The Bone People (40 page)

"Well, glad to meet you Hymornah ehh Simon... my name's Dave, by the way."

"Kerewin;" says Kerewin, and Joe says, "I'm Joe."

"Great," says Dave. "Now, what'll you have, Simon? What does he drink?" to Joe.

"He'll tell you," he says, and lifts his child onto a bar stool. Simon writes PIA on his pad.

"No way," says Joe firmly, and the barman cranes in for a look. "You write good and neat," he says to Simon,

"izzat Maori?" The boy nods and prints BEER beside it.

Dave laughs. "Hey neat!" He taps the jug. "But I can't give you any, sorry, Simon... the cops wouldn't like it.

I'll look the other way if your Dad gives you a sip of his, though." He winks at them all.

"He won't get any of mine... though it's good to meet a barman like yourself who doesn't treat children as

though they're some kind of exotic germ."

"Aw well, this is a bit different from the cities eh?" his quick look at them conveys, With gear like that, you're not country people. "Nobody minds a kiddie being in the bar provided someone's looking after it.

Better that than leave them at home uncared for, or stuck out by themselves in a car, isn't it?"

"O yes," say Kerewin and Joe in unison, and when Joe pours the beer out, he avoids Simon's eyes.

"We'll get you a coke or something, okay?" and the boy writes O YES. "Ah smartass," and pushes the beerjug out of his reach.

"Have one with us, Dave?" asks Kerewin.

"I wouldn't say no," pouring himself a seven ounce from their jug, "that's very kind of you, I'll shout the next one, cheers."

Swallow, swallow, swallow.

"Ah look, we've forgotten Simon... did he decide on a drink, Joe?"

"Make it a coke, eh."

"On the house," says Dave, and winks again. "Wouldn't get it like that in the cities, now would you?"

"Not even in the best pubs," Kerewin says solemnly, while Joe thinks of Whangaroa, Population 4000 give or take a dog or two, and gives the man his widest whitest smile.

The regulars trickle in. They say Gidday to Dave, grin to the boy, nod to her and Joe, and settle down at their

accustomed tables.

Motley bunch, she thinks. Fishermen. Farmhands. The odd truckie. And barflies... like that one there.

A big man, face purple, belly protruding, legs thick with oedema, delivering words in a permanent alcoholic

slur.

Sad. One in every bar. Widowed or unmarried, gone beyond taking care. I should be warned maybe.

But the jug gets less: the glass is full again. Down and drown it goes. Our third to date, and he's grinning

happily as he gets us another.

Sim's still with the toothrot, but cannily lining his vulnerable gut with potato chips. Neat kid, taking a single

crisp at a time and eating it as though it's a communion bread. Sip of softdrink. Then licking the salt off his

fingers. Grinning to me, and then back he. swings to his da, corroborating all he says with showoff gestures.

Me, still morose, although the beer is beginning to help me deny it.

Dave serving a new one, bang the angostura, swish a glass... pink gins coming up. The recipient has a high

and tenor laugh and a midbaritone belch, and he swishes too.

Motley the locals may be, they're a helluva lot more tolerant than some other small country pubs I've known.

There he goes, bending down to his friend, eyelashes fluttering before he sits. Right on, fella....

Did I say tolerant? Next door to them is a fat fellow with a carpenter's folded rule stuck in his rear pocket.

Sour and sneering, getting up obviously and pushing rudely past them to the bar. He bears tattoos on his arm

muscles like they're emblems of the brave, and he's got a paunch like a sponge pregnancy, overhanging the

double ledge of his hips, overlapping his belt in a full flabby fall. Yech. And you can quit trying to sneer on

me, mate.

She looks away, hearing Dave, "Wait your hurry now, wait your hurry, I'll get to you in a minute."

Joe's in conversation with a trio, all taking fish and prices and weather flat tack. And they've got Sim deep in

the chat with them. Ho hum... what was that about comfort? Ah hell, the drink'll bring it, and they seem

happy enough.

Talk seethes round her, coming in peculiar snatches.

"He's gone queer and he always was a queer bastard. Now he's absolutely queer, and even his housekeeper's

left him..."

