by Alan Duff
When it rained, the rubbish in the gutters’d block up the drains, have the street awash with its own gunge, its own discarded filth — oo, we Pine Blockers are our own worst enemies — and it might rain for days and so it’d rise up, the flooding, and creep up over the front lawns — if you could call some ofem lawns — form little lakes, ponds, puddles, and the kids — always the kids in Pine Block, the place is teeming withem, we’re shit breeding more shit faster than the sewers can handle — the kids’d turn up.
They’d turn the lawns to sludge pits, quagmires, traipse mud and dirt around withem. Even to bed. Even beds with no sheets. Bloody animals — not the kids, it ain’t their fault — the parents. Catch one of mine going to bed without at least a wash and there’d be trouble. As for no sheets.
Parents too drunk or half the time missing, boozing up somewhere, at the pub, in another blimmin town some ofem, where they’d ended up in their drunken state and with a whole tribe of kids left at home with not a brass razoo to feed emselves on. Jesus Christ, but a woman’d never done that, as drunk as she’d been. I make sure my kids come first. Their food, anyrate. What can a woman do about their future, their education? It ain’t in my hands. Not on my own. Not living here, in Pine Block, Two Lake’s dumping ground for its human rubbish. It’s all of us; we need to get together — talk and try and sort ourselves out. Before it’s too late. If we haven’t already missed the bus.
And when the rain’d stopped and the lawns’d dried out and the council’d come (late, as usual) and unblocked the drains, the mud patches became deserts; little deserts and dustbowls that the horrible untamed kids could come back to and sit by, twiddle, and scratching with their mindless, hardened little toes that’d hardly known a shoe between em, using implements, a stick, a nail, anything, scraping scratching digging gouging at the earth till dust filled the air and clogged up their flared, wild little nostrils. Then, satisfied they’d done some damage, they moved elsewhere to wreck ruin something else.
And when the rain came back and filled the craters they’d made, the kids came back and sailed blocks of wood with a nail hammered centre and scissored (if a pair could be found) sails made from plastic shopping bag or pierced cardboard or newspaper, down there on their hardened little knees blowing like crazy, urging their vessels on, swearing and cursing at the things as they practised being rough and tough. You could hear em from upstairs, the little buggers. Then, bored, they’d move off to another place.
Might be a car wreck; in there amongst the cobwebs and rusty, dangerous protrusions and springs shot out like broken Jack-in-the-boxes, and oases patches of upholstery, and soil marks, and dried food scraps, and the smell of piss, and sperm stains — (once Beth’d watched a kid — oh, the poor little bugger — one rainy afternoon out her bedroom window, a wreck across the street, and knew from the jerking movements the poor little fucker was masturbating. Made her weep. Turn her eyes away and weep. Love, she thought. That’s all the kid is wanting, love. And having to take it from himself because there ain’t no other source, Beth instincted out. Made her feel like rushing down there and bringing the youth back to her bed and giving him, you know, a real good rooting. Just to make him feel good.) — And for some, the car wrecks were home.
You could go past of an evening and see em huddled up in there with some old blanket or nothing at all, just this pathetic shape cringed in the frozen outline of a broken-down car. And the strains of music coming from inside the house it was sat outside of. May as well’ve been a gravestone. And those arseholes in there drinking up large, having a ball thank you very much and fuck the kid out there huddled up and dying, his heart anyway, he got sent out there because he was bad, he done something we didn’t like, or he exists and we can’t stand his existence, he’s such a, oh, we don’t know, we just don’t like him. Even though he’s of their loins. Jesus. Any wonder some ofem grew up wanting to join the gang that’d won the struggle in Pine Block, the Brown Fists. Though there were kids who’d joined with their archrivals, the Black Hawks, across town, and so got to do battle, often fatal, with their Pine Blocks brothers and cousins and childhood friends. Maori against Maori. And thousands ofem each side across the country. And hardly a one working; the government, the good old government, paying em to do crimes against each other and society.
Beth’d heard a whisper from her children that her eldest, Nig (my Nig), was looking to joining up. Had a woman confronting her seventeen-year-old, asking him outright, and he saying, None of your business, how they do these kids they don’t remember nothing of what you did forem. And she warning him, you better not be joining up with no Brown Fists, mista, or you and me are through. She didn’t mean it. Only wanted to scare him; Beth assuming that the intensity of her love for her son was matched by an equal reciprocating love. Nig just looking at her that way he did (oo, he knows how to hurt me), saying nothing, just looking with those glistening brown eyes looking hurt, those handsome features so much like his father, but Nig’s more refined, more handsome. Just looking. So Beth conceding, giving a little: Well, alright, I didn’t actually mean we are finished, kaput. But, son, you got to think of the future.
