What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

by Alan Duff

  But in my enquiries as to how long the father got sentenced to prison, it came up at the book club; Mabel Peters the retired nurse matron knew a bit more about it, she said that the police had not in fact charged the father because the semen evidence did not match the sample given by the father. And yes, a picture of a man having to masturbate to prove his innocence did very much cross one’s mind. Though Mabel said that that didn’t prove the man innocent except on the night in question. Which I thought was rather harshly judging and unfair of her but then typical of Mabel. She had married a traffic cop, after all. With a moustache, as we knowing friends used to giggle amongst us.

  I did not attend the poor girl’s funeral since it was not my upbringing to go to the funerals of strangers even in these circumstances; I’d have felt exceedingly uncomfortable and quite out of my place. And what would I have said to the mother — that I was sorry? That no, I had no idea of why her daughter chose our property. And if the mother in her distraught state had added one and one and got an affair between her child and my husband, what then? Though, of course, I was glad Gordon went since it showed, or at least I presumed it would have, that he had nothing to hide. Just as I was proud of the mother at turning down Gordon’s insensitive offer of money to help towards funeral expenses.

  One day I was driving my golf friends on my turn for the pick-up to golf when Mabel suddenly pointed out the window, That’s him. The father. The father of whom? The girl who killed herself. Considering myself a fair person I was surprised at my ill feeling toward this strapping fellow stripped down to shorts working on a road gang; I who had accepted his innocence on what Mabel herself had told us.

  One of the other girls commented that he was a handsome specimen and likened him to a thoroughbred horse, which I didn’t quite go along with despite his body. A thoroughbred has a certain class. This man lacked that, though handsome and well built he most certainly was. Given that it was his roadworks we were slowed and then stop-signed by, we all got a good look at him. I was reminded of white southern American women assessing a Negro slave. I felt somewhat disgusting for being one of them. I reminded myself, though, that he was innocent. But he did have a certain violent manner about him, those muscles rippling sweatingly in the sun.

  Grace Heke had changed our lives. Yet in a way that left one only with a keener sense of appreciation of one’s better lot in life. Which of course made her memory the more poignant.

  NINETEEN

  HE SHIFTED HIS feet when he knew the original position was exactly where the ball was gonna come (I’m a fighter, I unnerstan’ these things, arcs and flights and bodily movements, it’s like I unnerstan’ the very air bodies and objects move through — and thrown beer bottles, hahaha! from the old days) and he woulda been under it to take it at chest level, pull it into him like he and the utha locks’d practised the last five weeks every Tuesday and Thursday minus the one Thursday when a man’d decided to get on the piss cos it was raining and he (I) thought practice woulda been called off — no he didn’t, tha’s the excuse he gave when the boys came in after for a beer and, bugger me, they jus’ looked at him and said don’t come that, Jake. And Gary Douglas called him a wuss. When he’d thought he’d been getting along pretty well with ’em, what with the hunting trips and drinking with ’em several times a week, too. The whole fucken team ignored him that night, as if the nights he had turned up to practice didn’t count (even when I didn’t want to go and who said I have to anyrate, I’m not one a you. Not really. I only came in cos fucken Gary and Kohi talked — egged — me into it.) So he’d stood by himself feeling bad and thinking how quickly men become strangers to one another jus’ on account of a man decidin’ it’s a free fucken country — Well, fuck ’em. Won’t turn up to practice ever again.

  But when he thought about it nex’ day and remembered the fullas he’d got to know, several of them honkies at that, when he’d never known a whiteman not in his whole (unknowing) life — not if he didn’t count his brief time with the McClutchy alkies, which he didn’t cos they weren’t real people, not when part of their soul was sold to the drink in a big way — surprised at them, his teammates, sorta the same as Maori fullas ’cept they talked a bit different; one fulla, the halfback, cheeky an’ funny as anything, for a whiteman he was, and kinda warm, too, if a man was gonna be honest about it, the way he, Ronnie, put his hand on a man’s shoulder jus’ anytime and that smile right up into a man’s face. Alright, Jake? he’d ask, like he really cared. Like if you had sumpthin’ on ya mind he’d be the one you’d go to tellim all about it. (I might jus’ do that one day, ya never know.)

