by Alan Duff
Would cook for you, too, get recipes out of a newspaper — when I can be bothered to read one. But I’ve seen recipes in them, tore ’em out of fish and chip wrapping and went home to cook ’em. Once picked up a page blown in some city breeze on one of my lost walks, sat down and read it like there was a message for me saying: Go thataway, Sharneeta, follow the dots to your salvation. (Yeah, sure.) Memorised the recipe on home-made tomato sauce, went home and made it myself. Best sauce I ever tasted, yet did I make it again? Don’t think so.)
Got to slow up for a mob of sheep going the same way, gives me time to wonder what I’m doing here. Except it’s too hard, too damn hurtful to think that deep. (You mean it’s scary, and scary don’t have to be — don’t want it to be — deep.) I’m just driving somewhere different for a change, if that’s okay by you, voice in my head that doesn’t know when to shut its mouth. Leave me the eff alone.
I don’t know anyone who farms, or even works on one. Alistair, my flatmate, you can’t count him as one, just the son-of. So why’m I out here? ’Nless I’m driving to another town on automatic, without knowing yet knowing only too well: I’m looking for fellow lowlife soul (less) brothers and sisters. I’m the lost sheep looking for its own kind. And it ain’t hard.
The lost, they got the same glazed eye, and sly-eyed, mouth-hoping twitch, poised eyebrows ready to swoop, same as me. That’s how we recognise each other, ain’t hard. Or they got the sadness in their eyes that makes ’em look all funny, all tight of face, or so loose you think muscle relaxant’s been injected, ’cos they’re trying to fight it. Swimming upstream all the time. Don’t know how to go with the flow, unless it’s because (we) they don’t want to?
Nah, surely I don’t have to come this far, possibly to another town, to find other lowlifes? Man, they’re everywhere in the street I live, the places I go, every step of the way ya can’t avoid ’em. Listen, voice, I’m just out driving, trying somewhere else, not different. (Is that okay?)
Sometimes it’s okay by voice. Sometimes it isn’t.
Kayla, the other flatmate, Alistair’s girlfriend, she’s not a lowlife. Just in that mixed-up stage, only twenty-one. Her man, Alistair, he can be nice but I can see something darker below the handsome surface. Unless it’s my problem, got the miseries. Only thing I trust is he loves his mum so much, drives us nuts bringing her up, reminded of something she does: My mum does that. Oh, you remind me of what Mum does. (Maybe I’m jealous I ain’t got a mum I’m proud of.)
Roll down the window, have a smoke — damn it, gettin’ low, how I hate running out of smokes. It’s like running out of life, of chances you no longer have, ’cos you consumed them, blew them, literally smoked them away. I still get a buzz using the car lighter, of pushing it in and how quickly it pops out, all glowing at the end. Stick the smoke end up to it, inside the protective sleeve so it don’t burn its surrounds, feels like a minor miracle, of technology working in with satisfying psychology, namely my addiction. My emotional need. My personal weakness.
Ah, that’s better. What would I do without smokes? (But not the other shit, deary. You could do without the other shit.)
Damn sheep in the middle of the friggin’ highway. How long’s this gonna take? There must be thousands of the things. (Oh, what’s your hurry, Sharns? You got important matters to tend to? The hell you have.)
Two guys on horses, look fit and strong but dull. I think I prefer a bit of deadly menace in a man’s posture. A touch of hatred in his eyes, which don’t need to reason, offer no explanation, it just is. And it’ll become yours — as in physical hurting — if you’re not very very careful. But somehow a part of me is drawn to men who treat me bad. And they’re never good lovers, too damn selfish, too into ’emselves.
These shepherd guys, they’re mellow, at peace with ’emselves. Wouldn’t fancy one of them as a husband, though, gimme a crazy bastard or a busy boss farmer satisfied with his full life and a fatter cheque-book. Either or, but prefer the or. Not some bachelor dude lives up in the hills, pulling himself off and not trying to get what he ain’t got, being all men’s desire: woman. (As if you try to find a decent man, Sharn-haha-neeta.)
