by K T Bowes
“My mother doesn’t speak like that.” Logan sounded hurt and Maihi’s laughter increased.
“I need a thingy,” Hana demanded.
“A what?” Hemi and Maihi spoke at the same time.
“You know.” Hana gesticulated to her temple and Logan groaned.
“Helmet. She wants a helmet.”
“My son’s a cop!” Hana prodded Logan’s spine and he heaved out a sigh.
“And don’t we know it?”
“Who’ll feed the cat if I die?” Hana demanded. She tried to lift her leg back over the saddle and kicked Logan’s thigh.
“I’ll feed the cat,” Maihi promised, waving as Logan revved the engine to cover Hana’s bumbling ineptitude. He gave a cursory wave and drove around the side of the house.
Hana screamed at the sight of the driveway. “It’s steeper than ours!” she shrieked and Logan shook his head.
“Isn’t.”
“Is!” she wailed and he plunged down it, anyway. He navigated ruts and slips, bringing the bike to a sliding stop before a treacherous bend.
“Can you help me out here?” He turned his head and lowered the revs so Hana could hear him.
“To do what?” Her voice squeaked and she closed her eyes to the sight of the river glistening beneath the moonlight. The current whipped along at a surprising rate and Hana wondered about water dragons and taniwha.
“You’re gripping my stomach. You’ll bust my stitches.”
Hana nodded and scrabbled around for something else to grip. She settled on a wrinkle in the front of his jeans. Logan grimaced. “Yeah. I don’t want that damaged either, thanks.”
“Stop complaining!” Hana snapped. She rummaged around and discovered putting her hands in his jeans pockets helped her stability.
Logan shook his head. “For goodness’ sake, just don’t turn me into a eunuch! And please stop screaming in my ear.”
“I’m not!” She put as much indignation into her voice as she possessed. “It’s the bike engine.”
“Okay, Hana. We’re travelling four kilometres. A rollercoaster ride is longer so stop panicking.”
“They aren’t illegal,” Hana grumbled and hiccoughed again, ruining the effect.
On Hakarimata Road, Logan picked up speed. Hana saw her life flash before her eyes and realised she had little to show for forty-five years on earth. She pressed her cheek against Logan’s back and dug hard into his jeans pockets. Then she contented herself with reciting under her breath, “Help, help, help.” She resisted the bends, leaning opposite to Logan and feeling the wheels slew beneath them. He corrected it, wincing at the pain in his broken arm.
Stopping in front of their gate, Hana realised two things in quick succession. They didn’t possess a remote to open it and she couldn’t remember the number. A third issue sprang to mind, obliterating the other two. The driveway proved hazardous enough in a car and she suspected she might not survive on a bike. “I want to get off,” she shouted in Logan’s ear and he shook his head and clamped his fingers over hers to trap them in his pockets.
“No,” he growled and pushed a code into the gate mechanism. Hana squealed again as the bike took off through the gap. Logan drove one-handed, clamping her fingers with the other. At the bend, he needed both hands and let go. By then, Hana kept her face pressed into his spine, feeling the vibrations of the track reverberating through her body as the trail bike ate up the driveway.
The three-minute ride felt endless and Hana’s senses vibrated with the bike’s roar, even after Logan killed the engine. He kicked down the stand and rolled it backwards, sliding off without sconning Hana in the forehead with his foot. “You can get off now,” he said, smirking at her in the moonlight.
Hana groaned. “I’m welded here.”
Logan supported her as she worked her jelly legs off the machine and wobbled towards the porch. He shook his head at her in disgust. “My mother’s right,” he said. “By the way.”
Hana wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at him.
“Aye!” Logan bent and stared at something on the side of the bike. “What the hell’s that?”
“An indictable offence.” Hana kicked gravel beneath the soles of her gumboot. “My foot’s hot.”
Logan ignored her. He huffed some more and then pushed the bike down the slope, using his key to let himself into the garage through the side door. Hana heard the roller door rise, followed by scraping and swearing. The garage lights lit up the slope. “Thanks for your help,” she grumbled to herself and followed him, irritated by the gravel underfoot.
