The Unknown Zone

by Phil Smith

  All eyes turned to Hemi.

  ‘There’s possibly some people who hate me,’ he mumbled darkly. ‘I thought I’d seen the last of them.’ He’d hoped the passing of time would weaken the hostility against him, that the Hapetas’ bitterness would weigh less heavily.

  Crouching firefighters advanced towards the furnace, blasting jets of water into the blaze.

  The Fire Safety Officer took Bart and Hemi aside.

  ‘No sense in beating around the bush, now son,’ he said. ‘What’s the story?’

  Hemi could see the situation going from bad to worse if he blabbed on Tamatea. But there was no time to invent a convincing explanation, and, more than that, Hemi knew he was hopeless at concealing the truth — his eyes always gave him away.

  Steam billowed from the remains of the caravan and Hemi suppressed the impulse to shout his frustration.

  ‘I have a cousin, maybe an uncle as well, who could be after me,’ he said. ‘They used to call me Monkey-boy. That’s because I climbed trees. A year ago I left home. I haven’t seen them since then. I honestly haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just that angry people do evil things.’

  ‘How did they ascertain you might be living here?’ said Bart.

  ‘I’ve got no idea. I’ve had no contact with them for a year.’

  ‘Well,’ said the fireman, ‘it’s hard to keep a secret in a small community. I’d say it’s certainly arson, and you’ll also be interested to know that it’s gang-related.’

  ‘What would lead you to that conclusion?’ said Bart.

  ‘The cat,’ said the fireman. ‘That’s a common method of delivering a warning to an intended victim. Often it’s only the head; other times the whole body. There’s been a number of these types of arsons recently by the Black Dogs, though proving it’s been impossible.’

  14

  Get us back our land

  ‘This is what you need, young fella,’ said the salesman, straightening his hula-girl tie and adjusting his mirrored sunglasses. ‘Hop in. Take her for a spin.’

  Hemi needed no persuasion. The 1964 Cortina GT was four years old, and in British Racing Green. It had clocked 65,000 miles with one careful owner, so the salesman said. Its lustrous sides were adorned by the Cortina swoosh of chromium that framed the famous GT shield to the rear. It had big Dunlop Aquajets on widened rims, a four-speed floor change, gleaming polished-wood steering-wheel and a row of instruments on top of the dashboard.

  Angered by the arson incident two years previously, Hemi had worked with greater determination and had saved more than a thousand dollars in the new currency. Just enough.

  He filled up the tank with Europa and, on impulse, decided to cruise over to Kaimiro. It might just be time to go back to the Square Kauri and reclaim the key. Someone would be sure to know what it was for. The mystery had irked him for long enough.

  The agile Ford ate up the bends like spaghetti and before long he was swerving around the deep potholes and corrugations of the road over to the valley. At the corner where Baldy’s Zephyr went over the cliff, Hemi stopped and got out. The view was as magnificent as ever but things didn’t feel right.

  The road was rougher than before. The car wreck lay rusting where it fell. Further down the hill another car body, its wheels and engine missing, lay among the ragwort beside the road. Blackberry grew from the engine bay.

  Hemi had doubts.

  What would he find?

  Would Tamatea be there? Would anyone be there? Perhaps the place was now deserted. The Hapetas had never been happy at Kaimiro. Hopefully they’d moved away. He felt confident he could deal with any trouble and, at the worst, he could always turn around and drive away. The gold key could wait.

  A waiata whispered like thistledown on a hot summer wind.

  I am a man of strength and courage!

  Words declared at the base of the giant kauri, by the timid boy he once knew, resounded boldly in his mind:

  Your battle, your journey begins today.

  May your victories be many,

  May your wounds be few.

  Again the phantom voices drifted from the treetops.

  He drove on through the avenue of kanuka and nikau. As he approached the bridge he saw a new road had been bulldozed off to the right. At its end, a hundred yards up the slope, was a muddy clearing with a drilling rig and two orange Land Rovers parked next to it.

  The old family homestead had become dilapidated and part of it had been damaged by fire. Upside-down in what used to be the vegetable garden lay two Holdens. Three or four other vehicles, two old caravans and five motorbikes were parked in the yard.

