The Bone People (27 page)

The stream that flows onto the beach between the two baches is no good for drinking water, she says. "If you

saw the cattle staling in the pond you'd know why, eh. So all the water we got is rainwater. The tanks are full,

but it pays to go easy on it." Joe, walking behind her over the footbridge to the old bach, "These fences are pretty heavy... what comes lolloping up that you've got to keep it out?"

"The sea. See up there?" gesturing to the south end of the beach. "Those concrete foundations?"

"Yeah."

"There used to be baches on top of them. The sea ate 'em. Our black bach right at the end -- we call it the

Black Bach, incidentally," her grin flashes at him, "that one only survived because of the way it's dug into the cliff. The sea bashed into it but the pullback action never could get into effect... I think," her voice has grown suddenly dreamy, "I'll go along there and see how the old place is. The boat we'll be using is stored there.

After I've said hello to that, I'll walk along the tideline for a way and a while. See you later."

Joe looks round the old crib.

The firelight from the range is flickering on the ceiling, but the kero lamps glow bright and steady.

The beds are made up on the bottom two bunks, and he's unrolled the sleeping bag for the child on the bunk

above him. On the other top bunk, he's put their suitcases and the two guitars. He has arranged the food they

brought in the cupboards. Bread and butter and bacon in the safe in the boatshed; milk in the fridge in the

New bach; fruit and vegetables tucked away tidily in boxes and bowls; Marama's cake and biscuits in tins--

"Watch out for the furry gentlemen," Kerewin had warned. "Meece love here."

There are traces of them in all the cupboards... or there were. He's been working on that with disinfectant and

hot water. It looks like nobody has stayed in these baches for a while.

And to top it off, he's got a pot of soup near the boil on the range, and a kettle singing briskly beside it.

"Haimona?"

The boy looks down from his bunk.

"You busy?"

He smiles and shakes his head.

"Like to go and find Kerewin while I make the toast?"

He nods and kneels up, holding out his hands.

"Okay..." lifting him down. "Going to take you a while to get used to going to bed upstairs eh?

"Lazybones," he adds, shuffling the boy's hair out of his eyes. Simon peaks his brows... If you say so.

Joe laughs. It's funny how much he says, makes you think he says, with so little... how green your eyes are

tonight, tama... I'm happy to see you happy. He leans over and kisses the boy.

"Put your shoes on before you go out. It's getting dark, and you won't be able to see where to put your feet."

The wind has dropped.

It is growing very dark.

The shag line has gone back to Maukiekie, bird after bird beating

forward in the wavering skein.

The waves suck at the rocks and leave them reluctantly. We

will come back ssssoooo... they hiss from the dark.

Maukiekie lies there in the evening,

that rock of an island,

not much more than an acre and bare

except for a mean scrub of bushes and brown guano-eaten grass,

where the shag colony spreads its wings in the sunlight

and haggles over footspace at night;

Maukiekie at nightfall,

all black rock crusted with salt and birdlime

and sleeping life, and

nearest to land

the stone hawk, blind sentinel

watching the cliffs.

Aiieeee, pain and longing and relief... too long I've been away from here. Too long that's been just a memory.

Tears come to my eyes whenever I hear a gull keen, or watch a shag pass on whistling wings.

O land, you're too deep in my heart and mind.

O sea, you're the blood of me.

The night darkens.

It is too easy, sitting here in the rock seat, to put words to the seasounds. Words round the waves breaking on

shore, smacking the rocks. Especially now, when it's quiet, and there's only yourself listening in the dark.

(Well, there's them... and I think it was a mistake I brought them... but how can I send them away now?)

But my family is gone.

I am alone.

Why did I lose my temper that night and wound everybody with words and memories?

("It's the bloody horrible way you've remembered everything bad about everybody, and kept it and festered it

all your life...")

They started it. I finished it.

They are gone beyond recalling. I am gone too. Nothing matters anymore.

She stares into the dark. Maukiekie is just a shadow on the sea, wound round with crying birds.

