Heartland (21 page)

The hermit

Donny Mac guns his motorbike out of Ohakune, travelling north. A box strapped behind is packed with bread and milk. The day is fine but the air sharp as needles, the frost still tracing patterns on the fields where the sun has not yet reached. He’s pleased to be out here, wind in his face, snowy mountain high over his right shoulder, riding free. Home is pretty jumpy right now with all the activity over in the bush block. Tracey is a bundle of nerves. Donny doesn’t know what to do with himself when she’s like that. When old Vera charged him with this mission, he jumped at it.

At the T-junction he turns left, back towards Raetihi, and watches for a small side road which will take him towards Spud Howie’s place. Donny knows the general direction — there’s a swimming hole and camping ground down in the bush where the school once had a recreation week — but this will be further on. Unknown territory. Donny whistles with pleasure as the twisting metalled road leaves the flat and heads steeply downhill. He rides more slowly here, watching for fallen rocks and slips. The cliffs are greasy papa, unstable at
the best of times, lethal for a motorbike in wet weather. He loves the challenge.

He drives through a patch of bush. A fat wood pigeon flaps lazily away, the sun catching its green back and white bib. ‘Whoo hoo, kereru!’ shouts Donny. ‘Go for it!’ His inattention causes a little skid and Donny hears the milk sloshing. He stops, secures the box more tightly and continues more carefully on down, off the plateau, turn after turn, into bush then out again to sun and distant views, the vast uninhabited valleys rolling, dark and bushclad, north and west.

Down in the valley the air is warmer. The pasture paddocks of isolated farms follow the winding river; nothing can be cultivated on the rocky cliffs above. They are left to the bush. Donny sings the name of the river: Maunganui o te Ao, Great Mountain of the Dawn. This river has travelled all the way from the slopes of Ruapehu, through the bush, cascading off the plateau to wind through this valley, and will soon join the Whanganui River.

A plume of chalky grey dust rises behind Donny’s bike as he passes the turn-off to the river hole and roars on. Now the road narrows; the grassy verges are unkempt, the scattered fields full of thistle and clumps of regenerating bush. The few houses are empty, broken, sinking to the ground. The valley narrows too, and Donny feels the trees pressing closer. He watches for an unmarked driveway on the left. On he rides, anxious now that he’s missed the place. The sun is hidden behind towering cliffs, and Donny’s mood dips with it. The great river has disappeared down a different valley; here a sulky creek winds between weedy banks.

At last, Donny spots the driveway. This is where Mr Howie
has been leaving bread and milk for his hermit brother — for years, Vera told him, with never a word of thanks or even a word of any sort.

‘If you can manage the driveway,’ Vera had said, ‘drive on down and deliver the stuff in person and give him this letter.’ She handed him an envelope already grubby with her angry finger marks.

Donny had looked at it doubtfully. ‘What’s it say then?’

‘It tells him to bloody well get off his chuff and buy his own bread and milk. Bull’s not going to be able to deliver any more. It says if he doesn’t have the manners to say thank you, he doesn’t deserve the service.’

Donny was surprised at her fury — something different from Vera’s usual grumps. ‘Couldn’t I just leave the letter with the other stuff in the letterbox?’

Vera’s eyes shot sparks. ‘If only I could ride that bike of yours, Donny, I’d deliver more than a letter to that bloodsucking loser. He’s had our Bull tied in knots all these years. Oh, I could clock him one good and proper!’

Donny had grinned nervously and tucked the sizzling letter in his jacket pocket.

Now he eyes the odd letterbox — a rectangular slit cut into the clay bank, like a small cave with a wooden door, big enough to take the loaves and containers of milk. He slides up the door and peers inside. There’s a weta in residence but nothing else — no note, no other letters. Donny feels some of Vera’s fury. This hermit brother could at least say thanks.

He slides the door closed again and inspects the steep narrow drive. The surface is rutted but dry; his bike could
probably manage it. But where does it lead? Donny can see no house, no smoke rising in the distance; hear no sound of axe or hammer or animals. He swallows. Then, whistling nervously, kicks his old bike into action and heads on down.

The going is worse than he anticipated: the ruts are dry but deep, and fallen rocks lie scattered at every twisting bend. The approach seems endless. Twice he gets off and pushes the bike over a particularly rutted section. Then the track levels and he’s travelling along a good old road, pongas and toetoe leaning in, almost meeting overhead. Now he can see a roof and smell smoke. Dogs bark. Donny slows and stops. The hermit won’t be used to people and might get a shock. He decides to walk in around the last bend, carrying the box of food.

The gate seems out of place: it’s plank and wire, high and heavily chained. Then Donny sees a large man approaching. He’s wearing a new Swanndri and good gumboots, woollen beanie over his dreadlocks, and is flanked by big barking dogs. The firearm he levels at Donny is a big old thirty-o-six American rifle from World War Two, could bring down an elephant. Donny’s granddad had once owned one, but when he noticed young Donny playing with it he had handed it in to the police.

