Jake's Long Shadow (24 page)

OUT OF SOMEWHERE this booming voice: APEMAN! TURN AROUND! ’TIS I!

Clearly another was caught up in the drama to be had from even this intended mortal event.

Except Apeman didn’t turn, or not at first. He was down in a crouch with the knife, ready to make his first thrust at Abe, who had his hands up still in protective posture.

Nameless told Ape’s back, I got your number, brother. Got your
patchless
Black Hawk back at my bladed mercy. You haven’t told these crawlers doing your work that you got no influence with your gang, you’re living off a reputation. You can’t harm them, you’re a nothing now, Montgomery Rimene. So you better turn around and walk. Or they’ll be carrying you to a place you’re not ready to go yet. Same place as you put the woman Tania.

Ape half turned to see who his accoster was, as if he didn’t already know
the voice. Eff off, preacher. Ain’t none of your affair. Go converse with your God, ya religion-struck mug.

You got that one wrong, Ape. I got struck by what ails all of us, men like you and me. There’ll be none who cares to grieve for you. Specially not your precious gang.

And Abe could see the involuntary reaction in Apeman’s face, how that comment got to him. A brief opening there, too, for a son of Jake, as Jake would be proud to have.

Gangs don’t grieve even for their own dead. It’s ’emselves they grieve for, what they never tried to become. Don’t make me put you into a lifer’s unmarked grave. Leave the boy be.

Preacher, leave me be. You know revenge, what it does to a man. The code says you’ve gotta respect that, another man’s right to utu. You don’t and your lifelong stay in Hard-arses Hotel turns to hell, when your twisted mind has turned it into heaven. Leave it like that, preacher.

No, you leave it, Ape. Get to walk free, your own given name on your gravestone, your own reasonably good epitaph: Here Lies Apeman Montgomery Rimene Black. He lived hard and bad. But he learned to leave innocents alone.

Except
utu
had too great a hold on Apeman Black. All those years, of a mother who was anything but, of Lovey, burned of flesh burning in a living hell somewhere, the burning that went on inside boys who shouldn’t be witness to this.

All those waiting years of hope that a father would just once say
something
good, acknowledge a little guy’s existence, smile down at him, or come down on his haunches to the li’l monkey’s level and smile into his face, light a inn’cent boy up with love.

All those hoped-for, longed-for events that never happened, they’re what kept Apeman walking with the big prison-made knife about to lunge deadly at Jake Heke’s son, christened Abraham by his father when Jake had a spark of hope. It was the years.

THE NEXT WEEKEND, three jeep loads of them, spilling out with big menacing men charging for the human dog-pack, hanging out under the light spilling from the streetlight above, spluttering as a light-bulb was nearing the end of its life.

A vigilante mob no less, gathered together by Jake. Taking back the streets, even though they hardly ever lived in them. Still, dog-packs grow confident, arrogant with each new victim and start to spread their
ill-intentioned
roaming. The unlikely one of the vigilante number would call it nipping in the bud, being better educated. It was he who yelled out in that night: Do it so they never hurt any of our children again!

Gordon Trambert toted a baseball bat, together with mighty fighting fists of old, and old hunters’ experienced cunning. Jake Heke thinking to himself, just before the (counter) attack began:
I’m a man. A true man, not a bar brawler warrior. Ain’t a man or woman going to tell me this is wrong. I’d know, I’d feel it deep down, now I would, if this was wrong. I’m a man again. Acting as a man should.

Then he smashed a still-mighty (mightier) fist into the face of a youth whose features were in the shadow of a hood he had over his head. Jake could see the fear and confusion, the total disbelief of seeing a
balaclava-covered
face throwing a punch at him. They all wore balaclavas.

A head snapped back. A body staggered then fell in a crumpled heap. To a good man’s anger.