  It came down, he was too close, it hit him high on the chest nearly on the chin (had to snap my head outta the way like it was a sneak punch) and the fucken ref blew the whistle, Knock-on green! Scrum. Red put-in. A man hearing the Douglas mob on the sideline laughing atim. (Fuckem. I’ll showem.) But he didn’t. The other side showed, not just his opposite opponent but plenty others in the team showed him, Jake (The Muss) Heke, what another kind of muscle was about.

  He was out-timed, out-jumped and nemine a man’s height in the lineouts. (Our fucken hooker’s fault, he knows I like it lofted high not those hard straight throws, I hate those. Y’ timings gotta be too right. Wouldn’t mind if it was a fight, then I’d fucken make sure the timing was there alright, don’t worry about that.) He pushed his weight in the scrums but then scrums for a lock were easy. Being a lock forward he didn’t have to make many tackles like the backs running against each other individually had to, but the times someone broke from the play and came (thundering) at him, he made the mistake of trying to use his strength and got run over the first time, the second he drove into the tackle ’cept the fulla turned his body slightly and a man went brushing past ended up on his face eatin’ fucken dirt.

  When he was out of breath — and that started very early in the game — the Douglas brothers and some of the other fullas yelled atim to keep up, to get in there, Jake! when he was trying. But the ole lungs jus’ wouldn’t supply the muscles. The first time he got the ball — jus’ arrived in his hands from a maul — he thought, This is it! And he charged, right into a body tackle that not only winded him he lost possession of the fucken ball (oh!)

  It didn’t seem right, fair, that a man who’d been a fighter all his life, who’d ruled one of the worst pubs in town, had done fistic battle with, on several occasions, three his own size and won, should not be able to play this fucken game. Yet whatever he did he messed it up or at best made hardly no impression. He was lowered in tackles by li’l guys. Pushed around, elbowed in the lineouts, sneak-punched in rucks, raked by boots on the ground, and the cunts even mouthed off atta man while waiting for the ball to be thrown into the lineout. Made him turn, What’d you sa — Shet! Distracting a man so he misses his lineout jump altogether with wanting their blood. He did a cupla good things, had one long run and made a few sorta good tackles (they coulda been better, I know like any fighter man knows in his heart of hearts. But leas’ I made ’em.)

  In the clubroom bar after the game, he would’ve drank elsewhere if they hadn’t snubbed him so totally that night he missed practice (it hurt), so ashamed did he feel of playing exactly like Gary’s original facial expression’d said, like a wuss, man jus’ wanted to leave. But for some reason he likened it to Beth: if he walked then he was never gonna see these people, not as friends or teammates or even to say hello to, ever again. So he downed his beers — or tha’s how he started out till Kohi tole him, Hey man, slow down, slow down, we got all night, brutha. And when Jake looked (deeply) into Kohi’s eyes (yeah, he’d played well for a fulla with a fat gut) looking for any smartarse meaning he only saw goodwill. And a fighter knows goodwill like he knows badwill. Like he knows bodily movement, of objects, too, and so he shrugged, and slowed his drinking to his team-mates’ pace, as was the done thing. (You’re a team aren’t yas?)

  When the coach came ovah to their stand-up elbow-lean table, Jake Heke got guarded (Gwon, tell me how
bad I played. But don’t go on about it, Joe. A man knows when he hasn’t done well, at anything physical he does.) Good game, Jake. (What!) Timing a bit out in the lineouts, but that’ll come. Few more games. Jake astonished — shocked to his shallower core — that not only was he not being hauled out for how bad he played but — Coach, I hear right? What, it takes, like, a few games? And even his own sentence, the way he’d structured the question, surprised himself. It actually meant exactly what he wanted: did he have a few games to come right? (Tha’s all I’m asking, coachie.)

