by Bowes, K T
She cringed and Millie watched her face and giggled. Hana put her finger to her lips and the little girl shrieked at the new game. “No, no, sshhh,” Hana begged as the receptionist tutted.
“Principal Blair’s office. How may I help you?” Angus’ assistant sounded cross and officious as the person on the other end of the call stated their business. “He’s in a meeting,” she snapped, her voice carrying through the flimsy partition.
Hana’s blood chilled, the heat of the day leaving her as realisation flooded through her muddled brain. “No!” she gasped. Hana bit her lip, her green eyes widening and Millie dissolved into peals of laughter at Hana’s obvious alarm. Hana reached into her pocket and searched for her phone, covering her mouth with a sweaty palm when she couldn’t find it. Millie giggled and copied her. “What should I do?” Hana hissed and Millie laughed again, believing it to be a new game.
Hana listened as the officious woman made the person on the other end of the telephone miserable. Hana didn’t need to see their reaction to understand the feeling of being humiliated. The assistant’s tone brimmed with self-importance and malice. “Well, I can’t help that,” she intoned. “Mr Blair has no free appointments for the next two weeks. Sir, that’s not my problem. Yes, I suggest you do that!”
Hana sighed as the sickness began in her stomach. “Hurry, Amanda,” she muttered. “I need to talk to Logan.” The mastermind of the boarding house fraud slammed her receiver down and shuffled papers on her desk. “I knew the woman’s voice,” Hana whispered to Millie, who beamed. “She was outside with the delivery driver.”
Hana ran her hand over her face, feeling out of her depth. She was subdued as Amanda emerged, waving her contract in victory. “Oh yeah! Celebration time,” Amanda declared, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Wine or champagne?”
“Maybe later,” Hana replied. “I don’t feel well. It’s probably tiredness. Sorry.”
“Oh, ok. It’s my fault keeping you up packing all night. I’ll pop in and see how you are in a while.”
“I’m fine. I just need a nap,” Hana promised. “Congratulations on the job.”
Inside the unit, Hana found her phone charging in the kitchen and dialled Logan’s cell phone number. “Please pick up, babe, please,” she begged. The call went to voicemail after five rings. In all the upset of Chris Carter’s indiscretion, Hana forgot to mention the conversation between the delivery driver and the woman. “Where are you, Logan?” she panicked, ringing again and receiving no answer.
Hana pushed the pram down the front steps and slammed the door behind her. The soccer field was bleached brown with the heat and dust rose underneath her quick steps. Pete looked up as she strode into the office, Phoenix awake and sulking over her shoulder. “Oh, hi,” he said, jumping back from his computer. A spreadsheet adorned the screen, impressing Hana amidst her drama. In all the years she’d known him, the only thing Peter North used his work computer for was playing cards.
“Where’s Logan please? I need to find him, Pete.”
He picked up the urgency in Hana’s voice but shook his head, not sure. “Logan popped in fifteen minutes ago and said he was on his way home.”
“Well, he didn’t arrive!” Hana whirled round and ran along the corridor, her body swaying with the awkward weight of Phoenix. Boys swirled in and out of bedrooms getting ready for after school sport and Hana charged past a boy in a towel and another in boxer shorts, not caring as she headed for the stairs.
She didn’t realise Pete was behind her until she heard his heavy breathing, struggling to keep up with her as she burst through the restroom door. The space was deserted, the three tiny bedrooms empty and a breeze carrying through from their open windows. “Hana,” he puffed, “what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know but something is; I can feel it!” Hana kept Phoenix in her right arm and put her left hand up to run her hand through her hair. Pete looked at the mess on her wrist and his eyes bugged.
“Geeze, Hana!” He pointed, wheezing horribly; a crime for a physical education teacher after only two flights of stairs.
Hana heard a sickening sound drift through the open window and thrust the sleeping baby at Pete, making sure he had her safely in his inexperienced arms. “I’m trusting you to keep her safe, Pete! Don’t let me down!”
Then she was gone, finding her way downstairs through the myriad corridors until she discovered the kitchens. Hana blasted through the swinging doors, taking a smack to her forehead as her enthusiastic thrust returned to meet her. She felt the welcome breeze from an open doorway and heard again the awful noise of bone on bone. With running feet she crossed the smart industrial kitchen, spotting the dark blue lorry in the narrow driveway. Its shadow blocked the light through the huge windows and cast the room into an odd blue hue.
