What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (4 page)

She was just Polly Heke of Western College with a mother and an adoptive father expecting, not hoping, more of her than what her mother in her earlier union had ever imagined; why, there had been talk of university. An otherwise impossible thought if it wasn’t for the fact that Boogie was at one right now, as this sister baulked at several moments from the last of following up on their sister Grace’s last, very last, moments. Old enough now to do this. But not quite ready to take it further.

She turned and walked off into the dusk, the colours all bled down into the horizon, the night just starting with that funny quiet, of the mothers cooking their kids’ tea and (too) many of ’em wondering what the night was gonna bring; Jake Heke wasn’t the only one of his type round these parts, the property behind her excepted. A sister wondering, wondering, what Grace’s last thoughts had been and if she’d been cold that night her last. Which is what she figured she was crying for, that Grace’d been cold and shivering that last night.

W
HEN
J
AKE SAW
the metal ball swinging on the end of the crane at McClutchy’s pub, a clock pendulum against a fully clouded sky, he smiled inwardly and followed its progress like he would in
admiration
a punch, specially that it made a kinghit first blow and put a hole right in its side, a perfect body punch it’d been a man. Fuck the pub, is what he told himself, bitter at how everyone there’d treated him, same arseholes who’d sucked up to him all his years there (when I fucken ruled. I RULED) when he had the status in the place — the frequent of Two Lakes’ lowlifes, specially the older sleaze and unknowing pissheads who’d made their lives the place and the drink the centre of their wretchedly tiny universe — of The man. (I was The Man.) Jake The Muss. Toughest in all of Two Lakes and, he never doubted, beyond its boundaries if it’d suited him to go out and show outsiders how tough he was. All those sweet years, of respect, only to come crashing down, for all of it to mean
nothing
, now like that building was about to when he just happened to be walking past to catch his after-work bus home and licking his lips at not being able to afford a beer not in any pub. It was the day before payday, he could never make his money last till then no madda how much extra overtime his paypacket might have he always spent up to it, and on piss what else, and being generous to Cody cos Cody didn’t have a job and jobs were a bit tight, no
denying
, in Two Lakes, even with tourists everywhere here to see the thermal sights out the other side of town. Oh, to look at the Maoris, their culture which he’d not inherited and anyway was bothered by cos they seemed to have something he didn’t. McClutchy’s exposed guts now echoing with the booming of a ball, metal, pounding it out of existence; McClutchy’s, where the sheer pressure of people not talking to you or, even worse, being hostilely uncomfortable in your company when ordinarily they’d’ve shook in their scuffed, dirty boots and outta date shoes and jandaled feet at jus’ being in his presence; he’d stopped going and instead did his drinking at home or at another pub, Lakeside Tavern, where people didn’t seem to know him and he could drink in his quiet corner with a cupla old codgers who did most of the talking, he anyway realised
he never had much to say to the wider world, not really, that it’d been simply a physical existence with him in its centre on account of what he was and that they had done a lot of talking but none of it meant anything, not now he was six years down the track burdened with unjust shame for something he hadn’t done. Pine Block inhabitants, Jake Heke had realised, were wordless people pouring out with words that didn’t mean nothing. Whereas at least his corner pub companions at the Lakeside Tavern had a war they’d fought in to talk about, even if that was near all they talked and a man only had to give ’em half a ear he knew it so well, bombs and Italian names of towns and sheilas turned to easymeats (so they claimed), when he’d heard you ever touched a Eyetie woman her bros’d come get you — witha gun, or stab you to death, even
someone
like him — of fullas shot before these old codgers’ eyes that never failed to tear a li’l bit in repeated recall, but that was alright, leas’ it was company, and company he didn’t have to be always on his guard ready to fight. And it was better’n talking drunken shit and mean-minded gossip. Though he did miss hearing the talk about who’d done pub battle with who, of the up and comers, the down and knocked outs, the fistic heroes and would-bes of his world even if he was no longer a member. He missed that.

But by the time the demolition ball had punched its way into the building and exposed it like the inner workings of a defeated person, exposed guts, innards, he could even imagine kidneys and liver (I hate offal) and the heart of the bar beating no more, just anutha target for the demo man prob’ly enjoying his fucken heart out taking this place apart, Jake The Muss Heke started to thinking it was his memories being destroyed there. He could see the timber framing where they must’ve removed the bar counter cladding and the solid timber bartop itself, wires hanging down, a tangle of shapes. He could see the linoleum floor and its multitude of liftings where it was cracked — and hear the NOISE used to make the place alive in there, on a Friday night especially. Oh, and Sat’days when a man could start ’bout lunchtime, get his horse bets on — not that a man’d ever been able to pick anything but his nose — drink all day, party at his place or someone else’s when the closing bells claaaang-ed at ten o’clock. The music, the laughter, the howls that were meant to be laughter but could’ve been anything, ranging
from emotional outrage to emotionally messed up to howling for someone’s blood to howling for a husband too many days, and money, gone and the kids anutha day older of neglect. Was those memories crashing down, too.

