Heartland

by Jenny Pattrick

  Lovey jumps down from the table, carries her bowl to the sink, rinses it under the tap and leaves it to drain. The sink is full of other unwashed plates. Lovey reaches high to wash her hands, dries them on a tea towel. ‘Thanks for the food,’ she says, picking up the billy of soup.

  At the door, she turns. ‘You’ll see,’ she says darkly.

  ‘Got a time for the explosion?’ says Vera. She’s still angry.

  ‘In the morning. Before we wake up.’

  Lovey smiles for the first time, then runs out the door before Vera can hit her.

  All day Vera can feel the mountain looming. As she rakes out muddy straw from the coop, as she forks the steaming muck on to the compost heap, she pauses often to squint up at the crusty white ridge against a clear sky. She scatters fresh dry straw and smiles to see the chooks scratch and rustle in it. Again she scans the mountain. No sign of steam. No lazy puff rising from the crater to signal that things are on the move up there. And yet there’s something in the air — a stillness, a waiting — that raises her hopes. Lovey could be right; maybe it will blow. She imagines a great shooting explosion like last year. In her mind the ski field and hundreds of skiers are swept away forever in a thundering lahar. The damage is monumental: ski-tows destroyed, the road obliterated; to reconstruct the field would be madness.

  When she looks up, the mountain is serene.

  ‘Stupid old cow,’ she tells herself. ‘You’re as barmy as they think you are. That mountain did its dash last year. No hope of an encore, and you’d better accept it.’

  Later, while she’s having her afternoon tea, reading the racing tips in the Wanganui Chronicle, she hears Lovey, at it again in the field opposite. Her high chant rises and falls. Above them all, the mountain stands majestic and serene.

  ‘Get stuck in now, Lovey,’ whispers Vera. ‘Stoke up those fires.’

  Surprisingly, Bull doesn’t discount Lovey’s claims.

  ‘She could be right, Vera, not that I believe in mumbo-jumbo of course. But maybe she senses something. Up through her feet. A vibration.’

  ‘That’s what I reckon,’ says Vera, daring to hope. ‘I wouldn’t put it past the old devil. Do you feel something yourself, Bull?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say a definite no. Haven’t got the Maori sense though.’

  ‘No. Lovey has, of course.’

  ‘She has. In spades.’

  Sunday morning is silent. Vera wakes to no sounds at all. She hardly dares breathe. No birds, no donkeys. She lies still as a stone on the couch. No cars. No cars!

  Well past daylight, she lies under the blankets, listening. She remembers last year when the mountain blew and Manawa woke to a dead silence like this. ‘You little beauty!’ she whispers. She grins wide under the blankets. No thought is spared for a ski industry in ruins. She promises not to curse while disconnecting the water tank or washing down the vegetables. ‘Oh you little beauty!’

  But when she dares to open her eyes, she knows her mistake. The room is too light. Reflected sunlight shimmers and dances on the ceiling.

  Vera drags back the curtain. The world is carpeted not in black but in sparking white. Ruapehu has blessed the skiers, the townies, the outsiders who are simply waiting in this pristine world until the snow-ploughs open up the roads. It has bloody snowed!

  It’s history now, of course, that a week later the mountain erupts, not in a fiery display like the previous year but just as devastating for the ski industry. Vera wakes to a colourless landscape. All night Ruapehu has sent a column of dense material high into the air. The volcanic ash has fallen — a fine, filthy curtain that drifts down, turning the whole world drab. Trees, cars, roofs, all a uniform gun-metal grey. Sheep, wearing dark blankets, nose suspiciously at shadowy grass. All sign of snow on the mountain has disappeared, painted out by a malign hand. It’s as though life has switched over to black and white.

  ‘Good girl, Lovey,’ whispers Vera, but she’s awed nonetheless, and a little frightened. That Ruapehu — you can never trust him an inch. He won’t really care about the season, or Lovey, or the film crew, or the secret burial of Nightshade’s body, or the problems of any bloody one of the people living on his skirts. She watches the column of dark ash roiling up into the still air, imagines the intense heat that is sending it so high. What new capricious act might their mountain be planning next?

