Jolt

by Bernard Beckett

  I was expecting a lecture but it didn’t happen. Maybe he didn’t trust himself, once he got started. Instead it was straight into the questions, disapproval dressed up as formality.

  ‘Where did you sleep last night?’

  ‘In a barn,’ Jonathon replied, sounding pleased with himself. ‘Worth noting for future years actually, it was very comfortable.’

  ‘You missed your seven-thirty radio sked.’

  ‘Radio’s with our gear. We thought you might have done it for us.’

  Mr Camden would clearly have liked to hit him, the way people often do. But there are laws, and jobs to consider, so he turned away and addressed the rest of his questions directly at Ms Jenkins, even though that meant breaking his own rules.

  ‘So your plans from here have altered, have they?’

  ‘Yeah. I think they just want to do Cone tonight, Alpha tomorrow and then over the top and down to Parawai Tuesday.’

  ‘If nothing else goes wrong,’ he added, like she was stupid not to have said it herself. There was probably a lot more he would have liked to say but he didn’t even try. ‘Your gear’s up at the road end. If you’re not there by nine Mr Stewart has been instructed to leave without your bikes.’

  ‘Sweet as, Mr C,’ Jonathon called after him. ‘Good seeing you.’

  We rode off and Joe Stewart winked at us as we passed, like he’d seen it all before.

  We did make it by nine, but only just. The other groups had already left and we took our time loading up the bikes, so there’d be no chance of catching them. Then we hauled on our packs for the first time and said all the obvious things.

  ‘Okay, who put the rocks in here?’

  ‘You think yours is heavy. Try this one.’

  ‘There’s no way me and this pack are going up that mountain.’

  ‘Do you think we could just head straight down to the river and float out?’

  ‘Do packs float?’

  ‘It’d take us to the wrong coast.’

  ‘Actually I think it goes to the lake.’

  ‘Actually I don’t care. I’m not walking up there.’

  ‘Come on, let’s get going. It’ll seem better once we’ve started.’

  ‘No, it’ll seem better after a cigarette. Wait a sec.’

  Eventually we got moving. First up was a one-at-atime wire swing bridge suspended high above the gorge. The view from the middle took my mind off the weight of my pack, for a second or two anyway. There was something awesome about the determined progress of the water below, and the path it had cut through the solid rock walls. Above them was the thick bush we were headed into.

  We’d been warned that the first climb, up onto the ridge running along the eastern side of the Waiohine Valley, was one of the steepest of the trip. At times we had to grab at tree roots and branches as our feet lost traction. My lungs burned in a new way, my legs hurt and I felt like throwing up. Luckily it was a short climb by Tararua standards, only an hour and a half before it flattened out, and that was with plenty of stops to share our complaints around. Although we all knew we could have pushed on to Alpha and caught up with the others, none of us mentioned it, not even Ms Jenkins.

  We dawdled along the tops, where the bush became lighter and the mud was just deep enough to ooze into our boots. When we reached the sign pointing down to Cone, Lisa produced a camera, like she’d known all along this would turn into a trip worth recording. It took three goes for her to master the self-take function. Then we hurtled down the steep descent. The thought of almost being there brought the conversations back, happy disjointed stuff, like we’d been friends forever.

  Cone Hut is old-style, built of thick slabs of totara wood on a terrace above the river. The inside is dark and dirty and it would take a decent storm to make it look inviting. We opted for the collapsed picnic table outside and lay out our lunch: a small banquet thanks to the food we should have eaten the night before.

  We spent that afternoon hanging by the river, all of us mellowing, while the much-talked about Tararua wind left us pretty much alone. It was one of those days where you want to ask ‘why can’t life always be like this?’ You don’t though, because you know it’s a stupid question. It just can’t.

