by Alan Duff
Then he stood up, wiped the blood on his track pants, as Kohi called his dogs off but had to haul the holder from its ear-grip, Jake looking first for his rifle for no other reason to get fully on top of this setting, this stage he’d launched himself onto; a life lay there on its side staining the lush green ground a red made brilliant by the overhead sun; birds, insects were going, and a man was feeling inside like he’d never in his life. Not even in defeating several men in a brawl on his own.
He looked at Gary. Gary winked. Jake nodded. Gary looked down at the defeated beast as he shouldered his rifle but not without first flicking the safety catch on, told Jake, Good one, Jake. But then that pause, like he did with the word Muss … Your kill, your carry, eh Jakey? But with a li’l more respect in his eyes as Jake Heke could see it. And he’d called him Jakey. He liked being called that.
CARRY IT HE did. But first he used his head, ran a one-cut slit down the carcass middle, thinking of the pig as an honourably vanquished foe, and pulled out its guts, knifing away organs and bits that stuck to the inner gourd of once-living body. Then Kohi told him, Cut the balls out, too, Jake. Sours the meat. Jake with a li’l smile before he put his knife to work on that, too. Never thought he’d be cutting a creature’s balls out.
Then he hefted the carcass onto his shoulders — shit, it was heavy — and Gary came over and tied the legs together with twine to free Jake’s arms, giving him a pat on the face while he was at it. Made him sigh inside, it was like having his hair ruffled in affection and/or respect, made him feel so good about himself. Then they walked, heading for the hut. Could be walking back to Two Lakes for all Jake Heke cared. Funny thing, not calling himself that nickname as he always did in his mind whenever in physical triumph or in just trying to lift himself. Who needed it with a pig carcass on his back out in the wilderness where the only other humans were his partners and now respectful of him?
Later, outside in the lovely, round a fire, billy on the boil, hungry stomachs full from reheated fried lamb chops and Jake’s half leg of lamb sliced and between chunks of buttered bread, the stars up there as clear as ever a man’d seen ’em, the pig plus the deer, a small hind Gary’d shot just on dusk, both hung between cut manuka sticks, silhouette testimonies in the firelight throw, the embers on the ground, warmth outside but even more inside — Oh, and sheetless woollen blanket bunk bed in the hut behind them Jake was looking forward to, the rum and the Coke he’d produced from his borrowed pack, telling the brothers, Thought you might be thirsty, with that smile of his he hoped they got in the firelight, and they were surprised; and it’d loosened them, if loosening is what was needed, and Kohi was telling a story, of being out illegal spotlighting for deer — They stop dead in the spotlight, Jake, so you just shoot ’em. We picked places where we could see down for the ranger’s headlights and when we did we’d just slip down a bank, lights out, and watch ’em go past. But one night they got us; set up a road block and they did our trick, sitting there parked, no lights, in the dark. We came round a bend and whoa! they had one of their jeeps parked across the road. But this Maori boy’s got eyes in the dark, haven’t I, Ga’? And Gary went, Yeah yeah, get on with the story, Ko’i.
I spotted a gap between their jeep and the road and a steep bank. But down I went, nearly lost it but we got back up on the other fucken side! Jake joining his laughter with theirs, and not wanting to be anywhere else in this world but here, under the stars at one with nature and tale-telling man and men.
But fuck me, if one of the rangers hasn’t jumped on the back, on the bullbar, and thumping on our roof: I order you stop! You’re under arrest! And I look at Gary here an’ he groans, he knows what I’m like, I’m asking myself, who’s the stupid cunt here if I’m driving and he’s riding on the back? I lean out and askim, Hey bud? — a term Jake was laughing at when normally he hated it. Ya wanna go for a ride or are you getting off? You’re under arrest! he yells again. I yell back, I can’t see no handcuffs — ranger! Then I hit the fucken pedal. And we never stopped till we got to the top of that mountain there — Jake could see a prominent high outline, a thin glowy line in the sky — Kohi pointing, his face more smiling shadows under his eyes, his smiling teeth.
Cunt was frozen stiff! But, oh well, had to lettim inside the ride down. Though if we’d known his mates’d called the cops out to wait for us we’d a left the bastard up there.
Jake laughing, telling Kohi he shoulda charged the ranger a taxi fare. An’ oh how (lovely) good those stars looked is another thing he’d liked to’ve said and nearly did in his sense of, well, complete contentment.
