Kokopu Dreams (16 page)

‘Yeah,' Fairgo replied. ‘I suppose that's better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick.' He gave a bitter laugh. ‘But not much.'

A week later Sean left, riding aimlessly down to the Taieri Plains. He felt like he was running on empty. He'd lost everything. He wasn't even able to console Fairgo, who'd fallen back into prisoner mode, sitting by the stove all day and staring at nothing. Sean wasn't even surprised when there were no changes.

He found people on the Taieri. In a market at Outram he spent the last of his money on a bag of salt, some chickpeas and a packet of tobacco. The folk were lively and hospitable but Sean found the friendliness forced and offensive. He kept moving for something to do, completely without direction. He crossed the Taieri River and found himself in flat country with pines covering hills in the distance. Willows grew in the swampy places and starlings perched in the gum trees, calling to Sean as he rode by unseeing.

Camped next to a lake with the unlikely name of Waihola, he sat by a driftwood fire, his head in his hands. Maybe he could just swim out into the nor'westerly chop and end it all. Something stirred in his pocket. Bugs, he thought. Could he even be bothered? Listlessly he slipped his hand in, expecting to find a beetle. But there was nothing, only the manaia he'd shaped in Fairgo's workshop. He pulled it out, intending to throw it into the lake. The kiekie thong looked fresh and green. Coloured glass jewels glowed. He stared at it, and as he gazed laughter started in his head, quietly to begin with, then booming and irresistible. Slowly he got to his feet as the laughter crashed and surged like surf.

‘Hamu!' he called, but the dog was right beside him, panting and eager. ‘Something's happening!' Bojay had stopped munching. He put his head up and whinnied. The laughter was outside Sean's head now, pealing and echoing across the lake. A flock of geese took flight, honking loudly. Ducks flapped and pukeko burst from the raupo. A whirling mass of sparrows gathered. Sean stood on the sand, looking out at the lake, an unbelievable relief growing in him. He felt the manaia hot in his hand as the laughter slowly faded and birds wheeled and soared about him.

Streaks of red and yellow reflected on the suddenly calm water as the sun set. A floating log was just visible a few metres from the shore. Sean fastened the manaia around his neck. It seemed to dive beneath his swanny, as if it was pleased to be home.

He slept well that night, once more full of hope and promise, and now with a sense of complete wonderment. Sean breakfasted on fresh-water mussels from the lake, looking forward for the first time in months to what the day held. The manaia was inscrutable in the morning light, but Sean understood all he needed to know. Tinirau was back. Bojay stood quietly while Sean packed and saddled up, and Hamu drank from the lake, belly-deep in the chilly water.

Just south of Milton came a noise Sean hadn't heard in well over a year — a car engine, labouring as the car bumped and lurched over the broken highway surface. He tried to stop Bojay panicking as the vehicle drew alongside and he caught a glimpse of a woman with red hair and sunglasses. Was she the woman in Roger's dreams?

He was still wondering when, out of sight, he heard the car engine clank to a halt. He rounded the corner to see that two men walking by had stopped. Sean could hear their ribald remarks, and the woman telling them to bugger off, she had friends coming along soon. When Sean was fifty metres away, riding unseen down the ‘long acre' with his crossbow unslung and cocked, they managed to drag the fighting, cursing woman from the car.

She kneed one man in the balls and headbutted the other, who retaliated by punching her in the face. Sean's crossbow bolt took him in the neck, dropping him at the woman's feet and giving her a chance to reach into the car and grab a hardwood club. The man she'd kneed was still clutching himself as she straightened and, before Sean was able to cock the bow for a second shot, she brained the fellow. There was a noise like a pumpkin dropped on concrete and the guy joined his mate stretched out on the ground.

Sean trotted up to the woman, sitting sideways in the driver's seat, her feet on the ground, her head in her hands. She looked up as he approached. One eye was starting to swell.

‘You okay?' Sean asked.

She was beautiful. Red hair, high cheekbones and wild green eyes. Sean's heart lurched.

‘No, I'm fucking not,' she said. ‘But thanks.'