  9

  APRIL 20 Someone has left a radio here. It’s small and plastic, just like the one Lewis carries, only yellow instead of orange. Maybe Andrew left it for me. He hasn’t said anything to me, or checked in here again, but it could be his way of showing some kindness. Or it could be a trap. Someone checking, to see how much I understand. I found a station and then kept the sound right down low, so anyone listening outside wouldn’t know. I had to press it hard against my ear to make out what was being said. I must have looked like a real crazy then, all scrunched up in this chair, straining to catch the words, rocking backwards and forwards to stay warm.

  The radio is still full of earthquake talk. It sounds like a total mess. At first just hearing the guy say ‘Wellington’ was almost too much. Thoughts of all the people back there, of what might have happened, of how badly I need to see them, ripped at my insides. But there’s the thing I need to do first, the thing keeping me here.

  They’re saying the clean-up was a disaster in itself and people are starting to look for someone to blame. They’re saying people should have been better prepared but that’s not right. There’re some things you can’t be properly ready for, because being ready costs too much. Like dying.

  The police are being criticised because it took so long for them to establish order but they had some guy on who said nobody had expected the looting. Apparently some people just went mad, grabbing whatever they could, and when others tried to stop them it turned into a riot. And all the time people were still trapped beneath the collapsed buildings.

  They talked about the gas explosions too, which I already knew about because we saw them from up on the ridge, huge silent flashes of mayhem. Then they had some professor trying to explain why so many people went wild. She said a lot of things but mostly she just told us that sometimes people can go a bit crazy. I already knew that too.

  Now they say things are slowly returning to normal, or as close to normal as you can get in a city where so many have died that they have to ship in coffins from up north. The sort of normal that sees a lot of low-life crawling back beneath their rocks, trying to pretend the things they did never happened at all, in that time when craziness got out into the open. Doctors going back to being doctors, carefully cutting out the bits of the past that might infect them, stitching over the memories and hoping they might heal. Not my Doctor though. Not this wound. I can see him, better than he realises, and I am going to make him pay.

  Then I turned off the radio and tried to let my hatred rise. It’s the only way of keeping my mind off home, off Mum, the last time I saw her, when she dropped me off on her way to work, and told me to be careful. Off Duncan, who has to be okay, because little brothers always are. Off so many people, each one a face that can weaken my resolve. I shouldn’t even be writing this. I shouldn’t let these thoughts in.

  I have to think of useful things, I have to make plans. It isn’t easy. I am still weak. A morning walking the wards exhausts me and writing this journal means pushing through the pain that thickens behind my eyes. Each morning I wake to see the world a little more clearly but, like a blind person learning to see, most of it only frightens me. And the things I don’t see frighten me even more, people acting against me, staying just out of sight.

  I am sure now that Margaret is dangerous. Today she came to my bed pushing her nurse’s trolley, loaded up with all the usual things. She rummaged about in it for a while, for effect, then produced an unfriendly-looking syringe.

  ‘Just need to take some blood,’ she told me, wrapping a band around my arm and pulling it tight. ‘To check how the medication levels are settling.’ She may as well have said ‘I’m on to you, you know.’ She stared at me but I gave her nothing, and she gave me nothing back.

  I followed
her after she left, hanging in the background while she completed her rounds, watching her for clues. She is silent with some patients and chatty with others, the ones she thinks can understand. And she always chats to me. After the last room had been visited she wheeled her trolley back towards the nurses’ station. I could hear the test tube, still warm with my blood, clanking against the side of a metal dish the whole way down the corridor. Then it stopped, just outside a door I always thought was a storeroom although it has no sign. I can’t be certain, because her stopping there surprised me and I had to pull back into a doorway, but I think I saw her take my test tube and pocket it. She went in through the door and was back out almost immediately. Then she moved off.

  I waited a good five minutes before I checked the room. It was home to three large wheelie bins, one marked ‘biological refuse’, the other two ‘general’. Each had a small deposit slot at the top and was padlocked shut, so all I have are my suspicions. Suspicions that Margaret threw out my sample. So why would she do that? Reason is slow to reveal itself here. Maybe the sample hadn’t been ordered at all. Maybe she was just testing me, looking for a reaction. There must be other possibilities, possibilities I can’t quite see, whose blurred, changing outlines keep me awake through the night.

