"Very sharp, Bernie," said Anton. Gently pulled the lever pitch and rise above the small lake and the trees faded, coast road. I leaned forward and saw the sand at low tide tiger. "A bird only feels alive in the air," he said, and seemed satisfied with his Zen moment later adding: "Except in the case of a kiwi …". Bernie reminded me of the men with whom he had spoken in the mines. He had the same color, too red, and dressed like them, with a short-sleeved shirt, shorts and cigars steel toe boots. Before I started with his jokes before he opened his mouth, I knew that I liked. Leaving aside the second of two small islands and turned right. I peered first coal loaders at the end of two springs that seemed bent close to the Earth. There were three boats moored, loading coal. In the harbor there were dozens of ships at anchor, some of them were just dots on the horizon. It took another helicopter to the left, back to the coast. "Our destiny is one," said Anton to my advantage, pointing to a red-black-hulled ship that was filthy and in the middle of the anchorage. "The Santa Maria. It is a Panamax. Seven wineries only. Not as big as cabotage, which can have up to nine wineries and three hundred meters. In this, the left landing deck aft. ". "But it landed in the sea is tricky," said Bernie, who was encouraging. "The ship pitches and lurches, the elevation of the track changes, and the other sea, the invisible air, which pulls you and pushes you, as always.". "Wait a minute, guys," said Anton, and began to talk by radio with the Santa Maria. From what I hear, they were giving information on wind speed and other variables on deck. I looked down the long, narrow boat that was before us. It reminded me of the South Island of New Zealand, as it appeared in the weather forecast on television. "You limit yourself to not get wet," Bernie turned to face me. "I have no license at present, Kiwi. I can not drive or fly. "He turned to rotate forward, but went on:" One night I took a few drinks at the pub, and I'm going home in the car, no problems, but I am reaching that the door of the entrance road is closed. Normally I would not bother to close it, you know, so I go to a good speed and runs the instinct-the instinct fucking wrong, and instead of hitting the brakes trying to pull the wheel up. Pum-bah! "Gave a resounding slap. "It was not even the door of my farm," and laughed. "That night he was flown yes". On the cover of Santa Maria, between the last winery and the bridge, there were several men in overalls and white helmets, or yellow orange jumpsuits and helmets, all moving to and fro in a hierarchy inexplicable. Anton made an easy landing. "Come then," Anton said as he took off the headphones and slipped out of the helicopter to set foot in a brace that led to the skates, "and it's time for Santa Claus.". I climbed into the front seat, being careful not to hit any of the controls and landed on the side of Anton. This was drawing back the bolts of storage compartments that Bernie and I had loaded in the morning. Rice, vegetables, newspapers in English and Chinese, four industrial rolls of toilet paper and six mysterious boxes, with red characters printed above the caps, which had given us an Asian man in the hangar. "My wife can make an appointment for a cut, washed and dried out weeks in advance," said Bernie, as he walked away to talk to one of the men in orange overalls. I looked at the faces of the men on deck. They did not seem too unhappy to be anchored a few miles from the coast after spending weeks at sea. I assumed it was part of the work. The arrogance of youth I brought dramatically to some dead ends. One was my plan to leave for home after completing an engineering degree to white boat shoes for men make a hundred thousand dollars a year conducting mine-dump inside Queensland. In New Zealand had seen some reports about the lack of labor in the mines, the exorbitant salaries paid, plumbers early twenties already earned enough to have their own helicopters and returning them to their luxury penthouses Coast to spend weekends in three days. I had read newspaper articles about the insatiable greed of China's coal on the railways and ports operating above capacity, and the huge queue of tankers waiting offshore to fill the hulls of black ore . That was halfway through the first decade of the century, before the global financial crisis and the catastrophe that followed as economies changed from fifth to first place in the overnight, but the last thing I heard was that the tails had returned to form and reached the fifty ships. He had seen it all as clear as I prepared for final exams. Would leave the family, shoulder and back arrimarÃa the upcoming holiday season finally a grown man in the eyes of all. Buy expensive electronic gadgets for the children of my sister, liquor category for adults. I would meet Katie Wallis in Dux, just by chance, and one thing lead to another. The reality was somewhat different. I approached Mackay and agencies quickly learned the vocabulary of driving licenses for heavy vehicles and insurance policies work, the vocabulary used to