Stories on the Four Winds E-Book

Brian Bargh

• Herausgeber: Huia Publishers
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

This collection brings together twenty short stories from eighteen of New Zealand's accomplished writers. They explore the dark and dangerous milieu of our comfortable existence. There is humour, tenderness, surprise, anger, sorrow and abject desperation in these stories from the four winds. The authors are Patricia Grace, Albert Wendt, Alice Tawhai, Briar Grace-Smith, Paula Morris, Tina Makereti, James George, Renée, Jacqui McRae, Eru Hart, Helen Waaka, Toni Pivac, K-t Harrison, Anya Ngawhare, Ann French, Piripi Evans, Mark Sweet and Terence Rissetto.

Leseprobe

First published in 2016 by Huia Publishers

39 Pipitea Street, PO Box 12280

Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

www.huia.co.nz

ISBN 978-1-77550-306-4

Copyright © The Authors 2016

The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the author of their respective works.

Cover images:

Ceramic swan © Gilmanshin/Shutterstock.com

Compass © Huia Publishers

Te Rauparaha and Te Rangikoaea © Andrew Burdan

Palm tree © Chuck Wagner/Shutterstock.com

Man and child with tricycle © Dubova/Shutterstock.com

Bicycle © pzAxe/Shutterstock.com

Child with moko © Soldiers Rd Portraits

Young woman © Soldiers Rd Portraits

Picture frames © 501room/Shutterstock.com

Wall and back cover image © Robert Kneschke/Shutterstock.com

This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of the publisher.

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

The assistance of the Māori Literature Trust is gratefully acknowledged

Ebook conversion 2016 by meBooks

CONTENTS

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Briar Grace-Smith

A Small Light

Terence Rissetto

Delirium Tremors

Albert Wendt

Fast

Paula Morris

Three Princesses

Alice Tawhai

Killing Ginger

James George

Moontide

Jacquie McRae

Time

Eru J Hart

May Board

Helen Waaka

The Apology

Patricia Grace

Hey Dude

Toni Pivac

The Tree House

K-t Harrison

That Last Summer

Anya Ngawhare

Byron and the Bastard Blues

Renée

This Day Was Different

Albert Wendt

Neighbours

Ann French

Pointing the Bone

Tina Makereti

Frau Amsel’s Cupboard

Piripi Evans

Late Antiquity

Mark Sweet

Trust

Terence Rissetto

Morningslide for Life

The Authors

Back Cover

Introduction

Life is full of surprises. After twenty-five years of publishing, we asked the best of our storytellers to give us something that would surprise us and you, the reader. This collection is the result of our invitation. These are stories told with humility, humour and a good dose of irreverence – for the whānau, the Church, the authorities and contemporary obsessions with self-image. They are stories that weave values of manaakitanga and utu. And above all, these are stories of aroha – for whānau and ‘āiga, for those who have passed on to the spiritual world of our ancestors, for the nostalgia of old age, and of the gritty reality of aroha mixed up with violence and social injustice.

Huia Publishers continues to be a proud discoverer of new writing talent in New Zealand; many of the authors in this collection began their publishing with us and have become established literary identities.

Brian Bargh and Robyn Bargh

A Small Light

BRIAR GRACE-SMITH

None of them had expected Toi to be any good as a weaver, because, like his body, his fingers were short and square. But sensing the need for this man to hold onto something with long roots, the women had one day introduced Toi to a stand of flax.

There were many things Toi liked about flax, starting with the way it made him feel when he was cocooned inside its cool cathedral of leaves, listening to the hollow clatter they made in the wind. And the press and slide of the mussel shell against the dull underbelly of the leaf, forcing the greenness to fall away and reveal the silken wefts inside. Then, at the end of the day, when the women had gone home, Toi liked to stand with his bare feet flat against the wooden floor and breathe in the bittersweet smell that the flax left behind.