Polly Bennett couldn’t avoid hearing about it as she walked a cul-de-sac in Pine Block not far from where the vigilante attack had taken place several nights ago. Everyone was talking about it, she and Simon could see it in the smiling faces, something profound had taken place.

Good had triumphed over evil. The will of the people — certain people, and no names she had picked up on yet — had done what weak political will was too cowardly to do, or give police freedom to do, to take back control.

They heard it being talked openly on the street, that urban terrorism was at last answered with greater violent force. They heard the glee, saw the smiles of relief. Women were saying to each other, over fences, on the
footpaths
, out on lawns, how soft laws, rights of criminals before their victims, youth terrorism, it could all go to hell.

Out loud they were saying, Why don’t these liberals come and live here and see how long they’d put up with these violent young thugs. We watch them turn into murderous adults and have been helpless to do a thing about it. No one listens to us, except in election year and suddenly our voice is important. Until the party gets our vote then we’re forgotten again. Left to live here amongst the monsters they helped create, being the welfare
dependants;
come and see how it gives the opposite of the dignity you advocates of welfare claim, it slowly throttles the spirit, the desire to do anything for yourself. Corrupts your outlook.

This was a blow struck for the victims, for the whole neighbourhood. They said the vigilantes should have killed the mongrels and hoped next time they would. There’d be no witnesses coming out of Pine Block, that’s for sure.

There were said to be eight of them in hospital, that number again who required medical treatment. That thugs should have access to
our
hospitals, they were saying in the Block.

Simon did remark to Polly, as they went around the notorious
neighbourhood
, how bizarre it was that successive governments not only created
these welfare-dominated suburbs, they also paid a welfare benefit to thugs and gang members.

Polly said vigilante justice was jungle law, though since she knew the type on the receiving end, she had little sympathy, if any. But they were here to do business, she reminded Simon.

Integration Properties Limited was looking at buying three of ten houses in this neglected cul-de-sac, refurbish them and then one by one acquire every other property until they owned the entire street. Thereby they’d create added value and lift the standard of yet another portion of Pine Block. Polly was in a permanent state of overt joy that she and Simon were getting richer by the day. Though she knew to leave her new BMW at home; you can’t be flaunting your wealth in this neighbourhood (or not yet). Polly couldn’t wait to drive her new acquisition (toy) through the place she’d been raised in. (And eat your hearts out, losers.)

Nor did location inhibit her confident (conquering) striding of this broken glass-littered not-so-sleepy ghetto, in the company of her handsome lover and business partner. It felt truly as if she were walking on air.

Though, if she’d cared to read Simon’s body language, she might have seen that he was troubled; he kept throwing questioning looks at her whenever she made incessant mention of the money subject, or took eyes away and sighed to himself.

Was Polly becoming too crass, stricken by one of the seven deadly sins: greed? Greed and her horrible children who wanted all the toys, the food, everything, to themselves. He even said to her, bor-ing. But it went right over her head. Simon was no longer sure this was the same woman he fell in love with.

Splintered, shattered, broken in pieces they were, these youths of bad birth, bad genes, choiceless in growing up bad.

Busted, defeated by the sword they’d lived by, the group was devastated. Broken down, reduced, from a group invincible (and inevitable) to each an individual, having to face some part of himself, and finding he had nothing with which to face it. Not the truth. Not of seeing himself as he was.

So each could but rub his wounds, or rather lie helpless and have hospital staff tend to them, stuck injured in a bed with only his thoughts driving him crazy, since none had ever thought, not about anything ever before. Let alone being busted up like they had.

Even their ringleader was found out to have no leadership qualities. Like the rest of them he couldn’t fight for shit, not against the real men who attacked them.

They were in outrage in their hospital beds that their assailants wore balaclavas. They can’t do that (but they did). That they came out of the blue (the black night) in jeeps, which one had noticed were taped over with dark polythene. Several had heard a white man’s voice crying something about this is for the children. What children, man? We ain’t never done nothin’ to no children.