  Six men were drinking on the verandah when Hemi stepped from the car.

  One of them rose and swaggered down the steps, his arms out from his sides like a Western gunfighter ready for the draw.

  ‘Hey boys,’ boomed Tamatea, turning to his mates. ‘The fucken Monkey-boy’s come to see us. Come and meet Ape-man.’

  Tamatea had put on weight and shaved his head. He clomped forwards, his unlaced motorcycle boots flapping in rhythm with the swish of his greasy leather trousers. In one hand he clutched a bottle of Old Pale Gold sherry against his bulging belly, in the other he flicked ash from a cigarette.

  ‘We’ve got unfinished business, haven’t we, shit-face? We’ve got a crashed car to talk about, and a visit from the cops about some bullshit arson incident.’

  The others lumbered down the steps grinning and grunting, clenching their bottles and swaying staunchly.

  ‘Where’s Baldy and Atawhai?’

  ‘They buggered off back to Auckland ages ago. Couldn’t stand this stinkin’ dump. Now it’s just me and the boys in charge. We’re the owners now.’

  ‘What about the drilling rig? What’s going on over there?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. Bloody American outfit. They won’t be here for much longer, eh boys! And neither will you, arsehole.’

  Tamatea and his mates smirked at each other, nodding, and, as if controlled by the same minuscule brain, swigged from their bottles in unison and wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands.

  ‘So what’s happened to Te Maika?’

  ‘Shot through with that bitch Rachel. Reckons we gave her a hard time. Lives in Cambridge. Goes to boarding school. Rides horses. Goes to fucken ballet. Learning to be a white racist honky bitch, more like it.’

  There was no point hanging around.

  ‘So, Tamatea, looks like you’re not really pleased to see me then, eh!’ said Hemi with a provocative grin.

  ‘You’re a fast learner, Monkey-boy. Time for you to piss off. And don’t worry about coming back. We might not be in such a good fucken mood next time, eh boys.’

  The men swayed and mumbled and sucked at their bottles again.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Hemi, climbing back into the car. Instantly he knew he should have kept his mouth shut.

  ‘We’ll see about nothing!’ yelled Tamatea, booting the driver’s door closed and slamming the roof with his fist. ‘Next time we’ll firebomb your fucken sawmill.’

  A bottle smashed against the back windscreen as Hemi drove onto the bridge.

  His impulse was to slam on the brakes and have it out with them there and then.

  Kaimiro belonged to him, not Tamatea. He’d prove that one day. He wasn’t a thumb-sucking baby any more. Three years of stacking rimu and kauri had strengthened his physique and hardened his resolve. Tamatea was a drunken slob. Hemi could take him out with one hit if he wanted to. But what about the other mongrels?

  More bottles shattered around him and Hemi floored the accelerator.

  His rage smouldered as he wound off the miles back through the hills.

  The land where four generations of his whanau had lived, his turangawaewae, was now a junkyard. The home of his childhood had become a disgusting shambles. There was nothing for him there except anguish and violence.

  At least now he was free and independent, driving his own car
, wearing decent clothes, working at a good job and enjoying life.

  He would never go back to Kaimiro again.

  Never. Unless …

  In the rear-vision mirror he glimpsed the receding Tapuwaetahi Hills, and he remembered the words of his father during an overnight hunting trip up on the summit ridge.

  ‘Get us back our land, Hemi!’ Sonny had said.

  Hemi had killed his first pig three hours earlier, with one shot to the head from the .303, and they were roasting a hind quarter, along with some red potatoes, on a fire for dinner.

  The dogs were lying around, still panting from the day’s exertion, eyeing the meat intently, their muzzles between their paws.

  Hemi had asked, ‘Is this all our land, Dad?’

  His father stood erect and held his arms out straight from each side. ‘This is where our boundary comes to, son. From exactly right here, over those hills to the left, and right down to the coast. This is our land.’

  ‘How did we get so much land?’

  Sonny stoked the coals with a whitey-wood sapling and turned the meat on the spit.

