by Derek Hansen
Red’s anger flared, sudden and violent. He grabbed his work bag and tools and set off back down the trail. Archie raced on ahead of him. Red dropped off his bag, axe and saw on his veranda steps but kept hold of the parang. He called Archie back to heel. His parang rattled in its wooden scabbard as he ran down the track, crossing from side to side to avoid tripping on roots and tea-tree stumps. Foreign fishing boat or locals? It didn’t matter. He didn’t let anybody fish Wreck Bay and he was prepared to enforce his embargo with all the means at his disposal. Perhaps it was a foreign boat coming in to net bait fish. Or a mainland crayfish boat. He would allow neither. And nor would he give the crew a chance to ransack his boat or Angus’ cabin. Similar things had happened further down the coast.
He heard an anchor chain, loud in the still air, and strained his ears to hear voices, trying to determine whether the intruders were foreigners or from the mainland. He heard commands but they were soon swallowed beneath the rumble of a straining diesel as the vessel backed off the chain to set the anchor. Just short of the beach he cut off the track into the bushes to work his way through to the sand. The trail entrance was obvious and that was where they’d be watching. He dropped to his hands and knees, knowing it was easier, quicker and quieter to crawl beneath the spread of the bushes and ferns than to force a path through them. His heart pounded from exertion and apprehension, and from memories of stealing out of camp to trade illegally with the Burmese for food. Archie crawled along behind him, tummy touching the ground, growling softly. Red felt the sand beneath his hands, drew his parang and raised his head to peer through the silver fern screen above the edge of the dune. He recognised the boat immediately, collapsed back on his elbows and called Archie up alongside to take a look. He didn’t know what to feel or how to react. It was the Barrier’s lifeline, the scow Rahiri, and it had a punt-shaped barge tied alongside it. Red stood finally and walked out into the open and onto the beach. The little outboard-powered barge was perfect for bringing ashore a Bendix Gyramatic and a potter’s wheel.
Red held his ground, but Archie raced down the beach to greet Rosie as the barge butted up against the shore. The dog ignored the burly men she’d brought with her to haul her things up the hill and danced in circles around her, barking madly.
‘Hello, Archie.’ She reached down and ruffled the dog’s ears. She looked up at Red. ‘What a welcome. Almost every man and his dog’s here.’
‘Hello, Rosie. I thought you weren’t coming back.’
‘Thought or hoped?’
The four men Rosie had hired stood by grinning, waiting to see Red’s reaction. They were all Barrier men and knew Red or at least knew of him. If he welcomed her there’d be a little more spice to feed into the bush telegraph.
‘I’ll give you a hand.’
‘Thank you, Red.’
The men howled and whistled. Rosie was a good-looking lady which, in their eyes, made Red a lucky man. It would never occur to them that it was possible to have a relationship with a woman other than the kind they fancied for themselves. Or that Red didn’t want a relationship with any woman regardless of how good-looking she was. They could hardly wait to get back to their homes scattered down the west coast and spread the news. Rosie turned to them.
‘Would you blokes get your minds back on the job? The skipper wants to get back to Fitzroy tonight and I want all my stuff in my home.’
The four men lifted their heads simultaneously to look at the challenge ahead of them. They’d known when they’d accepted the job that they’d have to earn their money, but the steepness of the hill and the narrowness of the trail still came as unpleasant confirmation. Two Maoris from Katherine Bay with short, stocky arms and bodies like house bricks slipped a canvas harness beneath the Bendix and over their shoulders.
‘I’ll go on ahead and clear the path.’
‘Thanks, Red. I’ll come with you so I can show these blokes where to put things. Where’s Angus?’
‘He’s gone down to Awana. Went this morning.’
‘Widow’s lucky day?’
‘You know about her?’
‘Jean told me.’
Red shook his head as he wondered if there was anybody on the Barrier who didn’t know what everyone else was doing.
‘How often does he go to see her?’
‘Two, maybe three times a year.’
‘Drought breakers, eh? What about you, Red?’ She arched her head mischievously so that she looked right into his face.
