by Baker Chris
‘Two of my neighbours survived,’ the old man continued. ‘They both killed themselves when they realised what had happened. And what do you think I was doing? Nothing left to eat, no hope either. I’m not young and strong. I just can’t be bothered.’
Sean looked at him. ‘You’d better come with us, Uncle,’ he said.
While they waited, Edgar dressed and put on some solid walking shoes. He was in his seventies, old and frail, and they did the last kilometre to Brian’s place with the old man in the pushchair, piled up with blankets and food. He didn’t even ask where they were going, and nobody thought to tell him. They didn’t find anyone else either. Sean began to wonder how many more people had taken a rope from the shed or mixed themselves a Dr Death special from the bathroom cabinet.
Everyone slept — or at least some of them did — on the floor in Brian’s lounge, and in the morning they made a trip to the mall for more food. Kevin took Brian’s shotgun and the point position. Marie muttered something about ‘boys’ as Kevin high-stepped from driveway to driveway and peered around street corners. Marie insisted Sean walk beside her while she wheeled the pushchair.
At the mall they met Jim. He was standing outside as they emerged from the stink and the gloom with their cargo of rice, pasta, tinned food, toilet paper and other goodies. He was a nuggety little guy in his forties, tight jeans, a fringed and tasselled buckskin jacket, a flat-brimmed black hat, a bristling moustache and well-worn cowboy boots. He spoke first.
‘I thought I heard people,’ he said. ‘Hope I didn’t scare you.’ Sean tried to breathe slow and deep. He needed to calm his thumping heart after the fright of seeing Jim’s figure in the doorway, silhouetted against the sunlight like a western gunfighter.
‘Awesome,’ whispered Kevin.
Sean got his breath back. ‘You scared the shit out of us,’ he said. ‘But we’re still pleased to see you. Just surprised. Blown away, in fact.’
‘Yeah, well,’ the man replied, ‘nobody around to introduce us.’ His eyes had the familiar dark rings they were all sporting, and the state of his clothes showed he’d had his moments with the dogs. He carried an axe, and stepped forward with his hand out.
‘The name’s Jim Marinkovich,’ he said. ‘Believe it or not I came here to be by myself.’
Sean introduced himself, then Marie and Kevin.
‘I know you,’ Marie said. ‘You used to work for the council.’
‘Citicorp,’ Jim said. ‘Wankers. Pardon me.’ He touched his hat. ‘I’d shout you folk a coffee but the tearooms seem to be closed.’ He barked a short laugh that could well have passed for a snort of disgust.
‘Where are you staying, mate?’ Sean asked.
‘The high-school marae,’ Jim said. ‘They just built it. It’s set up for about fifty people. There’re water tanks, a fireplace and a hangi pit for cooking, bedding, even kero lamps and candles in case of power cuts. A wetback for hot water. We’re the first ones in it.’
‘Who’s "we", if you don’t mind me asking?’ Sean watched Jim start to bristle at the directness of the question, then soften.
‘Fifteen of us. All ages.’
Marie and Sean looked at each other. It sounded like a huge improvement on Brian’s barbecue and living room floor. For a start there was the safety of a large group of people. And they both liked Jim. He reminded Sean of the men he’d dealt with while doing bush work, fencing, and cutting firewood, men who led hard lives, to whom the greatest sin was a show of weakness, and looking after the family the greatest source of pride.
‘What are we waiting for?’ said Marie. ‘Let’s pick up the others and get over there while it’s still light.’ Jim nodded. Beneath his hard-man exterior Sean saw an eagerness, almost a desperation, and he was reminded just how vulnerable he felt himself.
That night they were all installed on the high-school marae, bags at the feet of their mattresses, and their supply of food on the pantry shelves next to the main kitchen. Sean felt he could breathe out. They weren’t just seven frightened people any more. They were twenty-three and it was starting to feel like they might make it — though where to he had no idea.
After dinner, when they sat in the wharenui and people told their stories, Sean listened to one tragic tale after another. Over and over he was given reminders of how other people were coping.
