Where Cuckoos Call

by Des Hunt

  It was during one of these pauses that I heard him groan. At least he was still alive. I pulled with renewed vigour and soon had him on the grass above the sand. Then it became much more difficult. I was beginning to despair that I might never get him to the tree when he said something. I looked and saw that his eyes were open.

  ‘Dad, can you hear me?’ There was a faint nod. ‘Can you get up so I can get you to Treetops?’

  This time I did hear him. ‘I’ll try,’ he croaked.

  Between us, we got him onto his feet. With me taking most of the weight, I soon had him at the base of the tree. That’s when I saw Peg. She was curled into a tight ball in the lee of the trunk.

  ‘Oh, Peg,’ I cried, ‘I’m so sorry! I forgot all about you.’ She answered by lifting her head and wagging her tail a couple of times. ‘I’ll take you home soon,’ I said, and she gave me one of her little smiles.

  Somehow Dad got up into Treetops: a combination of me shoving and him holding on. Once, he fell a couple of rungs before I got hold of him again. It was with relief that I gave a final heave and he plunged through the door onto the floor.

  I pulled myself through into the darkness. Scrambling around, I found the torch that I always keep in a drawer. Its light showed Dad lying on his back, shivering violently. I had to get him warm. I ripped down my two old curtains but they felt pathetically thin. The only other thing was the carpet. His body was already on it, so I just picked up the edge and rolled the carpet around him with the top of his head poking out one end.

  I checked his face to see that he could breathe easily. He must have sensed my presence, for he opened his eyes and whispered something.

  ‘What was that, Dad?’ I said, putting my ear to his mouth.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Ben. I’m scared. I don’t want to be alone.’

  I touched his face. ‘I won’t, Dad. I’ll always be here. I promise.’ I sat on the floor beside him, thinking. There was nothing more I could do about shifting him. He would have to stay here. And getting help was out of the question. Nobody could come out in this weather. I would have to look after him as best I could. His fate was in my hands.

  Then I remembered Mum. She would be out of her mind with worry. She would think that we’d drowned and all sorts of things. Somehow I had to get a message to her. It didn’t take long to come to a decision, though it was not one that I liked. I ripped a page out of my record book and wrote a note:

  Mum,

  Dad and I are in Treetops. Dad collapsed but he’s comfortable now. I’m making sure he keeps warm.

  Don’t come out into the storm, as it’s too dangerous.

  We’ll sort out what has to be done in the morning.

  See you then,

  Ben

  I rolled it into a tube, climbed down the ladder and tied it to Peg’s collar. I gave her a long, hard cuddle.

  ‘There you go, girl. It’ll be better for you back there than here. Now go, girl. Take this to Mum. Go home, Peg.’

  She stood looking at me for a moment. Then she gave a little woof of understanding, turned and disappeared into the black storm.

  Chapter 20

  There’s an old war movie that I once watched called The Longest Day. For me, that night was the longest night. At times I thought it would never end.

  However, it was not all bad. When I returned to Treetops and climbed into the lookout, I found I had company. Bigmouth was sitting on one of her perches. She must have flown in at the start of the storm. I was pleased to see her. When I thought of all the things she’d survived, I gained hope. Together we could get through this, and Dad would be OK.

  For the first hour or two, the yellow light from the tractor showed me what was happening below. The rain was still heavy and driven by a powerful wind. Although the waves were now hitting into the rock barrier, there was little water getting through. If the storm didn’t get much worse, the wall might hold.

  But the storm did get worse. I could no longer see, because the tractor lights had failed. I could hear what was happening and feel it, though. The tree was swaying violently, and at times it seemed that Treetops would shake itself to bits.

  I checked Dad regularly. His breathing was bad. Sometimes it seemed like minutes would pass between breaths. Several times I thought he had died. Around midnight I lay down beside him, wrapped in the curtains.

  Then I started telling him stories. Some of them were repeats of stories he had read to me when I was young. Others I made up as I lay in the darkness. There were also true stories: bits and pieces from my life that I had kept from him, or been too embarrassed to share. And I told him that I loved him. I felt that we were closer then than we’d ever been before.

