Dogside Story

by Patricia Grace

Which meant that every single night there was moonlight, where this bumper-car Stefan hung about waiting to take her into his arms.

  ‘He’s coming to take me away. He’s in love with me. I’m in love with him. We’re so in love with each other.’

  Words that would have made his voice crack and slide if he’d tried to say them—but still she managed to say them, words from some of those kissy books she stole.

  ‘And what we do … what we do …’ she’d said, taking off the singlet and the shorts and throwing them into the bushes.

  People were trees, with trunks and arms and leaves. You could go up against a tree, put your arms around a tree, push up against, up against, a tree.

  ‘But you wouldn’t know,’ she’d said.

  Or trees were people, with bodies and arms and hair that you could climb up and into, where you could find a place, where you could straddle and hold. You could hold the tree. It could hold you. You could rock. It could rock you.

  ‘You wouldn’t know and you’d be so afraid.’

  Rocking and riding would open the tree’s big arms and heads out to glimpses of the sky. He knew that she knew he wasn’t afraid, had never been afraid of anything they’d ever done together.

  ‘Afraid and you wouldn’t know.’

  He wasn’t sure if he knew, but he’d taken off his clothes and gone right with her as she slid herself to the ground.

  And he did it, did all of it.

  They’d done all of it.

  It was only when they stopped that he didn’t know what to do lying there still joined. Was there something else to do, something to say? What he didn’t know was what came next.

  Next was she’d shoved him, and as he rolled away she’d leapt up and put her foot down on his neck saying, ‘That wasn’t good. I didn’t like that at all.’

  At first he hadn’t believed her because of the way she’d ridden under him, thrust under him, up and up and up, arching, breathing hard in and out, riding just like him. He’d seen her face.

  ‘If you tell anyone I’ll kill you,’ she’d said pressing her foot down hard.

  He’d upturned his hands beneath her foot and thrown her off, rolled away and stood. And then he’d believed her. He didn’t like it either.

  ‘I mean it, if you tell I’ll kill you.’

  Blood—on him, on her.

  ‘And it’s not allowed.’

  ‘Course not.’

  For some time afterwards he’d kept away from Ani Wainoa, and on the occasions when he was sent with bread and supplies to Nanny Blind’s, Ani Wainoa was never home. Sometimes he thought she’d gone away as she’d said she would, then he would realise she hadn’t because there would be her clothes drying on the bushes, her comb by the washbowl with strands of her black hair caught in it, a book open on the ground.

  Occasionally on his way there he had looked across from the rise and caught a glimpse of her hurrying away from the house and into the trees because she’d seen him coming.

  The weather had just begun to warm up when one day he left his cousins to their after-school practices and their spacie games at the Lotto shop and come home knowing that the tide would be down and the blowhole dry. He’d changed into shorts, put gear in a bag and gone running with his dog down on to the beach then round the curve of it and up through the blowhole.

  The sun had backed away from the cove by the time he arrived there, but the warmth of morning and early afternoon had been enough to keep the chill away.

  It was an in-between-moon time when there was little movement of the tide which was out as far as it would go. There was nothing cutting the surface of the water, the weed hung at a standstill in it and the birds had gone off roaming. An off-white light caused by a spider web of cloud had spun itself between the backed-off sun and the water, the edges, the ridges.

  He’d broken all that, first with the swing and splash of his line from off the ledge, then with the perfect bomb he did from the plank. After warming himself into the water that still held a pinch of cold, he’d gone to explore the kina beds and the paua rocks thinking about what he would collect later, to take home. Every now and again he’d gone across to his line to see if there was a fish on it or to see if the hook needed rebaiting, and even though it wasn’t the season for crayfish he’d swum out to the cray rocks, diving down to look into the hollows and crevices.

  By the time he began making his way back there had been a further dulling down of the sky—grey light on the water as well as on the shore, where the bushy treetops looked like fallen cloud.

  He’d come out of the water for a knife and bag to go and collect paua and kina, and on returning had to wait at a distance from a stingray which was making its way among the weed, one wing and then the other lifting out of the water, dark and triangular, as it fed and browsed.

