“But I am aiming at a tree!” I said.
“What if you miss it?” he said. “No. Never fire a gun anywhere if you can’t see where you’re firing.”
I was going to say that I wouldn’t miss, but then thought it was best not to argue.
“Aim up at the sky,” he said.
“At what?” I asked.
“At a star,” he said.
I looked up. The rain had stopped and the night was clear. It was really beautiful. We were up on the hill and so I could see lots of stars. I lifted up the rifle and took careful aim, the way he showed me, at one of the stars to the east where it was darkest.
“Don’t pull the trigger … squeeze it,” J.T. said.
I tried to keep the gun on the target, but it kept wavering around. So I took a deep breath, held it, and when the sights settled back on one of the stars I slowly squeezed my finger and thumb together the way he said.
There was a huge bang and the gun kicked back against my shoulder and it hurt like anything and Jack started barking but I didn’t really notice any of that. Up in the sky, just where I had fired, a star was falling. It flashed across the sky and disappeared behind one of the hills to the north.
“I got one!” I cried, and we both giggled for a long time like Moma does when she’s been smoking her cigarettes.
I really like J.T. I wonder if this is what having a dad is like.
“I wish I had a dad.” I said what I was thinking without thinking what I was saying. Moma says I do that a lot.
“What happened to him?” J.T. asked.
I had to be careful here, because I didn’t want to say anything that could give away who I was or why I was here.
“He doesn’t live with us anymore,” I said.
“And you don’t see him at all?” J.T. asked.
“We’re afraid of him,” I said, and wondered if that was too much information.
“He hurt you?” J.T. said.
He had already seen the scar on my arm, and I couldn’t lie, so I nodded. “He broke my arm when I was nine months old.”
“You remember that?” he asked softly.
“No sir,” I said. “My mother told me the story.”
“You want to talk about it?” he asked.
“No sir,” I said. I’d already probably told him too much. “I’d better get going. Moon’s up.”
“Don’t forget your pig,” he said.
The pig still sat on the other side of the clearing, watching us with accusing eyes.
“Too big for me to carry,” I said. “Anyway, you killed it.”
“But you were going to,” he said. “If I hadn’t blundered into your hunt.”
I shrugged.
“Can you carry half a pig?” he asked.
I’ll spare you the next bit, it’s not for the squeamish, but I was just about to hoist the front half of the pig up on my shoulders when J.T. said. “So you’re not allowed to lie. What about stealing?”
“No sir,” I said. “You should never take anything that doesn’t belong to you.”
He just looked at me.
“You said I could have half!” I protested.
“Not talking about the pig,” he said.
That was when I realised I was still wearing his jersey. I went to take it off, but he held up a hand. “Keep it,” he said. “I’ll be around here for a few weeks. Drop it back to me some time.”
“Can’t,” I said. If I went home wearing it there would be hell to pay.
“Why?” he asked.
“Can’t tell you,” I said, stripping it off and tossing it to him over the remains of the fire.
Moma knew exactly where I’d been, even before I turned up with Crackerjack yapping around my heels, half a pig carcass slung across my shoulders, and my clothes in a plastic bag.
“He’s a big’un,” was her first comment. I knew she was angry.
She was right to be. I was just about killed. Then all of this would have been for nothing.
“Where’s the rest of him?” she asked.
“Too big to carry,” I said. That was not a lie.
She helped me clean up the carcass and store it in the meat locker. Tomorrow we’ll make up some brine and start salting the pork. Then we’ll store it in the cave.
After we cleaned up I waited for my punishment, but all Moma did was to get out her guitar and we sang some Beatles songs.
She even did her wacky rain dance around the clay oven. I joined in, because as long as she was going crazy like that, she wouldn’t go crazy about what I did.
It didn’t seem like a punishment.
But I wonder if somehow I was getting punished in a way that I don’t understand.
Book I am reading:
‘The Old Man and the Sea’.
Thought for the day:
Reading back, there are too many exclamation marks.
I must stop writing so many exclamation marks!!
Things I am not afraid of:
The pig.
December 5th
I’ve been thinking a lot about J.T.
I suppose that’s only natural. All my life there has been only one person that I could talk to or do things with. I know that most children have at least two people, their mother and father. Most kids also have brothers or sisters, and they have friends.
I don’t have a father or a brother or a sister, and my only friend is Crackerjack. So it was a pretty major event in my life the day I actually spoke to another person. The first person ever, apart from Moma, to see me and talk to me.
Actually that is not quite true. There is an old Maori lady. She and her husband run the general store down in the town. She has been to see me once or twice, maybe more. She is a healer, and when I was really, really sick, Moma would go and get her and she would make me well.
She was there the night we got Chunder – and I think she may have suggested the name.
