by Greg McGee
The first school, a primary, was just two blocks away. Ellie double-parked outside the school office, took one of the smaller cartons from the boot and carried it into reception. She passed teachers on their way to class, already trailing little posses of curious kids. She put the carton on the counter. The receptionist was busy with a mother and a child who looked like a new entrant, big shy eyes, but a passing teacher, a middle-aged woman with streaks of grey, diverted from her course, thanked Ellie and went to give her the empty carton from yesterday. Ellie said she’d need to hold on to it until Monday, that she wouldn’t be going back to base. ‘Have to go back to work,’ Ellie explained to a slightly raised eyebrow.
‘Well,’ said the woman to the little child. ‘We’ll just have to trust that another angel turns up on Monday.’
Ellie had driven across the bottom end of Mount Roskill into New Windsor and back towards the last stop, a big secondary school at the southern end of Three Kings, where she unloaded the biggest carton of little brown paper bags, the one sitting on the back seat of her car. Even the streets she hadn’t been in before were familiar in a generic way. Clientsville, she’d heard some of the advocates call these patches of deprivation, the slums of Auckland, where her clients generally lived. At first glance, these weren’t as bad as some slums, if you drove past and didn’t stop to go inside the houses. And certainly not as bad if you just stopped at the schools. When she first began doing these deliveries, out east in Glen Innes, she thought she’d missed her vocation, that she should have become a teacher, because it was so clear to her that the schools had stepped into the community vacuums and become the neighbourhood hubs, the last state-funded agents for change and for good in this sea of market-forces wreckage. Being a teacher, saving kids, enlightening them, would beat the hell out of ferrying them and their mothers to A & E.
But the more schools she visited, the more she could see the teachers were being worn down by the extra-curricular demands, by so many small hands reaching up for salvation from material impoverishment and mental stimulation, hour after hour, day after day.
She thought about her own child or children, if she was so lucky. Was SD 00007982 the man? If he was, and it worked, what then? The percentages weren’t that high. She couldn’t assume her eggs would survive the thaw, and she only had eight. But if it did happen, what then? She’d never wanted to be a single parent; children were to have been a natural part of a loving, supportive relationship. Watching and supporting Claudia since Will left her, she’d seen first hand how consuming and draining solo motherhood could be. She knew Yelena would always be there, Claudia would do what she could, and there were other friends too. Poor Carol, she would have been a brilliant grandmother. But Ellie had always assumed there’d be a partner with a job, a salary: she never thought she’d be a beneficiary. How would she live? Where would she live? Carol’s share of the estate would be available when the section was sold. Would that be enough for her to buy something in the part of town where she grew up? Auckland was a series of often badly connected towns and villages. Some she felt at home in, in others she felt so alien she might as well be in another country. That was the reality. She couldn’t count on any help from Den, living or dead. Will might have been right about the mercenary rest-home financial template but what else could they do?
She became aware of her mobile, on silent, thrumming insistently on the coffee table. She didn’t recognise the number. The voice identified itself as Meredith, the supervisor at the Sunset Road Retirement Village. She said that Ellie’s father, Dennis – in case she’d forgotten the name, Ellie thought – hadn’t been seen at happy hour or dinner, though that wasn’t unusual of late. But after dinner they’d been alerted by the sensors in his apartment that there had been no movement inside for four hours. She was about to explain how the sensors worked, but Ellie cut her off. ‘Where is he?’
‘Well, he appears to have disappeared,’ said Meredith.
What an odd way of putting it, thought Ellie. That someone could appear to have disappeared.
THINGS CAN DISAPPEAR in the night, while I’m sleeping. I don’t know what’s gone on, what’s gone, until I try to use it or find it, and realise it’s not there. So I always repeat my mantra before I open my eyes. ‘Here lies Dennis William Sparks,’ I say to myself. I know I might be taking a bit of a punt with this next bit. ‘Beloved husband of Carol and father of William, Eleanor and Stanley.’ Then, in case Carol is listening, I always add, ‘Just testing!’ But she never bites.