But while the women were impressed to meet a man who loved flax as much as Toi did, they believed that his desire to weave was transitional. Each morning when he turned up at the space, they would look up from whatever they might be weaving, their mouths slightly open in surprise. Then after a second or two of taking him in, the snap, crackle and flick of flax would continue. Not one of them imagined that in two years, Toi’s wedge-shaped fingers would be outtwisting, outbending and outknotting all of theirs.

But now here he was, Toi. Circled by loud, laughing women weavers, in a room earthy with the smell of muka, weaving a kākahu made from feathers of the purest black.

Before Toi’s fingers found the rhythm that came with making patterns – the over one, under one weave of taki tahi; the over two, under two weave of taki rua; the stairways of poutama and the canine peaks of niho taniwha – he had been a person who didn’t take the time to remember the past, or plan the future.

Before the time of patterns, Toi had been all about what was happening now.

This didn’t mean he’d had a past that he wished to forget, but instead one that he’d never belonged to, full of people who looked better, spoke better and who sat more comfortably with each other than they did with him.

And so, at a very early age, Toi decided that instead of engaging in life, he’d tread lightly along the top of it and not let it catch him.

If Toi looked backwards to his past, he saw a never-ending blackness. Once inside of it, he could make out the thin, luminous line that was the curve of his mother’s back. As he walked towards her he found himself growing smaller and smaller, until he was his five-year-old self again.

Toi buried his face in the material of his mother’s shirt. It smelt of washing powder. He put his ear to the ground and heard the mumbled voices of his sisters and brothers and the mosquito-like whine of his father’s trout fishing line as it sliced through the air, cutting into the shine of the lake. But none of these pictures, sounds or smells stayed around long enough to take real form.

Since Toi was a man who had no real past, he understood that it was dangerous to think about the future. The ground he stood on was a thin biscuit of washing powder. If he craned his neck suddenly to look ahead, it would crumble, turning into an avalanche of whiteness that would slide down the bank and into the lake, taking him with it. The lake would finish him off, drowning him in a churning whirlpool of foam. Scared of what was both behind and in front, Toi had learnt to make his present-day self become nearly invisible. So, even though he was a solid man, people looked right through him.

But today, as he carefully twisted and half-twisted aho around whenu and secured black feathers onto the growing kākahu, he saw his past begin to thicken and grow, and he didn’t flinch.

Toi had met Ru in the same way, in the same place, at the same time, that he met all the women he slept with – at the nightclub that stood on the hill beside the lake, at midnight. The club was dimly lit, but every time the door to the Ladies squeaked open, a blade of light would shoot across the space, slicing through whatever lay in its path. This included Ru’s head of bright hair. So when Toi looked up, his eyes were stung by the flash of her. An hour later Ru appeared at his side. She pulled at his shirt like a child and said, ‘I want to go now.’

And in the early hours of the morning, as Ru skipped and tiptoed along the Rotorua footpaths beside him, her hair caught the beams emanating from streetlamps and cars. A few small insects fluttered around its glow.

When they got back to the unit, Toi turned on the light and immediately felt ashamed of its plainness. The brick walls were the same dirty cream colour as the roof, and the carpet was thin and grey. The only decoration in the place was a calendar. It hung limply from a nail by the fridge. The man from the dairy had given it to him. Inside it were images and information about the things you could buy from the man’s shop. January was ice cream, February was peanut butter and March was all about Milo.

Ru looked around the room and made a clicking sound with her tongue. Then, reaching up with her leg, she turned off the light switch with her toe.

Everything went black.

That’s when Toi saw who this young woman really was. While Toi was strong and heavy, Ru was as small and delicate as a bird. Every part of her looked as if it had been carefully sculpted out of polymer clay, using dentist’s tools. The spirals of a moko kauae lightly dusted her chin, and Toi imagined they must’ve been painted on using brushes made out of spider webs. Much later, when they were in his bed, Toi could feel the slender frame of her skeleton beneath him and was scared that the weight of him might snap her.

