Dogside Story

by Patricia Grace

  While he was away she would bring her children out of the bush to the front houses and spend mornings, afternoons, whole days, whole nights, sometimes days and nights on end, with her husband’s sisters and cousins. In the mornings, after their chores were done, she would gather along with them in one house or another to listen through the crackles and whistles to the wireless serials.

  In the afternoons they’d garden or go through to the cove for shellfish and when the weather was bad they’d stay indoors with ukes and mandolins and sing. At night they’d go floundering with lamps and toasting forks or table forks tied to sticks or wire forks that they made with number-eight borrowed from fences. On other nights they’d go eeling or fishing for sharks.

  They sometimes went to town on the back of an uncle’s truck, she wearing a dress, hat and shoes that her husband didn’t know she had. On occasions she got drunk along with everyone else, if someone had money.

  Everything would be fine when the man came home. He would find the gardens had been cared for, the wood cut and stacked and the children well behaved.

  His wife would be looking dull and beaten enough for his satisfaction.

  The man had never been present during the births of any of the children, except that when the sixth child, daughter Harinia, was born he happened to be at home. That was when the man seemed to go soft in the head, or heart, or maybe stomach or spleen or liver or bowel. Somewhere changed.

  As she was born little Harinia’s eyes locked into his, or that’s how it seemed to him, and his liver or spleen melted. Harinia was no more beautiful or astonishing than any of his other children, but the father could only go by what his heart, stomach, liver, bowel told him, which was that she was the most wonderful child ever born.

  She was quite wizened really, like an old apple. Frightening, but not to him. He was in love for the first and only time in his life.

  His wife only lasted six months after the birth. It didn’t matter because he had his two older daughters to be mothers and servants to this wonderful baby—to wash and dress her and cook up special dishes. He had sisters to make her clothes and buy her shoes and had sons and nephews to carry her wherever she wanted to go. He filled the girl with sugar, bringing home blackballs, boiled lollies and jubes that she didn’t have to share.

  From a wizened apple, Harinia grew to a smooth round apple with a dark complexion for which the father blamed his late wife. He bought Harinia large sunhats to wear and made sure she kept in the shade. She became beautiful in a softened, pale sort of way. Eventually there was no sign of the apple, old or new, and Harinia became the colour and consistency of a mock-egg sponge. She was cushiony, droopy and her teeth were never any good.

  The father died when Harinia was eleven, but Ruahine and Tunia and the brothers were in the habit now of doing everything for their young sister. A lot of responsibility fell on Ruahine because Tunia’s sight was quickly fading and later the brothers escaped to war in Africa where two of them were blown to pieces. The rafters have it that the man died of his own home brew after someone had got into it while he was away, making up for what they’d used by tipping a bucket of creek water into it.

  Tunia, the sister going blind, never married or had children, nor did the two older brothers who never returned from the war. The youngest brother, before he left for the war, had two children, Arch and Wai.

  Ruahine, the oldest, with all her responsibilities, married late in life, leaving time for the birth of just one daughter, Ramari. Later she took her granddaughter, Ani Wainoa, from Ramari to bring up as her own.

  Harinia married and gave birth to Amiria and Babs.

  Genealogy is never easy to keep in the head and it can be tedious. It can choke you too unless taken piece by piece at the right moment, perhaps in snippets pulled down from the rafters year by year, along with an accompaniment of gossip and a chance of embellishment. But taken a little at a time, if you get to live long enough you get the hang of it.

  Tunia, or Blind, was brought down from her house in the trees the night that her dog died. An hour or two earlier Ani Wainoa had left and Te Rua had come into the wharenui with the baby, putting it into the nearest pair of held-out arms.

  Blind couldn’t give slight to her family by not accepting their care now that her dog and grandchild had gone so she allowed herself to be taken to live with Arch in his new, warm house where she was able to have a room of her own.

