Abalone Term Analysis

Water that was always there. Always everywhere. The sound and the smell and the cold waves making Harry different. And it wasn’t just because he was the youngest. He knew the way he felt about the ocean would never leave him now. It would be there always, right inside him.

Harry picked up an abalone shell, the edges loose and dusty in his hands. And every cell in his body stopped. Felt it. This place. Felt the people who had been here before, breathing and standing live where he stood. People who were dead now. Long gone. And Harry understood it, right down in his guts, that time ran on forever and that one day he would die.

First day of school holidays. First day he must man the boat alone while the men go down. Old enough now, he must take his place. Just like his brother before him, he must fill the gap Uncle Nick left.

There were things that no one would teach you—things about the water. You just knew them or you didn’t and no one could tell you how to read it. How to feel it. Miles knew the water. He could feel it. And he knew not to trust it.

He used to feel sorry for the abs when he was young. The way they pulsed and moved in the tubs, sensing the bright light and heat. But he couldn’t think about them like that now. He was only careful not to cut or bruise them, because once abs started to bleed, they kept on bleeding until all the liquid inside was gone. They just dried up and died.

And if you didn’t know better, you’d think that no one lived here anymore. That all these places were abandoned. But people were in there somewhere, hidden and burrowed in. They were there.

“Don’t you get stuck here with your dad,” he said. “Don’t you let him…You’re too young to be out there working, Miles. It’s not right.”

Miles felt the words sink down right inside him.

“You’ve had it rough enough,” he said.

Maybe that’s why Joe and Miles liked it so much. And he knew that Granddad would have taken him. It was just that he was too little, too small to go, when Granddad had been alive. And if Granddad hadn’t died then he definitely would have taken Harry fishing, too. And it would have been good, like this was.

He lived for this, for these moments when everything stops except your heart beating and time bends and ripples—moves past your eyes frame by frame and you feel beyond time and before time and no one can touch you.

He just kept starting at Harry. And his hand moved away from Harry’s hair, moved down to the string around his neck. And he cupped it in his palm—a white pointer’s tooth.

“It’s his,” he said, and his face went pale. “His.”

He let the tooth go. He stared down at Harry.

“She was leaving, because of him. Because of you.”