Just My Luck (37 page)

He turned off the residential street onto a main road, to Ally’s relief. The sight of all that loss weighed her down like the liquefied soil of Christchurch, once the solid ground on which so many had built their lives. All those couples, saving and planning, signing their mortgage papers with so much optimism, excited that their dream of homeownership had come true. The chance to own their own piece of the pie, taking such care with it, keeping it so neat, tending their gardens so lovingly. She felt her heart break just a little for every one of those lost dreams.

She said something of that to George, and he nodded soberly. “Nobody realized how bad it was going to be, at first,” he said. “They were out in their gardens, out in the road, shoveling away the mud by hand. Using the portaloos for months on end, thinking it would stop. That it would all go back to normal. But the mud just kept coming, and so did the shakes. And the houses got inspected, eventually, condemned. Some of them thought they could fight it, that they could fix the damage or build again. Holding on, the last ones for streets around. No neighbors, living in a ghost town. The kids playing in the front garden, nobody to kick the footy with, all alone. But eventually, they had to give up too. And now they’re all gone from here.”

“Look here,” he said, pulling off another main road and stopping in front of a school that, as far as Ally could tell, was open for business. “This is something to think about, eh.”

Ally looked at the grassy playing field, featureless except for a large boulder, twice the height of a man, in its center. “What?”

“That wasn’t there before,” George said. “Nobody saw it come down, but there it was, next day. Didn’t take down the fence round the school or anything. Which means it hit above, on the hill there, where you see the empty spot, see?”

He pointed, and Ally saw what he meant, a scar on the cliff face behind the school. “And then,” he said, “it bounced high enough to clear the fence, landed twenty meters away, in the center of the field. More than two meters high, that fence is. Gives you an idea of the power of it, how the cliffs and houses came down.”

“But your house is OK, right?” Ally asked. “And it’s on the cliffs.”

“Different geology, Sumner,” George agreed. “And a bit away from the worst of it. Which caused me some sleepless nights too, not suffering as much as some. Survivor’s guilt, they call that. Reckon there are enough people in Christchurch who can tell you something about that.”

He pulled to a stop on the street outside a pub, clearly doing a thriving trade although the businesses around it were shuttered, the rest of the block deserted.

“I’m surprised they still have customers,” Ally said when they were inside, tucking into their meat pies and salad.

“Yeh, yellow zoned round here,” George agreed. “Some buildings OK, some not. But we’re not exactly spoilt for choice in Christchurch these days. Any good spot that’s still open gets a fair bit of custom.”

“Because it’s not all doom and gloom,” he hastened to assure her. “Not a bit of it. Life goes on, and so does the city. We’re rebuilding now. Pulling up our socks and starting over.”

Quite a Nice Walk

“I’m guessing you’re not planning a move to Christchurch,” Nate said the next day.

Ally had to wait a moment to answer him, because she didn’t have any breath to do it with. She’d been surprised by how quickly the landscape had changed when they’d left the city yesterday, though she shouldn’t have been. She’d been in New Zealand long enough to know that an hour or two could take the visitor from the heart of a sophisticated metropolis to a fern-filled forest where the only sound was the call of bellbirds and tui, to the most pristine, deserted beach, or to a rugged mountain landscape, an alpine lake.

And rugged mountains were what she was looking at right now. Arthur’s Pass in the middle of the Southern Alps, to be exact. Not much snow right now, but the peaks were impressive for all that, forested in the lower elevations, their rocky summits appearing and disappearing in the mist.

“Quite a nice walk,” Nate had called it this morning when she’d been pulling on her boots in the comfortable room in the Arthur’s Pass guest house. She hoped it got a little easier as they got further up, because so far, it was one of the steepest trails she’d ever hiked. The fact that their hostess had looked a bit surprised when Nate had told her where they were going, though, made her wonder.

“Good on ya,” she’d told Ally. “You’ll have lovely views if it fines up. Gets a bit steep, though, Avalanche Peak,” she’d cautioned.

Now, Ally realized that had been typical Kiwi understatement. Because this wasn’t “a bit steep.” This was grabbing-onto-roots climbing. This was the world’s biggest stairway.