  Arch’s previous house, along with two others nearby, had been broken up by wind and taken away by water and mud during a cyclone a year earlier. Also demolished at that time, as already mentioned, was the wharekai, which was a wooden structure with roof and walls of corrugated iron. It had been fitted with rough-sawn timber benches, had its own water tank, and a supply of electricity rigged up via extension cords that was adequate for lights and a refrigerator. Across one end of the room was the long open fireplace with its wide corrugated iron chimney and its lengths of railway line mounted on concrete blocks, under which the cooking fires were built, and up on which the big pots and water tins sat. In one corner was an old-style copper that could be stoked up to heat water for washing up.

  In the main body of the room enough trestle tables and long forms could be set up to seat a hundred people. From time to time, where occasion and weather made it necessary, marquee extensions could be made, leading out from the double garage doors.

  At the time of its demolition by Bola in 1988, people were not too unhappy to see the old place go, and in fact were too absorbed by more urgent matters to give it much consideration.

  Eventually, the street preachers and singers that came into the township once a fortnight to the vacant section between the butchers and the Lotto shop were able to take advantage of the phenomenon of Cyclone Bola to show people their own unworthiness. It was the state of their unclean, unsaved souls and because they lived the life of Hatana that made them all deserving of such a disaster. The reason that the everloving God was handing out this punishment was all to do with sins of the flesh. People had brought it all on themselves.

  In Ngarua’s time, water coming off the hills had combed down through thick forest, among rootworks and undergrowth that bound the soil, then down into the equally as densely forested valleys and riversides. It delivered into the waterways only what was light and loose in the way of soil, seed, leaves and old wood.

  In her time, whether fishing, swimming, playing or making a crossing, except in extremely deep places, people were able to see the river bottom through clear water. Everything that was there, was known to their eyes. It was a place where they could see their own faces, where on looking up from sandy or stony contours or from fish swarms they would be able to find these reflected, up-flipped, in each other’s eyes.

  But Ngarua lived to see the clear felling and burn–offs that bared the hills and revealed their fragility. She saw hills turn brown in dry summers, where grass had been shorn down by the two front teeth of too many sheep until there was only dirt left. She lived to see the browning of the waters, the heaping of logs, the blocking of waterways and the shifting passages of creeks and rivers.

  She lived to see lands and livelihoods dwindle and even Ngarua, pioneer as she was, was unable to prevent it from happening, could only do what they all had to do, struggle to survive.

  Each winter floodwaters broke over the land and the new coursing of water made it necessary for them to move their houses and gardens and threatened the meeting house they had built. They began to prepare a site on higher ground away from the edge of the inlet for the wharenui, and then to dismantle this first house in order to rebuild it. This was still the old house. The present one was built on the same site years later.

  Ngarua lived to see the first ferry, which was attached to each shore of the inlet by ropes. She lived to see the building of the first bridge and then to see it taken away after a few years by dark and now unpredictable waters.

  In all the time throughout this clearing of trees, the erosion of land
and the changing of water routes, the resulting mud was being taken down through the inlet and belched into the ocean.

  It seems unlikely, having witnessed all of this, that Ngarua would’ve blamed the hand of God if she’d been around at the time of Bola.

  What had gone on up until then was the softener, setting up conditions over the years, priming the land for the big event. Bola was the Big One when the hills came sliding into the valleys and became the rivers. Not water bearing loads of soil as in previous storms, but hills, farms, pastureland, that had become infused with enough water to push them down and along the river pathways, taking with them everything that had already been weakened and loosened by wind—that is, trees, roads, sheds, houses, power and telephone lines, gardens, vehicles and machinery.

  Throughout the district, crops, vineyards and orchards were flattened and water went through paddocks taking animals out over the top of fences and floating them away.

  As the water rose round Arch’s house and neighbouring places, the people came to see what they could do. They pulled the baseboards off the houses in the hope that the water would flow under them. This worked for a while but the water and mud kept coming, eventually breaking up the houses and taking them off. Those houses that remained had metres of silt dumped into them.

