The Bone People (66 page)

But it went down his neck and into unlickable regions like his eyes.

Damn and damn again.

The oranges are sweet and still juicy, even when he's finished mutilating them. And they're sticky. His fingers

cling together when they're dry.

There isn't any water until just before the Tower, where the river comes out. So he scoots out onto the track,

and rubs his hands with dust. The stickiness is absorbed. Indeed, if you rub your hands hard, it sort of peels

off, dust and dried juice, in long spindrils. Interesting in a quiet sort of way.

He's so interested that he doesn't hear the car pull up behind him until a door slams.

He's jolted to his feet and running the other way into the bush before he has realised what he is doing. To get

away before they catch him is now instinctive.

Someone's yelling, "Hey Simon! Stop!"

No way, crashing on through the broom and manuka until his feet betray him and he comes down hard. Not

again, not again, not so close, pushing himself up. His heart is hammering, sight and sound drowned by its

beating.

They're going to get me again

but as his vision and hearing clear, he realises there are no sounds of pursuit.

He can hear voices calling down the track, but no other noise.

He crouches down, listening as intently as he can.

The voices stop, the car doors slam: the engine starts. The car drives off.

Trust nobody. They'll be waiting again, Clare, someone will be hiding and waiting--

The car noise dies away. No other sound.

Just the flies, an occasional bird, his heart beat. Carefully, he creeps forward, pausing after each step, waiting

for sounds.

There are none.

He steps forward more confidently. Still nothing.

Cautiously onto the track. No-one. Hugging himself with pure joy, Fooled you!

I'll get home now!

He is singing with delight.

They haven't touched the parka or the dufflebag. It's all there, just as he left it.

Talk about dumb, they can't even catch my gear,

packing the parka back in the bag, but keeping the transistor out. Music to march home by, one step two step,

winding the volume up and walking steadily along the righthand rut to the Tower. He's sagging before he's

gone another mile.

It never used to be this long, I know it didn't.

One foot in front of the other, stumbling forward, counting the steps in his head. The music still pours into his

ear, but he can't keep any kind of pace with it.

I will say hellos. I will give them all my love. And then I am going to bed for a week.

The thought of bed and sleeping makes him tireder than ever. One step, two step, take it a step at a time.

This bend to go, and the next bend to go, and then there's the bridge, and over the bridge, there's the Tower.

Over the bridge, there's a ruin.

The music blares on.

He shakes his head, squinching his eyes shut and squinting when they're open.

It's my eyes again, it can't be like that.

Half the Tower seems to have fallen down.

He drives himself onward at a lurching run, over the bridge, over the dandelion studded lawn. The grass is

long and snatches at his feet.

Up to the Tower door. Shut Tower door. Locked Tower door.

Standing there in the warm mid-December sunshine, both hands fastened on the great iron ring of the door

handle, hands fastened as though they had melted there, transistor dropped and still shouting from the tall

green grass.

A long time later, his hands drop numbly to his sides..

His bruised heart still beats, but he no longer cares.

Where? Where? Where have they gone? turning blindly away from the door and staggering as he goes,

anywhere, nowhere, I don't care where, where have they gone?

The black burn scar reels past, black grass? no longer thinking just seeing, then his heel catches against

something and he goes down backwards into the middle of ashes and cinders and small charred pieces of

wood.

The world has burned and he is in the midst of desolation.

Lying in the ashes staring up at the wheeling sky. The black world round... why bother to sit up?

Because it looks like Kerewin by his feet.

Kerewin's head in the blackness at his feet. That is too terrible to endure looking at. He crouches, his eyes

hidden,

but touch it, touch it, even if she has been burned here, touch her. Let her know you came back.

And the head is cold and hard as stone beneath his searching fingers.

Gone beyond thinking, drawn forward by his hands, he kneels in front of the thing. There are shadows and

voices coming towards him, from all sides over the lawn.

It is Kerewin, it is Joe, turning round the third face, aiee it is me, and even though he is moaning aloud,

somewhere in the cloudy anguish a thready voice says, Together, all together, a message left for you, and he

clasps it to his chest as hard as he can, and will never let it go.

Not even when the hands come down on his shoulders, and take him again.

12

The Woman At The Wellspring Of Death

She travelled for weeks in an aimless way, all round the South Island.

Uprooted again. Truly Kerewin te kaihau... but I seek always for homes. I find, then I lose. And I'm not a

traveller at heart, just a casual gypsy wandering out from my base and back. No more, because no base... and

nowhere to go, no-one to trust. No marae for beginning or ending. No family to help and salve and save. No-

one no-one no-one at all.

She arrived in the town, smaller than a city, larger than a country stop, and sat at the bus-station, wondering

what to do.

Stranded again, me soul. Dreary bloody place this looks too.

She stood at last and gathered her guitar and suitcase in one hand, the harpoonstick in the other, and walked

to the heart of the town. At the first hotel she came across, she entered and signed for a room. Sitting on the

immaculate bed, she stared at her oppressive comforts and wished for a hand, to hold or be held by.

O for a voiceless pantomime... a celebrated fuckoff to all this. Wonder whether he's up and about? Or playing

the discreet vegetable still?

She took off her jacket and unbelted the knife from round her waist.

I can't play pirates in the bar... Seafire, Troublemaker would be your better name... but I can hardly blame

you for my shortcomings... and if I do, you may yet have the pleasure of slicing my sweet and tender blue

veins. When the going gets too tough.

She polished the hook round her neck against her nose and shirt lapel for minutes (pale hair, dark hair, talking

fingers, lovebent lingers) and then slid down to the bar and drank whisky until tea, and then drank whisky

until the bar closed, and still as sober and clearheaded as when she started off, gloomed her way back to her

room to contemplate emptiness again.

