by Baker Chris
‘I’m the proprietor,’ the fellow said. ‘But we haven’t had many visitors lately.’
‘What happened?’ Sean replied. ‘Lions scare them off?’
They turned into the drive and rode through a gate in a four-metre chainmesh fence topped with barbed wire.
‘We’re safe in here,’ the guy said as he shut the gate behind them. ‘The lions are all outside the park now.’ Cattle grazed peacefully on lush pasture. Sean saw horses and goats. The drive led up to a large old colonial house, a verandah on two sides and fruit trees growing in a lawn where half a dozen sheep didn’t even look up. Swans cruised on a lake surrounded by kahikatea and rimu and a colourful mix of smaller trees. Variegated coprosmas and pittosporums, with red, yellow and green flaxes beneath, covered the banks, and raupo grew in the shallow water at the lake edge. A row boat was tied to a small jetty.
‘There’re stables around the back,’ their new acquaintance said. ‘You can drop your gear at the back door.’ He led the way to the stables where all three watered the horses and carried large bundles of hay to adjacent stalls.
‘You’ll be safe here,’ Sean whispered to Bojay. ‘Not sure about me and Kevin though.’
The guy was whistling as he unsaddled his horse and hung his rifles on the wall. What was the song? Sean knew it, but it hovered just out of reach. As they walked back to the house, it came to him. ‘Bad Moon Rising.’ Their mate was singing it now, with what sounded like a gleeful anticipation.
12
‘I COULD USE A DRINK,’ their friend said. ‘I suppose you could yourselves, after your little encounter.’ He stopped suddenly.
‘My name’s Zed. Like that redneck sheriff in Pulp Fiction.’ He grinned. ‘But I’m not a bit like him.’
‘Pleased to hear it.’ Sean remembered a grisly scene of rape and torture where people had been attacked with a Samurai sword.
‘If I get drunk enough I’ll probably tell you where my name came from,’ he promised as he flung the back door wide on a scene that mixed Kerouac and Hemingway. Lion-skin rugs lay on the floor, books and paper covered every available surface. A large and ornate bong sat in the middle of the kitchen table next to a kero lamp. A candle sprouted from what looked like a lion skull.
‘How about some tucker first?’ Zed said. ‘Steak and chips do you guys?’
He lit the wood range and two of the candles in the growing gloom, then left the room, returning with a jug and three glasses. ‘Home brew,’ he said. ‘Just the thing for a large thirst and a sore backside.’ It was thick and treacly, as good a stout as Sean had ever tasted. ‘Good health. Or rack and ruin,’ Zed toasted. ‘Hard to tell the difference these days.’
The steak, produced from a meat safe in the wall and cut on a well-scrubbed block, was delicious and so were the chips. Neither Sean nor Kevin had eaten food like it for months and they couldn’t believe how good the home brew tasted.
‘I just killed a cattle beast,’ Zed said. ‘Most of it’s in barrels of brine but I do like a bit of steak. Blood, you know.’ That sounded sinister to Sean. Why wasn’t he more on edge? The answer came to him with his third or fourth glass of stout. The guy seemed familiar, comfortable. Sean was sitting across the table from somebody who wasn’t really very different. No wonder he had felt alarmed. No wonder warning bells had sounded.
‘Had enough?’ Zed said. ‘Coffee and other treats in the lounge.’ He cleared the table and lit the kero lamp, loading an antique trolley with the lamp, the bong, a coffee pot off the stove, and cups and glasses. Wheeling the trolley from the room he gestured for Sean and Kevin to follow, through a wide hallway. Tapa cloth was tacked up behind framed paintings on the walls. Wooden floors marked with knobby tyre tracks led into a large room with comfortable furniture, and a stripped-down motorbike occupied the far end. Zed pushed the trolley to a large, low table and pulled three armchairs within reach. From a glass-fronted cabinet with a stuffed peacock on top, he took a corked bottle, an ancient kauri tobacco tin, an inlaid wood humidor and a rack of pipes.
‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ he said. ‘This’ll be a long night, I hope.’
