Before I could ask how she knew, she said, “And now I have to invite you, because otherwise—nah, awkward. Saturday night, the day we get back. My birthday. On which I will be thirty, unemployed, and unengaged. My doors may all be closed, but a window will open any minute. Hooray.”
I was smiling all the way through the roundabout, as we picked up speed, and as we headed north, out of town. I put on some music that had her tapping her feet like she was just bursting to get out and move, opened the sunroof, and let the smell of new leather and the feel of endless horsepower carry me along. I let myself think about nothing at all except this day, and it was good. Until, that is, we were driving through the outskirts of Paeroa, we passed a group of kids and bikes beside the road, and Karen said, “What is that? No way. Pull over.”
Karen
After a while, I forgot to think about wealthy men with sports cars (Josh had driven a Porsche), male models, or why on earth I was embarking on a trip with a wealthy male model in a sports car, when I was supposed to be having Girl Time with a lovely female entrepreneur who was also a children’s book author and a mother. A woman who’d sounded, from her correspondence with Hemi, very much like my sister.
I knew how to deal with my sister. I knew how to be with my sister, and right now, I didn’t quite know how to be with anybody else. I’d been planning to listen, watch, and explore for ten days or so, see Koro, and go back home and report to Hemi, hopefully with a vague feeling of life force returning and a clue in my head about what I was going to do next. That had been the plan.
Right now, though, the plan was to get out of this car. I was scrambling so fast, I got tangled in the shoulder belt, and had to spend valuable seconds swearing under my breath and unwrapping my arm, while Jax didn’t say anything, in that way calm people had of not saying anything that told you all the things they weren’t saying. Then I was finally free of the Demon Car, and was running back along the pavement to where the kids were standing over the cardboard box.
Two of them, the bigger ones, ran away when I approached, and the three little ones didn’t. They were barefoot, their bikes thrown down where they’d hopped off them. I came up fast, slowed down to a casual saunter in the last three strides, and said, “Hey, guys, what’s going on?” at too late a stage not to alarm them.
One of them said, “Nothing.” She was a girl, maybe ten or so, with her hair in a long brown braid and frizzing around her face, like she’d been in the water. A boy of about the same age said, “Nothing,” for good measure. The littlest kid, somebody’s brother, who might have been six, didn’t say anything.
I looked into the box. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find. A litter of too-young puppies. A kitten, crouching and terrified. Something I needed to make right, because I could at least do that. What I saw was . . . a duck.
A little white duck, in fact, with a short, rounded bill, a round head, a round body, and big, round eyes. It was the roundest little duck ever, and it was making a sort of tired little peeping noise, which wasn’t the sound ducks were supposed to make, and shuffling around the box on its flat feet.
The outside of the box said FREE, in big black letters. What I’d seen when I’d made Jax stop. A cardboard box that said FREE, a flash of white, a bunch of kids, and too much excitement.
The girl said, “The big boys were teasing it. There were two ducks in the box before, when we went to the beach. Now there’s only this one. It’s hot, but if we put the box in the shade, nobody will take it, because they won’t see. And the boys might come back. They’re in Year Eight, and they’re rough as. Plus, the duck should have water, I think.”
“Yeh,” the other boy said. “Ducks need to swim. We should take it to the sea, maybe.”
“No, we shouldn’t,” the girl said. “That’s salt water. Ducks need fresh water, like a pond or a river. I could take it home, except that the dogs will get it if I leave it outside, and I don’t think Mum will let me have it in the house. We could take it to the river and let it go, maybe.”
All three kids looked doubtfully at the duck, and so did I. If any animal had ever sent the message, Free lunch! to every predator in sight, it was this duck. This was, in fact, an absolutely defenseless duck.
That was the moment when Jax came up, still looking cool, and said, “Ah. A duck. I should’ve guessed a duck, clearly.”
I said, “That makes no sense.”
“In the context of my recent life? It makes as much sense as anything else.” He looked the kids over. “Whose duck?”
“We don’t know,” the girl said. “It was just here. And it needs water. A water dish, like.”