‘No sweat,' said Sean, trying frantically to think of something to say and finally coming up with the offer of a cup of tea. She looked surprised, and thanked him again.

Sean gathered wood, lit a fire, boiled the billy and tossed in some gorse flowers. He turned so she wouldn't see him taking them out of his swanny pocket and surreptitiously removing the worst of the fluff and twigs.

‘My name's Alex,' she said. ‘Bastards. Wonder who'll miss them?' She looked at the two dead men, no remarkable sight for Sean by then, and probably not for her either.

‘Sean,' he said, straightening from stirring honey into her tea and offering his hand. She was mid-twenties and dressed for a garden party. She saw Sean looking.

‘I'll wear what I like and get around any way I want,' she said, bristling. ‘Anyway this is the first time in months that I dressed up and look what happens.'

Her make-up was impeccable. She even wore stockings.

‘Sorry, my dinner suit's still at the cleaners,' Sean said as he spooned beeswax from her cup and spilled it all over his travel-stained trousers. She laughed, loud enough to startle the birds in a nearby poplar windbreak. Hamu gave a delighted bark.

‘This tea's nice,' she said. ‘Where are you going?'

‘Not sure. Just looking for a good place to live.' Tinirau was hot and heavy round Sean's neck. ‘What about you?'

‘I was going to Central Otago but it doesn't seem like such a good idea now. Maybe I should stay on the coast, near the sea.'

They sipped their tea and looked at each other. Sean saw a gorgeous woman, perfectly groomed. He was suddenly aware that he'd been on the road for two years and no doubt looked it, bearded — dreadlocked, scarred, with an eyepatch, his clothes torn and smelling like he'd been living under a log. Alex must have read his thoughts and his impulse probably surprised him a lot more than her. He leapt to his feet, whipped off his hat and bowed deeply.

‘At your service, madam,' he pronounced. ‘I'll take you wherever you like.'

She laughed again. ‘I accept, sir. And, for what it's worth, the clothes you're in look better than any dinner suit.'

It was worth a lot. Alex was the first woman Sean had seen in two years who made him conscious of his appearance and the impression he might be making. He put a rope halter on a smart-looking stockhorse he'd seen up the road. When Alex changed into khaki overalls and light boots, he fell in love all over again.

‘There's a place called Kokopu Waters out on the coast from Kahuika,' she said. ‘I think you'd like it there.' Sean had just slung Alex's two bags across Bojay's saddle and had helped her mount. He stopped just as he was about to leap onto the bare back of the stockhorse.

‘Where did you say?'

‘Kokopu Waters.' She looked puzzled at the excitement in his tone.

The manaia was jumping about under his swanny.

‘I'm a musician,' she said. ‘I used to play gigs in the pub there. I don't know who's there now. We'll have to go through Kahuika anyway.' She watched Sean mount the stockhorse and urge it onto the road. He turned back and called to Bojay, who followed.

A little way up the road he finally thought of something witty to say.

‘You know, I read somewhere that strange travel suggestions were dancing lessons from God.'

She laughed. ‘I guess we've just had the first instalment.'

They rode for several hours through the rolling hills of South Otago and arrived in Kahuika mid-afternoon, finding the markets by following hand-painted Day-Glo signs. About two hundred people were trading items they'd made, grown, caught, and even found. Food was everywhere. Sean could smell roast meat, watercress and puha boil-ups, smoked fish, fresh-baked bread, barbecued meat and the yeasty aroma of home-brewed beer. Some stalls carried clothing, mostly homemade. Others carried fishing gear and weapons, ammunition, tools, home-made medicines, bottles of liquor. People haggled and bartered loudly, argued with each other, shouted and laughed, greeted friends, yelled insults at enemies.

They found a stall stacked up with everything they needed for the stockhorse. Sean sorted out a saddle, bridle, shoes and nails. He was cultivating a look of disinterest mingled with irritation, before some serious haggling, when he noticed the fellow running the stall eyeing his sawn-off in its leather scabbard.

‘Don't suppose you're interested in some quality women's clothing,' Sean said, his heart sinking.