Nig saying, what future? No future for a Maori. And walking off. Rocked a woman to the core.
And her other children, they were coming up to the same troublesome age as Nig. Abe, fifteen. Is he next? Boogie, fourteen, and already getting into more and trouble at school. Grace — well, I don’t know about her. I never could get through to her. Something about her, I dunno. But she’s growing up all the time, she’s even got hairs on her whatsit. And her period. Polly, only ten and she still sleeps with her doll, and Huata, he’s only seven, so a mother’s got those two at least for a few more years. Though the years they do go by. And all too soon. Why, I can remember like yesterday being a teenager myself. Now I’m double the age. And about five times the misery! hahaha! A woman has to laugh or she’d cry. And Beth née Ransfield, she was no weepy weakling. Just confounded, that’s all.
Funny place, this Pine Block: you could predict it, the moods of the people, tell what day it was by the signs. Thursday to Sunday — the clink of beer bottles in their crates, the wafts of takeaway food aromas from Kentucky Fried to Chinese to burgers and, staple diet of Pine Block kids, fishnchips.
Mondays, starting to go on the cadge some ofem.
Tuesdays, hide your surplus you got any or someone’ll break your heart and your cupboards while they’re at it with a sad story.
Wednesdays, broke. The lot of us. Or nearly the lot. Even those with jobs, they’re only workers on a worker’s wage. So Wednesdays, they dreamed …
Tomorrow, man, gonna get my dole money and buy me some Chinese. Gonna buy me lotsa Chinese. And fuck the power bill. Spare ribs, man, oh far out. And a loafa bread. And butter thick, man, gonna dip it in that sauce they do and gonna stuff myself. I am, man. Yeow, brother, you dream away. Ain’t dreaming, man. Tomorrow, gonna do. And after I’ve had the ribs I’m gonna buy me a cooked chicken from the Hindu’s. The Hindu’s? Man, they ain’t chickens, they’re chooks. Y’c’d string a tennis racket withem, man. Aw, c’mon man, they ain’t that bad. They fuckin are. Well, I like em. You like anything. So what, man? So you got to have the bread, brother. The bread to pay for the stuff. Well like I said, man, tomorrow I’ll have the bread. Ah, man, you call what they give you on the dole bread? Well it ain’t fuckin porridge, man. And it ain’t bread, neither. Less’n a hundred bucks a week if you’re single, you call that bread? Well it beats having to work for it, man. I mean, work … just the thought of it makes me tired. I’d rather have a job that earns decent bread, man, steada this hanging out all fuckin week for a lousy less’n hundred bucks. How long does it last? Brother, it ain’t gonna last me one day by the time I’m finished tomorrow. Buyin pork bones too. I’ll be waiting for his truck to come, the Pork Bone Man. Gonna be waiting with that look, you know, real cool, casual, eh, like I just won something. The horses, like I just won a big trifecta or sumpthin. Or this Lotto. Man, wha
t I wouldn’t do to win that. Million bucks first prize. But hey, what would I be doing standing in the middle of Pine Block waiting for some cunt to arrive with overpriced pork bones? Eh brother? You wouldn’t see me for dust. So where would you be then, man? I’d. I’d — a frown creasing the brow, having to think about that one, really think about it — Well, not Pine Block thaz for sure. Maybe, brother, but you’d be back. Back what? Back here, where you started. Come on … When the bread ran out you’d be back. Ran out? Man, how’s a fuckin cool million gonna run out? Same way as it ran in, bro — luck. When it’s in, it’s in. But it always goes. And half the time don’t come back. What we all count on in this shit joint, Pine Block — luck. No wonder a man’s gettin himself drunk all the time: it’s the — the — the. No word for it. Not even so simple a word as frustration. It’s being what we are, man, that’s what’ll bring you back. That’s what keeps us drunk. Luck.
