Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The (17 page)

He walks away from the orchard, past a fire-break separating
the pines from native bush. A bell-bird calls from up the hill but Duncan goes down, throwing his arms round trees to keep his feet. The creek in the gully is almost dry. He crosses it with a leap and climbs to a clearing by the road. A car is parked alongside a picnic table and a woman lies on a rug with a straw hat shading her face. Duncan, standing in the bush, is interested in the way the weight of bone in her legs spreads her muscles out and how her breasts flatten with their weight. If we walked on four legs, he thinks, our muscles would have a different shape and our bones would bend in different ways. He looks at her husband playing with two children further off. It's a game his father and Bel used to play, but this man isn't half as good as Tom. He doesn't show his teeth and hook his fingers and make a meal when he catches a child. ‘What's the time, Mr Wolfie?' cries the girl. ‘Half past three,' the man drones, pacing along. ‘What's the time, Mr Wolfie?' says the boy. ‘A quarter to four.' Pathetic. ‘It's time I got my file and sharpened my teeth,' Tom would have said. All the same the children are in a state of fright and when the man cries, ‘Dinnertime,' and gallops after them they scream more with terror than enjoyment and the boy is almost in tears as he runs into his mother's arms. The boy is the favourite, Duncan sees. His father has chased him twice in a row.

‘Yum yum,' the man says, eager now. He pulls the child from its mother and bites it on the stomach.

‘Me, Daddy, me,' the girl screams.

‘That's enough,' the mother says, and turns half away in disapproval. Sees Duncan. Her eyes dilate and her mouth drops open. She's caught between breaths and can't make her lungs work. Duncan thinks, turned her into stone.

‘Dan,' she says, ‘Dan,' reaching up and hooking her fingers in her husband's belt.

The man puts the boy down, steps at Duncan, lifts his arm as though chasing off a dog.

Bugger you, Duncan thinks. He comes out of the bush and strolls by. ‘Bird-watching,' showing his binoculars. ‘There's bell-birds and grey warblers in there.' The boy has a bite-mark and saliva on his stomach. I might have saved his life, Duncan thinks. He winks at the girl, making her squeak.

‘Come here, Gail,' the mother cries.

Duncan walks backwards two or three steps. ‘Don't let them play with matches,' he smiles. Then he goes on down the dirt road towards the orchard, shading his face from the sun.

Turned her into stone. Bloody good.

Shelley walked through the right-of-way. She was on her way to visit Neil Chote but not even Hayley knew that. Hayley rode her bicycle close behind, with her swimming togs and towel on the carrier. She was heading up the river to Freaks' Hole (so named in the sixties when a tribe of hippies camped under tent-flies on the bank and scandalized Saxton by swimming without togs). Hayley hoped to meet her boyfriend Gary Baxter there.

As they entered the turning-bay an old lady ran from her door. ‘Girls,' she cried, ‘come and help me please. Ken has fallen down the stairs.'

‘Who's Ken?' Shelley said.

‘My husband. He put his stick on the wrong step.'

‘Is he hurt? Do you want a doctor?'

‘I just need someone to help me get him up the stairs.'

‘OK,' Shelley said.

Hayley leaned her bike on the fence. They followed the woman into the house and saw an old man in a dressing-gown lying on the carpet. He was mooing like a cow and waving a big walking-stick around. A broken vase of flowers lay halfway down the stairs and a scent of freesias filled the hall.

Shelley squatted beside the man. ‘Anything bust?'

‘Now Ken, don't hit, she's come to help,' the woman said.

Hayley tried to take the stick away but the man held on. ‘Too many women.'

‘Take it easy,' Shelley said. ‘Let's get you up the stairs, eh? Grab his arm, Hayley.'

Although he looked big in his thick gown the man was light. They lifted him and made him take a step.

‘Ha, pretty girls. Let's dance a rumba.'

‘Behave yourself, Ken,' the woman said. She put her hands on his back and tried to push him up.

‘Don't need you, old girl. Damn it,' he dropped his stick, ‘the world's going round and round.'

He had the smell of something going off, cabbagy and meaty. One side of his face grew silver whiskers and the other was shaved, making him look broken in half.

‘He's got my leg. Ow, shit!' Shelley cried.

The old man had her thigh in one long paw and was digging in. The woman said, ‘Be good, Ken,' but Hayley saw he was holding on, not attacking Shell. She tried to help her sister break the grip and got the hand away after a moment. ‘I'll have fucking bruises,' Shelley said.

‘Oh my dear, you shouldn't swear.'

‘It wasn't your bloody leg.' There were tears of pain in Shelley's eyes.

‘Let's just get him up, eh?' Hayley said. ‘Got him, Shell?'

They levered him into a sitting-room and guided him backwards into a chair. ‘Throned,' he cried. ‘My stick, wife, bring my stick.' The woman fetched it from the stairs.

‘I just about cut my foot on that bloody vase,' Shelley complained.

