Dogside Story

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by Patricia Grace


  Ani Wainoa would nod in a serious way and then smile, her neck lengthening, her big teeth parting and her dark cheeks forming up into tight balls. Her eyes would tilt and her eyebrows would lift like birds. ‘I’ll go to Nanny Blind,’ she’d say. ‘I’ll explain everything to her.’

  They’d watch her in her white clothes, her black hair flying, running and making her own track through rotting leaves, fern and overhangs, in those days before he started school. The white clothes that she always wore—shorts and tops, cut-off baseball pants, curtains and cloths, skirts, singlet and dungarees—she had sorted from bags of stuff people had given her. Red, yellow, green, blue, brown all discarded, thrown in the trees. It had all seemed part of her cruelty.

  On the way home his mother would gasp and huff and laugh and talk to him while she carried Moananui on her back. He’d be ahead listening to this and that his mother was telling him in her wheezy voice, following Moimoi and carrying the wet bag.

  Then he’d had to go to school. His mother and Moananui still went two days every week to Nanny Blind’s. For how many years? He knew that there were years. There had to be years. Moananui had turned five and followed him to school, their father had continued to go to work in the early mornings in the yellow Humber, continued to play in the band on Friday nights and to get drunk on Saturdays.

  But it hadn’t seemed like any years at all from when he was five until he was nine and their loud-talking, powdery, dancing, laughing, sweaty, baggy mother with her round face and hard hands, and with fat bulging round her eyes right up to her mostly pulled-out eyebrows which she had redrawn in arches with a bit of pencil, had become someone changed and opposite.

  He dropped the bone in the grass, hung the pack on a nail and pushed open the door of his falling-down place with its wavy floor, its smell of baked boards, old ashes, fish and smoky blankets. Letting go of the crutches he rolled onto the bed.

  It would be his father getting out of bed, moving about in the dark, that would wake him. He’d wake hot, never remembering how he’d got there into the big bed. On the other side of him, his mother, with Moananui on a pillow by her face, would snore a bit, shift a little, but keep on sleeping. In a while there’d be a thin line of light coming from under the bathroom door, and even with the door shut he would hear the scratch scratch sound of his father shaving. He’d fall asleep again and not remember his father leaving for work, or know that his mother had fed Moananui or got up to change her. He wouldn’t know anything more until he woke again at daylight alone in the big bed.

  Sometimes he’d make a cave, pulling the pillows down under the covers to make the walls. He’d make a little opening then hide in there and wait.

  ‘Where’s that Te Rua Tapaerangi? Where’s that boogey boy gone?’ his mother would say when she came in. Out he’d come, roaring. She’d laugh and laugh and put Moananui in bed with him while she had her bath. Or on cold mornings she’d sometimes say, ‘You got me a warm place? Come on give me a warm.’ Bringing Moananui she’d get back into bed with him, sweaty, giggling, her milk running and smelly and her straight, black hair coming out of its band.

  In a while she’d say, ‘Come on Boy, up time,’ and the covers would seem to float away as she lifted them and rolled herself to sit on the edge of the bed, feeling for her jandals and jabbing her feet into them and slap, slapping on the boards as she went to run the water. ‘Put Bubby back in her bed, good boy,’ she’d call.

  So he’d get up and lift Moananui into her cot and wait until his mother came out in a dancing dress, powdery, brushing out her hair. The dancing dress was a pink cotton wrap-around with palm trees going sideways that she’d pull tight under her tufty armpits, streaky from damp powder, crossing the cloth and rolling it above her milky bowls. When he was dressed he’d be allowed to go out and let Moimoi off the chain and go and find Taku and Shania.

  Chapter Six

  When he woke there was a candle burning and Kid was sitting in Nanny Blind’s chair. Kutu was stretched out on the floor in front of her, just the way that Toss used to lie waiting, wide as a table, dusty and tangled, stinking and slow, to take Nanny Blind to the lavatory, the wood pile, the creek, out to the bushes where she spread her washing. Toss’s eyes would move your way but you were nothing to do with him. He was hers, only for her. That time he came with the baby Toss was dead.

