Once Were Warriors

by Alan Duff

  Then one day the chief didn’t show up, and y’c’d see on the people’s faces they were thrown by this. Lost. Mumbling and whispering and feet shuffling and head scratchin amongst emselves when who else but Beth stands up, asks, What, we playin follow the leader or sumpthin?

  The crowd lookin ater but no one movin or sayin nuthin. Then she started singing this real old chanty thing that the chief musta taught her because no one ever knew Beth singing that sorta thing before. Then she was joined by one of the Moke brothers from Alligator Street, wildest buncha black Maoris you ever saw, those Mokes. And it seemed to be the signal for everyone to join in, even though most ofem didn’t know the chant. It was just the, you know, the sticking togetherness, eh.

  And all this time the chief was across the street in a friend’s car laying low.

  Another day and a fulla had ta join, or he was gonna miss the fuckin bus, man. He was. Like half of Pine Block was behind this thing now. This … this force.

  The other half, the ones didn’t wanna give up their all-day every-day boozing, well they went on as always, and their kids still ran wild at all hours, and y’c’d hear their parties raging half the fuckin night and fights break out and yellin and that old usual shit stuff ya’d think they’d get sick of it. But who cared about them? The chief didn’t. He said they got their chance. They don’t wanna change then we can’t force em.

  But the rest of you, ya got, I dunno, sorta in contempt of them, eh, these diehard arseholes just hellbent on emselves their own selfish pleasure, a guvmint payin em to carry on that way. Feedin their rotten habits, as Beth used to say in her speeches. So ya stopped talkin to em, it just happened that way: like ya couldn’t like identify withem no more because, well, they weren’t like you anymore, were they? Or you weren’t like them.

  And all the time this feeling, eh, that sumpthin important had happened. And that maybe it’d last. And not so much hoping it would but, you know, determined it would.

  Carload of Black Hawk prospects pulled up outside the courthouse, parked their mean machine on the yellow line (fuckem) spotted a trio of Brown Fists — What the fuck! This is our day, Wensday. Instantly wild. Even though it was obvious a court official must have ballsed up on scheduling the two gangs apart. This is our fuckin day.

  Browns! yelled the lead Black Hawk and he leapt from the car, raced for the trio, and his mates spilled out at similar mad haste. YA CUNTS! the front one yelling. This’s OUR day!

  Nig Heke was the first of the Browns to see what was happening. And first thing he thought was: Set-up. Jimmy’s set us up. Then it was too late for anything, ya just have ta fight. And the last thing he remembered thinking was, I’m a Heke, before he met the charge with a blasting right that caught the Hawk full in the mush. And the fuckin Hawk went down. And all hell broke loose. And such a nice spring Wednesday morning it was too.

  Back at the HQ and Jimmy Bad Horse thundering at the trio, YA WHAT!? at them reporting what’d happened, that they did their best but too many of the cunts, man. Too many. And the Hawk cunts were tooled up too: iron bars, blades, the fuckin works.

  Nig Heke with a stab wound deep in his right thigh and numerous other marks of a beating; his two mates the same. But feeling proud, despite their eventual loss — till they got back to Leader that is.

  Didn’t understand his reaction — he was mad atem. And it was Nig Heke he laid most of the blame on: I sent you as a fuckin escort for Mat and Chappie here. I told ya ta look afterem. And when Nig said, But it was a Wens — Jimmy cut him off — Fuck you! Slapped Nig’s face. Shook his big bearded and shaded face at Nig. Man, have you got some making up ta do.

  Nig more confused and hurt than he’d ever been in his short seventeen years of life. And catching the eye of the newly patched Warren, who seemed to be taunting him, mocking him for not having earned his patch when they’d gained their first probationary entry the same time.

  Nig went over to Tania, asked if she could look at his wound, the knife wound. But she looked up at him from where she sat on the (filthy) floor drinking beer straight from the bottle and told him, Ya suck, muthafucka. And guzzled for what seemed an eternity.

  That night Tania announced: I’m on the block tanight, boys. Slurring, with a sway on, and giving Nig Heke this terrible look as if he was ta blame her putting herself on the block for all the fullas to fucker.

  Then she tripped and stumbled over to the table where they sometimes ate from but mostly perched on and rested their beer bottles on, and anytime there was a sheila for blocking it was usually there they did because it was easier just ta flop yaself out, walk up toer and giver one.

