Aue, page 18
‘Yeah, it was. She loved him. Sure, she loved a lot of men, but Tommy was, well Tommy is Tommy.’
‘Got it bad for him, don’t you?’
‘Adore him,’ she laughed.
‘Watch your mouth, woman.’
‘Ha. You know why. He gave Sav her love story. In her tragic tale, she had this big, fucked-up, crazy love story. Every time someone she knew died, she packed her bags and pretended to go to the tangi. I mean, isn’t that celebrating life in the wake of death to the extreme?’
‘How is it you’re not a complete mess?’
‘I am, though. But I was loved. My mum and dad loved me. Sometimes it’s enough.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Felicity was given a box full of kids books when I was a little girl. My school teacher brought them over. One day she arrived at our front door, and I was so excited. I wanted to show her my bedroom, but Felicity didn’t look happy about me taking her in there, and I remember looking at both of their faces. So many things neither of them could say easily out loud.
‘It was a wooden house, Toko. Did I ever tell you that? It was a normal wooden house. There was a high concrete fence, and no grass. But behind the fence, barbed wire strung up above it, it was just a normal wooden house.
‘My teacher came back after a wall was put up to make a bedroom for me. She brought the box of books. I loved Māui best, there were lots of those. I guess my teacher thought Felicity would like them, would understand them, but they were the ones she made the most fun of. I really wish she hadn’t done that.’
In the middle of the night Jade woke with a start.
Of course Hash was there. Saw him with your own eyes. Fool.
Taukiri
‘Bones Bay,’ Jason said to me across our drinks. We were sitting at a bar. Jason had suggested it.
The bar was quite a dive – torn carpet, bar stools that wobbled, scratches over the countertop.
All the windows were boarded up.
But along the top of the far wall there was a row of small square stained-glass windows. They were random as. A dolphin, a lily, a sunset, the moon, a dragonfly. Amateur as. They made the bar look sort of, well, haunted. I liked them.
‘Mr Kyle, long time no see,’ the fat bearded bartender had said when we’d walked in.
‘Has been, Blue.’
‘Who’s the young fulla then? Bastard kid?’ he laughed. Ari would have called him a pirate. I forgave myself for thinking of Ari sometimes. Thinking of him made me feel less guilty because now he knew I wasn’t coming back and I wasn’t lying to him anymore. He wasn’t waiting.
‘Get us a coupla beers, Blue.’ Jason said. ‘You know, Taukiri, when Elliot told me your story, he mentioned Bones Bay. I gave it a Google search. Couldn’t find it.’
I didn’t answer. I stood up and walked over to the jukebox, scanned the tracks and found something good. Old school. Reminded me of Mum. Herbs’ ‘Dragons and Demons’.
I slipped a coin into the slot and punched in the track number.
I stayed by the jukebox to listen, my back to Jason and the pirate man at the bar. Outside the wind sounded as if it had picked up. The door opened then slammed shut, wind whistled through the boarded-up windows.
Blue yelled out, ‘Good tune.’
‘You wanna hear him play it,’ said Jason. ‘Now that’s something.’
Blue bent down and pulled a guitar out from under the bar, ‘I’m always on for a jam,’ he said. His voice sounded gripped by something.
I walked over to them, took the guitar, began playing. Singing Herbs to a pirate and a drug dealer. I thought if this was my life now, it was magic and could only get better.
I didn’t look at them. I sang with my eyes closed, not knowing if they were enjoying the song or not, just loving that inside a song there was no such thing as time.
When I opened my eyes Blue was white-faced and wide-eyed. Like he just saw a ghost.
I watched Taukiri enter the bar with a man.
I blew at the sides of the old building, I tried to rattle at the windows. There was a song playing, and I wanted to carry it all the way to Jade, somewhere, who should know I loved him. I loved her boy, my brother’s boy, like he was my own. But now it is her turn.
The turn I took from her. Whipped away from her.
What I have done swells. Like the sea.