  ‘This is the story, Hemi. One day, when he asks you, you will tell it to your son, and he will tell it to his son. You see, your great-grandfather, Tuapiro Ratana, came here from the West Coast goldfields. It was in the 1860s. After working hard for many years he’d made enough from the gold to buy the Kaimiro Valley and the surrounding hills from the Government. After that he set up a logging business that employed fifty men. They only took the trees from well down the valley. That’s why all this bush is still here. That’s why all the big kauris are still here.’

  Ghostly tree trunks undulated in the firelight.

  The dogs inched closer to the pork.

  ‘Tua and his son, Ururangi — your grandfather — made a living from the land for years. Then, when he was in his early seventies, the old man went away. He just vanished. It was okay for Uru and my Mum for a while. But then things started going wrong. People were saying that we never owned the land, that we were squatters.’

  ‘Where did Tua go, do you think?’

  ‘We just like to think that he went away. Some people have their opinions but no one really knows. Only the forest knows. Maybe the pigs got him, eh.’

  Hemi cut a chunk of meat from the roast. It was cooked. The dogs wagged the tips of their tails and wriggled forwards.

  ‘So we keep on paying rent?’

  ‘Ae. And it keeps us poor.’

  ‘Is that why those people from Auckland come to see us sometimes?’

  ‘Yes, son. The lawyers, and the debt-collectors, the gold prospectors prowling about, the Ngati Hei, from Wharekawa, marching about like the valley still belongs to them. It’s all a terrible mess.’

  The man’s voice was full of pain, as if the discussion was reopening old wounds.

  ‘Why can’t we prove the land belongs to us?’

  ‘The lawyers say the titles got lost, the Survey Office says the boundaries were all done wrong, and so replacement titles had to be issued by the Maori Land Court. They reckon it’s now owned by a trust, or some such thing. That’s why we have to pay rent. No one can find any records. No one wants to help us.’

  ‘So Dad, what about all the gold?’

  ‘Just more stories and rumours, I’m afraid, Hemi. Tua found a fair bit of gold earlier on, but like the kauri milling it all gradually went downhill over the years until there was only farming left by the time you came along. And there’s never been much money in farming on the Coromandel.’

  Father and son fell silent as they munched into the roasted pork and baked potatoes.

  ‘Times were tough then, I can tell you,’ said Sonny as if seeking consolation in his memories. ‘Every morning before school it was milk the cows, feed the chooks. Didn’t matter if you were crook. You didn’t work, you didn’t eat — that was the rule in them days. Not like today! None of us kids had shoes in them days. We used to walk on the frost in bare feet, go hunting in bare feet.’

  Hemi settled into his sleeping bag and gazed at the stars through gaps in the trees.

  It was a cool night and the dogs snuggled in either side of him.

  A morepork softly hooted its arrival close by.

  ‘Get us back our land, eh Hemi,’ the father whispered. ‘One day, if you can, will you do that? Make that your mission, your kaupapa. Put right this wrong. And maybe there’ll be a pot of gold at the end of your rainbow!’

  15

  Business booms

  At twenty to five, still stinging from his confrontation with the Black Dogs, Hemi swung the Cortina into the mill yard just in time to see Laurie climbing down from the cab of a brand-new 1968 Bedford.

  The men gathered around the shining white truck, admiring the forward-control cab and imposing chromium grille that spanned the gulf between the circular headlights.

  The Larkin company emblem, a fantail perched on a circular saw blade, was high on each door, above the signwriting:

  Larkin’s Sawmill

  Hikutaia

  Specialising in Fine Kauri Timber

  Telephone: Thames 741

  ‘By Jove,’ said Bart, striding from the smoko room, newspaper under his arm. ‘What a beauty!’

  ‘Never did over fifty all the way from Auckland, Bart,’ said Laurie, wiping a squashed wasp from the headlight with his elbow. ‘But I’d say she’d belt along no bloody worries once she’s run in proper. She’s a mighty machine, mate.’

  Eric and Harry, the bulldozer driver, crouched to admire the suspension and the strength of the underbody.

