Bird North and Other Stories

by Breton Dukes

  ‘“That’s not a pig,” says his wife, ‘“that’s a chicken.”

  ‘“I wasn’t talking to you,” says the man.’

  The lift doors opened onto LG. Dale went out smiling. Behind him there was silence as Sione took a breath and then a great gust of laughter. Dale turned around. Sione was coming out of the lift with his arms out like he was wrestling a bear. The phone rang and, still laughing, Sione went back and answered. As the lift doors closed he saluted. Dale smiled some more and then the chicken clicked into place with the pig. First his thin shoulders went and then the muscles between his ribs caught. He was still laughing as he went past Lily, but with each step down the corridor the warmth inside him grew cold. He went into the office with his hands in a monkey-grip around each wrist.

  ‘Glad you could join us,’ said Lane, undoing his top button. ‘Would you close the door, Dale?’

  You knew it was bad when Lane smiled. Dale closed the door. He could hear people out by the lifts and he wondered if Lane had heard Sione’s joke. When he turned back Lane had his shirt undone. He was wearing a singlet. Lane kept the deodorant beside the photo of the dead animal on his desk. Dale looked down at his hands then put them on his hips and then behind his back. He heard the bottle shake, the smell of it, the progress of the perfumed ball.

  When Lane had finished his toileting he buttoned his shirt and sat back with his hands behind his head. ‘So?’ he said. The computer hummed and the incoming call light on the phone flashed.

  Dale stepped from one foot to the other. ‘Instead of going to 7D to get my patient I went to CT.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Lane. ‘I’ve just been talking to CT. They said you were mucking around down there. The nice doctor thought you should get your eyes checked.’

  ‘I should have read your note more closely.’

  ‘20/20 vision,’ said Lane, holding his thumb and forefinger up to his eyes. ‘I see deer before they see me.’ He showed the photo like it was identification.

  Dale went over to the desk and looked. Lane squatting with a rifle and a dead deer. He’d seen it a million times. ‘Righto,’ he said. He went to sit down.

  ‘Uh uh,’ Lane said. ‘Stay where you are.’ He opened a drawer and took out a piece of paper. ‘We’ve been down this track before haven’t we? Time wasting on: the twenty-first of July, the seventh of September, the ninth of April. Today being,’ Lane looked at his watch, ‘Dale Harper, today being the ninth of November, I am giving you your first verbal warning for malingering.’ Lane sat forward in a pleased way and wrote on the paper.

  ‘But,’ said Dale, ‘I was helping an old lady on the seventh floor, and there were the Islanders in the basement.’

  ‘Islanders?’ said Lane, coming up from his seat and around the front of his desk.

  ‘He was under the bed with a book. There was a goat.’

  Lane was shaking his head. ‘Dale, Dale, Dale. We don’t call them that anymore.’ He sat on the front of the desk. ‘Polynesians,’ he whispered.

  Dale didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I don’t want to have to bring more serious action against you, Dale, but that seems to be where this is headed.’ Lane stood up from the desk. They were around the same height though Lane was much broader. Dale could feel Lane’s breath against his face. He wanted to step back, or to do something.

  ‘Now, I’ve got a job for you Dale.’ Lane took a red square of paper from the desk. Someone knocked on the door.

  ‘Lane?’ It was Feroz.

  ‘Wait out there,’ said Lane. He held the paper up. ‘Read this to me, Dale.’

  ‘Lange 6b to X-Ray. On a chair.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  There was another knock on the door.

  ‘Hold on, Feroz,’ shouted Lane. It was like a foghorn.

  ‘Bring patient Lange down from 6B on a wheelchair,’ said Dale.

  Lane took two short steps and stood on Dale’s toes. At the same time he grabbed Dale’s shoulders. Then Lane kissed Dale. Dale felt the jamming of his feet and Lane’s hands, they were like lead gloves, but mostly it was Lane’s breath, Lane’s nose squishing into his, and the flinty press of Lane’s teeth. There was a sound, a high closed off pant, and it was over. Then Lane was no longer in front of him, but was opening the door.

