Jake's Long Shadow (7 page)

IT WAS ONE of the guy’s, Errol Philips’, thirtieth birthday. A Friday. He put on drinks for his twenty-two workmates at Busby Sheetmetal workshop, and the boss threw in an extra beer keg. They worked through the lunch half-hour to knock off that much earlier to start the party sooner. And they talked about rugby, mostly, as every Kiwi man does. Rugby and sex, the latter’s mention so frequent it must be as natural as breathing. Though there were a few who disdained this sex talk culture, Abe Heke being one.

Busby was a good company to work for, you worked hard to set
production
targets and got paid a bonus by how much you exceeded the target. The firm paid well, too, above award rates and never did anyone complain of a fiddle with the bonus payments. Dave Busby was an honest man who played everything straight and expected you to play it the same with him.

Early in the party proceedings he eased Abe aside and had a frank chat with him. Told Abe he was one of his best workers and, furthermore, he had
a bright future with the firm, or one day with his own sheetmetal business.

But Abe wasn’t quite ready for this kind of talk, not to break away from the security of good employment, a guaranteed wage every week. So he just listened politely and said nothing.

Then the boss told Abe he reminded him of a good rugby player who was yet afraid to match himself against the best. Now Abe, being a Heke even though it was his Heke genes and background he was trying to disavow most (yet couldn’t drop the name), felt his juices rising to Dave Busby’s words, and he shook his head vigorously and said he wasn’t afraid of anyone.

Except the boss told him he misunderstood. I’m saying that you owe to yourself, the potential you have, to make a genuine effort to realise that potential, or life becomes as average as your fellow workmates’, much as I like and appreciate their contribution. But, between me and you, I’m not sure I have deep respect for them except as fellow human beings. And why? Because they refuse to stretch themselves, they stay well within their comfort zone. Is that what you want for Abe Heke?

Abe wasn’t sure what he wanted. He’d kind of thought this job here was it, as far as he could go, being a steady rise to a foreman’s position, even though the boss demanded his foreman have qualifying papers, meaning Abe would have to sit exams and stuff. He thought he’d get his head around doing that one day; and one day he’d wake up and find himself, what, forty, and then it would be fifty, and he could say if he achieved anything then at least he’d broken the curse of being a violent Heke.

The boss said he didn’t want to spoil Abe’s fun, just give him something to think about.

After two hours everyone was talking more freely, and teasing the birthday boy, Errol, to make a speech, or pull his trousers down and show the boys what he wasn’t made of, do a brown-eye, that kind of worker’s joke. So Errol said a few words, and with some emotion, too, as he’d been with the firm for all his fourteen years of working life and loved the company, which was really his way of saying he loved the boss for giving him the comfort zone. As they all did. Giving back in return.

The more beer they drank, the more the younger bloods talked about fighting than anything else. Except the one who could fight but never did, Abe Heke. He didn’t have their chips to shoulder, or their sense of physical inferiority. Though he was aware working men especially have a need to be respected physically, even when they don’t have the equipment to deserve it.
And when they saw that a big powerful specimen like Abe, and a Maori at that, didn’t throw his weight around, they, the more immature ones, liked to be in his company, sucking up to him.

They even shaped up to him, playfully of course, for it made them feel good doing that to a man clearly their physical superior. He didn’t mind. Let them be whatever they were or thought they were. Abe just wanted to mind his own business, stick at this job, which gave him a feeling of comfort such as he’d never experienced before. (If it wasn’t for the boss putting confusing thoughts in my mind.)

Basic, decent, reasonably hard-working, ordinary citizens they were, though the beer brought out their cruder side. Nothing dark or vile, just sexually explicit. These same guys discussed in outrage how a high-court judge had been found out downloading porn on the court computer. How dare he, a judge? Only a few honest ones admitting they did the same at home on their computers. But, hell, they were only sheetmetal workers, not high-court judges with the power and assumed higher morality to sentence people, not least for sexual offences.

One of the Maoris got his guitar from his car, which reminded the boss to tell them to put their car keys in the special tin labelled SAVE A DRUNK, and he’d pay for the taxis home or to wherever they felt like carrying on the drinking. No one was exempt either, unless he wasn’t drinking, which only two of the guys could claim. Tomorrow being Saturday, the boss would be here to give back their car keys and half a day’s work to those who wanted it, which was most.