  It was while he was treading water, waiting for Whai to move off, that he’d looked towards the rise which was catching remaining light from the sun as it stepped down behind the hills, and had caught a glimpse of black and white that was like a flash, blackwhite, like a trick, a turning up and turning down of a hand of clubs or spades—a flick of Ani Wainoa, a trick of Ani Wainoa.

  Going or coming?

  He’d watched, and by the movement of the bushes, realised she was making her way towards the cove. But why so slowly, because Ani Wainoa was never slow? She was up to something, but what?

  So he’d swum ashore, climbing to the ledge waiting at the end of the track that he knew she was making her way along, and eventually she’d stepped out holding something in her arms.

  On seeing him she’d turned to go back, but realising it was too late for him not to have seen what she carried. She had come at him, thrusting the bundle into his arms, a bundle wrapped in a tee shirt of hers.

  As he held it Ani Wainoa had picked up a lump of wood, then, holding it two-handed, had backed him along the ledge shouting, ‘You. You throw it. Throw it or I’ll kill you.’

  Backing away from her, feeling for each foothold along the narrow track, he came to the place where the plank ledge began. There he’d turned and run out to the edge with what he held and jumped with it folded into him.

  When he surfaced there was a wriggle and sneeze from in the wrapping, and up on the ledge in the dark that was now coming down he’d watched the curling away of blackwhite, which was like a seagull wing.

  A seagull scream had echoed round the bowl of the cove. ‘You tell and … You tell anyone and … And I’ll come after you … After you … come after … after you with … with a knife, with a knife knifeknife, with a knife.’

  He’d turned onto his back, held the bundle high on his chest and frog-kicked for shore on the blackening water. The edges of the sky were a cooked-cray colour where the sun had dropped behind the hills and he was thinking he should’ve done what she said, thrown it. He was thinking he could let it go now because it wasn’t anything or maybe it was a bird.

  Leave it, swim away, run off home.

  Not because of the knife. He’d never been afraid of anything Ani Wainoa said.

  As he came out of the water he’d unwrapped the baby, whose eyelids were shuddering, whose nose was bubbling, whose mouth had opened and begun letting out squeaky sounds, whose wingy arms had lifted as though to fly, then drawn back. On the ends of the bird-arms were little creepy hands.

  He’d wrapped her in his own dry shirt and thought of leaving her there. She was a bird. Thought of handing her up into the arms of a tree.

  But he found she was too warm to put down, too warm to be left in the dark, so he’d decided to take her to Nanny Blind’s.

  In the dark he’d made his way along the pathways among the threaded roots and vines, among all the heads and arms and hands of trees. The squeaking had stopped and there was a night smell of blankets, a breathing, a creaking, a taste in his mouth of kawakawa.

  As he neared Blind’s house he’d slowed his pace and quietened his dog, holding the brush and grasses aside to let himself through wit
hout noise, hoping Blind was asleep, hoping her half-deaf Toss would not alert her.

  He’d found Blind sitting in her chair with a lamp on the shelf beside her. Her shut eyes were leaking and her glass-eyed dog was stiff at her feet. ‘Ani Wainoa, Girl,’ she’d called.

  There on the bed, then run home.

  ‘Me, Rua.’

  ‘Boy, you got to bury my dog.’

  Leave it and run, but it was too warm to be left.

  ‘Go … get … get …’ he’d said going back on to the tracks, stooping, holding the bundle into him as he hurried through the trees to the area of bare, packed earth where the path ended.

  One more step and there’d be no turning back. One more, and he’d be in the place of wind, the place of eyes.

  One step.

  Night breeze, night light—white stars, a chalky piece of in-between moon, a white edge of water—a smell of weed, heaped on to the beach by a recent storm, an assault of midges which he snorted away from his mouth and nose.

  The lights were on at the wharenui and he’d made his way towards it going in through the opened-out doors to where an argument about drains had come to a halt.