’Nother funny thing: a man was so worn out from all that walking and lugging the pig he was the first to bed. Left the brothers to the rest of the rum. In under his woollen blankets caressing his naked skin, who needs a sleeping bag, talkin’ to his blankets how he did: There, there, I know it’s cold and lonely out here in the bush, li’l sheeps. But Jakey’s here. Jake Heke’s here. Asleep before he knew it.
TWELVE
SHE MARRIED HER worst and a few best qualities to Mulla Rota’s, whatever his qualities were and publicly and lawfully had been deemed as weren’t, her envy of money, her meanness and selfishness (and partly justified from her own miserable upbringing) with money, serving her own needs first, which Mulla wouldn’t’ve seen, not when she was serving his sexual and very quickly love needs, from his kindness to her children which she was told about but only after she said she’d wring their bloody necks if they didn’t tell her where they were getting this food from — after all, the food cubbid hadn’t been its usual empty three or four days before the fortnightly domestic purposes benefit was paid out into her Post Office bank account for some several weeks — and when they told it wassa Brown Fist, she at first became alarmed. But then thought whoever it was he couldn’t be that bad, not if he was giving them twenty bucks every week, a cupla times forty when he thought he mightn’t have it the next week, not if he’d given it only on the condition they buy food for the house, which twenty didn’t buy a lot of but it was several loaves of sliced bread, it was Weet-bix and it was a cupla cartons of milk, and it was the difference between life turning sour and mean and miserable every two weeks at the same time, give or take a day, and meant she could buy her smokes as her first priority, have some toast or Weet-bix, oh it made a difference alright. Thing is, she couldn’t unnerstan’ why she couldn’t make savings every fortnight of that amount to bridge those last, run-out days, it was only a lousy twenny after all. (But I can’t.)
So she’d dressed herself to the nines — or the threes as she gloomily said to herself in looking at the selection of clothes she didn’t have, so oozing sex’d have to bring it up to the nines — and took herself down the street, not far behind her children, and sure enough, the side door opens and out pops this (hideously) face-tattooed gangster, with tight curly hair, crushed features like he’d been beaten from birth, and greets her two kids like a visiting father when the real ones — different ones — had never come and seen their kids not once, and Narissa indicated with her eyes that she, Gloria her mother, had brung herself along (well, of course I would, I’d be mad not to. I wasn’t to know he was gonna be this ugly) and she went, Thanks for what you been doing. Ignoring the lean-back look her smartarse daughter gave her of never having heard her mother talk in this tone. (I’ve never had a chance to.)
Stepping up to her one big moment in quite some time, maybe some many many years, of money opportunity it was and money is all’t counted around here never mine what they say in denial, that it ain’t a Maori thing, it bloodywell is a Maori thing, it’s the biggest factor in their indulging, arguing-over-the-stuff lives is money, or it is the ones she knows; it’s the juice life runs on and if you ain’t got it you don’t run, simple, whatever race you are. And Gloria Jones was sick of running out of juice every few days to go before the gov’mint paid her the solo mum’s benefit.
She offered him sex wither eyes, her crooked smile (which accidentally slotted into h
is repertoire of the same, of differently crooked smiles to mean a host of things) and she told him thank you again, from here, touching her breasts ever so meaningfully and he lifted his shades and gave her one of his crooked smiles so she knew it was on. Her body for his dough. Where else could she get a chance like this? In Pine Block it was the solo mums who gave their toyboys, their few-times-a-week lovers, money out of their benefit, not the utha way round, the boys’ drinking and smoke money. All the gals sat around over cups of tea or afternoon beers if someone’d won big at the Housie somewhere, laughing at having to pay for their bitta cock. Laughing some more that really, it was the gov’mint paying for their sexual (what about emotional) needs. After all, they were permanently kind of employed by the gov’mint but to do nothing but look after their growing families of babies had out of wedlock that’d never happen, they knew that, too, why that got laughs as well.
And when the kids were gone on to school — but not before that damn Narissa gave me a knowing eye when I woulda thought even a forward girl like her wouldn’t know about sex yet — and Mulla was lost at what to say, Gloria Jones wasn’t so lost for words: Whyn’t you come over home, see what your money’s been buying our house? Even she swallowed the nervous lump in her throat and not for sex either, it was fear of blowing this one big chance, tha’s what folded like a page turning in a tight space downer throat.
And Mulla nodded, he thought that wasn’t a bad idea, but she’d have to go first, he’d come a bit later, with an awkward grin and explanation ’bout it being to do with his bruthas what they would think — But, like, jus’ to start with. So he was not so blind he himself hadn’t seen this for what it was, an invitation to not just her home and likely bed but quite possibly her life.
