Du Rose Sons

by Bowes, K T

  Hana bathed Phoenix, a happy, splashy affair which proved the necessity of the wet room design which Logan had insisted on. The excess water ran towards a dip in the tiled floor and exited though a plug hole in the corner of the room. Hana shut the door afterwards and left the room to dry itself without her frantic intervention with towels and effort. She was determined to enjoy time with her daughter, remembering how Isobel’s appearance had robbed Bodie of her time, attention and smiles for far too long. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him,” she mused as Phoenix popped her head through the neck of her pyjama top. “He feels hard done by.”

  “Dum by,” Phoenix repeated.

  The darkness imposed upon the floor length windows as Hana read Phoenix a story. The little bears in the picture book were finally put to bed by their frantic bear mother and tucked up for the night. The moral of the story was ‘do as you’re told’ but Phoenix wouldn’t realise that for a few years yet. “Cow,” the little girl said and turned Fluffy’s face to see what she was looking at. Hana shook her head.

  “No cows, babe. Just bears.”

  “Cow,” Phoenix insisted and popped her thumb from her mouth and pointed with it. “Cow.”

  Hana followed the direction of the wet thumb and gasped, instinctively clutching her stomach to shield her son. The slightly crossed eyes of one of the large shaggy white cows stared in at her, its hooves planted firmly on the scrubby grass outside. Logan had raised the foundations of the house so that the high deck lined up with the bottom of the doors. The beast’s head and shoulders were visible above the rail which ran the length of the deck, the only thing stopping the animal coming right up to the window.

  “Get Daddy nen?” Phoenix asked. “Naughty cow not ‘lowed in Daddy-garden.”

  Hana stood up slowly and the animal’s eyes widened. Its ears flicked.

  “Calfie!” Phoenix squealed and it snorted and jumped away from the window. Phoenix beat Hana to the ranch slider and put her hands and nose against the glass. Her nappy showed through the back of her elasticated pyjama bottoms. “Baby one!” she danced with happiness. The tiny animal tottered behind its white mother on pipe-cleaner legs which bent and wobbled underneath it. “Bootiful!” Phoenix sighed and beamed happily. She repeated herself over and over and then looked expectantly for Hana to open the door so she could go out and cuddle it. In the fading light, Hana saw the mucus dangling from the cow’s shaggy tail.

  “You can’t go out,” she said to her eager child. Phoenix’s face crumpled in disappointment and her frown heralded the forthcoming objection. “No!” Hana said forcefully, reaching into her pocket for her phone.

  “Photo?” Phoenix said and held out her hand. Hana squatted down to her level whilst dialling the number for the hotel.

  “It’s a brand new baby, Phoe. The mummy will get angry if you go near it. You can’t go out. I need to get Daddy.”

  “Get Daddy. Daddy bwave. Not me. Daddy.” Phoenix pushed her sincere face into Hana’s just to make sure her mother understood and nodded her head with forced precision.

  Hana nodded and sighed as her phone reception disappeared. She ran down the hallway to the kitchen and seized the wireless phone that connected her to the main house. Realising her daughter hadn’t followed, Hana moved quickly back to her, finding her still watching the grazing dam, her hands pressed against the glass. “Baby dwinkin’,” she smiled and pointed at the suckling calf. “He back and white.”

  Hana looked again, perplexed as the receptionist answered the phone at the hotel. “Hi Carrie,” Hana started politely. “It’s Hana. Please could you raise Logan for me? We’ve got a stray cow and calf in tow up at our place. It looks like she might have birthed it in the garden and...”

  “More!” squealed Phoenix.

  “...there are quite a few of them actually. I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

  The receptionist’s voice sounded tinney through the handset. “I’ll radio him. He went out with all the other Mr Du Roses a couple of hours ago.”

  “What - pardon?” Hana corrected herself. “Went where? What other Mr Du Roses?”

  The woman hesitated, unable to sort the genealogy in her head sufficiently to list them as father, nephew and cousin. None of which were true. She resorted to names instead. “Logan, Alfred, Tama and Neville Du Rose. All of them. They rode out about four o’clock. Caused quite a bit of excitement in the car park on those mad horses of theirs.” She laughed and then thought better of it. Hana heard lust in her voice and fleetingly wondered who she had been ogling. Early twenties, Hana figured it would be Tama.

