Dogside Story

by Patricia Grace

  The cousins had put their jackets, towels and bags of clothes into the forks of trees away from wet kids and dogs and had water on the boil on his camp fire. They’d taken one of his tarps and put their food and cups out on it. Remelda’s baby was asleep in the mingimingi wrapped in a rug, and now Jase had come through with Tina who was looking uncomfortable, a bit pissed off—not sure of this dorky Jase, not sure of the clothes she was wearing, not sure of dogs. Her two children clung to her. Jase was proud, or something, as he came down to the water to get the bag, taking the paua from it to put in the fire.

  ‘You, Rua,’ Kid said, sitting down next to him in the dark at slow song time, Eva on guitar.

  ‘You, Kid,’ he said.

  ‘You got to.’

  ‘You don’t say “got to” to your aunties.’

  ‘Got to. You know.’

  ‘Know what? What do I know?’

  ‘You know I cracked out of an egg.’

  ‘Porangi. Who said?’ But he knew who said.

  ‘Or a seagull shitted me.’

  ‘Don’t listen to your aunties, they’re porangi.’

  ‘But you know, you know.’

  ‘And you been told.’

  ‘Cracked out of an egg. Shitted from a seagull.’

  ‘You know your mother called Ani Wainoa lived with an old woman, a nanny who was blind. You know your mother gave you to me to bring home to mothers and fathers.’

  ‘Or, I cracked out of an egg. Or, a seagull shitted me.’

  ‘Porangi telling you that.’

  ‘So how?’

  ‘Ani Wainoa … ’

  ‘So how I got there? In that Ani Wainoa?’

  He put his arms round her and pulled her against him, his eyes watering on to her head, ask the trees, ask the trees. Her cousins were playing on the grassy slope in the dark, while his own cousins, with friends, by the light of the last bit of fire were beginning to collect their things to go home, or with loves were off tangling in the trees.

  Soon they were gone, torchlight ebbing, the blowhole empty, nothing answered. The one-eyed fire was all that was left, and, nailed up there, the far, unloving stars.

  Music was what he wanted and a smoke was what he needed. It was late, but now that Maina had gone he’d go back to his house for his tapes and sounds and a bit of weed from his stash, and he’d sleep back there until it was time to fish the high tide in the morning. The weather was going to break in a day or two and he wanted to get whatever fish he could before he packed up camp.

  And he had to decide what he was going to do. It was up to him now, no one else.

  He called Kutu, sent him ahead on the track and followed the dog’s white backside with the flickering light of his torch. It was cold and he and the dog were moving too slowly through the trees in the dark to get the juices going, but once at the house he’d light the fire and put some music on. Porangi as, Those Two, telling her stuff like that.

  But there was singing coming through the trees, Maina and Englebert—whose father was Maori and that’s why he could sing, everyone reckoned, ahh. Full blast. He called out so she’d know he was coming.

  And … all his candles. Candles all over the bloody place. Burn his house down, her.

  ‘I just ah …’

  Well what? He couldn’t walk in now, just take the tapes and the player and go. ‘Well didn’t ah …’

  ‘And neither did I,’ she said. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Nah, it’s okay.’ She’d washed the dress she wore to the dinner and it was there hanging near the fire, rigged up somehow—on wire from his hinaki by the look, dancing there, like a thin one of her.

  ‘Cass was going to take me back,’ she said. ‘But she’s going in early Monday. She can give me a lift right in to work Monday. I didn’t …’

  ‘Nah, I’m going back down. Just … wanted stuff, bit of weed.’ The fire was going for it, eating up his wood but he was getting warm.

  ‘I could’ve stayed there with her and Arch,’ she said. ‘But I wanted to come back here, just be on my own for a day and Cass didn’t mind. I got stuff, baggage to sort, my whole life to sort, even if the walk nearly killed me. I got to be away, away from him, away from all that shit, just while I sort myself. But I should’ve … ‘

  ‘Nah, sweet as. I’m not stopping.’