It was only ten minutes or so wait, time enough to check her pussy that it smelt nice for him, she had to get it right firs’ time, gave down there a jazz-up wash, wishing she had bedda-smelling soap. Brushed her teeth again. Reassure herself she still had it, what men want, even if with some of the sags an’ slumps’t come with being over thirty. And he did knock. And she said, Come i-in, in the nicest voice she’d heard herself in awhile.
And she showed him the cubbid his money had put the kaygee pack’t a Weet-bix in, the loaves of bread in the otherwise empty freezer, a big jar of peanut budda las’ week, the budda on a saucer (dammit, I shoulda put it on a nicer-looking plate) no need to show him the milk in the noisy ole fridge, she anyway couldn’t remember cleaning it for, oh, ages. But she did show him the bedroom, her bedroom, and what she had to offer that money couldn’t buy, not someone as ugly and kinda lonely and strange from the off, like him. He didn’t las’ long (how many men do?) — but he wasn’t rough, say that, as she might’ve expected — so not a long time to put up with, just that strange event’t took place in a man, this man no different to any utha man, like a balloon suddenly released of air from the tight, expanding, this c’n go anywhere tension and want, to his or any utha man’s urgent furious humping, faster an’ faster (Hey! take it easy, fulla, women need ta breathe, too) and whoosh, all the air, the meaning, the urgency, the gotta have it or I’ll die, gone. Gone. In its place something quiet, a calmed beast laying beside a woman. But still, not such a bad exchange if it would take her to his money supply.
Which she turned the conversation to even though he wasn’t actually talking about anything, he was jus’ lying there after the deed and playing with one of her tits, not hard, very gentle ’n fact, making her hornier forim than the firs’ time which she’d only done to gettim. So she thought if she gave it toim again and with the feeling he’d aroused iner she could talk money all she liked after it. But firs’ she got to the heart of the only thing’t matters round here in this routinely, just-surviving Pine Block house.
Found out they, the Browns, made a lotta money from selling drugs, dope, and they shared it depending on how long a man’d been in the gang, and as he was the second-longest serving he got the second-bes’ cut. He tole her, sometimes if they shifted kaygees in a week they split 6, 7 grand up between ’em, and his share was 5, 6 hundred, and they had weeks in the season when they moved maybe 5 kaygees, so a man had so much he didn’t know what to do withit — Gloria listening having to stop herself from crying out, in joy and despair that she might not be able to make herself part of this, she might not be able to end her life of struggle — ’cept he was never out of jail long enuff, and you didn’t get a share if you was in there, only plenty of hash smuggled in to you at visits from the bruthas and the handful of sistas posing as the de facto missus. Gloria Jones had to stop herself from exclaiming her very real fear that she’d miss out on this one opportunity even though she could see, it was obvious as anything, this was one lonely, kinda cutely troubled man and it should be him wanting to exclaim not her.
So she fucked him again, used her aroused tit as her own starting basis, pushing the nipple into his mouth, Oh baby! atim so he’d be flattered and anyway it did feel good. Then she got on top this time, showing him what nature had been pretty kind in gifting her with, a pretty good body considering she didn’t do no exercising (exercising sucks. Too hard) if he didn’t mine the stretchmarks (from having those fucken kids) which he didn’t seem to, he jus’ humped up from beneath and called her baby back, and she turned his tentative touching of her other hole to giving him what he wanted, it was one of her favourites, a finger up there, or it was with the main opening taken care of. Oh baby! she tole him again, this time not having to force it this was gooood. Li’l bit longer and she was gonna come — Oh-ummmmmmmm! Maybe why she thought she heard the word love escape from his tattooed throat, get loose from his tattoo-surrounded mouth but couldn’t be quite sure, cos she was coming.
What she was sure of, he’d be back for more. Specially when he dumped a fifty-dollar note on the tallboy on his way out of her bedroom (with jus’ the biggest of smiles pretending it wasn’t a smile). Specially then.
And she sat down on her bed edge with the fifty iner hand, wither clothes still off, his ejection matter running from her body, sweat from her forehead, tears from her eyes — she cried. She cried and cried — and it was with joy, mostly, and relief that only the permanently poor woman with children can know. Looking at the beautiful money portrait iner hand, not the portrait itself of some famous person (hey! but he’s a — a Maori?) she almost looked at the name on the fifty-dollar bill to who the Maori famous enough to be on a big note like this could be, but fuckit who cares about fame round here, it’s the portrait of money sweet money, whoever’s face is on it, that counts. As for the sex, the las’ thing she’d planned or expected was to come. She only went to hit herself onto a nice li’l jackpot for, you know, as long as things las’ round here. Having a orgasm was a bonus. But, while it lasted, she was gonna make the most of this. And fuck what her (solo mum) mates say of her going out witha Brown Fist. This wassa hard life, you gotta look after numba one, sis. The tears long stopped. Thinking of what she’d spend the fifty on.