They only knew a white man’s voice was yelling something about children and then hell turned full about and blasted them with the only thing they knew: violence. Yet they couldn’t comprehend from whence that moral, physical force came.

THE MAORI RACE is in a war mindset,
the thought came, finally, from Charlie's musings, his work experience, from the overwhelming statistical evidence, and three decades thinking about it, that the reason Maori were failing was their collective mind was locked in the past, where physicality ruled supreme and intellect didn't — couldn't — get a look in. And being an oral culture, with no written word, development was denied them.

We're still at war, in our thinking, when actual war ceased a century and a half ago. His beloved Maori people, for whom he'd given a lifetime of service in trying to do his bit to saving, could not be saved. Not until they decided to do it themselves.

My people are tearing each other apart, neglecting, abusing our children, destroying our families, in this endless cycle of failure, of living in
conceptual
darkness.

And the debate raging in our country, being in written form in the newspapers and magazine and government reports, is about us yet doesn't
engage us because we're not a reading race. We're not engaged in the very discussion about our failures since it is written down on paper to be studied, scrutinised, questioned, challenged, changed, improved. But we're not availing ourselves of the paper. Not enough of us are into the culture of the written word. We once were warriors and still are, in our minds.

A people at war without an artisan class, let alone an intellectual class, has no time nor inclination to pause and reflect. They do not develop
emotionally
, they analyse nothing. Emotion rules and information is exchanged by word of mouth or perceptions taken from the snapshot world of television. Charlie Bennett, it's taken you all these years to realise that change cannot come until a critical mass gets educated or, at very worst, only if the Maori people latch onto some form of superior enlightenment. But how? How?

It must be education. The Maori who has a university degree is seldom out of work and is unlikely to commit crimes. He is exactly like his European or any other counterpart. The Maori of stable outlook is not at odds with society, he's the same as others like him, doing his best. The Maori with a trade qualification, or her own business, is in the same boat as someone of any other race: the world is out there to be taken of what he or she will.

Except a large percentage of my people are not in that educated,
job-qualified,
or even emotionally stable position. Furthermore, they're not of enough consciousness to want it badly. Conclusion: You, Charlie Bennett, are wasting your time.

It was a devastating thought, for it meant his job was no longer tenable. And looking back at it honestly, he saw most of it had been a waste of effort. The same old cycle of recidivism, the same repeat faces, the boys turned to dysfunctioning men. Though he was not going to allow that he had
therefore
wasted his occupational life. For it had been a good life, and a man didn't consciously desire more.

But then the realisation soon became a great unburdening. It came to him that he was free (free!), to do and be whatever he liked instead of trying to save the Maori world when it can't be saved, not by me, not even an army of people like me. They have to arrive at their own conclusions and then act on those themselves.

Which means I can go and get a life. Away from the malcontents. The born villains, the families of hardcore criminals. He started thinking about what kind of business he could get into and maybe with Beth, of course with Beth. Who better as a working partner? 

He even got to thinking that being quit of this job might change things sexually with his wife. That part of his inhibition might be down to bringing home the job, the depressing situations he handled every working day and often into the weekends. For haven't I been a lot more sexually active whenever we've gone on holiday? The last trip, to Melbourne, I staggered myself, my own lack-lustre track record, by having sex every day of the six of our holiday. And one couldn't deny that he found a wife his more than willing partner (almost disturbingly so, I have to say).

He told himself, but that's not her lookout it's yours, Charlie. And this is a chance to reinvent yourself. Wondering then of running his own tourist business, giving groups an insight to Maori culture, taking them over his tribal land at Tarawera, reciting Domett's poem on the Pink and White Terraces. A husband and wife partnership, we'd need a big four-wheel drive. Smiling as he imagined himself doing a haka atop Tarawera summit to
astonished
Americans, Germans, how about what the Asians would think?

