Fuck the flagrant pride buzzing about the man who has just approached Jem, while he’s tying his boat up at the jetty. Fuck his jowly red face, sprayed with grey stubble. Fuck his chapped lips. Fuck his beer breath.

‘G’day, mate. She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ He wiggles his brows and flares his bloodshot eyes in a smile that tugs his lips off his teeth. His calloused palms scrape together as he rubs his hands. (Fuck his calloused palms.) ‘We’re going to weigh it to see if it breaks any records, then carve it up. There’ll be a fair old bit to go around. You want any, mate?’

Oh, Jem fucking wants some.

‘It’s gonna taste like shit and you know it,’ he spits. ‘You’re an arsehole for keeping it.’

‘Easy, mate,’ the bloke says, showing Jem the full glory of his callouses as he backs away.

‘I’m not your mate,’ Jem calls after him.

He wishes the bloke had arced up, right in his face, so he could have hit him. Biffed him. Given his smug jowls a good old wobble. Jem should have called him a cunt; that might have done it—gotten a rise out of him. But the world’s becoming desensitised to that word. Should have called him something else then, should have called him something. Should have just hit him anyway. Should have done something. Should have done something.

Jem fumes and fumes as he unloads the abs and packs up the boat and witnesses the whole palaver. This is his workplace, this is his home. This is what he has to put up with while he’s going about his business. This is what unfolds:

They put the boat on the trailer with the body still lashed to the side. They tow it up the ramp and onto the flat. Bloody water sluices from the body and gathers in murky puddles. Col Fitzgerald, an ex-commercial fisho and the president of the local recreational fishing club, is there to oversee the weighing. They must have called him from the boat. He shouts a hello-how-you-going-cobs?-ripper-day-on-the-water to Jem, but all Jem gives him back is a glare. Col says something to the blokes and they all look at him, chuckling a bit. Jem can imagine the gist of it and doesn’t give a rat’s. They unbind the body, and it lands with a thwump on the scales that they wheeled from the little clubhouse and parked next to the boat. One of them heaves the severed tail and fin from the boat, to the body, resting them on top of it so they’re weighing the full value. It’s declared a disappointment: only two hundred and ninety-nine kilos; sixteen shy of the record. Oh well, they say, and then they crack another round of beers and take it in turns posing with the corpse. They wrench the jaw open and pretend it’s biting their foot, their hand, their head. They laugh; it’s all a great joke. They’re just having a laugh, the boys are. And then they start dismembering it.