The Bone People (54 page)

Days in pubs... long long days and nights, days soaking, and blind nights... and those three mixed-up sweet

times of song and talk and happy heavy drinking... though Kerewin pake could never forget herself and come

home, it was so good.

He can feel his face flushing, beginning to sweat. He throws back the hood of his parka and lets the drizzle

fall on his hair. Clipped hair, prison cut.

He drinks the capful slowly.

The kaumatua:

"Now," he says, sitting down beside the little mound of earth, "where do I go?"

The top of the mound is smoothed flat, and he has traced where the river flows, where the inland track is,

where the five beaches are, and their headlands.

So many years--

He shuts his eyes, and drops the twig of karamu he holds in his left hand. In the dark at the back of his mind,

he hears his grandmother whisper. He lifts his right hand and lets the other twig fall. It leaves his hand

slowly, not like a stick dropping at all.

It falls without a sound.

Then, his eyes tightly closed, he says haltingly, fearfully under his breath, the old words.

He sighs when they are finished. I must do this, for my strength is waning, but the cold, aiee, the cold is

almost too much.

He opens his eyes.

The dart he had first dropped lies on the third beach. It is twisted as though something had snapped at it in

midair.

The other, the seeker from his right hand, has inched its way to meet it, and now lies quiescent, touching the

first.

He can see its thin trail quite clearly on the smoothed earth.

But it is as the first time: the twigs have moved and he never saw what moved them.

And as before, he feels the dry harsh laughter of his grandmother rustle through his mind.

"It's a bloody long way to jump."

The smoke from his cigar curls back and stings his eyes.

Those legs, thin-calved, weak-thewed, with brittle ankles. So painstakingly, painfully massaged back into

usefulness. The old cold hands pressed back and forth; the rank smell of acetic acid and oil; the pinching and

kneading of wasted muscles, "E boy, move your foot," pummelled to walking again.

So, I'm a shattered heap down there. The tide will roll in and sweep me away. Stronger logs are disposed

beneath the sea.

He got up unsteadily, and began to shuffle back and forth, a foot from the edge.

The space was small. No more than two yards free of scrub, but the shuffling became a dance, a dance of

abandon, of pain, of illusion. Stagger of despairing hope forward; a step of beaten-by-circumstance back. It's

become the sin dance of forlornness, the one dance of death.

But this lone dance is wrong, he thinks hazily. Even in hell, there be lines, ranks of sinewed legs beating

down beside mine. Ka mate, ka mate.... He fell down against the pack.

Why am I sitting down? When all I need to do to get to the bottom is jump?

A three-note saw, a whining vicious singing: Jump Nga Kau.

He pounded on his head. His fist made a dull sound but didn't hurt. Beat your brains out, Ngakau, beat your

sense back in. Because you do know what you're doing... o yes. All those nights in the dark alone, and his

face came before you as you split his lips, and bruised and cut and broke his face. Cracked his skull, and that

was just the beginning. Now they're gone, gone, gone beyond,

"O I need you!" he screams, "I need you both!"

Fists clenched against the sides of his head as though he would press more sound free, as though to make his

screams lightning edged to split this coming dark.

If I make it, it will be a sign.

Rocks await.

He tosses the pack to them.

It falls, tumbling briefly, thwacking against the bank below.

Thud. Imagine that's you. And the snap is your barrelchest giving way at the stays, the heart cask battered and

broke.

He throws down the empty flask, and a spin of last drops zags out golden.

A measure as an offering. Lucky gods. You get five full drops as a libation.

"The last measure is me," saying it loudly, but not in a scream, "I have rum for blood, and blood in plenty.

Measure me!"

He spreads his arms to the lowering sky and runs over the edge.

For a moment he seems to hang there, space below his feet, and then he plummets with sickening speed.

The first hardness in his breath, thudded out of him leaving him groaning with no air to groan on.

The second is his arm snapping like a stick beneath him.

And the third is himself swearing, You stupid shit, you could've killed yourself, and for fucking nothing.