He had woken late that morning to a sweep of cold air across his face and found her gone. The window had been opened just wide enough for someone with a body as slim as Ru’s to slip through. Standing outside with a mug of tea, he saw the wet prints of small feet on the driveway, and there was a violet scarf stuffed into the letterbox. Looking out onto the lake, he thought he saw a figure skipping across its steamy surface, but then it disappeared and he wasn’t sure if it was real. People were always seeing things on that lake that weren’t really there.

Toi decided to keep the scarf. He hung it in his wardrobe. It caught his eye every time he looked for a shirt.

Something in Toi changed after he met Ru. His job in the Warehouse office where he had spent years counting, adding up and ordering plastic toys, outdoor equipment, kitchenware and shovels, had once been enough for him, but now it seemed pointless. He used to look forward to his Friday nights, but now the nightclub where he went to get drunk, pick up women and joke with other men reminded him of the bottom of his rubbish bin. It was damp, smelt sour and was alive with wilted and unwanted things.

Toi was sitting on his doorstep one morning thinking about all of this when he heard a loud shriek of laughter. The squeal was joined by another squeal and then a snort. A river of chuckling followed.

Over the road, Toi saw seven pairs of legs walking down the narrow footpath. The bodies and heads attached to the legs were obscured by bunches and bunches of trembling flax leaves. Toi couldn’t help himself. He followed the seven pairs of legs and eight bunches of flax and the river of chuckles, to the weaving space. At the door the women put down their flax, narrowed their eyes at Toi and placed their hands on their hips.

‘Why are you following us? they asked him. Toi shrugged, which made one of them guffaw for some reason.

‘Better watch out, we’re all on the lookout for new husbands, us,’ said one.

‘I need a bloke like you to mow my lawns, and can you cook and clean and paint my house as well?’ said another.

‘Sounds like we’re going to have to share you, one day each,’ said the tallest of the seven, who always had the last word.

Toi wasn’t scared by their carry on. Instead of running he looked at his feet for one thoughtful moment, then followed the women inside.

They told him he should give the first basket he wove to someone he was grateful to. Toi had placed the bright green kono on the surface of the lake and watched as the current took it away.

‘Thank you and goodbye, Ru,’ he said.

But it wasn’t until he started weaving the kākahu that he realised Ru was someone he didn’t want to forget – and nor would he, for just a year later Toi came home to find his sister standing in the kitchen with a bellowing baby in her arms.

‘I came to borrow your weed eater, and a girl turned up holding a kid. Oh my god, Toi! Did you sleep with her? Anyway she told me she couldn’t look after your baby any more. Toi, why don’t you wear protection? Why don’t you take some responsibility for your actions? Why don’t you just … I mean, you know what’s gonna happen, don’t you? You’ll be done for maintenance and Mum and Dad will end up with this angry baby and they’re old, Toi. Old, old, old! Don’t look at me like that! I can’t help you. I’m not the maternal type. Besides, I’m leaving. Moving to Dubai for work.’

Toi pulled back the blanket and looked at the baby in his sister’s arms. She had big black eyes and a wide mouth. Her hands were clenched fists and her legs already looked solid enough to hold the weight of her body. He imagined how hard it would be for this loud giant of a baby to grow up in a house full of tiny-boned, bright-haired people like Ru. She was a squawking, shining cuckoo who had been placed in the wrong nest, and he knew just how that felt. The difference between the baby and him was that she wasn’t scared to let people know she was angry.

Toi took the child and held her close. After a moment she stopped crying and burrowed her wet face into his chest. His sister put her hand to her mouth and gasped. ‘Well, would you look at that? She knows who her papa is.’ It was the first time he’d clung to someone for more than a heartbeat, and he knew in that moment he was never letting this child go.

While all around him the weavers talked and laughed, flax rustled and his sure-footed child laughed, screamed and stomped, Toi sat back in his chair and took in the half-finished kākahu.

Reaching into his bag, he pulled out Ru’s violet scarf. He placed one of its tassels in the middle of the sea of black feathers of the cloak and secured it tightly.

There it sat, a small light flickering.