“You’re right about that,” Jax said, and told me, “I can’t tell you how surprised and pleased I am not to be forced into a duel. I’ll be back.”
He took off toward the car, and the girl said, “We could ride to the dairy and buy something that comes in a punnet, maybe, and a bottled water, and pour the water from the bottle into the punnet once we eat what’s in it.”
“Ice cream,” the little kid said.
“Not ice cream,” the girl said. “Because you’d have to eat the whole thing at the dairy. It would melt by the time we brought it back here, and eating a whole carton of ice cream would take too long anyway. We need to give the duck water now.”
“But I like ice cream best,” the little boy said. “So if we have to eat something up, I think we should get ice cream.”
“We don’t have any money,” the older boy told the girl, ignoring the little kid. “We can’t buy anything unless she gives us money, and people don’t just give you money.”
“I think Jax is getting water,” I said. “My friend.” I couldn’t stand to watch the duck be hot. I lifted the box and carried it up onto the grass and into the shade, and when I put it down, I felt inside it. The bottom was uncomfortably warm, which was why the duck was hopping. I sat down on the grass, scooped the duck carefully out, and set it down between my legs, doing my best to make a barrier. I wasn’t sure how flighty ducks were, and this was a very little duck, maybe six inches tall. It looked, in fact, a whole lot like Huey, Dewey, or Louie, except that it was missing the little shirt. It peeped some more and huddled there, looking feeble, and the three kids crouched down beside me to watch.
“Can I pat it?” the girl asked.
“I guess so,” I said. “It doesn’t seem very vicious.” She gave it a careful stroke, and the duck gave another peep and edged closer to her, which made the other kids stick their hands in there, too. The duck, in response, nestled close to my leg like it wanted to snuggle in. Its feathers were soft against my skin, but it wasn’t eating. Shouldn’t it be eating the grass? I said, “OK, hands off, now. I think it’s pretty stressed.”
Jax came back, and, yes, Mr. Strong and Steady had a fair-sized water bottle with him, and not just that. He got down on his good knee, poured the water into a sort of expanding rubbery cup that was probably part of the survival kit he carried everywhere, and set it beside the duck, who instantly stuck its short bill in there and began to slurp, then raised its round head to swallow the water down. Jax squirted more water from the bottle over the duck’s back, and it shook its tail feathers in a waggle that made the kids laugh, took a couple more drinks, and started to look less like a desperate case.
“All good,” Jax said. “Job done.”
The littlest kid had been staring at him without blinking the entire time. Now, he said, “You’ve got a metal leg.”
“Shut up,” his sister—she had to be his sister—said. “It’s rude to say.”
“Nah, no worries,” Jax said. “I do have a metal leg.”
“Does it come off?” the little boy wanted to know.
“Yeh. It does.” Jax did some pressing down near his ankle, and the metal part of the leg slid out of the sleeve, leaving it dangling below what must be his real knee. “Easy as.”
“Wicked,” the older boy said on an admiring breath.
“Are you a superher
o?” the little boy asked. “Because you have a metal leg and lines on your face like a superhero.”
“Nah,” Jax said. “I’m a soldier, mate. I got blown up a bit, that’s all.” Which made all the eyes go wide. The duck, meanwhile, had finished drinking and was ripping up grass with its round beak, like a duck who’d been in that box for way too long. I petted its head with a finger, then ran my hand down its body. It waggled its tail some more, and I smiled.
I’d never had a pet. I’d never even thought much about it. I was always at work, or outdoors getting in a fast, efficient workout, which was fine. That was my life. But the duck was nice. Now, it decided to lie down, cuddling close to my thigh. I put my hand over its back, and I could swear it gave a little duck sigh, like it knew it was finally safe.
The older kid asked Jax, “How did you get blown up? Was it an IED?”
“Nah, mate,” Jax said. “It was a truck bomb. A suicide bomber.”
“What’s sue-side?” the little boy asked.
