Kokopu Dreams (10 page)

Sean looked at his young friend — frightened half out of his wits, frozen, starved, kicked and beaten. That night they lay huddled together for warmth on the concrete floor.

In the morning they were tossed a live eel and a plastic bottle of water. During the night, Sean had planned to jump the next person who came through the door, but when the time came he was rigid with the cold and too stiff and sore to move. All he and Kevin could do was wait until the eel stopped moving and do their best to eat it.

‘We need the strength,' Sean said. He killed the eel by submerging his nausea and chewing its head off. He'd tasted worse, he kept saying to himself, keeping a brave face on things for Kevin's sake. If they could hold on for another three days, when he and George were expected back, there was a chance the Tokaanu people would come looking for them.

Sitting huddled against the wall, their one blanket wrapped around them, Kevin told Sean of a conversation he'd overheard.

‘That Colin is really out to get you,' he said. Sean turned and looked at Kevin. ‘He was telling this guy what happened when he woke up, after you thought you'd killed him. He said a pig was eating Murray's face. Murray must have been his mate. He reckoned it was gross. "What a way to go," he told this guy. No worse than him eating somebody. But he said, "I'm going to get that prick". I suppose he meant you.'

Three days came and went. Every day they froze and every night too. They marked the time by killing and eating a live eel each morning. The bucket they used for a toilet was overflowing in a corner and stinking the place out. Nobody ever emptied it. Sean tried to make a joke after four days.

‘Last time I stay in this fucking dump,' he said.

Kevin didn't laugh. He was expecting each day to be his last. He told Sean of Colin's terrifying taunts, of how he was just waiting to be taken out, stunned with a blow to the head, gutted, spitted and roasted.

‘Sometimes they're still alive when they get spitted,' Colin had told him. ‘You should hear them scream when they feel the fire.'

‘That's bullshit,' Sean told Kevin, not really believing it himself. ‘And don't worry. Something's going to happen.'

But nothing did. On the fifth day, Colin and two others came in without a word and knocked Sean flat with a rifle butt. They dragged Kevin out, kicking and yelling his head off. When the door slammed, the bolt drove home and Sean was left alone in the stinking gloom.

Colin's words echoed around the cell, ‘Your turn next, you prick!'

Sean jumped up to see out the window but couldn't get high enough. He tried kicking the door down but it was solid timber, opening towards him, and he succeeded only in hurting his foot. He strained to hear any sound, a hint of what might be happening. But there was only silence, and he sank to the floor.

Then as he sat there, thinking that he'd kill himself, if he could, before Colin had him impaled on a spit, he heard a rifle shot — and another, then shouts, and horses' hooves, dogs barking. He leapt up just as running feet sounded overhead. Shotguns blasted. The walls shook with crashes, like doors were being kicked in and furniture thrown. He heard feet on the stairs outside, and the door burst open. Sean had never seen a more beautiful sight than the gap-toothed, dreadlocked, tattooed apparition, in the torn, red and black checked swanny, standing in the doorway.

They looked at each other for a moment, then Mangu spoke.

‘Man, it stinks in here!' he said. ‘C'mon, if you can. We haven't finished.'

Kevin was with Sean's rescuer, grinning with what Sean could see was a great relief. He wondered how close Kevin had come to being the main course. As they were going back up the stairs, Kevin started to tell him but Mangu turned with a finger to his lips. He held a rifle in his other hand and pulled a machete from his belt and gave it to Sean.

‘They're all up on the next floor,' he hissed. ‘But you never know.'

As they reached the top of the stairs, two men attacked. One of them grabbed Mangu and the other fired his shotgun just as Sean ducked. The blast deafened him. He swung the machete, catching the guy on the side of the knee. The fellow collapsed, clutching himself, and quick as a snake Kevin was stabbing him with a large knife. Mangu twisted in his attacker's grasp and, as Sean looked up, delivered a savage headbutt and a knee between the guy's legs that lifted him off the ground.

‘You can tell he doesn't drink in the Flying Jug,' Mangu said.

Overhead they could hear thumps and bangs and an occasional shotgun blast. Sean thought of his own weapons just as he heard a shout of ‘Fire!'

‘Watch it!' said Mangu. ‘They're firing out of the windows.' But Sean was already kicking open doors along the corridor he remembered led to the kitchen. He found his gear in about the fifth room, his sawn-off still in its scabbard, his crossbow, even his saddle and the bags and blanket.

‘Where's Hamu?' he thought, and turned at a loud bark just in time to be knocked flat on his back by the dog's leap into his arms.

Back in the corridor, Sean smelled smoke. A man appeared coughing, at the top of the stairs. A rifle cracked. He reeled backwards, clutching his face.