He says it again and again, like a litany, while the blackness retreats and his breath comes back in shuddering

sobs.

He struggles to sit up, holding his arm so the bone doesn't move. He leans his head against his shaking knees:

his whole body shakes, with shock and hurt and crying.

E atua ma, wairua ma, if there are gods, if there are spirits, o, people of this place, I am made known by my

stupidity. Aid

me.

His own bone sticking out of the flesh, a weak china blue colour, like a pig bone in a butcher's shop freshly

laid from the meat.

God god god make the pain go away--

He presses it back into his arm and blood pours out. He retches. I've got to keep it in but o god what with?

He gains two pieces of wood in a staggering search, neither of them wholly straight nor smooth. He binds

them on his arm with his handkerchiefs. He is weak and clumsyhanded, and it takes a long hurtful time. He

derides himself when he moans,

"You can hand it out but you can't take it,"

but he is sick again before he finishes the binding, and cannot talk then, even to spur himself on.

He watches his hand darken and engorge, but he hasn't any more strength to loosen the sticks.

Look at my veins. Gnarled and thick like I'm already an old man. Jesus, I'm cold.

He pulls himself slowly to his feet. He can't feel the stones he walks on. Painfully, he gathers dryish chips

from beneath the damp piles of driftwood. He collects several large knots of wood. Each time he bends over,

he feels sick, as though he must fall.

He piles the kindling in a heap; holding the matchbox in his mouth, lights it.

He huddles over the little flame, sheltering it with his body. It smoulders a long minute before flaring.

Gradually, gingerly, he adds the bigger pieces, building them round the flames in a cone shape...

"Lang doon the cluny isles," sings Kerewin, balancing another

chunk.

"What does that mean?"

"How the berloody hell should I know?"

She twists a piece of wood to one side. "Hey look! See how

perfectly that reciprocates that shadow?"

"It's drizzling again."

"You couldn't shift anything more, or the whole lot would

topple, visually."

"And we're cold to boot."

"O to hell with the weather," snaps Kerewin. "You're not dying

of it. Look!"

"Himi's shivering. And my teeth are chattering."

"Ah ruin it then." She squats by the pile and strikes the match. The flames creep along the twists of grass, flare and soar into cracks between logs. Very soon the fire is roaring: Kerewin builds more towers and

wigwams about it, containing and directing the flames.

The drizzle has no effect. Simon crouches close as he can to the artistic inferno, and he kneels behind him,

arms outspread, catching the warmth and keeping his son from the draught.

She loved to sit and talk by those masterpiece fires of hers, to keep watch until they sank to quiet ashes. He

could name them all; the pipi and potato fire they taught Simon to cook on; the fire when all the flames had

been tinged with violet; the rata fire by the Tower; and the fire on top of Moerangi hill, the witch fire, when

streaks and spires of green and blue ran riot through the heart of the flames. And this one, the spider fire,

when the katipo crawled out and Kerewin let it crawl into the palm of her hand.

"Seen many?"

He looks cursorily into her hand.

"Jesus! Drop it!"

"Why? It won't hurt me. Or you either." The little katipo strolls unhurriedly across her palm. "I'm not squashing it. It's not bothered. It's not going to sink its fangs into me. And it wouldn't do me much harm if it

did. Although it might skedaddle you," she says warningly to Simon, who comes finger forward, closer.

"Take a good look at it, Sim. Aside from the seasnake, and you'll usually find that only in the heathen north,

this is New Zealand's sole poisoner."

Little Death, examining unfamiliar ground.

Kerewin put her hand on the ground, and after a while, the spider vanished into the marram grass.

Or did it?

His arm is bloated and aching, as if all his nightmares were spider poison dreams, and nothing else.

"But I'm not mad yet." He murmurs it. "I'm sitting by a smoking fire on some godforsaken beach with a compound fracture of my forearm. I'm sane and nearly sober and about had it."

He lies down wearily by the fire's edge.