  And they watched, beady-eyed, as Tania struggled out of her tight jeans, her gang denim jacket, no underpants ta take off, who wears undies, man, they suck. Then she sat up on the edge of the table, eyes downcast, nice tits goin up an down in what the fullas assumed was excited breathing but Nig Heke knew different.

  Then he could but watch as Tania lay down on her back but wither legs not spread — he knew she wouldn’t, that the first one’d have ta do it — and all the bruthas grinning and chuckling and lookin horny and suckin on their piss and their fags.

  Then The Beast, sergeant-at-arms, went, Oh well. Sauntered over to the table.

  Chief was giving his usual oral history lesson as men and youths of both sexes hammered and sawed on the latest community project, a changing room and shower block on the donated Trambert land for the newly ploughed and sown rugby field. Telling them of how their warrior ancestors were taught chants to gain strength from before battle, giving them the English translation:

  Give me my belt,

  Give me my loin cloth,

  That they may be put on,

  That they may be fastened,

  That wrath and I may join together,

  Rage and I.

  The loin cloth is for anger,

  The loin cloth is for destroying war parties.

  And the men smiled and nodded their appreciation of this imparted knowledge of their past (and thus, so sayeth always the Chief, their future.) And they hammered and laboured and their chief sang this ancient war chant in the language of its origin. And even out there, in the wide open of the land and the vast expanse of blue sky up there, it seemed to be coming (messaging) down from yonder hilltops.

  Bad Horse walking amongst his warriors like some great chief; in full gang regalia, big round patch on his broad back, urging them, yelling at them, firing them up to a state of war. And his unshaded eyes seemed to be mostly directed at the pros, Nig Heke. And his words too.

  A jacket with the Brown Fist emblem dangled from Jimmy Bad Horse’s brown-mitted hand. He kept shoving it up in front of Nig, asking him: What’s this? And Nig answering, My patch, brutha. And Jimmy’d go, Riiiight! and his teeth’d flash broken white and yellow stubs amongst mo and beard. And, man, all the mad bruthas and sistas standin around and juss dying ta go ta war.

  Nig Heke there with his face tats lookin good, real Maori warrior stuff, man, and soon as the scabs healed it’d look mean as. Nig frowning in pain from the stab wound, the one in his leg. And the fullas earlier laughin and sayin the Black Hawk shoulda washed his knife. The thing infected, probably. But ah, you’ll be right, Nig. Whassa lil cut, man? Get one a the sistas ta piss on it, man, that’ll heal it. Hahaha!

  Jimmy really working up to a pitch now: screamin at them. At them, the chosen frontline trio, the three who’d fucked up at the courthouse, allowed emselves to get dealt to by a buncha Black Hawk cunts. Screamin at them that this was their chance: Hatred! Ya got that? And the three pros’s goin, YEOW!!! Man, enuff ta make ya deaf.

  YA GO OUT THERE WITH YA FUCKIN HEART, YA MIND, YA SOUL — Jimmy taking a breath — On fire with hatred! And the pros’s went: HATRED!!!! HATRED!!!!! HATRED!!!! AEE-ARHHHHHHHHHH!! The fuckin veins, man, stickin out on their necks and faces like they were gonna explode. I tell ya.

  And the sounds, man, of carload after carload ofem rumblin outta Pine Block. Made ya shiver in awe
. All these mean machines, man, these grunt machines, headed into town loaded to the eyeballs with Browns achin ta do murder. Achin for it. (And a boy’s heart aching. Oh just aching.)

  And Beth watching from her bedroom window of her new house the pass-by of the Brown convoy. And she knew. She just knew. And so her heart ached too.

  19. So Life, It Is for Those Who Fight

  Gathered at Two Lakes cemetery, musta been mosta Pine Block there. And the cops. But they were parked up at the entrance, and formed in a line to prevent trouble from comin in. Black Hawk trouble. And Brown Fists goin off their grievin faces. With two of their number ready to be given unto the ground, the spaces created for them there.

  Two separate groups; the main body of mourners waiting for the Browns to do their last farewells, then it’d be their turn. The people from whose loins and past troubled ways did spring this monster calling itself Gang. And the mother of one of the dead gangsters in a mind of absolute clearness; and even her grief tempered with this sense of clarity and even well-being.

  The gang members finally sauntering and swaggering past the main lot of mourners, giving them all the bad shaded eye but there being plenty of unshaded eye in return, and the main with the numbers. And you better believe, the righteousness on their side.