But look: they are all moving out of town. My māmā, my pāpā. The moving van is here and they have bought a little bungalow in Gore Bay. They won’t have to drive past the Craypot anymore.
Ārama
Our first day at school was not going well. It turned out the blonde lady with red lipstick who got the bus sorted for us to get to school was going to be in the Kaikōura Star for making it possible. And everyone decided to make a big deal out of it. The pōwhiri was cool. And so far that had been the only cool thing about our first day of school. I had told Beth it was gonna be the coolest. Someone was taking lots of photos, and the blonde lady was busy straightening her hair and putting her lipstick back on all day. She wrapped her arms around all us poor little country kids for a photo. She called us darlings.
I could tell Beth wasn’t liking it, and to be honest I wasn’t either. This wasn’t what a first day at school was supposed to be like. We just wanted to go to the fort and play. I ran out to the field where some boys were throwing round a rugby ball. ‘Can I play,’ I yelled. Then the photographer came behind me with the lunchbox lady and all the boys ran towards her saying they wanted to be in the paper. Forgetting their ball, the game, they didn’t seem to hear me.
Beth came over. I saw she was thinking, thinking hard.
‘You thinking about that lunchbox, Beth?’
She thumbed behind her at the blonde lady who was talking to someone. ‘Her shoes are pretty.’
‘Be a mighty shame,’ I said grinning.
‘Sure would, kid,’ Beth winked.
And because we sounded like we were in a movie, we thought our idea was good.
Beth said I should go talk to the lady and I should ask for a photo with her near the school, beside the low window of the toilet block. She reckoned the window was low enough for her to reach, and she could tip the cowpat out easy enough.
‘We are only going for the pretty shoes, though, right?’
‘Of course, don’t be a sook, I’m not going home with cowpat in my bag. It needs to be used. Unfortunately for blondie, she’s the only one who’s pissed me off today.’
‘Me too.’
‘You see.’ She whacked my shoulder. ‘You aren’t easy to piss off. She deserves it.’
‘Maybe she does,’ I said.
Beth took her lunchbox from her bag and marched away like an angry dwarf with her swinging arms and legs.
I went over to the lady who was talking to the principal. The feather from the pōwhiri was still in my hand.
‘Oh, Ari,’ she said when I came over, ‘Oh, dear Ari, how is your first day going?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘Such a sweet boy,’ she said turning away from me to the principal. And the blonde lady had an extra button undone on her shirt. I felt weird noticing her extra undone button.
I also felt peed off again when she called me a sweet boy. I probably was sweet. But she didn’t actually know I was, which meant she wasn’t being honest.
Suddenly I hoped I was right and Beth wasn’t going for her pretty shoes but maybe her pretty hair. The wind whipped, brushing up the hair and blowing the feather out of my hand. It landed over near the window Beth told me I should take the lady to. I got an idea.
I touched her elbow, which was surprisingly wrinkly. ‘Miss,’ I said, ‘I lost my feather, the one from the pōwhiri today. Could you help me look for it?’
The lady wriggled her boobs further up her shirt. ‘Of course, sweetie.’ She tilted her head, smiled at the principal. ‘Where do you think it is?’
I told her I had been playing on the concrete near the toilet block.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s start there.’
My heart started beating louder and I was scared she could hear it. When she got close to the feather, she turned to where the principal was standing, to make sure he was still watching, then to me, ‘I think I see it,’ she said. I followed her.
The wind had carried the feather to the perfect spot.
She bent down to pick it up.
‘Now,’ I whispered, and hoped Beth would hear me.
Then I saw the lunchbox pop up at the window, and Beth’s fingers holding the sides, and the yellow cow S.H.I.T. sliding down and landing all sloppy over the lady’s bent-over bum, running down her legs and onto her shoes.
‘Ahhhh,’ she screamed. ‘Is that …? Oh God is that … is that … shit?’
The whole playground was quiet, and everyone was looking.
I covered my mouth with my hands because I couldn’t believe what we’d done.
They found Beth’s lunchbox. She’d stuffed it into the rubbish bin.
