn the language of the sea.’
    â€˜Like Dora says, maybe you don’t need words.’
    The plane rumbled on, taking him home.



The night Abel returned, there was a little party on the verandah at Longboat Bay. The sea murmured against the shore and humpbacks sang somewhere out in the dark beyond Robbers Head. It was a hot, still night and the salt air hung upon them. Dora Jackson told them stories of waterspouts and lightning balls and manta rays and schools of salmon so thick you could climb out of your boat and walk across them. All the wonders of the ocean, the things she’d seen. She held the papers from the government that protected the bay as a sanctuary. The pages flashed yellow in the light of the lantern. Her face glowed with pride and relief. The three of them laughed and sang until it was late, celebrating the news, happy to be together again.
    They were all going to bed when Abel’s mother fell. She stumbled against the rail and toppled down the verandah steps to the hard dirt below. She cried out, her voice small as a girl’s.
    Abel rushed