It was, and it was probably unforgettable too, except neither Sean nor Kevin could remember large parts of it. Zed poured them a coffee, uncorked the bottle and carefully measured an inch into each of three tumblers. The liquid was clear and oily and looked harmless enough to Sean. They toasted absent friends — for once the words really meant something — and following Zed’s lead Sean tossed back his drink. It exploded inside him. He dropped the glass and grasped the chair arms. He hacked and coughed and clutched himself while Kevin looked on in horror. Zed sat unperturbed, waiting for Sean’s paroxysm to finish.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said. He was right. Sean did, but he sipped his next few drinks, especially after Zed said his motorcycle ran like a rocket on the liquid. Kevin didn’t touch his drink. He carefully placed his glass on the table and asked if Zed had any more stout. He did. He left the room, returning with three bottles and an opener. Kevin surveyed the largesse like a dog who’d just discovered an extra tail, poured himself a glass and took a discreet sip.
Zed had built a still. He also grew his own tobacco and some extremely strong dak. As he had since his youth, he devoted a lot of his life to the production and consumption of intoxicants.
‘I used to think I did this as an act of rebellion,’ he told Sean and Kevin. ‘But now there’s no point.’ He laughed as he passed Sean the bong. ‘Anyway I just like the taste.’
Zed’s father was Irish, a scholar from Dublin steeped in Greek myths and legends. That was why he had been named Xerxes, in the face of strong protests from his aristocratic Maori mother who would have preferred something a little more local.
‘They gave me rissoles at school,’ he said. ‘So when I left I started calling myself Zed and buggered off to Aussie for ten years.’
When he returned he married, probably because it made everyone else happy, and bought the lion park.
‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
Then along came the Fever. As soon as he was able to move, he opened the gates and let all the lions out.
‘You guys only saw two,’ he said. ‘But they breed like rabbits. There must be dozens out there.’
Life got simple then. For the first nine months Zed lived by himself, almost going crazy from loneliness and despair. But he kept himself sane growing vegetables and securing his stock inside the fences that were now keeping the lions out. He also caught eels and carp in the lake, kept bees, ducks and chooks
‘We’re a day’s ride from the markets at Waikanae,’ he said ‘I trade meat and eggs for things like candles, salt, coffee and ammunition. But I’ve got pretty much everything I need here. Pretty much.’
He looked over Sean’s shoulder at the door and the expression on his face changed. Slowly he got to his feet and stood swaying. Sean and Kevin turned and saw in the doorway a young woman. Sean struggled to focus and struggled even more to stand. He didn’t make it. He fell back in the chair and settled for an upraised hand and a ‘Hi!’ But it didn’t matter. She wore exactly the same look as Cathy at Ngahere, complete with the thousand-yard stare and the slack features that suggested nobody was at home and only a twenty-five-watt bulb had been left burning.
‘This is Fiona,’ said Zed. ‘Come in, girl, make yourself comfortable.’ She didn’t move and her expression didn’t change. Zed moved unsteadily around the table. Taking her hand he led her gently to an armchair near his and helped her to sit.
‘She’s been here for six months,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about her. I even had to give her a name. I talk to her and I still have no idea if she hears me.’
He’d found Fiona at the Waikanae markets. He was just leaving one day, saddlebags full of goods he’d traded, when she approached unnoticed and laid her hand on his stirruped boot. What could he do? He ascertained from some of the stallholders that she was on her own and had run away from every atte
mpt to provide her with a home. He brought her back, behind him on his horse, and she barely moved even when they were attacked by a lion that he had to shoot from the saddle. He washed her, gave her a room of her own and some of his wife’s clothes to wear — ‘They looked better on her anyway’ — and had been caring for her ever since.
‘And here’s the corny bit. It’s so predictable I’d never have written it. I fell in love with her and not only that but the constant sight of her causes the worst case of unrequited lust since Cleopatra told Mark Antony she had a headache.’ Absently he poured them each another drink and recharged the bong. Sean tried to look alert. Kevin tried not to look disapproving. Fiona gazed off into the distance while they sipped and smoked. Zed leaned over occasionally to pat her hand on the chair arm and murmur some endearment.