Below this halfway mark of his life, Toi saw the trembling threads of his future. They fell in a delicate veil waiting for his thick-fingered self to turn them into something beautiful.

Delirium Tremors

TERENCE RISSETTO

Our hospital is situated on top of a hill, nestled in the bend of the river, its grounds and views making it prime real estate for modern would-be developers. The main buildings, including high walls and four watchtowers, were built in the early 1900s as a prison but never used as one. Due to supply and demand at the time, the latent prison was turned into a mental asylum instead, one institution substituted for another.

Practically the only difference, though, is that in the asylum, patient behaviour is managed by legal drugs, whereas prisons are managed by illegal drugs. The asylum buildings have all the rudiments for incarceration, including reinforced floors and walls, bars on the windows, secure cell blocks, enclosed exercise yards and a farm run by the inmates. Most of the staff here don’t wear the white uniforms of other hospitals, so there is no obvious delineation between staff and patient. The hospital administration needn’t have worried. When I first applied to work here it seemed that to be employed as staff, you had to either drink heavily or be called Pita. I fell into both categories. The only way to differentiate between Pitas was to attach an appropriate characteristic, for example, Pita piano, Pita hair-do, Pita knitting, Pita poof and so on. I was just Pita. To my face, anyway.

I have fitted into hospital life like a prison glove on a recidivist, so much so that on my first day I showered a patient against his will and found out later he was the ward charge nurse. That didn’t go down particularly well at the time, but earned me a lot of drinks in the retelling.

In my flimsy defence, it wasn’t entirely my fault. I’d grabbed him and he’d said imperviously, ‘Do you know who I am?’ So I figured if he didn’t know who he was, then he must be a patient. His name was Greg the Egg, and we’ve had a running feud ever since. Greg doesn’t drink but I do. Unfortunately.

Like today, for instance. After a late night and early morning I had a blinding hangover and needed a drink badly, or my name wasn’t Pita. I’d survived the morning showers, feeding, toileting and clean up and was on my way to the mess hall to line the stomach with some breakfast at least. It was a beautiful morning, and even the male peacocks seemed happy, resplendent in their outlaid shimmering rainbow finery. God knows why the English thought peacocks roaming freely had a calming effect on patients already suffering from hallucinations. Being pōrangi and coming face to face with their unworldly psychedelia and nocturnal cries for help would turn even the most ardent bipolar into a paranoid schizophrenic. But that wasn’t any of my concern. I had other things on my mind.

‘Hoi. You! Stop!’

The sudden demand spliced through the crisp air in five directions and splattered against the fragility of my hangover. I kept walking.

‘Stop! Halt! About face and come here, soldier! Now!’

I heard a heavy scrambling scrape of hobnails and felt a hand on my shoulder. Turning slowly, I found myself staring into the cold blue eyes of Dolph Lundgren from Universal Soldier. This person with the hand was younger, dressed in army fatigues, beret and epaulettes. As tall as me, only bigger. Much, much bigger.

‘What’s your name, soldier?’ he bellowed into my twitching face.

I was definitely not in the mood.

‘Jack Nohi. What’s yours, superboy?’

‘Adrian. Call me Sir.’

I saw Adrian was cradling an ominous-looking black object in the crook of his right arm. As you’d expect from a soldier armed to his yellowing teeth: a toy truck.

‘I’m a private,’ he said proudly.

‘Excellent,’ I said, nodding my head. ‘Let’s keep it that way.’

‘Are you a truck driver?’ he asked, suddenly obsequious.

‘No,’ was the short answer.

‘Do you drive a truck?’ he persisted, patting his toy fondly on the head.

‘No,’ I answered, even shorter than before, and turned to walk away towards the mess hall.

‘You’re really big and strong,’ he gushed, rubbing my biceps. ‘Are you in the army?’

‘No. Bugger off.’

He stepped in front of me and held up his truck.

‘Do you like my truck? I saved up and bought it myself.’

‘Really? Yes. It suits you.’