They also figured I was in on it because when I’d whispered, ‘Now,’ it came out as a yell.
Aunty Kat and Tom Aiken came to the school together to pick us up. Beth and I were sitting in chairs near the principal’s office. He put us there after being pretty mean. He told us we were the worst kids in the school. The worst! Then he made us sit on a bench near his office. I heard the school door bust open, and by the quick steps I knew Aunty Kat was here. I was pretty scared to see her. So I ducked down behind Beth.
I heard Aunty Kat tell the principal she was here for me.
She said, ‘I’ve come to get my nephew.’
The principal started to tell her about our very, very terrible behaviour. And my aunty stopped him, stopped the school principal in the middle of what he was going to say. I peeked around Beth and down the hall. Aunty Kat had her hand up. And then she said again: ‘I’ve come to get my nephew.’
The way she said it made me feel the safest I’d felt in ages.
I smiled when I saw Aunty Kat. But she didn’t smile back. Neither did Tom Aiken. Aunty Kat gave my ears a solid clip, a real stingy one, and said the fish-and-chip trip to town at the weekend was canned. Which also meant no dairy for one-dollar mixtures.
But it didn’t matter. I was hers. She came to get me.
All the way home in Tom Aiken’s truck I thought of the pretty lady and felt a bit sorry her. She had cried. Even Beth felt a bit sorry. Probably only because we got caught. She wasn’t allowed to go to the movies at the weekend – Tom Aiken had planned it as a surprise, and for me too – but it was out of the question. That’s all we heard all the way home. Everything was out of the question.
At home I sat at the kitchen table. Aunty Kat was making me a snack. Which I thought was a good sign: she wouldn’t make a snack for someone she was really, really mad at. Uncle Stu came home, and Aunty Kat said nothing to him when he came in. He walked real quick towards me and looked right into my eyes. He’d never looked me in the eyes. He grabbed me by my collar. Aunty Kat yelled at him.
‘Leave him, Stu!’
‘Left to finish cleaning the sheds, while you picked up this little shit.’
‘Stu. Leave him. He’s just a kid.’
I felt scared. Looking into his eyes was scarier than his hand holding my collar so tight my bum lifted out of my seat and my eyes burned.
‘He sure is just a kid! A fucken dumb kid.’ Uncle Stu’s spit flew into my face and he threw me back into my chair, where I had been waiting for cut-up apple and a cheese sandwich. I fell backwards, the chair flipped back and my head cracked against the floor. I looked stupid. My legs up in the air, my eyes open trying to stop the room from spinning.
He grabbed his work boot and held it above my face. Then he threw it against the floor beside my head. It just missed. He walked away.
‘Just a kid,’ he said. ‘Just a dumb-arse kid. An idiot, like his loser brother.’
‘You could have hit him!’ Aunty Kat yelled.
‘If I wanted to hit him, I would’ve. I don’t miss.’
Then he said three words to Aunty Kat and at first those three words hung, making the air all wet and cold and gluey, but they suddenly dried hard and tore into me, tore into my mouth like angry bees, down my throat into my chest where they buried their stingers in my thump, thump, thumping heart.
He slammed the door, and above me the light swung. I heard his truck drive away. I had wet my pants. And I just looked up, not blinking, at the light swinging above me, and listened to the sound of my aunty Kat not knowing what to do for me.
Aunty Kat called Tom Aiken on the phone, and he came and got me. I went to their house and sat in the lounge staring at the TV, watching colourful pictures flitting on the screen, but the only thing I could feel was the bees stuck in my chest, making my heart sore.
Beth was so sorry, so sorry, for what we’d done at school, and Tom Aiken felt sad for her. It was hard for her, without her mum and school not being her thing. It was just too much. She didn’t need to be punished – she was sorry.
‘And you, Ari, well you don’t deserve … you’re just kids. You’re just a kid,’ Tom Aiken said, and it sounded so different from him, different from when Uncle Stu said it, but I just kept my eyes on the TV with my mouth closed.