  ‘Cass said you wouldn’t mind, so I thought … God I never walked so much. There and back in one day? I got the fire going and … and found the bath, did what you said. It was … it was … Then come in here and couldn’t stop lighting candles, sorry about that. I been sitting here reading books from schools and shops and libraries.’

  ‘That Ani Wainoa stole.’ He’d got rid of most of them. Bugs had had a go at some, mice too.

  ‘Ah, Ani Wainoa, the little one’s mum.’

  So she’d found that out.

  ‘And, been playing tapes, some of yours some of mine, using up all your batteries.’

  ‘I got spares.’

  ‘That’s what you come for I suppose, your tapes, your sounds?’

  ‘Nah, its OK.’

  She was wearing a Hawaiian tee shirt and a seashell sarong, stretched, and her hair was wet and springy. She started talking about the meeting, saying what the aunties and uncles were going to do, that is, tell her old man where to get off then take up the idea themselves—tent sites, caravans, camper vans. Far out. The fire was going for it, he was warming up and Englebert was winding down.

  ‘This one,’ she said, ejecting Englebert and slotting a new tape in. ‘I saw you listening to it the other day when you called. Iz.’

  Awesome and high up. Flat out, wired up high on the neck of the uke and real, real, coconut style. ‘You been to Hawaii?’ he asked, to keep himself there a bit longer by the fire and because he wasn’t really interested in what happened at the meeting.

  ‘No. There was a group that came to Tauranga when we lived there, came over from Oahu for a festival then travelled up. We swapped tapes, swapped shirts, swapped songs. But mm, I want to go there one day.’ She began singing along deep underneath Iz with her good voice.

  He leaned and picked up the poker, let the stove flap down and stoked, putting in more wood, keeping himself there. Easy once you listened to the words, all those aas and uus, so he joined in, couldn’t help it, high up there with Iz while she burrowed along beneath both of them.

  Him’n Iz up there, her down there, ha, her hands gone all hula because she couldn’t help it, her face crumpling up, and her big teeth, big voice, awesome, and saying to him, ‘Ha, ha. Dance then.’

  It was the fire.

  And she was just like his aunties and cousins, who he knew would’ve left him alone if he was two-legged, come come come. But he always got up when they said, couldn’t help it. So he did what she said, got up on his sticks, it was the fire.

  It was the fire that had him swinging in the bit of space between the bed and the fireplace by that skinny sister dress of hers, a bit of hip, he couldn’t help laughing.

  She was up too, knocking over two candles, set his place on fire her, bending and picking them up, one out, one not, dancing in the left-over bit of space and relighting the gone-out candle from the other.

  Dancing with candles, ha, ha, no room to move and trouble with his stick, couldn’t help it. So close she couldn’t help but know, looking at his face then blowing out the two candles, taking his sticks away and holding him.

  Hardly dancing like that, hardly moving at all.

  Trouble, or no trouble?

  Grown and no trouble.

  Grown and going down no trouble on his busted bed. Finding her and holding—locked, folded, shaped and his eyes leaking. Climbing a long time, unlocked and easy and just sweet as.

  In the morning he sat on the edge of the bed, pulled on the shorts and tee and couldn’t think at first what he wanted to say. He pulled himself up and went to the stove, rattled the poker in among the embers and put in a handful of kindling before moving to the doorway, propp
ing himself there looking back at her sitting up smoking.

  There was light coming in. Kutu was out there pushing through the long grass.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘suppose …’ Half a finger of ash balanced there on the tip of the tailor-made. ‘I shouldn’t … I shouldn’t …’ Burn his house down, she could. Frowning down on the tailor-made. ‘Shouldn’t be …’ Frown ironing itself out. ‘Using up all your batteries.’

  ‘Ha, I got spares.’

  Rocks of teeth, ash dropping on the pillow, bashing at the ash with her hand flappy as a fish and awesome.