I put my arm up to push him aside and he grabbed my forearm to take a closer look at my watch.

‘I like your watch!’ he enthused.

Without warning he started gnawing at the watch face and band, slobbering over my wrist.

‘What the hell?’

I hit him with a hanged man’s reflex: closed fist hammered behind the left ear and a kick to his well-worn privates. He screamed in agony, bending in half and dropping the truck beside him. Given his size, I kneed him in the nose, just in case, and just hard enough to draw blood as he fell. Noticing the people around me, I grabbed his arm.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked, in a loud voice. ‘You tripped over your truck.’

I helped him to his feet and bent his little finger back, feeling him wince with the pain.

‘Piss off,’ I whispered into his ear before saying loudly, ‘better go and see the doctor.’

Adrian stumbled off, clinging to his truck with his non-wounded hand.

‘You shouldn’t have done that, Pita,’ said a voice matter-of-factly.

I looked around and saw Little Ronnie, graduate of the Children’s Cottages. On rubbish duty. He posed mid-cigarette amongst the litter like a smoking Zen master gnome caught short in a crazy wavy raked garden of attrition. My head felt the same way. Lucky that I liked Ronnie.

‘It was self-defence, bro. Did you see what he tried to do? Do you think he’ll tell the Matron?’

‘No. Nothing like that. But you made a big mistake there.’

He shook his head sympathetically.

‘I had to, bro. He’s a big boy and could have done a lot of damage,’ I said.

‘No, you got it wrong. He likes his pain. A couple of years ago he got picked up by a truck driver who beat him up and then bummed him. The truck driver had a big watch on, like yours. He’s been going around ever since asking every guy he meets if he’s a truck driver. He’s in love with him. No one’s ever given him a hiding before. He’ll think you’re the truck driver and the more pain you give, the more he’ll like you.’

‘Thanks Ronnie, I needed that,’ I said, patting his bald head like Benny Hill on fast-forward.

I walked into the mess room and there she was. Cathy, the flame of my oily life. Slow motion. Queasy. I wanted to throw up. She was so beautiful. I collected the hospital breakfast and sat down with her. My hands started to tremble. We talked and talked until I noticed that the room had gone quiet and a shadow had fallen across the table. I looked up and saw a minotaurised replica of Popeye, sans horns, hat and pipe, stalking purposefully over towards me. Nobby.

Nobby will do anything for a cigarette. There was one conspicuously tucked behind his left ear.

‘Patients aren’t supposed to come in here, Nobby,’ I admonished him, glancing up deadpan into his eyes.

Nobby chewed his cud nervously. He knew me from working on his ward a few times.

‘Ah, um, Pita, um Pita, I’ve ggggot a ppppresent for you.’

‘A present, Nobby? Who from?’ I enquired, eyes full of hidden meaning, my fingers steepled in front of me.

He handed over an unidentifiable object, wrapped neatly in a pair of men’s jocks. My head was throbbing and the eggs in my stomach were starting to get restless.

‘Who’s it from, Nobby?’ I encouraged him sweetly. The room had gone even quieter.

‘HHHHe said, um, he said yyyyou’d know,’ Nobby replied, trembling through a mouth uncluttered with teeth and filled with trepidation.

‘Oh,’ Cathy sighed. ‘Isn’t that nice. What a beautiful boy. What a nice boy.’

I opened the pants cautiously, to reveal a recently spruced-up toy truck. Nobby immediately decamped, scattering for the door like a bird with three broken wings. I threw the truck after him, managing to bounce it off the back of his head and into the face of a male nurse who was just about to walk into the hall. Greg the Egg. Perfect. Or not.

Greg cursed in heartfelt passion and made a petulant beeline towards us.

‘Pita, you prick! How dare you do that to me.’

He grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet like a recalcitrant patient.

‘Come with me now to the Matron’s office.’

The sudden upward movement and my bilious head managed to stir the poached, scrambled, and fried eggs composting in my stomach into violent action. I vomited over him, barely managing to pull the neck of his freshly washed white jersey out far enough to allow most of it to splatter over and down his shirt without damaging anyone else. A five-pointer without trying. A clean kill with minimum collateral damage. No wonder he hated me.