Twenty-five years. That's a long time. A quarter of a century.

A generation. They were the only people who knew me, knew

anything of me, and they kept on loving me until I broke it...

do they love me now?

Six years is a long time to be alone. To be unknown, uncared

for. Cut off from the roots, sick and adrift.

They must have wiped me out of their hearts and minds...

why can't I do that?

Why do I keep on... careful, you're wallowing, back in the

slough of selfpity and greasy despair... but why do I keep on

grieving? When all meaningful links are broken? Forever.

(Because hope remains. Get rid of your hope, Holmes me gangrenous soul. Do you really think you could

apologise? Say you were wrong? Ask for forgiveness that might not be given? Never!)

She shudders.

Aie, quit it. Listen to the sea, not to words in your head--

There is an alien sound, a slight scrunching sound like someone... ahh, yes.

She watches him trudging past in the dark.

You really are a very stupid child. For all you know, there might be something terrible lurking in the

shadowed cliff at your side, just waiting to sink its fangs in your flesh... (a mad sheep, woman? Don't be

barmy!)

She sits up shivering.

"Anything wrong?"

Joe pads over, torch in one hand. She can just see the boy lying against him, cradled in his other arm.

"It's all right," he whispers. "Sim's been sick, that's all."

"O." She settles quickly back down under the eiderdowns. "Can I help?"

"No, I'm just cleaning up." There's amusement in his voice. "For a small boy, he can surely throw up plenty."

Yech.

"Yeah, I'll bet." She's glad to have never wiped up anyone's vomit.

"It was probably the car, the travelling. After-effects. You know."

"Yeah," says Kerewin. "Mmmm," sleepily. . Joe grins to himself.

"You know what?" he asks Simon, very softly, his mouth close to the child's ear.

Simon taps his neck, No?

"I think she's glad I didn't ask for help... she's gone back to sleep a bit too quick, eh?"

The boy giggles.

"Hush up."

He kneels again, and mops up more of the mess on the floor.

"She sounded like she might have thrown up too, if I'd said Yes, I need help. That'd be a bit hard on me, eh."

Finger brushing his neck, light as a moth touch, No.

"Cheeky brat," Joe whispers.

She can hear the rustle of his voice, and the boy's quick hushed laughter, but the sea is loud, louder--

It's good lying against Joe like this, thinks Simon. All the muscles are soft, the strength in abeyance. He has

let his own body go completely limp, relaxed into the curve of arm, the curve of his father's chest.

Joe finishes the floor, and shines the torch round to check -- yep, sick over my bed too -- he's only just made

it over the side of his own bunk.

"Talk about making a thorough job of it, Himi... that must have accounted for everything in your gut from

last week on."

After he's done rubbing and wiping, he creeps over and puts a pot on the still-hot range, and heats milk.

"Think you'll go to sleep all right, without any more dope?"

Simon nods, smiling at him in the firelight. He gestures to Joe.

"With me?" the man murmurs. "It's a bit cramped in those bunks, fella."

He pours the milk into two mugs.

"Might be an idea though... you really finished being sick?"

The child giggles softly again as he tells him No. He has found

the whole episode hilarious apparently.

Joe hefts him higher against his shoulder, and sits on the floor with the boy in his lap.

"You truly all right now?"

He nods, and then leans his head back to look up at Joe. One of his hands rests on the man's wrist, loose and

quiet. With the other he touches his forehead, and then his scarred back, and gestures to the bunk where

Kerewin sleeps.

He can feel his father's heart start to beat urgently hard. He stretches up and touches Joe's lips.

"She's keeping quiet? Or I'm to?"

The whisper is high and strained.

Both, say the upraised fingers. It's okay, he mouths, it's okay, and suddenly the word is turned into question

and entreaty, Okay? Okay?

"Aue, aue... okay, tamaiti, okay..." he strokes Simon's hair away from his eyes, and kisses him. "Taku aroha ki a koe, e tama."

All still, all silent, except for the sea.

