State Ward (10 page)

Freedom! The world through the front of Mr Dekka’s car growing wider and wider with every minute of George’s now steady driving out of Riverton. Charlie thinking, at first, that if only they got out of Riverton then they’d have accomplished something. But when the housing ended and the view outside turned to rolling farmland — and became, in the instant, a rerun of Charlie’s unforgettable trip the other way as newly deemed ward of the state — Charlie shifted his hopes that they’d last till the next town.

“Freedom?” he asked George, expecting his friend to break out, expressing what he was feeling. But George shook his head.

“Not yet. Have to leave the car in, maybe one hour. Or roadblocks. Cops,” in his halting English.

“But Two Lakes is over an hour from here. I thought we said we’d get to my home town then get a bus to your —”

“No bus to Ruapotiki. Not even blimmin’ horse!” George surprised in an outburst of laughter.

“You very happy, eh Charlie?”

“Oh yeah, George. Very.”

“Why?”

Charlie wasn’t expecting the question. “I, uh. Well, cos I’m — we. Cos we’re free.”

“This free?”

“Will be if we can reach Two Lakes. They’ll never find us there, even if we have to hole up for a few days. I got places. I got friends. I got a family who’ll help hide us. Then we’ll get a bus — did you say the bus doesn’t go to Ruapotiki? All right, we’ll get it to the nearest town. What’s the nearest town, and how far is it from your pa?”

“Whakatane. Dunno how far. Never count.”

“Count, George. You don’t count a distance.”

“No? Then what you do — use measure tape?”

The both of them laughing, even as one checked constantly the rear-vision mirror for police following, and the other scanned out front of them. Freedom.

“So why you come, Charlie?”

Another stumping question. “Cos — cos, I — hey, I already told you: makes me feel kind of, you know, wanted?”

“No, not understand. Wanted? By what — cops?”

“No, you idiot. In here.” Charlie patted his chest. “In my heart. My stomach. Like it’s warm. And I feel like I’m making up for things. Oh, but no use trying to explain if you don’t know what I mean. Just wanted, all right?”

“All right, Charlie.” George threw him a smile.

A few minutes later and George asking, “Charlie, why you come?”

“Look, I told —” But then Charlie realised what the question was. “Well, because you’re my mate. And that’s what mates are for, aren’t they? Anyway, I like adventure I decided. I like being a bit bad, especially when
after you’ve tried to be good it doesn’t pay off. So why are you running — apart from the dream, like?”

“Sick of dream. Sick of it. So this time I try and end.”

“How?”

“You see.”

“Hey, you can tell me, I’m part of it, aren’t I?”

“We see, eh?”

“Yeah, we’ll see, George.”

They passed through a small town that had a tree-lined avenue introducing it. Charlie remembered only too well the town, the trees, of coming through here that age ago the opposite of what he was now.

“Freedom, eh, George?”

“Why you always saying that? Not free yet, Charlie. Soon, boy, soon the cops come. You like to drive fast?”

“Not with you driving, boy, nope!” Charlie laughing, not sure if it was nerves or excitement or just general unbelievable specialness of this situation.

Then they saw a cop car. It was parked on their side and facing the way they were going.

“Cops, George …”

“But George was already changed, his face wary, almost animal. And hatred. For George’s eye, the one visible from the side to Charlie, oozed hatred, and his jaw muscles pulsed, and big, dark, bony fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard the knuckles were an odd white against the dark skin.

Two shapes of cops in the front seat visible. George had slowed right down — too slow.

“George, you’ll make ’em suspicious you go too
slow!” Relieved that George heeded the warning and sped up, just as a toot sounded behind them and Charlie spun to it. An impatient driver and his front male passenger gave the fingers. But Charlie was so relieved he waved at them. Back to the cop car, now in George’s rear vision with his dark eyes fixed on the reflection.

“They coming after us, George?”

“No. Dunno. Look like they moving …” And Charlie went to turn and look.

“No look, Charlie! Cops come for silly looks. I know. Straight ahead. Eyes ahead, Charlie. Be all right. Not time for cops to know. Hockey game still going. Take over one hour.”

“But what about with both of us missing though?”