I have never seen the old lady. Well, that is not quite true either. I have vague pictures in my mind of a brown face, old and lined, and thin, silvery hair pulled back in a bun. The face emerges from the shadows in my dreams and whispers soothing things and there is something cold on my forehead. I drink something, and the face fades back into the shadows.
It is like a dream, but it is not a dream. It is the old lady visiting me on my sickbed.
Anyway, I have been thinking about going up to the shingle slide where J.T.’s camp is. Just to hang out with him for a bit. But I have to be careful.
I often go off for long periods of time, Moma is used to that. And if she asked me where I’ve been, I’d just tell her. But if she asked me if I saw anyone, I’d have to tell her about J.T. and she’d ban me from going to see him again.
I really think J.T. is okay. I don’t think he would tell on us. But Moma is right. If he said anything to anyone, that could bring our world crashing down.
I need to think about this some more.
In eleven days, on the 16th of December, there is going to be a partial eclipse of the sun. I am really excited about this. That is when the moon, which revolves around the earth, gets in between the earth and the sun and makes a shadow. I can’t wait! It will look as though someone took a bite out of the sun.
My astronomy book says the moon is 384,400 km away. I know how much one kilometre is, but I can’t really imagine 384,400 of them.
Moma also says that men once flew up to the moon and landed on it, then came back down to earth. It doesn’t say anything about that in my astronomy book, so I think Moma is confused about that.
She wouldn’t lie, but maybe somebody lied to her and she believed it. She said when I leave the forest, I can look it up on the ‘Internet’. Whatever that is.
I am writing a story. It’s all about Moma and me when we first came to live
in the bush. I am trying to write it like Ernest Hemingway, but it is really hard. I am thinking about calling it ‘Moma and the Skiff’ or maybe ‘The Young Woman and the River.’
I heard shots today. Pretty sure it was the same rifle that J.T. was using.
Maybe I should take him some tomatoes or something. You can’t just eat meat, you need vegies too. And we have lots of tomatoes.
As I am writing this, Crackerjack is cuddling his bunny.
Bunny is a soft toy rabbit that I loved when I was a baby. I lost interest in it after a couple of years but when Jack was a puppy he pulled it out of a corner and used to sleep with it all the time. Funny thing, anything else he would tear to shreds (my good blanket, my winter jersey, my copy of ‘Treasure Island’ by Robert Louis Stevenson – but never the bunny). He chews on it all the time, but somehow does it gently, so he doesn’t hurt it. Try and take it away from him and he’ll grab it and shake it out of your hand. Bunny is his second favourite thing in the world (after licking his balls).
He’s funny, Crackerjack. Toughest dog in the world, I reckon. Thinks nothing of grabbing a 200 kg Captain Cooker by the ear, but goes to sleep cuddling a toy bunny.
He must know I’m writing about him because he’s jumping up on my lap and giving me the sad eyes, which means he wants me to scratch his tummy.
Good boy, Jack.
Thought for the day:
I don’t really understand what the Internet is. Moma has tried to explain it to me. She says it is lots of computers, which are thinking machines, like brains, but electrical, all connected together all around the world. None of that makes any sense to me.
I don’t think Moma understands what the Internet is either.
December 6th
Went up to the shingle slide today. The camp was empty, but Jack picked up J.T.’s scent and followed it up to Pentonville Road, a disused kauri trail.
I waited in the open at the entrance to the trail. I didn’t want to blunder into the middle of his hunt and disturb his quarry. And I didn’t want to get shot either, although I didn’t think that would happen. I think he’s too careful for that.
We sat on a rock on a small hilltop and waited.
He showed up about an hour later and didn’t seem surprised to see me. He was carrying a string of deer tails.
“Gidday Egan,” he said.
“Howdy,” I said. “Good hunt?”
He nodded. “Yeah mate. Place is damn near overrun. Can hardly turn around without falling over a red-tail.”
“Do you collect the tails?” I asked.
“Gotta show the tally to my boss,” he said.
“What happens to the carcasses?” I asked. “Do you helicopter them out?”
“Yeah nah,” he said. “Too costly. I just have to leave them. I make sure they’re well away from any water supplies though.”
I didn’t say anything but it made me realise how much venison was being wasted. Too much for Moma and me to eat. But rule number 24 is ‘Don’t be wasteful’.
Moma says that in the outside world there are many people going hungry because there is not enough food. So I really don’t understand J.T.’s job.
We hung out for a bit. I gave him some tomatoes. I think he likes tomatoes.
Later we played the dilemma game. It is one of the games I often play with Moma, especially in summer when the evenings go on all night. One person gives the other person a hypothetical dilemma and the other person has to answer it honestly.
A dilemma is a situation where you have two choices and often both are bad, but you must choose one of them.
Like, would you prefer to lose an arm or a leg? (A leg.)
Would you prefer to be blind or deaf? (Deaf.)
If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life would you prefer tomatoes or potatoes? (Potatoes!)
