Dead Lemons

by Finn Bell

  I nod, thinking I’m beginning to like this woman; she may be crazy but it works for me.

  “That’s part one. Part two is I want you, every day, to sit in front of a big mirror and look yourself in the face, nowhere else, for 10 minutes each day. No skipping, either bathroom or bedroom, but alone, where it’s quiet. No looking away, set an alarm. Got it?” she asks.

  “Yeah, okay, but why? What’s it supposed to do?” I ask, curious despite my lack of faith in all this stuff.

  “Not telling you. You do it and find out,” she says. I try not to roll my eyes too blatantly.

  “That’s it for today. I’ve got problems with my beetroot to see to. Do your homework and come back next week. I’ll let you know when.” By means of a dismissal, she gets up and heads for the door.

  I notice that she’s in socks, holes in both toes. Her muddy gumboots must be by the door.

  “Right, okay, right, see you,” I say, not sure what to make of all this yet.

  “And you should clean yourself up, have a shave, get a haircut!” she yells from the back of the house as I head for the front door.

  Yes, ma’am.

  I’m still thinking of the “homework” Betty gave me on the drive back over to the hairdresser. I decide to give it a shot, nothing to lose. Rolling back through the door at La Coiffure Salon, I see that it’s almost deserted now. The morning crowd has cleared out. Patricia comes up to me right away.

  “Hello again,” Patricia says, smiling, and I find it hard not to respond again. “Put yourself over there by the basin.”

  I reverse into one of those curved-basin things and she moves behind me, pulls me head back and starts wetting it without ceremony.

  “So you’ve moved into the old Cotter place?” Patricia says as she starts washing my hair. As she massages my scalp I realise it’s the first time in months, many months, that a woman has touched me in a comforting way. It’s not sexual, but the intimacy of it feels so good it’s almost painful.

  “Yeah, I moved down here two weeks ago,” I say.

  “You’ve got beautiful views out there from the cliffs. But don’t you get lonely out there?” she asks.

  “I like the quiet,” I say.

  “Takes all kinds,” she replies, and gives me another one of those heartache-inducing smiles.

  I know how sad it all is, how really pathetic. That I’ve fallen so far that simple kindness from a stranger can touch me so. But then, I know the real reason. It’s because Patricia doesn’t know me, doesn’t know who I am. She still looks at me and treats me like I’m a real person on the inside, as if I’m not broken, and I don’t mean my legs.

  I wish I could be the person strangers assume I am.

  Talking to Patricia is easy. Must be part of her job description, chatting away, scissors always moving.

  On virtually any topic of conversation she has a story about a cousin. Patricia has a lot of cousins. Her cousins are clearly busy people, out there doing right and wrong all over the place.

  I learn about Remi, Manu, Aroha, Pollo, Hemi, and the three Tuis.

  It gets hard to keep them all straight.

  But when she mentions that Tui number two works just across the road in the hunting and fishing shop and that she’s also related to Betty Crowe, her second aunt, I begin to figure out how Betty knows what I’ve been up to.

  Before I know it, I’m telling her how I grew up in South Africa, my years traveling around the world, and finally settling in Wellington here in New Zealand and starting a business. It’s only when Patricia asks about my family that I hesitate.

  “Anna—me and my wife—we separated last year, no kids,” I say.

  “Ah, sorry to hear that,” Patricia replies. “Thought you had some sadness to you, around the eyes.”

  I don’t respond, but it’s probably true, I think. People always forget that while you’re watching everyone else they are watching you right back, too.

  “So, are you going to try to fix it with her?” she asks. “Just so I can tell all the single ladies looking,” she continues with a smile.

  I give a snort. “I don’t know, but I should think there are better prospects than busted up old me for the ladies of Riverton.”

  “Now don’t count yourself short, or give too much credit to the competition around here. Bunch of rough buggers. And besides, everyone’s related,” Patricia says, and then laughs in an infectious way.

  I find myself laughing with her; it feels unfamiliar to my face, but good, too.