Luck. Beth! Beth! The hell is she? Jake that day had come striding out to Beth hanging out yet another load of washing. I got lucky, Beth! Carrying an armful of something, looking like he’d just won this new craze, Lotto. But not first prize. Despite Jake’s tone, despite that armful of parcels. That’d be wishing for the impossible. So Beth turning her back, back to the washing and that ever-reminding view of lucky Trambert’s acreage, his big old house half hidden in the trees over there. And Jake standing there saying, Beth, Beth, listen to me. Look what I got for us. And for you.
All six foot three inches of hard-muscled towering man of him, and Beth playing it cool, and just a little bit coy because you never knew his being lucky might run into her being lucky (he hasn’t touched me in ages) and smiling at him making an appearance between a shirt of his and a pair of Grace’s underpants. I got lucky. Smiling all over. But Beth sighing, what kind of luck? The kind that you can bank? And him grinning, Maybe. Her heart doing a little leap at that: What, you mean no worries about where the next meal is coming from? Surely not.
So she stopped her doings. Looked up at him, his head poking over the washing line wire. No fooling around, Jake. I ain’t in the mood. What luck? And him doing a sway, with a sexy grin, or maybe he was just being stupid, and drawling, Guess what I got for you? And her thinking, it can be anything. Don’t care what. Because it’ll be the first time in years. Playing along with his game, thinking he’d finally had a win on the horses that he spent half his dough on. Come over here.
Beckoning her to step away from the washing, he doing so first, going down on his haunches on the long grass of back lawn it took him all his time to borrow next-door’s mower, cut the damn thing, having to spread with his big mits an area flat where he laid out his newspaper-wrapped parcels. Couldn’t be much of anything flash, not in newspaper. But Beth feeling sort of excited about it. So tell me, she sat herself down beside the parcels, counting em, four, five, six. Six surprises. Must be something good.
Jake opening the first, taking his sweet time, doing it page by page and Beth being able to read last year’s local news about the mayor presenting someone before the contents finally revealed itself. A crayfish. Crayfish? Jake, you haven’t been up to nothing bad, have you? Nah, don’t be stupid. Grinning. Alright? Beth brushing her forehead, Wow. Course it’s alright. She hadn’t had crayfish in that long it wasn’t worth trying to remember. And the bees buzzing away in the background (and fat blowflies too, don’t forget them, Beth) and someone with a motor mower going, and a plane humming around up there somewhere in the nice summer blue, oh but this is a nice change. Crayfish.
For us? And Jake unwrapping another of the lovely red beasts, I don’t even have to cook em. Jake stroking — stroking — the things, and oh, it must be big for his mit not to dwarf it. Jake laughing. Her starting to believe it, that he’d been lucky.
Another parcel, this time a whole snapper. Big. Two more in another parcel. Oh, but this is a food-lover’s dream. This is what a Pine Blocker has a Wednesday wet dream over. What next?
Mussels. Dozens of the sweet little creatures. Greenlips, the farmed jobs. They’d be fat as anything. Fill the shell from edge to edge those farmed mussels. And what’s he got in those plastic pottles, not what I’m thinking, surely? He must’ve won big at something. Jake, what’d you win? Come on, stop teasing now. (And wondering what was in the sixth and last parcel. For me. For Beth Heke, who’s had to put up with this man for sixteen years and don’t remember getting anything for me like this, let alone with a feast to boot.) Can I do the last parcel? — but Jake was already doing it. Grinning.
Jake …? in that voice, girlish, come-onish, a you-can-have-me-if-you-like tone. Remembering the pottles: What you got in these? Oh them? Jake making out he was so cool. Oh, juss some oysters. A pause then erupting in laughter. Making a woman warm all over for her man. (Why, I can’t help loving him.) Oh, just ten dozen little ole oysters, dear. And laughing again. Oh, why can’t life always be like this? Beth thinking. Why can’t we have a few more wins? a bit more of this luck, whatever it is.
Last parcel. (Oh, don’t tell me, I can’t look. I can’t look.) Beth closing her eyes, wanting to near squeal with excitement — no, not so much excitement as happiness. At just being happy because he, her man, is happy. At how it must be near all the time for some (like him over there, Trambert) because life keeps throwing you winners, a bit of luck for a change.