Logan parked the bike next to Bodie’s car and squatted, prodding at something outside Hana’s range of view. She pressed the switch to close the roller door and wrinkled her nose. “What’s that rubbery smell?”
“I dunno.” He stood and ran his right hand through his dark hair, leaving the fringe sticking up. Hana tripped over a paint can and a roll of discarded wallpaper with a volley of slurred swearwords.
She kicked off one boot, but the other stuck fast to her foot. “I can’t get my welly off!” she complained, hopping around on one foot. “It’s frozen on.”
Logan rolled his eyes and left the bike clicking to itself as the engine cooled. “Sit down!” he told her, opening the internal door to the house and helping her onto the third step. “Give me your foot.” Hana lay back against the stairs and sulked, waving her pink boot around in the air. “Keep it still!” Logan snapped and she closed her eyes. “And they’re called gumboots here.”
“Well, that’s stupid,” Hana grumbled. “Because Wellington is the capital of New Zealand. Wellington boots makes more sense.”
“That’s not the history.”
“I’m tired,” Hana whined as he hauled on her foot.
“No, you’re a miserable drunk,” Logan commented, adding an expletive as Hana’s backside thudded down to the second step. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed. “It is stuck.”
“It’s never gonna come off!” Hana wailed. “Angus will fire me for wearing one pink Barbie wellie for the rest of my life.” The alcohol ran through her veins making everything worse.
“Oh, no!” Logan let go of Hana’s foot and peered at his hands. Bright pink goo covered his palms and the bottom of his sleeve. He yanked her foot upward and Hana’s butt thudded onto the first step accompanied by a wail of anger.
“Ow!”
“Hana!” Logan held his palms up. A distorted Barbie face stuck to his hand with a melted daisy up her left nostril. “Where did you rest your bloody foot?”
“I don’t know.” Hana sat up and peered at her foot. “Hemi just pointed and I did what he said.”
Logan grimaced. “Yeah. I suspect he pointed at the footrest. Not the bloody exhaust pipe.”
“Oh.” Hana’s bottom lip curled downward like a pouting toddler. “My Barbies are ruined,” she wailed. “I loved them.” She turned sideways on the stairs and buried her face in her sleeve.
Logan swore as the melted rubber coated his fingers and the boot disintegrated at his touch. Hana’s sock became collateral damage as he discovered it welded to the inside. She went to sleep as he examined the bike and found pink goo dripping onto the garage floor. “Bloody marvellous!” he sighed.
He nudged his sleeping wife awake and half carried her up the stairs. She face planted on the bed and he stripped off her jeans and covered her. “You kill me, Hana Du Rose,” he sighed, allowing himself a small smirk at her expense. “Never take up poker or drinking. You’d suck at both.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hana awoke unscathed and Logan claimed the headache. “That’s not fair,” he grumbled. “You should have the hangover!”
“Don’t be mean.” Hana stretched and yawned.
Logan reached out for her and seized the bottom of her sweatshirt in his strong fingers. The veins on his arms stood out against his olive skin. “Get back here now and make it up to me.” A tearing sound came from he
r waist and Hana whipped around, her open mouth betraying her shock. Logan hooted with laughter and took the chance to reel her in. “That’s what you get for arriving home drunk and sleeping in your clothes.” He rolled her over in the wide bed and relieved her of her knickers.
Hana spent another morning in the garden while Logan slept off his sore head. She unearthed more flowerbeds and tidied as far as the garage. As she pushed the mower up the slope, she eyed the damp lawn with disdain and prepared to get her trainers soaked and her feet wet.
The old mower refused to play the game as Hana huffed and puffed at pulling the starter cord. She only remembered to check the petrol chamber after kicking it four times and hurting her toe. Empty. “Blast!” she exclaimed and turned the machine around, pushing it back down the slope to the garage.
She hunted for the red petrol container and oil, wondering where Logan put it. She found it in a white storage cupboard in the corner. Yanking the door open without care, she wobbled the cupboard and car shampoo and other chemicals bounced onto the floor around her like an aerosol shower. A bottle of brake fluid jumped out last, hitting her square in the forehead.