Chuckling to himself as he went back to writing what was now going to be his final report (as if they take any notice down there at head office). Then he'd do his resignation letter. Looking up at hearing a rustle of movement to find Sharneeta Hurrey standing in the doorway. Holding her infant child. How did she get up here? Unless the cleaners let her in.

She said: Mr, I'm lost. I'm going down and I don't know how to stop from sinking. And looking at the child to say she, the baby, would be going down with her.

Charlie stood up, a habit of politeness, of respect to a woman. Sharns, please come in and sit down. Is the baby asleep?

Sharns looked at her child — with oddly uninterested eyes, detached from the bonds of mother love. Looks like it. Damn silence sure sounds like it. Long may it last.

As she came slowly towards Charlie, she added, Not that it ever does. Sat down heavily, with burden. God, I'm so tired. Muttered what had become familiar to Charlie, that it was so dark. Wherever she was, it was dark for poor Sharneeta Hurrey.

He said, I've just had a revelation that took me thirty years to figure out. And I've concluded that I'm wasting my time in this job, Sharneeta.

You mean trying to stop people like me going down the gurgler, Mr Bennett?

I keep telling you, call me Charlie. No, if only most were like you. He
saw the surprise lift Sharneeta's eyebrows. Me? Like me?

Yes, you. Because at least you try. At least you want to see light at the end of the tunnel. Most of my clients don't; they don't even conceive that they need a light. Now, why are you here at this hour? It's seven o'clock.

My state, condition, whatever you want to call it, doesn't care what time it is. Nor do you with your job seems to me. You've come round and seen me till late.

That's because I care — I used to care. Still do in your case. But I'm resigning, Sharneeta.

Good for you. Sharns stood up. But Charlie gestured her back down. Please, I'm not wanting you to leave. You came here to talk, obviously.

You know that flatmate friend of mine, Alistair? The guy got beaten near to death in Pine Block? That's him.

Charlie had read about the incident, of course he had. He had discussed it with Beth, given she was ex-Pine Block. It was she who told him to stop worrying about yet another bunch of Maoris behaving violently. Now he knew what she meant.

Yes. I did read about that. The surname, Trambert, kept nagging
familiarity
to Charlie. Then he remembered: Beth's daughter Grace had hung herself from a tree on the Trambert property. But not the same family, surely?

Tell me, is Alistair Trambert any relation to a farming family has a big old mansion-style house near Pine Block?

He's the son.

Gave Charlie quite a shock, and yet purely coincidence. He said, my wife knows the parents. Or rather, she's met them once. A long time ago now.

But they got their beans, those shits who did that to Al.

So I heard. Vigilantes. It's all the news. Community asking if citizens should take the law into their own hands or not.

What do you think — Charlie? She seemed awkward with the
familiarity
.

I think they're wrong.

But you don't live there, the life they do.

No, but I've spent nearly a whole working life trying to deal with the monsters and pitiful creatures Pine Block produces. And don't worry, there've been times I felt like whipping ass so bad of some of my clients. Except we can't. Or the law is pointless. It's a jungle law. 

When you got dwellers in the jungle, wouldn't you use jungle law to deal with them?

No. That's why we have a police force.

TV news says the police are looking for these vigilante guys.

I hope they find them and they suffer the full consequences of the law.

See what's happened, Mr Bennett? They put more time into looking for the good guys who gave the bad guys their just desserts. When they could pass a blind eye.

Vigilantes aren't just desserts, they're unlawful justice. They're
simple-minded
people taking the law into their own hands. If we allowed that, we'd allow chaos and anarchy. They were wrong.

Says you. Go ask the folk in Pine Block. And it's their neighbourhood they have to live in.

A neighbourhood I know only too well. But you didn't come here to discuss community ethics. How is your friend faring?

He's going to live. They're hoping there's not brain damage.

Charlie waited for more from her but it didn't come. She was looking over his shoulder at the wall.

You're with those thoughts again?

She nodded yes.

