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Dad used to believe that the souls of the dead rise up into the air and become one with the universe, but doesn’t anymore because he has seen too many minds in pieces, too many spirits crushed, and when I ask him how that happens he says ‘Life’ I imagine it sometimes: all of them looking down from what must be stillness, darkness, quiet, and then through the clouds and the blue sky to the earth and the sea, deep enough to watch the fish turn and flash like so many coins and up here the houses among the ti trees, the shops on the road, people passing the time of day – chinwagging, daydreaming, gadding about – old men in leather shoes baiting lines on the pier and pulling up squid so white they glow in the late light of evening And the skinny thing with the long legs: that is me, running through the water   Lawrie goes about the beach barefoot, shambling; I watch him through the brightness off the waves Cool winds blow from the ocean with mutton birds coming in and yellowness flickers on the cliffs and spindly pines, bent about like ink drawings I have seen I think again of those high up souls, of gods and angels and creatures of the sky I wonder if they see us now, me and Lawrie, his footsteps on the sand making shapes like some kind of writing: telling all those things he cannot say in words; me, dancing around, thinking of them while they look at me, wondering if they see us always, carrying on like we do, or if we already made too much noise and fuss and they have turned away   Dad comes back from the trawler with a bag full of prawns, along the beach past those beaten rocks with their small shelves and hollows, the naked dangling tree roots and Lawrie, who puts his hands in his pockets and yawns and spits and follows in his lounging, raggedy way I go with them to where the barbeques are, watching those prawns crawling about, I