by Nick Spill
It was too noisy to conduct any conversation, so Mel was about to go to the bar to escape Clovis’s close scrutiny when Henry appeared at the table with Wiremu, carrying three large pitchers. Beer spilt onto the crowded table as they plunked them down.
“Wiremu.” Henry waved to his long lost friend. “Meet Mel and these are our new friends.” In the excitement of seeing Wiremu, he had forgotten the couple’s names.
“Hi. I’m Clovis and my girl, Plum.”
They shook hands and Henry noticed how big Clovis really was.
A few inebriated couples started to work their way through the packed bar to the front door. But no one else could be drawn away from their precious pitchers of beer.
“Me and Henry go way back. Quite a story. Must tell you some time. Excuse me. I have to look after my mates. Talk to you in a minute.” Wiremu turned and waded through the crowd to the bar.
“Is that who I think it is?” Mel asked Henry. Plum noticed Henry’s pounamu pendant. She could not take her eyes off it.
“Look at that pendant! It’s greenstone! Will you buy me one like that, Clovis?”
Clovis got goose bumps up his forearms when Plum spoke in her distinctive pleading voice. It bought back the recorded sex call he had listened to, too many times, alone in his cockroach-infested sublet on St. Marks Place. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it was only two weeks.
Clovis grinned. He was broke. He had spent his life savings to fly to New York to find Plum and bring her back. Now he needed work. He had an audition with the local orchestra next week. If he got that position he could pay next month’s rent and contemplate buying Plum a modest present, but first things first. On returning to New Zealand with Plum, he had sent her to a Women’s Clinic. He dared not think what Plum had done in New York. The tests had cost him $15 in Auckland, rather than the $250 they would have cost in Manhattan. Plum had gotten the results that afternoon, negative. If he thought she was infected with some sexually transmitted disease, what did that say about him? If he flew halfway round the world to rescue her, how could he not trust her? Tonight they were celebrating, in Clovis’s favorite Ponsonby pub. Only Plum’s doctor was sitting right next to him, and he could not take his eyes off her, she was so beautiful in a powerful, confident way.
“I think they’re going to come back in force!” Clovis shouted. “Why don’t we go up the road to the Three Lamps?” He stood up and swayed on his feet. No one responded to his suggestion. Perhaps they did not think the police would reappear, and one pitcher of beer would scare the police away, forever, and allow them to drink in peace. The heat and beer were going to Clovis’s head, but he did not want to get beaten senseless by cops in a brawl, especially with his audition coming up. He had to protect his musician’s fingers, as well as his Plum Blossom. Clovis had witnessed a saxophonist have his front teeth punched out when he refused to play “Ten Guitars”, back when he was in a rock band misnamed the Cat’s Pajamas. He knew Plum would love to see a New Zealand bar brawl, where everything unbreakable got broken. He bent down and addressed the table again.
“Look. I live nearby, why don’t you come over to my place. We can pick up some beer.” Clovis had shouted, nervous about what could happen next. He had had enough of men in uniforms. At Auckland International Airport, Clovis had been separated from Plum Blossom, put into a windowless room and made to strip naked before three customs agents. He had flown from New York with Plum and paid for his tickets in cash, the day of departure. He had long hair, a beard and a scruffy rucksack and a violin case as his only luggage. He had to be a drug dealer, according to customs.
Clovis was ordered to bend over a desk, while one of the agents inserted a surgical gloved hand, one finger only, he hoped, although he had dared not inquire, up his anus. Right up, till he could feel his prostate being tickled. It was unpleasant and humiliating.
Plum had fared worse. She had endured the deep cavity search, at both ends. Lying flat on her back with her knees pressed up to her ears, two butch custom’s agents with spiked hair had probed around inside her while a third had held her ankles. “What could they be looking for? It was like being raped by a gang of lesbians,” she had told Clovis in the taxi from the airport. “And they didn’t wear gloves, only lots of Vaseline. Ugh! I feel so unclean. I need a bath!”
“Let’s do it. Buy some beer and get outta here!” Henry announced.