“It’s when you off yourself,” the older boy said. “You kill yourself, like. With a bomb, so you’re blown to bits. They might only find your head. The rest of you is just little pieces. But if you’re a suicide bomber, you kill other people, too. You take them with you, that’s the idea. Did heaps of people get killed?” he asked Jax.
“Two,” Jax said. “And the bomber killed himself, of course, but that was the point, eh. He thought killing other people along with himself would take him to Paradise.”
“Why did he want to kill people at all?” the little kid asked. “I wouldn’t want to kill people.”
“Good question,” Jax said. “It’s a war, and it’s been going on for a long time. He may have grown up thinking it was his duty to fight that war. In Afghanistan, which is the other side of the world.”
“How come they want to do a war?” the little kid pressed on.
“Also a good question,” Jax said, not seeming the least bit fussed. “Wars happen when people fight over land, generally, or when one lot of people want to hurt other people and be the boss, and other people say it isn’t fair.”
“Like when the other kids were teasing the duck,” the girl said, “and we didn’t want to let them.”
“Is that what happened, then?” Jax asked.
“Yeh,” she said. “It wasn’t fair, though. It’s just a little duck. It wasn’t doing anything to them.”
“Lucky for it that you came along, then,” Jax said. “Always better to be the protector, eh. Lets you sleep at night.” He’d been putting his leg back on, which the kids were watching with a kind of morbid fascination. As for me, I was getting used to it. It was like the little boy had said. The blue scars on his face made him look a bit like a character from a fantasy novel, the kind I’d devoured in my teens. Not less than human. More than.
Now, my more-than-human got to his feet, and an expression flickered over his face that had to be pain. “Ready to go?” he asked me.
I didn’t want an argument, especially if he was hurting. If he was more than human, I felt a bit less-than right now. I didn’t want to be quirky, and I really, truly didn’t want to be somebody’s . . . pet. The way I had been for Josh. How much easier had that made it for him to dismiss me the way he had? I said, not being funny, and not being quirky, “I think we should take the duck.”
I’d been afraid that Jax would sigh. If we’d taken my car, I wouldn’t have worried about it, because I would have been in control. Power dynamics always messed me up when they got twisted together with sexual dynamics, but you couldn’t help what you liked, could you?
He didn’t sigh. He paused a minute and asked, “Why?”
“Because,” I said, “I think it’ll die otherwise. And I think it’ll make my Koro smile. Call it a birthday present.”
“You’re the one with a birthday,” he said.
“And what I need most for my birthday,” I said, “is to make my Koro smile.”
Jax
It took me a few minutes to rearrange the car in order to fit a box with a duck inside, and Karen, naturally, remarked on it.
“Good thing we don’t have anything scheduled today,” she said. She was leaning against the car again, ankles crossed, watching me work. Now, she emitted a sound like an air horn, and I jumped.
“Grass whistle,” she said, showing me the strip of green between her thumbs. “I’m going to have run through all my talents pretty soon. Once I start in with my clogging routine, you’ll know I’m out of ideas. I’m used to working. Plus, I don’t actually know how to do clogging.” She looked down at the blade of grass, fussed with its position for a minute, and said, “Thanks for not making a big deal of the duck. I didn’t want it to die, that’s all.”
“Why would I make a big deal of it?” I got the duck’s box wedged onto the floor with my wetsuit tucked around it, to make sure it wouldn’t be sliding around back there. “Maybe I felt the same way. And what does it matter to me if you bring a duck along anyway? The owner’s brother can get around the no-pets policy, and a duck isn’t a cat that’ll be killing the birds. Besides, I’m just the tour guide.”
“Oh.” She looked disconcerted, and then blank. Almost shut down, if that were possible. “You’re right. It’s a few days, that’s all.”
Somehow, that had gone pear-shaped. I thought back over what I’d said. Still no clue. Was I supposed to pursue her harder? When I’d done it, she’d pretty much run. Correction—she had run. Getting any more insistent, when she was stuck with me in the car, and then in the wilds, would be creepy, surely.
We got going again at last, and made it almost a kilometer before she said, “Stop the car!”