‘I’m not the only person deep in the brown stuff,’ he kept thinking. ‘And other people are handling things.’
Weeping, as the shadows swooped and loomed in the soft and flickering light, teenaged Naomi talked about her parents and little brothers dying around her. Puru, tats and gang colours, talked about organising a dogwatch. Bill, who turned out to be an old mate of Edgar’s, spoke of finding others while there was still a chance. Brian speculated on what might be happening elsewhere. Sean pulled himself together enough to talk about the importance of ritual and spirituality.
‘Say it like you mean it,’ he growled at himself. ‘No room for half-arses any more.’
Through the tears they sang songs and said prayers. People even told jokes, and watching everyone trying made Sean feel a little stronger. But everyone still looked shell-shocked, jumpy and unsure of themselves. They shared a bemusement, a puzzlement. like nobody quite believed what had happened. They sat close to each other, touching, even clinging, relieved they’d found more people.
‘I think we’re doing okay,’ said Brian, from the mattress beside Sean.
‘Hope so, bro,’ Sean said. He was thinking they’d just come through a time that could have blown them apart. Any number of fates could have finished them — dogs, the rope, Dr Death.
Cally was on the mattress to Sean’s right. He’d helped her pin her taniwha on the wall. Hemi was beyond her, then Marie. Sean leaned back, closed his eyes, breathed deep, and it suddenly came to him what he’d wanted to ask her.
‘Are you okay, girl?’
‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘I like it here. I feel safe with so many people.’
‘How come you were all clean when we found you?’
She looked at him for a long time, trying to work out what he meant. ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘the taniwha looked after me. I didn’t get sick.’ She threw him a sideways glance, like he was a bit simple. ‘Excuse me, I’m going to sleep now, I’m tired,’ she said, and, burrowing under her blankets, she was soon giving off the rhythmic snuffling and snorting of a small creature in repose, oblivious to all about her.
Sean didn’t find sleep so easily, though, and when he finally drifted off he had the first of many strange dreams.
He was back at Pukepoto, Te Rina’s ancestral home. He was walking across McKinleys’ farm towards the Waitangi Stream to find a place where he could take the kids swimming. It was midsummer. Everything was hot and dry. The stream looked idyllic from a distance, an attractive line of cool, green willows, but up close it was a series of dark impenetrable pools ringed with willow roots and choked with fallen trees and floodborne debris. He took his time, climbing the drystone walls and skirting the giant pig-pear tree, wasps buzzing drunkenly around its fermenting windfalls.
As he drew closer something shifted. The willows vanished. The stream was wide and clear. Waving grasses grew on the banks. A few metres back, feathery manuka danced delicately in a gentle breeze. Sunlight glinted on the water tinkling down rapids at the head of a long pool. He’d never seen anything so inviting. He peeled off his clothes and sat in the sun, the grasses tickling his side. He gazed at the water as it fanned out from the base of the rapids and magnified the coloured stones scattered along the stream bed.
Then something happened in his head. There was a noise like boulders cracking and rumbling in a snowmelt mountain torrent. Or maybe it was like the thunder of surf, and the hiss of a wave sweeping up a beach. Or maybe it wasn’t a noise at all. Maybe it was like an eel insinuating itself through a field of marine grass, with the effortless ease of a Bach fugue or a Miles Davis solo. Whatever, it was irresistible.
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��Haere mai!’ it said, but not in words. ‘Haere mai kei roto i te manga.’
Sean didn’t hesitate. He stood up and dived, as far out as he could, and as he hit the water he experienced not the shock of coldness, but immersion in a cloud of emotion: triumph, sadness, pride, compassion and a feeling of great antiquity. He entered another world. He could breathe. His vision was sharper. Images rang in his head.
‘I’m Tinirau. I’ve been swimming the waters of Kiwa’s ocean since your people lived in trees and ate raw flesh. I’m older than Kiwa. I’m older than anyone. I’ve watched the children of the land come and go, the people of the sea too. I endure. I watch, and guard. I’ll be here long after this place is nothing but damp ground.’