As the hole got bigger he watched for the jukebox, the jukie, trying to recall the songs he got others to play for him (weren’t that stupid I was gonna spend my own money on it). Sam Cooke, anything by him Jake loved. And he could sing a bit like him, too, when he was drunk and surging with that (false) confidence. He used to play ‘Mean Old World’, that started with a piano flipping out the rhythm and mood except Jake liked to play it, sometimes, with someone else’s money a course, after he’d had a fight; with a smile on his face, not in keeping with the lyrics which he sorta heard as Sam sang about the world — for a nigger, Jake guessed — being mean, really mean. Jake only meant himself, when he was crossed. Beth, she liked ‘Sad Mood’ of Sam Cooke’s, he remembered she sang along with it, the record, at home on the stereo; and, if he was honest, usually after he’d given her a biff. But that was her lookout. Anyrate, a man now was, well, kind of different, he thought. But wasn’t exactly sure how or where. No one to show by example if he had changed. He couldn’t see the jukebox so they must’ve taken it away to another pub, somewhere out in the wops prob’ly where people didn’t mind it bein’, you know, out of date.

One blow brought a section of ceiling and roof down with it. Made a great sound of collapse and looked a sight awful of sagging finish, like a man on his knees and still getting it. Dust and shit kicking up everywhere. That was it, Jake Heke started walking, he’d seen (and felt) enough. Now his eyes were smarting — only from the dust thrown up — though when he kept walking right past where he sometimes caught the bus he admitted to himself that his eyes were like they were for the memories being about all he had of these last many years, if he didn’t count the last six. All he had. And he asked himself the question of damn near every man he knew: Wouldn’t you?

Funny thing, when he heard the crash behind him of another blow struck against his life his past, he got a song Mavis used to play on the jukie, and everyone if they were drunk would sing along with it and depending on how drunk they could reach such
heights, man, including himself lost in the song with closed eyes and a beer in his hand, surrounded by his own, his mates around him, as he was, taken on of the voice’t was all throat, Dool did the voice best, pulled it from way deep inside him and let it gargle out his throat like the ole Negro dude they were all trying to copy; so it was a pub of fuck-ups and the lost temporarily found of ’emselves all singing like Satchmo Louis Armstrong, ‘What A Wonderful World’. When it was. But it wasn’t. That was what Jake, used to be The Muss, Heke walked away remembering, everybody (and myself) singing that song. And crying, damn near to. For the memories (I guess). And other things. Lotsa things.

E
VERYWHERE WERE FACES
— stealing knowing glances at her, and then some. Little vases of flowers and a candle in a holder and a silver dazzle of cutlery on each stark white-clothed table. And before her, like everyone, this … this — she picked it up. What’s this for? pretending a calm voice when inside she was anything but. And those faces (looking at me) and not a brown one except for him across the table. Who was now grinning. What you smiling at, mister? Which only made him chuckle, and her start to get mad.

I dunno, might be a free hanky. She knowing he only had that smiling confidence because he had his back to most of the eyes and if he could only see them that’d wipe the smile from his face. They sposed to be for wiping our mouth? she guessed. No, your nose. And he burst out laughing, which fair jolted her with
embarrassment
as now the whole place was looking. Charlie! But he wasn’t stopping now, not Charlie, he had a roll on, that’s how he laughed, a kind of teasing process even when he wasn’t teasing. Every (white) face seemed to be frowning disapproval. So Beth, who used to be a Ransfield before she married the nightmare (well, maybe not all the time) Jake Heke, joined her man in laughing, too. And exclaimed, Fuck it. Who cares? When really, she did. But damned if she was gonna show these people, damned if she was.

Why they got candles if they got the lights on? she wanted to know. Power cut, he was in a smartarse, joke at everything mood, even her sensitivity, her sense of profound unfamiliarity. In case they have a power cut. Bring your matches? Yeah, she snarled at him. To set fire to your black bum. Now, now, Bethy, leaning his big frame back. But at least he reached a hand for hers which she took with gratitude. And as if Charlie’d arranged it, along came a waiter and lit the candle, as was happening all over the little restaurant, and then the lights got dimmed right down. Magic had been cast. Her smile more relaxed. Tha’s better. Squeezing his big hand, bigger than Jake’s and they were big, yet not once used in anger. The difference.

