Aue, page 21
She walked out of the room.
‘Hey,’ I yelled. ‘Don’t be a precious princess.’
She came back with her hands behind her back. ‘If I give you something, I want something in return.’ And she brought an envelope out and held it in front of her.
‘So what is it?’
‘Pictures. Old ones. Of May – well, of May’s brand new arsehole boyfriend. No one will miss them. I hope.’
I opened the envelope and slid out the pictures. There was a picture of a bat, lying in some grass. A picture of a smashed lock. And a set of skid marks on a road.
The pictures were cold and light in my hands. I could feel the oil from my fingers seep into them. I stared and stared and Megan let me, didn’t ask what the pictures were making me think or feel or why I wanted to look at them, why I was still looking at them. Why I didn’t blink.
She just let me be. The bat. The lock. Skid marks.
I set them on the coffee table.
‘I want something in return,’ she said, ‘I want a story.’
‘Why May? What is she to you?’
‘She was my friend. Once. I stopped keeping up with her. First time I see her in ages is at the police station to take her picture. I’m wearing lippy and my hair’s done perfect. She’s a mess. Split lip, bad skin, put on weight. Dark circles. I saw how ashamed it made her to see me. After such a short time – just a year – and we were so different. What she went and did to herself.’
‘Did?’
‘Allowed? Accepted? I don’t know. Took her hands off the wheel – just for a second. All it takes, Tauk.’
‘She works at the factory – in the café.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Saw her in the street, saw her work T-shirt.’ I felt bad for lying to Megan, but didn’t want to lose her trust. ‘Go see her.’
‘Come on, Tauk,’ said Megan. ‘I gave you pictures so I could hear your story.’
‘That’s hardly fair.’
‘Pay your rent then.’
‘All right. I do have a ghost story,’ I said.
‘A real one?’
‘Of course.’
‘A sad one.’
‘Terribly.’
And she stood up and flicked off the light and took a box of matches and lit a candle. ‘Tell it to me good.’
‘As I remember it,’ I said.
She nodded and she put her head in my lap, and because I knew what I was about to tell her, her head in my lap didn’t make me hard. I asked, ‘What if your boyfriend comes home?’
‘He won’t. He’s busy. Important stuff. Now tell me the ghost story, Tauk.’
I put my hand on her head. She closed her eyes.
‘Once upon a time I’m a small boy tripping over my own feet. The boat rocks and my father has so many books spread out in front of us. My mother is sad. She doesn’t want the books. I am crying because they have pictures. I want to look at the pictures and my father wants to let me, but my mother doesn’t like something about the books. She says there’s something smeared on them that will never come out.
‘I steal one picture though. I rip one from a thick book. A beautiful picture of a mermaid with long green hair. And one day my father finds it under my pillow. He comes to me and he says, “Did you wreck one of mummy’s books?”
‘And I can feel that he is unhappy. It was a bad thing to do, rip mummy’s book. And I feel like I am not his good boy anymore. So I tell him, I didn’t. And he says that I must tell the truth always and I won’t be in trouble if I tell the truth. And I believe him so I do. I tell him the truth. I tell him I did rip out the picture. And I’m sorry, and I cry. He says he has a great idea, and he wipes my face with his thumb and he says, “Come with me, my tama.”
‘And we go walking along the coast, and he tells me to pick sweet-smelling flowers. I pick at everything, grass, weeds, flowers, and thrust bunches at him. He takes them in his large hands. The sun blinds me when I look up at him. His face, his teeth and eyes, brilliant like a galaxy. And I grab a weed, but it bites me like a jellyfish. It stings me all over and my hand and arm goes red and lumpy.
‘Dad says, “Oh, my tama, that was nettle.” But he stuffs it in his pocket anyway, like he’s too strong for nettle to hurt him, then kisses my hands and arms over and over.