entangle those sites. In the mines were not giving work to newbies clean skin, no matter what the media say. Although I did with all the documents, I was going to need five years experience in the mines just to drive a dump Cat 769. I found a lantern, and I was to approach the bars during the weekend, I made friends with those with pint of supervisors and tried to make my way engatusarles in mines. It was not the only arrogant young man who wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars easily. For men of the mines, we were just entertainment. When they had enough fun, we were frightened, as if we were seagulls. "My colleague Ivan," said one, "fell asleep in the car for three nights, but eventually gave driving job. And did not even have steel toe shoes. ". So I bought an old Ford Falcon for eight hundred dollars. Under the hood was a noise like kitchen mixers, but it took until Goonyella. I refused as they did in Mackay: three mornings in a row with my innocent look, the title of engineer, forced Kiwi accent and all. I was told that ProBase in Callide, but that was six hours south by car. Instead, I tried all the farms around Moranbah and Coppabella. BMA, Anglo, Macarthur: all I said no. I went north to Xstrata mine in Collinsville, and there I was offered a job in the cafeteria. By then he was already bald and had to accept it. Not that it was a good cook, but I also needed: the biggest thing was that cooking was a lunch that required piece of toast a bagel and put up canned spaghetti reheated Heinz, a slice of cheese and a fried egg. I lasted two weeks and then limped back to shore. I ended up sick inside. Even if he had made friends with a big shot of the city and BHP had offered me a job and I had promised that took care of all my licenses, I would have told him where he would fit tuck. My optimism had given everything of themselves over and over there in the mining, sleeping in the back seat of the Falcon-after night fell, the temperature was close to zero, and the foam is seared out among the cuts in the upholstery and I was falling down like a shower, and finally cracked optimism. No way. Can you keep all the red sand, their snakes and coal. As far as I'm concerned, the whole continent could be a huge atoll, and its inner lagoon inhabited by an evil hungry and poisonous creatures. But still could not return home. There would be a grown man in the eyes of anyone. And that's how I ended up working for Anton, making the delivery service for colliers who were anchored at some distance from the coast, islands real time. There the men were homeless, removing dry noodles with vegetables until we got us and we brought them over, or getting a berth at Hay Point or Dalrymple Bay. I stayed at a campsite for caravans near Nebo Road, and rented a caravan every week. It was a little something chrome and adorned with a tiny little flippers, was a kind of silver bullet, a magic solution and stylized that one expected to find in the old Warner Brothers cartoons, but not in Mackay, not in real life. The caravan had no TV, and for some strange reason the campsite managers cut the light every night, just ten at night, which meant I could not even read. After having done some thread to the miners, the bars of the city and did not have much appeal to me, so I got to bed early. Still, there were times when I wake in the middle of the night wanting to take a leak and had to grope in the caravan slippers and keys to the building of the baths, and then the door. As we were as far north as Queensland do not have daylight saving time, I had the feeling of spending my midlife dark. In addition to the supply trips, the company performed Anton transfers of pilots, had the pilot of the port authority to guide the ship to the docking point safely for these trips, but they did not need a pair of extra hands. Bernie you were going to return the driving license in a couple of weeks, and thereafter he and I would service the high seas with Jetranger Bell 206, while Anton is in charge of transfers of pilots in a Robinson R22, smaller. He also began to spend more time in the office, trying to set up a company in the training section of helicopter pilots, were not the only company that was dedicated to that service in the bay, and Anton knew it was too risky to rely too much on there would always be a long queue of coal ships. But there was so much paperwork and six months later, when I was deported from the country and everything went to hell, yet was not registered. My work required to verify that we had everything we had asked for a boat, load it into the JetRanger, download it once we were on board and put up with Bernie. We visited two or three ships per trip, hopping from one to another making deliveries, taking new orders, receiving requests surprising in a broken English, asking us "long sticks of fire" or "black shoe". As long queue outside, we would do two or three shocks in a vessel while remaining anchored in the bay. And one morning you went over there, and where the Monte Cervantes had been there was now a hole, or maybe another vessel had already taken his place. Most