by Alan Duff
The tension as if the pair’d done the opposite of this incredible achievement, of eight fucken losers arseholes, an’ that was jus’ those who happened to be present when these two hero hunters arrived — Yeah, we know it, too — fighting to come to grips with their only dream right in front of ’em (Money! Jus’ gimme the money, honey, and shut the fuck up). Eighty fucken thousand in cash, and taken of everyone’s voice it seemed.
Finally the prez turned and nodded to the sarge’t-arms and he came forward, all long arms from the leanest, meanest body clad in filthy gang regalia, even his fucken fingers had muscle, tattooed arms hanging out bare from the waistjacket, that funny thing had a gold chain of a fob watch, not that the pair knew what that was, nor cared, and the light in here with blue cellophane as crude tone shades around the bulbs so it was though death was always present, an’ it looked Death himself was coming toward them in the form of the sergeant-at-arms. They were just prospects about to lose that lower status, they were about to be crowned princes, they were the young hunters returned unexpected with the big kill slung bloodied over their shoulders. This big handsome bastard was about to knight them. (Or was he?)
No music going, no nothin’. Just those stacks of money on the dirt and beer and blood and cigarette ash and dropped food and tomato sauce (’nless it was more blood) stained floor. And then the voice saying, Welcome, bruth-ahs. Welcome to our Family. And it sounded as though from above them, from heaven, that it was an invite to heaven for the two strapping young warrior prospects no longer. Which brought both chests up, specially the more powerful one, his head to his six four, though Mookie weren’t exactly liddle, jus’ a cupla inches in it. First Sarge shook Mookie’s hand in the handshake, then he hesitated, as if fighting some private principle, some past matter unresolved, before he stepped up, gave the special handshake, then hesitated again before giving what he gave Mookie, an embrace. And powerfully strong it was, too (he mussa been doing some helluva working out while he was inside) he was the sergeant-at-arms, a ledge in his own right let alone what respect, awe even fear, the position commanded.
He said, Wha’s your name, new brutha? to Mookie. Mookie Hawea, uh — Mookie lost his voice at not knowing how to address the sarge. Call me Sarge, bruth-ah. Sarge, it’s Mookie Hawea an’ I’m — an’ I’m — Ya don’t have to be Mutha’s Day ’bout it, Mook. We all know you’re glad to be in. He turned to his bruthas, the prez firs, Aren’t we, bruthas? And every eye but one set went down to the money. Yeah. Yeah, guess they were. Sure they were, both newbloods saw the final decision register in weight shifts and grave-faced nods.
And wha’s your name, new brutha? The eyes gone even colder they had murder in them. Abe. Name’s Abe, Sarge. But Sarge stepped forward, Abe Heke could smell his beer-drinking breath, see his half-carse Maori green eyes, the red in them, see the little tremblings of muscle quiver all ovah his rather handsome face. Abe who? came forward anutha half shuffle. Abe who, man?
Abe Blackie, Sarge. Name’s Abe Blackie. So even he, Apeman Black, of himself the changed name, gave smile. Hard though it was. Then put an open-fingered hand up, a black leather glove without the fingers, entwined it with Abe’s, ’cept Abe wasn’t yet with the cut-off gloves, but he was gonna be. And the bruthas nodded with much grave-faced propriety of most serious ceremony now concluded and the prez himself spoke the words: Black Hawks firs’! Let me hear it … Cocking an ear, a stubbled face to his men, Wanna hear it. Black Hawks firs’! Abe who used to be a Heke spoke those words as though a commandment — they were a commandment. The First, too.
SHE WENT UP to him in the street, the main street of town as it happens. Just one word to him, her son: Why?
And he gave one word, just one word in reply: Nig. Before he moved on with that walk they get, of attitude. Of so much missing from their life.
