by Duff, Alan
“No. Dunno. Look like they moving …” And Charlie went to turn and look.
“No look, Charlie! Cops come for silly looks. I know. Straight ahead. Eyes ahead, Charlie. Be all right. Not time for cops to know. Hockey game still going. Take over one hour.”
“But what about with both of us missing though?”
“Not too much worry. Nobody escape when Mr Davis on. Never. Even me, Charlie, too scared of Mr Davis even when dream making me crazy to go. Maybe halftime Dekka go for look for me and you. Clock there say only twenty-five minutes go. Cop car turned corner, Charlie.”
And the face that turned to Charlie was a different, broadly smiling one Charlie knew best.
“You’ve got it all worked out, eh, George?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Ruapotiki boy, he do things his funny way. Not plan-plan like big city Two Lake boy, eh, Charlie?” Laughter again. As well something special happening, Charlie could feel it, between two boys who less than half an hour ago were state wards. But now they weren’t. Not really. Not till they were caught.
Part way into a range of bush-clad hills, George turned off at a side road, no announcement, not a word.
“Hey, George …”
“Is all right, Charlie boy.”
The road twisted and turned as it rose steadily uphill. Hardly more than a dirt track, it gradually became almost enclosed in trees. Tall, soaring trees, alive with bird and insect song. They came to a halt at the top of a rise in an area that had been cleared by hand, and quite recently. George explained this was a place he’d camped a night or two before, a place the same Maori warrior ancestor of the run-dreams told him was here. They’d hang around here till dark, then drive on into Two Lakes, or maybe go all the way to Ruapotiki if they could get their hands on some petrol, money to buy it.
“Come,” George beckoned when they got out of the car into yet another world of stark contrast. “We save town clothes to change later. We go for walk.”
Through dense bush, and for Charlie a first-time experience. Getting scratched by growth outjutting, tripping over ground obstacles, then crossing the same stream at least, on Charlie’s not overly appreciative reckoning, a dozen times, the all of it uphill. Charlie about to bring to a halt and scream his frustrated and confused head off at the Maori boy who was so much at home in the same surroundings, when they stepped out into a natural clearing and there was a waterfall.
Fantails flitted in and out of the fine spray, and sunlight danced merrily in the cascade, and wing-rubbing insects sopranoed in the green all around.
And George just said, “Good, eh?”
And Charlie could only say, “Oh, yes.” Afraid of his voice disturbing the serenity.
Then Charlie was wondering what on earth was a state ward doing in such a place, for it didn’t seem right. As if he did not belong, and yet George, the other state ward, acted as if this was his home. Then he thought of having been deprived all his life, by parents whose children had never experienced this kind of setting, the sheer effect it had on the mind. The heart, too. As if … as if a kid, this kid, Charlie Wilson from Appleby in Two Lakes, the state-house boy just a few hours ago a state ward, was not another kind of being, a stranger to this scenery, its deepness, and feeling like he didn’t fit. Which is why George put an arm around him when he began sobbing, and didn’t say a word, didn’t need to, that he, George, understood why a boy was crying. No need for words. The arm around was much better anyway, said everything that words couldn’t.
They left a few hours later, hardly a word spoken, just enjoying being at one with whatever it was back there. Nature? Just the quiet? Charlie didn’t know. He knew only that this friend of few words was trying to tell him something at every moment, if only he’d stop to listen.
And yet … and yet, sitting in Mr Dekka’s stolen car as they waited for the last of the sun to die, even as the changing shadows threw fascinating light on George’s silent features, and the tree world and hillscape outside offered ever-decreasing hues of light, Charlie was looking at his friend wondering if there wasn’t something he wasn’t telling Charlie. Like a secret. An unbearable one, too.
“George? Ya think when we’re both older we’ll understand a lot more?”
Took George some while to answer, as if he was in an elsewhere.
“Yeah. Hope so, Charlie. But wonder sometimes. You know, Mr Dekka, he not understand. Still a kid in some part of him, yeh? Mr Davis, even Mr Davis, he kid, too. Part of him still kid, eh? So maybe we grow up more understand. Maybe not, eh, Charlie?”
“I hope we do, George.”
“Yeah. Me, too, Charlie. Now, I think time to go again.”
It was eight o’clock by the time they drove into Two Lakes. It looked familiar and yet so different, all lit up, not too many cars. No sign of cops. They drove to Charlie’s street. Charlie excited at being so close to his old friends, but with a job to do. Yet hoping he’d set eyes on Becky Royal, just to wave at her and, of course, get her smile in return. George waited while Charlie got a friend to make contact with his big brother Roger to come out. Roger came all right, and he was not very pleased. Well he was, at seeing Charlie, but not at the circumstances. But he gave Charlie money anyway, enough to buy petrol and get some food. And he clicked his tongue at his younger brother, with a half smile, half a sad eye. Then he did something he’d never done as far as Charlie remembered: he hugged Charlie goodbye. And told him he hoped this life was going to work out for him.
“Someday. Eh, fourteen-year-old brother who wants to be eighteen like me. See you.”