Sharneeta, I'll take Rachel off your hands right now. You need to go and get help, medical help. My wife and I would be happy to look after her until you come right.

She'll drive you mad, too. She's colicy, I told you. Twenty hours a day she screams.

Let us worry about that.

What was this revelation you had this very evening that has you resigning your job?

The question took Charlie by surprise. It doesn't matter, he said.

It might.

Charlie shifted position in his chair, remarked it would be soon the last time he sat in it and the smile said he was glad. Then he told her of his conclusion, that he believed too many Maori were in a war mind-set from which nothing can advance. And she sat in silence for some moments.

Then she said, Worse than at war, Charlie. We're like slaves.

Slaves? (Where did she get slaves from? — Jake.) The first name to come to mind.

Slaves to a slack attitude. Slaves to assuming we're born losers. Slaves to this, I'm a Maori and proud of it bullshit, when we're not in fact proud of ourselves.

Why is pride in your race bullshit?

Because if you had it you wouldn't need to run around declaring it all the damn time. The world would know it by how you conducted yourself. It's like me claiming I'm oh so happy, when everyone knows I'm not. And what's so goddamn important about being-a-Maori? If other races said it we'd call them racist. What's the look for?

I guess I'd not picked you for the thinking type. Or not how you're coming across now.

If I wasn't a thinking type I probably wouldn't be in such a mess. So, tell me it's not a curse.

I can assure you thinking is not a curse. But, like booze, food, whatever, too much of it likely is. Food I know about. Her teeth broke out in smile. He realised how attractive she was.

He said, I hear your words like new revelations.

A tentative smile flickered across the screen of her haunted
sometimes-beautiful
face. You mean that?

Yes, he nodded.

She said, And we're slaves to the fixed way of thinking. You know, that our ancestors' words were never wrong kind of stuff. Yeah, right. Like somehow Maoris' ancestors got it right and no one has managed it since. Doesn't say a lot for the living generation does it?

It's called prescribed thinking, Charlie was enjoying this intercourse. Like to a set formula at the pharmacist's.

Yes, she understood that. Slaves to the image we're s'posed to show of ourselves, Sharns gathered momentum. I'm only quarter Maori but that was enough to claim me at school on the wrong side, the bad side. And we all bought into it. The day you realised you were on the brown side, you felt your world contract. The green grass was all the other side of a fence too high to climb over but you could see clear through it, the wire netting, the better houses, cars, livelier more loved children, the — dunno why I'm telling you this, Mr Social Worker.

Call me ex-social worker, so make that someone who might be a friend. And he smiled at her, slightly differently to before.

She gave back, it didn't do a lot for her did the diffidence. Or was it coyness?

She said, We bought into our situation first that we were inferior. (Was that a slip of emotion getting through her barrier?) Then, not being able to handle that kind of heavy shit, we got into the thinking it wasn't our fault, it was the white man's. He became not only superior and better off, he became our bogeyman, our big white feared ghost at our every turn, good or bad. Know what I'm saying, Charlie? We made
him
responsible for all our woes. Yeah. Even our self-inflicted ones.

Especially our self-inflicted ones, Charlie said quietly. For they're the ones where truth points the hardest finger.

Sharns found a better smile from somewhere and said, Ask the finger to point me in the right direction, Mr Bennett. Not at me — for me. To
somewhere
good. So I can want my baby along on the same good journey. Show me how to stop looking through the fence and instead climb over it and get mine. Can you do that for me?

I wish I could say yes I can, Sharns. But you know magic wands are in short supply.

I like being called Sharns.

Charlie swallowed, thought this life-changing night must be having strange effect on him, for he was sexually aroused in the instant. (Me? Turned on by a client!) Yes, by what government had ordered you describe the person in your counselling charge: a client. As if people walked into his office of their own accord, seeking help for which they willingly paid. Everything glossed over — smudged more like — by a repertoire of government-ordained euphemisms.