"Ten minutes," he says, more lowly still.

I am a waste, a wilderness of alien gorse and stone that scores all who enter. O, Kerewin can stalk through in

her grim and withering way, because she is self-contained, wrapped in iron, and I cannot reach her except on

the terms she admits. Very

few, very hard--

And Haimona... ah dear God, my Haimona... Haimona storms through any wilderness though it tears him

bloody. I am afraid

of his ardour. I am afraid of him. So they track my waste,

and the waste yields nothing blessed yet. And no-one else

attempts this desert--

O, I am hamstrung by foreign images... all the luminous

childhood pictures are sunk beneath the gorse, the stones...

I cannot warm or heal the woman.-! cannot warm or heal the

child....

Any of them--

Coming home that Thursday, with no idea, no hint of what was to come. What already was. Ae, she'd been

sick. But it was the 'flu. Everybody gets the 'flu in winter. And Timote was colicky, but that was probably a

virus. Everybody gets a virus in winter. And then the terrible bare unbelief. I had no shield for that mood of

death. I could not believe so much of me could be cut out so swiftly, leaving only a gaping depth of anguish.

And there was nothing, no-one to take their place.

I could not cry for days. My chest was tight, my jaw muscles clenched so hard they ached all the time, even

when I drank myself into a stupor. It might have been better if I had gone with her, home for the burying

but... aie, everything I looked at, thought of, touched or tasted or smelt carried a burden of memories.

Reminded me that they were gone. For ever. And only Haimona left behind--

The best part of me was lost then. What remains is a deep ulcer that will not heal, a waste.

I have nothing to give Kerewin that she will have. I have nothing to give Himi, not even the shelter of my

arms and heart. I know I exacerbated his reckless wounding of himself, but now I am not allowed to give him

even shelter--

I am just a waste... and the worst thing I bear is the knowledge that others have borne far worse distress and

not buckled like this under it. They have been ennobled by their suffering, have discovered meaning and

requital in loss... O Hana Mere, why did you eat the food they offered you? Why did you not return to me?

Aue, the roots of the tree are long and descend into darkness. The shore is wave beaten, and there is nothing

beyond but the unceasing immeasurable sea.

The kaumatua:

He is not a big man, not tall, but he is very heavy. To lever him off his side and wrap the blanket round him,

has tested my strength to the limit. I have spread his coat over him, and built the fire a little closer, and rested.

His arm is badly broken, and badly set. Shortly, I will undo the cloths and wash away the blood, and reset the

bone.

I shall try to rouse him then, and feed him whatever he will eat. Afterwards, there will be time to consider

what to do.

He breathed out deeply, and cautiously inhaled. The pains that felt like bubbles exploding in his chest did not

return.

He took out his pipe and filled it carefully, picking up the shreds of tobacco that fell into his palm, and

returning them to the tin. He smiled to himself as he did it.

"Ah, the habit of frugality is hard to lose," he said softly.

He reached across the still form in front of him, and removed a stick from the fire, and lit his pipe.

"Still, it is nothing to be ashamed of, this being careful of what one has. Just a little ridiculous when one is going to die."

As he smoked, he studied the face before him.

I am glad you're Maori. It would be very hard to explain things if you were a European.

The tendrils of smoke spread over the unconscious man, hang in swathes about himself. The cold at his back

is intense, but the rain has stopped, and there is no wind.

The voice is high and husky.

"This is food, a piece of bread. Open your mouth and chew it." He chews obediently, puzzled by the taste. It is slightly fatty, more like a scone than bread.

It's fried bread, but I'm not... where am I?

He opens his eyes cautiously. The face above him smiles. Joe shuts his eyes quickly.

That can't be Kahutea feeding me fried bread. He's a photograph somewhere north and he's been dead for

fifty years.

He shook his head side to side quickly. I'm hallucinating.

"He aha tou mate?"

'Who is there?" asks Joe, and his voice sounds loud and harsh to himself. "Who is that?"