Hana’s breath caught in her chest seeing Logan facing her, his arms strung between two giant men while a third hit him repeatedly around the head and stomach. Blood ran in rivulets down his face from an open wound on his temple and Logan’s left eye was partially closed. His body slumped as a cruel laugh accompanied another fist to his stomach and he leaned forward retching, heaving blood and mess onto the concrete. “Hold him!” the delivery driver ordered as he drew his arm back for a king punch to Logan’s face. “Go on! Stand the bugger up!”
Hana seized a weighty, metal frying pan from the draining board, hefting it in her right hand as she ran through the open door. Her sacrifice to Laval seemed pointless in the face of Logan’s fate and rage burned inside Hana’s breast at the futility of her physical and emotional injuries. The skillet bent her arm at the wrist with its iron weight and she saw Logan’s eyes close in defeat at the sight of his wife wielding the cooking implement. His attempt to communicate with her generated only blood stained air bubbles.
The man drawing his fist didn’t see Hana coming. He went down like a stone under the heavy iron skillet. Logan barely managed to duck as Hana swung at the man to his left and she did a double score, making him bang heads with his companion. Unfinished and consumed with the misty red rage, Hana backhanded him to the face while he was still reeling in surprise and he bent double, bleeding from the nose.
Hana stopped and stared blankly at the skillet, realising why fishwives beat their husbands with them. It was awesome.
The delivery driver staggered to his six foot height in her peripheral vision, towering over her and holding his ear. He was too tall for a clear swing and Hana’s face registered panic as Logan slid down the side of the lorry, grabbing his stomach and coughing up red blood. “Logan!” she squealed. “Help me!”
He grunted and coughed again and Hana gritted her teeth, the same protective instinct Laval invoked in her, rising bigger than before.
She stood up straight as the delivery driver lurched at her, summoning up her anger at Laval, Chris Carter, Vik and his mistress. Hana included in her short rage, Reuben, Miriam, Alfred and Tama’s parents. It built to a powerful frenzy in her brain like a pressure cooker valve and with it, came the painstaking instructions of her son. ‘Stomp to the shin, fist to the face, knee in the nuts and shout your bloody head off, Mum. Yes, I know it’s embarrassing, but it might save your damn life!’
Hana swung her unusual weapon and opened her mouth. “Shin stomp!” she yelled, dragging the side of her pointy heel down the delivery driver’s bare shin and feeling it drag skin. “Skillet to the face!” She bashed him with a substantial tennis backhand and saw his head spin. “Skillet to the nuts!”
With an oomph of pain the man snapped forward as the back of the iron pan crashed into his groin. Still enraged, Hana spun the weapon in her good hand and used its circular bottom against the back of the man’s skull, seeing the imprint appear from the ridges built into its cast. “Skillet to the back of the head!” she yelled into his face as his knees gave out.
Her mouth dropped open as she heard her own shout and the delivery driver glared at her sideways with malice. Hana dropped the skillet with a clang and delivered
a neat right hook into his left eye. “Not skillet! Fist!” she yelled, giving him two extra stunning whacks to the head to make up for her error. Liking the sound of the dull thud, she clumped him for the last time on his crown and he sank to the ground moaning.
“Oh-my-freakin’-hell!” Pete appeared with the baby in his arms, trailed by three grounds staff, four prefects and Angus. They shuddered to a halt at the kitchen door, having watched Hana’s final few blows as they ran across the room.
“She’s a ninja!” the head prefect squeaked and the three boys behind him nodded in awe.
“I’m sorry; they made me do it!” Hana blathered, retrieving her skillet from the concrete and examining the blood on the back with a look of disbelief. Her eyes widened as the man to the left of Logan sat up and Hana bonked him on the head again, making him shout in pain as he keeled over sideways.
“You’ve killed everyone!” Pete breathed and the prefects gasped as one.
“They do appear to be rather dead, don’t they?” Angus sniffed. “Including my head of English. Hana, did you do this?” He eyeballed the redhead in disbelief.