  Into the nearest pair of held-out arms was where he’d placed the bundle—which happened to be the mean, yellow and bandaged arms of Lady Sadie.

  All about him the meeting broke into questions, and he’d given out answers as ridiculous as No-one, A seagull, A bird, Screaming, Whiteblack, Flying.

  People had put their arms around him as though they believed him. They’d helped him home, dried him and dressed him, as though he was two years old. Others had gone from one house to the next to the next, using phones, finding cash, preparing to go to the city and the all-night pharmacy for milk powder and nappies.

  There were lights on all over, and above the talk and hurry he’d called out, ‘Blind’s dog’s dead,’ which had caused another clatter—torches, movement, voices in the other direction.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He wondered if she, puffing along behind him with the torch, noticed the shells he’d scattered along the path. White shells and torchlight made it easy, or he thought it should be easy but she was gasping and the light from the torch was going all over the place. Gasping or laughing? He crossed through the creek and waited for her to step over on the stones.

  ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘I came across there blind yesterday, step, step, step?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No step step step, you. Straight through. Water, water, like you didn’t see, like you had your own path.’ The thought of it stopped her, leaned her laughing against a tree.

  He went on more slowly now as she stumbled along behind him in her wedding shoes and her asthma, or something.

  ‘I mean … it should’ve … ha ha killed me. Never walked this far in my life.’ The torch was doing nothing, nothing useful—treetops, undergrowth, everywhere but. ‘Just shows … just shows … what a skinful can …’

  They began to climb the rise. It shut her up and he could hear her scrambling. I could give you a hand if I had a leg, he thought of saying. When he came to the top he sat to wait for her.

  ‘Don’t believe this, don’t believe. This’ll kill me,’ she said as she came up pulling herself from bush to bush, at last arriving and sitting breathless beside him with the torch stuffed down the front of her dress, lighting and shading her face, giving her the look of a big wife of Dracula.

  ‘You got an alternative route?’ she asked laughing the torchlight up and around from behind him on the track going down, ‘Got a … got a Smoker’s Path or something?’

  ‘Supposed to be …’ he said collapsing, strung up between his sticks and … buckling at the knee, he wouldn’t have minded telling her. ‘Supposed to be showing the bloody way, you.’

  She fell into the trees and the light was gone.

  ‘Haa, give you a hand if I had a leg.’

  The car was coming, Jase giving the usual double toot and turning to shine headlights in on to the track. So he had to drag his bones back together, get himself out of this jelly, waiting while she smacked about on the ground trying to find the torch, but it was gone. He wiped off tears, pegged himself. ‘How come wasted you never fell down?’ he asked.

  ‘All right for you with sticks,’ she said. ‘What about us?’ She was up, crashing along behind him in the cracking-up trees.

  Stepping out of trees he straightened his face to face Jase who was opening doors and looking pleased about something, or maybe his cousin was on an insulin high.

  ‘Coming,’ came from somewhere in there behind them, and a moment later there she was in the ragged light of headlights coming out of the shapeless trees calling, ‘Wide load following.’

  Jase plonked his foot down and wheelied them away in a dirt spray and bumped them hard over loose metal and corrugations, past the graveyard, the meeting house, the front houses, jolting ha ha ha out of them. On to street lights and tar-seal, along the road to the turn-off and on to the main road where something moved on the roadside, someone hid, and Jase said, ‘Who’s that?’ bringing the car and ha ha ha to a stop.

  Jase backed back along the verge, shining headlights into the high grasses, looking for the face they’d all seen.

  Taking his sticks he got out of the car, swinging across the ditch where he called and Kid got up from her hiding place. Her clothes were torn and he could see she’d been crying. ‘What you doing?’ he asked but she didn’t speak. ‘Come on,’ but she made no move, ‘we take you back.’

  ‘The kitten,’ she said.

  ‘Come, you got to come home …We take you …’

  ‘Find the kitten.’

  ‘Never mind the kitten.’

  ‘Door locked.’

  ‘What you mean? They can’t do that. We take you home.’

