Can't Kill Him With an Axe

It was our first afternoon at Irwins and we were setting whiting net along the cockle banks. Old Salt threw over the last buoy and checked his bearings, so we could find the net the next morning.
"That sand spit is under the hill that looks like a tit." He turned around and surveyed the flat landscape ringing the inlet on the northern side. "And bugger all that way."

He grabbed the rope. I gunned the motor, headed for the car park. The problem was Old Salt hadn't got the rope at all. He did an amazing spear maneuver, a kind of horizontal pole vault, his body straight as a ladder, over the thwart, over the deck and landed on his head on the pile of chains at my feet.

Here he stayed. I fumbled about for the kill switch and then changed my mind, because what if he was injured and I couldn't start the outboard again, and so I yanked the motor into neutral instead. Old Salt's eyes were open, the colour of curdled milk and he wasn't moving.

It took a long minute or so for him to come to and another ten before he got up and patted himself down. He thought he may have broken a rib. The rest of that trip to Irwins was peppered with Panadol and pain for him. Poor Old Salt had to sleep on the floor like the rest of us in the little fishing hut - getting in and out of the swag must have hurt.

A week and half later, we were out setting crab pots in Oyster Harbour (on a mistaken whim there may be crabs there).
"I reckon you gave me a good kicking when I was knocked out," said Old Salt, feeling his rib. "It's still fucken sore."
I didn't say anything but scanned the sea grass bottom, looking for a pot we'd lost, and grinned.
"I take it, from your silence, that I'm right," he said.

Of course he wasn't, but,  "It does sound appealing."
Accidents like that one happen so quickly and often in such banal circumstances, don't they? Just a second too late grabbing the rope, dropping that spanner, a moment of inattention while changing a CD ...

He's often fallen over in the boat and it's usually my fault. I drove past the starboard channel marker once, tipping Old Salt into the life jackets and anchors in the bow as the boat plowed straight into the sand bank. Another time, Old Salt was sitting on the pile of nets as we came home from the Sound at night. He slid sideways when I broached the tinny on a channel wave, and fell against the side with one arm trailing in the water. I kept going, thinking he would right himself, but it didn't happen.
He told me later that his raincoat was collecting water and turning him into a sea anchor.