“No!” she said convincingly, ruining the lie as the delivery driver began to stir. She cracked the skillet over the back of his head again and then hefted it in her hand as he returned to kissing the concrete.
“Somebody take that bloody saucepan off her!” the head groundsman exclaimed, but the males hung back with obvious reluctance.
“I don’t want it anymore.” Hana dropped it with a clang on the delivery driver’s head, hearing him groan and narrowing her eyes with satisfaction. She dropped to her knees and cradled Logan’s bleeding head in her arms. “I can’t keep rescuing you,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m no good at it.”
Logan choked back what sounded like laughter and Hana pressed his face into her chest. “I know who’s running the scam,” she said, as he showered her blouse with bloody goo from his mouth. “We need to call Bodie.”
Logan continued coughing up blood in the restroom upstairs and Hana sent Pete to their unit for his medication. “It’s in the bathroom cupboard,” she told him. Pete obeyed instantly, fear and respect mixing in his eyeballs.
Bodie arrived with uniformed colleagues and called an ambulance which Logan refused point-blank to get into. “I’m fine,” he hacked, sounding dreadful.
“Come for an x-ray, at least,” the paramedic urged. “You’ve broken a few ribs and you shouldn’t take risks with haemophilia.”
“I hate hospitals and I’m not going!” Logan insisted and they patched up his face and left, raising their eyebrows at Hana.
The restroom filled with people and Hana couldn’t think straight. Phoenix ran her soft fingers over Bodie’s chin and giggled as Hana fretted and clung to a cup of strong coffee. “Stubborn bugger won’t go to hospital!” Bodie exclaimed in irritation.
“No, I know. He hates hospitals,” Hana said impatiently. “Look, Angus’ personal assistant’s behind all this.” She fretted, slopping her drink. “I heard her talking to the delivery driver. She’s been stealing from the boarding house, clearing invoices for things they haven’t delivered. It’s possible she’s got the same scheme going in all the other hostels in town. I recognised her voice but couldn’t place it; then today in reception I heard her on the phone and knew. I came to tell Logan but the men were already here!”
Bodie handed the baby over and used his radio in the hall, talking to someone in the control room. Logan lay on the sofa, his shirt open and his torso a mess of bruising. Pete appeared with the bottle of spray and Logan shoved it up his nose, coughing and spluttering as the medication released. He lay on his back as blood dribbled sideways down his face, swearing profusely under his breath.
The room buzzed with excitement, affecting Phoenix like a drug and her tiny head darted in every direction, her brain working overtime. The head prefect took her from Hana as Logan clutched his side and made a gurgling sound, rolling sideways and moaning in agony. He coughed up blood onto the carpet and Angus reached for his phone. “I’ll get the paramedics back,” he stated.
“No!” Logan choked. “Don’t you dare!”
The grounds staff and prefects stilled, reluctant to leave with so much action on offer. “I feel sick,” a smaller boy said, clapping his hand to his mouth as his English teacher yakked more blood onto the carpet.
Hana squatted next to her husband, her eyes filling with tears. “Logan! Please go to the hospital?” she begged. “You don’t have to go in an ambulance; I’ll take you.”
Logan shook his head and put his hands flat on the ground, his body doubled forward. He murmured something unintelligible and every eye in the room turned to hear.
“What are you saying?” Hana asked, her face wracked with anxiety.
“Skillet to the nuts,” Logan rasped and coughed again, the sound morphing into a gurgling laugh. He repeated it. “Skillet to the nuts, wahine?”
“Ohhhh, is that what she said?” Pete asked loudly and Angus nodded.
“Apparently so.”
“That wasn’t it, Mum.” Bodie looked disappointed. “I never taught you that.”
Hana stood up and vented her humiliation on her husband as one of the prefects sniggered. “If that’s your dying sentence, it’s crap!” she snapped, unimpressed. “Bloody ungrateful!”
Bodie’s colleagues smirked shamelessly and Hana pouted, unable to see the funny side. “Miss?” A youthful, blonde officer approached her bearing the cast iron weapon, neatly fastened into an evidence bag. “I don’t suppose you’d like to autograph this?”
Hana glared at him through narrowed eyes and he walked away, laughing with his eager audience of spotty prefects and guffawing grounds staff.
