by Baker Chris
Sean enjoyed the food. Rice salad with chicken pieces and watercress — a huge improvement on soggy Gingernuts. Graeme, the cook, had been running a health shop and restaurant that had been steadily losing money. He’d lost a wife and three young children and he too had the air of somebody waiting to wake up from a bad dream.
Merenia, the woman who led the group, impressed Sean. In her mid-thirties, she was alert and aware of everyone, moving among the people, a word here, a casual caress there. She was obviously used to maintaining harmony in a large family. She didn’t take to Sean. Every time he saw her looking at him she seemed annoyed.
‘I suppose you’re taking Matapihi away,’ she said eventually.
‘He’s going home,’ Sean said. ‘Nothing to do with me. I’m just travelling with him.’ She gave Sean a long, hard look.
‘You’ve got something on you,’ she told him.
‘Nothing a hot bath wouldn’t fix,’ he countered.
‘I don’t believe you. But that’s your business. Just don’t leave anything here.’
Graeme was listening to their conversation and so was a young blonde man, tanned like a surfer. They both looked mystified. Merenia ignored them while she stared at Sean.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be gone in the morning,’ and thinking to allay her fears even further, ‘I’ve got no business in these parts anyway.’
The statement seemed to satisfy her, even if it left the others puzzled. Sean wondered too. What was it with him? What peculiar mark was he carrying? Merenia obviously had te matakite and Sean’s experiences with both Cally and Auntie Mihi had left something with him that had disturbed her. Or maybe it was the manaia he was wearing under his swanny. He simply didn’t know, and he realised there’d be times when he’d have to get tricky and pretend to know more than he did. He thought of the old poem about drinking deep or touching not the waters of the spring of knowledge. He thought too of the possibility of running into people who might see him as a threat. Would they turn him inside out, defending themselves from something he wasn’t even aware of?
Matapihi rescued him. He joined their group and deflected all the attention by thanking Merenia for her hospitality and wishing her every success in the future. It felt like Sean’s last night at Ngahere all over again, except this time it wasn’t him in the frame. They were in the lounge bar, a bilious black, orange and green carpet underfoot and a faint smell of cigarettes and spilt beer still clinging to the furnishings. Somebody was playing the Bee Gees on a boombox. Sean wondered how long the batteries would last.
They slept that night on the bar floor, Bojay grazing in a paddock out the back and Hamu inside at Sean’s feet.
In the morning he tried to be invisible while Matapihi said his farewells to the assembled company. They looked very vulnerable to Sean, a small group of people facing a most uncertain future. He told them they’d be welcome at Ngahere, if they felt like making the journey, and was surprised to see relief on several faces.
‘I mean it,’ he told them. ‘They’ll be glad of the extra people,’ and then, no idea why, he spoke to Merenia. ‘Look out for a guy called Jim,’ he said, thinking of rocks and hard places. ‘Say gidday to him for me.’
Just south of the township was a patch of road where the surface was disintegrating even quicker than elsewhere.
‘C’mon, cuz,’ Sean said to Matapihi. ‘This place gives me the creeps.’
‘I’m not surprised. Hongi killed a lot of people around here. Ate some, took some for slaves. I don’t like it either. Some of them are my bones.’
All was quiet as they rode through Wellsford a few kilometres further south. Sean remembered late-night stops halfway home from Auckland, a brick toilet block by the Plunket rooms and cups of instant coffee on the footpath outside the roadside cafe while the Cresta engine pinged and creaked and he wondered if the car was going to take them all the way home or die out there in what felt like the middle of nowhere.
Near Wellsford, Sean’s curiosity about Matapihi’s moko and gang patch got the better of him. ‘You’re articulate with more than half a brain,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to turn you into an outlaw?’
Matapihi was silent and Sean began to think he was offended by the question. Then Matapihi started talking.
‘I was head boy at my college. I topped the class in Maori studies, English and history. I was all set for an arts degree at university, maybe a career teaching.’ He fell back into silence then spoke again.