‘Not in the least,' said the guy, still looking at Sean's sawn- off.

What the hell. Nearly out of ammunition. ‘The weapon for everything.'

‘Done.'

Sean really disliked the transaction. He felt defenceless with the reassuring weight gone from between his shoulder blades. But Alex took his hand and squeezed it, whispering, ‘Thanks.' He'd have traded his clothes as well, and done a naked jig, for a repeat of that moment.

Sean shod the stockhorse and saddled her, while Alex and the stallholder fussed around the animal who'd really taken a shine to Alex.

‘I think I'll call you Starlight,' she said, while the horse rubbed her head up and down Alex's curvaceous front. Sean nearly died from envy.

Then Hamu turned up, towing a little girl who was holding onto his collar. She was seven or eight with haunted eyes, hollow cheeks and skinny wrists protruding from the sleeves of a ragged jacket. Her jeans were filthy, her hair matted and full of leaves and twigs. Sean watched Alex melt. She handed him her horse's reins, knelt by the girl, and the two of them threw their arms around each other, sobbing and weeping.

‘Do you know her?' Sean asked Alex as they were riding down to the Kahuika River. She had mounted and Sean had lifted the little girl up behind her. Alex was silent for a while then she turned to Sean, traces of grief and pain on her face and echoes of loss in her voice.

‘Yes and no.' It was all she needed to say. Sean could see she'd spent the past two years coping with volumes of hurt that had just returned, wrapped around a gift of love. He felt his own hurt too as they rode through the deserted streets.

That night they camped beside the river, Sean's by-now-tattered tarpaulin strung in a grove of willow trees. The girl ate three bowls of stew and told them her name was Lydia. She whispered to Alex, a tale that Sean wasn't really listening to. The feeling of a journey ending was growing stronger by the minute. He looked across the fire at Alex, her arm around Lydia, the flames flickering on her face. What a joy it would be to get close to another person.

Then he realised Alex was looking at him with an expression that said maybe she was thinking something similar. She spoke, her voice soft and musical. Sweet smells and silky flesh filled the night.

‘You must have ridden a long way to get here.'

He told her where he'd come from, within him a thousand tales from his travels. In her reply was a promise that made his heart leap.

‘You'll have to tell me about it some time.'

That night they slept together, Lydia in the middle, all three of them snuggled up against the early spring chill. Hamu lay at their feet, alert to every little noise, while the two horses grazed under a rising moon as the river slid silently past.

In the morning they set out for Kokopu Waters, past weed-choked paddocks, broken fences and the occasional wandering animal, a horse or a steer too big for the dogs to pull down. They had an all-day ride, through country that grew steadily wilder with bush growing down to the road and pointed hills that resembled the unlikely cones Sean had left behind in the north.

Kukupa soared and tumbled high overhead. Korimako chimed unseen in the trees. Streams gurgled through culverts under the road and ran alongside, sparkling and splashing playfully. They reached the top of a hill and saw the sea away to their left. Waves broke on rocky shores and tree-lined inlets glinted. The sun shone through clouds blowing gently up from the south.

‘Not far now,' said Alex. ‘We should get a good view from the next hill.'

They rode through a cutting and below them, like a toy town in the sunlight, lay Kokopu Waters. Sharp and clear were short streets and trees growing everywhere beside a large inlet. Nothing moved. Sean could hear the faint cries of seagulls and the distant roar of surf. It was the place of his dreams. A huge weight lifted. He looked across at Alex and the tears flooded. She reached over and took his hand.

‘You big soft thing.'

Halfway down the hill towards the red-roofed cottages she spoke again. ‘I wouldn't be here if you weren't. You probably wouldn't be either.'

Sean managed a tremulous smile. ‘Somehow I have the feeling this is just beginning,' he said.

17

IT WAS THE YEAR of the Water Dragon. Lydia and Whata, Dennis and Corinne had been married for two years, and Desiree and Tony married a year before. The ceremony partly celebrated their young love, but for the Kokopu Waters residents it was a final act of desperate hope. And still nobody got pregnant.