ELEVEN
A MAN’D FALL down, tripped by a tree root, a rock, a growth obstruction of some fucken sort, cut himself, put bruises on bruises, scratched on face, neck, hands, exposed arms from rolled-up sleeves but fucked if he was gonna roll ’em down, that’s how he’d started off this hunting trip — expedition that cackling Kohi’d called it — with his sleeves rolled up, borrowed pack on his back to which he’d transferred his bringings, his borrowed hunting boots from Gary a size too big but better’n a size too small, or so he’d thought when they started out but now the ends of his toes were rubbed raw and felt wet with blood. This was exactly like that dream he had a while back, of falling over on a harsh landscape ’cept this real one had bush and sharp branches and big ole slippery, fallen logs to clamber (and slip) over, to a ground always waiting with sumpthin’ hard to hurt a man. And the humming from that dream was what came every so often from Kohi, up front in the lead there and not panting, not even breathing hard, and when it wasn’t his humming it was Gary breaking out in a whistle, and boy could he whistle, reminded a man of Dooley (who used to be my closest mate) as if inspired by the birds going in the scrubby trees, the real ones to come when they got glimpse through clearing or another (dozens more to come?) rise reached, a breather, roll a smoke, the only pleasure he could take of saying that first stop nah, he didn’t smoke, with his own smug glance at Gary. ’Cept when the brothers lit up and the smoke drifted right to him, Jake Heke felt like starting up again so good did it smell, so apt to this setting of just three men, the birds, insects, and a nice day looking down on them, what it did to a man’s sense of smell, his every sense. But then that would be showing these fullas weakness and that’s what they were looking for, why they’d brungim, why they’d reminded everytime they saw him at the bar he’d now made his regular, they were going to take him out hunting.
Cupla nights ago, paynight Thursday, they said their rugby team had a bye so Sat’day was it, Jake The … Gary’d held the word back for a sarcastic eternity … Muss. Pick him up his place this morning at 5 o’clock — on a Sat’day? Shit, a man was only a hour or so asleep on a Friday night meaning Sat’day morning, his head swimming with beer and thoughts and often troubled wonderings and bothering dreams. About lots of things really, even at that hour. Though this morning he was up before his alarm. Packed some food for tonight, cupla blankets since he didn’t own a sleeping bag and they were going to be overnighting in a hut, and he sat at his early morning kitchen table drinking tea and thinking about holding a rifle they were gonna lend him. Thinking: Bang! Bang! Gotcha! And not all the targets were pig or deer, neither.
About a two-hour drive in the dark to a forest block utha side of Taupo, Jake not telling the brothers it was further ’n he’d travelled in his forty-two years, to however many miles it was past Taupo, when that trip years ago to go and see Boogie in the Riverton Boys’ Home (in that nice rental car) woulda been further but a man’d made a fucken mistake of going in for one beer with his mates and that was it, he never came out and nor, he did see the message therein, did Grace ever come out again, like as a living person — fuck thinking about that. (How many years I been living my own death over that, over her, over everything?)
This was the longest journey in his life and he was quite excited, the thrill wouldn’t leave his stomach, and the rifle beside him was dying to be picked up and cradled (and fucken fired!) but he’d have to wait or they’d know. They parked the jeep up at the hut they’d return to, hid the packs in the scrub — Even out here, Jake, there’s thieves. A reality that kind of troubled Jake. (Out here?)
Half an hour walking in the dark under torchlight over scrubby, tussocky country to start with and, once the sun came up and showed what a beautiful part of the country this was, once that’d subsided, Jake thinking he could do this at double the speed these bigmouths were, but he’d bedda not push it or they might get pissed off, tellim, Well you lead the way then, Jake The … Muss. Oh, he didn’t like the way Gary held back on the word, it used to be a word people spoke with — with reverence. Respect. (But then what if I don’t measure up today, what about respect then?) He was thinking about that.
Then
it started getting steeper, and the manuka got taller, and he found if he so much as lost a few seconds of concentration imagining what a hero he was gonna showem he was when he shot a fucken deer from quarter mile away (or run it down from behind, hehehehe), he’d look up and could only (shit!) hear ’em. How quickly a stranger here could get lost. So he kept close and kept his thoughts on their one blood-red and one bush-green Swanndri (broad) backs, the rifles slapping against the same broad expanses. The dogs somewhere up front, maybe way in front, chasing pig scent.
Four fucken hours and they were still walking and still climbing and not a cheep from the fucken dogs sposed to be pig dogs, smell one from ten miles away, and a man hungry as well. When he never ate lunch. Hadn’t even brung any as he was gonna show off he didn’t need lunch and that was why he was slimmer than them, he just had a leg of lamb half-eaten, some buttered bread and three boiled eggs. Oh, and a bottle of rum, a big 1.5-litre job for tonight, show these fullas how to drink the hard stuff, two big 2-litre plastic bottles of Coke to go with it. All he needed was some ice and it’d be like finishing off a (successful) day at the pub! Hungry, but laughing to himself at that thought.