After I’ve said my prayer and know that I still know who I am, I open my eyes. It’s dark. The smell of the earth I’m lying on and the ragged thrum of cicadas is comforting. I’ve missed both, and so many other things I can see or feel. Being cold. Trees. Branches arcing over me. The night sky beyond. Stars. I roll over on my side and find my Rainbird under my head. I sit up and shrug into it. I’m stiff and chilled. Through the vegetation I can see a weak flickering light. I push myself up using the trunk of the tree as leverage. That fucking knee never goes away. I have to lean while I catch my breath, my cheek against rough bark scored with narrow furrows. This tree, melia, I remember, for some reason. Carol and I planted it, after Will was born. This tree, still with me, trying to support me. My tears run into the rivulets of bark and down into the earth. A tree hugger, finally. I’d laughed at the very idea, long ago. What a waste. I seem to be crying a lot, and quite often can’t remember why. I push off the trunk, get the knee going, begin limping back along the grass track. At the fork I turn right onto a wider track, towards the dancing light, growing stronger as I get closer. My AF 1s know the way to a couple of steps leading up to another wooden gate, where I stop, peering over at an expanse of deck, which seems both deeply familiar and strange.
The light is coming from a small blaze deep in the pizza oven, which is still there. In its low flicker of flame, I can see those gaunt blackened bones to the south of the deck where my home used to be. The kitchen area is completely razed, but the big french doors from the sitting room are still standing, in front of a cross-hatched black ruin extending back into the darkness. That edge of the deck itself has also burnt away, exposing the ash-strewn concrete foundations underneath. The rest of the deck out to the pool is still there, as far as I can see, most of the surface covered with . . . stuff. I can recognise the sun-loungers. One is made up as a bed, with a pillow and old blankets, the others arranged as chairs, but draped with vegetation of some sort. And behind the loungers is a low structure, a kind of lean-to. It has a central ridge like a tent with riders running down to the deck, burnt timber from the house, covered with see-through plastic sheets. As I watch, another flickering light comes on, one of the torches that used to surround the deck. I see a thin figure turn from the torch, carrying a red-embered stick he’s using as a lighter. I step back instinctively, my knee gives way and I stagger onto the bottom step. I must have cried out: by the time I recover my balance and look up, the figure is at the gate, pointing a gun in my face. I don’t recognise the face immediately, but I’d know that pistol anywhere. ‘Walter!’
‘Walter? Who’s Walter, Mr D?’
The face is long, a boy’s face, but old, too, with watery brown eyes which seem to have seen as much of the world as mine. ‘I know you, I think.’
‘It’s Jackson, Mr D. There’s no Walter here.’
‘You must give me my pistol back, Jackson.’
When Jackson hands Walter to me, I must confess I cradle him to my chest like a baby.
‘I didn’t steal it, Mr D,’ says the boy. ‘You gave it to me the night of the fire when I found you on the sofa. Honest. I’se just keeping it for you.’
I’m in no position to contradict him. The boy – what did he say his name was? – opens the gate for me, and I limp up onto the deck and look around in wonder. ‘My father would have known what this was.’
‘What was?’
I indicate the makeshift shelter and th
e sun-lounger bed and chairs arranged around the table, which I hadn’t noticed before because it, too, is draped in what look like corn fronds or maize. ‘This is like . . . My father lived in the desert.’
‘Yeah?’
‘In the war.’
‘My grandfather was there too.’
‘Bivvy!’ I’m exultant. ‘That’s the word! Bivouac!’
The boy is looking anxiously at Walter, who is waving around a bit. ‘Does Walter have any bullets in him?’
That was something I knew, I’m sure. When the boy offers to take the pistol and put it somewhere safe, I tell him I appreciate his looking after Walter while I was gone, but I will not be separated from Walter again under any circuses. I’m deeply embarrassed because I know that’s the wrong word. Circles isn’t right either. The right word has gone, but not the knowledge that the word I’ve substituted is wrong. I must look bewildered, lost. The boy says he doesn’t want to be rude, ‘considering it’s your house, but how come you’re here? Does anyone know you’re here?’