‘During the holidays I got into a fight in the pub and bottled this guy. He lost an eye. I got six months for aggravated assault and — depending on how you look at it — things went downhill from there. I met some guys in boob that I liked and I ended up prospecting. My family sent me up north for a new life, but I don’t think they understood just what a big tribe we were. While I was away I got my patch and my moko and I never regretted a thing.’
He told Sean about the fights he’d had with people who called him a smart-arse every time they saw him reading a book.
‘Trouble is I liked fighting as much as I liked reading. Hard to find-a place in that sort of world.’
They both laughed. Matapihi was familiar with the work of poets like Sassoon and writers like Graves. He understood their reluctance as badly led warriors and, like Puru and Mike, he wasn’t particularly upset by society disintegrating.
‘Studying our local history gave me a very useful attitude,’ he said. ‘That and all those people who couldn’t see past the gang patch and the moko.’
They rode on, the shadows lengthening.
‘Do you know anything about Tinirau?’ Sean asked.
Matapihi looked startled at the question.
‘He’s a Polynesian god, isn’t he?’ Matapihi said. ‘He looks after regeneration and rebirth. Why do you ask?’
‘He’s got something to do with all this,’ Sean said. ‘I don’t understand what, but I suspect I’m going to find out.’
Matapihi looked inscrutable. He took a small flute out of his zippered jacket pocket and blew a soft scale. Hamu stopped dead, threw his head back and gave a howl that must have been audible for miles. Matapihi hastily put the flute back in his pocket. ‘Fuck that,’ he said. ‘So much for not attracting attention. We might get some visitors now.’
Just ahead was a small stream, watercress growing by the banks and long grass down to the water. The fence was trampled flat, but they stood it up to provide secure grazing for the horses and, with an ease that was becoming practised, Sean lit a fire. They were soon leaning back against their saddles, with a cup of tea and some rice salad leftovers.
Sean and Matapihi didn’t have to wait long for their visitors. The short northern dusk was over in half an hour. Hamu growled and, when they looked up, they saw a shadow with a bushy tail slink past, just beyond the circle of firelight. They barely had time to get back to back. The first dog was right on Sean before he could shoot, but he stunned the animal with the butt and shot it in the head as it got to its feet. Sean shot another in mid-air, as it leapt at him, and another as it attacked from the side, sinking its teeth into Sean’s calf, its grip suddenly vanishing as its hindquarters shattered. Sean could hear yelps and snarls, kicks and blows, as Matapihi used his tomahawk and knife. Then, from the darkness, came a sickening thump and a large Shepherd landed right in the fire, scattering coals and bowling the billy with a hiss and a cloud of steam. The attack stopped instantly. The two men looked around. A huge dark shape snorted, shook its head with a jangle of harness, and went back to its munching. They looked at each other, then at the seven or eight dead dogs lying at their feet. Sean grinned. Curried dog.
Hamu wasn’t going to wait for curry. They built the fire up again and, by its light, Sean cut a hind leg off the black Lab that Hamu had been fighting. He took it off into the long grass on the other side of the fire, growling as loud as his messy mouthful would allow.
‘I’d prefer a Big Mac and fries,’ Sean said,
already started on the other leg. ‘But let’s not get too fussy.’
The dog looked to be middle-aged and, being warm and soft, didn’t butcher as easily as a sheep hung overnight, but they weren’t talking cordon bleu. They weren’t even talking Gordon Brown. Sean diced the meat, complete with bits of grass and foreign bodies, mostly obscured in the flickering light. They fried the meat in oil with plenty of salt and curry powder and let it stew in whisky. While it was cooking, Matapihi cleaned Sean’s leg with whisky, smeared on some antiseptic cream and bandaged it. He was as fussy as Marie about infection and had some cheerful words to say about gangrene and radical surgery with a panel saw. They drank whisky with the curried dog.
‘Useful stuff, this,’ said Matapihi, holding up the bottle. ‘Wounds and cooking.’ He tried some more of the curried dog. ‘This is really horrible.’ He screwed up his face. ‘I’d better have another plateful.’ He finished and wiped his tin plate clean with a handful of grass. Sean did the same before they sat back with the last of the whisky.
‘You can tell me your story and I’ll tell you mine,’ Matapihi said.