Things like that.
Moma and I have asked just about every question a person could think of, so the game has got a little boring with her. But it was fun playing it with a new person.
We were sitting on the side of the stream, skimming stones, just killing time.
I asked J.T. the blind/deaf question and he said deaf. Like me, he couldn’t stand to lose his eyesight.
Then he asked me if I had to give up my sense of smell or my sense of taste, which one I would give up. I think he expected me to say taste, because without it you would never enjoy food again. But I said, honestly, smell. In the bush, you depend on your sense of smell almost as much as your eyes and ears. Without that, I’d feel blind.
And I asked him if he had to give up cheese or potatoes which would it be.
He said cheese. Potatoes are nutrition but cheese is flavour. Then he asked me which my favourite kind of cheese was, and I said goat’s cheese. I think he was surprised at that, but it’s the only kind of cheese I’ve ever eaten!
It was his turn at Dilemma, so he asked me if I had to give up TV or the Internet, which one would I give up.
That gave me a different kind of dilemma because I have never seen one of them, and don’t understand what the other one is. So I said the Internet. You don’t miss what you don’t understand.
Then I asked him if he had to lose his arms or his legs, which one would he prefer, and suddenly he didn’t want to play the game anymore. I don’t know why.
Tonight I finished the story I have been writing. I think it’s quite good.
Moma says that people don’t believe in God any more. She says that’s okay. She doesn’t believe in God either. She says a real God would not allow all the bad things to happen that happen in the world.
I’d like to believe in God, but I’m not really sure what God is. Moma says God is everywhere all at once and can see everything and hear everything.
I think it may be something like the Internet.
Moma says when people believed in God, they followed a religion, and that religion gave them a set of rules by which to live their lives.
Because most people don’t follow religions any more, they don’t have any set of rules to guide them. So they just do anything they want, and treat other people however they want, and this makes everybody unhappy.
So a few years ago Moma and I sat down and worked out a list of rules that I should live my life by when I eventually get out of the forest. It’s like a guide to help me make decisions and do the right thing when I’m not sure. She calls it The Code. We started off with 12 rules, but she keeps thinking of new ones. We’re up to 30.
Often at dinnertime we talk about The Code. We discuss one of the rules, what it means and how to use it in everyday life in the outside world.
Book I am reading:
‘The Old Man and the Sea’.
Thought for the day:
If someone was deaf since they were born, what language would they use to talk to themselves inside their head?
Another thought for the day:
I think everybody should have a code to live by.
Moma’s Code #24
Don’t be wasteful.
Not with food, not with money, not with your affections.
Not with anything. There will always be times when you wish you had been more frugal.
Things I am afraid of:
The outside world.
The Young Woman and the Skiff
BY EGAN TUCKER
(A true story about my mother)
She was a young woman who had been born in a forest, and it was to the forest that she returned when it all turned bad.
Her mother had been moss collecting with her father when little Moana decided she wanted to see the world, five weeks earlier than the doctor had predicted. Perhaps that was why she loved the native forests so much, although it might just as well have been that she had two older brothers and spent her childhood hunting and fishing with them
on the rugged west coast of the South Island of New Zealand.
Even during her short but fruitful marriage, she liked nothing better than to spend a day hiking through the Waitakere ranges, or a week in a tent exploring the wild areas of the Coromandel peninsula while her husband was overseas playing rugby. That was where she found the old stone cottage. An old gumdigger’s hut she called it, although it was just as likely to be a kauri logger’s hut, or even that of a gold miner.
The walls were stone – river stones, fitted together as neatly as a jigsaw puzzle and cemented so well that they had survived for over a hundred years, although the bush had crawled up and over them, claiming the cottage for itself with fingers of green and brown.
The roof was long gone. Rotted, along with the door and the floor, if there had ever been one. The cottage was tiny. Barely large enough for one person, let alone two.
No one knew the cottage was there. The camouflage of the enveloping bush meant that a hiker could walk right past it and never see it. But somehow Moana found it on one of her hiking trips, and she knew how to find it again when she needed it.
That day came when her baby was not yet twelve months old.
Moana went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that when she and the baby disappeared, they disappeared properly. Without a trail or even a trace. Erased from the face of the earth.
The night before the baby’s father was due to take court-ordered custody, Moana gathered up as many of her possessions as she could carry in a backpack, picked up supplies, wrapped the baby in a blanket, placed him on the back seat of her car and drove.
Moana was a woman of thirty-three years, but had the skin of someone much older. Her face was permanently creased with worry lines, deep and hard, like the corrugated, moss-covered hills where she was born. Right now her face was also bruised and her lip was cut in two places. She had a black eye.
The car ended up under water, in a place where nobody would think to look. The rest of the trip was by boat, purchased a week earlier under a false name.
Shooting Stars Page 3