  ‘Can’t, not allowed.’

  ‘Bang the door down, us. Swear at them, give them heaps treating you like that.’

  ‘Where’s kitten?’ Jase was out of the car standing there beside him.

  ‘It went, run away,’ she said.

  ‘Come on, we look for your kitten tomorrow.’

  ‘Dead,’ she said, ‘Run over on the road and threw it in the bushes. Chucked in the bushes there.’

  ‘We take you home.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘To Aunty Wai’s place.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And Aunty Wai give them real arseholes locking you out like that.’ He was shaking and his eyes were streaming.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bring her,’ Maina was saying from the car. ‘Come on, little Kiri. Home to my place first. In here by me.’

  Kid made no protest when Jase picked her up and put her in the car.

  ‘Bring her in,’ Maina said when they arrived. ‘She’s cold, shivering, little Kiri,’ and she went ahead of them towards the back of the house. He held the car door while Jase lifted Kid out and they went along the path to the front of the house where the lights had been turned on and Maina was opening the sliding door. ‘On the settee,’ Maina was saying.

  Jase put Kid there while Maina tucked a duvet around her and put a pillow behind her. ‘Little Girl, I’ll change my clothes then give you a little wash, clean all those scratches and put some Savlon on. Then a cup-a-soup uh? You too Rua,’ Maina said to him. ‘Sit down in the chair by her.’

  ‘It coulda been her,’ he said.

  ‘I get it,’ Jase was saying. ‘Soup? Put some water on. Whatever.’

  ‘Through there,’ she said. ‘In the cupboard above the bench. And toast … but we’ll have to get a loaf out of the freezer. Look in the freezer for a loaf.’

  She went away and came back wearing track pants and a shirt, carrying a basin of warm water and towels, and began washing Kid’s face and arms and hands, talking, wiping, patting with the towels, applying the cream.

  ‘It coulda been her. Coulda been her run over.’

  ‘Do you think,’ Maina said, ‘you should ring home?’

  ‘
Locking her out like that … in the dark … like … like a dog.’

  ‘Do you think they could be out looking?’

  ‘Let them.’

  ‘There you are Girl,’ Maina said when she’d finished. She took the wash things away and in a little while he heard her in the kitchen talking to Jase. They came in with the cups of soup and a plate of toast. Maina handed one of the cups to Kid and one to him, moving papers off a coffee table and pulling it over close to the settee. ‘Well, there’s more important things,’ she said, ‘Embarrassing really, shooting my mouth off to your whole whanau and then involving you in my domestic affairs when there are more important things.’

  All that cooking, singing, dancing, laughing and crashing through trees? It seemed to have happened days ago, and thinking about it now was like looking back through a long tunnel of days to when he’d been someone else, someone he could never be again. What to do?

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘I mean, I mean what’re they doing right now?’ he said after they’d told Wai. Wai, who had got out of bed after waking as the car drove in, opened the door for them then moved the cushions from the settee so that Jase could put the sleeping girl down. ‘I mean what … Out looking? Getting up a search party?’

  ‘God knows,’ Wai said. ‘Babs rang to see if she was here. Hours ago. Didn’t say Girl was missing.’

  ‘Car’s still there. No lights on. Seems to me like they’re in bed asleep, no worries.’

  ‘Going to get it from me tomorrow, those two.’

  He was disappointed with this response from Wai, expecting her to say she’d keep Kid there from now on. After all, there were only Wai and granddaughter Eva living in the house now that Uncle Morehu had died and all the family had gone. It was a house that had always been full of people, full of kids—her own and other people’s, such as himself. ‘Someone’s got to …’

  ‘Last time I kept her—had her two weeks—those two put the cops on me.’

  ‘She can’t go back there.’

  ‘Got the Welfare on them once, but you see the girl’s in good health, good enough clothes, everything. The Welfare talked to the school, found nothing wrong and they all end up thinking it’s me being a troublemaker. What those two do, how they treat her’s not bad enough, that’s their way of seeing it.’