Dogside Story

by Patricia Grace

  Numbers decreased even further over the years. Even though there was now a road only a short distance away, and small-time development inland, most of this development passed them by. More and more people left to find work or to join gangs, or because they had been able to do some comparisons and now thought their turangawaewae was a hole, the pits, the backwater of the universe, and should be left to the manuka and the dogs.

  Now in 1999 there were not too many more people living on Dogside than in The Crossing days. There were fifty or so people living in fifteen of the houses, that is, counting the falling-down one where Rua lived. There were four houses that were unoccupied and though the area of available land had reduced considerably over the years, there were pieces of land either side of the wharenui that were also unoccupied. That was the land that Piiki Chiefy, the rogue husband of Maina, had his eye on.

  However, though there were only fifty people now living there, there were those from elsewhere to whom Dogside was turangawaewae, and who had the same rights as those in residence. Dogside was their place to stand, their place to speak and give voice. Shares from land incorporation were owned and dividends due to them just as much as they were to their on-site relatives, and they claimed descendency from Ngarua in the same way as their home relatives did.

  Some of these exiles had moved only as far as Turanganui, the near city, while others had gone to the far cities of Whangarei, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill and everywhere in between. Others had crossed seas to Australia, Europe, America. Many of the children of these exiles had never seen home.

  All of these demographics have been researched by one of the family doing hapu studies at university. There are figures available and all sorts of information, including the fact that dividends from shares in the amalgamated blocks now stood at: one free mutton per person over the age of fifty-five, once a year at Christmas, as long as the person was registered and on hand to collect it.

  But never mind that. The study was useful when Wai and her helpers needed to contact the whanau to get them to come to a meeting regarding the new dining room and Y2K activities.

  The exiles were always moved by news from home. From a distance their turangawaewae sat warm inside them like carbohydrates and gravy, and when the call came the employed of other places began scheming as to who they could get to cover for them at work, or what they could say to bosses that would enable them to lengthen their weekend by at least a day. The unemployed borrowed money or a vehicle, or got out on the road to hitch home. This didn’t happen for those from the far south for whom travel to the North Island was too expensive, though they did contemplate it. They did wish.

  Of course those who lived in Sydney, Melbourne and beyond couldn’t even contemplate, but would’ve been offended if they hadn’t been notified. They were able to send koha—usually one or two hundred dollars. Anything less would’ve seemed mingy, especially when everyone at home believed they were making it big in these far cities of the world. Along with koha the exiles sent messages that they were saving to come for Christmas, or that they wanted to send nephews and nieces across for a holiday, or that one day they would return for good.

  ‘In a box.’

  ‘In a wooden overcoat,’ was the response to the latter from those at home who didn’t believe a word of it, having once too often brought their relatives home from afar, for burial.

  Not all this warm spuds and gravy stuff applied to everyone. There were those who had pulled their feet out of home ground and would never plant them there again.

  The wharenui where this meeting was to be held is twice the size and more strongly built than that erected by Ngarua and her followers. The old one was eventually pulled down and burned, the only pieces kept for incorporation into the new one being the ancestral head and the arms from the outside, and a short section of the ancestral backbone from the interior.

  It is not one of the grand houses of modern times. It has a veranda large enough, with enough depth from front to back to shelter a coffin, and enough space for widows and other mourners to keep the dead company for a few days and nights. There are hooks on high from which to hang the awnings that provide shelter for the mourners during their vigil and to keep the sun from playing havoc with the carefully made-up face of the dead.

  Inside, the ancestral backbone and wall poles have been carved and the ancestral ribs painted in kowhaiwhai patterns.

  In between the carved poles are plain plank walls, except that in recent years, on the back wall, young artists on a Maccess scheme have painted a mural depicting The Crossing, Te Whakawhititanga a Ngarua. In it you see Ngarua, in full daylight and bright sun, standing large in a great carved war canoe, prow feathers and all, striking downward with her ornamented paddle, the waves mountainous on either side of her. She’s dressed in a kind of leather-look battle dress with a piupiu over the top. Her eyes are gold, her face shining and her black hair fills the sky.

  Behind her on a far shore is Maraenohonoho on the back of a knock-kneed horse wielding, not a lump of driftwood but something resembling a jousting lance.

  Some like the mural.

  Others think it modern and hideous and say that ancestress Ngarua has been made to look like a gang member or a bikie. They’re awaiting an opportunity to paint it over.

  The reason for the piece of tahuhu, or ancestral backbone, being kept from the old house to be put into the new one is because the wharenui is the repository of talk, and rafters are its storage place: Ko nga kupu e iri nei i tara-a-whare mau tonu, mau tonu. It was a way of transferring the old stories into the new house for safe-keeping.

  At the meeting Wai knows that there’ll be a great deal of talk to get through before they’ll be able to get to the business of the day. The house is full, which means that the initial talk that connects them all, the nostalgia, the catching up on what is happening in all their other worlds, will probably take most of the morning. It can’t be hurried because it’s one of the main reasons most of them have come—which doesn’t mean they’re not interested in this project of Wai’s. Wai is just hoping the talk and the in-between songs won’t take too long.