  10

  Sleep is the mind’s way of shitting. Dreams are just thoughts you have no use for, thoughts that will poison you if you don’t let them out. They say a lack of sleep will drive you crazy soon enough. None of us had slept much the night in the barn, three or four hours at most. The next night at Cone was even worse.

  It’s a small hut, no more than three metres by four. The sleeping space is a platform raised above the dirt floor, where six people could lie comfortably, if there were mattresses. There weren’t, unless you count one decaying lump of foam that smelt of dampness and grime and things you wouldn’t want to imagine. We settled down early, straight after the radio sked. The weather report was for wind rising later the next day, and maybe some rain on the tops. We heard the other groups report in. All three of them were up at Alpha, so something must have delayed the fast group. When the operator asked them if they had any messages they replied ‘no thanks’, as if we weren’t even in the hills with them. That suited us fine. We didn’t give any messages either. We wouldn’t have to see them again until the end of the trip.

  Lying down on the bare boards I could tell sleep was going to be difficult. I had that half-sick camp feeling you get—too much dried food, too much breathing in smoke from the open fire, and a long drop not designed for relaxation. My stomach was tight, my throat was dry, and my mind was restless. I propped myself up on one elbow and looked around to see whether anyone else was feeling the same. Lisa was already sitting up. We both tried our best to get a conversation going, like we had in the barn, but it was pointless. That mood had passed. We circled awkwardly for a while: school, family, childhood pets, before Jonathon put us out of our misery.

  ‘Fuck up will you both? I’m trying to get some sleep here.’

  I lay back down and dug my head into a pillow of track pants and polar fleece and waited for sleep to rescue me from the feeling of disappointment. The rats came first.

  I was on the end, up against the wall. A thin ledge ran above our heads, where you could squeeze another two people if you were desperate. I heard rustling there but I was determined to ignore it. Probably just birds. So what? I was too tired to care. Then they scampered from one side to the other. It was impossible not to listen.

  ‘Fucken rats.’ Jonathon’s water bottle bounced off the boards overhead and I heard the little feet scurrying away. A minute later, just long enough to start to relax, and they were back. Down below our feet this time, where we’d left our packs. I could hear their sharp teeth making short work of our plastic bags. I imagined the diseases dripping off their little tongues and how their tails would feel if they ran over me. I tried to remember whether I’d left anything open. The others definitely had. I’d seen Lisa throwing stuff everywhere, looking for her torch. I waited for someone else to do something. So did the others. Meanwhile the rats got on with their work and the sound of it filled the darkness. I tried to push it aside and lose myself in sleep but every time my thoughts began to break up the sound would start again; another rip, another tear.

  A torch came on and I heard the rats disappearing through the cracks and holes. It was Ms Jenkins, sitting up in her sleeping bag, shining the light onto our gear.

  ‘You’ll have to check your packs,’ she told us. ‘If you don’t put that food away they’ll come back.’

  Reluctantly we wriggled free from our bags, apart from Rebecca who didn’t move.

  ‘All fucken useless,’ I heard her mumble. Her pack was just as she’d left it, closed up tight and standing against the wall.

  ‘So who left the bread out?’ Jonathon held up the remains of a loaf. In the light of his torch we could see the plastic had been shredded and large chunks of bread were gone. ‘Hungry little suckers aren’t they? It was your job to pack this away wasn’t it Turner?’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d taken it out,’ I snapped.

  ‘Should have checked.’

  ‘Anyway, Lisa was carrying it.’

  ‘No, I took the pot, remember, after lunch.’

  ‘We stayed here after lunch.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Rebecca sat up, sounding like a babysitter who’d had her favourite movie interrupted. ‘One of you just put it away. We’ll be dumping it in the morning anyway. Hurry up. I want to sleep.’

  ‘Don’t see you helping,’ Jonathon said.

  ‘I didn’t leave food out, did I?’

  ‘That’s right, I forgot. You’re perfect.’