• • •
Henry Lotus led them past the group of Maoris. Wiremu dramatically clutched him by the shoulders again and let out a big yell. Mel, Clovis and Plum came to a halt behind Henry. The other Maoris were crowded around their leader. No one could move.
“Hey! My mate!”
“When was it? 1965?” Wiremu recalled.
“Yeah! That party!” Henry looked back at Mel who shrugged her shoulders. She could barely make out what they had said. While Henry had been partying his youth away with oversized Maoris, Mel had been at Dunedin Medical School, cramming for interminable exams under a desk lamp, worrying about intercellular leakages and macrophages, wondering if she would ever hold a normal human conversation again.
• • •
The scene came back to Henry fueled by the beer he had just consumed. Police cars had been lined up outside the party house. Their blue lights bounced against the stonewalls. Swarms of policemen wielding truncheons threw everyone out of the house. They punched and beat the bikies, Maoris and any young man with long hair they could lay their hands on. They struck them in the stomach, the chest, the legs, but not the face, where the cuts and bruises would show in court.
Wiremu had given Henry the greenstone pendant, the Tear of Tane, after Henry had saved him from being arrested in that police raid.
The head bartender, sweat dripping from his large red nose, rang the ship’s bell that was suspended over the bar. He yelled at the top of his lungs, “Last call!”
The entire beer-crazed mob responded in unison, sending their delegates to the bar to refill their pitchers. The more pitchers of beer they had on their tables, the safer they would feel. The public drinking house had to close, by law, at exactly 11:00 P.M.. The drinkers had a few more minutes to empty their mugs. Then, at twenty minutes after closing time, the police routinely entered and flushed out the remaining drinkers.
Henry was jammed up against Wiremu, as other Maoris with their empty pitchers tried to put their stomachs to the bar and claim the attention of the bartenders.
“Hey, I like your pendant,” Hei Hei shouted. “Wear that and you’ll always be protected!”
“Doesn’t mean you’ll be safe,” Hone added, laughing as if he were privy to a secret joke.
“Yeah! I proved it three times!”
Hone chuckled; his eyes shone, not from too many beers but from the joy of being surrounded by his mates, particularly his brother. Wiremu had been out of Paremoremo’s D block for over two years. As a multiple offender, the next time he was arrested, he would be put away for a long time. Hone had not even received a parking ticket. He had lived in Auckland the last two years, the better to assist his brother in their tribal business and work on his political science thesis.
No one left. The patrons were too busy hoarding beer for the closing minutes, determined to last as long as possible in the communal madness of drinking. Suddenly the double doors swung open and three policemen with metal helmets stood shoulder to shoulder, reinforced by a wall of blue behind them. They were, at first, ignored.
Henry saw Mel wave a $10 note to a bartender, as she tried to get his attention. Then he noticed the policemen and thought how odd that they should arrive before 11:00. Why couldn’t they wait until after closing time? Then Henry remembered the thrown pitcher. “Oh shit!” he said to himself.
A loud explosion went off next to him. His ears rang. He saw Wiremu fire both barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. The shots blew out the stained glass windows above the doors, covering the three policemen in a shower of glass splinters. They stood frozen, then, when they realized that t
hey were still alive and unharmed, they retreated and the double doors closed. There was a huge hole above the doors, where the stained glass windows had been.
After the shock of silence that followed the shotgun blast, panic erupted inside the bar. As if on cue, the jukebox started up again even louder with “Wild Thing” by Jimi Hendrix. Most patrons were too drunk to move, and if they could, there was nowhere for them to go. The front doors were the only exit. But the doors were now closed, creating the illusion that the shotgun blast had blown away the police. But they had formed a circle outside, blocking anyone from leaving. Those patrons who were still aware of their surroundings had dived under their tables, knocking over full ashtrays and mugs of beer. Or they crouched behind their chairs, expecting another blast.
Henry looked across at Wiremu who bent down and stuffed the shotgun into his trousers. Mel had seen everything and shouted in Wiremu’s ear as he righted himself.
“We better get out of here. They’ll be coming back in force any second!”
She looked around. Patrons pushed and shoved each other to get to the entrance and escape. Such was the mass of bodies trying to get to the front doors that it appeared the crowd was dancing in slow motion, swaying back and forth, but getting nowhere.