"... and her with muscles like a chicken's instep, not to mention tits like nothing at all, eh. So I--"

"Hey George! Glad to see you're still in the land of the living you old..." mumble mumble mumble.

"Who's the crutches?"

"Him? He just came outa hospital falling outa --"

"Hur hur! Ter hur hur hur!"

That's a laugh? Debate, debate, relate, relate, all around the bar--

Dave comes past and fidgets with a sloppy cloth, wiping up the spill.

"Enjoying yourself, Kerewin?"

"In a quiet way, Dave."

"Your mates are cards, eh?"

"They're good company."

"Jeez, I can imagine! They've got themselves quite an audience."

"Mmmm."

He passes on to his next customer, whistling,

They have, too. Barstools ranged round them in a semicircle, the man and his boy in the middle. Joe grinning

like a hyena, and Simon showing off. Handsome Joe, brilliant sunburst shirt and maroon suit, strong hands

bracing the child against the pitch of his knees, protective and gentle. Really so... and the brat leans against

them, sure of his perch, happy child pretty as a picture. And who'd believe, under the flowery silk and fresh

blue denim, the fine skin is keloid scars and seams from welt laid on welt? Them?

mentally thumbing the grinning chattering crowd,

They probably think this is the normal routine--

She sweeps up the rest of Simon's chips and eats them sourly.

I think I'll go home soon. I can drink by myself in as good company as here.

"See y'gain." "Hooray." "Chalk it up will ya, Dave?" "Rightio then." "O David," the willowy man, back again with his two pink gins. He smiles briefly at her, and goes on arranging his change in graduating rows on the

bar-top.

She stands up, brushing beads of beer and chip-crumbs off her trousers.

Have a mimi, grab a couple of half g's, and walk back. Or shall I take the car, and leave them loot for a taxi?

"Excuse me," trying to force a way through the crush round the bar.

"Hey Kerewin, you ready to go?" calls Joe.

"In a minute," she doesn't look round.

When she gets back, Joe is standing, Simon in his arms, saying goodbyes to his circle. There's a general

chorus of "Aw" and "The night's just begun, mate," and "What's the hurry?"

Except for our fat carpenter friend, she notes.

Lips raised in a sneer, he is glad the strangers are going. As she goes to the bar to ask Dave for the half g's, he

says quite loudly, About bloody time, too. Stinkin' leslies and Mahries and that bloody little freak."

She swings round to him, and he goes on sneering, eyes and lips now, not words. His shoulders jut under her

scrutiny.

"Got an uncivil tongue, fella," she places her hands together, rocking slightly, back and forwards on the balls of her feet.

"Yurr."

"Inarticulate with it?"

"Shut yer bloody fancy words," he spits a flake of tobacco off his tongue, and says to the barman, "Fill me glass."

"In a minute," says Dave coldly, suddenly in front of Kerewin. He whispers, "Don't mind him, he's got a bit of a grudge against the world."

"So have I," she says loudly, but seemingly equably, "So have I."

It's grown abruptly quiet, all ears tuned to her.

"Uh, can I get you a drink?" says Dave.

She doesn't say anything, staring the fat man down. He stares back, his eyes blinking. A fly comes buzzing

past in the silence.

She doesn't appear to move with haste but her left hand has captured the fly, killed it, and flicked it at her

adversary in a split second.

"Ah Kerewin," from Joe, and the silence becomes more intense.

To the onlookers, that jade-laden hand has become frightening. Any comedy about the rings has died.

Dave says haltingly, "Ah some drink?"

She turns to him, smiling. "Yeah. Say a couple of half g's?"

"Right!" The relief makes his voice ring out.

Joe moves in by her, leading Simon now. "I'll get it, e hoa... everything okay?"

"O yeah..." her smile gone.

"He-ell," says someone behind her. "What is she? Some kind of prizefighter?"

"Dunno, but it looks like it... I wouldn't like to get in the way of a punch that fast, woman or no woman," and someone else adds, "With that set of knuckledusters, hell no..." and everything else is drowned in a rising tide of talk, as the regulars regroup round the bar.

There's a gap left either side of the carpenter.