  The nip had gone from the air, there was a bit of wind from the north-west stirring, warm and gusty because there was a storm coming up, but not today. Soon the tide would be full and the fish biting. Later, at low tide, Bones and Jase would come through to collect the fish from him to take home and give out, but before they came there was a whole morning.

  ‘Come down the cove with me,’ he said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It had taken a couple of trips back through the trees to get all the gear home and then he’d had to get his shelter down and pack up quick. After that it was a race to get his wood in before the rain came.

  From the ledge he’d seen the storm coming from out over the sea, at first nothing but a blurred, humping horizon with whipped up water climbing to meet the bags of rain. He’d packed up his bedding first, got most of it home in the backpack, then gone back to take the covers from the frame he’d made in against the trees. Out there it was coming, the sea beginning to roll in, climbing the rocks and banks. Bags of rain, tarps and sacks of wind he thought of telling her.

  Thought of telling her that after seeing her to the end of the track in the early morning he’d managed to get home dry, get his wood in, put his bucket out under the broken spouting to catch water, and that he’d packed his tent and gear back where he usually kept it, propping up the broken side of the bed.

  After he got the fire going he’d put the tapes on and followed along with the guitar in the company of cockroaches that had crept in out of the weather, sitting round the walls like medals. The lightning was fish-flash putting him in spotlight and there was thunder set up on the synthesiser breaking breaking breaking, ha, alone at his own disco with a stack of wood drying in the space between the bed and the fireplace.

  ‘Don’t think of me,’ she’d said walking behind him on the track in the early morning in dinner clothes that had been washed, then dried, looking like a dancing sister, on wire of his. Old shoes for walking the track, dinner ones in her bag for when she got to work, even though, as she’d said, they weren’t suitable for a day walking the floors of DEKA.

  Don’t think of me.

  It was Kid he ought to be thinking about.

  The next morning, when he saw how much the creek had filled, he’d gone to the place where he had only partly cleared his dam following the dry summer, getting into the water and pulling away mud, stones and debris to free the flow. It had been an easy creek to live with before the days of Bola, clear and easy in its passage all the way to the estuary. Now it was full of silt, its course had been altered and there was still debris being carried down from the hills eleven years later, catching in its curves and piling against the banks, damming the flow.

  After he cleared the dam he had pulled his way upstream through the muddy water clearing the narrow necks and tossing out broken branches from the wide pools that had formed, knowing if he didn’t get the stuff cleared there’d be flooding out at the front houses, the gardens would be ruined again and there’d be mud everywhere. The rain was still falling, and though sheltered from the wind he’d been able to hear it, see the heads of the trees on the hillside rolling and tossing like waves. Down at the cove the breakers were coming in like trains.

  He could go to DEKA, find her he thought, with her face made up for work a little bit less than for a wedding or dinner. He’d watched her do that, working a squirt of cream one-handed with her sharpened fingers, the other hand holding a mirror the size of a playing card.

  Could have a conversation with her as if he were a customer. Do you have one-legged pyjamas and track pants, haa, half a pair of socks or shoes, a couple of left-foot gumboots?

  He’d slid himself out onto the wet banks dragging the wood into the cover of the trees from where he would recover it later, working as quickly as he could to try to keep the cold away, and he’d thought of Archie, with his smoked lungs and pickled liver who he knew would be out shovelling, clearing shingle from the mouth of the run-off. But who was there at home to help Arch now—a few old ones, a few young ones with babies. They wouldn’t be able to get any Council workers in to help because they’d be away clearing slips off the main highway.

  Ace of diamonds.

  There was a pack of cards up on the shelf with Ani Wainoa’s books, one joker having to be the missing two of spades, the other the missing ten of hearts. In a storm you could lay them out and play euchre or five hundred, or matchstick poker with the stakes increasing.