THIRTEEN
SHE KEPT GIVINIM glances which even behind her shades bothered him, cos he sure as hell wasn’t givin’ ’em back. The music from the stereo was being pumped out, peeled back, near overwhelming the emotions whenever it surged to a peak in the club-house hall, which original members had built ’emselves and not a bad effort for a buncha untrained rough dudes if, sure, some of the inside painting was pretty rough, it was still sound and whoever’d dream’d the carpet had got it started with about a quarter of the floor done, who was complaining. But that sheila member’s glances were bothering Abe Blackie standing there in the Hawk clubroom bar where virtually all of their gang life took place, he and Mookie knew this already from jussa few months in the gang, and didn’t mind in the leas’.
He wasn’t wearin’ his shades, felt they kinda had to be earned if a man, a new member, wanted to wear ’em inside like the older bruthas; he’d tole Mookie earlier, Man, I wouldn’t be wearing the shades, not yet, bro. Might be a rule of, you know, seniority with sh
ades. So Mookie’d taken ’em off and slipped ’em into his jeans pocket. Yeah, man, you’re right. Thanks, Abe. Love ya, man. I mighta got in trouble.
All night he’d tried to steer the conversations — if they c’d be called that, which even he knew they couldn’t, more like bursts of yeahs and nahs and swear words between periods of silence and clicking fingers to the music, singing along with it, not yet time of being freed up enough to dance to it, talking fights, social grade rugby league games cos some a the bruthas played league (and made out they were playing this Aussie Winfield Cup stuff when all Abe saw las’ Sat’day was fat, outta condition dudes with the dreadlocks, with their tats, running puffing around a field trying to take a opposition player out with a big hit or a coathanger — ooops, man was jus’ waving out to his mutha, hahaha, on the sideline — round the fucken throat and who cared if the ref sent a man off, might even stick one on him he wasn’t too tough which this ref was, he musta been cos he sent two of the bruthas off — You! And you — you’re both off! jus’ like that when the two bruthas started punching up a fulla and the members on the sideline were off their faces yelling and that got their dogs goin’, but no one exactly ran onto the paddock and smacked the ref; Abe heard uthas on the sideline saying the ref was one of the Douglas brothers and you hit one of them you hit the whole family, meaning about nine brothers and the fifty-five cuzzies, too, which made the Douglas family, even the dumbest Black Hawks could figure that one out, bigger than their own gang. And with the law on their side, seein’ as they were straight, it meant the bruthas, if they were gonna take it further which they usually did (cos they hold grudges sumpthin’ terrible and they’re jus’ kids’t heart, made wild, turned rotten, so they’d go so far as kill a man on jus’ the way they think he’s lookin’ at them) they’d have to use guns on this referee and his reputed staunch-as family, which jus’ wasn’t worth it, not killing straight fullas who weren’t the avowed enemy, it was them the Blacks wanted to waste, maim and kill, the Brown Shits, so they had to cop their sending off with jus’ some bluff and bullshit noise and hollering, and (secretly) hope the rugby league board officials didn’t ban them for too many games) — well, everywhere Abe Blackie moved to in the community-like hall of about smalltown dimensions, so they, the players sent off, wouldn’t have to go too long suffering — HAHA! — at having no one to hit, dirty tackle, stare gangster’s stares at and, you know, show off to the boys, he jus’ couldn’t get anyone off the game, which they’d taken their bull terriers and rotties along to, to scare everyone, specially the straights who were whites, specially them cunts — Abe wanting to get onto the avowed enemy, them, the fucken Brown Fists. Brown Shits they called ’em round here, and then some. Abe wanted to get the talk to the Shits’ prez, Jimmy Bad Horse, an’ what he’d done to Abe’s (Heke) real brutha, Nig. Why Abe’d joined and changed his name to show the ultimate staunchness, on account of his late bro. Who Jimmy set up to be killed by this gang, ’cept Abe forgave them that, they couldn’t help it, jus’ doing their job their life-chosen code of duty, the opposite of the duty Bad Horse was sposed to owe Nig (ya don’t set up one of your own members). Abe wanted to find out who of his bruthas here was ready and willing to take the Shits’ prez’s scalp. Tha’s what he was trying to find out: who’d go do the bizniz with him.