They can't even hear Kerewin's breathing.

Joe sighs.

"Eh, I don't know why I hit you," he says in a low voice, talking more to himself than his child. "I'm drunk or I'm angry, I'm not myself... even when it's necessary to beat you o I don't know, it's not like I'm hitting you,

my son..." Simon moves, and Joe looks down to see what he's saying.

It feels like it is, says Simon wryly

He closes his hands over the child's small hands.

"Thank you for not holding grudges," his voice lower still, husky and shaking a little. "God knows I deserve your hate... but you don't hate," he says wonderingly, "you don't hate."

The boy looks at him, eyes glinting in the firelight, saying nothing. Then he smiles, and leans over, and bites

Joe's hand, hard as he can.

"Shit!" the man gasps, hissing with pain, and pulls his hand to his mouth. "Bloody brat, what's that for?"

Aroha, mouths the child, grinning, aroha, and his smile is wickedly broad.

Joe sucks his hand until the ache dies, then holds it out in the firelight.

"Look at that, you...."

Neat set of teethmarks, halfmoon on one side, quarter circle on the other.

"Aroha my arse, utu more like," says Joe ruefully. "Drink up your milk, and we'll go to bed."

Lying awake in the night when no-one else is, warmed by the boy at his side. (Simon is asleep, face down on

the man's arm. Kerewin hasn't stirred from her close inviolate solitude.)

My hand hoods, holds your head against my palm. Shifting his arm a little,

You are still too thin, but you've always been slight... and

it's been better since Kerewin arrived. Well, not so much arrived

as you discovered her... I wonder what she really thinks of

us?

Me?

She never shows anything much.

She's still wary of you. I can't imagine her cleaning up after

you... what'd she say if I mentioned you wet the bed every

so often. Probably be very cool and polite about it. "O really?

Well, lack of control over micturition in children Simon's age

isn't uncommon, particularly in moments of stress." Taha,

Ngakau, you're putting words into her mouth. You don't know

what she'd think.

He lets his hand fall, away from the child's head.

Himi, what are we going to do? It's all very well for you to tell me to hush up, but what am I going to say

tomorrow? How am I going to look her in the eyes now? Same way you been doing it before, you great

pretender.

He reminds himself, It's been okay today. Been all right this week... when did she find out? And how? He

wouldn't tell, because of what he said, it makes him look as though he's been wicked.

He is, sometimes.

Flicking matches, and stealing.

And when he loses his temper, he can get vicious... what had

Piri's kid done to him? I was the one doing the teasing, and

who nearly got his brains bashed out? Timote, the bystander...

yeah, but who treats Himi viciously when they lose their

temper?

He shifts uneasily in the sea-hushed dark.

There's trouble at school... I don't know what it is, but there's trouble going on... Jesus, why does he have to

go to school? He's smart enough to do without it. If Kerewin would only have him for a while... or I could

stay home... it's too much of a struggle to get him along there every day, even though everyone seems

sympathetic now. Even most of his classmates.

O but he learned early on that his handicap made him peculiar, and having only one parent wasn't normal,

and not knowing his

original parentage or background or even his proper name, was downright wrong.

And how've I helped with all that? mourned Joe. Not going to school triggered off the first time of all.

The air is sweet, but his lungs hurt as he takes in great gulps of air. There is no other sound than the persistent

ringing chorus of treefrogs. No lights. No questions. No more cries. O, what did you do that for?

You must be sick, man. He says it aloud, experimenting with a statement of guilty excuse. I must be sick, but

who can I tell? And abruptly his noisy breathing changes to sobbing. A grown man down on his knees

beneath the cool moon, crying out the pain in his heart and the guilt in his hands, with no-one to hear him

anymore.

("Except me now," whispers Joe. "Neatly two years later, I can hear me cry--")

It left a gap. It made a wound, for all the child's reacceptance of him. He'd gone back inside and cared for the

boy as best he could, all apologies and endearments and tender loving care... and curiously Simon hadn't