  ‘The latest TK model,’ said Harry. ‘She’s built on the new Commer chassis. See, she’s got the fully floating spiral-bevel rear axle and the power take-off coupling.’

  The other men stood in front like border guards at a remote outpost, leaning back, feet apart, arms folded, eyes roving appreciatively from the Goodyear tyres to the fabulous Bedford insignia.

  No one noticed Hemi’s new GT.

  He was glad of that.

  He was in no mood to explain how the door got kicked in or how the roof was dented. It had been lunacy to go back to Kaimiro and he was angry with himself for failing to anticipate the outcome. The panel beaters would fix the Cortina up in a few days; the dents in his dignity would take longer to heal and the cloud of unresolved acrimony would continue to darken his sky.

  Bart was hauling himself up to the cab.

  ‘I say, chaps,’ he announced, ‘what say we take her for a run, eh? Let’s knock off early and nip up to Thames for a snort. I’ll shout.’

  Within five seconds, twenty-two men had clambered up onto the back and stood like penguins in a blizzard, holding on to the sides.

  They normally drank at the Pioneer Tavern, at the end of Ferry Road, on a Friday night, but everyone leaped at the chance of a trip to town in the new Bedford.

  Only Laurie remained on the ground. ‘Not me, thanks Bart! The Missus’ll have my balls. Been a big day. Next time, eh?’

  ‘Well then,’ said Bart, ‘who’s going to drive the jolly truck? Hemi, you’re the only one who won’t be drinking. Come along, lad, get yourself behind the wheel! You can do it.’

  ‘But … it’s huge,’ gasped Hemi, awed at the transition from the Cortina. ‘Are you sure? Do you think I can?’

  The men on the back began singing, ‘Why are we waiting, why are we waiting?’ to the tune of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ and Reg called out, ‘Let’s get going, we’re wasting precious drinkin’ time. It’ll be closin’ time before we get there at this rate.’

  Hemi climbed up into the cab and settled, grinning, into the driver’s seat six feet above the ground. Twenty minutes later, all the men were leaning against the public bar of the Brian Boru with cold jugs of foaming beer in their hands. Hemi drank Lemon and Paeroa.

  Laurie was right. It had been a big day.

  The Bedford was the right vehicle for the job and the delivery service to Auckland went without a hitch every Thursday.
>
  After a few months the business was carting top-grade native timber on other days as well, with Hemi and Laurie taking turns with the driving. Boatbuilding was booming and so was the furniture industry as families from the provinces flocked to the metropolis seeking more luxurious lives.

  ‘We should keep an eye out for a veneer mill,’ Hemi suggested one day. ‘We ought to start making our own plywood here, instead of carting timber to Auckland for someone else to do it.’ Hemi had a gift for developing new ideas and his employer and mentor was wise and humble enough to take him seriously.

  ‘I say,’ Bart replied, looking up from the business section. ‘D’you know I was thinking that self-same thing to myself. Let’s see what’s for sale, shall we?’

  He turned to the tenders column.

  Ten months later they’d built a new factory next to the sawmill and set up the machines. Hemi flourished under the increased workload. He worked well under pressure and required little in the way of praise or recognition.

  By the time the Holyoake Government was withdrawing New Zealand troops from Vietnam in 1971 (Hemi missed out on the conscription ballot by a day), Larkin’s Sawmill had been shipping marine-grade plywood to Sydney and Melbourne for two years and three more Bedfords had been purchased. Hemi was placed in charge of transport operations.

  The trucks could pay for themselves faster, he calculated, if they returned from Auckland with freight. So he put an advertisement in the Herald offering to carry goods from the city to Waikato and Hauraki Plains customers. Within weeks the trucks were carrying everything from farm machinery, building supplies and fertilisers to personal effects, food and furniture.

  More staff had to be hired. Another two trucks were added. By 1975, Larkin Road Transport Ltd had depots in most of the North Island provincial centres and the fleet had swelled to sixty-five vehicles. The US dollar was down and farm production was at its highest level for a decade. The country was on the move and Larkin, thanks to Hemi’s constant input of ideas and practical experience, was ready to pounce on any new opportunity.