He stands, staring in at his glass where the dead fly lies.

He hasn't moved since it arrived.

"You okay now?"

"Yeah."

She stands with folded arms, watching the waves crest and break, crest and break.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for us to ignore you and that. It just happened."

"S'okay. I was in a bitch of a mood anyway. I wouldn't have been any kind of good company."

"You sure you're all right now?"

"Mmm."

He shivers. "You aren't cold?'

"Na... I'll be in in a few minutes. I just want to look at the sea

awhile.' "Right. I'll go back and see Himi doesn't steal all the grog."

"Unlikely."

"O, he's helped himself to a glass already.'

"Struth, that brat's got an unhealthy eagerness to enter into lushdom. He looked like he had some back at the

pub too."

"No, that was just high spirits... the unbottled kind eh?"

There is pleading in his voice, Laugh with me?

"Pretty good." She makes an effort and smiles at him. "I'm really all right, fella. This bad temper'll wear itself out soon. It's just, o I don't know. I keep on thinking about the things we used to do here, build fires, share

dreams, play wild and weird games, all together... and it all came to nothing, meant nothing," she ends

bleakly.

He hugs her shoulders. "E Kerewin, e Kerewin." He takes his arm away. "We could do some of those things too--"

"Yes."

He sighs.

"I'll get some tea ready... we'll see you soon?"

"Very soon."

The waves march in.

Three herring gulls lift with each breaker, settle back on the sand again as the sea streams out. An old black

back carks and skrees, fossicking along the tideline. The shags sit by their hollow mud nests on Maukiekie.

Nothing else is moving. Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing,

eating the earth--

She can hear Joe singing in the bach behind her. Then the rise and fall of his voice talking, with pauses for

the child's answers.

At the horizon, the sky has turned smoked and red: the sea out there looks as though hot blood diffuses the

water.

A cloud of midges comes weaving and dancing through the evening air, and she is suddenly precipitated back

to the day she had gone floundering in Taiaroa estuary, and fallen asleep, and woken to find nudges round her

face.

The day she came home to find a mute frightened child in her window.

It seems like years ago.

Years... and it's not much more than a couple of months since he came into my ken. I know him well, and yet

I know so

very little about him. He's been horribly scared by something in his past. He may understand some French.

He's maybe scared of needles; he was definitely scared when he realised I was listening to him sing... a

frightening secret, a thing he had kept hidden. I wonder what else he keeps hidden from me. Even from Joe.

Maybe more from Joe than me-- I know he has his own kind of courage, wry humour, an abnormal

compassion, a great capacity for love, and yet--

The colour has faded out of the sky. It is grey, becoming darker as the world turns herself round a little more.

The clouds are long and black and ragged, like the wings of storm battered dragons. Or of hokioi... huge

birds--

The bird he killed... was it beyond help? Might he have a dark streak in him, as Joe seems to think? And that

is why the violence? Flicking matches, throwing things... ah, I don't know. I don't know much about him at

all.

For that matter, how much do I know about Joe? Only what he's said, and what he's done. And what he's done

is a confused mixture of the congenial and the unpleasant. Gentle with his son, and brutal. Drunken boor and

sober wit. Too much of the past riding on his shoulders, I think. With too much of an emotional stake in the

boy to ever see him clearly, dispassionately... maybe. I don't know.

It is becoming night. Pale stars show through the gaps in the clouds.

Betelgeuse, Achenar. Orion. Aquila. Centre the Cross and you have a steady compass.

But there's no compass for my disoriented soul, only ever-beckoning ghostlights. In the one sure direction, to

the one sure end.

She shivers. She is beginning to feel very cold.

But wait here a little longer, think about it a bit more. You're involved with two strangers, different and

difficult people. You're different and difficult yourself, but strangely enough, you all get on well together. To

the extent that there can be a real fight, and forgiveness and renewed friendship after.

To what end, my soul?

Remember how horrifyingly painful it was when you and the family broke apart? So much so, that a brief

meeting with one member is enough to put you in despair. The pain is back. Be wary. Keep it a cool

friendship. Look out for the child by all means -- it's the least you can do as a human being -- but don't let