  The ash shower over Manawa is short lived. A stealthy overnight visitation. By morning, the wind has veered to the south and the rolling plume from the crater heads north, disrupting flying schedules but leaving populations largely untouched. In Manawa, everyone is out cleaning up.

  Bull props a ladder against his water tank, climbs up and wraps the intake sieve in a stout plastic bag. He jams it back in place. Step one accomplished. Now, if it rains, water from the ashy roof won’t contaminate his water supply. Step two — clearing the roof — will have to wait until after a good downpour. Meantime, he buckets water out to his vegetable patch and washes the cabbages and sprouts. His car, protected by a lean-to, seems pretty clear, but he washes it down nonetheless. That fine ash can wreak havoc if it gets into the engine.

  By lunch time the heavens have opened. It’s as if the rain clouds are competing with the ash cloud for the biggest dump. Bull runs inside, cursing. He’s wasted all that tank water and now he can’t replenish it until he’s done the gutters. He spends the afternoon on a new lace pattern, but all the while he’s watching the weather, itching to get up on the roof. Finally, when a watery sun struggles through late in the afternoon, he pulls on his boots, picks up trowel and bucket, and heads outside.

  The rain has done its work. The black volcanic stuff has washed off the roof down into the guttering, where it lies in a thick, sandy layer. Bull grunts — worse by far than last year. He starts on the gutters he can do from the ladder. It’s slow work. By the time he has trowelled six inches into the bottom of the bucket, it’s as heavy as lead. For all Bull knows, it is lead. Two or three times as heavy as sand, that’s for sure. Up and down the ladder he goes, emptying the solid stuff into a pile. Later he’ll dig it into the soil where it will do some good. For now it’s all a bloody chore.

  He decides to clear a section of guttering above the lean-to. This means climbing onto the roof itself, something which holds no fear for Bull. But, in his haste to get the job done, he’s ignored the fact that the roof is still damp. A single footfall on that steep slope is one too many. Down he goes, his boots gaining no purchase on the treacherous iron, grabbing, too late, for the guttering, over and down on to the concrete below.

  Bull hears the crack before he feels it. Then the pain hits like a train crash. He lies still, trying not to scream, but can feel the cry building. He risks opening his eyes and sees one leg jutting away from his body at a weird angle. Something’s wrong with his shoulder, too. He groans as the pain hits again — wave after wave.

  ‘Guardian Angel, please let Vera come early tonight,’ he prays. He tries summoning the guardian’s creamy-gold aura, but knows, with a sinking despair, that it’s been nonsense all along. A silly game. He wills Donny to call in with a bit of news. Donny and Vera are the only two who will come inside his property. There is no inhabited house close enough to hear his calls.

  He lies there. The cold of the concrete is seeping into his bones. He moans again as a fresh stab of pain rocks him. Is he bleeding from his head?

  ‘Mr Howie?’

  Bull opens his eyes. He has difficulty focusing, but it appears that the blessed Virgin Tracey has heard his prayers. Her peeky little face peers down and, on either side of her, two cherubs regard him with solemn eyes.

  ‘Hang on,’ she says, ‘I’ll ring 111.’

  She runs to the house, leaving the cherubs in charge. It seems no time at all before she’s back with a blanket, a pillow and a blissful hot-water bottle.

  ‘You look too awful to shift. Can I get something else?’

  ‘Aspirin.’

  ‘Ambulance is coming from Ohakune. They’ll hav
e something stronger.’ She stands there, solid and reassuring. ‘Do you mind if I take the children inside? It’s too cold out here for them.’

  Bull closes his eyes, but the tears of shame leak out. This angel of mercy has to ask permission to enter his forbidden house. How has it come to this?

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he croaks, ‘please take them in.’

  ‘I’ll turn on the lights, so the ambulance knows.’ And the Virgin’s gone again, with the cherubs, leaving him fearfully alone.

  ‘Please come back,’ he prays.

  A dark red swirling behind his eyes takes him up and away.

  When he comes to, he sees pastel-green walls and white sheets, a plastic bag on a hoist which is attached to him. And dear scruffy Vera sitting beside him, reading the newspaper.

  ‘There you are,’ she says. ‘About bloody time. I’ve read the news twice over.’

  ‘Vera,’ he croaks.