“It’s a roundabout,” I said, navigating it, then pulling over once there was a verge again. “Not the best place to stop, generally. Also, shouting at me when I’m in it isn’t your best choice. Where are you going?”
She was halfway out the window, waving to somebody standing at the side of the road. Somebody absolutely enormous. I was a tall fella, but the shaggy mess that came loping along like the larger species of elephant was half a head taller and a half-body broader. His red beard mingled with his curly hair, and I wasn’t sure where you got shorts that big. His cardboard sign read Wilson Bay, a tiny settlement up the half-wild west coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, so I didn’t have the excuse of not going his way.
“Cheers,” the fella said when he got to the car. His grin was as big as the rest of him, and he was too hairy for me to guess his age. “It’s bloody hard to get a lift from these bastards, isn’t it. I’ve been waiting something shocking, and getting a wee bit worried that I wouldn’t be there for the job tomorrow. Supposed to be hired onto a mussel boat. Thought I’d have to hire myself out down here instead, but never mind.” All in a Highland accent so broad, I could barely make it out.
“Right,” I said. It was an hour and a half’s drive max. It would be all right. “We can take you as far as Thames. I’m Jax, and this is Karen.”
He beamed some more, took my hand in a fist the size of a reasonable ham, and shook with enthusiasm. “Jamie MacDougall here.”
“Won’t work with you in back,” I said. “Not with that pack as well. Get in front. Karen, you can ride in back.”
“Excuse me?” Karen said.
I said, “He won’t fit.” Which was true enough. This car had heaps of power and style, but what it didn’t have was much of a back seat. The other reason, though, was that having somebody behind me that I didn’t know made me itchy.
“Right,” Karen said, perhaps remembering that she was the one who’d decided to give the bloke a lift. “I’ll ride with Debbie.” She squeezed herself into the back seat on the passenger side by putting a foot on either side of the box with the duck in it and lifting the bag of fruit into her lap. It was a squeeze. Karen wasn’t exactly short herself.
“Who’s Debbie, then?” Jamie asked, settling his bulk into the car and twisting between the seats to peer at Karen, which left
roughly twenty centimeters for all of me. His hand on the glove box looked like something out of a monster picture, as if he’d rip it out of the dash at any minute.
“She’s my duck,” Karen said. “We just got her. She was free. Pretty sweet, huh?” She lifted up the duck to show him, and Debbie did some more peeping and a little raspy quacking.
“Oh, aye?” Jamie said, leaning forward a bit more and practically propelling me out of the side of the car, as if he had absolutely no idea how oversized he was. “That’s a wee call duck, eh.”
“I don’t know,” Karen said. “Is it?”
“Oh, aye,” Jamie said again. “Taking it on a journey, are you? That’s not quite usual, is it?”
“Maybe,” I decided to interject here, “you could shift over to your side, mate, so I could see out the windscreen, and we could take a journey.”
Jamie laughed some more, sat back, and hit me in the shoulder, which I didn’t much appreciate. If not for Karen, I’d be turfing him out, genial as he was. Hitchhiking wasn’t easy, though, and the bigger you were, the harder it got. He told me, “You could’ve just said, mate. Hang on. You’ve got a leg off. Driving all right with that, then? No clutch in this thing?”
“Yeh, nah,” I said. “No clutch.” I started the car, eased into traffic, headed north again, and wondered why people felt compelled to mention the leg. Little kids were one thing, but next time an adult did it, I was going to say, “I have? Bloody hell, you’re right!” and politeness be damned.
Jamie was turned back around to talk to Karen again. Probably wise. “You taking the wee duck home, are you? Have a flock there?”
“No,” she said. “She’s a present for my grandfather, eventually. He likes to be outside. She can be company, I thought, and lay him eggs, too. Duck eggs are extremely nutritious. Bonus.”
“Nah,” Jamie said. “Probably not.”
“Once she’s grown some more, of course,” Karen said. “She’s still a little fuzzy and gawky, and not exactly duck-sized. I suspect she’s a teenaged duck. I wonder when ducks start laying eggs? I only know about chickens.”
Kiwi Rules Page 10