The whisky had one effect: she slept easily.

But only for a time. In the very early morning she woke, sweating and itching unbearably. Not only in the

usual places, wrists and neck and hands, but also in hitherto pacific regions, centre of her back and the middle

of each shoulder blade. She writhed and blamed it on the whisky, but secretly knew better. An old enemy had

returned. One which was impossible to fight. Damn thee, itch of my own sick soul.

It was most persistent and unbearable on her hands. The joints and creases of each finger developed small

spot-like sacs. Scratch them until they were torn, and your own skin and blood lined your nails, and the

eczematous torture persisted. Then the soft bases of her wrists. Then the entire hand.

An old foe, this, thought beaten years ago. The antagonist of childhood, known in all its degrading forms of

ambush and sabotage. She waged the old hopeless campaign. Cold water, and anything that hurt the itching

areas into temporary passivity. Salt, or alcohol. Even ash.

She bought antihistamines as soon as a chemist opened, and spent the day feeling doped and sluggish, and

especially, at war with herself.

And the knife-paining slid sharply into her stomach before the day died, and this time, it stayed.

After the first minutes, she found she could endure it, but felt if she moved suddenly it really would turn into

a knife and cut the coils of her intestines to shreds.

Aiee, instant harakiri, sickly jokes, sweating, crying without sound, staying immobile all the long tense night,

But even in the anguish, the busy noisy part of her mind still analyses.

You have given up your home. Because the burden of uselessness became too much. Because the loneliness

of being a stranger to everyone grows. Because knowledge of your selfishness has grown to be unendurable.

Mentally, I am almost drowned. I'm not made for fighting this kind of battle. Spiritually, I still hope... idiot

Holmes, you are not charitable, you do not have the gracemeet of faith, faith in anything. Why hope?

Because, because, I can do nothing else... and you call yourself bright? Hah!

When the pain did knife in, despite her rigid stillness, she bit her lips bloody to stop from screaming.

God not here I can't.

It seared.

For dislocated minutes.

Suddenly ceased.

Shortly after, weak with relief that the knife had been withdrawn, she slept. The itch was in abeyance. As she

sank wearily through

sea that seemed to have neither touch nor bottom, she collected the tears that slid down her cheeks and

grinned in their salt embrace.

"Why do you want sleeping tablets?"

"Because I want to sleep eh."

The doctor smiles, a little superciliously.

"We can gather that, but what is preventing you from sleeping?"

"Nervous eczema," she flicks a scarred wrist briefly towards him, "and," she hesitates, but ahh what the hell,

"stomach pain."

"Indigestion? Or, umm, heartburn?"

"Oath, no. I could clear those up fast. This feels like, well, like a knife might if you were being stabbed."

He seems surprised.

"Does it occur often?"

"It's happened twice before, but this time was too bad. I couldn't take it."

He notes something on a pad.

"Nothing unusual to eat or drink beforehand?"

"Nope."

"Are you, umm, entirely regular in your toilet habits? Any recent alteration in them, or discharge?"

"I never looked. I shit the same as I always have."

The doctor sniffs.

"Where does this pain occur precisely?"

She pointed.

"Would you lift your clothes a little?"

Denim jacket, sharkskin jerkin bedecked with fringes, silk shirt, mushroom white Holmes type skin ----

He palpated the area with his fingers. They are soft and cold and dry.

He frowns.

"You haven't had a blow to the stomach recently?"

"

"You have noticed the swelling and hardness there?"

"Yep."

He asks, full of non-professional curiosity, "Well, why didn't you ask me about it first? It's the real reason for your visit, isn't it?"

"It isn't. I came because I needed something to help me sleep. Whisky gets to be too hard on the liver. That,

that swelling is a matter about which I am entirely incurious."

"When it causes you substantial distress? Come, come. I think we'd better have some tests done right away."

"I think we won't," says Kerewin coldly. "I said I wasn't interested."

The doctor puts his pen down, and polishes his glasses slowly.

"I think," he says, searching for gentleness, "that this may be

rather more serious than you imagine. I think it would be better if we found out what the swelling was, and

why it is causing you pain."

He has found a certain professional gentleness, speaking to her as though she were an excited idiot child.

She takes the same tone for her answer.

"I think I have a generously large imagination. I think I have covered all possibilities ranging from tumorous

growth to invasion by alien fungi. And as I said, it doesn't interest me further. I wish for something to assist

me to sleep. If you will also prescribe a strong painkiller, I'll even manifest gratefulness. If you won't do

either, I'll stick to my whisky."

He says bluntly,

"It may be cancer. There is definitely an unusual growth there, not an intestinal blockage. The sooner it is

examined and removed, the better your chance of survival."

"I am not interested. Ah, do you have difficulty understanding English? I've said that three times."

He looks like he's going to froth at the mouth. "Do you know," speaking quickly and intensely, "have you any idea of what someone dying of cancer goes through? The agony they suffer? Do you know "

"You are getting beyond yourself, little medicine man," her voice is controlled and gentle. "How do you know I want to live? What say this is a nice neat no-questions-asked-after way of committing suicide?"

His jaw hangs open.

There is a curious inevitability about the whole scene, as though it were destined to be played out like this

from the moment she arrived in town. It was remote, like watching someone else in a play. It didn't feel real.

"Don't talk to me anymore," she says quietly. "Just write me a prescription. After all, that's what most of you jokers do, most of the time. Oblige me, continue the practice. In your code put, for pain, and for sleeping

when needed. And I'll say ta and go away forever, okay?"

He had spoken more, passionately.

Kerewin had sat and looked at him with the same sort of expression she kept for viewing new varieties of

spiders. He had finished abruptly, flushing under her stare.