  ‘Well, at least you haven’t lost your marbles. It’s me all right. Whatever possessed you, you silly chook?’

  Silly chook is a term of endearment in Vera’s vocabulary. Bull attempts a smile which migrates into a pained wince. ‘My head hurts.’

  ‘So it bloody should. There’s fifteen stitches in the back of it. Just as well you’ve got the rugby physique.’

  Bull keeps his head still but lets his eyes rove. Out the window there’s an unfamiliar landscape. ‘Not Raetihi?’

  Vera sighs. ‘No, Bull, we’re in Whanganui Hospital. Raetihi couldn’t cope with you. Your leg is broken in two places, your shoulder was dislocated and then there was the split in your head. If your skull had cracked, which it didn’t, you’d be in Wellington, and then where would I be?’

  Bull gives up trying to follow Vera’s logic. A nurse comes to administer medicine. Bull has to grit his teeth not to flinch at her touch. He closes his eyes.

  ‘It’s all right,’ says the nurse in a soothing voice, ‘I’m just giving you morphine for the pain. You’ve been properly in the wars.’

  Bull can’t respond.

  ‘He’s not used to strangers,’ says Vera.

  ‘Well, he’d better buck up, because there’ll be plenty of strangers like me around him for the next few weeks.’

  The nurse moves on to the next patient. There are three others in the room.

  Bull feels the pain recede, but the unfamiliar surroundings panic him. He grips Vera’s hand.

  ‘I need to get home.’

  Vera locks his hand in both of hers. ‘I know you do, Bull, but it’s not going to happen.’

  She stays there, holding tight, while he drifts off to sleep. When he wakes up — how much later? — she’s still there, flicking through a gardening magazine.

  ‘Right,’ she says in her most workman-like voice, ‘I’ll be off now. The meat supply van for the New World will take me up the Paraparas. Donny arranged it. Donny said he’d send you a hug from him, but he knows you wouldn’t like it.’

  Bull smiles and this time it doesn’t hurt so much. ‘He’s a good lad.’

  ‘He is, for all that he’s a few pence short in the pound.’

  ‘Tell him to thank the Virgin from me. Tell him I’m switching religions. From now on, it’s definitely the Virgin Tracey who gets my prayers.’

  Vera grins. ‘So you haven’t lost your sense of humour. Good to see, Bull.’

  He reaches for her hand again. ‘I won’t be any good when you go, Vera.’

  She stands, puts down the magazine and picks up her grubby old shopping bag. ‘Think of it this way, Bull. It’s a chance to break this thing you have. One way or another, there’s no choice.’

  Bull swallows.

  Vera squeezes his hand, then leans down to plant a bristly kiss on his cheek. ‘And no flirting with all these pretty nurses. I’m your girl, you remember that.’

  Bull sees her tears, which gets him going.

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ says Vera gruffly, ‘here we are blubbing like a couple of kids. And what were you doing, I’d like to know, getting up on a wet roof? The rest of us were waiting like sensible people, but you had to rush ahead like some townie. I’ll never forgive you, you silly chook. Back tomorrow.’

  And off she goes, padding through the pristine ward like a ferocious old bear, the nurses giving her a wide berth.

  Throughout the long painful night, Bull finds the comings and goings of the nurses, the mumblings of the other patients in his cubicle, the volunteer with the early-morning cup of tea less frightening than he had feared. Everyone approaches him quietly; every intervention brings relief of pain or reassurance that he’s making good progress. He remembers the desperation of lying alone on the concrete, knowing that no one would be likely to call in; Tracey’s hesitation about taking the children inside. And now there will be the problem of his brother. He tries to remember how all this withdrawal, this building of ramparts around his life, came to be. How he let it happen. It was easier to let it happen, that’s the truth of it, easier than explaining.

  Vera’s righter than she knows, he thinks. I’ve been a silly chook.

  Bull says, ‘There’s something on my mind, Vera. I probably should have told you years ago.’

  Vera brushes crumbs from the coverlet and settles back in the hospital chair. ‘Well, spit it out then, the meat van won’t be here for three hours. You’ve got a captive audience.’

  Vera had arrived before Bull was awake, having hitched a ride down on the carrot truck. She brought with her a freshly baked carrot cake and a picture of his house, painted on card by Tracey, with the inscription From your Virgin with love from us all. Get better quick!