I figured out Beth wasn’t really sorry. And the reason I knew was because at school she called things she liked ‘mighty fine’, and things she thought were C.R.A.P. were ‘a damn shame’. And she winked a lot and called everyone ‘kid’. Even bigger kids got it. And she told the story of the cowpat in her lunchbox every time she was asked. Said that she had the whole thing planned out. And the reason she got away with all the winking and calling big kids kid without being told she was a D.I.C.K. was because everyone knew she was the little prankster farm girl. One who poured cow slop out the window, hitting the bum of a lady everyone said was running for town mayor. And Beth made her say the word S.H.I.T. out loud in a public school.
So Beth was cool, and could say dumb stuff that made her sound like she was born in some big country, where people used to ride around on horses shooting each other, and I was cool because I was her little sidekick, who yelled out, ‘Now!’ Kids sometimes call me ‘Beth’s friend’ instead of Ari. Beth tried to introduce me as Django, but for some reason the nickname didn’t stick.
It was the not-good version of actually being cool.
So, I was not cool. And now I was not only lonely in my new home but scared as well. Plasters-covering-my-belly scared. Pee-in-my-pants scared. Scared like Django wouldn’t be. And scared of what Uncle Stu’s bees, stuck in my heart, planned on doing next.
I am tired. And I am starting to accept this is no longer my job. To make things understood or help people see.
The world is but a grain of sand in my mouth, and yet my lips leave a perfect print on the cheeks of the ants I could kiss.
I am the worm, and the bird, and the ten thousand things which make a nest. I am the stone and the hand from which it is thrown.
If I had fingernails, they were still full of the dirt of my young years, digging. To China. For treasure. Animals’ graves. My heart still pounds from the run we took up the hill.
But come, you need to hear something new, something happy.
See them: they’re marrying each other. He is wearing a white shirt. She is wearing a cream dress, and under it her belly is growing. Only they know, and now I do too. I know so much more now that I don’t need to, can’t fix.
The church is by the sea and painted white, inside and out. It is weathered, so it is soft and lovely and the paint peels in places revealing a light brown wood underneath. There is no harshness.
The children are called in from the beach. The ceremony should start. Not Taukiri, nor Ari – not yet. These are other children whose names and the names of who they belong to are not important. These names would only make us tired.
The children come into the church flushed. Panting.
Oh, these words are so limiting, and I am tired.
This feels an impossibility, but I must try. It may be the last time. I brush the netted curtain aside, the white paint peels from me, outside I lap at the beach, and I am carried under their nails. I am the red flush of their cheeks. They’re married then, and they are so lucky, they know that.
‘I always wanted a sister,’ she says to me, to Kat. ‘Now I have two.’
Taukiri
Blue knew my father.
He knew Tom Aiken. He knew my mother. Blue used to own a bar in Kaikōura called the Craypot, until he decided to sell it. He couldn’t live there anymore, he told us.
He swallowed as he spoke and chose his words carefully. This seemed to go against his nature. He was used to saying whatever he wanted. That much was clear.
‘There were stains in the carpet, so much glass was broken,’ he said, and looked at me to see if I understood the words behind those words. I looked from the tattoos that covered his arms to his small light goatee.
‘It was a long time ago,’ he stopped, again looking for the right words, ‘Fucken hell, can’t believe I didn’t see it off the bat. Wasn’t till you sung that song.’
‘And my mother? Do you know where she is?’
He took a bottle down from the mirrored shelf behind him and poured whisky into a glass, ‘Drink?’
I shook my head. Jason lifted his empty bottle. Blue sculled his drink, popped the top off two beers, then poured another whisky and put the bottle back.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Do you know what happened to your dad, Taukiri?’
‘A boat accident.’
‘Fuck,’ he said.
My mouth watered.
I wanted to be anywhere but this bar. I wanted my own room. I even – for the first time in forever – wanted Ari’s head in my lap, while we watched a dumb cartoon. And I wanted not to hear words that meant there were other things to be said.