Ricky the Maori, as they called him — even though there were two other Maoris — played good guitar and sang well. So did Abe pretty well, though they thought Abe should show off his fine singing voice more often and without their prompting.

Abe wasn’t being modest, he’d just listened to the best and knew he wasn’t up to the standard, period. So it was no big deal if he sang or didn’t. The white guys couldn’t get their minds around the fact that the other Maori, Dean Matenga, couldn’t sing. They had it fixed that Maoris all had good singing voices and all could fight. (What if we don’t want to sing or fight? Are we still Maoris then? Or do we sort of become honorary white men?)

He ignored their pleas to sing and looked across at big Billy Knowles, agitated, anxious to have the invites thrown his way. Billy frequented the karaoke bars and fancied he’d get discovered one day. Where the others
might fantasise how they’d spend a million-dollar Lotto win, Big Billy wanted someone at a karaoke joint to walk up to him and say: Star! His workmates never fantasised that big, not on talent or a delusion of it. Only on a one-in-three-million chance of becoming an overnight millionaire if they won Lotto, and only then if no one else shared the winning numbers, which they all agreed would be a real shit if finally you won.

At work social functions everyone dreaded Billy getting a few drinks on board and wanting to take the floor. Ricky always claimed he didn’t know how to play that particular number as accompaniment on guitar, nor that one neither. But Big Billy never took the hint because he couldn’t. Still, he was a nice guy once you got him past talking about himself. Like most of the blokes.

By ten o’clock some of the guys were running off at the mouth. Piss talk it was called. The boss said time to wrap it up, meaning clean up before you left. Drunk, giggling, joking, slurring men crushed cans, washed glasses in the sink, emptied ashtrays, two weilding brooms, all converts to the culture of order being cleanliness imposed on them by a firm but benign boss.

An apprentice tried to get in the boss’s ear but an older guy pulled him away before his mouth and youth got him into trouble. Which he near did when the boss said, Don’t say anything you’ll regret in the morning, and the kid took offence. But his senior dragged him outside and promised to whip his ass if he misbehaved, and the kid calmed down and was soon vomiting an end to his night.

Outside in the fresh air it was cool, the stars were out, though no one looked, none were interested in silly old stars, not their weight or distance and infinite meaning, not their answers to our own origins up there in the impossible beyond, not even the sheer beauty of a million visible pinpricks of light suspended above you, not even that. Just talk oozing from their mouths.

Abe and best mate Ryan, with whom he flatted, headed for a favourite bar. Abe forgot to remind himself Ryan could get ugly when he was drunk, not always but enough times to be a piss-off. He joked with Ryan that he was a violent white man you couldn’t take anywhere.

They drank rum and cokes and looked (and leered) round the joint for a bit of easy pick-up that wouldn’t mind a booze-stinking one-night stand. Or more than that if she were all right. But the women, even the younger ones, just got classier and classier these days, they went for the more sober
guys, and even then demanded they be treated right or they were off. How it was with females these days. Ryan recently made a supposed joking suggestion they get hold of a drug to spike some women’s drinks to make them an easy lay. Everyone was doing it.

Abe got angry and told Ryan if he even mentioned it again then he’d better look out. Ryan, being what he was, said, Look out for what?

Got the answer when he looked into Abe’s morally outraged eyes. Hey, I was only joking, Ryan lied. But he took Abe’s point.

Without needing to put it into words, the pair signalled this would be a males’ night out. Ryan’s eyelids had a droop on and Abe was hardly in a state for romancing a woman. Didn’t help that all day Abe’d had this odd nervous feeling, like a premonition that wouldn’t state itself. Not an ‘I’m gonna die’ premonition, just a feeling that someone he knew well was very ill or there was a bad event looming.

Tonight Abe was sick of rugby talk and he switched off to Ryan’s drone about the game; took a look around at what kind of night this might turn out, as a mere handful of troublemakers could sour it for everyone. (Like my old man used to. Busting heads. Wrecking whatever joint or house he was in. How could I ever forget those memories?)

Trouble was staring him in the face, in the shape of four dudes in their early twenties aching for it. (I seen aching like that all my life, guys. It don’t faze me, just pisses me off, because it has to have an outlet, a violent
conclusion
.) So Abe turned away, but at the same time as Ryan looked across the crowded bar and managed to find these dudes’ eyes as well, except he held them and said to Abe, Those wankers are staring at us.

Abe said, So look away and then they won’t be staring at us and they’ll find someone else to eyeball.