  “Oh. I’m not sure what to do then,” Hana panicked. “How far did they go?”

  “Back blocks,” Carrie confirmed and Hana sighed.

  “Ok. Thanks. Please radio him and let him know that some of the stock has come up here. They seem...” Hana watched Phoenix’s face take on a look of disbelief as a large distressed dam raised her tail in a wiggly pencil-crayoned line and birthed a massive, cloudy bag of something from her back end. The sack slithered to the ground and the cow turned and licked it, uncovering the face of another calf.

  “Mrs Du Rose?” the receptionist called, concerned at Hana’s abrupt halt.

  “Sorry,” Hana sounded distant as she willed the little body to move. For a long time it didn’t and then suddenly it wiggled, struggling to release itself from the constrictive natural sleeping bag. “The cows are upset. They look like they’re spontaneously aborting. They’re milling around and someone’s going to get hurt. Look, if Logan’s not there, please can you send someone else. Maybe Toby or Flick. They can’t all have gone. It feels like something’s wrong.”

  Hana squatted down next to Phoenix as the herd seemed to swell and grow, penning the newborns into a corner next to the house under stamping hooves. The child looked up at Hana wide-eyed as the throng increased, sure her mother would do something amazing and fix everything. Hana felt powerless. She put her hand over her mouth and prayed for the tiny, spindly bodies being forced back against the deck. “Oh God,” she breathed, “help them.” She fought the urge to cry in front of Phoenix as the small bodies hid underneath their dam’s stamping legs, moving as the herd swirled like water.

  They were seconds away from being smashed and broken as the bullwhip sounded, cracking out into the dusk like an alarm. The herd shuddered and stopped. A dark horseman appeared at the edge of the garden, his hat masking his face but his body perfectly aligned to the white mare underneath him.

  “Daddy!” Phoenix shouted and slammed her palm on the window.

  “He can’t hear you, baby,” Hana said, relief in her voice. She put her arm around her child and cuddled her in close. She was desperate to pull her daughter onto the bed and close the curtains against the reality of their farming life, but knew it would cause more harm. She and Logan had argued about it frequently.

  “Life sucks,” he had said with passion. “I’m not sheltering her from it. She needs to see things resolved otherwise she’ll be a runner, like you and me!”

  “I have to let you see it finish,” Hana breathed into her child’s fluffy hair. “I need to let you see it all made better, otherwise you’ll have bad dreams about it.”

  Phoenix pushed her bottom lip out and studied the scene before her with intense concentration, the hot bath and soporific story wasted in the aftermath. Sleep had gone from her eyes and her taut little body.

  “Shed them!” Logan shouted to the other riders who appeared on the fringes and they moved around the seething mass, pushing their way through on fearless mounts.

  “Sacha!” Phoenix pointed. “Luff Sacha.”

  Logan’s white mare ducked and weaved, her head higher than usual as she avoided horns and flailing hooves. Logan sat solidly in the saddle, his body flowing with hers as he controlled her just with the touch of his reins against her neck. He was strong and powerful, no sign of his former weakness diminishing him as he did what he loved best. Instead of hiking up the panic, the riders
dispelled it. They were the herd leaders and the cows relaxed under their authority, demurring to human instruction. The men used their bullwhips to hold and release the animals, checking them before sending them this way or that. Hana would have loved to see an aerial view of the display as the men channelled the beasts between them, their horses swaying on their front feet as they darted to thwart an escapee or drive the reluctant ones after the others. Sacha did a complete spin, effortless in its execution as she followed a straying heifer. She herded it successfully and it kicked its back legs in defeat in a mammoth bunny-hop and followed the others. In no time, the huge garden was almost cleared. The swell of bodies were gone and the night noises reclaimed their prominence once again; the cackle of disturbed tui and the growl of curious possums resonating alongside the clank of metal tack and the snort of tired horses. Logan kept the mothers and calves at the back near Phoenix’s window, holding his whip out straight in front of him and putting Sacha’s body between them and the disappearing herd. At first they panicked but then relaxed as Logan backed up a little.