“Hey Mum,” Bodie said, putting his arm round his mother. “Stress makes people kid around but I want you to know I’m proud of you. I honestly thought those self-defence lessons were a waste of time but you did good today.”
“It was beyond reasonable force though, wasn’t it?” Hana chewed her lip and watched her daughter being entertained by the teenagers. “I could be in big trouble, couldn’t I?” She gulped.
Bodie shook his head. “No way, Mum, not on my watch! You defended yourself and a hundred school children against three unknown attackers. Ain’t nobody gonna do anything but give you a medal.”
“Promise?” Hana begged. “I don’t want to go to prison. I frightened myself if I’m honest. After all that agony trying to keep Logan out of Laval’s way, he gets beaten up on our own doorstep and I didn’t see it coming. I’ve never been that angry, not ever.”
Bodie snorted with laughter. “Oh, I don’t know. You’ve had your moments parenting me.” He smiled and rubbed her shoulder. “It’ll be ok, Mum. For once, trust me.”
“Skillet to the nuts,” she muttered. “I’ll never live that down.”
“Probably not.” He grinned and pushed her hair away from her face. “You look exhausted. Is everything ok?”
“Yep, just tired.” Hana dismissed his concern and watched her daughter barf milk onto the carpet to the horror of the teens. They looked towards Hana as one. “How’s Jas,” she asked, taking Phoenix back from the grimacing prefect. “Wipe it up with that tea towel,” she told him. He pulled a face as Hana raised her eyebrows. “Please?”
“Jas is great,” Bodie replied. “I’m not sure what you said to him but he’s heaps better. He’s taken his school stuff off for washing and stopped saying he’s a bridesmaid.”
Hana smiled at her daughter and almost missed her son’s next sentence. “What did you just say?”
“Yeah, bit worrying.” Bodie rubbed his eyebrow with the edge of his notebook. “He says he’s leading Amy up the aisle in some kind of ‘suit’ but reckons he hasn’t decided what sort yet. We’ve had dragon suit, bear suit, Smurf suit and this morning he decided on a Darth Vader suit.” Bodie’s radio chirped on his breast and he reattached his ear piece and strode from the room.
“Oh, no!” Hana whined
to her baby. “I didn’t mean that kind of suit!”
The grounds staff left the restroom and the cops filtered away, called to other city crimes after roping off the kitchen and driveway. One lonely probationer stood guard until the forensics guys finished photographing a patch of blood which was mainly Logan’s. The prefects disappeared back to their dorms to gossip about the evening’s events and make it worse in the retelling.
Angus sat on the ageing sofa next to Logan, his complexion washed out and elderly. “How did I miss such antics?” he chastised himself. “It must’ve been going on right under my nose. How long, do you think?”
Logan shrugged. “Not sure. The cops will work it out. I believe the scam’s years old but they got greedy this year.”
“And they didn’t factor in you, my friend, did they?” Angus ruffled Logan’s hair as though he was still a student in the old man’s care.
Pete cuddled Phoenix, unaware she left a long trail of white sick down the back of his new shirt. Hana cringed. It had taken him fifteen years to dispose of the deadly school tracksuit and it seemed her daughter took every opportunity to barf on each new item of clothing.
Logan’s face was ashen. Bruised, stiff and sore, his pride seemed severely dented. “I should have seen those guys waiting outside,” he grumbled to Angus. “I’m getting soft in my old age.”
“You and me both!” his employer replied. Then he smirked. “Methinks that fragile Du Rose ego is wounded because your dainty, flame-haired wife was the one to rescue you.”
“Whatever!” Logan snapped, stung by the truth. He watched his wife from the corner of his eye. Being so effectively jumped for the first time in his life would be a constant source of aggravation for him, especially during the sleepless, painful night to follow. He smiled again at the memory of Hana’s running commentary as she frying-panned the men into unconsciousness. “I think I’m a bad influence on Hana,” he mused.
Angus snorted and nodded his head, the fluffy red hair moving with the action. His eyes strayed to Hana as she chatted to her daughter, eliciting giggles and gurgles of conversation in return. He smiled. “Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “I think our Hana marches to her own wee drum, don’t you?”