You never told me this is your first time. You never asked. Well, don’t be worried, it’s only a restaurant. That’s what is
worrying
me. Look at them they keep glancing at us. He smiled: Or you at them. What? You heard. Charlie, don’t be laughing at me. I’m not, Beth. You are. What you ordering for starters? Now that put her back on the back foot. She grabbed up the menu again, where’s it say starters? She peered at it, harder to read in the candlelight, It says soup and entrée. On-tray, he corrected her. Yeah, yeah, on-tray, whatever. Don’t see no starters. She shot him a warning look:
Charlie
? Don’t tease. But he pointed over her shoulder, and she near jumped. Tell him what you want, at the waiter. She took a deep breath — Oysters. Please. Staring straight ahead, just to the side of Charlie. Who she could see was staring right at her, with that stupid grin. And the bloody waiter wouldn’t move; she wanted to ask what the hell he was staring at, she’d just told him her order hadn’t she? But still he waited.

You got a problem? she couldn’t help herself. Stuff him. And that fixed him, see how he felt being on the back foot. Madam, I was waiting for your mains order. (Oh.) Oh. Well, I haven’t decided yet. She gestured at Charlie. Take his. Mister Grinner’s, she said it aloud. Though that didn’t help, Charlie was still grinning.

But, you know, the wine — also her first taste ever — the candlelight, the realisation that oysters can taste like heaven just by being served on ice, with a bit of class, a wedge of lemon, a bit of bullshit waitering fuss, and a live three-piece band started up, a woman, well, she couldn’t’ve been happier, or wanted to be anywhere else. And, funny thing, she gave him back the smile, They’re not looking at me are they? No, he shook his large head, such a big man (’cept down there. But, he’s average. And sure beats having a Jake and suffering his other side. Give me a small one, short performance, great company to be in any day.) They’re not looking, and even if they were, we can’t put signs up saying they can’t — Or walls around us, she added her own t’uppens’ worth. And reached for his hand again and mouthed him, I love you. And he nodded in that dignified way of his, such a fine man, the irony of being grateful that son Boogie had had court dealings with this man as one of the town’s child welfare officers but now the general manager of the department, and things’d just happened. Of a life in which so much had happened, none of it good (fucken tragic, in fact), not till the day she kicked Jake out. Though she was not
convinced their daughter Grace’s letter accusing her father of raping her was right. At the time she did. But she’d read it a hundred times since and so had Charlie; both were of the mind there was some doubt. Grace wrote she thought it was her father.

She and Charlie had re-enacted the possibilities of what might have happened in Grace’s (and the other kids’) bedroom. The way the bottom bunk would have been in darkness, even with the door briefly open, as poor Grace’s rapist came in. Beth had played the horror part of her daughter — to the hilt — so she’d not only know if Jake had done it but how her poor child must have felt. It was almost as bad as burying her all over again. That it should not prove the case against Jake came as a kind of relief. Suspended judgement, the words Charlie in his profession’s way used. Suspended, it would seem, forever. And anyway, even if Jake was innocent, she and Charlie were both agreed, now see how he felt being an innocent suffering unjustly. Though in her heart of hearts, Beth couldn’t quite justify that kind of injustice against a man she had once loved, who had fathered her children even if mostly only biologically. Not that bad an injustice.

A few more wines on board, and they were on the floor
dancing
. Along with quite a few other couples. And everyone smiling at each other as they swept past in good old-fashioned waltz to the band assisted by modern gadgetry so they moved to a host of sounded instruments. The occasional figure passing by outside, vehicle headlights, none of it mattered, here life was: candlelight spears, the soft head fuzz of wine, food outta this world,
conversation
(oh, I hope he doesn’t find me too uninteresting; I only got mostly sad and bad things to talk about), the music, the fact that all her first-time fears were unfounded. And love.

S
HE CAUCHT IT JUST
as they turned to sit down (from dancing? In a place like that?) not knowing her eyes had narrowed, slowing immediately her anyway slow waddling walk. Well I’ll be. If it ain’t … She didn’t form the name in her mind, it was so familiar, so much used to be a part of her daily existence it — she, Beth — didn’t have a name, she was a concept. Of a friend. A close, close friend. She thought it again: Well I’ll be. If it ain’t her. With him. Mister Welfare, who used to come round our area to round up our
troublesome kids. Not that she had any herself, did Mavis. (Too fat. No man wanted to have sex with me. And even when I got me a desperate, he was always drunk with not much juice down there, or none at all.) And not that Mavis’d wanted to have a child; li’l thing squawking inner ear with its constant demands. No more the good times, not even the man who fathered it likely to be part of the deal in which case, in her more honest moments with herself, which were less and less these days and she knew that, she might’ve copped for it, being a mother, a de facto wife, a more meaningful citizen of this small city world or jus’ Pine Block woulda done — just.