  ‘Just less useless than you. There’s a big difference.’

  ‘It must be so hard for you.’

  ‘Leave her alone.’

  ‘You fuck up.’

  ‘All of you fuck up and do something with that bread.’

  It was just like old times. We packed everything away, exchanged a few more insults and went back to our sleeping bags. The wooden boards felt even harder second time around but again I made it halfway to dreaming before the rats came back. I heard one running along the board that angled down the wall only centimetres above my head. Then it stopped and there was silence, the silence of five people listening for the same sound. Then a second rat making its way down the same board, so close I could smell it, that old piss scent rats have. I pulled my head down into my sleeping bag but it was too hot to breathe.

  Something brushed my hair and I froze. Just Rebecca’s hand, I told myself. Then Lisa screamed, a sound so sudden and so loud it stayed ringing in my ears, like I was hearing it bouncing its way down the valley.

  ‘My hair! It was in my hair!’ She sat up and rubbed frantically at her scalp. ‘The little mother was in my hair!’

  ‘Probably got fleas,’ Jonathon offered.

  She hit him hard across the back of his head as he sat up.

  ‘Ow. Just saying.’

  ‘I think one touched my ear,’ I told them.

  ‘It’s still there!’ Lisa screeched. ‘Look.’

  We followed her torchlight along our sleeping bags. It was perched at the end. I could have reached out and touched it. Its dark eyes regarded us complacently, like it had us worked out. Jonathon snatched Lisa’s torch and hurled it at the little beast. There was a loud crash against the wall, then darkness.

  ‘Now you’ve smashed the bulb.’

  ‘So you want them to keep coming back do you?’

  ‘They will, now they know what a crap shot you are.’

  ‘Well I can’t sleep now,’ Lisa announced. ‘There’s no way I’m even going to try.’

  ‘Lisa.’ Rebecca spoke slowly, like she was trying hard not to lose it. ‘Did it bite you? Did it hurt you in any way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So ignore it.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Ms Jenkins muttered something I couldn’
t hear, climbed out of her sleeping bag and walked over to her pack.

  ‘Here, I’ll light a candle. They won’t come back if there’s light.’ Maybe that was true. Maybe it was Jonathon’s torch hurling that had scared them off, or maybe they did return and ran all over my face. I don’t know. I was asleep.

  When I woke my throat was drier, my head hurt more and I felt like throwing up. Lisa and Jonathon were both making noises that would have terrified me in the dark. Rebecca, however, was already up, munching her way through a bowl of cereal. We’d gone two nights without decent sleep, we were a day behind schedule, rats had been into our food and the biggest climb lay ahead of us. I got the feeling that in years to come Mr Camden would be using us as his example of how not to do Coast to Coast.

  The tramp started with a river crossing which wasn’t too bad. It hadn’t rained for a while and the water ran clear. From there we dragged our soggy feet up Bull Mound, a two and a half hour slog along a ridge where my moods came and went without warning. We stopped more often than we should have, breaking any rhythm we might have found, to drink, blame, and complain. We weren’t too unfit as a group. Only Lisa seemed to be strug-gling and that was just in bursts. Our weakness was more social.

  My opinion of Ms Jenkins was changing. She didn’t seem to have tired at all, even though she’d had as little sleep as the rest of us. She stayed totally even-tempered, the same calm mood the whole way. It was like she was quietly letting us know we could rely on her if we had to. And she was the fittest of any of us, too. When she walked out front I could see her calves knotting with every step and she never seemed to slip or drop her pace.

  The climb was through bush the whole way, beech forest with light undergrowth and the moss getting thicker near the top. The trees thinned out as the ridge flattened to a long spur and we made our way through a new landscape of low scrub and rock. That’s when we first heard the wind, roaring across the tops above us. I didn’t think much of it, I was too busy trying not to think of sore shoulders or the hours still ahead, or the way I’d walked in on Jonathon and Rebecca talking that morning, and how they’d both stopped as soon as they saw me.