Abe, you ain’t scared of ’em are you?

He lifted his hand. Is that shaking?

So, give ’em the stare back.

And then what?

And then whatever happens, man.

Nah, man. You know it’s not my scene. I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Ain’t it better to be both? Ryan took his glaring eyes back to the foursome.

The booze did this, to a lot of guys: turned them into Mike Tyson, from Joe-nobody to self-deluded heroes.

Hey Ryan, if you want trouble I know bars fulla Maoris who’ll give you trouble all night long — if you can stay standing. Which you won’t. All night, all tomorrow, every effin’ day of your fighting life if that’s what you really want. I’ll show you real warriors, who don’t know no better (like you don’t, like my old man didn’t). Come on, Ryan, give it a miss.

I don’t like wankers staring at us.

All of nature and genes were against Ryan. Us, he said. Roping Abe in when he wanted no part of it.

Abe said to him, Let’s go get something to eat. I’m starving.

But Ryan’s head was in another place, sent there by the booze, fastpost. Wait on a minute.

No, Abe wasn’t waiting on a minute. He stood up. You know why I stayed here in Christchurch? Because it’s mostly peaceful. Did I tell you about the place I grew up in, Pine Block? You had a scrap for breakfast, two for lunch and a brawl on your plate at night. But it never fills you, you always want more. Understand me? And Abe headed out.

Ryan came after him, moaning about what are friends for if you can’t count on them. Abe presumed Ryan eyeballed the four guys as he went past and was expecting the altercation to start behind him (and then what would I do? Leave my flatmate in the lurch?). He turned around and pulled Ryan by the arm to make sure he didn’t have to make a choice. Heard an exchange of verbal, but at least Ryan was beside him, boasting he didn’t back down to those shits.

Outside, in the cool March air that said this town was a little closer to winter than North Island towns, they headed for their favourite food joint, a Turkish kebab house near Cathedral Square. There the night was claimed by a new creature, each thinking he was unique, different to the others when no one was. Lost is lost.

Waiting for their kebab order, the pair watched a group of Maoris across the street accost some Asian youths and demand the burgers they were about to eat. Code for: we rule. Ryan wanted to go and fight the Maori bullies, but decided cowardly Asians weren’t worth defending, and, anyway, the kebab was ready and Ryan’s eyes were telling a booze story and the laughing Maoris were eating their forcibly taken burgers, the Asians nowhere to be seen.

Except Ryan wanted to know why the Asians didn’t fight the Maoris, why did they stand for that shit, we wouldn’t. And on that he was right: even
Abe wouldn’t stand for that. Maybe both held onto their kebabs a little tighter, as they headed for the taxi stand.

Then Abe spotted the group from the bar, they were across the Square, beyond the loners and lost who couldn’t fit, staring from the side of the cathedral, was God’s wretched flock of four. So Abe put himself between the punks and Ryan and walked that way for the taxi rank, and Ryan didn’t see a thing.

In the taxi where Abe thought he could relax now, he was yet still with that feeling he’d had all day: nervous. But about what?

Life was going well and yet maybe the boss was right, maybe he was afraid of fronting up to himself, seeing what he could really achieve if he applied himself. (But not ready yet.) He had no steady girlfriend but only because he wasn’t in a hurry to get serious with anyone. Otherwise life was pretty damn good and to hell with the boss saying what he did. My business, my life, to do what I want with. He wouldn’t know the background and I ain’t into telling no one, not even Ryan here.

The taxi driver wasn’t the usual blabber mouth. Ryan’s eyes were closing. So Abe had time to be reminded that the nervous feeling not only was still there, it was getting worse. (I know, it’s like that day me and Mookie first entered the Black Hawk HQ for the first time, with Tania. Jesus, poor bloody murdered Tania. We were scared out of our minds, not knowing what was gonna happen. We’d rammed a bank money-machine with a stolen vehicle and this was our entry fee to the gang. I wanted revenge for the Brown Fists setting up my oldest brother Nig to be killed by the Black Hawks. I was gonna find out which of them did the deed and he was gonna get it, too. That was how I thought back then, where my stupid young head was at. Blind with grief, or so I believed. Now I know the only thing I was blinded by was my own immaturity, of fighting violence with more violence. Walking in with all those mean-arse gangies staring at us, tattooed faces most of ’em and wearing shades inside at night. And that big ugly animal, Apeman.)