‘Me? I’ve never even met the woman.’
The little barge punted backwards and forwards from ship to shore as the wind freshened and brought the threat of rain, hurried on by the anxious skipper at one end and an equally anxious Rosie at the other. Red volunteered to help carry her possessions up the hill so that the men could take turns to rest without the process grinding to a halt. He worked willingly and without guilt, because it was clear he and Angus had failed miserably in their efforts to dissuade Rosie from returning, and because it was the right thing to do. He set her potter’s wheel down in the corner of her veranda, and promised to help secure it there later.
He returned to the beach and joined the others as they made a conga line up the hill, each man carrying half a dozen fire-proof bricks for her kiln. He should have known better. It was a mistake, the sort of mistake he’d made before and was powerless to prevent recurring. He automatically fell into step with the man in front as he’d done a thousand times before in another country in another time. He began to worry that they weren’t going fast enough, overtook the man in front, then the next and the next, head down, urging them on, setting the example. New men had to know what was expected of them. There was a speedo on. Didn’t they know? Hadn’t they realised? ‘Speedo! Speedo!’ he shouted. The men reacted, partly from surprise and partly because they didn’t want to be shown up, totally unaware of the demons that had begun to emerge and drive Red on.
To a man treated as a beast of burden, there was little difference between carrying bricks and carrying ballast. Red’s mind had instantly made the connection and begun to flash back to the chain of broken, weary men, of their despair every time the Japanese raised the quota they had to carry, of the beatings and punishments when their spirit and bodies let them down. Anger, fear and desperation pushed him on to work harder, part of him trying to fight off the memories, part of him lost in them. He lapsed into the prisoners’ fear-filled plod, eyes fixed on the trail immediately ahead of him, step after endless step, pushing his body to an effort that was beyond it, praying that the guards would find some other back to bend their bamboo rods across. Sweat ran from his body in rivers, his breath rasped and eyes glazed. ‘Speedo! Speedo!’ The men gave up trying to keep pace with him. He became an automaton, a human pack-horse spurred on by threats of torture and death.
Rosie caught the look of anguish on his face as he dumped his bricks and turned blindly back down the trail. Without hesitating, she dropped the suitcase she was carrying, grabbed him and dragged him by the hand up onto her veranda where she forced him to sit.
‘Hell’s bells, Red, what do you think you’re doing?’
Sweat glazed his body and he shrank back from her. He answered her in Japanese and tried to get back on his feet. She grabbed his shoulders and peered into his unfocussed eyes. Captain Ladd had called Red’s look the thousand yard stare. He was wrong. It was more like a thousand miles. ‘Red, look at me!’
Red looked but all he saw was Archie and his namesake. Archie couldn’t help him this time. He reached out to his friend one last time before the hot bullet tore through flesh and bone and death swallowed him up.
‘Don’t worry, miss.’ One of the Maoris, was looking up at them. ‘Red goes funny sometimes. I seen him do that before, eh? At Port Fitzroy. He’ll be okay.’
‘Thanks.’ She nodded to the Maori, who wandered off back down the trail. But things were clearly not okay. She tried to remember what her father did and what she’d been taught. She recalled how her fath
er used to distract his patients to force them to abandon the world inside their heads. Once he’d stunned her by producing a pistol and waving it backwards and forwards in front of the eyes of a returned soldier who was lost in wartime nightmares. The man’s eyes had immediately locked onto the pistol and followed it wherever it was waved. As the patient’s ravings and tremors had begun to ease, her father had put the pistol down on the table and just moved his hand instead. The patient’s eyes had flickered backwards and forwards, not missing a beat, as her father had begun talking to him. He’d told the patient to take deep breaths and the ex-soldier had instantly obeyed. In minutes, her father had calmed a man who’d seemed beyond reach and had brought him back, shaken but approaching normality. Rosie had been impressed. Typically, her father had dismissed it all as ‘pure theatrics and mumbo-jumbo, the self-hypnosis of a feeble mind’. His arrogance had appalled her. Rosie had wondered angrily just whose mind was feeble.