Sean started drifting with the current. Above him the water swirled and the sunlight splintered. Chalcedony and carnelian were splashes of blood glinting on the stream bed. Soft grasses grew in the sand by the banks and wafted in the eddies. On the surface, stained glass melted and flowed. Rainbows formed and vanished like little daubs of light from a spinning crystal.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it,’ sounded in Sean’s head like bells pealing.
‘Where are you?’ he asked — or thought.
‘You can’t see me. The sight of me might kill you. But you can believe I’m all around you. I’m the water sparkling in the rapids. I’m the gentle grasses waving in the current. I’m the tuna watching from his hole in the bank. I’m the koura under a rock in the shallow water. I’m the kokopu dreaming in the dappled shadows. See them, you see me. Love them, you love me.’
Sean drifted on, entranced, light and colour incandescent about him. He thought of Cally’s paintings.
‘What about the little girl?’ he asked.
‘Calliope can see me whenever she wants. She understands. She respects and believes. She doesn’t fear me. She even loves me.’
Ahead a darkness grew. The banks closed in, lined with knotted tree roots. The bottom became muddied. Suddenly Sean was afraid.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ came a far-from-reassuring feeling. ‘Nothing here will hurt you. It’s just ugly.’
Sean was plunged into a pit, one of the willow-lined pools. Down he sank, aware of his naked vulnerability as he came close to the sides, tangled roots hiding dark cavities. The water was chilly and tasted bitter. A greenish-grey light was just enough to see by but not bright enough to cheer. His heart froze, and as the bottom came in view he cringed. It was muddy, carpeted with bones, bits of wire, a set of rusted bed-springs, a car chassis, discarded machinery.
‘Welcome to my spare room,’ said the voice, not a trace of amusement. ‘You can stay here as long as you like.’
Sean looked around at the sheep skeletons, the corroding metal. He tasted chemicals in the water. What could he say? He couldn’t think of a worse crime than turning the sparkling stream into this disgusting pit.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He’d been fighting the ugliness for years, but he’d always felt he was still a part of it.
‘So you should be. Did you imagine you were exempt from the workings of the law of cause and effect? Did you think your greed was without price? But most of you are gone now and, even if it’s too late for this place, there are still streams where the kokopu does his nightly dance. You should go there. There’s nothing for you here.’
Sean sank to the bottom, overcome with a dreadful despair. He lay on the mud, his eyes stinging in the now-acrid water, and sobbed.
‘Piki mai, kake mai!’ boomed in his head like the opening bars of a symphony. ‘Stop lying there feeling sorry for yourself. Get up. Calliope asked me to help you so I did, and I’ve given you all the help I feel like giving. You know what to do!’
Sean didn’t know. He just wanted to get out of that dreadful cheerless place and back to the sunlight. He started swimming upwards, choked on the water, and had to hold his breath. When his head broke the surface, he swam to the side of the pool and clambered out, his flesh creeping at the touch of the willow roots. He found his clothes a little way upstream after climbing around pools and over fallen trees. They were hanging in the branches of the dead willow that lay across the dark water. Caught up next to them was the rotting carcass of a sheep, drowned in a recent flood and half eaten by water rats. He dressed quickly and scrambled up the bank, back into the sunlight.
He was on his mattress in the wharenui. It was early morning, just light enough to see. Cally was lying on her side, watching him carefully. Her head was propped on her left hand.
‘I didn’t know your name was Calliope,’ Sean said.
‘Course,’ she replied. ‘It’s Greek. She looks after people who write long poems. I haven’t written one yet, but I’m going to. Did you like where the taniwha took you?’
Sean looked at her. He couldn’t think what to say. What was real? What was a dream? He thought he’d woken up, but as people stirred around them, disturbed by the conversation, he felt disjointed, detached, like the fragile state after a mushroom vision that had blurred all the boundaries and trampled the physical rules.
He pulled himself up against the wall and sat there with his head spinning. Goya-esque images of impaled sheep, accompanied by Verdi arias, strobed and echoed in his mind. Cally called him back.
‘You’ll have to leave here, won’t you?’ she said.