Sometimes a shepherd comes into town and drinks at our pub, bores even us go-nowhere galoots and silly gals and life-made sluts stupid with his tales of effin’ sheep and more sheep, of rain and horse treks on dangerous terrain, spooky mists and stars at night, moon so close you can touch it, breezes howling and whispering music up in them hills. As if any of us is ever gonna go out and experience any of this for ourselves. And what do they do for sex when any gal in our world knows men need it all the time?
Dogs keep the sheep in control. Look how they crouch and sneak up, stop, change direction at a whistled command from one of the shepherds. Clever things, woof-woof-woof, man, they’re keen. Just here to do the job, no effin’ around, no skiving off or mouthing off on the next bigtime criminal job or scam off of social welfare. No standing there, eyes averted (from responsibility) no one can make a decision, too effin’ childish and irresponsible, are the types I know. Shit, even these sheep dogs act more decisively than the company I keep.
Like life is always in front of you, it’s a job has to be done. As in handling it, baby. Like getting over it, putting whatever crap’s happened behind you. Just do the job, Sharns … (The job?) Yes, the job. Yeah, well, soon. Whenever. Whatever. My, it’s got dark again all of a sudden. And there’s voice again, telling me I’m a worthless piece a crap.
Have to pull over, stop the engine, stop breathing nearly, close my eyes and hope I open them to some light. Takes three attempts before I get the sun back. But with the shadow over it. (Shadow, always shadow.)
They’re far behind, faded fast in the rear vision the yapping, working dogs, the unhurried men on slow horses knowing their own job at hand, which a woman can presume — oh yes, Sharneeta Hurrey, fancy lady, one can presume — is to get the sheep from one paddock to another, unless it’s to the meat works, to all those big brute brown Maori men waiting with sharpened knives and easy smiles and hardened muscles from handling live to dead carcasses all the day long, laughing and singing, standing in the slosh of death.
Oops, didn’t notice the fuel gauge getting low, never been out this side of the city before, hope there’s a petrol station soon and hope they take my beneficiary bank cash card, I think I got fifty-two bucks credit left, oh, I hope I have, I couldn’t stand the embarrassment, the humiliation. And I only go on welfare in between jobs, which I look hard for.
I was in a supermarket few months ago, Christmas, had convinced myself the government paid us a Christmas bonus in our benefit. I loaded up that trolley with tins of salmon, fancy cereals, sauces, biscuits. I even bought a big cake from a glass display, enough to feed ten mouths, I just wanted it so badly. And some candles to have myself a four-month-late twenty-ninth birthday party all by my happy self. Felt so good the darkness lightened and my head had lifted higher, my eyes could stare back at the world, and maybe I smiled. All this from a full shopping trolley.
Then I got to the checkout and I should have picked it my teller was a bitch, making the world pay for her being fat. Put my stuff through, took my card and zap. Comes up, Transaction declined. Insufficient funds. Eyes at me swimming in fat rolls and glee: Madam, your account doesn’t have sufficient funds. In a loud voice. I wanted to die.
Left the trolley right there at checkout and walked out, face burning. I even wanted to cry, which I thought wasn’t me. Not over that. Hell, not when I had my heart broken a dozen times and maybe it was broken to start with. Never shopped there again, even though it’s the closest supermarket to us.
My, the gauge is lower than empty, it’s in minus. A half hour has passed of a nothing life. It’s dark out there, hardly a cloud in the sky, yet as if a massive storm’s about to engulf the world (… dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent …).
CHAPTER FIVE
A GENTLEMAN TO THE RESCUE
A PETROL STATION, tha
nk God. I pull in. Get the thought to say, Fill me up, please, with a sexual tone in my voice. Makes me smile and the darkness kind of backs off a way.
A middle-age guy takes his sweet time coming out. It’s a pump needs a key. Sign says: NO CHEQUES ACCEPTED. CASH ONLY OR MAJOR CREDIT CARDS. He takes a look at me. Cash or credit card? No howyoudo nothin’.
I wind the window down. Credit card. (Well, it is a credit card in a way. ’Cept it’s limited by how much cash is in the account.) He’s sizing me up on my car, which ain’t much size at all. It’s a Jap import, the Nips’ discards for us bottom-of-the-heap Kiwis to buy at rip-off prices.
Twenty bucks’ worth, please. He ain’t gonna like this. But he can’t siphon the petrol out, can he?