‘Back at the boat we put the flowers and grass and weeds, even the nettle, between the pages of all Mum’s books. And I remember the smell. Smells are hard to remember, but I do. Because after, maybe a long time after, whatever a long time might be to a kid, my mother would read to me from them. And every time she did, the smell of flowers and weeds came out of the book, and they fell from between the pages. We didn’t have to get rid of the books anymore, and I was allowed to look at the pictures whenever I wanted. And we taped the little mermaid back into her book. My mother called us her heroes.’
Megan opened her eyes. ‘The end?’
‘The end.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
I pressed my thumb, lightly, against the freckle on her eyelid. ‘You’re welcome.’
I had another ghost story, but I didn’t tell it to Megan. Me and my mother. Another smell – a sweet metallic smell. Birds bleeding.
The black ink birds on my mother were bleeding.
She was on the floor, with her eyes closed.
I painted her skin with so much blood.
Jade and Toko
They came back to the town. The whenua had long been buried under a tree along the coast. Like an anchor.
They stopped hiding on the boat. Enough time had passed and their little green-eyed boy was growing big and needed to move.
He needed to see other people. And they needed those people to see their beautiful boy.
They wanted to show him to the world.
And show him the world. The whole wide world.
All the stuff from before. Hash, even Coon, couldn’t hold them captive any longer.
They went to town for ice cream.
They visited Nanny and Koro.
The line of Colleen’s mouth stayed elastic. Bending to a joke, or joy at seeing her moko.
Toko, Taukiri and Jade walked together in town.
Sometimes they stopped at the Craypot.
For Taukiri a juice, or a sneaky fizzy from Bryan the bar owner.
Sometimes a beer for Toko.
He would bring his guitar, like he used to. And Taukiri would sit on his lap so still – so still – Toko could play a whole song. And Toko’s little boy would move his eyes from his father’s lips, to the moving fingers, and back again. As Toko tapped his foot, little Taukiri would look and listen, his mouth open – struck dumb by his daddy’s songs. And everyone smiled at the two of them.
‘Gonna be a musician, just like his dad,’ they would say.
‘Look at him, it’s like he’s hypnotised by the sound,’ they would say.
‘Spitting image.’
And when it was time to go home the bartender polishing glasses would ask Toko to play another song. ‘One more for the road, Toko.’
Toko always had time to play one more.
People loved to see the Māori man sing his Māori songs. It was the south. People in the south often treated him like he was a souvenir.
Toko, Taukiri and Jade would climb into the truck and go back to the Felicity. Seagulls keeping watch. And not far off the peninsula the dark water of the Kaikōura Canyon was nothing to fear. It was not angry, and even though it could at any moment break pieces of the land to make islands, it didn’t.
Jade had stopped having nightmares about yellow-eyed, yellow-toothed dogs living below deck. The pages of her childhood books were lined with flowers and weeds and flax so they no longer had the smell of the House in them and they no longer needed to be kept away. They always kept some in the box though. Some in, some out.
Like an anchor.
Taukiri
I had no money. None. I busked, I spent the coins, the odd note, I busked, I bought food, I busked. And now I had no money.
I opened the closet and I took out my board. I tried to open the bag but the zipper was stiff, and I had to pull harder. The board was stuck to the bag with wax, didn’t slide out. Was dried out. Sad.
The board felt lighter than usual, and bone dry, brittle. There were bits of sand on it, and I realised that sand was from Kaikōura, and it was so dry it looked like prehistoric sand. Like it belonged in a museum. Like ghost sand.
I took it outside and I got a blunt butter knife and began peeling the old wax away. At first it spun away like cold butter, until the sun warmed it so it got soft like fresh-chewed bubble gum and came away in globs that got under my nails.
Jason came out of the house. He had on skinny jeans, white sneakers and a black bomber jacket. Freshly shaven too. But it looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week. Despite the shit he was up to, he was a pretty decent guy. Was hard to hate him, even though I wanted to.
‘Going for a surf, bro?’ he asked.