  Sure. What, you expect to go out there and play All Black rugby? In a third-grade senior team meant to be enjoying themselves? At, what, forty-three? Jake, come on. Hey! Forty-two. Jake trying not to break out smiling cos it’d be the relief he was smiling at as well knowing coach was teasing the year onto his age. Well, you played like forty-bloody-six, mate, Joe in that whiteman way of talking, more sure of ’emselves, less mumbled. And with the eyes right at a man. When in Jake’s world, direct eye contact meant challenge. Meaning fighting talk even when it was silent.

  At some time during the body-tired but heart-singing — and voice-singing, when the Douglas brothers produced a gat — night, Jake got ’n idea. Of asking Cody to join the team, it wasn’t so serious a level Cody would feel out of his depth, not with a coach let you have a few games to settle in. In fact, his head swam with lots of ideas, on his own game and where he could improve. On ways he could get fitter so at least he’d enjoy the game better. (Double up on my daily press-ups.) And where he could show his team-mates (buddies) his social contribution. Remembering his days at McClutchy’s where he ruled, at fighting and singing. This feeling of tired elation about the same as after a day out hunting (now I got experience). He wanted to sing to, you know, express that elation; now he was jus’ drunk enough not to feel, you know, too embarrassed. Got a thought then of why: why would a man be embarrassed at jus’ hearin’ his own voice singing a fucken song when he knew he could sing it, not as if it’d be like a man’s firs’ rugby game in twenny-five years, this was sumpthin’ a man’d never missed a practice at — (Haha! a practice) — not one fucken week, of doing his (drunk) singing thing at the pub, at pardies all ovah — all OVAH — this town in, what, nearly the same twenny-five years.

  He (I) had sung with the best. The pub an’ pardy best anyrate. So he went to Gary on the gat, Hey Ga, you know ‘Tennessee Waltz’? Holding his breath cos the younger players, which was mosta them, would go, Ohh, not a fucken oldie numba! Put a man off, make ’im feel stink about himself. When in the ole days they’d a only said it from a safe distance that it was a oldie song. ’Cept no one said anything. ’N fact they all went, Yeah! Jake’s gonna sing us a song.

  So (you know) he took a breath and sang. And no one said a word or laughed, they only joined him in the chorus: … to the beautiful Tennessee Waltz. He hadn’t felt this good in — oh, a long long time. (And wait’ll I play football better. And wait’ll you hear my best songs. Wait, wait, jus’ you good people wait: Jakey’ll show you.) In this life — not the fucken next — he’d showem.

  TWENTY

  THE VIEW FROM her upstairs window used to change according to how much money she had. In the ole days before Mulla it was a set routine process of the fortnightly solo mutha’s (I even talk like a Hawk now) benefit as it ran out, her tobacco supply as it got down to skinnier and skinnier rolled smokes, how her mind turned scavenger as she went for long walks in the neighbourhood hoping to find some money on the ground even when — when she thought about it — all of Pine Block’d be like this in the days leading up to benefit payout, hundreds and hundreds of solo mums jus’ like her, the unemployed, the heaps on bullshit sickness benefits, they should call this place Benefit Block, if it could be called a benefit (fucken gov’mint, never give us enough, jus’ enough to keep us scrapin’ by the rest of our lives, fucken gov’mint cunts) of hundreds — no, thousands — dependent on government for their entire existences (though not as if we invite ’em, even our local MP — who the fuck’s he? What Party is in office? — to our parties, hahaha! Thassa only party we care about.)

  Tha’s how it used t’ be before Mulla. Now, utha than a cupla bad weeks when Mulla didn’t get a cut from a drug deal, she felt almost rich in that she had spare cash instead of running completely out three, four days before the fortnightly ole cycle came around (again), and the kids hadn’t gone to school hungry in ages, plenty food in the cubbids (I’m rich), which meant they were easier to put up with, you know, bein’ a mother when a woman weren’t actually, like, born to this motherhood stuff (I wasn’t.) Rich, or enough to lift her sights and since it was usually out her upstairs bedroom window her sights more and more fell on the new housing subdivisions, as she imagined living in her own house, witha what-they-call-it, a mortgage (Social Security could take it outta my benefit, the fucken thieving gov’mint, give it to us with one han’, take it with the utha) but she’d settle for that if she could have her own house; she’d mow the lawn, not like half the bastards round here, waitin’ till someone, a mate, a rellie, got sick of the sight of it and did it for ’em, useless fucken bastards and bitches going: Oh, I was jus’ gonna do that, tomorrow. Like everything was tomorrow.