Hana grabbed what she needed and turned to leave, catching her foot on the pole of a sun umbrella leaned up in the corner. It fell with a shuddering crash, sending paint cans and a packet of new brushes half way across the garage floor. Hana stamped in temper, tempted to leave the mess until later. She imagined facing the tidying exercise after fighting the lawnmower through the overgrown lawn and her shoulders sagged. “Fine!” she grumbled. “I’ll do it now.”
Hana battled with the folds of the huge umbrella, pulling the green cloth together so she could get both arms around it and heave it back into place. She wrestled it upright and let go, watching as it pitched away from her and back into the corner. The clang it created sounded loud enough to wake the dead and Hana frowned and took a step forward.
She peeled back the folds of cloth and peered behind it, discovering a blue tarpaulin fixed across a rectangular object. Poking further, she saw a tall, grey metal cupboard leaned against the wall. Hana tried the door but the sturdy lock held against her. “Weird,” she muttered and examined it from a different angle. It rocked when she pushed it and the umbrella slid sideways, threatening to squash her under its weight. Inside, something heavy swayed and knocked the sides.
Hana stood back with her hands on her hips and temper flared in her green eyes. “What did you do, Logan Du Rose?” she growled. “You wouldn’t do this without asking, would you?”
Without him there to defend himself, Hana pushed the matter to the back of her mind, dragging the petrol container and oil out to the reluctant lawn mower. But she didn’t forget and the presence of the cupboard seemed to weigh her down. The mower chewed up the grass, spitting the shorn chunks into a messy line to one side. Some stripes looked almost even if she put her head on one side.
The scent of cut grass reminded Hana of summer and she longed for its return. This year she had someone to share it with. The cupboard popped into her memory and she grimaced. Its presence seeped into her happiness, filling her with dread. Perhaps she didn’t make herself clear enough.
Pushing the mower back down the slope into the garage, Hana eyed the rimu benches and table. She stopped and ran her fingers over their wooden surface and imagined sitting outside on the roof garden with a glass of wine and a good book. Driven by an image of perfect bliss, she found the wheelbarrow and manhandled one of the benches into it, not sure how she’d drag it up to the roof. As she lifted the handles and pushed her cumbersome burden a few feet, a voice made her jump and she dropped the lot. The wheelbarrow tipped and the bench clattered out sideways. “Logan!” she shouted in temper. “Stop doing that!”
Logan leaned against the doorjamb. His casual stance suggested he’d watched for some time. His good hand rested in his jeans pocket. Solid muscle showed through his tee shirt and Hana turned away to avoid the distraction. She bent to retrieve the bench and clattered it back into the barrow with lots of grunting. “Don’t be stupid.” Logan sounded calm and Hana gritted her teeth.
“It’s not stupid to want my furniture where it should go.” She lifted the barrow and the muscles in her biceps let her down within a few metres.
“Is that right?” Logan appeared next to her and pushed himself between the handles of the barrow. “Don’t lift that onto the roof, Hana. You’ll kill yourself.”
“You do it then.” Hana pouted and Logan laughed and edged her backwards with his thighs. Looking down, she saw his cowboy boots and her heart sank. “You’re going out.”
“It’s too heavy. Wait until I’m fit and I’ll ask Hemi to help me.”
Hana’s image of sitting in the afternoon sunshine with a glass of wine melted before her eyes. “But I wanted to sit there today,” she grumbled.
“Tough.” He spun her around and pressed her into him. His belt buckle grazed her stomach and she put her arms against his chest to stabilise herself.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, narrowing her eyes.
Logan smirked. “Nowhere for you to worry about.”
“But where?” Hana’s panic grew. “You won’t let me out but it’s okay for you to ride around the country?”
“I’m not riding around the country.” Logan bent and kissed her forehead. “I won’t be long.” He jangled the car keys and jerked his head towards the wheelbarrow. “Put that back and if I find it on the roof, I’ll saw it up for firewood.”