Sean gave up. There was no hope. They were doomed. That winter he slipped into a black depression. By the time spring arrived he was just going through the motions — feed the animals, dig the garden, chop the wood. Sometimes he even forgot to eat. Why bother?

One day he was in the orchard, inspecting the trees, mechanical and almost unseeing, when he looked at The Tree. To hell with it, he was thinking. What was the bloody point anyway? Why had he bothered? He was just about to kick the trunk when he noticed little green bumps between the unfurling leaves. Buds? They had to be. His eyes opened wide and he stepped back. Yeah, boss. Buds for sure.

Sean told Kevin and Hoheria, nobody else. Who else would understand? Who wouldn't dismiss him as barking mad? As it was, enough people gave him funny looks. Even Alex was in two minds. He'd caught her sidelong glances that made clear her opinion he was a couple of oat flakes short of a full bowl of porridge. He was even unsure himself. Perhaps the Maeroero had succeeded. Maybe he had lost the plot. But the buds gave him new hope. What did they mean?

The first thing they meant was blossom; pink, white and the most beautiful flowers Sean had ever seen. Alex burst into tears at the sight of the first delicate petals.

‘They're lovely,' she said. ‘What do they mean?' Sean just shrugged.

‘No big deal, probably.' But it was, to him, Hoheria and Kevin anyway. They'd helped him sprout and grow Uruao's apple seed. The three of them kept telling each other they didn't want to get people's hopes up for nothing, but when the petals wilted and dropped and tiny green apples appeared they could hardly contain themselves.

‘I'm late,' Lydia said to Alex one day. ‘You don't think ...' Alex took a long look at her girl.

‘Something's going on,' she said. ‘We'll get Frangipani to check you out.'

Frangipani felt Lydia's pulses and examined her irises. Her voice was loaded with suppressed emotion when she spoke.

‘I want to see Corinne and Desiree too.'

‘I am, aren't I?' said Lydia.

‘You might be. I want to see the others first.'

‘Wait a few weeks before you tell anyone,' advised Alex. ‘And no horses or sex just in case.'

‘What about my husband?' said Lydia.

‘What about him?' said Frangipani, who had long held to Germaine Greer's last-century dictum that the ideal man was a metre high and lived quietly under the stairs.

‘Never mind. That's my problem.'

The three young women managed to keep the news to themselves for a month but eventually Desiree's husband, Tony, guessed the reason for his prolonged loss of privs.

‘You're pregnant, aren't you!' he said one night when it was suggested that yet again he sleep on the couch. Desiree lowered her eyes. She could take the weight of the deception no longer. Bugger the secrets. This was their business.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I am!'

People were delirious with excitement. They danced and partied. They held ceremonies thanking everyone from God, to the Tree Spirits, to an endless list of multicultural deities. They organised communal feasts. They listened to a thousand variations of ‘I knew it all along'. Cats appeared wearing ribbons. Eggs were painted and distributed. There was a frenzy of knitting, sewing and carving. Pita and Jacqui even dyed their goat blue and gold, why Sean wasn't sure. The three couples were hardly able to move unaccompanied. Their houses were repaired and refurbished for them and their gardens dug and planted. Their well-being was constantly scrutinised and inquired after. The merits and meanings of names were discussed endlessly.

The apples were the size of golf balls now. They were starting to change colour, glossy green with paler streaks. Nobody noticed and Sean couldn't see any point now in saying anything.

At first the community kept all news of the pregnancies to itself, but before long an announcement was made at the markets where they discovered that two of the young Kahuika women were also pregnant. The small number of people who knew had kept quiet for similar reasons to the Kokopu Waters folk, but like them they had great difficulty containing themselves. When word of the pregnancies got out the festivities spread and overlapped. Frangipani set up a two-day-a-week clinic at the markets and within a fortnight she'd diagnosed two more pregnancies. Dr Kamisese Prakesh started travelling around the district on horseback, as far as the Taieri Plains and almost up into Central Otago.

‘I've got a big surprise for you,' Beatriz said one day when Kamisese arrived home after three weeks away.

