The Bone People (60 page)

effort, is too nearly dead to succeed in writing his name, drawing his secret design.

Like a puppet lifted by its strings, the old man rises up. His hand outstretched, he receives the pen. His eyes

stare fixedly ahead, looking at the end of his bed.

"Where?" pen poised.

Joe stares at him, cold with horror.

For it is as though the old man has already vacated his body and he -- or something else -- is directing it from

the outside.

"Here," he whispers, through numb lips. Blinking against the tears and sweat of pain, he guides the stiff hand.

"My name," he whispers, "here."

In beautiful copperplate, the letters form: mechanically, each letter separate then joined by an eerily serene

curve: Joseph Kakaukawa Gillayley, Kati Kahukunu--

"It is done. Where?"

The voice is not the kaumatua's, the eyes still stare blankly ahead.

"Here." Joe is shaking and trembling, his voice chilled to an almost noiseless whimper, fear growing in him like crystals of ice.

The signature flows swiftly, appearing on the paper as if tipped from a strange container. T. M. Mira, a

flourish, two dots. The pen falls.

As though someone struck him, the old man winces and jerks. For a second he is present again. Joe seizes the

pen and returns it to the cold grasp, ice deep in his heart now as he touches the fingers to close them round

the barrel.

As though the fingers have eyes, they take the pen back to Joe's name, and quickly draw a complicated maze

of spirals and spreading lines. Too quickly. No calligraphist could have drawn the moko so perfectly in the

short time the fingers execute it. With the same horrid fluidity, a second pattern is drawn over the kaumatua's

signature.

"Yours... Joseph. My. Blessing."

Joe eases the paper away, avoiding another touch of the living dead hand. The pen falls. As though a string

has been cut, the thin body flops bonelessly on the bed, the eyes closing.

"Aue," Joe says softly, "it is ended. It is done."

But the old body convulses once, twice, and the bowel contents spurt out. The stench of excrement is

overpowering. The old man moans, his fingers twitching helplessly by his sides.

"Not like this," a husky thread of protest, "not like this... aue... aue, the shame, the shame--"

Joe takes hold of the hands, enfolding them.

He says, weeping,

"E pou, tipuna, we all die like this, do not worry, I will be a son to you, be content to let a son perform this office for you, there is no shame, no shame," his words strangle in his sobbing.

"Aue, te whakama," says the kaumatua wearily.

"No shame, no shame,"

but he is talking to empty ears.

"Today I shall cry, Ki a koe, Rehua! Rehua, ki a koe!" "Aue, te whakama--"

He washes the body.

He clothes it in a pair of his jeans and his shirt.

The jeans are short, and the thin ankles stick out ridiculously.

The shirt could be wrapped round the body twice. . There are no shoes he can put on the body's feet, no shoes

anywhere in the whare.

He walks out and waits by the side of the road.

A passing motorist stops, and when she hears someone has died, she is shocked and sympathetic. She takes

him right to the police station in Durville. Joe doesn't speak. He feels as hollow and dry as a cicada husk.

He watches as they casually pick up the brittle old body and tuck it up on the stretcher, blanket across the

face.

The roots of the tree snake down the cliff. There is nothing beyond them but the endless sea.

"Lucky for you he found you, mate." The police sergeant is roughly jovial.

"Yes."

"I suppose it was lucky for him too, in a way eh?"

"Yes."

"Going into town to get that arm of yours seen to?"

"Yes."

"I can give you a ride back in the patrol car if you like."

"Yes."

Shocked, poor bastard, thinks the sergeant, and leads the way to the car.

His arm is set under anaesthetic, and the other cuts stitched. They had burst open when he carried the dying

man back to his home.

The surgeon says later,

"Well, you've been lucky. Not many splinters, and not much torn muscle. You'll probably have difficulty

using your arm initially, the tendon's damaged quite extensively, and it'll be a while before you're carrying

weights again. But with rest and physiotherapy you'll come right."