‘Private property!’ yells this fellow. ‘Get the hell out!’ He’s Maori, surely not Spud Howie.

‘I’ve got this stuff for Spud Howie.’ Donny’s voice comes out high and shaky. He’s ready to run. This must be Spud’s place, but nothing seems right.

Now another man approaches, older, also Maori, a cigarette in one corner of his mouth, army greatcoat almost trailing the ground.

‘He’s looking for a Spud Howie,’ shouts the first man over his shoulder, keeping the rifle level and his eyes on Donny.

The older man speaks to the dogs, who calm down, then unlocks the gate. He steps just outside the gate and looks Donny up and down. ‘You delivering the bread and milk?’

Donny nods.

The old fellow scowls. ‘Don’t come any closer. Put the box on the ground and then bugger off. Don’t come down here again.’

Donny frowns. ‘It’s not for you. Where’s the hermit? Where’s Spud Howie?’

Both men laugh. It’s not a pleasant sound. The old man tries to take the box, but Donny won’t let go. He feels his anger rise.

Now a third man approaches. He’s Pakeha, dreadlocked and tattooed — perhaps the right age?

‘Mr Howie?’ shouts Danny, desperate now to get away, but mad too. Everything is wrong.

‘Spud Howie is long gone,’ says the old fellow, taking the cigarette from his mouth and coughing raucously. ‘He married his missus and moved off to Aussie maybe fifteen year ago.’

‘What?’ Donny stares. Can’t make it out. He holds the box close to him. ‘Fifteen years ago?’

‘You heard, sport,’ shouts the man with the thirty-o-six. ‘Now put down that box and get lost.’

‘He’s married in Aussie?’ Donny works it out at last. Mr Howie has been delivering the food to the wrong people. Without a word, he turns to go. He’s nearly choking with rage.

The man with the rifle moves through the gate. ‘Not so fast, mate. Give over our stuff.’

Donny eyes the rifle, the dogs; slowly, breathing hard, he places the box of food down on the ground and steps back a pace. ‘There won’t be any more,’ he says. Then shouts, ‘You cheated my Mr Howie! He’s a good man! You never even said thanks!’

The gunman laughs. ‘Fuck me, the boy’s short of a spark plug. He’s a loony. Hey, loony-boy, Spud Howie sold us his patch fair and square. We own it, right? And he said the bread and milk came with the territory, courtesy of his big brother, get it? So we’ll expect delivery as per usual next week, or we’ll come after you. Now, get the fuck out and don’t come down again.’

The man leans down to take the box. Donny waits until the rifle is pointing a little to the side, then lunges forward, grabbing the firearm and knocking the fellow to the ground. He takes three steps back and has the rifle at his shoulder before the other two realise what’s happening. For a moment Donny, in his rage, aims for the sprawling man.

‘Hey!’ shouts the Pakeha fellow, running forward, but his curses are drowned by the roar of the big thirty-o-six. Donny’s first two shots smash the milk bottles, the next blows the bread into crumbs. Donny’s tempted to take out the dogs but, furious as he is, he can’t do it, so he shoots a hole in the gate, draws a bead on a duck which has startled out of the creek, brings it down in a cascade of feathers, then with a wide arcing throw tosses the rifle high and away into the bush.

He runs then, bellowing with fear and rage, up the track, towards his bike.

‘I forgot my one two three,’ he tells Vera and Bull later, grinning sheepishly. He hands Vera back her letter.

Bull, at home now, his plastered leg propped up on a stool, an early whisky warming his blood, beats his good hand on the table. ‘All these years! All these bloody years!’

Vera tears the letter to shreds and shoves the pieces in the coal range. ‘I’ll give that Spud a one two three and a half if I ever set eyes on him. Married and gone to Oz! Bloody hell.’

Bull shakes his head back and forth. ‘Those low-lifes will be growing pot or running drugs down there. I’ve been feeding up a criminal gang.’

‘Will they come after us, Mr Howie? I said there’d be no more.’

Bull’s laugh is grim. ‘They won’t come after us. Not after the way you shot them up. That sort are all bluster. Probably couldn’t bring down a stag if it stood still at ten paces. Good man, Donny.’

A truck rumbles past, then another. Down the road they can hear a loud hailer organising a group of extras. Donny’s grin fades. He looks quickly up at Bull and then away again.

‘Don’t worry, Donny,’ says Bull gently. ‘We’ll sort it out if we have to. Now go on home to the family.’

The props truck

The bush section across from Donny’s place is a
five-acre
block. The back two-thirds are virgin bush, never been cut over. Towards the road, the line of high dense cover begins to break up, patches of weeds and grass, toetoe and fern colonising the spaces where larger trees have been cut years ago. This is the area where Nightshade is buried. Single totara and mountain beech trees have room here to spread their branches wide. A small river, fed by melting snow and general run-off from the slopes of the mountain, runs through the block and away to the west. A young totara, planted two years ago by Donny, marks the grave, though it’s hard to spot it now — hard even for Donny. The bush is regenerating and young saplings abound. The part of the block closest to the road is open grassland, sometimes grazed by sheep or horses. Here there was once a house, long since fallen into decay, no sign of it now unless you dig. Somewhere under the cover of grass will be roofing iron, fence wire, an old coal range perhaps, a clothesline, even an iron bath.