‘You should wear shoes. No Ken, don't hit. Stay out of range, girls. He's very pleased to see you but he gets excited. Oh, it's nice you've called. We don't have enough visitors. Sit down. No, the sofa, Ken did some wets on the chair.' She started for the kitchen. ‘I'm going to make a cup of tea for us all.'

‘I don't want tea. God, it stinks of piss round here. I'm going,' Shelley said.

‘I want to wash my hands.'

‘Me too.' They went into the kitchen. The woman was plugging in the kettle. Shelley and Hayley rinsed their hands at the sink.

‘One of you girls put some peanut brownies on a plate.' She had thin legs and heavy humped-up shoulders and cushiony breasts. If she fell over, Hayley thought, they'd have to get a crane to hoist her up.

‘We've got to go. Can't stay for tea,' Shelley said.

‘Oh, what a pity. Ken will be disappointed. You must let me give you some money for an ice-cream. In that tin, dear. No, not that, that's Ken's treasure trove, the other one.'

Shelley closed the first biscuit tin and opened the next. It was half filled with ten and twenty and fifty cent coins.

‘Take a handful, we've got far too much. And you must let me give you a bag of peanut brownies.'

They went back through the sitting-room.

‘Who the hell let you in?' cried the man.

‘Come and see us again,' the woman said. ‘And next time you must have a cup of tea. Ken enjoyed your visit.'

At the corner Shelley dropped the paper-bag of cookies over a fence. They counted their handfuls of silver and had more than three dollars each. Shelley laughed. ‘Money for an ice-cream, shit!' She did not tell Hayley about the notes in the other tin – five hundred dollars at least, maybe a thousand. There were orange and red notes at the bottom, underneath a fat stack of green. And Hayley had no time, before she and Shelley went different ways, to mention the photograph of Mrs Sangster she'd glimpsed on the dining-room sideboard, and the wrinkled ghost of her in the old lady's face.

Her old man's mad and my mother's mad, Hayley thought. It surprised her that teachers should have troubles of that sort.

She chained her bike to the fence and walked along the shingle bank to Freaks' Hole. No one was there. Most people went to the big holes downriver, where you had to swim with screaming kids and pot-bellied men who perved on you and dogs chasing sticks, even though notices were nailed on the trees:
No Dogs Allowed
. You had to dodge beer cans and broken glass. Here it wasn't deep, not up to your chin, but at least you got it to yourself. If it wasn't for the golfers through the willows and the Rounds' house along the hill you could swim in the nick like those hippies.

She changed into her togs and sat on the sand. The river was low because of the drought and slimy weeds grew on the rocks. You had to ignore that when you swam, or have fights with it, wind it round your neck like a scarf. It only looked dirty, really there was nothing wrong with it. The water was so clear you could see pebbles, brown and green and white, magnified on the bottom.

Hayley had a swim, diving and porpoising and doing back somersaults. She swam the length of Freaks' Hole under water and was in the rapids at the top, letting water run over her, when Gary arrived. ‘Bugger him,' she said. He had brought his creepy friends, Tuck and Legs. ‘What did you bring them for?' she said when he swam up.

‘Why not? They won't look.'

‘They won't have nothing to look at.' But in the deeper water they rolled all round each other. She helped him get his fingers in, not that it felt any good, and held his cock and rubbed him till he came. She would have let him put it in if it hadn't been for Tuck and Legs watching from the bank. She kept up-river from his come and watched it curl away like bits of weed.

‘Some lucky slag down in Monday Hole is gunner get that,' Gary said.

She swam away from him, not liking him, even though he was so neat to look at. On the bank she took a fag from Tuck and lay on her towel and smoked, listening while they told jokes that got more and more filthy. Some of them made her feel sick. She saw their cocks slew round and stiffen in their togs and wished someone would come so they'd have to roll over and shut up.

Gary took a can of beer from his bag. ‘No thanks,' Hayley said. She'd told her father she wouldn't drink or smoke and she threw her cigarette away, deciding she'd keep the whole of the promise. She went into the water and swam around and when Gary joined her she said, ‘You brought those two for a gangie.'

‘No I didn't. You're all mine, eh?'

‘You're a liar. Why do you hang around with creeps like that?'

‘They're all right. They buy me booze.' He was feeling between her legs. ‘Give old Tuck a hand job, eh? He's never done it.'

‘No.' His cunning pretty face made her sick.

‘I'm gunner put it in this time.'

‘You're not.'

Then Tuck and Legs surfaced beside her. They came up like seals, poking up their heads, and rubbed themselves on her bum and hips. Their arms unrolled and slithered round her neck. She thought they were going to pull her under and was terrified at the thought of drowning. Someone – it was Gary – stuffed weed in her bikini pants. Legs pulled her bra down and made a finger-bite on her breast. ‘Lay off,' she screamed; and punched him with ridged knuckles on his throat. She found a hand pressing her mouth and bit as hard as she could and heard Tuck scream. She spun away from Gary, jerking her head through the noose of her bra, and made it to the bank; grabbed her jeans and T-shirt and ran.