“Not too much worry. Nobody escape when Mr Davis on. Never. Even me, Charlie, too scared of Mr Davis even when dream making me crazy to go. Maybe halftime Dekka go for look for me and you. Clock there say only twenty-five minutes go. Cop car turned corner, Charlie.”

And the face that turned to Charlie was a different, broadly smiling one Charlie knew best.

“You’ve got it all worked out, eh, George?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Ruapotiki boy, he do things his funny way. Not plan-plan like big city Two Lake boy, eh, Charlie?” Laughter again. As well something special happening, Charlie could feel it, between two boys who less than half an hour ago were state wards. But now they weren’t. Not really. Not till they were caught.

Part way into a range of bush-clad hills, George turned off
at a side road, no announcement, not a word.

“Hey, George …”

“Is all right, Charlie boy.”

The road twisted and turned as it rose steadily uphill. Hardly more than a dirt track, it gradually became almost enclosed in trees. Tall, soaring trees, alive with bird and insect song. They came to a halt at the top of a rise in an area that had been cleared by hand, and quite recently. George explained this was a place he’d camped a night or two before, a place the same Maori warrior ancestor of the run-dreams told him was here. They’d hang around here till dark, then drive on into Two Lakes, or maybe go all the way to Ruapotiki if they could get their hands on some petrol, money to buy it.

“Come,” George beckoned when they got out of the car into yet another world of stark contrast. “We save town clothes to change later. We go for walk.”

Through dense bush, and for Charlie a first-time experience. Getting scratched by growth outjutting, tripping over ground obstacles, then crossing the same stream at least, on Charlie’s not overly appreciative reckoning, a dozen times, the all of it uphill. Charlie about to bring to a halt and scream his frustrated and confused head off at the Maori boy who was so much at home in the same surroundings, when they stepped out into a natural clearing and there was a waterfall.

Fantails flitted in and out of the fine spray, and sunlight danced merrily in the cascade, and wing-rubbing insects sopranoed in the green all around.

And George just said, “Good, eh?”

And Charlie could only say, “Oh, yes.” Afraid of
his voice disturbing the serenity.

Then Charlie was wondering what on earth was a state ward doing in such a place, for it didn’t seem right. As if he did not belong, and yet George, the other state ward, acted as if this was his home. Then he thought of having been deprived all his life, by parents whose children had never experienced this kind of setting, the sheer effect it had on the mind. The heart, too. As if … as if a kid, this kid, Charlie Wilson from Appleby in Two Lakes, the state-house boy just a few hours ago a state ward, was not another kind of being, a stranger to this scenery, its deepness, and feeling like he didn’t fit. Which is why George put an arm around him when he began sobbing, and didn’t say a word, didn’t need to, that he, George, understood why a boy was crying. No need for words. The arm around was much better anyway, said everything that words couldn’t.

They left a few hours later, hardly a word spoken, just enjoying being at one with whatever it was back there. Nature? Just the quiet? Charlie didn’t know. He knew only that this friend of few words was trying to tell him something at every moment, if only he’d stop to listen.

And yet … and yet, sitting in Mr Dekka’s stolen car as they waited for the last of the sun to die, even as the changing shadows threw fascinating light on George’s silent features, and the tree world and hillscape outside offered ever-decreasing hues of light, Charlie was looking at his friend wondering if there wasn’t something he wasn’t telling Charlie. Like a secret. An unbearable one, too.

“George? Ya think when we’re both older we’ll
understand a lot more?”

Took George some while to answer, as if he was in an elsewhere.

“Yeah. Hope so, Charlie. But wonder sometimes. You know, Mr Dekka, he not understand. Still a kid in some part of him, yeh? Mr Davis, even Mr Davis, he kid, too. Part of him still kid, eh? So maybe we grow up more understand. Maybe not, eh, Charlie?”

“I hope we do, George.”

“Yeah. Me, too, Charlie. Now, I think time to go again.”

It was eight o’clock by the time they drove into Two Lakes. It looked familiar and yet so different, all lit up, not too many cars. No sign of cops. They drove to Charlie’s street. Charlie excited at being so close to his old friends, but with a job to do. Yet hoping he’d set eyes on Becky Royal, just to wave at her and, of course, get her smile in return. George waited while Charlie got a friend to make contact with his big brother Roger to come out. Roger came all right, and he was not very pleased. Well he was, at seeing Charlie, but not at the circumstances. But he gave Charlie money anyway, enough to buy petrol and get some food. And he clicked his tongue at his younger brother, with a half smile, half a sad eye. Then he did something he’d never done as far as Charlie remembered: he hugged Charlie goodbye. And told him he hoped this life was going to work out for him.