  Arch and others had to take their clothes, an army of shoes, photographs, a few chooks and their dogs and go to live in the least affected places, including the wharenui. They were without electricity and had to empty out their freezers and use what they could of defrosting food. The only clean water they had was what rain they caught in buckets and drums. Once their road became impassable, and because the sea was tossing up ten-metre swells making it impossible to go anywhere by boat, they became isolated.

  What a laugh.

  All they could do was entertain themselves watching the devastation, marvelling at the might of Tawhiri Matea.

  The clean-up lasted for many months, though it had never really been completed as far as the waterways, gardens and pasturelands were concerned. The sandy banks of the inlet, as well as the beds of the creeks and estuaries, were now mud, and every time there was heavy rain, wood and debris had to be cleared to get the waters flowing again. In many places where silt had covered the land, though plants began to grow again, the ground underneath was as soft as porridge and those places had to be abandoned. Arch had to leave his old house site and rebuild further back on his land. He had to make new gardens and set up new places for his chickens and pigs.

  The few places on Dogside that had not come to any harm were the wharenui which stood back against a treed hillside, the cove, where there had never been any removal of trees, and the property of Amiria and Babs. Theirs was the very best of land, handed down by the melted father to the daughter Harinia who became known as Lady Sadie.

  People had already spoken of the need to rebuild the wharekai and had planned on having something that was much better than what they’d had previously. It was when Blind died four years after the cyclone that they had first felt the lack of the old building, when cooking had to be done under tarpaulins in the wet and boards needed to be put down over mud in the marquee where the tables had been set up. The new kitchen and dining room was to be large, modern and all-electric.

  Arch was still in employment when Blind came to live with him, and was into the twentieth year of his widowerhood. He hadn’t yet met Cass and had been living alone since his children left home. Each morning as he left for work he’d deliver Blind to her cousin Henry’s for the day. Blind’s sister Ruahine had died eleven years earlier, as had her remaining brother. Her sister, Harinia, Lady Sadie, was still alive but Blind didn’t like her. It was her own choice to go to her cousin’s place rather than to her stinking sister’s, but she grew tired of being delivered and of having everything done for her. It was a useless life, really.

  One morning while her cousin was in his kitchen coughing, leaning on a chair, she took up her stick and headed for the bush at quite a good pace considering there was only the memory of a dog padding along beside her.

  The only ones about were little kids playing on a pink trike and a red horse. Older children were away at school. Aunties, uncles and fathers were away at work, or asleep, while others were inside looking in cupboards and fridges to see what was left.

  ‘Nanny Bline, Nanny Bline,’ the little kids called as she went by on her balloon legs floating off to her own place.

  By the time Henry was through coughing she was well on her way. He busied himself cleaning his fireplace and only after he’d completed that did he begin to wonder where she was. He went from house to house looking for her but it was only the riders who could tell him she gone, Bline-eyes, Nanny Bline-eyes, gone.

  So she was brought back to Arch’s but soon afterwards made the decision to go off after her dog. What else was there to do?

  Blind died with her eyes open, whereas in life she’d mainly kept them closed. It’s all recorded in the rafters.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kid.

  By the way Kutu lifted his head and put his ears up, and by the smile on his dopey face, he knew it would be her coming. The dog stepped towards the blowhole swinging his banana tail.

  She wasn’t alone, there were voices and other dog sounds now, amplified in the cavern. Kutu was beginning to yelp and turn himself.

  He’d been looking forward to them coming with the midday tide, had been expecting them once the water went down because it was just the kind of extra-low, full moon time that made you hungry and that you couldn’t ignore. The further the water pulled back the more it drew you towards it. And it was the right sort of day, nipped by coming winter, clear and breathless, so still that he could hear the snapping beaks of piwaiwaka vaulting among the puffs of insects rising out of the manuka behind him and the wingbeats of birds and their sharpened calls as they crossed overhead in bunches. You had to get out in it, break it up, colour it, crack open its paths and surfaces.