  Over the top of it all with a piece of sponge, then a bullet of lipstick drawing lightly over the blackish colour of her lips.

  Don’t think of me.

  There was his own backside to think of. He’d kept working until he couldn’t ignore the cold any longer then had gone back to the house and stoked the fire, taking his clothes off to stand out under the spouting and wash the mud away. He decided he would cook up a couple of fish heads with a load of onions and pepper and think about that. In a day or two the storm would blow itself out and once the sea had begun to flatten he’d be able to get into water and swim hard through all of this, hard and far, concentrating on not drowning, not being pulled under or taken away, not breaking his head or his ears—swimming, swimming, knowing how far his breath would take him, how long before he might freeze. No space for anything else. He’d come out and shake himself dry, and maybe after that he would be free to think of what it was he had to do.

  ‘Don’t think of me,’ she’d said from back on the track, behind him in the dinner clothes and old shoes. ‘I shouldn’t’ve …’ with her face made up for work, her hair brushed and plaited, twisted and tucked and tied.

  ‘Don’t think of me. Shouldn’t’ve …’

  Frowning along on the track behind him?

  ‘Lit all my candles?’

  ‘Aa … you …’

  Face creasing he’d thought, there behind him, drawing up and bunching, eyes screwing to slits, lips curving and parting over teeth, ‘Ha ha, aa, you … Look you, don’t want … want, fall in the bushes again you know … torches.’

  ‘Torch busted ever since.’

  The car was coming, Cass.

  ‘But don’t. At the end of the track, that’s me, gone. You shouldn’t …’

  ‘Shouldn’t, like, come there stoking up fires?’

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the story of ancestress Ngarua and the crossing of the inlet, there’s mention of a wharenui built by the people as a statement of their authority in this new place. This house, it was believed by its planners and builders, was better in every way than the one left behind in that country on the other side.

  It is true at least that this house was larger and stronger.

  It was a modest house really, a house of its time. The walls were made of sawn planks lined on the inside with kakaho. Bundles of manuka brush, wired against the outside walls, kept some of the cold out. It had a thatched roof and a packed dirt floor. The few feet of overhang at the front kept most rain from the doorway, though not the rain coming in from the east.

  Decoration was minimal. The front overhang had at its apex the carved head of the ancestor, while ancestral arms outstretched at either side, though mostly of plain, painted wood were carved on the ends, that is, on palms and fingers.

  From behind the carved head, going through to the back inside wall, the backbone of the ancestor had been painted in thin white lines of kowhaiwhai decoration, as had the ancestral r
ibs. But apart from this small amount of carving on the exterior and the scrollwork on the beams, the house was unadorned.

  Retelling would have it that defections were numerous at the time of The Crossing. In fact those that crossed from north to south numbered about twenty, with as many dogs. Though life was never easy the land and sea were good cupboards.

  Thirty years later numbers had grown to about a hundred but lands had dwindled because of government legislation, men had gone to a world war and most had not returned, the country was in severe depression and there was no work. Nor was there finance available for land development and this situation continued until people’s remaining land shares began to be consolidated into blocks and partitioned into farm-sized units. All the shareholders were to receive dividends from these blocks, but the land did not provide work for many of them.

  The situation worsened over the years and it became impossible for everyone to survive on the land that remained.

  People left home to find employment, to go to the next war, or to go into tuberculosis wards and sanatoriums. Those who were left behind scratched for a living, took in the orphans, brought home the sick, disabled and traumatised. People were thin and dazed and their dogs were even worse.

  When the situation in the country became a little better some were able to find work scrub cutting or shearing. Some were able to take out mortgages and replace the old Crossing time homes and shelters with timber houses that had corrugated iron roofs, glass in the windows and outdoor washhouses in which home brew rigs were likely to be found.

  Those without work made do with patching up the Crossing-day shelters, or they slept with rats and birds in cow sheds and out-buildings—but also in the meeting house which by then had gone beyond people’s means and energy to repair.