  “You should meet my cousin, you know,” Patricia says. “Tai can take you to Murderball and do up your chair. His chair is choice.”

  “What’s Murderball?” I ask.

  “You don’t know about Murderball, and you’re here in a wheelchair and everything? Oh, it’s mean as . . . I’m going to call Tai right now, he can take you along.”

  On the way out of town, the drive back to the cottage feels unusually short. It’s been an interesting day. I think about Betty’s questions and my homework and about meeting Patricia. I’ve also got an invite from her cousin Tai to go and experience Murderball, which is apparently like rugby for people in wheelchairs. But as Patricia had put it, “But mean as . . . hard out like . . . it’s too much.” Which I take to mean that it’s probably interesting.

  It’s only when I get home, singing along to the radio in that fearless, horribly off-key way that we truly untalented singers only can when we’re alone in a car, that I realise I was, for reasons unknown, actually feeling pretty good.

  As I pull up next to the cottage, that’s when I realise it.

  With everything that’s happened today, I had completely forgotten why I headed into town in the first place. Planning for the worst-case scenario.

  The in-case-of-suicide gun sits in its safe on the seat next to me, accusingly.

  Ever have those moments when you realise that you are actually irritating yourself?

  CHAPTER 5

  JANUARY 3, FIVE MONTHS AGO . . .

  It’s 3:00 a.m.

  I establish this through bleary eyes as I was actually, amazingly, asleep for a change.

  Given my past, this means being woken up especially sucks.

  Then I hear it again. It’s like a low moan, almost like a child. It’s an eerie sound.

  I hear it again, clearer this time; it’s coming from the front porch.

  I lie there, quiet, hoping it will stop, and thankfully, it’s quiet now. I just start to drift off when I hear it again. Argh.

  Getting into the wheelchair requires the kind of manoeuvring that means fully waking up, not like the old days when I could stagger to the toilet and back on autopilot without ever fully waking up.

  But I’m committed and annoyed now so I roll out into the lounge, and I hear the sound again.

  I hit the lights and open the front door to have my suspicions confirmed.

  It’s a cat, out here near the cliffs in the bush, with no other houses around for miles.

  A tiny, skinny, bedraggled-looking cat that meows in that beseeching tone and stares at me.

  It slowly slinks in, keeping low as it passes me. It goes straight to the fireplace, which still has a faint, warm glow, and hunches down.

  Looks at me and meows again.

  I don’t know if Emily Cotter, the previous owner of the cottage, had a cat. No one mentioned anything. The cat looks around the room then back at me, giving another meow for good measure. I swear there’s something almost accusatory in its tone.

  It’s a little tabby cat. It looks miserable; it’s wet and dirty, with dried blood on its nose and front paws. It’s so skinny I can make out the individual vertebrae bones along its back.

  For some reason I think about Betty Crow talking to me yesterday. About dead lemons and being no good to no one around them, and remembering how I felt that for me it was uncomfortably true for some years now.

  Fine, I think, I may suck at people, but this at least I can manage.

  So I roll in
to the kitchen, open a can of tuna and put some milk in a bowl, get it on my lap and roll back out.

  The cat’s gone.

  Wet paw prints lead out the front door again, which I had neglected to close. I feel almost disappointed, not sure what to do next.

  I’m just about to close the door when the cat—she—returns. I know now that it’s a she because she’s carrying a tiny kitten, eyes still closed, in her mouth. Runs up to the same spot on the rug by the fireplace and plonks it down. Then immediately heads out again. I inspect the little kitten on the floor; it’s a tiny wet ball of dark fur, but still moving.

  This process keeps going, to my growing surprise and uncertainty, until there are four little kittens on the rug by the fire with the cat sat behind them.

  At which point she looks at me and gives another of those blaming meows and a pointed stare.

  I remember the food on my lap so I roll forward and put the fish and milk on the floor about a meter away from her. She gets up and, without ceremony or fear, starts eating, finishing off both tin and bowl before returning to the kittens.