  Kid came through with her two same-age cousins, she and Hinewai carrying bags and Georgie carrying Dirtyrat. They’d been running and their faces were the colour of dark plums. Behind them were Eva and her mate from Polytech, then the rest of the cuzzies with kids and all the dogs—all their food and water and pots and bags and clothes. None of the aunties and uncles were with them, he noticed.

  It was company, company that he often longed for but wanted to be able to do without, as though all these trees, all this water, all this physical life could fill him while he looked for his grown self. But there were only so many hours you could spend in or around water getting people their fish, only so much time listening in the trees because he wasn’t a bird or a fish after all. There were always the fire times.

  But huh. Just think how much more of a physical life being one-legged gave him. Great. Two-legged and he’d have all this wood collecting, fire making, food finding, cray diving done in half the time. All that more time on his hands, ahhh. Then, if he had no legs at all, ha ha. Hard out, day and night with all this physical life.

  More coming through. Bones with Remelda’s baby in a backpack and handfuls of bags. Remelda following with more stuff. No aunties, no uncles.

  ‘All having a hui with that Maina,’ Bones said when he asked. ‘Some sort of hush-hush korero. Yack yack, so we took off, left them to it.’ He swung the baby-pack down looking pleased or embarrassed or something.

  ‘And Those Two?’ he asked

  ‘Ahh, Those Two?’ Eva said. ‘At the meeting too, them. So Nan Wai said go and get Kid, bring her over, said it in front of The Aunties and they didn’t say a thing. Sent Georgie to get her.’

  Bones lifted the baby out of the pack and handed him to Remelda. ‘Her and Georgie Boy and Hinewai took off—run all the way here,’ he said. ‘Dirtyrat after them, but legs too short ay? Had to carry him.’

  His cousin was talking a lot, pleased or embarrassed or something, about Remelda and some other man’s baby, some jailhead’s baby, his ast
hma singing after the walk and the climb. Remelda had her tit out and the big blackberry knob plugged into the piggy baby.

  Dogs were moving in and out of the trees, some sniffing and yapping along the cove paths, breath sawing against the dark rock and banks, others twisting and turning themselves round kids who were scrambling here and there picking up wood to pile above the high water mark. He strapped on his knife belt, tucked a Pak’n Save bag down behind it and waited until there was a fire going before getting down to the water.

  Eva was already out in it even though she was two-legged enough and the tide low enough for her to get paua from rocks round the shore. But, like him, she wanted to be in water. She was calling her mate to come in but it was too cold for Makere who was standing up to her ankles. ‘No way, cold as, bloody freezing.’

  He jabbed his sticks into the sand and lay down in the shallows, pulling himself along until he reached deep enough water where he ducked under out of the nicked air, under and up, under and up, breaking it. Eva was doing the same ahead of him, cracking and colouring all the surfaces.

  Back on shore the kids were peeling off and running in too, even though parents didn’t want them to and were echoing at them, You’ll you’ll freezefreeze, and get sick and, you’ll and you’ll bark freeze barkbark all all night like bloody, like dogs. But the kids weren’t listening.

  In the channel he went down and sped along under water to the weed and the low edges of rock for a fast pick of paua to put in the fire. He wedged the knife, cranking the fish from the rocks, and after a while was joined by Kid, Hinewai and Georgie who looked after the bag for him. Eva worked round the higher edges of the rock ducking down every so often to keep the water round her.

  After the fundraising dinner he had taken Maina back to the house, remembering to go along at a slower pace this time. He’d lit the lamp for her and set the fire for morning. When he left he’d wanted to take his transistor with him, but thought he should leave it for her. It’s what he’d missed this morning, a bit of music to light his fire by. He began making his way back feeling hungry and realising he hadn’t eaten since early morning.