  ‘Tell me,’ Kid said.

  ‘You better get off home,’ he said, but could see it was too late, too dark for her to go home. Why should she anyway?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Huh, you don’t say that to your aunties ay, “no”?’

  He went out into the trees where he had his bath set up on bricks and emptied a bucket of water into it. In the dark he scraped together dry twigs and leaves, gathering them into the paper that the bone had been wrapped in, and lit a fire under the bath. When the flames had spread through he put in a few larger pieces of wood and went down the creek bank for more water which he could get one bucket at a time, sliding on his bum.

  ‘Aaay, that’s your bath?’ Kid called and started to laugh.

  Back in the house he lit the lamp and sorted out some clothes to wear, gears good enough for a barman at a wedding, good enough to dance at a wedding. When he went out again Kid was feeding sticks into the fire. ‘That’s enough or you boil my bum you, Kid.’

  He woke next morning face down on the beach with the water high and the sun right over him. Kutu was sniffing round the shore rocks and his crutches had gone awol. Propping himself on his elbows he could see people moving about and vehicles backing round and driving away. There was smoke and the smell of leftovers cooking—hangi fry-up—and John Rowles was doodling out over the speakers as the clean-up was going on, only had time, only time. His leg was bloody sore, wrecked from dancing—come on you, come on you, come on you—all night. ‘I’m minding the bar, me,’ he’d kept saying.

  ‘Come on, come on, plenty other barmen.’

  ‘Pick on them, get one a them to dance.’

  ‘Got two legs them, ha ha handicapped.’

  He rolled on his back and closed his eyes, making up his mind he wasn’t going anywhere until his sticks turned up. Kutu’s wet legs went past, toenails clicking on the stones.

  Hard case party and he reckoned there’d still be half a keg left back there for the workers and thought Archie, Wai and them might be already cracking it. The water was running full in the blowhole.

  No years at all for someone to change size, shape and colour, and to feel and sound different, to taste different, to have a different smell. No years before that bed, that same early morning bed, had in it this small, white, hairless woman whose arms, that she held out to him each afternoon when he came home from school, had been just hanging flaps of skin, whose hands picking at his face and scratching in his hair were like the twists of newspaper she used to get a flame from the stove element to light her cigarette with. The powder smell had gone and there was a smell and taste of ditches, a little voice that said good boy, you been to school, you come home to Mummy.

  Kid.

  ‘Give my sticks you.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Give them.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘There’s nothing.’

  She was off, swinging down the road on his sticks, his dog following, tail going, jumping round like a picnic. ‘Tell Jase I want him,’ he called.

  ‘No.’

  Now coming towards him was that out-of-luck wife of Piiki Chiefy, still in the dress she’d worn to the wedding. Looking for her old man or what? Looking for that blow-bag from Other Side or what? She wouldn’t find him because he’d gone off with the writer, everyone knew that. Anyone going out of a marquee in the middle of a party couldn’t not be seen. Anyone not coming back couldn’t not be noticed. Blow Bag leaving first and that Dawn Anne leaving a few minutes later wouldn’t fool anyone, especially since the two of them had already spent half the night gabbing in each other’s faces.

  Baggy eyes, bag
gy face, been crying or had a hangover? Or still pissed? Mmm, still had a skinful he reckoned and needed a sleep, walking to keep herself awake. Guessed she’d been up all night with Arch and the other stayers. Cigarette in one hand, lighter in the other. He shut his eyes. ‘He’s such an arsehole,’ she said.

  There was only one thing wrong with having one leg instead of two, only one real thing, nothing else was any big deal. While it was true he couldn’t play rugby any more he didn’t really care about that. Though he sometimes thought he wouldn’t mind driving a car and probably could if he got himself an automatic. What use was a car when you lived in the bush?

  Also it was true that no one wanted him wobbling round the hangi pit, but he could still stand back and give them all a bit of jaw if he wanted to, and it was true too he had trouble getting up ladders, which wouldn’t be too good if he wanted to get his old job back.