  Okay, so now I have five cats. Umm.

  I return to the kitchen and refill the bowl and open another tin of tuna. The cat gets up again and finishes both again. I’m impressed. On my third round she has about a quarter of both fish and milk and then walks back to the kittens, stretches out around them and promptly falls asleep with the four kittens piling in close and soon following suit.

  A tiny, wet island of warm, furry peace.

  I look down at the scene and I can’t help thinking that animals are much better at sorting out their priorities than people. Babies. Eat. Sleep. Done.

  I finally close the front door. Put some more logs on the fire, the cat not even stirring at my presence close by, and head back to bed.

  I, too, sleep like a baby.

  I wake up at around eight. It is Wednesday today, I remember.

  I am now a person who has therapy homework, five cats, and a Murderball appointment on Thursday. I can’t complain, I think. I came out here to make changes; not sure if these are what I had in mind, but they’re what I got.

  I also have, I soon find out, no hot water.

  I personally find few things more trying than not having hot water.

  Lose your sleep, your wife, your legs and you bravely soldier on, these things happen. The world is a strange and random place, nothing personal. But the hot water, that’s crossing a line.

  God clearly hates me.

  I have no hot water, it turns out, because I have no power, again.

  It started on my third night here and has continued ever since, at least once or twice a week.

  I called the power company and they sent someone out.

  A very friendly, tattoo-covered old man named Tui who’s short, skinny, and ancient-looking. His face is a close-fought battle of wrinkles and constant smiles through which he informs me that he has worked for the company “man and boy, sir.”

  Tui, it turns out, is one of the three Tuis in the army of cousins of Patricia.

  While he looks ancient, he has that busy energy and bustle about him that some tiny people have.

  This is the fourth time the power’s been out. This time Tui explains that what with the age of the grid out here and something about relays tripping under high load that they can reset things but that, basically, way out here, sometimes you have no power.

  It’s been more frequent since I moved in but it will cost the company too much to fix, not enough customers out here to justify the expense.

  If it goes off—again—I am to call him direct and he’ll come out and get it back up. I comment that this seems a bit inefficient and Tui just laughs, his wrinkles transforming the tattoos on his face into new things.

  “It’s Fiordland; what’s inefficient got to do with it?” he says and laughs. I don’t. This is about hot water. Tui catches my expression and sobers up a bit.

  “Only other thing you can do is talk to the Zoyls,” he says, and then explains, “they’re your neighbours on the far side, got the big farm with all the bush land on it. You are all on the same lines, see? You use too much power at the same time and the relay goes, see? Maybe you can talk to them . . . but you shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  Tui hesitates, looks uncomfortable, then says:

  “The Zoyls can be a bit rough sometimes, a bit wild like. They’ve been out here a long time. They’re not like town people, you know, more ornery.”

  “They’re ornery,” I state.

  “Yeah, heaps, bro,” Tui agrees.

  “What do you mean?” I say. “I’m sure a friendly chat about the power couldn’t hurt.”

  Tui nods but looks uneasy. “Sure, sure, but the Zoyls, it’s best to leave them to themselves like,” he says, looking away.

  “Maybe you should get a gas boiler and cooker. My cousin could fix it up for you. He’s good with that stuff. That way you’d need less power. Got to make the best of things, you know?” he suggests. I can’t help but feel that he’s nervous about suggesting I talk to the Zoyls and is now trying to change my mind, but I don’t pursue it.

  On the way out to his van, Tui seems to regain his natural humour and says, “Yeah, bro, get the gas done. And if you want things kept cold just leave them outside, bro. Got to make the best of things.” He laughs at his own joke more than I do and drives off, waving to me happily as he honks the horn.

  I check in on the kittens, who seem content enough by the fire, and the cat gives me a sleepy look.

  Although she blows at me threateningly with her ears flattened when I try to touch her. Okay, too soon.