They kept crossing this same creek, slippery with smooth stones or underwater green stuff, so by the third crossing a man was soaked and, if the truth be known, fucken miserable. Yet everytime they got to a rise and it afforded a view out over a landscape of forest he’d never seen the like of, or not that he remembered, Jake more or less forgot his discomfort, found a little more reason to go on. Not that he had a choice even if he packed a sad and turned for home, a man’d be lost in about three minutes flat — and then what? Help! Help! that whatta man’d be saying? Fuck that.
He started noticing the smells, the scents; the manuka was the constant one, but they kept walking into others, from sweet flower aroma to strong scent of rotting vegetation but kind of nice to the nose. Same as he’d spot little bits of fern a brilliant pale green, or a sudden portrait of plant so perfect in formation even he noticed and appreciated it. Wasn’t for going up and down and having to keep crossing a fucken stream, or a creek, they called it differently without any reason he could see, this was starting to feel, you know, not the end of the world.
He must’ve lost his concentration, cos next minute he near ran into the back of them. And Gary turned and snarled at a man to watch himself, back to his brother, the two of ’em standing there with cocked ears for nothing Jake Heke could hear. But then he did: a distant barking, like echoing in a canyon somewhere; the brothers looking at each other. Le’s go. Kohi with a covered-up urgency Jake still got. And they broke into a steady trot despite the thickness of bush.
Every so often they stopped as one, did the brothers, and Jake the follower’s stop having to be more abrupt, and listened for a bit to that barking getting nearer and changed direction slightly as they ran on. Well it was crashing, not running, and Jake just couldn’t find the pace to set himself to. A foot would hit something sticking up, send him off balance and it was all he could do to stay standing and moving at the same time, what witha fucken pack on his back even if it was only small; and the rifle keeping on slipping round the front of him. All of which was throwing off his breathing, he even thought he might be panicking, though only at not being able to keep up if he hit the deck since they wouldn’t be stopping for him.
But he got that closing barking fever, too, so he forgot about his lost dignity (my stupid fucken pride all the time worrying about it steada jus’ goin’ with this flow, we’re out hunting pigs not standing in a public bar worrying how good we look here, Jakey) and ran with them.
Funny thing, he started to find his balance a little better, of feeling the ground the instant the (bleeding in the boots) toes struck and knowing what shape was down there, the adjustment to make. (The way the flow went.) The dog sound they ran towards was like some deeper instinctive calling, it came to him the more he found his rhythm, the flow, of partnership from caveman days between dog and man; and then the flow itself, now he had it, as though another instinctive thing but this one a place, yeah, a place. As if now he was run into a tunnel that the dogs were summoning them (me) to. And all was with excited hunter’s instincts, so it was wholly instincts with a man and men.
Three dogs barking, going off their dog faces, not that they could see them yet, as they got nearer. And damn if it wasn’t rock walls the noise was bouncing off in this kind of valley, or a canyon divide, Jake didn’t know what they’d call it, only that he was right: the barks did have echo in them. A canyon of sheer rock and in parts thickly lush, moss-like growth on the forest floor a most beautiful green, the more with the sun on it; the trees not so high so it could be secondary growth from a fire, or maybe now its time in about noon sunlight was the only hour it got sun due to the height of the rock flanking walls. Whatever, it was beautiful even with the dogs going and now the grunting, snorting of their prey which set alight something more in an anyway surging man, Jake (The Muss) Heke.
Now they slowed to a cautious and charged walk, rifles off; never had Jake felt so glad at the feel of weapon, such power, in his hands. Till Gary turned and glanced at Jake’s rifle and stepped back and did something to it and said, safety catch, Jake. No good having a cock if ya don’t know how to use it. (Fuckim.) Then they saw the thing. Meaning the pig, before Jake at least saw the dogs even though they were making all the noise. He never realised a pig was so fucken big, so powerfully squat and hairy. He raised his rifle. Got a helluva fright when the barrel got slapped down — No! Ya miss and hit one of Ko’i’s dogs, he’ll hit you! (Oh yeah? Would he jus’?) Jake had to shake his head to rid himself of old habits of reaction. Had to look at the closeness of dogs and that damn scary this-way’n-that pig with its huge head and tell himself Gary was just showing his greater experience.