  That’s if.

  But no big deal all that because he could still play ‘My Dog’s Got Fleas’ on the uke, still take his turn on the guitar, do his stick dance, smoke some stuff, get wasted now and again.

  Women? It wasn’t a missing leg problem.

  And if he ever wanted to win a gold medal he could train up for a swim at the paralympics, haa.

  The main thing was he could still get himself through the blowhole, get himself into water. That was the big thing, the biggest thing, and meant his life wasn’t all that much different from before.

  So if there was anything wrong with his life now it was nothing to do with his missing leg. It was all right. He liked it if only people knew. Being one-legged made him think better, gave him a physical life.

  ‘Even if he’d come back at daylight, or early,’ she said, ‘so we could pack up and go, then people could talk about him as much as they liked, or feel sorry for me as much as they liked after we’d gone. But it’s bloody embarrassing being stuck here and everyone looking through their eyelashes at you and trying to be polite.’

  There was only one pain-in-the-arse thing about having one leg instead of two, only one thing, and that was that people he didn’t know—strangers—all thought they could tell him their aches and pains and problems. They thought being one-legged made him worse off than they were, so believed they could hammer him on and on about how they’d been done over by shopkeepers, politicians and gangs, about how they’d been beat up by their children, how their lungs and livers had packed up and their houses had been burgled. Then there were their toothaches and emphysema, their dead daughters, their stillborn babies, their Aids, their shot livers, their cancer of the brain.

  He got it from taxi drivers, hairdressers, nurses, physios and other people’s hospital visitors; from people any size any colour any age; in waiting rooms, at bus stations, in post shops and banks.

  Now from people on beaches.

  Your problems were greater than theirs, they thought, therefore you’d understand about their bad secrets, their sick bodies, their domestics, their stuffed-up lives.

  ‘Can’t stand it,’ she said.

  Sore head or husband, he thought of asking. Take a seat, he thought of saying.

  As though she’d heard this last thought and taken the invitation seriously, she stepped down on to the stones in her wedding heels, hooked her muscly arms behind her and smoothed the flowy stuff of the dress down over her big backside, holding it there behind her knees while she seated herself. The cigarette jigged in her mouth as she got it going, smoke easing up round her big face. She was breathing it in again through her nose he noticed, smoking it twice.

  ‘Bloody embarrassing being stuck here without a car and everyone having a laugh. You want a smoke?’

  ‘Nah. No thanks.’

  ‘She’ll end up paying the bill, that Dawn Anne. No out-on-the-beach-under-a-starry-sky for him. He’ll take her off to the flashest place around, everything laid on, wine, room service, the lot. Before she knows it she’s paid up, thanking him.’

  Now Kid was back, hanging around, blinking, spidering. He should hop up, hop off, get out of it. Should go up and get some beers into him and never mind being polite and being stuck there listening.

  ‘She’ll be so impressed with his Micky underwear, his leather toilet gear, his silky pjs, she’ll think it’s worth it.’

  Or he could strip off and roll into the tide, wander about under water until the coast was clear.

  ‘No marae sleeping for him I thought when I saw him packing his bag before we left yesterday. I reckon he didn’t even put a towel in. Big dreamer … I saw you at the wedding Darling Girl, up a tree.’

  ‘Give them Kid,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me,’ Kid said.

  Smart, getting at him in front of a stranger, but there was nothing he could tell her, or nothing he would tell different from what she already knew.

  ‘You know already,’ he said.

  ‘Tell.’

  ‘There’s nothing.’

  She turned and was off again bloody Kid, running up to meet other running kids, shooting them with his crutches—poom, poom, poom.

  ‘It’s really something watching him in front of some motel mirror in his Miki Kiore shorts, with his hairless chest, his hard arms and his not too flabby middle, lathering up and scraping his loose doggy face down clean, looking at himself looking at himself. That voice in the shower. Then it’s the aftershave slap, the roll-on underarm bit before he gets into his perfect clothes. She’ll think it’s worth it.’