  Eventually the rain stopped, the wind eased and the tree no longer rocked. Dad’s breathing settled, and I realised that we would get through. When dawn came, I left his side and climbed once again into the lookout. At first there was nothing but dark outlines. I sat with the curtains wrapped around me, fearing what I would soon be able to see.

  As it became lighter, I saw that the wall had held, and I became more hopeful. Soon I could see the spit. There were a few small lakes of seawater, but nothing like in other storms. Maybe it had worked. Finally, I could make out the details of the phalarope nest, and my hopes died. The male had gone, leaving behind a messed-up nest with the eggs half-buried in the sand.

  I heard Dad’s voice from below. I rushed down and found his eyes open. ‘Did the wall work?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. It worked well.’

  ‘Did it save the nest?’

  ‘No,’ I replied softly, ‘the eggs have been abandoned.’

  He pulled an arm out of the carpet and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly. ‘I’m sorry, Ben. I thought together we could do it.’

  ‘I thought so too, Dad.’

  He was silent then. When I knelt to tuck his arm back, I saw that he was crying in his sleep.

  Bill Wiltshire’s helicopter arrived just as the sun was rising. I ran down to the beach, waving my arms furiously. A while later the helicopter landed a short distance from the tree. With the rotor still spinning, the pilot and a guy in uniform jumped out and ran towards me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked the uniformed guy.

  ‘I’m fine. But Dad’s not. He’s up there,’ I pointed to Treetops. He rushed off.

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked the pilot.

  ‘Your mum rang Bill the moment the phones came back on. There was something about a dog giving her a message.’

  I smiled. ‘That was Peg. I tied a note to her collar. It sounds like she got through.’

  ‘Yes. Bill tried to get an emergency chopper. But they’re all out. The top half of the North Island is devastated. So he got hold of a paramedic and here we are.’ He reached out and turned me around. ‘You sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Yeah. Just a bit tired.’

  Then the paramedic yelled down from the tree. ‘Give us a hand to get him down, will you?’

  It was a slow business, yet it was a lot easier than it had been getting him up there. Between us we finally had Dad strapped into the back seat of the helicopter.

  ‘Hop in!’ yelled the pilot above the noise of the motor. ‘We’ll go up to the house and see your mother.’

  ‘No thanks, I’ll walk up.’

  ‘You can’t. The beach is isolated. You have to come this way.’

  As we lifted, I soon saw what he meant. Three more kauri logs had blocked the stream and the kahikatea had fallen on top of them. The resulting dam had then burst, carving a path behind the beach and into the estuary. The channel was so deep and wide it looked like it could be permanent.

  Mum was waiting in front of the house. I put my face to the window and waved. She yelled something that I couldn’t hear. Shortly afterwards we had landed and she was reunited with Dad. ‘Oh, Graham, you’re all right. I kept on thinking…Oh, I’m so pleased…Oh…’ I’m not sure how much of this Dad heard. He was slumped to one side, in a
coma.

  When she had calmed down, I asked her about Peg. ‘She was wonderful. She kept scratching at the door until I opened it. At first I couldn’t see the note. But she kept pushing her head against my leg and then I saw it. After I read it I went to bring her inside, but she had gone. Did she get back to you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Then where did she go?’

  That was what I wanted to find out. I was beginning to fear for her.

  Mum didn’t want to be separated from Dad, but we couldn’t all fit in the helicopter. I quickly volunteered to stay. At first this idea was rejected, until the pilot said, ‘After what he’s been through last night, I think he can look after himself.’

  The paramedic still wasn’t sure. However, after a full examination, he declared me fit enough to be by myself. ‘Just get yourself some food and then go to bed. We’ll come back when we get your father sorted.’

  ‘It could be a couple of hours,’ said the pilot. ‘You make sure you go to bed.’

  I nodded, but I had no intention of going to bed. Not yet: I had to find Peg. Before they had even left, I was inside putting on dry clothes. Even though it was a sunny day, I was feeling shivery. I think it was the thought of what could have happened to Peg.