  I reload the fire and refill the bowls and then spend some time cleaning up the expected puddles of cat pee and lay down newspaper. Luckily I’ve got wooden floors and they’ve not targeted the rug they are sleeping on.

  Right, I decide, feeling unusually chipper and full of energy today.

  It’s time to go meet the neighbours.

  There’s a dirt track that leads over the hill from my cottage. I remember from when I bought the place that the real estate agent said it leads to the neighbouring farm, owned by the Zoyl brothers. I get in the car and as the track doesn’t look too rough decide to cut across instead of going around by way of the main road.

  I take it slow, and just beyond the top of the hill come to an old rusted gate. There’s a sign on it but it’s too faded to tell what it says. It’s not locked so I let myself through and move along. I don’t know how far I am into the farm, maybe only a few miles, with the farmhouse nowhere in sight yet when I see the shed on a short offshoot track from the one I’m on.

  It’s an ancient-looking patchwork of faded grey wood and corrugated iron in various stages of rust and decay. A long and low building that stretches back maybe 20 meters. I don’t know much about farming so have no clue what it’s for, but I notice an old red truck parked by the open double barn doors.

  As I pull up I hear a loud, almost continuous complex sound.

  I can make out metal and banging and machines and movement and people yelling, as well as animals screaming. Unsettling how human it sounds, like children almost.

  It takes a bit of time getting from the car out into the chair but I’d just managed it when the sounds inside suddenly die down.

  I’m not a spiritual person, or intuitive or sensitive or anything like that, but I suddenly don’t want to go in there. Something about the place just feels wrong. The dark beyond those doors isn’t empty.

  I put it down to momentary paranoia and roll forward. I’m almost at the door when a tall man in old blue overalls steps out into the dark opening of the barn doors, blocking my way.

  “Help you, mate?” he says. The smile he has on doesn’t seem to reach his pale-blue eyes. He’s an attractive man, but there’s something not right about it, like a Roman Adonis turned opium addict. His face is truly handsome with a strong jawline and a regal nose over full lips, and his smile show
s perfectly straight but yellowing teeth. He looks about my age. But my eyes are drawn down to his hands. He’s got the sleeves of the overalls rolled up and both arms up to the elbow are glistening red with blood, just like his gumboots, up to the ankles.

  “Just slaughtering some pigs, mate,” he says as he catches my stare.

  “Darrell, Archie, got company!” he yells over his shoulder and then moves out towards me.

  Soon two more men come out and I can see the family resemblance. They are all big, muscled men, all with the same, distinctive pale-blue eyes. But while the first one I met is handsome, the other two, Darrell and Archie, are plain ugly, with flattened features and both missing teeth.

  It’s a small thing, just a social nicety not observed, really, but as they come up to me Darrell and Archie come to stand on either side of me, facing me, while the first brother steps up in front of me.

  It feels like they are all too close. Too close.

  “I’m Sean,” says the first one, from in front of me.

  “These are my brothers, Archie and Darrell Zoyl,” he says, pointing. “Who are you?” Sean says, still holding that smile.

  I nod and try to return the smile, glancing to either side. I see both of the brothers beside me also have blood on their hands and feet. I don’t know why that’s bothering me so much.

  “Hi, I’m Finn Bell. I’m your new neighbour. I bought the cottage over the hill,” I say, pointing back.

  “You came in over the hill?” Sean asks, as he takes a dirty rag from his side pocket and starts to wipe his hands.

  “Yeah, just through the gate. Don’t worry, I closed it behind me in case you had stock,” I say.

  “Not worried, mate,” Sean replies, his eyes not meeting mine, still busy cleaning his hands. His smile is starting to look hungry and there’s a look to him I can’t put a name to. I just know that I don’t want to be here anymore.

  “Why you here?” says the one brother abruptly from beside me, Archie, I think.

  “Ah, actually I came to talk to you about the power. See, the power company tells me we are on the same cables and I’m losing power about once a week. They say it happens when we both try to use too much electricity at the same time. I thought maybe we could work something out.”