‘Nah, selling it.’
‘Need cash?’
‘Yeah, bro. I’m a broken arse. Fucked it up bad losing that job.’
‘I got something.’
‘What?’
‘A run. Easy one too. No sweat. Just a drop off, pick up.’
‘Dropping what?’
‘Just an order.’
‘Yeah, I get that. What sort?’
‘A mixed order. Weed on top – all you need to know, if you prefer. If it helps you, you know, morally.’
‘How much?’
‘One-hour drive loaded. Fifteen-minute stop, and a nice cruisey return, no load.’
‘How much?’
‘Three hundred.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight. Tonight’d be ideal, actually. Yeah?’
‘I dunno. I dunno. Nah. Nah.’
‘Good luck with the board then, mate.’
‘Yep.’
And he left.
Once I got all the wax off, I cleaned out the bag, wrapped the leg rope around the tail of the board and pushed it back into the silver bag.
I secured it to the roof racks and headed to the nearest surf shop.
There were two second-hand boards outside, selling for four-hundred dollars and six hundred-and-fifty. Mine was better than both of them. I went in. There was a guy at the counter with long dreadlocks and those piercings that turn your earlobes into gaping holes.
‘Selling?’ he said, nodding to my board.
‘Yup.’
‘How much you want for it?’
‘It was worth a grand when I got it new. I’d sell it for eight hundred.’
‘Ha. Good luck.’
‘Go lower?’
‘Try seven hundy, give it a month, drop it if it doesn’t go.’
‘All right,’ I said, and set the board against the counter.
‘Open it up,’ he said, and I did. ‘Nice. Good nick. Should sell.’
‘So you can give me the seven hundred?’
‘Ah, no. Not exactly.’
‘Ah right, sorry, what’s your commission.’
‘No, I mean, yeah we take ten per cent, but you don’t get paid till the board sells. Sorry, dude. Still wanna sell it?’
‘Yeah, I guess. Don’t have much choice.’
‘You could go on Facebook. There’s a Buy and Sell Wellington page. It’s easier. Get your money quicker.’
I could ask Megan or Elliot, I thought. Or I could sign into my own Facebook on Megan’s laptop and do it, but I really didn’t want to see the messages I might’ve got these past months. ‘I’ll leave it with you, bro,’ I said.
I wrote down Megan’s details on a square of paper, and left. Went to find Jason. He wasn’t back at Megan’s, so I called his phone from her landline.
He answered. ‘Hey, babe.’
‘It’s me.’
‘Tauk, what’s up? Sell the board?’
‘Nope. You still need someone for that job?’
‘Sure do. Eight all G? I’ll be there. At Meg’s. Loaded.’
‘All G.’
I went to the attic and I lay on the bed. Stared at the ceiling. It felt so empty in there. Was it that my surfboard wasn’t in the closet now, was it that my life was about to change, and I was in that sad trough before I did something I never had and never thought I’d do – a run for Jason?
And ‘weed on top’, that’s all I’d need to know?
Why was Megan even with that guy? I didn’t like him. Hated feeling like I needed him. And why did I really? Why couldn’t I just go and get a real job. What was I even doing in Wellington now – what was I even doing?
The board. I’d held onto it telling myself I’d never use it again, never go near the sea again. But I didn’t really believe it. Mum and Dad bought that board for me. And Ari always told people his brother was a surfer and one day he would be too and I was going to teach him.
Now my board was in a shop like a loser reject no one loved.
I leapt from the bed and ran downstairs. I got in my car and drove to the surf shop.
The guy was still there. ‘Ha! It’s not sold yet, bro. Sorry.’
‘Not selling anymore.’
‘Good for you, bro, good for you. No price on happiness.’ He gestured to the board and I took it.
My fuel light was on, but I headed out of the city centre. To the sea.