So Sean told him about Te Rina and the kids and life at Pukepoto, the stone walls, the eels in the creek, the patch of taro and the bags of kanga wai below the puna.
‘We had running water,’ Sean told him. ‘Run down the hill and get it.’ A little eel had lived in the puna. It kept the water clean and sweet.
‘Every bath night I had to cart a dozen jerrycans of water up the hill. I had to do it again on washing days.’ Sean drifted back into memories of Te Rina and the kids. Matapihi spoke very gently.
‘What happened after they were gone?’
‘Hard times, bro. But I guess we were lucky. A group of us made ourselves at home on the high-school marae.’
‘How come you left?’ Sean looked at Matapihi. Maybe he’d understand.
‘I had a dream,’ he said. ‘A taniwha told me to go.’ Matapihi didn’t seem surprised, but he’d been embarrassed when Sean mentioned the Fever. Before Sean could ask him why, Matapihi started on his own story.
Matapihi had been living on the coast, out from Waipoua Forest, near a place called Kawerua. Sean had dived in the lagoon there, for kina and lobster. He’d been aware of a settlement on the fringe of the forest, nestled in the coastal scrub, avoided and feared by everyone he knew, north and south of the forest.
Matapihi lived there for a year after he’d been patched up. The people there gave him his moko, designs he’d never seen before, telling him he was now marked as belonging to them. And never mind the modern needles. They’d used the old method, chiselling the skin and rubbing in pigment so his face looked carved. He’d never known pain like it, he said.
‘What about the Fever?’ Sean asked him. ‘Wasn’t that pain just as bad?’ Matapihi looked away.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get sick and nor did anyone else in the kainga.’
Sean nearly dropped the whisky bottle in surprise. ‘What do you mean, "nobody got sick"?’
‘And that’s not all,’ Matapihi continued. ‘There was no electricity, no radio or TV, and, as far as I know, no contact with anyone, except maybe one or two forestry workers. But the people in the kainga seemed to know exactly what was happening. They even predicted it; about three months before it all hit the fan. They knew when I should leave. "Go and look after your own," they said. They predicted you too. They had you down as a threesome. I had no idea two of you would be a horse and a dog. Maybe that’s their little joke.’
Sean was speechless. First Cally and the taniwha, then Auntie Mihi. Now Matapihi and his people.
‘What did they say about the Fever?’ he asked.
‘They said it was "utu",’ Matapihi replied. ‘I suppose you know what "utu" really means?’
‘It means "price". It’s got more to do with the law of cause and effect than revenge.’
‘You got it. Forget all that Hollywood crap. It’s karma, simple as that.’ They were both silent then, gazing into the fire. Sean remembered Auntie Mihi telling him he’d pick up pieces of the story along the way. Matapihi’s tale felt like a big piece.
From there south to Auckland, about seventy kilometres, the subdivisions and settlements grew thicker. From Orewa it felt to Sean like an attenuated suburbia, houses most of the way, occasional ‘lifestyle blocks’ and patches of bush covering land too steep or unstable for building. At the turn-off to Paremoremo, they looked at each other, imagining the scenes that had played out in that sad place. They saw people who fled at the sight of the two travellers, even though they were dismounted and seated by a fire.
‘Fuck it,’ said Sean. ‘Maybe they had some decent tea. I could have used a cuppa.’
‘They probably think we come from Pare,’ said Matapihi. He looked depressed. ‘I’ve never even been there. I did my time in Mt Eden and that place was horrible enough.’
Sean had to agree with him. He remembered doing a week on remand. He’d got all bloody-minded and refused to admit to anything, even his name and address. The judge had seen fit to administer the ‘short sharp shock’ he probably hoped would bring an endless queue of young men to their senses. It must have worked. Sean didn’t do it again. One week in that mouldering, medieval pile of black rock, in a wing with the rapists and child molesters, eating food that made Gregory’s Kai Kart menu look like haute cuisine, was enough for him. He pleaded guilty, grovelled, and got a suspended sentence.