I tell him it’s a long story. I’ve found that to be the perfect answer for questions I don’t want to answer. It always stops further enquiry: no one, it seems, wants to hear long stories. But the boy is different. He’s obviously waiting for me to continue. ‘Enough,’ I say. And that seems to be sufficient.
‘You hungry, Mr D?’
‘Depends. What are you cooking?’
‘Warming up a can of baked beans,’ he says. ‘I’se gonna have it on bread. Got no butter, though.’
‘Real food! Sounds wonderful.’
The boy crosses to the table, takes a small blackened pot and places it close to the fire in the pizza oven. He then clears one side of the table, pushing the dry vegetation over to the other side, and invites me to sit down on an upturned pot that had once, I think, contained a yucca near the steps to the pool. When I take my place, Jackson lays out plates and knives and forks. The pattern round the edges of the plates looks familiar to me, though much of it has been burnt off. The provenance of all the stuff Jackson has used to make himself comfortable here is obvious. Good luck to him, I think, unless the boy started the fire with this outcome in mind. No, I started the fire, hadn’t someone suggested that? Why would I have done that?
Jackson takes a small tomahawk from beside the fire and chops some blackened timber he’s stacked nearby, just a few lengths, which he feeds into the fire. He comes back to the table and cuts a loaf of white bread and lays a thick slice on each of the plates, turns the pot of beans a couple of times, sticks his finger in the top and pronounces it ready. He brings it over to the table and ladles generous portions of beans over the bread doorstops. When he’s seated in front of his meal, he asks me if I’d mind if he said grace? I tell him that’s fine with me, that I’m as hungry as a hunter and truly grateful for what Jackson has put in front of me and I’m happy that he thanks whoever. Jackson closes his eyes and murmurs something to himself.
‘You can say it aloud if you like.’
‘It’s my Nana’s,’ he says. ‘Whakapaingia ēnei kai – bless our food. Hei oranga mo ō mātou tinana – for the well-being of our body. Whāngaia ō mātou wairua – feed our spirit.’
‘You don’t have to translate,’ I tell him. ‘I’m getting the general idea.’ After that, the next word I recognise is Amine.
I look at my utensils and have a bad moment with my fingers. This has happened before. I look across to the boy and mimic him, holding the bread in place with my fork in one hand and cutting with my knife in the other. I don’t want him to see what I’m doing, but he does. He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t give any indication he’s noticed, except, I can tell: he slows his movements so that it’s easier for me to shadow him. Lifting the portion to his mouth with the fork. He chews, I chew. A wonderfully savoury mixture. ‘Succulent indeed.’
‘Is that good?’
‘That is very very good,’ I confirm. ‘Delicious.’ I watch the boy carefully for my cues and notice other things. He’s looking worried. Chews twice, like clockwork, then listens, like the noise of his jaw is blocking something. His eyes are always moving around the perimeter darkness established by the weak light from the fire and the torch. Chew, chew, stop, listen. Chew, chew, swallow, stop, listen. I feel obliged to do the same. Chew twice, stop, listen carefully. ‘Are you expecting someone?’ I ask him.
He says no, but shortly after that, he rises from the table and stands, like a pointer dog with quarry in his nostrils. When I ask what the matter is, Jackson puts his finger to his lips. All is silent, save for the cicadas and the crackle of the fire in the oven. But Jackson can plainly hear something I can’t.
‘Prob’ly nothing,’ whispers the boy, then seems to contradict himself almost immediately. ‘Car just came up the drive.’ He moves quickly from his place at the table, round towards me. ‘Mind if I borrow Walter for a sec?’ Before I can register the question or reply, he lifts Walter from the table and disappears through the gate into Carol’s garden. I resolve to keep Walter in my pocket in future, though the boy is so obviously alarmed by what he’s heard, I’m not about to deny him whatever comfort he gets from the pistol. Who knows what’s out there?