ships were from Hong Kong, they said the large letters painted on their prows. The men of the monkeys were a mixture of nationalities, mostly Asian, but often the officers were Europeans: Norwegian, Dutch, English accent presumptuous. The majority of the boats were going to Japan or Korea as soon as the filling of coal, but the steel would help end certainly produce in China. It was strange the change that came over him when he was driving Bernie. He kept the conversation, but the jokes disappeared and dipsomaniac extravaganza. He just heard, and who could throw it on the face, with the hundreds of things that had to pay attention up there in the invisible sea. I felt safe with this Bernie at the controls. But as we landed and took off the headphones, you could bet you anything that had a ready wit of sheep and kiwis. It also had plenty of jokes for Asian crews. I said, looking into his eyes: "How do you say in Chinese" Chinese subnormal "? No-Tol-Niyo. "If you understand or not, the crew, both monkey and the monkey orange white, reacted the same way, ie not reacted. Even amid the tricks that Bernie did little groups hidden from the bridge, suddenly raised his voice and proclaimed: "The other day I played with them Annoula China's version of Look Who's Dancing, but hell, is impossible! They're all alike ". Immigration restrictions meant that we could not take the city to any member of the crew in flight. In the second or third visit you could tell that they were going crazy. They wore helmets aside, or climbed the slaughterhouses of the pants to the knees. His requests were made less discreet. Bernie could keep satisfied the few who wanted drugs, but the vast majority of them craved the company of women. "Matt", I said, offering her hand to Felix too bloated, addicted to the gym, the kind of guy who has never won a fight, but who are not going to give you the chance to do so. Felix was the same, with his muscular arms crossed, saying nothing. I noticed he was holding a small gym bag white leather, which I assumed belonged to Yanna. I turned to her and said hello. "Hello," she said. He wore white boots that reached to the knees and a white set-I guess you could call it dress that covered her breasts with two vertical strips of elastic nylon, but the air leaving the rest from the waist up. Looked like a spoiled little sister. Hotter than an oven: thin, dark, playful, there was a time when she knew it, but this was what he had taken. I finished loading the compartments while Bernie was showing the JetRanger Yanna, explaining the difference between piston engines and jet propulsion, or why does not matter the number of blades having a rotor rotating in different directions according the country where they manufactured the device, and how this all very confusing to the pilot. I had worked with him and a month and I had not explained anything about it even once. Yanna helped up to the cabin and Felix followed her into the back seat. I sat in front, next to Bernie. As we walked toward the Orient Athena, a ship that had visited only four days ago, I turned back and watched Yanna, wondering if it be cold in that outfit so tight. She was looking out the window, entranced by the sea, the only way that a novice may be pregnant. I turned a little more to look at Felix, who was sitting right behind me. "All right, Felix?" I asked. This time honored me with a grunt. On that first trip was not sure if he was her pimp, her boyfriend, or both. I imagined that treating silence meant he was not happy with the numbers that Yanna was about to play board. I soon discovered that in fact it was the muscle-hundreds of trips like that with Bernie over the years. The two had a deal with a brothel in the city. When Yanna was spent, another girl would replace that, but Bernie and Felix, apparently, would always be at the service of crews anchored. We landed on the platform of Athena Orient, which in this particular oil was amidships. I could see how many men came to us dressed in overalls, from bow and stern, while others came out of the deck hatches, and appeared in yellow helmets guarding the bridge windows. I felt disgust. Jumped off and I took what I hoped was the fresh sea air, but mostly it smelled of diesel and hot tar. I worked my way through the crowd and stood by the landing gear compartment and opened the box to download vegetables: Chinese cabbage, cabbage, squash, beans, Chinese, Japanese radishes. A world away from the canned spaghetti in the cafeteria of Collinsville, but Yanna was the only dish on the men aboard the Orient Athena had an interest that day. "But how many .." I did not. I did not want to know. I walked around behind the device, checking that everything was ready for takeoff. As I climbed to my seat I could see a crowd of excited men escorted Felix, twice as large as the crew, and Yanna, they drew a head with the help of her high heels, toward the bridge. "Cheer up, Kiwi," said Bernie, lighting switches and adjusted the headphones. "He's not going to happen. I wish many people work only one day a week. ". We stop in two boats on the trip, both anchored