  She wasn’t at the kennel, or in any of her favourite places around the house. I never really expected her to be. Mum was right: she would have tried to get back to me.

  I moved down the ridge, calling all the time. When I got to the new stream cutting, I could go no further. There was still so much water that it would be dangerous to cross. Yet I didn’t think she was on the other side. If she’d got over there, she would have got to the tree. No, she was either on this side, or…I didn’t want to think about that. I knew she would have tried to get back to me. She could swim, so she would have thought it OK to cross. Yet at that time the water would have been a raging torrent—she must have been washed away.

  I headed back to the house to get some sleep. I did what the paramedic had ordered and had something to eat before going to bed. But sleep wouldn’t come. I couldn’t stop thinking about Peg. Had I looked in the right places? Could she be so badly injured that she couldn’t answer my call? After a while, I knew I could not rest until I’d made certain.

  This time I was going to look everywhere. To make it quicker, I decided to take our ute. I’d never driven it before, but surely it couldn’t be much different from driving the tractor? Plus I’d take Jake, as he was more likely to find Peg than I was.

  Driving the ute was a lot harder than driving the tractor. After numerous stalls and many kangaroo hops, I eventually got it moving and set off to recheck the area by the channel.

  ‘Where’s Peg?’ I called to Jake. ‘Find Peg.’

  He stopped screaming around and began sniffing. A couple of times he got Peg’s scent, but it led to the channel and stopped. Next we moved on to the mud flats. This was much harder going, as they were strewn with rubbish, some of it quite big. Jake turned up a dead wild pig and two dead possums, but no sign of Peg.

  We went all around the mud to the northern side. While there was even more stuff there, none of it was hiding Peg. I stopped the ute near the mouth of the estuary and sat thinking for a while. There was only one conclusion I could come to—Peg had been washed out to sea. If that was the case, there was nothing more I could do here. I turned the ute towards home, and as I did a flash of colour caught my eye. It was Tiny-M feeding on the sandbank! I was thrilled to see her alive. Maybe if T-Boy had also survived, then…Suddenly my thoughts took a U-turn when I realised I hadn’t searched the sandbank. There was plenty of rubbish there that could shelter Peg.

  I parked the ute and, with Jake swimming alongside, waded the hundred metres or so out to the bank. As soon as his feet touched the ground, the dog took off. This was no random searching. This time he definitely knew where he was heading. When he got to a large log, he stopped and started barking. I picked my way through the rubbish with my heart pounding in anticipation. He’d found her—but would she be alive? Oh, she had to be, she just had to be.

  Jake was staring at a mound covered in debris. Frantically, I pulled back the rubbish. My heart was thumping so hard I could hear it beat. Yet I soon knew it wasn’t Peg. It was too big and there were clothes. This was a human. I quickly peeled back the rubbish until the whole body was exposed. I didn’t recognise the face, but I did know those clothes—it was Yamaha.

  I could only guess how he’d got there. Like Peg, he must have tried to cross the stream, somewhere up in the bush, maybe. Who knows what had happened to his bike? One thing I did know, he wasn’t going to worry me again. I’d never seen a dead person before, but to me, he looked dead.

  Then, just to prove me wrong, he let out a low moan. It was so faint that at first I thought I’d imagined it. When it happened a second time, I bent down and put my hand to his mouth. ‘Yes!’ I hissed. ‘You’re alive.’ I could feel the warmth of air being exhaled. He was alive, but only just.

  The first thing I did was to check for injuries. The only visible sign was something wrong with his hip. His leg stuck out at a strange angle. I decided that shifting him without help would be foolish. He was probably as safe there as anywhere. It was best for me to go back to the house and wait for the helicopter.

  I took off my jacket and placed it over him. Then I carefully replaced the rubbish. It wasn’t much of a bed, but I couldn’t do any better with what I had. On the way back, I thought of the other bikers. Where were they? Were they also injured, or had Yamaha gone out by himself? One thing was clear, they wouldn’t bother me again, not now after I’d saved their mate.