But life hadn’t even given her a just. When it’d offered so much when poor Beth’s world’d spun into tragedy of losing first Grace, then Nig in that gun battle on this very street at this very end, the lake end, of town, between those stupid Brown Fists and the jus’ as stupid Black Hawks. How she and Beth’d been so inspired by the words of that Maori chief, Te Tupaea, telling
everyone
off at those Sat’day morning gatherings he used to have out on Beth’s (the State’s) front lawn, for their drinking, for not making something of their lives, for their children’s sake he thundered at ’em like the pack of children they were; and how rapidly they’d built the hall, and the things this inherited title chief’d taught them, it’d seemed like he had brung ’em hope when otherwise there was none. It’d seemed that he, chief Te Tupaea, came along at the right time, when Beth’s poor Gracie was dead, raped by her own father why she killed herself, and even Beth’s famous fight-back ability was never more in need, and Mavis herself with a life purpose outside of boozing and playing cards and pleasuring the flesh teaching others how to sing, and as if she’d been born to teach (I remember how gooood I felt about myself) — all to end up like everything does in Pine Block, nothing. It jus’ faded out. Their past’d claimed them. Their way of sordid, unthinking existence’d summoned ’em, damn near every bitch an’ bastard, back. But not that bitch inside (astonishingly) that restaurant, oh no. Look where she was. When I, her best mate, poured so much of myself into helping pull her up from her tragedies and from that damn Jake fucken Heke. And she thought of that Shirley Bassey song, I (Who Have Nothing), did Mavis Tatana in her self-pity, and the line came
with Shirley’s and her own mighty-powered voice, as if Shirley was there or Mavis was herself singing it in the street,
must
watch
you,
go
dancing
by
, which got her emotions roiling up for the line,
with
my
nose
pressed
up
against
the
window
pane!
—
I
— And there she stopped. Though not with nose against the window pane. And in her heart she’d sung the word with twinned meaning of pane and pain (oh, you can’t know how much pain, Bethy-girl).

Mavis smiled bitterly. Not bothered if Beth happened to look out and see her — ’n fact I’ve a good mind to march in an’ ask her who she thinks she is. And is she above all us now. Mavis felt like slapping Beth’s face. But, lucky for everyone, Mavis got one of her less frequent moments of self-honesty, and knew the fault was (well, not all) she’d returned to the old way of life; only started off as one li’l drink, catch up with the people she’d known all them years of, let’s face it, being one of the stars in McClutchy’s, no bitch sang better’n her, big Mavis the Davis (from Sammy Davis) Tatana, so she was only catching up. ’Cept it ended up like Jake Heke and choiceless family’s visit to Boogie waiting in the Riverton Boys’ Home — it didn’t. And nor did her resolve to have only one drink and go as every Thursday scheduled to the community hall where a bunch of kids were waiting for a singing lesson, raw though the lessons were (I knew that), it was that she was there, bringing — or trying to — out the confidence in them, seein’ as their useless fucken parents weren’t. She stayed on that night and ended up at a party. Then someone at the party said, Hey, there’s a fortieth at my cousin’s in Tokoroa, whyn’t we put in for a keg and go over? With that beaming look, child-like and eagerly kinda innocent that it was, as if the welcome they’d get would be second to none (specially with the keg) Eh? Eh? Whyn’t we go over in Tama’s van? So they did. And stayed not jus’ for the three days the party las’ed, but the lifetime it claimed back in doing so.

So Mavis took one last look at Beth in there sat down across from her Mister Welfare bigtime manager man, and she took her large (and gettin’ larger) frame across the street, full of beer from the new pub she’d become a regular of jus’ up the street, tonight bein’ a Saturday having started, what, ’bout lunchtime, so she was pissed and hadn’t any real idea of where she was walking to, ’cept
somewhere
in the direction of home, but now regretting it her decision
to sneak off from everyone, not that they noticed in their oblivious state, singing that Bassey number aloud to herself now, but not loud-ly,
I
.
I
who
have
nothing
. (Nothing, girl.) I.
I
who
have
no
one.
(No one. Not for myself.)
Must
wa-atch
you
— Voice coming out in more a simper. And someone watching her would’ve seen a picture of seventeen stone fallen womanhood moving slowly down the main street of Two Lakes, another Saturday night, like lumbering truck tail-lights disappearing into another somewhere.