‘That's for George, you bastard!' came a voice beside him. Over their heads the fire crackled and windows exploded.

‘We'd better get out of here!' yelled Kevin in his ear. Two more people burst through the door at the top of the stairs. Rifle shots dropped one man and drove the other back into the billowing smoke. Sean turned at the shots and saw two more of the hunters. They were almost invisible in the shadows. One of them lifted a hand to Sean. One more person, probably a woman but hard to see by then, ran through the door and fell with a shot. Another, with his hair and clothes on fire, tumbled down the stairs and lay still on the kitchen floor. Flames were coming through the door now and licking down the room's timber walls. A shelf of liqueur bottles crashed and the liquid caught, flaming as it spread across the floor. Sean, Kevin and the three hunters groped out the door and stood in the parking area coughing. Flames curled through the upstairs windows and a section of roof collapsed.

‘Serves the bastards right,' spat Mangu. ‘We caught them just as they were going to kill this little guy.' He nodded at Kevin. ‘I think they were going to eat him too. We found a fireplace and a big spit.' And just like Matapihi, ‘No time for that sort of shit.' He thumbed fresh cartridges into the magazine of his rifle. ‘Sorry we took so long. When you guys weren't back in three days we rode to Waiouru. They hadn't seen you and on the way back the dogs found George. We just knew who it was. We came straight here.' He turned to the other hunters. ‘Did you get them all?'

‘All but one of them,' came the reply. Sean's heart sank. ‘Don't tell me,' he said. ‘It was a tall skinny blonde guy with a front tooth missing.'

‘That's him,' said one of the hunters. ‘Soon as we started shooting he took off.' They moved back from the heat of the burning building. The hunter laughed. ‘Friend of yours?'

11

AFTER A FEW WEEKS back in Tokaanu recovering, Sean resumed his southward journey, now accompanied by Kevin. The young man had aged, was wary of everyone, and aware of his diet in a way he never had been.

Just north of Taihape they were caught by a sun-shower. They spied a church up ahead and took shelter in the porch. Sean found dry wood under the building and laid and lit a fire on the concrete floor. While they waited for the billy he opened the door, expecting a dusty and unkempt interior.

It was spotless. The floor was swept and polished, the wooden pews oiled, clean linen adorned the altar, and in the sanctuary the eternal flame burned. The flame's brass stand and all the candlesticks were burnished and gleaming. Late afternoon sun shone through leadlight windows, each one showing a saint from Sean's Catholic boyhood.

There was St Peter, bearded and patriarchal; St Paul stood among lightning bolts on the road to Damascus. The recently demoted St Christopher carried an angelic Christ child through knee-high wavelets. Ascetics looked at the ground, martyrs gazed piously heavenwards. Even St Jude was there, peering myopically outwards. Hastily Sean whipped off his hat and stepped backwards. He nearly tripped over Kevin, who hadn't seen inside.

‘It's boiling,' Kevin said. ‘Where's the tea?'

Sean rummaged in a saddlebag, tossed a handful of tea into the billy and was served a faceful of smoke by a gust of wind. He wiped his streaming eye with the tail of his swanny and, when his sight was restored, the first thing he saw was Kevin's open-mouthed gaze.

She wore an ankle-length bright yellow robe and odd sneakers, one crimson and one gold. In her arms was a bundle of lilies. She didn't look dangerous. Bojay was sniffing the back of her shaven head. She pointed to the fire.

‘You'll have to get rid of that,' she said.

Sean didn't even think of arguing. He'd never have argued with a nun, and that's what he saw. He knew what nuns were like. For years he'd been convinced they wore roller skates beneath their robes, so they could sneak up on small boys, almost certainly involved in some sinful activity.

While Kevin picked up the billy, Sean kicked the fire out onto the scythed grass and stamped out the coals. Their oddly dressed visitor watched silently as they carried their gear around the back of the church. They found shelter under a manuka pole and corrugated iron lean-to. The fire rebuilt, they settled down to a cup of tea, resting against their saddles. Sean could see Kevin felt as guilty as he did about their inadvertent desecration of the church. The woman followed them and stepped up to Sean, her hand held out.

‘I'm Sister Annie Choling,' she said. ‘I shouldn't really be making you welcome, but I can't help it.'

Sean introduced himself and Kevin, and offered Sister Annie some tea from his cup. She sniffed, like she was used to better things, and declined, but then she invited them home with her to stay for the night.

‘As long as you both behave yourselves and don't do anything peculiar.'

‘We'd be delighted,' Sean said. ‘And we promise to behave.'

‘Don't be surprised if people around here are funny about strangers,' Sister Annie said. ‘We just had somebody pass through here who did the most horrible thing you could imagine.'