  I don’t know how long I slept. I sat on the sofa waiting for the helicopter to come, and the next thing I knew I was being shaken by the paramedic. A few minutes later we were in the helicopter on the short trip to the estuary. The pilot did a pass over the sandbank, looking for a suitable place to land. As we banked over Lizard Island, he pointed to the pile of rubbish on the estuary side. There was something yellow in amongst all the black.

  ‘His helmet,’ I yelled.

  ‘Yeah!’ nodded the pilot. ‘He was lucky he didn’t end up there as well, or you would never have found him.’

  ‘I’m surprised he didn’t. Just about everything gets washed up there.’

  The rescue was a slow business, with the paramedic insisting that he immobilise the biker’s leg before moving him. When it was done, Yamaha was squeezed into the back seat of the helicopter and bound into place. Before leaving, the paramedic gave me another physical check, and once again declared me fit enough to look after myself. He wasn’t happy about this, but with Yamaha taking up all the back seat there was not enough room for all of us, so I was left standing on the sandbank as the helicopter lifted and disappeared over the mountains.

  Mum rang as I was microwaving some spaghetti for dinner. She sounded as tired as I felt. She said that Dad was comfortable and in a drug-induced coma. The doctors thought he’d had bleeding in the brain—they would know more after some scans. She told me to make sure I locked all the doors and windows before I went to bed, as she didn’t want any more disasters.

  That evening the news was all about the storm. The devastation was worst on the Coromandel. Two people had died when their cars had been washed away by the floods. The whole of the coastline from Thames up was awash with rubbish that had sluiced down from the ranges.

  Mansfield Bay was mentioned in the second segment. There were no pictures, just a report that a man and a youth had been taken to Auckland hospital by a private helicopter belonging to property magnate Bill Wiltshire. Both patients were in a stable condition.

  That night I slept on the sofa with the TV on to keep me company. I didn’t want to be left alone with my thoughts. I lay awake thinking of the futility of it all. I had set out to protect T-Boy and the eggs, and had failed. More than that, my actions had almost killed two people. I worried about Dad. The only image I could see was of him attacking t
he bikers with the tractor. That man had been insane. Was that what he would be like from now on? Had my actions finally tipped him over the edge?

  And then there was Peg. How I wished she was still with me. I wouldn’t have needed the TV on for company. She would have climbed up onto the sofa and stretched out beside me. I would have put my arm over her and enjoyed the wonderful warmth of her body.

  But now, that could never be. I had lost everything—the eggs, the bay, and the most wonderful friend I’d ever had. I was crying by the time I fell into a troubled sleep.

  Chapter 21

  What a difference a night’s rest can make.

  I went to sleep feeling nothing but despair, and woke with my head filled with possibilities. Sometime during the night I had replayed the events of the previous day, and there I had found hope. First, Tiny-M was still alive, and I could see no reason why T-Boy wasn’t also. Then there was Peg. I hadn’t searched everywhere at all. I’d remembered what I had said to the pilot as we flew over Lizard Island: ‘…everything gets washed up there.’ That’s where I would find her.

  With the dinghy loaded into the back of the ute, I headed for the spit. I left Jake at home. He would have been useful in the search, but impossible in the boat.

  The flow of water from the channel was no more than what the stream normally carried, and was easily crossed by the ute. While there was still no sign of T-Boy, there were plenty of other birds on the spit and lots were sitting on nests. It was great to see that our wall had at least saved some of the birds.

  I stood for a while looking at the sea. I almost abandoned the trip then, as the swell was bigger than anything I’d rowed in before. Yet it was possible, and I did want to find Peg. I wanted to find her and tell her how sorry I was.

  The first part of getting to Lizard Island was in the calm of the estuary. Then I headed into the incoming tide and ran into the heavy swell. Water spilled over the bow each time the little boat dug into a wave. When I turned for the final approach, the swell now hit the dinghy side on. It was hard to row, keep the boat balanced, and see where I was going all at the same time. Perhaps if I’d taken it a bit slower, I might have been all right. I don’t know. There is always that one wave that is much bigger than all the others.