‘There's people watching you,' she cried, half-seeing a golfer in red through the willow trees; and although she was sobbing her
fear was gone, because she knew she was better with her body than any of them, better at fighting and running, quicker and harder at everything. No one like Gary would get her. She stopped and picked up a stone the size of a hockey ball. Legs was on his hands and knees at the edge of the water. Tuck had his bitten hand hugged to his chest. She lined up Gary and threw at him underarm, hard and flat. He spun side-on, with a shout that turned into a scream as the stone hit his forearm. He fell over, rolling on the shingle.

Hayley pulled her T-shirt on. She walked the rest of the way to her bike. Her knickers were at the pool but the bikini pants would do. She took the weed out – it felt nice and cool, better than Gary with his fingers – and pulled on her jeans. At the first bend in the road she found a place where she could see the lower part of Freaks' Hole. The three of them were sitting on the shingle, nursing themselves. She'd wiped out the whole lot of them.

Hayley laughed. ‘Jerk each other off,' she yelled, and she turned round and rode back up the valley, past the bridge to the Rounds' house, past the golf course. She wasn't ready to go home yet, she'd find a place and have another swim. She felt this was the best day of her life. She'd got past creeps like Gary Baxter and felt she had travelled a long long way and good things would happen to her now. All the same, as she rode, she sobbed in her elation. They would have raped her, they would have drowned her. She knew that she could easily be dead and felt something dark and horrible close by her shoulder.

She found a pool by the top of the golf course and washed her face and swam up and down, twenty lengths, in her T-shirt and bikini pants. She was not even puffing when she stopped.

‘Plee,' a voice said.

She looked up the bank and saw a Japanese man in a neat little cap with a white pom-pom, smiling at her. She had not heard his ball land in the pool but went where he pointed, and dived and brought it up and lobbed it to him. He caught it in one hand, gave a little bow, laid something on the grass, ‘Fi' dollar,' and dropped the ball over his shoulder. She watched him play his shot, and scrambled up the bank when he had gone. A five dollar note lay on the grass. She was a little insulted that he'd taken her for a child. He wouldn't have offered money to a woman, probably tried to chat
her up instead. She watched him join his friends on the green, and the four, in bright trousers, take their turns at putting. Golf was expensive in Japan, her father said, so the trawlermen brought their clubs to New Zealand. They'd never get near a course at home.

Hayley walked across the pool, holding the note, and put it with the silver in her jeans. Everyone was giving her money today. She felt happy now that something stood between Gary and her and she smiled at the way the Japanese golfer had said please.

Two joggers went by along the bank. Stella Round and her big sister, whose name Hayley could not remember. Their faces were bright red, over-heated, and Hayley was sympathetic, although she usually hated Stella Round. She watched them cross the footbridge single file and go away through the willow arch, flashing on and off like lights, red and blue, red and blue. The big sister was the one who had saved her brother's life. She hadn't tried to save Wayne, of course.

Hayley turned her face away. When she remembered Wayne she felt her chest go empty as though her heart and lungs were taken out. She saw how it could happen to anyone. If Wayne was dead, Wayne who had tried wrestling holds with her on the floor, and smoked fags in his bedroom and used the air freshener before their father came home, and eaten with his mouth open – ‘Chew with your mouth closed, Wayne' – if Wayne was dead then she could die as quickly, just as easily, one day soon.

Hayley jumped up and pulled on her jeans. She rode up the valley and saw goats in the bracken by the road. A drive with ruts in it curved steeply in the scrub. She got off her bike and wheeled it up, not sure this was Lex Clearwater's place, and not sure he'd want her if it was. She couldn't remember anything special now in his invitation and felt like a pupil walking up.

A goat was tied to an iron stake where the drive elbowed back. She stopped to feed it grass and was amused by its comic chewing and troubled by the sharpness in the black part of its eye and a kind of blindness in the yellow. It was as if it saw, saw everything, but didn't have any interest. Didn't give a stuff. Only for itself. Nothing could be more greedy than its mouth.

Pellets as black as licorice fell from its bum. It's just a machine for eating, Hayley thought, and was a little disgusted even while the goat's greediness attracted her. It butted her hand for more grass.

She walked on with her bike and found a house at the back of a sun-baked lawn. Dry land stood behind it like a wall, crumbling away, and dried-out bracken grew higher up, and only the pines on the top of the hill seemed alive. The tea-trees and the gorse by the fences seemed made of crinkly wire and broken sticks. As for the house – she couldn't believe Lex would live in such a rundown place – if it was Lex's. She looked about for a sign. No ute. No clothes she might recognize on the line. Goats were the only thing and plenty of people had goats. She thought she had better go away.

‘Hey, Lex,' she called; then, small in the silence, ‘Mr Clearwater.' Goat heads looked at her from the bracken. She wondered if goats ate people at all. They seemed to eat anything they could find. She did not want to go back down that drive closed in with scrub.