I wiped my mouth on his look of horror and quickly turned to leave.

‘Thanks for that, Greg. I feel much better now. I’ll leave it with you, then? Better get back to the ward.’

I grabbed Cathy’s arm and we went out into the sunshine again. At least my head had cleared.

‘What just happened?’ she asked in disbelief, turning to face me, away from the noise and bedlam inside.

‘Oh, just Greg living up to his name. You okay?’ I asked, deflection being the better part of valour.

She hugged me warmly. ‘It’s about time you asked. Coming down to the Skinny Dog at lunchtime for a drink with me?’

I knew I was. It was the same dog that had bitten me last night after late shift. I walked her to the admissions ward door, where she kissed me on the cheek and went in after unlocking the door, waving to me through the window.

My own ward was a short walk further on down past the morgue and the nearby surgery unit, opposite the Children’s Cottages. It was pleasant in the sun. Birds were singing, lawns were being mowed.

As I unlocked the ward door, a small sound distracted my attention and I felt an indistinct movement nuzzling my left foot. Looking down I saw a toy truck. A slightly bent toy truck with a slightly bent quivering toy truck owner lurking behind the tremens of a nearby bush. I also saw red.

‘Mothertrucker! Bugger off, Adrian!’

The scream echoed and threw itself back at me several times before finally dying down. The acoustics were very impressive. I briefly enjoyed the silence until I heard loud guffaws and laughter coming from the vicinity of the Children’s Cottages.

It was Ronnie and Nobby, pointing and laughing in my direction while simulating various unexpurgated truck and trailer copulations. Dolph the Adrian had long since vacated the area, stampeding the preening peacocks in his haste.

For good measure, I gave Ronnie and Nobby a flurry of two-handed one- and two-finger salutes in a scattergun profusion, a drunk juggler throwing his toys in the air and the knives after them. It had the desired effect. I could see a look of alarm on Ronnie’s face. He pointed urgently behind me before sprinting off, with Nobby wobbling close behind him.

Too late, I felt a large hairy hand on my shoulder and remembered that I had left the ward open while trading insults with the boys. My ward was maximum security, full of the criminally insane and sundry unmanageable violent offenders from the justice system. There were no second chances in this place. I could smell horrendous breath with a hint of bourbon, vomit, stale cigarettes and cheap cologne.

Turning quickly, I grabbed the hand and twisted it up behind its owner’s back, putting my arm around a fat-arse neck and squeezing a barely existent Adam’s apple. You don’t work in a men’s ward for violent offenders and not know how to defend yourself at any moment. Faint heart never won a fair lady.

‘Pita!’

Greg stepped towards me, superciliously dressed in a freshly laundered patient shirt. Snotty little prick. He should have helped me. My hangover was back, breaking chunky masses of loosening brainfreeze from my forehead. I needed a drink. Badly.

‘Pita!’ he urged.

I snarled back.

‘What the hell do you want, Greg? Can’t you see I’m slightly busy here?’ I said, emphasising the words with a vicious twist of hand neck, and being rewarded by a strangled gasp of pain.

‘Pita, please let the Matron go. She only wants to talk to you.’

Fast

ALBERT WENDT

… And it is blinding morning, laced with the unpleasant odour of winter mud, bursting through the gap under your bedroom curtains and flowing over your duvet and up over your chest and into your nostrils and eyes. You remember, you push your legs out of bed, your feet find the floor and you re-hitch your ‘ie lavalava round your waist and start rushing for the bathroom. Shit, shit, shit, you’re going to be late for your 9.30 am lecture, again! No time to shave or have breakfast. Final week of lectures and then finals, and hopefully the completion of your MA and your graduation and getting a teaching job. You have to be at Professor Thalmer’s last class of the year because he is going to tell the class what is in your final exams on The New Zealand and Pacific Novel.