“What?” she asked Nate, heaving herself up yet another step, determined not to have to ask him to slow down. They’d been at this nearly an hour. Once they got over this beginning part, it would surely get easier. It was a popular track, Nate had said. “What did you say?”

“Christchurch,” he said, sounding not in the least out of breath, to her annoyance. “Thinking that you won’t be shifting house.”

“Oh. No,” she agreed. “I was glad to leave.” She pretended she was thinking instead of catching her breath, then gave it up. Talking would take her mind off how hard this was, maybe. And if the sentences came out in gasps, too bad.

“I know George said that people had adjusted,” she said, “and I guess you do that, if you have to. And I know that New Zealanders are tough. But I don’t think I could live there, and I guess I’m surprised anybody stays. That more people haven’t moved out. That the guys on the Crusaders, especially, are still playing here. Surely they have opportunities elsewhere.”

“Loyalty,” Nate said simply. “Christchurch has been through the wars, it’s true. Bit of a siege mentality, sticking together and that. Rugby’s been one of the things that’s helped people get back to normal there. You saw that the other night, how strong the support is. Stronger than ever now, and the team feels the same way. Hell of a side, the Crusaders. They always have been, but there’s something more there now. Playing for the city, for everybody there.”

“You know,” he went on, and she let him talk, glad to listen, to focus on climbing. “That first season, before they got the old stadium fixed up so they could play there, those boys played every game on the road. Away from home nearly every night, all year long, while their partners and kids, their parents and grandparents rode it out, sometimes more than one quake a day. Not able to be there when one hit, when their kids were crying. Not knowing whether the next one would be the really big one that’d do the whole place in. That was rough.”

“Tough season,” Ally got out, clambering up and over a big boulder that surely had no place in the middle of a marked trail.

“Yeh,” he agreed. “How’d you imagine they finished on the ladder, that year?”

“Not too well, I’m thinking,” she said.

“You’d be wrong, though. Lost in the final. Barely. All that, and they nearly won the whole thing.”

“Wow. What do you think it was? That they were, what you said? Playing for everybody at home? Or do you think other teams, maybe, didn’t play them quite as hard?”

He laughed. “Not bloody likely. That’s not the way it works. You’re always busting a gut for the win. After the match, you can be mates. While it’s happening, you’re bashing the hell out of each other, no matter what. That’s footy.”

He stopped a moment, turned around. “Doing all right?”

So he had noticed her breathlessness. “I’m good,” she said. “As long as you keep your elbows to yourself.”

“Have a bit of compassion on my tender male ego,” he complained. “We’re putting the ‘Epic Fail’ tag on that one and shoving it to the back of the cupboard.”

“What about you?” she asked as they began climbing again. “Planning to change teams? Going back to the land of your childhood? The Mainland?”

“Nah. I’m the loyal sheepdog type, I guess. Make a decision, stay with it.”

“Toro,” she said. “The bull. No going sideways, no going back. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

“You’ve got a bit of a metaphor problem there,” he pointed out. “But that’s the idea.”

“You know,” she couldn’t help mentioning, “in some places, when people build a trail up a mountain, they put in switchbacks. They don’t just go straight up it.”

“Those places wouldn’t be in En Zed, then,” he decided.

She laughed in spite of herself. “Probably not.”

Another half hour, and they were done with the roots, to her relief. Were coming out above the treeline, into an alpine environment of yellow-green grasses, blowing in the chilly breeze. The clouds were still heavy around them, obscuring any view. Ally looked ahead, could see the track winding up. And another two ridges rising, one behind the other, above the one they were crossing. Whatever lay ahead disappearing into the mist again, but surely they were near the top now.

And still the track stretched up, and up some more. Always another ridge or two appearing through the mist, no matter how many they crossed. She wasn’t trying for conversation anymore, was just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. On following Nate’s back, climbing steadily.

Nate slowed as they approached a young couple, the first people they’d seen on the track, who were sitting in the shelter of a large boulder, screened from the wind blowing across the open ridge. Great. A break. Because no Kiwi seemed able to run into anyone without stopping for a chat.