Next a knife was in his hand, thrust at him by Kohi. You’re the sticker, Jake. A blade that he tested too hard with a thumb and made it run with blood. And he was confused. And thinking this was one of the same of six confidence-sapped years, of every good moment melting on a man, of his strong moments being just that, when in days before they’d lasted a man his whole (magnificent) fighting life. When he looked up Gary was looking at him. Felt like using the knife on him. Come on! Kohi snapped him out of it. (But now what?) As he moved forward in a state of such uncertainty it was all he could do not to stop and beg for some advice.
His advance was too slow and he knew it and so did they, the brothers, themselves moving up quicker on the animal which itself suddenly saw them, or it saw Jake Heke. (Jesus chrise!) And inside he felt closer to the most humiliating collapse of his whole meaning of existence in front of these fullas. He made a burst of footsteps forward, as much in desperation than anything. The pig swung its huge, long-snouted head his way! (Oh!) He wanted to tell these fullas he’d take ’em both on in a scrap if they were doubting him, if they wanted (real) proof of his manhood. But Gary only stabbed a finger at the pig, gave Jake the wildest eyes, Well? You gonna do it or’re you — But Jake wasn’t letting him finish. This was it. All or fucken nothing. He couldn’t just let his manhood disintegrate here even if it was in the middle of nowhere — there were two witnesses who’d have it all over town by tomorrow; he just couldn’t. (I had my taste of that six long fucken years.)
And then he remembered. Jake Heke’s childhood, or the start of his teenage year came back; he had a reference point, something to go by. Now Gary was yelling at him, Stick the fucken thing, man! Stick it! He looked at Gary: alright then, mister. It’s a sticking job. And he came forward at a crouch for the moment by moment changing scene in front, to the side, other side, back to the middle of them as the pig took its three animal pursuers, and this man, this way and that in a frenzy of flashing tusks and terrible noise.
One dog kept losing its hold on the pig’s tail. Another kept darting in under to bite at its balls — if it had balls, none that Jake could see. The biggest one hung onto an ear and the pig was trying desperately to thr
ow it, flicking its hairy, thick-neck head, tusks catching in the sun like flashing ivory knives. Then it suddenly dropped its head, did a full about-turn and charged into one of the dogs. Yelping echoed in this canyon. Sunlight bathed it and participants in this ancient practice (ceremony, initiation rite) man had made of hunting. The bailer dog that had been gored still managed to scramble out of the charging pig’s way trying to finish it off. Helped by the holder dog on its ear pulling hard backwards bringing the pig up short, and when the other rushed in and took a mouthful of back leg and twisted furiously, the pig sank onto its hind quarters, squealing — more like screaming — to the heavens and sound-bouncing rock walls.
No one told Jake to act, he just did; charging in like making a rugby tackle — no, a rugby league tackle, they hit harder — when he’d only played the game till he was, what, fifteen — and he drove his shoulder into that hairy body, knocked it off balance onto its side, feet pawing at air, scratching the side of his face; and he saw it as clearly as a fight (in a fight I can see everything), so he snatched a handful of ear in a grip that registered like a vice, and he plunged the knife hand exactly where he was sposed to, at its throat, and he saw his two companions right there, one grabbing a back leg and yanking it outward so it was belly up, and the other, Gary, standing with rifle ready in case (you’re hoping) Jake was going to fuck up.
He had his weight (and strength) straddling it, the knife thrusting down, his fighting weight driving his stabbing arm — uhh!-uhh!-uhhh! — stabbing it downward, downward, find the fucken heart, his fist around the knife handle sinking into the creature’s body, dogs going mad, the holder still on its ear, Jake probed and probed and the animal struggled and gave off great struggling strength, so he thrust even harder downwards, reached into the core of this creature’s being (die! die ya fucker!), and felt the thing come alive in sudden but, he knew, last flexing of its power, the failing of even its great(er) strength, to men and as many dogs, if they no longer counted the dog ripped by the ivory knife the animal was born with, lying whining on its side. He held the knife down there till the very last, blood vomited up over his sticking hand, last violent convulsions went its hairy length and muscular breadth, he punched his sticking arm even further as red liquid gushed up around it. Held it there till there was no more and his ears could register the birds in (oblivious) titter.