Sean looked at her, a sick feeling growing.

‘We didn't even know he was here till we saw him leave and then somebody found what he'd done. He was tall and skinny with blonde hair and a tooth missing. Do you know him?'

‘Colin!' both Sean and Kevin exclaimed at the same time.

‘What did he do?' Kevin continued.

Sister Annie's face was a mask. ‘There was a man here, a possum trapper, living by himself. They found him dead, hanging upside down, with bits cut off him. Your friend must have been staying there and nobody knew.'

‘He's not our friend,' Sean said. ‘He tried to kill us too.' Perhaps Sister Annie should be more suspicious. Maybe she shouldn't be inviting them home. He asked her why she trusted them, knowing that the eyepatch and the scars on his face gave him a villainous look.

‘You two are safe to be around,' she said. ‘I can see your auras. But that man passed close to me when he left town.' She shuddered. ‘Evil has a colour all of its own. I've seen it before, but never that strong.'

Sister Annie Choling shared a house with Harold next to the church, about a kilometre from town. The house was full of cats. It stunk and Sean could tell that it wasn't just tomcat spray, cats had crapped under and behind things. Both Sean and Kevin wished they'd stayed in the lean-to. They wondered how they'd manage to eat anything amid such a stench.

To their relief the kitchen wasn't too bad. Double doors, opening into the evening chill, let out the worst of the stink, and Harold's meal of vegetable and walnut pie with a stone-ground wholemeal crust was a very pleasant surprise. They could hear Bojay and Kevin's horse, Sofa, just over the fence. Hamu sat outside the door, deeply offended by his vegetarian dinner. He stared hungrily at the cats. Their casual saunter round the door instantly became a defensive, hissing and spitting, back arched, sideways scurry for cover when they realised a dog was loose on the premises.

Sister Annie excused herself after the meal, leaving the others to do the dishes by lamplight. Harold seemed nervous about playing host to two characters of such travel-worn and desperate appearance. He looked far from desperate. The sight of him made Sean think of lounge suites and ‘Some Enchanted Evening' on the stereo. Harold was elderly and effeminate. He wore a neat toothbrush moustache and an immaculate green and silver tracksuit.

‘They're all my cats,' he said with pride.

After the Fever he'd gone through the township feeding the abandoned felines and over the winter he'd enticed them to his house. He realised they smelt a bit, and when Sean suggested that claustrophobia would force both he and Kevin to sleep outside he laughed.

‘Try the garden shed. The only smells you'll get in there are earth and vegetables.'

Harold and Sister Annie had been looking after each other for the past year. She was schizophrenic, he said, and prone to unpredictable enthusiasms.

‘And you can imagine what it used to be like for me,' he said. ‘Rocks on the roof, slogans on the wall, insults and threats across the street.' Sean nodded in sympathy. No picnic being gay in a small rural town. Harold and Sister Annie instinctively saw safety in each other and Harold was grateful for the Fever.

‘I've got a life now,' he said. ‘It's harder in lots of ways but I'm not afraid any more.'

Sister Annie was the town's vicar, guardian of its spiritual welfare. She looked after the church and every Sunday conducted a service concocted from Christian and Buddhist teachings and her own unique fantasies. Everyone came to listen to her sermons and prayers. People fed them, Harold said. They brought vegetables and other offerings to the church and to their home. For his part, he was a counsellor.

‘I've always been a good listener. And I know how it feels when everything turns against you.'

The whole town was in an uproar over Colin.

‘Lucky you met up with Sister Annie first,' Harold said. ‘Most of the people here would have shot you, no questions asked. I probably would have.' He straightened a rug on one of the armchairs. ‘You must admit, your looks raise a few questions.' Sean lifted an eyebrow, forgetting that the gesture was hidden by the eyepatch. Kevin looked from Harold to Sean. He'd been silent up to that point.

‘Thanks for everything,' he said to Harold. ‘We really appreciate your hospitality.'

Great, thought Sean. Ten out of ten for manners. Then Kevin spoke again.

‘Actually, those people in town are lucky. You too. We'd have wasted you if you'd tried to harm us. No shit.' He looked like he meant business, and Sean watched Harold's eyes widen.

‘No offence, young man,' he said.

‘That's okay,' Kevin replied. ‘None taken.'

Bet he used to watch old Clint Eastwood westerns on the telly, Sean thought. He realised that he didn't know Kevin all that well. Maybe his youthful partner was hiding some very useful surprises.

The three of them chatted about life on the road. Harold was curious about what the pair had eaten. All three laughed over the curried dog Sean had shared with Matapihi, but Sean could tell Harold was really revolted, his laughter polite rather than heartfelt. He talked of the markets, now a regular feature of the town's life as people had gradually gathered at the centre of the district.

