The Turning by Tim Winton

pretend otherwise was simply and finally beyond him.
    In the spring Dyson packed up and moved south. He took possession of his mother’s house on the hill above the harbour in Angelus. He knocked out a wall and painted the
rest in colours that would have made his mother blanch. The roof was fair, the foundations good and being home gave him a sense of satisfaction that might once have alarmed him. He was not blind to
the irony of starting over in a house and a community he’d long ago left behind, but it was a ready and practical option and it was the least disruptive for Ricky who seemed to love the
place. Right at the outset Dyson sensed how much less force of will it took for him to be himself in front of his son and this new ease seemed to relax the boy. He’d never seen so clearly how
this worked, how the boy took his emotional cues from him. He couldn’t imagine what he’d done to the kid already without realizing it. He had to think of the future and to seem happy
with their new start.
    Although Ricky was enrolled at a kindergarten an easy walk from the house, Dyson kept him home for the first week of term so they could explore the old town together and he could give the kid
his bearings. They walked the white beaches and hiked over the granite bluffs that dominated the harbour. From a windswept lookout, staring south across the whitecapped open ocean, they tried to
picture the ice, the penguins, the very bottom of the world. Back at home Ricky passed nails while Dyson built him a cubbyhouse between the peppermints in the backyard. In the evenings, for as long
as they could stand the cold, clean wind, they watched the lights of ships track through the narrow entrance to the encircling harbour. Rain chattered on the roof at night as father and son lay
spooned together in bed.
    For a day or so Ricky was fascinated by the idea that this was once his grandmother’s house. He was so young when she died that he didn’t really remember her but he insisted on
seeing photographs, especially those few with him and his grandmother together. Dyson dreaded the photo albums but let the boy thumb through them, enthralled. Within the hour, Ricky had moved on to
some fresh enthusiasm. He was small for his age, a serious dark-eyed child, curious and rarely fearful. Dyson himself had been, he gathered, much like him. He treasured the boy for selfish reasons.
Ricky was the only thing that offered his life any meaning. He couldn’t bear to think what damage the past year had done him.
    In the days after poring over the photos, Ricky seemed more tender and solicitous. It was as though he finally understood that they were both motherless. Their Lego projects were quiet affairs.
They sat at the table in the weak afternoon light with only the companionable scratch of pencils passing between them.
    Dyson began to think about getting a job. For years he taught woodwork and outdoor ed, but after Ricky was born and the depression took hold of Sophie, he spent so much time
on leave that he had to resign. So many emergencies, hospitalizations, sleepless nights. When things were stable he operated as a mobile handyman. The flexible hours allowed him to be around to
pick up the debris when things unravelled at home. But it was fifteen months since he’d worked at all and he’d come south without any solid idea of what he might do for a job down here.
It wasn’t a matter of urgent concern. He owned this house and the place up in the city was let, so he didn’t need much money. A job was more about adding some shape to his new life,
meeting people he could start from scratch with, free from pity or recrimination. It would all have to be new. There was no point in seeking out people he’d gone to school with a decade ago.
It was a small town but hopefully not so small that you couldn’t choose your company.
    The day he got Ricky settled into kindy, he took a walk down the main street with a view to wandering along the