I seen movies with guys like this, who have a little petrol joint way out in the nevernevers, and they’ve always got a grudge against the outside world. Like priests of some weird religion gone strange from the isolation.
The pump stops. The face appears in my window, I hand him the card.
What’s this? he asks, with a detective’s disbelieving, you’re going to jail look.
You must have Eftpos, mate.
No, I don’t have Eftpos. Sign there the width of your windscreen says it’s cash, credit cards, no cheques. You owe me twenty bucks, lady.
So, take my card, put it through your machine. This is the twenty-first century, pal, don’t you have an Eftpos machine?
No, he hasn’t got an Eftpos machine. But I got a phone, lady, when he couldn’t mean less a lady. And I’m using it right now to call the cops.
Is this dude for real? I mean, I’m offering payment, I know I got fifty-two bucks of credit left there. And if he waited one more day, tomorrow the government social welfare puts another $192.50 into that bank account, it’ll show up on my credit.
Except he’s not waiting, he’s written down my car rego and gone inside to phone. Then this sort of car station-wagon pulls up. Out hops a very handsome young gentleman. He’s got his shirt collar turned up, which’d get him ’bout fifty metres down my street before someone smacked him over for being up himself. And if the collar wasn’t up he’d get smacked for being too handsome and too sure of himself. Or for driving a car too flash, too far out of their miserably efforted reach. Or for being white in black territory. Oh, he’s sure of himself all right. Where I come from and where I’ve never managed to get away from, the only sure is sure of your muscle power.
The proprietor comes out huffing and puffing, glaring at me and about to say something till he sees he’s got another customer. But then he decides eff it, and marches over to me, effin’ wanker in blue overalls lives way out here eking out a living harder than us low-class urban dwellers do, so it’s my fault. And his demons make his eyes bulge, I’ve triggered something irrational in him, maybe it’s the way I dress, maybe he doesn’t like part-Maori girls with blonde streaks in their hair, I don’t know. Sigh.
I’ll give you one more chance. You must have twenty dollars in cash on you.
But I don’t. (And my face is burning ’cos the handsome dude is looking at me. This is like at the supermarket.) Mr Petrol Pump stabs a finger at his sign: Read it. What does it say?
He can go eff himself.
Excuse me, but can I be of assistance? Oh, God, Mr Handsome’s heard all this.
No, it’s all right, says Mr Petrol Pump. I can handle this. (I’d rather you filled up your tank, Handsome, and left me to my humiliation alone.)
I’m staring at Petrol Pump, hating his guts for doing this to me. I’ve eased Handsome to my side vision, so he’s blurred. ’Cept I can’t blur his voice:
Look, if the lady has a problem with making payment acceptable to you, Bill, put it on our account and I’ll sort it out with her. Why don’t we?
Funny way of talking. So polite, yet so in control. And Pump knows this gentleman. Must be a regular customer, which would make him a farmer, which could be why his nice car’s got dust all over it. What brand is it? Range Rover? Never heard of it. Nice colour, though: olive green. I got a sweat-shirt similar colour, one of my favourites, when I’m in the mood to wear brighter colours ’stead of my usual (reflective) darks.
Sir — don’t know what else to call him — I offered him my Eftpos card but —
Oh, that’s all right. I understand. Out in the country they do things a little differently. Don’t we, Bill? (Take that, you bitter ’n’ twisted arsehole.) He’s such a different kettle of fish to Bill the fool. Different class altogether. This is servant–master stuff this is. ’Cept the master’s a nice bloke. As for the servant, he’s staring no less than hatred at me, for making him look the fool he is, when I did nothing.
Thanks, I say to sir. Can I have your name and address (and telephone number, honey-pie!) and I’ll send you the money.
How much is it? he asks.
Twenty dollars.
Don’t worry about it. Sticks out his hand. Not used to a man doing that. In a dizzy I didn’t hear his name.
I can feel the strength in his hand, even in such a refined-looking gentleman. Nice clothes, too. Nice warm blue eyes (wouldn’t they be good to look up into whilst you’re doing it). Nice everything. Sharneeta. And thanks, uh … Thank you very much — look, are you sure?
Yes, I’m sure. He fills up. I can’t help staring. He climbs up into his funny-looking vehicle and drives away with a flicked hand wave. (Oh, boy. Some guy.)