“Nah! They’ll wait for the Armed Offenders Squad! They’re too chicken!” Wiremu replied to the woman he had been introduced to. He looked at her with interest, not only was she beautiful, for a white sheila, but she had said “we.”
The screams and shouts grew louder. Henry struggled to keep his feet on the ground without being swept away. He yelled to Wiremu while holding onto him for balance.
“There must be an exit in the back!”
“Nah! It’s sealed! You’se guys go out the front. I’m goin’ to disappear. I’ll call! Okay?” Wiremu addressed Hone, Hei Hei and his other young men with a sense of authority they did not question. They nodded and began to move in unison, like a bulldozer, to the doors. Wiremu started to elbow his way to the back of the bar. Henry followed him with Mel right behind.
Clovis looked at Henry then at Wiremu, undecided on what to do. He sensed he was on the verge of missing out on an adventure. If he were truthful with himself, he would have admitted that he would have followed Mel to the ends of the earth; he was so attracted to her. He got in step behind Mel as they pushed their way against the panicking crowd.
“Why are you following me?” Wiremu yelled over his shoulder. “You’re safe to go out.”
“Heh. I just met you again after all these years. We’re with you,” Henry yelled back.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Mel whispered to Henry. “Let’s get going.”
Wiremu worked his way to the door at the end of the bar that led to a narrow corridor and two toilets. The five went unnoticed by the drunken crowd evacuating the pub. The corridor stank of piss.
Opposite the toilets was a large casement window. Wiremu drove his right elbow into the lower pane, shattering the frosted glass. He kicked out the remaining pieces to reveal a set of iron bars. He took a step back and aimed the heel of his right boot at the iron. The bars vibrated, but remained in place. Clovis led Plum into the corridor, to join Henry and Mel. They watched Wiremu kick the bars for a second time. Nothing moved. The third time, one of the bars came loose at the bottom. Using his full weight, Wiremu threw his right shoulder at the bars. They gave way and Wiremu fell out into the courtyard hitting his head on the concrete. He continued his interrupted forward roll, stood up and brushed off the shards of glass. He turned to the others who looked at him through the broken window.
“Why don’t you lot go out the front? We’ll meet up later.”
Henry already had one leg over the windowsill. He was on tiptoe, careful not to catch himself on the jagged glass. Here he was following the man who had given him the greenstone pendant. He felt lucky, as he lifted his other leg over the glass. Mel was right behind him. She had traveled all the way to New York to rescue Henry, and she was not going to let him out of her sight now.
Clovis picked up Plum and propelled her through the gap, feet first. He sensed something unusual was about to happen. He had survived New York and felt he could handle anything in New Zealand, including the Armed Offenders Squad. He had invited his new friends to his home, and he wanted to play the gracious host. He looked down at his favorite khaki shirt. It was ripped at the left elbow. A trickle of blood ran down to his wrist. He started to panic. All his false courage left him. That was his fingering arm. Maybe he should have left through the front door? But it was too late to turn back. He caught Mel throwing him a quick smile, and his confidence returned. He could still hear “Wild Thing.”
The small triangular yard was enclosed in empty beer crates stacked high against the walls. Wiremu quickly rearranged some of the crates to form a steep stairwell to the top of the wall farthest from the pub, next to the gasworks. He climbed up and disappeared with a quick curse. The others followed him. Clovis caught Plum as she jumped over last.
They crouched against the wall and adjusted their eyes to the dark. Wiremu could identify the back of one police van nearer the Jolly Rodger entrance. There were more police cars around the corner. They could see the blue flashing lights reflected off parked cars. The bar was still being emptied. The police were too busy sorting out the rowdy drinkers outside the entrance to pay attention to the back of the pub and the side street.