offshore, delivering regular supplies. Mackay flew back to Orient covers Athena. Were deserted. That night, alone in my silver bullet, not stopped thinking about Yanna, isolated there in the sea. I imagined her in a windowless room, sitting on a single bed cornered against the wall. A Felix, standing beside the heavy steel door, arms crossed. A tail of the crew dressed in overalls and helmets, and some other bearded official with its blue and gold epaulets on the shoulders proudly located. How to open the cell door and entered the Yanna the first client. I considered returning to the hangar, get the trailer JetRanger, Yanna off and rescue. I tried to convince me that knew the routine of the switches and buttons to put the rotors turning, the operations being carried out by different levers and pedals, but there are some feats that even the arrogance of youth can do. I lay in darkness, in my squeaky mattress, while my head was again and again the image of men unbutton the overalls and dropped to the ankles, while continuing with their boots and helmets positions. When we returned to the Orient Athena in the morning, Yanna and Felix were waiting on deck. She was wearing a baggy black sweater, the kind that are usually put the dancers after a rehearsal. Her curly brown hair and had the same physical appearance the previous day. His face had the same expression, safe and distant. Even gave him talk a lot once stood inside the cabin. Asked several questions about the JetRanger Bernie, in what sense the rotor blades spinning. It was clear that the previous day had been listening to the conversation. It seemed as if nothing had happened in the meantime. We made a stop in the Hav Konge. While Bernie and I descargábamos supplies, you can see how he rubbed his head Yanna Felix, and mocked it started to lose hair. When we were back in the air, Bernie contacted the Rodeo IV, our last stop that morning. The wind was gaining strength, but nothing that Bernie could not handle. He even found time to joke. "Do not be so modest, Bernie," said Yanna, whose voice sounded more serious and mature over the intercom. "You mean because they have tiny penises?" She let out a laugh. "Do not be so sure. After all, I really am in a position to compare. ". One week exactly after the first trip, Yanna and Felix returned to the hangar. Despite having seen his relief after the first night aboard the boat, I still had an uneasy conscience about leaving aboard the June Tong III, in particular because it was a ship of nine wineries, a mastodon. Should be more than thirty men on board. I thought Anton tell, but deep down I knew suspected. Should know if Bernie and Felix for years had been carrying prostitutes to the ships, before Bernie had a suspended license. As the weeks passed and I find out more about Yanna, began to blur the boundaries of moral indignation felt the first time we left on board. He had no ill child or parent to be maintained. It was clear that he could stay on the ground if he wanted to and serve the people of Mackay, or could leave behind the world and study at the Central University of Queensland, or get a job in a clothing boutique or do gardening-anything that is proposed . But this was the path he had chosen. "It's just a temporary thing," he once said, apropos of nothing. "This business, I'm just waiting to decide what I want to do with my life.". She laughed at my timidity. "I do not fuck with Mackay anyone for money. Only do the ships. This makes it easier to keep things separate. Hooker sea, so the girls call me now. ". I felt like sharing with her philosophy that I developed walking about the difference between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of happiness, which took root during the nights got mine in the Ford Falcon, refined philosophy that every night lying inside my silver bullet, but I knew I would muddled. I want to die: I realized that had led to another joke of Kiwis, but she said: "It would have been so romantic," taking another role in that moment, toying with me. I gave for wanting to arrive on Friday, the day of the week we had on Yanna and Felix to the anchorage zone, which took place the conversations she and I had. Friday nights were still a mixture of conflicting thoughts and feelings, arguments with myself, tested and repeated conversations with her: a kind of torture, maddening for his candor. The rest of the week doing my job on autopilot. I did not even important to the plastic bags filled with white powder and brown Bernie was giving to anyone who wore a helmet and a handful of tickets in hand. We ended up flying at noon, we had the hangar clean and closed before it suddenly came the inevitable afternoon storm. Every time my Ford Falcon refused to start, Bernie took me after work at the campsite so I would not get wet. Almost not worth it, with all the jokes that I spent on it "hard to put me" by Yanna. He had prepared a complete repertoire on my "pigeon" about how New Zealanders put their noses where they should stick his cock. Sometimes he would stop at the bank, on the way to the campsite, and changed the Chinese