Sean couldn’t remember much after that, though Kevin occasionally took the trouble to remind him. Zed banged on about Ireland, Kevin would say. ‘Who cares if they put up statues of drunks and poets?’ Sean had talked some incredible nonsense too, Kevin said. Little of it had made sense to the young man. Sean suspected that while Kevin had listened bewildered, Sean had imagined himself the James Joyce of the Antipodes. Kevin must have wondered what he had struck, watching Sean swinging on a bong and pouring out the contents of his tortured soul. Sean and Zed even decided to fight each other, except when they got up they both fell over. Zed had lain on the floor bellowing poetry at the top of his voice.
Sean awoke in the morning still in the armchair, clutching a neatly folded blanket with no idea where he was. Slowly intelligence returned, aided by the sight of the motorcycle and by Kevin snoring gently in the next chair. Had they really spent an evening drinking motorbike fuel and smoking lethal herb with an Irish-Maori poet?
Zed came in with a pint of stout in one hand and a large brown egg in the other. While Sean shook his head, gently, Zed broke the egg into the drink and, reaching down to the table, picked up a ring spanner to stir the concoction. He handed it to Sean, who struggled to an upright position and took the drink.
‘Cheers,’ said Zed. ‘Get it into you.’ Kevin watched aghast while Sean gulped the handle down.
When Sean’s stomach had reached an understanding with the vile elixir, he realised that he felt better. Revived, in fact.
‘More steak and chips in the kitchen,’ Zed said as he wheeled and stepped lightly out of the room.
That was the pattern for the next three days — heaps of good food; smoke, drink and verbal pyrotechnics at night and a good heart-starter in the morning. Each day they worked in the mornings, gardening, repairing fences, looking after the stock. In the afternoons Zed played, mostly tinkering with his motorbikes. Both Sean and Kevin declined his offer to go hunting. Neither felt like that sort of excitement and they both discovered they just didn’t like shooting things. They asked if Zed had seen any sign of Colin.
‘That must have been him!’ Zed exclaimed. ‘I wondered who’d be crazy enough.’
About two weeks previously he’d heard a motorbike go through at speed, but he hadn’t seen the rider and he didn’t hear the bike slow down.
Zed had a motocross track in an adjacent paddock. Fiona, Sean and Kevin were watching as he screamed and blatted around, airborne on the jumps and showing a skill that had kept him up with the best at the Saturday night speedways in the Old Times.
At the back of the track he miscalculated and came off and, despite his helmet, caught something sharp across his forehead. He was on his feet straight away, picked the bike up and was about to mount and ride on when he saw Fiona’s reaction. She was screaming and pointing at the blood starting to run down his face. He must have heard her — they probably heard her in Foxton. As he realised what the noise was and where it was coming from, the blood ran into his eyes, blinding him and making him stagger. Fiona’s screaming went up several decibels. She dropped the basket of puha she was holding and ran to him, arms outstretched like she was in some Hollywood love scene.
Zed was no fool. It took him only a split second to twig that the sight of the blood had burst some psychological dam in Fiona. He let the bike fall, met her with open arms and held her while she screamed and sobbed till she was hoarse, dry, and probably as sane as any of them.
Back in the house, a cup of tea at the kitchen table, Fiona talked in a broad Geordie accent.
‘Thanks for looking after us, Zed, man,’ she said after she heard the tale of where she was and how she came to be there. She couldn’t believe she’d been out to lunch for nearly a year and a half. She and her parents had lain down with what she knew from the telly was a really dreadful illness. She’d woken up. They hadn’t, and that’s all she could remember. But she amazed the company with the speed of her adjustment and her acceptance of circumstances so radically different to her memories.
‘I’ve been talking to you since the day I met you,’ Zed told her. ‘Some of it must have got through.’
Her real name was Glenda, but she much preferred Fiona. When Zed suggested she lie down for a while, have a little rest, she told him no way, she was here now and here to stay. Her words trailed off as she passed out and slumped forward. Zed caught her and carried her to her room where she slept for a day and a half. She finally emerged with a puzzled look, saying ‘Who am I? Where is this?’ These were familiar questions, to Zed and Sean at least, and they spent the next week answering them patiently and carefully. Fiona had LIFE SUX tattooed on her left arm, as well as the name JOHNNO, done herself in gothic lettering. Things came back to her in a steady flow. By the end of the week, she was talking about her father spending his redundancy money from the engineering works on tickets to a new life in New Zealand. He’d had no trouble getting work, she said, but the car-parts factory had closed and he was redundant here as well. The pay-out was soon spent on bills Fiona was eighteen, doing an animal husbandry course at the polytech when the Fever swept over the country. Gradually she remembered wanting to be somewhere else, somewhere safer than a world where bad things could happen to the people you loved and probably would.