  Tama, Nev and Alfred rode up to him and Phoenix’s face lit up. Alfred rode as though he sat in his armchair in the apartment, his body moulded to the stock saddle and his girth hanging loose under his mount. “I forget that Poppa Alf used to run the farm,” Hana said quietly, mourning the man who had seemed so potent and all-knowing at their first meeting. Phoenix nodded enthusiastically.

  “Nat Mefusa,” she said, pointing at the horse and Hana remembered.

  “That’s right. Clever girl. Methuselah.”

  “Me wide ‘im a Poppa Alfie,” Phoenix said proudly and Hana shook her head. She hated the Du Rose men’s disregard for safety or lifeblood in general, slinging her baby in the saddle from six weeks old and giving her mother numerous heart-stopping moments in the last, almost two years. So much for waiting for the helmet to fit. Nothing had ever happened. But it could.

  Happy with the equilibrium, Phoenix was chatty. Her father had fixed everything, just like she knew he would. “Nonie Leslie not ride dough. She fat!”

  Hana’s eyes grew wide at her daughter’s statement of fact. It was possible that Leslie herself had said it but Hana was saved the dilemma of reprimanding Phoenix, by the men outside. Their horses walked slowly backwards, controlled by imperceptible commands and the cows moved away from the house, trotting quickly past them. The tiny calves tottered after them making a strange mewing sound. “Bye calfies,” Phoenix called and waved pleasantly. Then she turned to Hana. “My ‘ungry.”

  The four imposing Du Rose men sat in Hana’s kitchen, their socks fluffy and incongruous without their work boots. The other stockmen drove the rest of the herd back down the mountain and the noise seemed to shake the house on its pilings. The men’s legs were long as they sprawled on the kitchen chairs and Hana found it hard not to fall over them as she delivered coffee and sandwiches to the table. The muffins she and Phoenix made together earlier were inhaled in a matter of minutes, the interesting bright red icing barely even touching the sides of their mouths on the way down.

  “So, where are the calves and horses?” Hana asked tentatively, resting her hand on Logan’s outstretched thigh under the table. Nev answered.

  “We’ve shut the gate so the new calves and dams can stay up here for the night, if that’s ok?” He asked the question out of courtesy, knowing Logan had already ratified the decision. “The others are driving the rest back down the mountain to JD’s paddock near the road. It’s got good grass. They won’t be escaping anywhere else tonight.”

  Hana’s eyes widened at the mention of the elusive JD, but she kept her ears open and her mouth shut for once. Her interest was piqued and she saw Logan studying her covertly from under his lashes.

  “Where horsey?” Phoenix asked her father, her mouth covered in icing and her pyjama top stained with food colouring. She held her hands out to the side, palm upwards, questioning.

  Logan leaned towards his daughter. He rescued a blob of icing from her chin and almost popped it into her mouth. Even though he washed his hands more than Hana did, the cracks in his skin bore ingrained dirt and his nails were permanently filthy. He changed his mind and wiped it on the inadequate bib around her neck.

  “Outside, moko,” Alfred answered with a smile. “Having a snack with the cows.”

  “I see...I see...Mefusa!” Phoenix struggled with her sentence, spraying crumbs onto the table and Alfred grinned.

  “Yeah, the old boy’s still got it!” he beamed. Hana wasn’t sure if he referred to the horse or himself. The other men smiled at each other, except Tama, who worked hard to eat everything left on the table. He ravaged the plates like a starving man. Castaway meets McDonald’s.

  “What’s the damage outside?” Hana asked. She had watched one of the cows kick down the deck rail near Phoenix’s window.

  “Superficial,” Alfred answered. “Could have been worse. You might want to keep your gate closed in future.”

  Hana looked at him strangely. “It is closed.”

  “Not,” Tama interjected. He waved his muffin at Phoenix and praised her with a mouthful. She laughed, red icing in her teeth like a vampire.

  “It is!” Hana insisted. “I always close it.” She felt abruptly under the spotlight as though the men wanted someone to blame and she was it.

  “So why was it open?” Nev asked, his grey eyes shrouded and disbelieving. Hana was instantly defensive and it made her rude.