A few hours later, the sun set and darkness gathering, they rode around the corner that once gave a spectacular view of the illuminated glory of downtown Auckland. The city was dark and the harbour bridge spanned the Waitemata in near invisibility. A little way on, they rode past the site of the old Barry’s Point tip and Sean thought of Archie Green, the poet who used to visit their house, drunk and horny enough to make a leg-humping dog look restrained. At one stage Archie had lived in the tip, in a humble dwelling cobbled together from timber scraps and cardboard boxes and furnished with a discarded mattress and other unwanted accoutrements. He had found a girlfriend, a recent resident at the old Kingseat Psychiatric Centre, and, for a few weeks, local residents had been beguiled nightly by the unrestrained cries of Archie and his paramour in the transports of passion. People complained. The authorities had been unable to ignore Archie. They’d bulldozed his dwelling, forcing him and his girlfriend back into the frosty bosom of polite society, where, in their efforts to remain free-spirited and creative, they’d caused much alarm and consternation in public places and especially in Sean’s home.
But all was silent now, carpet warehouses alongside paint factories hiding their secrets in the growing gloom. No mangroves until Sean and Matapihi came right to the motorway leading to the harbour bridge. Movable barriers across the road ahead were just visible as they rode towards them and by the time they got there the darkness was complete. Sean was listening to the horses’ hooves when suddenly a diesel generator burst into life and the whole area was blasted with light.
He resisted the temptation to stare into the spots and floods and he saw the welcoming committee just as the leader spoke. There were four of them, old-style petrolheads, with greasy jeans and leather jackets. Each had a rifle trained on the pair. They looked barely out of their teens.
‘Tolls,’ the fellow said. ‘Some of whatever you’re carrying.’ He didn’t sound too convincing. Sean thought of Crocodile Dundee — ‘Just kids having fun.’ Matapihi rode forward. Sean watched the group take in his moko and his dog’s head tee shirt.
‘We’ve got fuck-all of anything,’ Matapihi said. ‘But I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You’ll stand politely to one side while we ride on through, and nobody will get killed.’
Sean saw two of the young men swallow nervously and, over the sound of the generator, he heard the ‘snick’ of safety catches being released. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hamu trot forward, cock a leg and pee on the generator. There was a shower of sparks, a small explosion, a loud yelp and
they were plunged into blackness. Matapihi must have been as familiar as Sean with moving around in darkness. They both reacted a lot quicker than the young petrolheads. They rode ahead together and for good measure Sean drew his sawn-off and fired a blast into the air.
They slowed their brisk trot at the top of the bridge. The moon glowed over the city. Sean could see Matapihi on his horse. He was shaking with laughter and he burst into a loud guffaw at the same time as Sean.
‘Dogs one, humans nil,’ he chuckled.
Downtown Auckland was dark and empty, shop windows broken and rubbish blowing in the streets. The place felt even more depressing than at the height of the mid-nineties power crisis.
‘Okahu Bay,’ said Matapihi. ‘Round the waterfront.’
The harbour felt better, more wholesome than the empty buildings and immobile cranes outlined against the rising moon. Yellow and gibbous, it showed the face of a young Polynesian girl, as clearly defined as in one of Cally’s paintings. They passed the Parnell swimming baths and the yacht club, the sea loud against the retaining wall and pohutukawa trees growing over the road.
‘Good night for eels,’ Matapihi said. ‘Not so good for fishing in the sea. Too much light.’ He sounded nervous. ‘I haven’t seen my family for ages. I’ve been resigned to the worst for a long time now.’
Sean thought about Matapihi’s family, his parents, brothers and sisters. Not the homecoming he must have dreamed of.
8
THE FOLK AT OKAHU BAY wept over Matapihi. They laughed and cried and hugged and kissed him. They didn’t let him out of their sight. All the time they were close to him, embracing him, touching him, and for three days not letting him do a stroke of work. He didn’t mind. He was pleased to be home, among his family. His parents were dead and so were three brothers and two sisters. Everybody tangi’d over the grave, so many people dead, seven in one hole.
‘At least they’re all together,’ he said.
Sean was made welcome too. He was aware they’d killed the fatted possum, so to speak. They served up pork and fish, and three times they killed two cattle that fed the four hundred or so of them for nearly a week each.