I Got His Blood on Me: Frontier Tales
Page 25
‘My tally,’ he said. ‘Fifteen cigars since this thing started, and six hundred cigarettes. And I’ve had four hours’ sleep.’ He lifted the cigar to point it at me, at my wife. ‘And I’ve stayed up as late as you. I’m tireder than these champs, I’ll bet.’
I was weary on my legs. Now it was over, I could barely stand up.
‘Good luck, mate,’ he said. ‘Good luck with your kid.’
Shortly we were taken round the back. An ambulance stood there with its doors shut. Inside were two more families, like us unable to get home off their own bat. I nodded at these others and sat with Helen on the bench. I brought her close and checked on Frank. Soon both were well asleep. As the ambulance went up the streets and turned, I leaned back and closed my eyes and immediately saw the pool, that rectangle of blue and black. I saw its pulsing light. I opened my eyes again and watched over Frank.
WHAT LUCK
He had another ulcer. High under his top lip. First thing in the morning he probed it with his tongue as he limped down through the dunes to wash it with saltwater. Ulcers again. That was one thing about the food here—it was hard on his teeth and mouth. But he preferred it. He’d had worse on the ships. At the water’s edge now he dipped his hands and how good it felt, how cold. He sluiced it up over his face and down. The tiny waves nibbled his feet, and he walked in further for the sake of his ankle. Here was another reason for this early morning rite; the cold pressure shocked and soothed his misshapen left foot. Still after all this time it troubled him when he woke up. Another relic of the ships.
Almost knee-deep now he washed his face fully, his armpits, smoothed his hair back. Teased out the rank smell of bed. The sun was already lifting light over the surface of the bay and the forest that came down close on each side, and out beyond the bay the water was lit up, all the way across the strait. The mountains of the other island and Kāpiti were out to the left, looking so close in this light, so close that someone really might swim that distance. As in the stories someone had. This morning, with a sun like this, he could believe a girl had swum that strait.
Still on his knees he swivelled as a couple of early kids ran onto the beach, scaring beach birds with their laughing chase. Back over the dunes, the rest of the people would be waking up. He dipped his hands again, sluiced water into his mouth and winced at the good bite of salt on his ulcer. Rinsed and spat into the water at his knees, rinsed again. Brought up water to sluice his armpits again, his chest and crotch. Then stood still in the water for a last quick view out over the sound, the close islands, and north. Somewhere in all that haze his own first home and boyhood were so far north, so blessedly far from this life. Shetland, Scotland, and the ships, all unlamented. The unrelenting hands of crewmen, much older than he’d been. The cruellest pair, who’d broken his ankle. One of them holding the joint against a ship ladder while the other applied all his weight until it cracked. Then grinding more weight into the pudding of bone and cartilage, and hissing close in his ear—here’s what happens, brat, when you don’t do what you’re bid.
He shivered and washed again, washed all over, his face and shoulders and head. Rinsed the ulcer one more time and rubbed it briskly with a salty forefinger, rinsed and spat out. Then he turned and sploshed towards the shore with water streaming from him, as a handful of other early people surged in past him for the same wash, some murmuring to him as they went, others not.
Then he was up the beach and walking through the dunes to the huts and shelters of the summer village, into the noise of people waking up, calling and yawning in the new language he’d learnt. His own wife standing before their shelter with her back to him, and her hand in the small of it, to take his little family’s weight. Hapū—not far off now, his own wife, his own first child. Their shelter. He stood still and shook his head, just to look at this. Look at her. His ankle still ached in this first hour, even after the cold soak, and the ulcer still smarted in his mouth, but look at this. What a life. What sun there was today. What luck had brought him here. What luck.
Notes
I Got his Blood on Me
Key sources include Explorers, Whalers, and Tattooed Sailors: Adventurous Tales from Early New Zealand (Auckland: Random House, 2008) by Gordon and Sarah Ell, and ‘An Englishman, an Irishman and a Welshman walk into a Pā’ by Tina Makereti, Sport 40 (2012). Other relevant works include Trevor Bentley’s Pākehā Māori: The extraordinary story of the Europeans who lived as Māori in early New Zealand (Auckland: Penguin, 1999), and W. Carkeek’s The Kapiti Coast: Maori History and Place Names (Wellington: Reed, 1966).
The Pathway
This fictional story is indebted to many sources on early missionaries, principally Octavius Hadfield’s Papers 1833–1879 (Transcribed 1979: Wellington City Libraries); Christopher Lethbridge’s The Wounded Lion: Octavius Hadfield 1814–1904 (Christchurch: Caxton, 1993); Miriam Macgregor’s Petticoat Pioneers: North Island Women of the Colonial Era. Book Two (Wellington: Reed, 1975); Barbara Macmorran’s Octavius Hadfield (Wellington: 1969); and John Mason’s Letters and Journal 1839–1842 (Transcribed 1994: Wanganui: Whanganui Branch, New Zealand Founders Society, 1994).
A Hesitant Man
For a non-fictional account of the 1909 wreck of the Penguin, see Bruce E. Collins’s The Wreck of the Penguin (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2000), which provided important source material for this story, along with Catherine Morrison’s Terawhiti (Wellington: Arty Bee’s Books, 2003), pp. 104–111, and a number of newspaper records sourced from www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.
The Knight of the Range
This fictional story departs from the record suggested by Thomas H. Pauly’s Zane Grey: his life, his adventures, his women, (Illinois: Illinois UP, 2005), and Zane Grey’s Tales of the Angler’s Eldorado (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1926). See also Zane Grey’s Knights of the Range (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1949 (1939)), pp. 31–45. ‘The Knight of the Range’ artwork is by Kōtuku Underwood.
The Road to Tokomairiro
Key sources include ‘Inquest’, Bruce Herald (Volume VI, Issue 342, 16 November 1870, p. 3). Accessed 10 October 2010.
The Man Beside the Pool
This fictional story departs from the historical record. For a non-fictional account of the swimming contest, see these key sources: Paul Goldstone’s ‘Nehua, Katerina—Biography.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of these stories originally appeared in the following publications, and I am grateful to their editors. ‘The Road to Tokomairiro’ appeared in The Long and the Short of It and Sport 39, ‘Claim of Blood’ in Turbine 11, ‘My Brother’s Blood’ in Sport 40, and ‘All our Friends and Ghosts’ in Hue & Cry 6. ‘The Snack Machine’ will be published as ‘Mahi’ in Waiataata 2.
I am very grateful to the many people who have helped this book come together. First of all my parents and family, for their encouragement and support right from the start. I’m especially grateful to Bill Manhire, Harry Ricketts and Fergus Barrowman for their generous guidance and support. A particular thank you to Gavin McGibbon for early advice on story craft, Kōtuku Underwood for cover art and ‘The Knight of the Range’ artwork, and Michael Lewis for cover design. A special thank you to Jolisa Gracewood, whose perceptive reading and editing improved this book immensely.
I am also grateful to the brilliant PhD group at the Institute of Modern Letters, the Tennyson Street Studio
and the workshop group, Chloe Lane and Hue & Cry colleagues, Pip Adam and 8th floor friends. I am very fortunate in having supportive employers at the Office of the Clerk, and I thank all my colleagues at the Hansard office. Thank you also to Hōri Mike and the Monday night Porirua Te Ara Reo group, Dale van Engelen, Ani Gray, the Lodge crew, and a particular thank you to Jõao Baptista Lung and Laurence Fearnley for support from way back. Finally a special thank you to Tina Makereti, Kōtuku and Aquila, who made space in their lives for me, and for this book.