  She stopped talking while she lit another cigarette. The kids were running down to the water past where he sat, kicking up sand, stripping off and throwing themselves in. Kid doing what other kids did. Kid playing with cousins. She’d hidden his sticks somewhere, knowing not to take them into the water, knowing he could easily get her there.

  ‘He buys you flowers, you get the bill. But still they are the best flowers, wrapped in real stiff, classy paper with heaps of proper ribbon. You think you’re married to this perfect man. Look at him and your heart goes funny. He talks to you, your stomach goes funny and you forget you’re one of many, you forget you’re paying for his car, his home gym, his bets, his debts and everything.’

  She was a talker this one, and still more than half cut, spilling it all.

  ‘And why me? I mean … the younger woman and all that, but that usually means attractive younger woman don’t it, like skinny, like stylish. That’s what he goes for … but still he came after me. Ended up married.’

  ‘Do you want to look behind those logs for my sticks?’ he asked.

  ‘Monkey isn’t she, doing that?’ She held the shimmering skirt bunched in one hand, the cigarette in the other as she walked back and forth looking behind the driftwood piles. ‘Sweet monkey though. Little trick. Gorgeous really … He went off with my bag in the boot of the car of course. That’s why I’m still in this stupid outfit, these stupid shoes. Went off with my money is why I can’t call a taxi … We would’ve seen her I suppose, that monkey one, if she put them anywhere down here.’

  ‘Back there in the bushes.’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘Nah. Just pass me that bit of wood by you, and another one the same.’

  ‘What happened to your leg?’

  He said what he usually said, ‘A shark got it.’ Said it loud and it shut her up.

  She didn’t believe him, knew she knew he was giving her the message to mind her own business. Well the other thing was, that after they’d told you about their diseases, their depressions and their stuffed relationships—after they’d come to an end of talking about themselves, they’d always want to know. Payback time. Only they didn’t usually ask straight out like this one here, gawping at his gone leg as though it was some fascinating baby.

  The sticks she gave him were about the right length, anyway good enough to get him up as far as the bushes. He started off ahead of her showing her half a clean pair of heels, which was something he wouldn’t mind saying to someone, haa.

  But she was getting along at a good rate
and overtook him in the end, banging about in the bushes, slapping about in the grass, the dress catching on branches and her just ripping the cloth away. Now there was Eddie calling him over the mike, ‘Where are you? Come in Te Rua. There’s a few cold beers up this way.’

  ‘She’s a trick all right that little … Who?’

  ‘Kiri. Pain in the bum.’

  ‘Here, there, look. One in the grass one in a tree.’ Big-teeth smile. ‘Who’s her mum and dad?’

  ‘Aunties. The Sisters.’

  ‘Ah, Amiria and Babs. Saw them shooting off in a mini while I was out lighting up under the trees.’

  ‘Aiming for dartists.’

  Her head dropped back, smoke shooting from the small whistle-hole she’d made with her lips, then she leaned forward into a big, deep laugh, like a gush of tide and a back wash.

  ‘Lolly Sisters,’ he said. ‘Candyfloss …’

  A gush and clatter like a wave busting over stones, before she fell down in a big heap in the grass in her snagged clothes, her laughter bobbing her about as though she was on water.

  ‘And … and Peppermint Stick.’

  ‘You … You’re a crack-up, you.’

  Eddie was on the mike again calling him.

  ‘You want to go up and get blind?’ he asked her. Blinder, he could’ve said.

  Chapter Seven

  On the first school morning after burying their mother, Aunty Wai had come in to help them with their breakfasts and their school lunches. Their father had already gone to work.

  When it was time to go he’d gone into the bedroom to say goodbye and had seen the bed not only flat but empty. It had been made up with the cover pulled tight and tidy and the pillows gone. The curtains had been taken down and the windows were all open. Cold air was coming in and he’d felt as though he was being strangled, as though there were fingers round his throat stopping him from screaming.

 

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