by Gee, Maurice
‘Be careful he doesn’t choke,’ Ellie said.
Dion half opened his eyes. He closed them.
‘I’m here,’ Debbie whispered. She turned her face at Hollis. ‘He’s been starving himself to death.’
‘We’ve got to get him out,’ Hollis said.
‘No. Don’t shift him. He’ll die.’
There was only a whisper of life in the boy. His skin had a pallid sheen, yet was dry; his face was the hollow face of newsreels. He looked as if his bones would break if they lifted him.
‘Stay with her,’ Hollis said. He went out to the Cruiser. Ellie followed him.
‘You can’t drive,’ she cried.
‘I’m telephoning. If this bloody thing will work out here.’ He punched 111 on his mobile. ‘Not getting through. You’ll have to drive out. We need a doctor and a helicopter. God knows, he might be dead by the time they get here.’
‘Let me take the phone. I’ll try when I’m out on the road.’
‘Make sure they send paramedics at least. Go fast, Ellie.’
She drove back over the ford and along the back of the sand dune. The old man was standing in his doorway.
‘Do mobile phones work from here?’ Ellie cried.
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Where’s the nearest doctor and police?’
‘Whataroa for police. There’s a district nurse at Fox.’
She drove out to the road and tried the phone but got only silence. Looked at the map: Harihari was closer but Whataroa had the policeman. She was there in twenty minutes. Found the constable, told her story: Dion would die. His mother was a nurse (had Debbie said something the night before about working as a nurse aid once?) and was certain he would not survive being brought out overland; so, a helicopter, a doctor, paramedics, hurry please. Then she went outside and sat exhausted in the Cruiser. She had been driving for ten hours. The constable came out for more directions, went back inside. Ellie ate the sandwiches left over from morning tea and drank lukewarm coffee from the thermos. She should take food and drink back to the whare for Hollis and Debbie. And Hollis would need his pills, which were here with her. Why hadn’t she thought?
‘I’m going back,’ she said, looking in at the constable.
‘The Greymouth rescue heli can’t come, so they’re sending one from Christchurch. Park beside the whare so they can see you. Are you OK?’
‘Where can I buy something to eat? Not for me, for the other two.’
‘I’ll bring an emergency pack. I’ll only be ten minutes behind you. Take it easy, eh?’
She arrived at the whare, where Hollis stepped out like a man from a prison cell.
‘There’s a helicopter on the way,’ she cried. ‘The policeman from Whataroa is bringing some food. Hollis, your pills, you need something.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Oh shit, don’t be stupid. Take your pills. Killing yourself won’t help him.’
‘He’s not going to make it, Ellie. You can hardly feel him breathing. I think if he even opened his eyes it would use up everything he’s got.’
She had never seen him cry. It was silent, as though, like Dion, he had no strength left. Ellie felt overwhelmed with his loss. She took him to the Cruiser and made him sit in the back seat; made him swallow a pill and drink some water. The constable arrived and went into the whare. Hollis struggled out of his seat and followed. Ellie waited outside, watching for the helicopter over the hills. It came from behind her, down the beach, made a wide swoop and settled on a tussock dune behind the whare. Two men got out, met the constable halfway down, talked briefly with him and went inside. In a moment one ran back to the helicopter and carried equipment down. The pilot brought a stretcher. Hollis came outside.
‘What are they doing?’ Ellie said.
‘Putting him on a drip.’
‘Is he going to make it?’
‘They don’t say. She …’
Ellie waited. ‘You mean Debbie?’
‘I’ve never seen anyone so … I think if he dies …’
‘What are you going to do, Hollis?’
‘They’re taking him to Christchurch. There’s room for two of us.’
‘All right.’ Ellie took his face between her hands. She kissed him carefully, a soft pressure. ‘I love you, Hollis.’
He struggled to speak, then nodded in a way that answered her. She smiled. Enough.
‘Will you be careful?’ she said.
‘Yes. Where will you go?’
‘Down to Franz and see if I can find a bed. I’ll drive home tomorrow.’
‘I’ll phone you when we know something.’ Hollis freed his hands. His crutches fell behind him, criss cross on the sand. He hugged her but she felt that she was holding him up.