‘People are much nicer to each other now,' he told Sean.

‘They're not in such a rush and there's room for people like me. People share more — food, everything.'

Sean was struck by the thought of what would they be eating for the next part of their journey? Where would the food be coming from?

‘Do you have any thoughts on where we could acquire food?' Sean asked Harold.

‘You'll have to trade for it at the markets, like everyone else,' he said.

Trade. Of course. Sean started mentally reviewing their meagre possessions and he remembered the eel net.

‘Do people around here eat eels?' he asked Harold.

Harold's face twisted with revulsion. ‘Yes, they do,' he said. ‘There's a creek down the back here, if you've got any way of catching them.'

Kevin waited till they were setting the net in the icy water before he spoke.

‘If I have to eat another eel, I'll spew,' he said. It was too dark to see his face but his tone was grim.

‘You didn't have to bite their heads off.'

‘I still had to eat the bloody things though. I'm not eating any more. Bad buzz.'

The net was full in the morning. Kevin left Sean to clean the two dozen eels while he and Hamu walked purposefully off.

‘Rabbits,' said Kevin. ‘Time we had a change of diet.'

Sean had his first taste of what he laughingly described to Harold as genuine free trade. The open market was held in the main street under sun umbrellas and colourful canvas awnings. It wasn't a pleasant experience. He traded the eels readily enough, but everyone looked suspiciously at him.

‘Fuck that,' Kevin said when Sean told him. ‘Harold was right. We'd best be outta here.' That night the cat stink seemed particularly vile and they decided to leave in the morning.

Kevin spoke for Sean too when he said to Sister Annie, ‘Nice little town, but we know when we're not welcome.'

Their saddlebags stuffed with food, they said goodbye to Sister Annie and Harold, thanked them and wished them well.

The roaring Rangitikei gorge gradually gave way to the flat plains of Hunterville as they rode. They could see the railway being taken over by yarrow and other wildflowers. Tangles of convolvulus hoisted themselves on gorse and broom growing beside the tracks. Blue cliffs of papa rock had slipped in places and other travellers had made tracks over the tumbled masses, already overgrown with blackberry and old man's beard. The vine was flowering in the late spring, climbing on the manuka and other small trees that had managed to get a foothold in the gradually dissolving debris.

Sean and Kevin spent the night beside a gentle stream. By the morning it was a raging, dirty brown torrent, thanks to heavy rain that began falling before daybreak. It soaked them and promised a miserable day. Neither had thought to stash any firewood. They spent all day under the hastily erected tarp, eating cold vegetables washed down with muddy water and last night's cold tea.

‘Pity you didn't set the hinaki,' Kevin said. ‘It'd be miles out to sea by now.'

The next day wasn't much brighter, but at least the showers were scattered rather than steady. They started riding early, hoping to find dry fuel and a hot meal somewhere along the way. Just north of Bulls, they passed an open hay shed with a heap of old fence posts and battens in one corner. They made themselves comfortable there. Bojay and Sofa dined on hay. Kevin laughed when Sean produced the final eel from the Taihape haul.

‘Told you,' he said, ‘I'm not eating any more of those manky things.' He turned to his saddlebag and, like a magician gave a bow and a flourish before pulling out a rabbit.

‘Maybe we can stew this,' he said. ‘I shot it the other day.'

When nobody was looking Hamu ate the skin. It made him fart all night.

‘Good thing this is an open-sided barn,' commented Kevin.

Bulls was a washout, literally. It was hosing down and there was no trace of the markets they'd been hoping for. They were soaked and miserable, and both envied Bojay and Sofa the stoicism that allowed the two horses to plod on in the teeth of wind and rain. Sean and Kevin spent the night under a bridge near the Palmerston North turn-off. A pile of driftwood had dried out on the bank, giving them a fire and a hot meal, and almost making up for the stony ground they had to sleep on.

It was fine and clear in the morning. The two horses worked their way through a large patch of red clover while the men gnawed on woody parsnips. But at least they were dry and the wind was back in the north, warm and fragrant with fresh wildflowers. Sean was conscious of the smells. They'd been there all his life but they were stronger than ever, no longer mixed with the stink of rot that had covered everything for the first months after the Fever. But there was something else. Familiar and unpleasant. What was it?

Kevin realised first.

‘Hey man, get a load of that,' he said. Sean stopped and sniffed.

‘That's cat,' he said. ‘Where's it coming from?'

It wasn't everywhere. They got occasional whiffs, carried on gusts of wind. It wasn't as strong as it had been in Harold's house, either. But it had a more mature and pervasive quality, like the source was a good distance away, but close up it would be overpowering. Hamu was aware of it. He looked nervous.