“How’re you going?” Nate asked. “Been to the top already, or just having a bit of a rest?”

 “Deciding what to do,” the young man said in what Ally’s untrained ear thought might be an English accent. “How much farther is it to the top, do you know?”

“You’ve got a fair bit left,” Nate admitted, and Ally suppressed a groan. She hadn’t dared ask, because she’d been afraid to hear the answer. And “a fair bit” definitely sounded ominous.

The man looked at his girlfriend.

“Go back,” she said instantly.

“They told us at the I-Site,” she complained to Ally, “that this was a nice walk. This isn’t a nice walk. This is a death march.”

“Oh, not that bad,” Nate protested. “And if we get the mist clearing, you’ll get a view to make it all worthwhile.”

“I’ll look online and pretend I was there,” the woman said firmly, making Ally laugh.

Ally’s attention was diverted by a large, drab-colored bird that had flown up behind the couple and landed on an open day pack. “Look, Nate,” she said, pointing. “What
is
that? It looks like some kind of parrot!”

“It
is
a parrot,” Nate said. “You’ll want to watch your—“

Too late. The big bird had reached into the pack with a formidable beak and one taloned foot, and was now half in and half out, dragging out the contents. The young woman gave a little shriek, and the man grabbed for the pack, dislodging the bird, but not before it had stolen a packet of sandwiches, with which it flew a little distance off, proceeding to rip open the cling film and starting to work on the couple’s lunch.

“What
was
that?” the young man asked in frustration, stuffing the contents of his pack inside again and closing it up.

“That would be your kea,” Nate said, keeping a straight face. “Got to watch yourself up here in the mountains. They’re bad enough with your lunch. What they really want, though, are the bits of rubber round your car windows. They’ll take those straight out, strip the whole thing. Thieving little buggers.”

“Ready to go?” he asked Ally.

“Sure,” she sighed. “What the heck.”

Nate had been right, she thought when they were finally at the bottom again, several grueling hours later. Near the top, when they’d been carefully traversing a razor-backed ridge of shale that dropped steeply off on either side into slabs and chunks of black rubble, the mists had cleared in patches, revealing a vista of steep, forbidding peaks, lonely mountains rising out of the fog, even more spectacular for being so briefly glimpsed.

But when they had turned to make their way down the slightly less vertical descending track, she had wished that, instead of parrots, there were some giant eagles up here to take them off what looked exactly like the slopes of Mount Doom, and felt like it too. Because she’d been
tired.
And that was before her knees and ankles had taken the brunt of kilometers of down-climbing.

“We’ll go for lunch,” Nate said when they were back in the little village again, a few buildings scattered amongst the trees, the mountains rising sharply on either side. “Have a beer.”

She groaned. “I’m so grubby, I’d like a shower first. But once I have one, I’m not going to want to move again. So I guess we should do lunch.”

“What?” he asked when they were in the little café. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Here’s the question,” she said, pinching one of his chips, as usual, and fixing him with what he could only describe as a glare. “Why did we just do that?”

“If you want chips,” he couldn’t resist pointing out, “I’ll get you some.”

“I don’t want chips,” she said. “I just want a few of yours.” Which made him roll his eyes.

“Why?” she insisted again.

“What, the walk? Because I thought you’d like it,” he protested. “That it’d be a challenge for you.”

“Uh-huh,” she said skeptically. “It wouldn’t be that you wanted to do something where you’d be so obviously better than me, would it? Because that was the hardest damn hike I’ve ever been on. That was
ridiculous.
And it looked to me like you could have run the whole thing.”

“There
is
a race every year,” he pointed out helpfully.

She groaned. “I so did not need to know that. New Zealanders are crazy. But come on. Was that why?”

He started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. “I hope not. Because that would be pretty low of me, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, it would,” she scowled.

“Never mind,” he consoled her, reaching for her hand. She looked so cute with that frown drawing her dark brows together. So severe, like the world’s sexiest librarian, about to shush him. “I’ll take you somewhere else tomorrow, and you can outperform me.”