As for you, Mr Bill Fool, standing in your doorway, hands on hips, giving me the evils. Hey Bill?
He leans forward. Bill? Bill? he says as if I’ve stiffed him. Since when were we introduced? I get your kind here all the time, I know your tricks. Gwon, piss off to the next country petrol station to find another sucker farmer’s son to pay your way.
(So he was a farmer’s son) I recognise certain mannerisms similar to Alistair’s. As for this Petrol Pumphead’s class — Bill? You know what? (Do you know what?) I got feelings, too. (You hear me? I-got-feelings and do you know what you’ve just done to me? This ain’t fair, Bill. Not fair of you at all. I pay my way. Pay my bills.) You’re an arsehole, Mr Bill. Kiss mine.
I turn back the way I came and the dark has returned, the shadow’s fallen down on everything. (Sharneeta’s drive in the countryside. Some drive.) Eff the countryside.
CHAPTER SIX
POLLY AND THE POLO PEOPLE
SHE TOOK IT in like someone gulping, starved of more than just air. Decided, or it might have decided for her, way back when her consciousness was forming, that she wanted this (I want this, I want this), and, being Polly, was quite certain she’d get it. Eventually. (Inevitably, inexorably.) A little smile to herself. The determined one. The one made of steel.
For she had a few disadvantages — no, too strong a word for her. A few small problems to overcome, but brains, an exceptionally positive outlook, some said a special charm, and she knew a determined nature would do it. The disadvantages were race and class. Those around here were uniformly white and uniformly higher than ordinary middle-class. Not rich, but hardly broke either.
Looking around, listening to the conversations in this quaint little miniature grandstand, she decided, no, it wasn’t brains going to get her in with this lot; sure, brains would help. Intuition was telling her something more fundamental was needed, which she did possess: personality. Which came from within, when you were secure with who you were, and what you’d consciously grown yourself into. She’d done that, developed a sense of presence, but not put on airs or installed that certain enunciation into her voice. Just been herself, the single-minded young woman who intended making the most of the one life she had. Not defined as a Maori woman either. (Just me.)
They’d come to know, should they make the mistake of slotting her into the Maori stereotype, that she was her own person with ambition, especially financial ambition. (I want it all! And since I can’t, then I want lots!) And even with her younger age and fairly limited social experiences, Polly Bennett already knew that no man was going to re
legate her to the conventional female role of looking good but the less you had to say the better. She knew when to shut up, and the choice was always hers. No one was going to invalidate or part-reduce her existence to that of mere woman. (I want to be strong like my mother, even if she did have her potential brought out by a good man, my dearest stepfather, whom I can’t think of as a step-father. Charlie. But unlike Mum, I want to keep going, I want to reach the stars.)
She came in her own car, on Simon’s instructions, to this improbable venue of a polo match, as Si had to organise his horses and stuff. She strolled over to where the players were getting ready to engage selves and mounts, kissed Simon on the lips, and shook hands with his fellow team members, three others and a spare. She was aware of their bemusement at their teammate’s choice of a female companion. (My God, she’s Maori!) Polly was laughing inside.
At the other end of the field was the opposition team with its numerous horses. Then there were helpers and horse attendants and helpful children all pitching in, and Simon had made a few introductions to Polly, so she already had a range of responses; from hostile to friendly to patronising. Whatever.
She was used to it, standing out as the singular brown in a white setting. Only last week Simon and his parents had taken her to a symphony orchestra, where Polly saw not another Maori face anywhere in the audience. (Don’t know what you’re missing, cousins. It was fantastic.) The parties she went to, they were with the same dominance of whites. And she wasn’t afraid to say it to herself, that she hated the raw and, for her, coarse energy of not just Maori socialising but anything without a bit of grace, style, and a confident sense of itself. So make that the lower classes, of whatever skin colour, whose social company she did not prefer.
She knew she owed a lot to Charlie’s influence. He was a proud man of principles and love. And surely her mother’s ultimate refusal to bow down to Jake had passed a strength on to her. Nor had she ever wanted to be like her Pine Block friends, an entire neighbourhood going nowhere fast. She excelled at school and only decided against university because she had another desire: to make lots of money. (I love money.) But she would only marry it if all efforts to make her own failed.