  Feroz came in. ‘You and Lane in a secret meeting, Dale?’

  Dale looked at Feroz.

  ‘Hey Dale, you okay, man?’

  Lane said something, but Dale was leaving the office: rounding a huddle of radiographers, passing the staffroom and going through a family of Asians who were clustered around the reception desk. A lift was waiting, doors ajar. He went inside and pressed the button for the sixth floor. The lift started upwards. He stood on one side and then the other. There was a chip packet stuffed between the wall of the lift and the hand-rail. Prodded, it fluttered scratchily to the floor. He saw and then felt Lane’s dry lips. Lane’s thin, dry lips.

  Entering the ward Dale held the red paper in two hands like it was a steering wheel or a shield. He was trembling. With no Lange on the whiteboard outside the first room, he went further into the ward and scrutinised the board on the wall outside the next room, but that too was no good. Two nurses were standing beside a water cooler. On a plate on top of the cooler were the remains of a chocolate cake. ‘Chocolate cake,’ said Dale breezily. ‘Feroz likes his chocolate cake.’

  They looked at him with bland expressions. One of the nurses had a box of cigarettes. She opened and closed the lid.

  ‘Somebody’s birthday, eh?’ Dale said.

  The nurse with the cigarettes turned back to the other nurse.

  Dale rubbed at his mouth and, not bothering to check the board, went into room three. There were two old men in beds, and a trolley of piss bottles. Opposite the beds, already in a wheelchair, and with a folder in his lap – the word Lange in black felt down its spine – was a huge man: grey skin, giant glasses, and a brown dressing gown. ‘Good to go,’ said Dale, more to himself than Mr Lange.

  When Dale got out of the ward, the lift he’d ridden up was waiting, doors ajar. He backed on and pressed the button for the lower-ground floor, but nothing happened. He jabbed the button with his forefinger. The doors fluttered for a moment and then closed reluctantly as if resisted by a strong body. He gripped the handles and tried to concentrate on the light in the numbers above the doors. Five, four, but no three, just a strangely gentle tearing sound. Then the lift stopped.

  *

  Before his death, Mr Lange would describe the hour he spent in that broken down lift as one of his strangest. There was the initial outburst as his orderly slammed from wall to door like a blow fly in a shoebox: ‘I told them. I bloody told them!’ Then the second round, and this was when Mr Lange had to use his firmest language, when the orderly climbed the back of the wheelchair and attempted to clamber through the manhole in the ceiling of the lift: ‘I’ll only come out at night!’ After that, and to Mr Lange’s great relief, the man faded somewhat. Mr Lange was still facing the lift doors and, hearing the man weeping and muttering, he managed, with some considerable effort, to reverse and turn his wheelchair.

  The man was folded into the corner of the lift gripping his wrists. Mr Lange tentatively offered a question around claustrophobia and when the man shook his head he started on a more general line around the man’s hobbies (they shared an interest in rugby league) and most relevantly, his working life at the hospital.

  If that hour in the lift was a peculiar one for Mr Lange, the hour following the entrapment was merrily described as the last truly satisfying work of his life. When he recalled that time in the narrow office (in order to fit his wheelchair the orderly removed the six chairs with the solemnity of a bailiff) his tired yellow eyes blazed, his once voluminous voice rediscovered its grandeur, and he was able to announce with the great surety of the dying that the truism (about hunters and the hunted) had once again shown him the sweet barb of its tail.

  People’s hom
es

  My son Tom was three when I started as a fairy. Vern had just left us, and I took a job doing children’s parties. I was one of three fairies. Our boss owned a shop called Pinky’s Party Store, and we would meet there on Saturday mornings to load our cars and get changed. The other two were younger. They went to drama school and were always talking about new ways to engage the children. But I took the job because it was weekends only when a neighbour could look after Tom. After a certain amount of fairying I started stealing from the houses where I performed.