The paramedics carried Dion to the helicopter. Debbie walked alongside with the drip-bag and clamp. Her lightness and her leaning reminded Ellie of Hollis. The boy was nothing like, with his naked eyelids and fallen mouth. He was generic.
They had always been there, waiting for Hollis to look around.
Ellie picked up his crutches. She went to the Landcruiser for the bags and carried them up the dune to the helicopter.
Instead of driving south to Franz Josef, Ellie turned north. The sunset thickened and the long slow evening turned to night. She drove into Hokitika, which more than any town she knew made her think of frontiers. Even with crowds in the streets and drunks on balconies and music punching from doorways she could feel the huge emptiness beyond the dark.
She had meant to get a meal and drive on, but sitting in the restaurant – a French name, French food – she understood that she had pushed herself far enough; and that thinking, Home, straight home, while driving out through that no-man’s land of dunes, had been delusive. Home was Fan’s house on the hill, and Ellie could not live there any more. She felt her eyes fill with tears. I’m tired, she thought, I need to sleep. Home is at Tidal Flat with Hollis. I’ve got my studio. It’s not a sunroom. I’m happy there.
She used the toilet, washed her hands and face, then drove towards the river mouth and found a place to park in the line of cars. People walked to and from the beach. Watching them, she wondered if Dion would live or die. How exhausted he must have been, going into that hut and forcing the door closed as far as it would go. Like that boy in Lower Hutt who had hanged himself. And how they had been waiting, Debbie and Dion, unseen at the edge of Hollis’s life. Would they help him complete himself, as she could not, or would they just bewilder him?
She locked the Landcruiser and walked to the river mouth. A long sandhill hid the sea from the town. She climbed up and saw a line of driftwood fires, more than she could count, on the beach. They made a row of stations, each one paler, as far as the northern edge of the town.
Ellie went down the sandhill. She took off her sneakers and walked between the fires and the sea, which ran soft waves around her ankles. People called to her, moving in the shadows behind their fires or kneeling close with faces lit up. They offered beer and food but she walked on until she found a fire that had been left. She sat looking into its red heart where the wood combusted: deep and rich, natural, chemical. She felt that she might pick it up and mould it in her hands. Heat from the flames dried the tears on her face.
She walked back to the Landcruiser and made a bed on the back seat. The pillow smelled of Dion. She turned it over and dozed uncomfortably as people went by and cars started up. A torch shone on her and a Quasimodo face flattened on the window. A woman shrieked. The mouth spread its lips and smeared away. Ellie turned her own torch on her watch: one o’clock. She slept then, deeply, and found that it was ten to six when she looked again. She wondered where Hollis was – at the hospital, at a hotel? Had he slept?
She ate some chocolate and an apple and drank water from the bottle she had filled at Ross. The public toilet was filthy from the night, so she drove out of town to a layby and used the bushes. She washed from her bottle, then settled down to some serious driving.
Outside Greymouth she picked up a hitch-hiker, a girl smelling of unwashed clothes and marijuana. She was heading to Nelson to pick apples.
‘You can go on the back seat and sleep if you like,’ Ellie said.
She drove through Reefton and Inangahua and stopped for morning tea in Murchison. The girl was murmuring in her dream, so Ellie left her and sat in the tearoom alone. Somewhere around here Carol, her friend from twenty-five years ago, lived on a farm. Happily, happily, Ellie hoped. She remembered Carol’s grief, remembered her own loneliness, then Neil, then Fan, then John and Derek. Hollis came at the end of the line. Where was he?
Ellie sat still, forgetting her sandwiches and coffee.
The fires burned on the beach, making their stepped-down progress into the dark. She saw how their colour weakened as they went away; saw people sitting close, with faces lit up and clothes almost white – no competing colours. Figures stood at the back of them, indistinct. Could she paint them? Paint the night? She had never tried. And that fierce blaze, that consuming light? Oh yes I can, Ellie thought.
A figure moved between the firelight and the luminous waves: a man like a shadow, walking on the beach. She had been expecting him. Hello again. Do you have more substance now, blacking out, biting out the rim of the fire?
Ellie smiled. Oh yes I can.