Sea-eggs. Your favourite, Beth. She looking at him with grateful eyes but thinking he must have her present hidden on him. But of course you don’t ask, you wait till he’s ready. May as well enjoy the feast beforehand, Beth told herself. And sea-eggs were a favourite of hers, she loved em. (Funny thing, Jake, being a Maori, and near a full-blood at that, unlike Beth, being about half with white blood on both sides of her parentage, Jake didn’t like sea-eggs, kina the Maori called em. Look like little hedgehogs, Jake described em. Did too, but the roe inside was sweet, even if it was a black purply gooey mess to get at the tasty part.) She had one right there, cracking it open against the steel pole of the clothes-line, delicately removing the inner slivers of yellow roe, letting em slide down her throat just barely broken by her teeth to release the taste. Mmm-uh! Let life stay like this. And Jake he started on one of the crayfish.
Ah, the two ofem out there, eating like a king and queen; chuckling at each other, shooing away the flies that came rushing, feeling greedy, selfish about it: the delicious food, the shared moment. Of just me and him. Me and my man pigging out on a fine summer’s day.
Jake winking at her. Beth hoping it meant what she thought it did. Careful not to wink back because he didn’t like the woman to be the instigator of that particular activity, nosiree he didn’t. Sex was a man’s choice first and foremost; in fact, a woman was careful she didn’t show she enjoyed it too much or it made Jake wild, he’d start asking questions, or sulk, not touch her for another month. But she had her ways of reaching her objective without Jake knowing she’d reached such a height.
Then she asked about the luck, what it was, how much. And he laughed and laughed. Rolled about on the grass, a crayfish front horn in his hand cracked with his teeth and ready for eating. I got the sack! Laughing. The sack? From your job? And he was laughing? Aw, come on, Jake, you’re joking. Not joking, woman. Laughing again, telling her it was last week, his firing from his job as a labourer at a quarry where he’d been for fourteen of the sixteen years he was married to her. Sacked? Last week? So why tell me now? And why all this food? You mad, Jake Heke? Feeling angry with him. About to give him a piece of her mind — and to hell with the consequences and to hell with this food and to hell with whatever else he’s got for me, personally — but Jake explained: I got granted the benefit. What benefit? The unemployment. The unem-ployment! Beth wanted to slap his face. You got it, lady. I’m on the dole as from now. Got the letter today. And they sent a cheque with it. And you’ve eaten some of it! Laughing.
Telling her it worked out at only seventeen bucks less than what he was paid at the quarry, and to think, all them years of working it was for not
hing. (Beth quickly calculating her half of Jake’s income to meaning half of seventeen bucks less a week. Not the end of the world. And Jake’d find something soon.)
That was over two years ago. Jake just another of the long-term unemployed of Two Lakes. The country suffering its worst-ever unemployment figures. Why, half of Pine Block was out of work. Though a person had to be blind and deaf not to see the figures published in the papers, on the TV, about Maori unemployment being much higher than their white counterparts. It was because they were less skilled. And now, Beth knew, a damn sight less motivated if Jake and a good many of his cronies were examples. And to think, he was so proud of himself, as if he’d had it over not only his former boss who’d sacked him (for absenteeism) but the rest of the world for thinking they were better than Jake Heke. Luck. A woman wasn’t so sure about this luck business that it was really luck and not just plain hard work, self-motivation. Luck.
As for the present Jake had for Beth, he’d meant the sea-eggs. Sea-eggs for chrisake. Call that luck?
2. Two Kids on a Bench
Boogie looking up at the wall clock for the umpteenth time — Fuck. Fuckin thing hasn’t moved since I last looked at it, telling his sister: Grace, that clock must be broken. His own voice broken, close to tears. No it’s not. Just stop looking at it all the time, Boog. Can’t help it. Know you can’t, but it ain’t broken. So 9.30 a.m., crawling, finally, past, the time Boogie’d set his mind on, because ten o’clock, man, that was just too long. Now he could do the next half-hour endless crawl.
Just sat here, a boy and his (good) sister in the foyer of Two Lakes Courthouse, on a Friday morning when his mates (what few he had) were at school, probably laughing about me, I bet.
Grace? You think they’ll be, you know, laughing at me? Who? The kids. At school. My mates ’n that. Dunno. Grace shrugging. And if they are then they can’t be very good mates. But you think they are? Shush, Boogie. You got more to worry about than mates laughing at you, and no, they won’t be. You sure, Grace? Course I’m sure. Oh Boog, you’re such a sook at times. You really are. No wonder the old man picks on you. Can’t help it. I know that. Well? Well what? So why’re you calling me a — Because you are. Sometimes.