Funny look from the fulla at the petrol station. But George put him off asking questions by saying something to him in Maori. Put an end to him, a white man. Filled up with petrol and stomachs on pies, two each, and a big bottle of drink, still with the fulla giving them a suspicious eye. They drove out of Two Lakes. It wasn’t far before George turned off, another dirt road, but this time two mere headlight beams in a world otherwise pitch black. George drove very slowly. Then he went off the road, bumped over knee-high growth for a bit, then stopped. His voice came from the half gloom, “We get out now, Charlie. Car no good anymore.”
“But we filled it with petrol only a few miles back,” Charlie completely mystified, though at least he had the prior knowledge that usually he just needed to catch up to George, so he got out.
“Now, push — hard, Charlie.”
“What?!”
“Car go over cliff down there.”
“But why?”
“Dekka car. Hate Dekka. Utu, you heard of utu? Revenge. Push.”
They watched as the car suddenly fell off the edge of the world, lights still on, this plunging, bouncing, runaway of shape illuminated by itself, all the way down to some far below where it came to a rest, on its side, as this fallen beast with its eyes as yellow rays staring its last. They watched till the lights grew dim, no need to wait for the end. “We hike-hitch, eh, Charlie?”
“Well, you can hike-hitch and I’ll hitch-hike,” Charlie laughing. Adding, “Boy, you’re hard to keep up with. What next?”
Next was the journey’s end, Ruapotiki; two boys walking along a dusty road — it must be dusty by the padding sound their feet made — where a little cluster of house lights shone and came nearer and nearer, a contrast to the dying lights of Mr Dekka’s car, with George not saying one word, not one.
Next was the second time the two boys had split up. George told Charlie he must wait at this very spot and not move, not even if he heard the cops coming. “You stay.” Then the night took him, as he went towards the nearest house.
For what felt like hours, Charlie stood and stared at the house outline till its lights finally went out. And he heard, faintly, voices in urgent exchange, then he heard a vehicle start, and watched the lights of its departure. He wondered what George had said to get everyone out of the house. He thought he saw and heard so many things, because — well, the circumstances. A morepork on the haunting call. Some insects like soprano sing
ers — oh, I know: from Sweeny Todd, the play Mr Davis took us to. Oh, yes, Charlie remembering the set, the insight into a magical world of characters and sung lines of dialogue. The whole world is magical, if you want it to be. Or it just is whether you want or not.
So this world here is magical, too, in Ruapotiki, with every light now gone out, though not the stars up there, never them, they’ve shone down on men, and women, and boys, for all of time. Right, Charlie? Right. He waved to the stars. Then he heard the crackling sound, and watched the glow as it increased.
Then it was a blazing inferno. And yet he still heard the sound of an approach, but did not ignore the instructions from George to hold his ground. Anyway it was George. And he was smiling in the bright firelight, which was obviously of his making.
The shadows thrown on his face by the fire were half moons, little crescents of dark against the shine of skin, but the teeth gleaming white, as the background was a roaring red and yellow. Like the sun was coming up out of the ground.
“Freed— what you call it again, Charlie?”
“Freedom?”
“Freedom. Freedom, eh, Charlie? No more kehua make me come back here.”
So that was it, by burning the house, George was getting rid of the makutu, the curse. As if reading Charlie’s thoughts George grinned.
“Makutu burn with house. I free now. Now, we go to cops.”
“Cops? What for, cops?”
“To make George free of last thing.”
“What, the rape you got sent to Riverton for?”
“Oh, yes. I forgot that. Yes, that, too. But to — I dunno how to say it. Dekka. To tell cops on Dekka.”
“For doing what?”
“He touch me. All the time he doing bad thing to me, Charlie. Tell me is the way of getting ghost to go way. Bad thing, Charlie. But now his turn be state ward, eh, Charlie? And us, maybe they let us free when they know of Dekka. Freed— what, Charlie?”
“Dom, George. Freedom.” Charlie grinned back at George. Mean going back to Riverton for him for sure, but that strength, that sureness was in him now. Gave him his own freedom. Throwing a playful punch at George, his mate, best mate.
The fire began to die. A siren howled in the far distance. And two boys padded slowly away in the dust. And stars, as always, shone overhead.
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About the Author
Alan Duff was born in Rotorua in 1950 and now lives in Havelock North. He has published two previous novels and a non-fiction work. Once Were Warriors won the PEN Best First Book for Fiction Award and was runner-up in the 1990 Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards. In 1991 he was awarded the Frank Sargeson Fellowship. One Night Out Stealing was shortlisted in the 1992 Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards and Once Were Warriors has now been made into a film. Alan writes full-time and is a syndicated newspaper columnist. He first wrote State Ward for National Radio in 1993.
Copyright
Random House New Zealand Ltd
(An imprint of the Random House Group)
18 Poland Road
Glenfield
Auckland 10
NEW ZEALAND
Associated companies, branches and representatives throughout the world.
First published 1994
Reprinted 1999
© Alan Duff 1994
ISBN 978 1 77553 050 3
Printed in Australia
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in any information retrieval system or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