  ‘I don’t deserve them,’ he’d said, and Vera had agreed.

  ‘Well then,’ she says now as he relapses into silence, ‘what’s on that mind of yours?’

  Bull takes a breath, shifts a little to change the dragging weight of the huge cast on his leg, clears his throat. ‘It’s something I’m not proud of, Vera.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, man, the meat truck will be here before you’ve started at this rate.’

  Bull fixes his eyes on a distant tree. ‘You remember my brother?’

  ‘Spud?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘I never really knew him. He was a few years younger, wasn’t he?’

  Bull nods. ‘Ten years.’

  ‘And not good at the rugby like you, as I recall. I remember hearing about the crash that killed him, though.’

  Bull shifts irritably. ‘You want to tell this story then?’

  Vera gives him the eye.

  Bull sighs. ‘The thing is, he’s not dead. He didn’t die in that crash up north. He wanted to but he didn’t. The police said there were no signs of skid marks. He drove hard at a tree, hoping to kill himself.’

  ‘Dear God. But you said—’

  ‘I never really said he was dead, but I let people think it. It was because of me that he wanted to die.’

  A nurse comes to take his pulse and give him his medication. They wait in silence until she’s gone, rattling her trolley to the next bed. But the silence seems to have taken root.

  ‘So he’s not dead,’ prompts Vera. ‘Then where is he?’

  ‘I’ll come to that.’ Bull groans, whether from physical or remembered pain, he doesn’t know. ‘Spud was a late starter as far as girls went, but he finally found a girl he was keen on. Very keen. Name of Rita. An Ohakune beauty, admired by many. Part-Maori was Rita, a lot younger than our Spud who was in his thirties. They both worked in the chemist’s.’ Bull looks over at Vera. ‘You’d remember that Mum and Dad had retired to Tauranga and I stayed on in the family home and took over the drapery.’

  Vera nods. ‘You were — what — when they moved north? Forty-five?’

  ‘About that. Spud rented in town. He brought Rita home a couple of times. Very proud of her. Our Spud was a quiet boy, very serious about life. He knew Rita was the girl for him and planned his life around that. He announced that he was saving for his own place.
Spud wanted to farm, and he wanted to marry Rita.’

  Vera fidgets with her specs. ‘Where’s all this leading, Bull?’

  ‘I’m giving you the background. It’s important. I suppose I wasn’t that caught up with Spud and his ambitions, being older. I was into rugby, coaching the local team, and we were top of our division. We were getting quite a bit of attention.’

  Vera grins. ‘You were famous, Bull, no need to be coy about it.’

  ‘I was, yes, for a year or two. Mum and Dad, being rugby people, were pretty proud of what I was up to. I suppose we all ignored Spud a bit. But he never seemed grumpy or jealous of his older brother. I think he was proud of me too. Had all my rugby posters on his wall and the clippings from the paper. He was a sweet boy.

  ‘So he brought Rita home a couple of times. She was quite different from him, lively, a bit flashy, wore lipstick and eye make-up. He took her up to Tauranga but I don’t think Mum and Dad were that keen on her. Spud wouldn’t have noticed, though — his eyes were only on Rita. She was a drinker, that shocked me a bit at the time, her being seventeen, eighteen when he first started going with her. Much younger than him.’

  Bull reaches for his water glass and drinks. Vera watches him. Now we’re getting to the nub.

  ‘Then she began to call in without Spud. Always with some excuse — a pair of dark glasses she’d left behind, a magazine to return, that sort of thing. Every time it coincided with when I was at home, though to start with I didn’t twig. She’d hang about, laugh a lot and try to chat me up, ask about rugby, go on about my fit body. It embarrassed me, to tell the truth.’

  ‘Did you fancy her then?’

  Bull screws up his eyes as if they hurt. ‘That’s the awful part, Vera, I didn’t. Not at all. I was much older. And anyway … But one night she arrived unannounced. She said she was looking for Spud, but we both knew he was working late. I’d had a couple of drinks with my dinner and was into a third when she marched in all bright and bushy tailed, pretty drunk herself, I realised later. Stupidly, I offered her a drink and she poured herself a big whisky and topped me up.’