“Here. Follow me. Ponsonby is Clovis’s land.” Clovis stepped out of the shadows and casually walked across the street holding Plum’s hand. Henry and Mel took Wiremu by the arm as they ambled after them. The small wooden houses had hedges and picket fences separating their tiny front gardens from the pavement. They walked up the hill until they came to a lamppost with a broken light. Here, Clovis ducked behind a tall hedge. The others followed him. Through the branches, they spied an ambulance scream down the street followed by two police cars. The cars stopped directly by the wall they had jumped over. Four policemen emerged with rifles. A light went on in the front room directly over their heads.
Clovis put his finger to his lips and pointed to a narrow path between the two houses that led down to a pitch-black garden. He slowly duckwalked down the path, feeling in front of him, for any obstacle. At the end of the property he came to a tall corrugated fence with ivy growing up it. The fence was over six feet high and was not solid enough to scale. He felt for the join between two sheets. He tore out one side of the corrugated iron sheet. The sheet groaned as it was wrenched from its flathead nails. Clovis! Your violinist fingers! Wiremu held the sheet back and Clovis crawled on both hands through the opening into the next yard. He slid into a freshly dug garden. Standing up, he took a step forward. He began to sink into a large hole.
A dog started to bark nearby. Clovis felt his knees disappear into the sludge. Then Wiremu slipped through the fence and stepped on Clovis’s shoulders. He sunk deeper into the compost. The barking dog seemed very close.
Lights went on up the valley of back gardens, as the dog’s barking grew louder.
“Watch out!” Clovis whispered. They could both hear the deep growl of a large dog.
Wiremu leapt off Clovis to dry land and pulled him out of the pit. Clovis held his breath. There was an atrocious smell coming from his trousers, and he found his boots made a squelching sound. In the darkness, Wiremu organized the others around the manure trap. Clovis tried to wipe some of the decaying vegetable matter off his trousers and shirt. Taking another step forward he became caught in netting for string beans. He lost his balance and fell over. The more he struggled, the more entangled he became. The dog was closer and louder. Henry and Wiremu, trying not to laugh, ripped the netting apart and pulled Clovis out of his bean cocoon.
A nearby neighbor yelled at his dog, “Shut the fuck up!” followed by a crash and a whimper. Clovis checked to see that Plum and the others were following him and continued his trek across the booby-trapped Ponsonby garden.
A chorus of dogs barked
at their own echoes up the valley. There was another dog who sounded nearer. Clovis took another step forward in the darkness and came nose to nose with a huge Rottweiler at the end of a tight metal chain. The guard dog strained on his hind legs and snarled into Clovis’s eyes. He could see into the dog’s mouth. Its teeth were so white with froth dribbling down its wide-open jaw, that they looked fluorescent. Clovis took a step back and found the proper path away from the reach of the dog. He led the others to the front gate, where they crouched down behind a hedge, out of sight.
Wiremu turned to face the others after checking the street. It was deserted. He raised his hands. By now, Wiremu knew the police would have seen the broken back window and bars and realized a man, the size of a gorilla, had escaped. There would soon be roadblocks with police and dogs scouring the area.
‘Here. Let’s split up. There’s no reason for you lot to get caught,” he whispered.
“No,” Clovis found himself saying. “Two doors up across the street, they’re some friends of mine. I’ll borrow their car and take us to our place. Stay here.” He ran across the street before Wiremu could protest.
Clovis ran down the side path to the back of the house. The path was full of overgrown weeds. The back door steps were covered in slippery moss. Clovis fell against the wooden door and knocked three times. There was no reply. He turned and saw a light farther down the yard, seeping out of the partially opened door of a large shed. He heard the sound of an electric sander coming from inside.
He opened the door and was immersed in a bright light softened by the suspended dust. A kauri hull of a half-finished thirty-foot yacht emerged out of the dust cloud. Clovis felt he had walked onto a surreal stage set. The electric sander whined. Wedged under the hull was his friend, Rodney, on his back with a discolored mask and steamed up, sawdust caked eye goggles, sanding a kauri plank. Rodney was oblivious as Clovis shouted at him. After a fit of coughing, Clovis found the power cord and pulled the plug out of the transformer. In the abrupt silence, Rodney, after examining his sander, slowly pulled off his goggles and mask and gazed up through the dust to see an upside down figure in front of him. The figure was covered in brown smelly compost and had beans in his hair and beard.