JACKSON MATERIALISED FROM the darkness of the garden even as Ellie turned from the driveway into the parking bay, the swinging arc of the headlights catching him full beam.
‘Mr D is here,’ he said, as Ellie opened the door.
Jackson helped carry the hemp supermarket bags and blankets and pillows up through the garden to the deck, where Den was sitting quietly at the table. ‘Dad. Thank God you’re here.’ She dropped the bags she was carrying and hugged him, then saw his plate, white bread strewn with baked beans. ‘I’ve got some real food here,’ she said. ‘I’ll put something together.’
‘This is delicious!’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said Ellie. ‘Yes, sit, you too Jackson, finish your meal, please.’
Jackson lowered the stuff he was carrying, which Den now saw was blankets and pillows. ‘Is that my bed?’
‘We’ll make up one of the sun-loungers,’ she confirmed. ‘Like Jackson’s. Just for tonight.’
‘Yes,’ said Den. ‘Just for tonight. But I’m not going back.’
‘Okay, Dad.’
Den became suddenly panicked by the thought of what tomorrow might bring. ‘I can’t go back! Promise me!’
‘Okay, Dad. Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.’
‘I’m happy here. I’m home.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘We’re sweet,’ said Jackson.
Sweet? thought Ellie, trying to smile encouragingly. The section would be sold soon, and even if it wasn’t, winter was coming. And . . . She was registering the changes on the deck since her last supply drop for Jackson a couple of days ago. Jackson’s sun-lounger bed, not in the lean-to, out in the open, the fronds of desiccated vegetation draped over everything. What the fuck? ‘Jackson, what’s going on here?’ She picked up a frond. It was dry and crackly. ‘What is this . . . ?’ Holy shit, it was marijuana. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘I was down picking feijoas, and I found these plants. Three of them. Just growing there, ready.’
Whenever Ellie had come to weed and water the garden, she’d concentrated on Carol’s flower beds and left the bush area and mature trees to themselves. But even so. ‘How . . . ?’ she began, but was cut off by Den’s sudden revelation.
‘Stan’s birthday present!’ Den said he remembered he and Stan had planted three bushes on the night of his seventieth.
‘Thing is,’ said Jackson, ‘It’d be a shame to waste it. You can’t buy this stuff, it’s all synthetic shit. So I pulled it and dried it. See?’
He was indicating the lean-to. Ellie peered inside and saw marijuana hanging from the ceiling, completely obscuring the interior. When she stood up, she turned away, trying to process this
latest complication, and saw the bottom of the pool, drained the night of the fire, covered in the same stuff.
‘There’s a shitload,’ confirmed Jackson. ‘Another coupla days of no rain and we’ll be sweet.’
That word again, thought Ellie. This wasn’t how she’d ever seen things turning out, but what the fuck could she do, apart from buy time? She’d think of something. She took the blankets and began making up one of the sun-loungers for her father’s bed.
***
HALF an hour later, Ellie drove back down the driveway, clinging to the one thing that made any sense: Dad was happy. For the moment. Tomorrow, she’d think of something. Some plan for Den. Some plan for Jackson. Some plan for the fucking marijuana. How could Stan have done that? Something to say to Meredith at Sunset. That had to be a priority. When Meredith had called, she’d relayed the information the home had gathered about Den’s movements, that he’d been seen up on Sunset Road mid-afternoon by the woman who was a part-timer at the pharmacy, that he’d asked her the way to town. One of the bus drivers on that route had reported to the shift supervisor picking up an elderly man who, he said, looked like Einstein’s brother, in sneakers. He’d been intending to take him to the end of the line at Britomart so he could get himself a card, but the old man had exited quietly with a bunch of other passengers somewhere along the waterfront. From the moment she heard that, Ellie had known where her father was going and had managed to dissuade Meredith from involving the police or taking any further action until Ellie got back to her.