He smiles. Joe says dully,

"I'll be discharging myself tomorrow."

The smile vanishes. "No way, man. You'll be here a couple of weeks before I'll--"

"Tomorrow," says Joe. "There are some things I must do."

Thin darned socks, and old old clothes. The greatcoat. A superb weka feather cloak.

Odds and ends of fishing tackle, and the battered tobacco tin. To pipes. The hexagonal pin cushion. The

photographs off the wall. The books. The clock and all the things off the mantelpiece. A pouwhenua. Toilet

gear.

He puts them all in a sugarsack, setting aside the cloak and the pouwhenua.

As he is putting in the photographs, something says, "Keep Timon," and he can't tell whether it's a voice in his head or outside of him.'He takes the photograph of the young man out again, numbly, and lays it on the

bed.

He cleans out the whare thoroughly, clumsy and restricted with one arm only to use.

He burns the mattress outside.

While it smoulders, he looks at the hut.

The iron of the roof is piled in layers, a kind of metal thatching. Rusted and rain eaten, flaking away piece by

piece, it'll decay entirely soon.

The wood of the studs and rafters is borer-eaten. A little while, and it will all subside into dust.

I won't burn it. It can die at its own rate.

He searches for nearly an hour before he finds a toetoe bush. He takes one short strong golden-stemmed

spear.

Back in Durville he applies for, and is granted permission to bury the body.

"79 years old, hale and sound except for one heart vessel," says the coroner drily. "Is this kind of tattoo common? In his time, I mean?"

"No. I think, I think he wore it as a reminder of a dead people."

"Hmmm... are you a relation?"

"No, I was a guest in his house when he died. He has no family."

"And you feel this obligation to um," checking the certificate, "Tiakinga Meto Mira, because of that?"

"It's the least I can do for him."

The coroner raises his eyebrows. "Hmmm," he says again.

He takes the cloak and pouwhenua, and his greenstone chisel, pierced now and strung on a plaited cord, to

the undertaker's. He helps them clothe the body with the cloak. He places the greenstone round the withered

neck, and the wooden spearclub between the cold hands.

This is nearly all the rite and ceremony I can make for you, Tiaki. I am nearly dead inside as well.

In the afternoon, he visits the solicitor whose name is on the titlehead of the will.

The solicitor looks at him a long time, taking in the broken arm, the strained face, the dark furrows under the

eyes.

He says,

"Where are you living?"

"Nowhere. I have a mind to go back and live in his house. For a while."

The solicitor offers a cigarette case, "Smoke?"

"Not now, thank you."

The man lights up, and looks at the will, and a sheet of paper he has taken from a wall safe. He compares the

designs on each like a detective comparing fingerprints. The cigarette ash grows longer and longer. At last, he

puts the papers down.

"Tell me, if you will, how the old man came to die?" He stubs the butt out. "And how you came to be with him?"

"Why?"

He is sick, and tired to the limit of his endurance. And there is still tomorrow to be got through.

The solicitor looks at him again for a time.

"I knew Tiaki Mira for an afternoon, and visited him twice in hospital. I don't make hasty judgements... I

don't know whether you'd agree that you can make a friend in a few short hours. I felt I had. He was one of

the most noble and dignified people I have ever met, yet he was warm-hearted... it was only because I felt

him to be a friend that I agreed to act as his trustee."

"For no other reason would I tell you, unless it was going to frustrate his will."

He leans his head against his left hand. In a flat voice, he relates most of what happened, even including some

of his own past.

"I read about that," says the solicitor, but doesn't make any other comment.

At the end, he picks up the will.

"There will be no trouble with this. The title will pass to you, after probate has been filed. You will then own 796 acres of pakihi and private sea beaches. The land itself is nearly worthless unless you care to develop it.

If you spent a million dollars and half a century, for instance, you might make a farm out of it. But that is all

its potential, overt value--"

The words hang in the air.