  All Vern left us was his shoe, and after a few days crying I remember screaming and throwing it through our bedroom window. I went out to where it was and returned it through another window. Then I heard Tom howling. I found him under the table with his hands over his ears. His skin was the same colour as the side of a bath. Vern and I had taught him that if there was an earthquake – wobbling, cracking, crashing – he was to get under that table. The shoe was nearby and before picking him up I put it in the fire. And as I held him and we both cried I made the previous four years into a spider and sealed it in a preserving jar. The jar went far back in a high unused cupboard and from then on I only saw Vern when I slept.

  I rented a one-bedroom unit on the cold flat land between the head of the harbour and the sea. I sold the furniture that wouldn’t fit and signed up for the benefit. It was winter. We had the heater going all the time. Mould came through the walls and Tom spent time on oxygen in the hospital. If we wanted to be comfortable and well-fed I needed a job. That’s when I started at Pinky’s.

  The props filled the car. The pink secret staircase jutted from the boot like a huge tongue. With the star out the window, the giant wand just fitted in the back seat. Its opposite end was a sharp spike and the first thing I did when arriving at a party was plant it in the front lawn. The magic blanket was under the wand and it too was pink and shiny. There were mandarin-coloured tassles down each edge and the children had to sit on it with their arms and legs crossed if they wanted to go on adventures. There were complimentary wands and wings in the passenger seat’s footwell and fizz and dessert food filling the seat itself. A certain type of parent covered the carpets and sometimes the furniture in a layer of clear plastic. I was always wary stealing from those houses.

  The first thing I stole was a batch of sausage rolls. They were on a bench with a lot of other food and with nowhere better to hide them I rolled them into the magic blanket. I had time before my next booking so I parked the car overlooking the beach, got into the back seat, and retrieved the pastries. They were squashed and there were bits of fabric and god-knows-what stuck to their oily skin, but I ate what I could and bagged the rest for Tom. I gave the blanket a good shake and then watched from the car as the seagulls fought over the scabs.

  After loading the car I would get changed. There was a pink wig, wings sewn to a pink vest, bracelets around my wrists and upper arms, tights, a lavender tutu, and ballet shoes. The mask was optional. I tried it once but breathing was hard and one of the children went off screaming. After that I stuck to make-up and, following the theft of the sausage rolls, I stole from almost every house I went to. Among other items there were pot plants, a school bag, a frying pan, a carving set – and from the same house a frozen chicken.

  My show excluded adults. The men especially liked to hang around. They would hover in doorways or sometimes sit like museum exhibits in the rooms where I was to perform. But they never stayed long. I had a special look for them. I imagined they were Vern. If they were respectful I took less. If they leered or sneered I took more. But only what I needed and could get easily: one smooth movement, there and then gone. One time, though, was different.

  It was my last booking of the day. I’d already stolen a bag of green apples and a hand-held blender. Tom was back in hospital. He’d come off a swing and broken his jaw. The doctor had said to feed him pulp. I found the house and as usual sank the giant wand into the front lawn. Faces and hands pressed against the windows and then the door opened. They came like schooling fish: around the wand, over to my car and the pink staircase, and around and around me as I carried the magic blanket into the house and whispered to them not to touch its tassles.

  ‘They’re covered in travelling dust. You do want to see the Monkey Princess?’

  I unpacked the rest of my gear then we darkened the lounge and boarded the blanket. Not long after take-off, over the ocean just before Monkey Land, a curly-haired boy tumbled off. His face convinced them he was falling towards the polar bears and their black scissor teeth. There was hysteria. But Fairy Daisy got quickly into position and retrieved the boy with her magic hand of hope. It was a safe journey after that. We sang a waiata to the Princess and played upside down racing with the silly blue baboon gang before going out to the wand.

  I’d just finished packing when a woman I hadn’t seen before came out to the car. She was holding a cheque and a glass of wine.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘My Robert particularly enjoyed the race to nowhere.’

  Every few words her lips closed and her throat worked up and down as if there were bubbles coming from her stomach. She was drunk. ‘You must find it exhausting,’ she said.

  Before each party I imagined myself and the children surrounding a paddling pool. We detached a part of our skulls then strong hands held the bum of our trousers and tipped us like gravy boats. Our brains plopped into the pool. There was hacking and mincing and then communal brain meat for us all.

  ‘I feed off the children.’