The four of them were comfortable, like old mates almost. But Sean could see that as Fiona grounded herself more and more in the low-tech reality of their daily lives four was two too many. Zed probably thought so too, though it seemed to suit him having Sean and Kevin round as a hedge against the more alarming commitments and undertakings of intimacy.
Sean and Kevin talked one day and decided they’d best leave. They asked Zed about crossing Cook Strait.
‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘I know a guy in Wellington with a motorised scow. He makes regular trips to the Mainland, as long as the weather is right. The horses will be fine on the deck.’
It sounded feasible and, after months of worrying about the crossing, Sean seized on the idea. Three days later they left.
They formed a watchful caravan. Zed’s dog, Porkus, stuck close to Fiona in the middle. Sean and Kevin, Hamu, Bojay and Sofa travelled in the rear, alert for lions and pleased to be on the move again.
They camped out twice, on a grassy paddock with rusting swings and a disintegrating slide at Paekakariki, and on the outskirts of Porirua.
‘We’re safe here,’ Zed said as they made camp within the view of several young people who called out and waved. ‘These folk know me. I used to have family here.’
Didn’t we all, Sean thought. Hadn’t they parted company with a lot of people, parents, children, partners, friends? Hadn’t they struggled to come to grips with losing everything that was comfortable and familiar, and all the people they’d loved? Sean supposed the shrinks and psychologists would have had some useful advice on the matter.
‘You have to integrate all your experiences,’ they might have said.
‘I’m doing it, I’m doing it!’ Sean might have replied.
On the third day they came to Kaiwharawhara, where the ferries used to berth while journeying to and from Picton. There they met Geoff.
‘How the fuck are ya?’ he cried as s
oon as he recognised Zed, dropping the sack that he’d been carrying and flinging his arms wide. Geoff had been a seaman since he left school. He’d loved and fought in most of the world’s major ports, and in some of its more exotic backwaters as well. He was Celtic and something Polynesian, a mixture that Sean was already aware caused both volatility and indifference to many conventional considerations. But while Sean was of average height and build and had learned to conduct himself accordingly, Geoff looked like a rugby flanker, two metres tall and rangy. He walked in an athletic crouch, arms swinging loosely like weapons. Geoff had met Colin.
‘That prick!’ he said. ‘I had to throw him and his motorbike overboard.’ Kevin almost choked on a piece of roast mutton at the thought of Colin and his conveyance hurtling through the air and splashing into the tide.
‘He tried to stick me for the fare,’ Geoff said. ‘It was only two dollars.’ Normally Geoff would extract a fare from his passengers before departure, but this day they’d been in a hurry to catch the tide. They were a few metres from their destination, the Lake Grassmere groyne, when Geoff finally got a chance to confront Colin.
‘Where’s the money?’ Geoff had asked. Colin had apparently made some reference to Geoff’s dreams. He had also laughed, but what had really upset Geoff was when Colin pulled a knife on him.
‘That’s when I threw the jerk overboard,’ he said. ‘Him and his bike.’
Geoff became thoughtful when he saw Kevin’s reaction, joy and relief at the thought of Colin meeting a watery end. He turned to the young man.
‘There’s obviously something serious between you guys, so what I have to say is probably bad news.’ Kevin’s shoulders slumped.
‘I might have known,’ he said. ‘Go on. Tell me.’
Geoff didn’t intend killing Colin and he’d thrown him overboard only fifty metres from the breakwater. He’d turned and was hoisting a sail to take advantage of the wind they’d been battling into, when he happened to glance back at the breakwater. Colin had swum to safety and having climbed to the top of the jumble of boulders was cursing as loudly as he could and giving Geoff the fingers.