He adds softly,

"Tiaki only said there was something of extraordinary value on

property that needed watching. I assume you know, and you are the new watcher?" "If I can be," says Joe wearily, "if I can be."

He stays in a hotel overnight.

There is a short report in the paper of the old man's death. "Local Identity Dead" it says, and not very much more.

The body is buried in the morning.

It is raining, a fine misty drizzle, when the hearse arrives at the cemetery. He is surprised to see another car

standing there.

The solicitor waits beside it. He doesn't say anything, just takes off his hat and follows the coffin that the

undertaker's people carry. Joe, feeling out of place in his jacket and jeans, follows him. He carries the

sugarsack with the old man's belongings in it, and the toetoe stalk in his right hand.

When the short service is finished, before the sexton fills in the hole, he lowers the sugarsack onto the coffin.

The undertaker watches with astonishment, the solicitor, calmly. Joe kneels, and plants the tiri at the foot of

the grave. It sways gently a minute, and stills.

The drizzle continues. The silver drops slide down the golden stalk.

That is all, Tiaki.

Sleep in peace, or find your way home.

The solicitor says,

"Stay with me and my wife tonight, please." "Thank you," says Joe, smiling brittlely. "Do you often put up crims?"

"No. Only people I like and respect."

The dry hollow in Joe fills alarmingly fast with tears.

He talks a lot that night.

About the kaumatua. About Simon. About Kerewin. About the dream world, and the world of the dead.

About legends and myths, and nine canoes, tatau pounamu, the possible new world, the impossible new

world.

The solicitor and his wife seem stolid educated middleclass people, but they know what he talks about. They

agree and sympathise and draw him out, until he is talked out. He goes to bed weary, but rested. He sleeps

soundly and dreamlessly. The solicitor says to his wife as they undress for bed, "He is one hell of a man, but

you'd never pick it just by looking at him. Like the old man, very like the old man... isn't it odd how

it's worked out? Him arriving just before Tiaki died? And the old man meeting him in his need?"

His wife is a woman of much thought but few words.

"Ordained," she answers.

''Keep in touch," they say after breakfast. "I will. Kia ora korua!" he says, and is gone.

Two things more to do, and then he can rest as long as he likes.

He buys what he needs, food and clothing, and a set of wood chisels. New bedding and a guitar.

Then he goes to the police-station.

"Gidday, you're looking a bit better," says the sergeant. "Everything okay now?"

"Yes thanks, more or less... but I'm wondering if you could help with something. The old man, you know

Tiaki Mira?"

The sergeant nods.

"Well, he told me about this man," handing over the photograph,

"staying with him, and dying with him, but he said he never knew who he was."

The sergeant looks at it, pursing his lips.

"Can't say I do either... was he a criminal? Do you want us to check through the files or something?"

"I don't know... I thought maybe there was someone who should have the photo. Tiaki said he injected

himself with drugs, and I thought, if he was a heroin addict or something, you might know him..." voice

trailing away.

"Can I have a look?" says a constable, coming to their side. "O him," he says, after a cursory glance, "that's that hippy fella... before your time Dave, you wouldn't have known about him."

He says to Joe,

"He was called Timon Padraic MacDonnagh, I remember that, I'm Irish background myself. Spoke well, but

a right layabout. He did cause quite a stir when he first came here, as there was a bit of a drug-scandal going

on, and he was a registered heroin addict. Harmless enough though, just did himself in. Arrived from

Auckland in ahh, late 1976. His wife and kid were killed in a car accident there... he had to report to us on a

regular basis because he was more or less an illegal immigrant as well as the other business. I think the

Ministry let him stay on for compassionate reasons, eh. He died at Mira's place about six months after he

arrived anyway. I was one of the lot who brought the body out. Thin as a bloody rake he was... I felt sort of

sorry for the bloke, you know, not having any reason to live, and killing himself by degrees."

II

II

"Yeah, I can understand," says Joe. "And his wife and child were both dead, eh?"

"Yeah. Auckland, as I said. I've got a good memory for things like that, though I say...."