  Pop Henry, the one whose mind has gone ahead of him to meet the ancestors, is being helped to his feet to begin. No one can make head or tail of what the old man’s talking about, except that once in a while something connects with what is already in the house hanging from the rafters.

  But at least the old man is there for them to see, to look at, and now that they’re all comfortable it doesn’t really matter how long he goes on. Those who haven’t been home for a while and didn’t know the old man had gone funny, take the opportunity to lean sideways to ask what’s up.

  They discover the old man is being looked after by a granddaughter, Reggae, one of Beano’s kids. She’s a single mum with two children who’s good to the old man but not old enough. Looks after his clothes good, feeds him good, but there’s no life for her. Now and again she takes off somewhere without telling anyone.

  Sometimes it’s the old man who takes off and it’s difficult for Reggae to keep an eye on him all the time. Off he goes along the beach in his slippers, halfway to the blowhole, raining, tide coming in, and they all have to keep a watch out. Archie goes along to see him once a day. Rua gets him his fish. Old man’s got a suitcase full of new pairs of socks under his bed because it’s what everyone’s been giving him for his birthday and Christmas for ten years. Go there with your present of socks and he rips off the paper, pulls out his suitcase, opens the lid and slings them in. Bagful. But no one can think what else to give him apart from lollies.

  And his sister Tini. She left her house to go and live in the city closer to her kids and grandkids, but at least today she’s there for them to see. Her grandson has brought her from Turanganui for the day.

  Once the old man has sat down there’s an interruption in proceedings from Atawhai, by the far door. He wants permission from the gathering to leave his cellphone switched on because h
e’s on call.

  No problem with that.

  Atawhai is the doctor in the family, born on Dogside, who left there on scholarship at thirteen to attend boarding school, and was sent from there to medical school. He’s spent thirty-five years in city hospitals and in private practice in South Auckland where the most difficult thing for him to do was to close the doors of his surgery in the evenings. But after thirty-five years he began to think more and more about flounder in the estuary, crayfish in the cove, and about growing corn and cabbages.

  Retirement.

  It wasn’t easy to leave people’s illnesses, beatings, rashes, malnutrition, iron deficiencies, diabetes, impetigo and running ears, but once he’d made up his mind he quickly sold up and came home. He built a house just across the bridge in the township and bought a boat which was hardly ever taken out by him though his nephews over from Sydney made good use of it.

  It wasn’t long before Atawhai found it necessary to convert one of the rooms of the new house into a surgery. He was the only doctor within a forty kilometre radius and was on call twenty-four hours. Though he didn’t have time to fish he never went without crayfish or fish of any description because all varieties were brought to his door as payment in lieu.

  Atawhai had come to the meeting because it was to do with all this millennium sunrise business and he was concerned that if there really was to be an influx of people at new year he might have trouble coping with all the extra fishhook injuries, motor and boat accidents, fevers, sunstroke, sick babies, drownings and falls from bridges.

  However he didn’t get a chance to bring up the matter because halfway through the morning his phone rang and after answering the call he opened the door behind him and went out, for a moment removing from the painted mural the down-stroking paddle of Ngarua, a wild wave and an ancestral thigh.

  Two others present were brothers Jackson and Joeboy who knew plenty about making deals and money. They’d ridden down from further up the coast on their Harleys, taking time out from cannabis plots and drug dealing to come and see what the meeting was about. They were dressed like cowboys with cellphones on their belts like guns—but saying they had phones slung like guns isn’t saying these two were armless. They did have a real gun, carried on the back of their ute, that they used mainly for hunting. But in business like theirs there was always a possibility of it being needed as a deterrent or a persuasion.

  It was afternoon before Wai got to outline the project and her scheme. Her idea was simply to use the planning already in place, that is to remove it all from the original planner—‘your relation’ she called him—and carry it through themselves, using the skills of those present. To raise all the money they needed in one major effort, then to build and equip the wharekai, was the aim. Wai had a broad idea of how they would reach the goals she was outlining but her most special skill was in knowing who she had in front of her and how to delegate.

  What she knew she had was a voluntary work force of people who could do what was needed, or people with the contacts that they needed for the task. They’d have to have everyone there working for two weeks over the new year, or for part of that time. No holidays, no celebrating until it was over. As well as that they’d need some people working from now on, doing bookings, preparing the grounds, extending and improving their toilet and shower block, and whatever it was that had to be done for all that Internet business. They were going to have to use the money already raised to bring it all together.

  Her biggest task at the moment was to persuade them. She knew that without everyone agreeing it wouldn’t work, for although the people in front of her were workers and people with contacts, that wasn’t all they were. They could be objectors too.

  As she spoke she looked around reading the silent language, which is a language that works its way into the rafters also. She saw that there were some who sat with eyes fixed on her, or even with eyes averted but who she could tell were listening and interested. Others were hunched, averted, while others sat flat up against the wall, their eyes sideways, uncommitted, suspicious, whispering behind hands, eyebrows up, eyebrows down, waiting for her to finish so they could leap up.