  I’d left a bucket in the hallway. But she wanted to talk.

  ‘When we were young there was pass the parcel.’ She was leaning near the back window of the car and swaying so the wand’s star sometimes covered her face. ‘Occasionally there were balloons,’ she said, looking up at the sky. From the house there was a blast of party music, quiet, and then a child’s howl. ‘My bloody brother,’ she said.

  The wine in her glass was thick and yellow-looking and she took a deep draught. I’d stolen vitamins once. The morning after Tom had screamed from the toilet. ‘Mummy!’ Neon yellow piss arced around the bathroom. Afterwards he’d told me he thought his penis would be too hot to touch.

  ‘We’ve got balloons at the store,’ I said.

  ‘Of course one does have to be careful.’

  I went up and down on my toes and then smiled at her. ‘I just want to check I have everything.’ I pointed back at the house.

  ‘All the mothers think you’re beautiful,’ she said, squeezing at the point of the star like she was testing fruit.

  I started across the lawn.

  ‘I suppose the fathers think the same,’ she said.

  The front of the house was quiet. There were high ceilings, a staircase, and a painting of a street under snow. We’d played disco giants up and down the wide hallway. The door to the lounge was at the end and then the hall branched to the left. I’d picked up my bucket and was going into the lounge when – down that left branch – I saw two feet: toes down, sticking out of a doorway.

  I walked towards them. There was another surge of music. It was the chicken song. The feet went side to side. I kept walking. The music stopped and the feet went still. I had no idea what I was doing. I looked into the room. A man was on the floor wearing a business shirt, boxer shorts, and one sock. It was as if he’d been hit over the head while changing. There was an unmade bed covered in CDs and more CDs on the floor.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  He didn’t move or say anything.

  I looked down the hallway. It was empty. The only sound was the far away flush of a toilet. I used my heel on his toes.

  ‘Aah,’ he said, and rocked side to side to get his foot free. He rolled onto his back. There were blotches on his forehead and nose from where they’d been pressed against the carpet. He was holding a remote control. ‘Whoa,’ he smiled. ‘Welcome.’

  His eyes made a slow revolution around the ceiling. He looked like the woman by the car.

&
nbsp; ‘Where’s your wand?’ he said, making a gun out of his fingers. ‘If you don’t have a wand how can you grant me a wish?’ The rest of him was still. He looked deflated, as if the part I couldn’t see had sunk some way into the carpet.

  ‘Don’t point at me,’ I said. There was a clock on the wall. I had to pick Tom up from the hospital. I looked back down the hallway. ‘Move your feet,’ I said.

  ‘You have bad manners for a genie,’ he said.

  ‘Move your fucking feet.’

  He bent his knees. ‘What have you got in your bucket?’

  I closed the door. He’d been lying on the leg of a pair of pants. The rest of them were under the bed. The belt looked expensive. I pulled at them with my toe and they came out. One of the pockets was bulging. ‘What’s that?’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’ he said, licking his lips. ‘Hey, what sort of genie are you?’

  My heart felt so close to the surface I thought if I looked I’d see its shape. I bent over, wriggled the wallet out of his pants, and put it into the bucket. The music started again. It gave me a fright and I stood up. More CDs fell off the bed onto the floor. I opened the door. The man’s feet shot forward like small dogs trying to escape. They started moving in time with the music. He was smiling and his eyes had focussed. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he shouted. ‘Don’t you like to party?’

  I went out into the hallway. The music stopped. He was laughing. I started running. The front door was wide open. The grass was already under dew. The cold air was good. I got into my car and made a U-turn. There was a sound. I thought someone had thrown something at the car. I drove a little further and then stopped. I looked in the rear-vision mirror. It was getting dark; the hills were black smears. I rolled down the window and listened. ‘Who’s that?’ I said.

  A dog started barking. I got out of the car and threw the wallet as hard as I could. It landed on the footpath and skidded onto the lawn where my footprints were like insect tracks. Where I’d turned the car there was a little glistening patch. The woman must have left the wine glass on the roof. A light went on in an upstairs room of the house. It was like a monster’s eye.