The catering tent is being erected on this derelict paddock.
Tracey watches from her bedroom window as Fitz and his gang wrestle it upright, the driving wind giving them a hard time of it. Finally the flapping canvas is guyed to the earth, and the men, shouldering shovels, set off into the bush. Tracey swallows. News has filtered through to her that they will dig trenches in the bush where a battle between humans — or is it creatures from outer space? — and the forces of darkness will be enacted. She looks at the clock. Four hours before Donny will be home. Manny and Sky are asleep in their bunks and won’t wake for another hour. She wants to scoop them up and run. To pack their belongings and find Donny and get the hell out. Her heart is beating so hard that breathing is difficult. But where would they go? And by what means? The car is still a distant dream.

The catering tent looks to her like part of a police murder inquiry. The horror of that night two years ago comes back to haunt her. A small digger rattles down the road, heaves on to the lumpy grassland and disappears into the ferns and toetoe. Tracey groans.

Tina Kingi, lugging trestles, shouts from the gate. ‘Hey Trace, can you give a hand?’

Tracey’s relieved to see her. She throws up the window and leans on the sill. ‘Manny and Sky are asleep. I’ll see if Delia or Aureole will watch them.’

Tina waves and continues on to the tent.

A large covered truck rolls up and parks at the gate. A tall man wearing earphones and face-mike jumps out. He says something into the mike, nods, takes a huge bunch of keys from the tool-belt slung around his waist and speaks into the
mike again. He looks up and down the road, scratching his mop of red curls, sees her at the window and waves. It’s Tim. A moment later he’s at the door, explaining his problem.

‘I’ve got a truckload of props here that are saturated and muddy. You got a shed where I could dry them out?’

Tracey shakes her head. ‘Ours is full of wood.’

He looks over at the McAneny place. ‘Any chance they’d let me use that back porch?’

Tracey grins, diverted from her worries. ‘You could try. They’re a bit odd.’

‘You’re the catering lady, right? I’m Tim.’

‘I know. The oldest lady’s a bit of a dragon. I’d come over, but the kids are asleep.’

‘No worries. Thanks.’

Tracey watches as he drives around the bend, then re-emerges down the McAneny drive. Aureole appears on the back porch, flapping in excitement as the big back doors of the truck are opened and the props man begins to carry objects out. Manny and Sky must have been woken by Tim’s shouts — they want to see what’s going on. They all hear Aureole’s scream. Tracey gives a hand to each child and runs over. Then stops abruptly.

Lying on the grass by the porch is a dead body. Beside it a decapitated head, blood dripping from the slash. Tim has another body — a misshapen nightmare creature in chain mail — slung over his shoulder. Half of its face is shot away.

‘Oh oh oh!’ screams Aureole, thoroughly enjoying herself now that she understands. ‘The battle has come to our doorstep! Oh, the brave young warriors! Oh, how life-like!’
She sees Tracey and the children standing at a little distance, and another tiny scream escapes. ‘Cover their eyes, Tracey, quick! Oh, and another one!’ as Tim props an armless dummy against the veranda post.

Grubby flags, headless animals, sodden lumps of clothing and more muddy, bloody body parts follow. Soon the back porch resembles a gruesome war-zone in some mystical fantasyland. Tim hands Manny a fake sword and laughs to see that the boy knows how to use it. Sky hides behind Tracey, her eyes round. Tracey is oddly comforted by all the artificial carnage. Surely no one will turn a hair if some truly sinister body part is unearthed in a trench.

She calls to Manny, but he won’t come. He slices at a dead — what? could be some sort of giant insect? — and screams with laughter.

Delia, who has come out to see what the commotion is about, shakes her head at the sight.

‘Manny, go home with your mother,’ she says firmly, and leads the dragging boy away to Tracey. ‘Dear oh dear,’ she mutters, ‘what is Roe going to say? Aureole should never …’

She stands there beside Tracey, looking back at the scene; glances quickly at the girl’s pinched face and away again.

Delia’s face is grave. She lays her hand on Tracey’s shoulder, as if, Tracey thinks, she sees an illness inside her. ‘What a mess,’ the old woman says, and then adds, oddly, ‘Don’t worry, my dear, all will be well.’

They walk in silence back to Donny’s. Aureole comes running behind, her dress fluttering in the wind like a bright flag, full of the excitement of the film shoot.

‘On our back door! We can watch history being made. Tracey, is this the Great War they are filming?’

‘No,’ says Delia tartly, ‘don’t be so ridiculous, Aureole.’

‘But they’re digging trenches, I heard there would be trenches.’

Delia glances sharply at Tracey. Tracey understands, from that grim look, that Delia knows.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Delia again.