“Someday. Eh, fourteen-year-old brother who wants to be eighteen like me. See you.”

Funny look from the fulla at the petrol station. But
George put him off asking questions by saying something to him in Maori. Put an end to him, a white man. Filled up with petrol and stomachs on pies, two each, and a big bottle of drink, still with the fulla giving them a suspicious eye. They drove out of Two Lakes. It wasn’t far before George turned off, another dirt road, but this time two mere headlight beams in a world otherwise pitch black. George drove very slowly. Then he went off the road, bumped over knee-high growth for a bit, then stopped. His voice came from the half gloom, “We get out now, Charlie. Car no good anymore.”

“But we filled it with petrol only a few miles back,” Charlie completely mystified, though at least he had the prior knowledge that usually he just needed to catch up to George, so he got out.

“Now, push — hard, Charlie.”

“What?!”

“Car go over cliff down there.”

“But why?”

“Dekka car. Hate Dekka. Utu, you heard of utu? Revenge. Push.”

They watched as the car suddenly fell off the edge of the world, lights still on, this plunging, bouncing, runaway of shape illuminated by itself, all the way down to some far below where it came to a rest, on its side, as this fallen beast with its eyes as yellow rays staring its last. They watched till the lights grew dim, no need to wait for the end. “We hike-hitch, eh, Charlie?”

“Well, you can hike-hitch and I’ll hitch-hike,” Charlie laughing. Adding, “Boy, you’re hard to keep up with. What next?”

Next was the journey’s end, Ruapotiki; two boys walking along a dusty road — it must be dusty by the padding sound their feet made — where a little cluster of house lights shone and came nearer and nearer, a contrast to the dying lights of Mr Dekka’s car, with George not saying one word, not one.

Next was the second time the two boys had split up. George told Charlie he must wait at this very spot and not move, not even if he heard the cops coming. “You stay.” Then the night took him, as he went towards the nearest house.

For what felt like hours, Charlie stood and stared at the house outline till its lights finally went out. And he heard, faintly, voices in urgent exchange, then he heard a vehicle start, and watched the lights of its departure. He wondered what George had said to get everyone out of the house. He thought he saw and heard so many things, because — well, the circumstances. A morepork on the haunting call. Some insects like soprano singers — oh, I know: from
Sweeny
Todd,
the play Mr Davis took us to. Oh, yes, Charlie remembering the set, the insight into a magical world of characters and sung lines of dialogue. The whole world is magical, if you want it to be. Or it just is whether you want or not.

So this world here is magical, too, in Ruapotiki, with every light now gone out, though not the stars up there, never them, they’ve shone down on men, and women, and boys, for all of time. Right, Charlie? Right. He waved to the stars. Then he heard the crackling sound, and watched the glow as it increased.

Then it was a blazing inferno. And yet he still heard
the sound of an approach, but did not ignore the instructions from George to hold his ground. Anyway it was George. And he was smiling in the bright firelight, which was obviously of his making.

The shadows thrown on his face by the fire were half moons, little crescents of dark against the shine of skin, but the teeth gleaming white, as the background was a roaring red and yellow. Like the sun was coming up out of the ground.

“Freed— what you call it again, Charlie?”

“Freedom?”

“Freedom. Freedom, eh, Charlie? No more kehua make me come back here.”

So that was it, by burning the house, George was getting rid of the makutu, the curse. As if reading Charlie’s thoughts George grinned.

“Makutu burn with house. I free now. Now, we go to cops.”

“Cops? What for, cops?”

“To make George free of last thing.”

“What, the rape you got sent to Riverton for?”

“Oh, yes. I forgot that. Yes, that, too. But to — I dunno how to say it. Dekka. To tell cops on Dekka.”

“For doing what?”

“He touch me. All the time he doing bad thing to me, Charlie. Tell me is the way of getting ghost to go way. Bad thing, Charlie. But now his turn be state ward, eh, Charlie? And us, maybe they let us free when they know of Dekka. Freed— what, Charlie?”