She picked up the parang and tried moving it in front of Red’s face. He shrank away from her in fear. Wrong move. She put her hand in front of his eyes and moved it rapidly from side to side. His eyes focussed and locked on. ‘It’s rest time, Red. Rest time.’
‘Yasume . . .’ he said feebly.
Yasume? Rosie hadn’t a clue what yasume was but thought it worth a try. ‘Yes, Red, yasume. Yasume. Yasume, Red. Yasume.’ She repeated the word over and over as her hand moved rapidly from side to side.
‘Yasume?’ Red shook his head and began to sit up. She stopped waving her hand in front of him.
‘Jesus Christ, Red. Where have you been?’ She looked anxiously into his eyes, put her arm around his shoulders and her hand on his forehead.
‘Sorry, Arch.’
‘Its okay, Red, okay. I’ll get you some water.’ She rose and went into the kitchen, her mind reeling. So Archie was not just a dog. What did that mean? Oh Christ! Her return to Wreck Bay had begun better than she’d hoped. Perhaps her welcome hadn’t been the warmest, but it hadn’t been frosty, either. Red had accepted her, which was a vast improvement on her previous arrival. Now this. Christ! The man sure picked a good time to go off into orbit. When she took a glass of water back out to him he was gone, and Archie with him.
Rosie was tempted to drop everything and look for him. He needed help and she wanted to help, though it was moot whether she was responding to her training as a doctor and psychologist or as a woman. In mitigation, she had little opportunity to consider her motives because she had more urgent things to attend to. She had to tell the men where everything went, where to stack her gallon cans of paint, where to put the tea chests with her crockery, her pots and pans. As she paused to make sense of some unidentified boxes she heard someone slashing scrub up high on the ridges. The man had his problems and his own peculiar way of dealing with them. She looked up towards the sound and felt an unfamiliar and disturbing emotion building inside her.
‘You poor bastard,’ she said, barely audibly but with all her heart. Her eyes began to water, which was ridiculous. She didn’t cry over men.
Gradually, all of her prized possessions, her bed, her sofa, and her precious plastic-wrapped kilims made it ashore and up the hill, along with lengths of new copper guttering and downpipes. She thanked each of the men and gave them the money she’d promised, plus a bit extra as an inducement against the day she might need their services again. They refused her offer of coffee and biscuits, saying the skipper was anxious to get back to Port Fitzroy before the storm broke. It looked like settling in for days, they said. She waved farewell and turned her attention to the mess around her. The place was in turmoil. There were cartons and boxes everywhere and strips of newspaper packing strewn all over the floor. But these were the things she’d longed for during her two-week trial, things that would transform her bach not just into her home, but into a little piece of heaven on earth. The kettle and tea caddy were where she’d left them, and a relaxing cup of tea beckoned. It seemed the perfect interlude before continuing the business of unpacking.
She made tea and walked back out onto the veranda to enjoy the last of the afternoon light. A tui called out in warning but there was no sound from Red’s parang. Instead, she heard a far off roaring, almost like heavy traffic or a distant train coming closer and closer, yet knew it could be neither. The roaring increased and suddenly accelerated towards her. Almost too late she realised what was happening and raced for the door. The storm had arrived.
The rain slammed onto the windows just as Rosie managed to close them. The wind drove in hard over the ridges, deflected upwards then bore down in gusts that shook her shack to its foundations. Tea-tree whipped into the eaves and battered windowpanes. The temperature plummeted. Rosie wished she’d lit the Shacklock while she’d had the chance. She didn’t fancy the prospect of crawling under the veranda for firewood, but what choice did she have? No firewood meant no heat and no hot water. No hot water meant no bath, and never had a bath been more deserving. Where, she wondered as she surveyed the mess of cartons, bags and boxes, had she packed her new foul-weather gear? She had no choice but to do things Red’s way. She stripped off and dashed outside, down the veranda steps and into the teeth of the gale.