  “Don’t mistake me for some basket-case lunatic, thanks. The gate was closed when I drove through it at three o’clock. I opened it and closed it! I always close it because I don’t want someone to blast through it and run Phoe over when we’re playing outside. It’s habit. I keep it closed all the time because then I will never forget! Look for someone else to blame.” Hana’s fire was on show for them all to see, her red hair seeming to glow with an inner burn and her porcelain face flushed and beautiful. Her green eyes lit up like display emeralds and flashed dangerously at her brother-in-law. Nev glanced at Logan and backed down.

  “Well, anyway. That’s how they got in. You can see their tracks all the way up the mountain and onto the road up. Good job you never got round to landscaping. They’ve dug up the ground proper. Thanks for raising the alarm though. We were already looking for them but would never have tried up here.”

  “It bite my mummy,” Phoenix swallowed, her voice sounding muffled and strange. Hana pushed her sippy cup towards her, not wanting her to vomit on the table.

  “What?” Logan said to her.

  “Pardon!” Phoenix swallowed the water and admonished her father, waving the sippy cup and giving him an accidental shower. “It bited Mummy hand. Ouch!” She put her finger up to her mouth and sucked it. Logan looked at Hana, noticing the plaster on her index finger.

  “Today?” he asked pointedly and Hana gritted her teeth. He still treated her like his mentally fragile mother sometimes and it infuriated her. She wondered if Nev treated his lovely wife the same way and saw in his eyes that he did. Anahera meant ‘angel’ in Māori and Nev’s wife was exactly that. Gentle, patient and easy going; everything Hana Du Rose was not. She took a deep breath and reined in her temper.

  “When I drove home this afternoon, the gate stuck and a sharp piece of metal under the catch snagged my finger.” She held the plastered digit aloft, noting with satisfaction the blood speckling through to the outside from the cut. She turned away to avoid releasing the biting comment to her husband about getting DNA from the gate to prove it. It stayed unhelpfully at the front of her brain, still wanting to be said, sounding clever and witty in her head.

  Phoenix did a spectacular sneeze and pink cake bits shot in a wide arc around her plate. She squeezed her face up and stuck her bottom lip out to catch the snot. Hana grabbed a length of kitchen paper and wiped her daughter’s offered nose and face with its roughness, deciding that a proper face wash and change of jarmies was probably in order. She went through the teeth cleaning and story process f
or the second time, finding the men still sitting at her kitchen table when she returned. Logan had made more coffee and Tama stood with his nose in the pantry like a pig seeking truffles.

  “Come out of there!” Hana chastised him and put her hands either side of his waist, moving him out of the way of the pantry. “What’s wrong with you? Do you need worming?”

  “Ahakoa nui, ahakoa iti, Pūrangatia ko te aroaro o Taiawa,” Alfred piped up and the other men tittered amongst themselves. Hana sighed loudly and Nev translated it for her.

  “It means, no whether large or small, it will be heaped up in front of Taiawa. He was a gluttonous figure and would eat anything dished up for him, no matter what sort of food or quality it was. That’s like our boy here.”

  “I’m hungry,” Tama whined as he tried to get back to the pantry doors again.

  “I’ll make you something else,” Hana said staunchly. “But then you stop.” Tama scuttled back to his seat and sat down again. Hana handled two tins of pumpkin soup and looked across at the other men. “Are you guys hungry still?” They nodded as a unit and she turned away to hide her smirk. “Pumpkin soup it is then,” she smiled.

  The men ate the soup and another loaf of bread but in her quiet ministrations, Hana was able to glean knowledge that she otherwise wouldn’t have.

  “So who do you reckon’s doing all this?” Alfred asked, beaming at Hana as she laid the steaming bowl in front of him.

  “Insider,” Nev said without doubt. “But why? Throwing a brick through a window at your missus was personal. The other stuff is about trying to ruin the business.”

  “So what exactly is happening?” Alfred asked with his mouth full. “I’m out of the loop nowadays.”

  Hana watched her husband raise his eyebrows at Nev. It was Alfred’s choice to step back, nobody had forced him. After Miriam’s death he had withdrawn from everyone and everything. It had been understandable but also made things much harder for Logan. Logan inclined his head towards his half-brother and Nev listed the things that had gone wrong over recent months.