‘No thanks, dear,' he said. ‘I'm not really very hungry.' He'd diagnosed four more pregnancies and had helped the happy communities celebrate.

‘It's not that sort of surprise,' said Beatriz. ‘Unless you have the same expression in this country.' Kamisese caught the excitement in her voice.

‘And what expression would that be?'

‘I've got a bun in the oven,' she said. She helped him to the floor when he fainted.

In the middle of all the excitement Fairgo arrived, looking like he'd been let out for the day.

‘Do you know that bloke?' said Alex. ‘He looks like he's been at the sheep dip.'

‘You'd look like that too, if you'd seen what he's seen,' Sean said. Alex was puzzled.

‘Never mind. He saved my life once.'

‘Uruao doesn't understand how we did it,' Fairgo told Sean, who heard a clear echo of rocks on a tin roof. ‘All the Maeroero are grumpy as hell. They thought you'd be loose as a goose by now, good for nothing.' He peered at Sean. ‘You're okay, aren't you?'

Sean laughed. ‘You tell me, mate,' he said. ‘How did you get away anyway?'

‘I kept a straight face for ten years. It's easy in those mountains. Then I thought, to hell with it, and I started laughing.'

‘Do you know what happened?'

‘I had more flying eel dreams,' Fairgo said. ‘I'm glad our trick worked, even if we did get it arse-about-face. The Maeroero finally couldn't stand the sight of me. They told me to bugger off.' He laughed and thumped the table. ‘I found out about the pregnancies from them. Uruao had a real hissy fit. He demolished my hut.'

Fairgo liked working with wood and made bassinets for all the expectant families. As fast as he worked more women became pregnant.

‘I'm hapu too,' Hoheria told Sean one day.

‘We just have to wait,' she'd been saying to Sean ever since she and Kevin helped plant The Tree. ‘Things'll happen when they're ready.'

‘See,' she said. ‘We must be ready.'

Kirsty joined the gravid ranks, refusing to name the father. Genetically he seemed to be up to scratch, she said, but he had a few personality problems that she didn't care to live with. And anyway what was wrong with getting pregnant and then finding a partner? There weren't any hard and fast rules on the matter as far as she knew, and speculation on the father's identity would only cause offence.

One day, at the height of summer, Sean and Tao were returning home from the inlet foreshore. They'd been checking on the ducks and Sean had been picking over the driftwood left at high tide, looking for good pieces to carve. A movement on the hill, away in the distance where he'd gained his first view of Kokopu Waters, caught his eye. Two tiny figures on horseback had come through the cutting, gazing down as he, Alex and Lydia had, all those years before. Who were they? The sight made his hair stand on end and he legged it home, stoked up the stove, and put the water on to boil. A cup of tea. The familiar chore calmed his nerves.

With the water heating, he stood waiting, leaning against an oak tree in full leaf. Before long two people rounded the corner at the end of the street and rode towards him. Tall, on a large brown standard-bred like Bojay, was a Maori man in his late twenties, dressed all in black — a silver-disc band on his flat-brimmed, black hat and a black wool poncho that left his arms free like an old western movie gunfighter. Beside him was a Pakeha woman, a few years younger, with long dark hair hanging loose under a peaked cap advertising an Old Time beer.

Both were travel-stained and weather-worn. They sat on their horses with the ease earned after many hours in the saddle. The man spoke first.

‘The eyepatch suits you.' He was clearly enjoying some private joke, grinning all over his face. The woman burst out laughing.

‘Cally!' Sean shouted. ‘Hemi!'

Hemi swung off his horse and helped Cally dismount. They all fell in each other's arms laughing and weeping.

‘I said we'd come.' Cally rested her hand on his arm. ‘I wasn't kidding.'

Sean looked at them. His friends. People from his past, people he loved. He was just about to offer food and drink and his open home when Cally spoke again.

‘I'm pregnant,' she said. Hemi looked protective. Sean's jaw dropped.

She was too. Between three and four months, Frangipani said, suggesting that she keep off horses for a while.

‘You're here to stay, girl,' she said. ‘Hope you like the place.'

Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. She and Hemi could have been anywhere. Every evening was filled with stories. They couldn't believe Kevin's adventures and, even though he'd shared many of them, hearing them retold shocked even Sean. He and Kevin caught up on all the news from Ngahere, only a year out of date. Hemi and Cally took them over every inch of their journey. Sean had never been so interested in anything and Hemi turned out to be a gifted storyteller, leaping, dancing and gesticulating, as he acted out incidents from their travels.

Edgar had died eight years before, Hemi told Sean, remembering his affection for the old man. Sean could still see Edgar sitting in his deckchair waiting for the dogs. Edgar had taken advantage of the occasion of his death for a final practical joke.

As people gathered round his bed, solemn and tearful, he'd feebly lifted a hand for silence.

‘I suppose you're wondering why I've gathered you all here,' he said, and promptly expired.

‘I didn't think it was all that funny,' Cally said, when Sean's outburst of raucous laughter had finally petered out and he'd dried the worst of the tears. She turned to Kevin who wasn't laughing either, and tapped her temple with a forefinger.

‘Things must have got to him,' she said.

The Kaiwaka folk had arrived in the same year, sailing a yacht on the short trip across Bream Bay from Mangawhai Heads to Whangarei Harbour. Sean wished he could have been there. Merenia said gidday to Jim and inside a week they were an item — daily practising the arts of crockery-hurling, invective and riding off in a huff for solitary sojourns deep in the bush.

‘They really love each other,' said Cally. ‘Nothing could separate them.'

Marie and Doug had watched over Cally and Hemi as they'd grown. Sean could see they'd done a job they must have been proud of. It would have been very hard for both of them, he was sure, waving goodbye to the two young ones, knowing they'd never get a letter or a phone call and they'd probably never see either of them again. They wouldn't even learn about Cally's pregnancy, though when Marie had asked one day Cally had apparently smiled mysteriously saying that anything was possible.

‘Did you know what was going to happen?' Sean asked.

‘Tinirau told me. It must have happened about Wellington.'

Hemi laughed at almost everything, but he didn't laugh at that and he didn't laugh when Sean asked him about Brian. He just looked at Cally and Sean had his answer.

‘It was the flu,' Cally said. ‘It killed Cathy. Brian died a year later. He couldn't sleep, he wouldn't eat properly. It was a broken heart really.' She snuffled and next thing they were all weeping, their painful memories reawakened, their heartbreaks still close to the surface.

‘What about Matapihi?' Sean asked Hemi the next day. ‘Did you meet my mate?'

‘Sure did,' said Hemi. ‘That's some moko. He's the big kamokamo at Okahu Bay now. He wanted to ride south with us, but he reckoned he's too busy looking after a thousand people.' Hemi reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small packet. ‘He sent you this though.'

Sean opened the packet and sniffed the yellowish spice. It was a strong curry and it made a delicious possum stew. Sean was delighted when Fairgo added whisky, distilled by the wild men of the Hokonui Hills according to an ancient recipe.

‘I often wanted to do this when I was eating dog,' he said.

Cally and Hemi had stopped in Ngaruawahia and were told by an ancient Oriental man in a rust-red blanket sitting in the sun with an elderly Pakeha couple that Sean had arrived safely in the south.

‘But you know that already,' he'd told Cally.

They'd ridden right through the centre of Maui's Fish, camping among the pines.

‘Bad buzz,' said Hemi. Cally laughed.

‘I told you we'd be safe,' she said.

‘I don't care. That was the scariest thing I ever saw. Worse even than Auntie Thelma telling me off when I was little.' They'd seen Kurangaituku in the moonlight, her beak and claws terrifying. Cally called out a greeting. Hemi cocked his sawn-off. Kurangaituku hadn't moved.

The folk at Tokaanu remembered Sean and Kevin well. Along with Kurangaituku, they were now a local legend.

‘In our own lunchtime,' Sean laughed, remembering Roha's kindness. Uncle Ruka was still alive. He sent a letter for Sean, painstakingly written on good notepaper, stamped and addressed C/- the Kokopu Waters Post Office.

‘Pai tou mahi,' Uncle Ruka said.