Icy rain drenched her in seconds, but it didn’t matter. She dipped under the house and grabbed an armful of firewood without giving spiders a second thought. The rain caught her again as she rushed back inside. It flattened her hair against her scalp and ran in rivers down her body. She dropped the wood in a heap in front of the old stove and fell back shivering onto the floor. She hadn’t run naked in the rain since the wild weekends of her student days, and here there was no one to frown or disapprove. It was her moment of liberation as she realised that, henceforth, she could do whatever she liked. She wanted to shout and scream and whoop for sheer joy, and would have if she hadn’t been so cold. She grabbed a bath towel out of the airing cupboard and wrapped it around her, stuffed paper into the fire box and broke kindling over her knee. Her shaking hand held a match to the paper and immediately the flame radiated warmth back to her. She snuggled deeper into her towel and fed the fire more splintered boxwood. Hot tea, warm towel, a fire and a house of her own. No more crappy jobs, lousy flats, or lost life going nowhere.
‘Let ’er rip, Hughie!’ she shouted, and laughed as another gust slammed into her little home in response. ‘I’m back, you hear me? I’m back and back for good!’ A thousand drummers beat a welcome on her roof.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
‘Angus is missing.’
Rosie looked up from chopping vegeta bles to the silhouette framed in the door way and smiled. She’d wondered how long it would take Red to find a reason to visit.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes. Why?’
Why? The absurdity of his response overwhelmed her. The day before he’d been a shivering, jabbering idiot, a man in as much need of help as any patient she’d ever attended.
‘You did leave rather abruptly yesterday.’
‘Had work to do.’
‘Yes, I heard you.’ She looked at him doubtfully. ‘Come on in.’
‘No thanks, Rosie. We’ll drip everywhere.’
‘Okay, I’ll come out.’ She joined him on the veranda and gave him a quick once over. He seemed pretty much as she remembered him from her first visit, distant, almost vacant, with no sign of the previous day’s troubles. ‘Nice look.’
Red had a way of dressing she’d never encountered before. Plastic yellow foul-weather hat, and a green-slicked, oilskin coat that fell to mid-calf. Over a football jersey, shorts and rubber thongs.
‘Angus is missing.’
‘So you said.’
‘I have to go look for him.’
‘Oh come on, Red. Maybe Angus and the widow have a lot to talk about.’ She smiled mischievously. ‘Or not, whatever the case may be.’
‘No. He never stays longer than one night. He wouldn’t leave Bonnie.’
‘Have you been down to check on her?’
‘Well, there you go. Angus knows you’d look after her if he decided to stay over an extra night.’
‘No, Rosie. That would make Angus beholden to me. He’d never allow that.’
‘Beholden?’
‘That’s what Angus says. He says he’ll not be beholden . . .’
‘I get the picture. What do you want me to do?’
‘Feed Bonnie.’ He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket. There were pieces of chopped-up fish in the bottom. ‘Could you go down this evening and keep her company for a while? Just stand outside and call.’
‘Okay, Red. Nice to know I can be useful around here.’ She watched for a reaction but the irony was lost on him. He was set upon finding Angus and nothing would distract him. ‘Look after yourself, and don’t go peeping through any bedroom windows. People might misinterpret your intentions. But if you do, take a camera.’ She smiled wickedly, but her attempt at humour also failed. Red’s mind was focussed on the fact that Angus was missing and was reluctant to acknowledge anything else. Rosie had seen similar single-mindedness before in people suffering from nervous breakdowns, and knew enough not to delay him any longer. He was already beginning to fidget. She glanced out of the main windows hoping that the weather had let up. The wind had settled to a steady fifteen to twenty knots but the rain was constant. ‘Before you go, Red – I’m making a vegetable soup. Drop by when you get back.’
Red stood awkwardly for a moment, not sure what the appropriate response should be. They’d done that in Burma, of course, kept soup for men who worked late filling their quota. It had precious little vegetable or anything else in it. They called it white death after the white melon added as filling. Lord knows what it filled, but it certainly didn’t fill their stomachs.