Hana’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t!”
“Try me.” Logan grinned and kissed her lips, leaving the taste of toothpaste.
Resentment crashed over Hana’s head like an icy wave and she reacted. “You can’t tell me what to do.” She shoved at Logan’s chest and he didn’t budge. Fury lit the redheaded fire in her gut. She stepped backwards, forgetting the wheelbarrow until she fell over its handle and stumbled. Logan caught her forearm and held on while she floundered. The veins showed in his bicep like blue rivers seeking the estuaries of his heart.
“What about the guns?” she demanded, ire making her unreasonable. Hana tossed her hair and faced him down, determined to force him under her spell. She shook her hand free of his grip. “I hate guns.”
Logan swallowed but never broke eye contact. “You hate them. I don’t.”
The fingers of fear snaked around Hana’s heart, its fibrous black hands making her feel sick and ill. She remembered Bodie in the hospital, his olive complexion replaced by a waxen sickness as the doctors fought to save his life. He looked dead, his features identical to Vik’s as she’d identified his body on the mortuary slab years earlier. Hana swallowed. She thought often about the day Vik died, looking for moments of revelation which warned her about the forthcoming disaster. The day Vik lost his fight against an oncoming truck, she lay in bed sick. The day a gunman put a bullet through her son’s stomach she sat at her desk. Another ordinary day. “Please don’t go.” She heard the begging in her tone and hated herself. “Please. I need to talk to you about the guns.”
Logan’s brow knitted and he lifted her chin with his fingers. “I won’t be long,” he promised, his voice soft. “Then we’ll talk.”
“But you won’t get rid of them.” Hana chewed her lower lip and her eyes flared in challenge.
Logan shook his head. “No, Hana. I want them here.” He jerked his head towards the ominous gun cabinet. “I’ll screw it to the wall once I can reach without busting my stitches.”
“No!” Hana dug her heels in and protested, feeling the sense of futility grow. “I won’t let you.”
Logan cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Because it’s your house, Hana? Do you really want to go there?” His tone held warning and Hana knew she should stop. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and tried to pull herself together. Logan nudged her aside and grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow. He pushed it into the corner and upended it, clattering the bench to the ground. Hana saw th
e muscles bunch in his back and sensed his anger as he righted it.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, her fists balled by her sides.
Logan sighed with exasperation. “Nowhere important, Hana!”
“Then don’t go!” Her chin wobbled with the effort of fighting for composure. “Don’t walk away and leave your guns here when you know I don’t want them around me. You can’t use Bo’s car. He didn’t give you permission.”
She pressed the self-destruct button without really understanding why. It shouldn’t have surprised her when Logan snapped, but she still jumped and took a step backward. “The guns belong to me, okay? They’re legal and licenced and I know how to use them. I want them here and you need to accept that. I’m not arguing about it, Hana. This debate is over.”
He yanked the driver’s door of Bodie’s car open and climbed inside, messing with the seat controls to admit his long legs. Hana stepped aside as he revved the engine and backed out of the garage. The car dropped onto the slope and Logan pushed it into gear and drove away. In his absence, Hana folded in on herself and sank to the floor.
Maihi rounded the corner and found her there, sitting amidst tears and snot. “What happened?” she demanded. “Did you fall?”
Hana told the old woman the truth, appreciative of the strong arms around her. They sat on the garage floor amidst the solidified pink rubber and Maihi laughed at Hana’s blunder with the exhaust pipe. They shared confidences and Hana revealed more of her complicated past than she intended. Maihi held her and took on the role of mother figure. After a while, the old woman stretched her legs and leaned backwards. “I’m too old for this, kōtiro,” she groaned. “My legs are going to sleep.”
“I’m sorry.” Hana jumped to her feet and helped haul her up. “Would you like a hot drink?”
They went upstairs to the kitchen and Hana made tea. The women sat around the table and debated Hana’s situation. Maihi leaned forward and covered Hana’s hand with hers. “It will all be fine, girly. He ain’t going nowhere. He loves you.”