yuan, the yen, U.S. dollars and Philippine pesos in bills Australians. Sometimes we let ourselves down by a villa surrounded by a rusty metal fence with a mastiff who looked asleep. Aboard the ships I simply unload the food and toiletries, no attention to the crew or if they made me me, or so I thought. How much time would have gone well? Earning almost nothing, lying before ten, fascinated and frustrated with Yanna. My mother tried to convince me to return to Canterbury for my graduation ceremony, but I had already checked the box to receive the title in the mail. It may not work as a man was, or earning the salary of a man, but at least he could make decisions as a selfish man. And then one Friday, we had left Yanna and Felix in the MV Prestige and landed on the stern of the Ruby II. Bernie had gone off to do their business and I had unloaded the goods to the ship and was about to close the cargo when someone grabbed me from behind, I got a hot hand in the mouth while the other pressed against my neck I later discovered it was a cutter. I tried to keep a cool head. If you were about to rajarme neck really should take this moment to reflect on my life too short, thinking about my family in New Zealand in the house where I grew up, maybe even spend a nostalgic thought Katie Wallis. But I could only think of my useless Falcon, parked next to the caravan, and how long it would take someone to realize that I was not coming back. "Relax, man." It was Bernie, who made his way among the monkeys of the crew until he was a few feet from me. "Hang in there.". The man behind me off the hand of my mouth for a moment before re-hooked his arm around the neck and drag further back towards the bridge. The head was about to estallarme, squeaky my ears. The corner of my eye I could see the white shirt of an officer, then relaxed the pressure around the neck and yanked me into a small room. The man continued to scream while slamming the door and the two plunged into total darkness. I felt a sharp pain in the shoulder, as if I was driving a welder in the joint. The man stopped screaming, but I could still hear his labored breathing, irregular, heard him move around the room, looking for a switch, or perhaps looking for me. I had no idea what I wanted. You may comenzase as a protest over working conditions on board. Maybe he was mad because Bernie had been cast for cocaine on another occasion and had refused to sell him this time, or maybe has already been drugged and was well placed and did not know what he was doing. You may smell the scent of Yanna in me and that was already enough to get him out of his wits. I tried to remember if we had been in the Ruby II, but could only concentrate on keeping your back against the wall. Despite the pain of the shoulder that was dislocated pretty sure I knew that every night spent in the darkness of my silver bullet had prepared me for this match without lights. I could hear him stumbling to bed and how he was knocking things over the top metal. He kept going around in circles the room in clockwise clock, and I kept six hours ahead. People outside were knocking on the door, but it should be locked. At one moment the ridiculousness of the situation overcame the pain and fear, and avoid my attacker in the dark became a game. He was prevented in any way, had to be. I turned away from the wall and got in the middle of the room, hearing spun around, whispering, hissing, wailing. Perhaps it was simply mad suddenly, being stuck on this ship anchored at sea knows who for how many weeks, waiting for their turn came to moor at the dock. "Fuck you" he replied, and turned to throw a knife. I walked away and went to bed, I lifted the mattress, which was only foam coated with a thin layer of vinyl and, forgetting his shoulder in a moment of pure adrenaline, I turned and plunged ahead with the mattress to connect with my attacker and knocked. I quickly stood up, adjusted the cushion and I got a jump on him to become trapped under me, supine, helpless as a cockroach on his back. Outside you could hear a kind of whisper that, as I discovered later, was the chief engineer of the Ruby II rushing the door with a torch. Almost everything was over, could feel it. He was commanding in my head the day's events to count. This would be my great triumph: defeating a mad bomber with only one good arm, my grand entrance into the Hall of manhood. And have a lot of practice to tell the story. First the guard, whom the captain had sent a radio message and came to his own helicopter just as they forced the door, then the police, once we were back on land, then Anton, I visit in the hospital while I healed shoulder and received several cuts. And then the phone call would be my own people at home, the lawyer, the second contingent of police. It showed that my assailant, Rondel Santos, a native of Quezon City, Philippines, was under the influence of methamphetamine. It was easy to keep track of the drug that led to Bernie, and the laboratory in the rear of the villa where the mastiff was sleepy. Bernie was arrested and charged with drug trafficking and distribution. Of course.