  Her eyes, nail drivers that they were, told her there was going to be division, perhaps a bust-up. She knew if it happened it couldn’t be diverted and only hoped there’d be time to work through it by the end of the day, that is if they were going to be able to work through it at all. She knew it could all fall down round her ears, and if that was the case they’d have to count her out as the main fundraiser from now on and find someone else, because she’d already made up her mind she wasn’t going back to raffles and dinners, which were too much work for too little return and meant money coming from the same people all the time.

  She reminded them about that. ‘It’s tourist dollars we want. Just this once then thanks and goodbye. Haere ra mo ake tonu. OK that’s it,’ she said. ‘Over to you lot. If you want it, think what your role can be. Or, have a go at me if you want. The only thing I’m asking us not to waste time on today is slagging off our big-chief relation. We been screwed by our own relations before. Hei aha. Deal with him when we get him here for the takeover, hmm, after we thank him for the idea of course.’

  So the talk started.

  Not in the following order, because there are protocols to do with order, which though imprecisely followed on this occasion, were roughly adhered to. Well, it was all in-house anyway. Most of what came at first were objections from those Wai had already seen were waiting to leap. Nothing would nail them.

  ‘All this 2000 business. What is it anyway? It’s a Christian celebration, that’s what. So why are we celebrating it. What’s “New Year” to us—nothing to do with our people, our culture. If we want to be celebrating then we should celebrate our own survival in our own Matariki star time. Never mind all this other rubbish dumped on us by missionaries and colonisers—all eyes to heaven while they take the land from under your feet. We got to decolonise ourselves, unpick our brains because they been stitched up too long. We need politicisation and decolonisation if we’re going to claim tino rangatiratanga, otherwise nothing’s gunna change, gunna keep on being bad statistics, our kids are gunna keep being kicked out of school, keep going to jail, keep killing themselves. Babies are gunna keep on dying, people are gunna keep on being sick, poor, kicked around. Shit-all happens unless we get rid of this shit out of our heads. We been messed with long enough.’

  So hang that in the rafters.

  Dion was getting off the track, some people thought. You know, parents make sacrifices to send their kids away to become teachers and lawyers, but all the kids are doing is shouting around the place about everything instead of getting on with their studies. You can’t switch on television without seeing this niece or that nephew marching down city streets with a lot of untidy mates waving flags and holding up rude signs. Families paying for all that. Waste of money.

  But some agree with Dion that they’ve been messed with long enough. ‘We keep letting it happen, letting our own do it to us too, our own relations. The sun’s going to come up on the first of January with dollar signs all round it. Already in Turanganui thousands of dollars are being spent doing the place up—face-lifting the city—new paving and palm trees, doing up the clock tower, soundshell lights, digital calendar all lit up counting down the time. It’s all gearing up …’

  ‘Well but, so what? I mean …’

  ‘All that money being spent, but people are still poor. Airlines, hotels, motels all doubling their prices so everyone can come and hoon around and be first to watch the same old sun come up. Poor old Te Ra. People letting their houses out for $1000 a week, leasing out their backyards to campers—all for nga Merikana, nga Hapanihi, nga Tiamana, nga Wiwi. He aha te mea nui? He moni.’

  ‘Well, we might as well be in too, I mean …’

  ‘And what about our fish?’

  ‘And what about tourists all over the place, lighting fires and being a bloody nuisance, tramping
all over the urupa.’

  ‘There’s enough robbing of paua and crays as it is without more and more people finding out it’s a real good spot.’

  ‘Well now, while we’re on the topic of fish, and rip-offs, have a look at what our own Runanga’s doing to us. Never mind what a few strangers might do. It’s selling its cray quota to our own fishermen for seventeen dollars per kilo and our poor fisherman only getting twenty bucks. That’s it, making three dollars a kilo—don’t even cover expenses. Yeh, making money for themselves to fly here and there in aeroplanes, sleep in flash hotels, set their kids up as consultants and managers.’

  All recorded in the rafters.

  ‘Well you know, you let strangers on your land you never get them off. They stick there. They start off as campers and end up sticking there. I remember when I was a kid running round in the toitoi and strangers started coming with tents. Later, our parents and grandparents let them build baches. No rent, no nothing. These people had flash boats with motors and didn’t even give us a fish. That’s how some of them got in further up the inlet where there’s good launching for boats. Now this here’s the same thing.’

  It wasn’t easy to get back to the topic once people began on land issues, and it may seem there wasn’t much support for Wai. But there was plenty of support really. What has been recorded is selective and, what’s more, without lunch.

  Anyway they weren’t celebrating the new year, or century, or millennium Wai reminded them, only taking advantage of it. Year two thousand or year sixty thousand was irrelevant, and she didn’t care if it was a Christian festival, pompom girls or mice poop. ‘Come home Christmas, you won’t be on holiday, won’t be celebrating, you’ll be here to work if we agree on this here today,’ she said.

  This is not Wai losing her cool here, she’s just dishing out a few reminders and nobody objects to that.

  ‘True. And anyway who cares how we get it, as long as we get it. It’ll only be once so why not go for it?’