I took the bend around the bottom of Moa Street and found Lyall Bay, wide open like a big lovely smile. Beaming. Above the rocks, the waves were peeling. They bowed to the sky. They moved from left to right, stilling time in sublime slow motion, like they were in no rush and yet moved quicker than anything else ever had. A giant-like pace, quick, powerful, graceful.
I pulled in to watch the surfers. Left my car running. There were six or seven out. One surfer took a drop and made a smooth bottom turn, rode the clean wave all the way in, before lifting his arms in the air and springing off his board. And then there he was, up on it again, duck-diving the white wash, making his way back out quick, not wanting to miss a thing. My heart beat, my feet tapped, my hands slapped the steering wheel.
And a song with a quiet, deep, mournful beat came on. I didn’t turn it off. Just listened, just listened and looked out at the broad open bay. When the song finished, I turned off the ignition and got out of the car. Stripped my clothes off and pulled on the bone-dry wettie, coarse and brittle now. Unstrapped the board and watched another surfer ride in. Cut back, cut back, cut back. Finally, placed my car keys on my front tyre, and with only the sound of the sea and a loud, ‘Akaw!’ like a bird about to take off, I made a light-footed jog down to the ocean. My board under my arm.
The sea is not grey and the sky neither. The sun is high and the bay is open like a Cheshire cat’s smile and the water is already bringing my brittle wetsuit back to life and sucking against my skin.
And the sea!
She kisses me like I’ve been missed.
She’s like, ‘Where’ve you been?’
She’s like, ‘Where did you go?’
She’s like, ‘What’d I do?’
I don’t say, ‘Don’t you remember?’
It’s in the past. All’s forgiven. She’s forgotten and, for now, so can I.
She’s like the tongue of a giant puppy who did something a long time ago, something silly like chew up my shoes.
The saltiest sorry is gushed.
She’s happy I’m back, and licks me sloppy, and wags her tail for me in perfect curls.
Forgive her. Drop down the face of the first wave, and turn quick, cut back, up, down. Forgive her. I forgive so much my heart swells full up, like she is, swelling up, swelling up over us being back together again.
Licked better, like an old bruise and she wants to make it all better now. And the blood in the bruise of me uncrystallises, and decides to swim about again, beneath my kissed-better skin.
Surf. Duck-dive. Surf, surf, surf, up down and swelling more now.
And let go, and swim away from my board and float. Leg rope on, though, so not separated. Not floating unowned, together still, even if just by a cord. Floating, and the sky so open above me that there’s nothing but this. Wave crashes on me, pulls my board away, and I feel the pull at my ankle. Haul it back, jump on.
Sit with feet dangling under. Bird darts. Cloud moves. It’s energy, pure hit. Smack. And into my blood.
Surfing for an eternity. Surf until thirst from accidentally-on-purposely drinking salt water, draws me to land.
Find a bottle in my car. Chug it back, so quenched now. So perfectly quenched now.
Feel me again. Taukiri. And for the smallest moment, looking out at the ocean, I let Taukiri miss Ari.
How is he? How’s he doing?
After my surf I don’t really dry off. My skin and hair wet I try to dress and the clothes are hard to pull on because I don’t dry properly. I don’t want to. I’m so happy I don’t want to. I’ve been trying to dry my whole self out ever since I crawled out of the water and onto the beach at Bones Bay. But now, I want to leave the salt water on my skin.
In my car, turned the ignition and couldn’t get it to start. No gas. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. The time. Eight. Jason.
I walked to a bus station. Waited twenty-five minutes, took it, shaking. Cold. Worried. I needed that money. Too late now. Unless Jason waited? Would he wait?
Got off the bus near the airport, walked to Megan’s. At least an hour late. Would he be there? Weed on top, whatever it is underneath. No harm done?
Door locked. I knocked. No one answered. I sat on the porch. Jason would’ve been here, with the load. Hoped he wouldn’t be mad. Needed some weed myself just thinking about it. About the money I’d lost.
A car pulled up.