  Specially him, the man in the black pinstripe suit standing fiercely proud and erect with his carved tokotoko held across his chest like a weapon, and staring at the file-past of filthily dressed young men and their handful of women with contempt and yet pity, even if it was almost a sneering pity. And especially her, the fine-looking woman in black who had the huge woman beside her, it wasn’t for the scars and linings of life leaving its mark on her, looking not at any of the headbanded wild things filing past but up there, at yonder hills with a cloud formation shaped like nothing much though it could’ve been a boat, a water vessel of some sort, at a push, you were looking for that sorta thing which she wasn’t. It was simply where her eyes inclined, and so she should not have to look at those who had murdered, by association, her eldest son. (My Nig.)

  Nor giving away her surprise when the last of the Browns stopped at Beth Heke and just stood there … then her uniformed arms went out in a hapless manner, and you could see her grief even though her eyes had them hug-around shades. And her mouth was trembling and she was trying to say something, but it wouldn’t come. So she, uh, well … she stepped up to Mrs Heke and put her arms around her. It was a very moving sight.

  But not so moving as seemingly most of Pine Block, people you would never have picked as, singing the sad refrains of a hymn in Maori being led by that huge woman Mavis, and the mother of one of the dead Browns standing beside Mavis singing too.

  And so proud she looked.

  But don’t forget The People. Their new-found pride. Made ya wanna bawl ya eyes out. With happiness. Yep, even at a graveside.

  Chief Te Tupaea gesturing to Beth: Step over beside me. Pointing to Mavis as well, You too. And this Pakeha family, eh, dressed spick and span (I mean, they know how to dress, don’t they? Though not as smart as our chief.) right up at the graveside there, and Beth excusing herself from them, and they giving just a little nod they know how to, you know, comport themselves.

  The birds tweeting from line of pines along the boundary, the lake-end boundary, and bees and flies buzzing away, and the odd car and truck going past as reminders of not only life carrying on but the time too, eh. The century. The year: 1990, brother. Got ta move with the times or it leaves ya behind. But not yet, not yet, brothers and sisters and all of you wherever you are. For there is one more thing to do.

  And Chief began it:

  O my son,

  Now you are gone, alone.

  Love has no power to restore the heart.

  So slow to live, swift to die …

  … man, and it was maybe four hundred voices adding to those of first Chief Te Tupaea and Beth Heke and Mavis Tatana, but you would not believe such force could be generated from mere voices, four hundred though they were.

  … Your blood soaks into the wood

  But you have flown —

  You will greet your ancestors,

  The great await thee…

  (As the great do farewell thee …)

  And this fulla with this equally bedraggled boy, over in the pines, concealed, peeping out like thieves, or shamed children of slaves.

  And tears trickling from him — Him. He who they used to say was toughest in all Two Lakes. Bad. Mean as. Jake Heke. Now just child weeping for another child.

  And the chief leading the gathering:

  … O my great fish, rise from the depths.

  No! That cannot be,

  Death has swallowed thee

  (Ah but so does life stem from thee.)

  So go now, boy warrior … your mother shall see thee (as shall your daddy, boychild. And we’ll showem, eh boy? In the next life we’ll showem …)

  The last refrains of sweetsad hymn more mighty than the departing rumble and roar of Browns. And a sky stayed blue. And that cloud formation had changed shape — But only if you’re looking for that sorta thing.

  To my wife, Joanna;

  my father, Gowan;

  and my late brother, Kevin.

  A VINTAGE BOOK published by Random House New Zealand,

  18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand

  For more information about our titles go to www.randomhouse.co.nz

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

  Random House New Zealand is part of the Random House Group

  New York London Sydney Auckland Delhi Johannesburg

  First published 2012

  © 2012 Alan Duff

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  ISBN: 978 1 77553 285 9

  eISBN: 978 1 77553 361 0

  This book is copyright. Except for the purposes of fair reviewing no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Design: Carla Sy

  The publishers gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Literary Committee of the QEII Arts Council.

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Dr Margaret Orbell and Richards Literary Agency: Translations of Maori songs.

  Penguin Books: excerpt from The Coming of the Maori, Sir Peter Buck, Whitcombe and Tombs, 1966.

  Victoria University Press: excerpt from Maori Poetry, ed. Barry Mitcalf, Price Milburn for VUP, 1974.