He took a few seconds to collect himself, the realisation slowly dawning on him. Of course he’d have to leave. He’d just been given the hard word, clear and succinct for all its outlandish delivery. He had no idea of the consequences of staying but, looking across at Cally, he knew that, even if he didn’t understand what was happening, he’d best go along with events. Go with the flow, as the old hippies might have said. He felt like an old hippie. He felt like Alice in Wonderland.
‘I’m late, I’m late,’ he muttered.
‘What?’ said Cally.
‘Nothing. It’s just a book about some strange things that happened to a little girl.’ She gave him a hard and searching look. On the wall behind her the jewels on the taniwha sparkled and glowed.
5
EVERY DAY WHILE the autumn lasted, they dug and planted, chopped and gathered, and every night they talked. Some of them hadn’t coped with all the death and the loss of the people they loved. They took extra care with those who hadn’t handled their lives exploding in their faces. When Cathy was confronted with the aftermath of the Fever, she unfocused her vision and turned off her speech. She wasn’t alone in her oblivion and nobody was surprised either.
‘We know this is very difficult,’ Sean or Jim would say. ‘The trick is to find a bright side. And if you do, let us all know.’
The Ngahere people avoided the shops, preferring to compete with the dogs for sheep, search out suburban veggie gardens, and catch eels and pick watercress in the creek behind the school. The kids had guarded that place jealously, Brian said. They started with various ecological studies and had come to love a bit of genuine, wild beauty in their midst. Sean soon found a healing tranquillity in the place, and he often fished there for eels, especially at night with a kero lamp, some ripe bones, sneaked before somebody put them into a stew, and an unbarbed gaff.
‘Here, catch this, little brother!’ Sean would call out as he slung an eel up to where Hemi was waiting on the grassy bank with a taro sack he’d found in the storeroom. Hemi’s black gear was dark green and brown after three or four weeks. He still didn’t say much, but he didn’t miss much either, and he was very quick with the eels. Cally went with them a few times, till Hemi handed her a smallish eel that wrapped itself around her arm and barked.
They smoked the eels in the chimney whenever they weren’t burning treated timber. The boss cook was a fiftyish Pakeha guy called Doug. He’d learned the craft of feeding lots of people without electricity in the army, and while there had sussed that the art of being a good officer was to delegate anything that mattered and take the blame for everything. He kept up an endless supply of black tea for the people who would volunteer to
peel vegetables or do other useful things, so they could take some time to sit on an upturned milk crate by the fire.
‘It burns a lot of wood,’ he’d say, ‘but so what. Plenty of that around.’ There was too. They indulged Kevin by demolishing the Henare block and feeding the timber through the fireplace, roasting meat, simmering stews and boiling rice, taro, potatoes and pasta. They needed the carbohydrate for energy, Marie told them. She took charge of the menus and brought a considerable knowledge of matters dietary and medical to bear on the business of keeping everyone healthy. To Sean’s relief they didn’t have to worry about food or shelter. They cared for each other too, especially those who hadn’t been cared about much before, and that was more people than you might have thought.
Two of the young men were particularly fine examples of parental and societal neglect. Once they recovered from the initial shock they weren’t too distressed by what had happened. Apart from everyone dying, they were even pleased.
‘Saves me the trouble,’ said Puru, a young Black Power prospect, abused and bullied at home, expelled from school and, at only seventeen, already locked into a depressing cycle of crime, court and jail. He didn’t mind seeing everything trashed, he couldn’t have cared less. Finally he was being valued and even liked. Puru took charge of fencing the school playing fields into paddocks and organising a nightly dogwatch to protect their flock of sheep and the three dairy cows they were hoping to milk in the spring.
Brian and Sean used the school metal and woodwork shops to shape their shotguns into sawn-offs, less accurate but very effective under twenty metres. They regularly did the dogwatch, not sleepy for a second after an attack in the first week by a pack of about eight dogs, luckily not too hungry but mean and determined enough. Smart too. The dogs fought in pairs, one attacking noisily from the front while the other came in silently from the side. They must have practised on somebody, Sean said. He told Jim about the rifles in the sports shop.