  As she’d got to quite like walking from the ole broke days, Gloria Jones would walk (with my eyes up, not on the ground) down to the new subdivisions, slowing down so the experience lasted longer, near watering at the mouth at wanting to have one of these homes; why, they had carports and some had garages, she could make the garage a spare room (I know: I could rent it out, that’d pay half the, whatsit, mortgage, for starters. And if I could get Mulla to move in but not officially so I wouldn’t lose my solo mum’s benefit, well naturally he’d pay board — and then some — and before I knew it I’d have my cunning li’l arse covered with the whole benefit to myself, me and the kids. Shit, might be able to save up a deposit and buy a car. But as the (fucken) Social Security’d be deducting and I wouldn’t be telling ’em not to or they’d smell a rat, fuck me I’d end up owning the place in, what, ten years?) The thought(s) made her tremble.

  Her hoping, wanting thoughts made her wet, too. For him, Mulla, who she never thought she’d get to like but not only did she — well, she was sure she loved him. (Yeah, reckon I do. Now I do.) Despite his facial tattoos, his gang membership, bein’ a ex-con, he was a decent man beneath it all, better’n any and all of the men she’d been with ovah the years put together. If he could pull off one good deal on his own, without having to share it with the uthas (shit, some of ’em don’t get outta bed till lunchtime) that would be the deposit they wanted on a new (our own) house. ’N fact, a cupla months back Mulla’s share of that ten kaygee dope deal was four and a bit grand. He gave Gloria a thousand dollars of it, the mos’ money she’d ever had in her whole life, and she went out and bought clothes, clothes, for herself — oh, forgot the kids — so she bought them a few things, ’bout two hundred’s worth, the rest she glad-ragged herself to the 9’s — no, the legs 11’s, hahaha-hehehe, liked so many things she even had to give some back when it came to more than the seven hundred she had to spend after buying two cartons of tailor-made smokes and a bitta food for the cubbid. She couldn’t believe it the cost, and how far it didn’t go, not really. But boy had it been good spending it. The rest of his thousands Mulla jus’ blew like they all do the gangies and the people around here, it’s how they are with money, kids, love: they blow it. On drinking. On buying up the large, big noting, in the lowie bars they go to that open early (to dispense the medicine for their ailing hearts).

  Mulla’d been moaning his head off of late, ’bout Jimmy Bad Horse (oo, what a mean mongrel dog that is. Yet he’s got sumpthin’ about ’im) not respecting his senior status by sending him out with punk kid prospects to case robbery or burg jobs. Robbery, the firs’ preference, more dough in it. In an’ out. Gloria was anguishing over whether to put it to Mulla outright, why didn’t he turn this to his advantage, get the pros’s to do a job and pull out a
hunk of the dough. She had the armed bank robberies well imagined in her mind, of the prospects running in doing their desperate thing, waving their shotties around, feeling terrified and like giants at the same time — givus the fucken dough bags! — out to the first getaway vehicle — which Mulla said Jimmy’s tried to say he should be driving but Mulla insulted enough by that to tell him fuck, a man his many years in the gang didn’t have to be frontline risk stuff, after all the time he’d done inside, too. No, Mulla would be driving the second vehicle; the pros’s’d just bundle in their bags of dough and frantic selves and want their young asses outta there. Mulla could have a plan to drop them off at her house, she could give ’em the big impression of harbouring dangerous criminals, make ’em feel good, hot stuff about ’emselves, whilst Mulla was elsewhere pulling big wads of cash (I want the slabs of fifties, not hundreds. Hundreds make people suspicious. Fifties but I’ll take twennies — take fifty cent pieces if I had a place to turn ’em into notes! hahaha) and then they’d have a deposit on a house.

  She thought and thought about this and today she’d be putting it to Mulla, meaning it risked everything but then, what the hell, not as if life’d given a woman many utha options. (I’ll be aksing him hehehe) amused at how they said the word ask.