Drowned Sprat and Other Stories Page 4
‘Where’re you from?’ I asked them. Wherever it was, they saw a lot of sun. The man had creases round his eyes deep enough to hide your finger in, but he was maybe only the same age as Dad. ‘Nyu Zillun,’ the man said. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a little green monster with hopeless crippled legs and saucer eyes. It was made of plastic, but it wasn’t a Pokemon. ‘A tuckie,’ said the lady, as he gave it to me.
‘You keep it,’ said the man.
‘What’s it for?’ I turned it over. A tuckie from Nyu Zillun. ‘What’s it used for?’ It had a hole in the top of its head. The lady looked at the man.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you can put a string through here and wear it around your neck.’
‘We’ve got big ones like this at home, at Mardi people’s meeting houses,’ said Ray.
‘Real ones?’ I asked.
The lady nodded and said sternly to her husband, ‘Those aren’t tuckies, Ray, those are tekoteko.’
I made a promise to myself never to go to Nyu Zillun, wherever it is. Maybe these Mardis keep these tuckies as pets and they’re probably real bad-tempered. With little bent legs like this they can’t possibly run around; they’d be bored and grouchy like my mother was. Maybe they shoot at them for sport and that’s why they’ve got holes in their heads.
‘Is that your dad?’ The lady pointed at Chuck.
‘Christ, no,’ I said, and out of habit looked round to see if anybody had heard me. In Harbor Lights you can cuss all you like. In Zion you can’t — they’re real religious. You can’t buy a drink and you don’t say Christ ’less you’re praying. My dad used to be religious, but after Mom died he was that mad at God he gave it away.
‘Where’s your mum?’ asked the lady. I shrugged. Who knows the answer to that one? Her last year she was as mean as a crosseyed snake. Maybe she’s gone to hell.
‘You should ask her to wash your hair,’ the lady said, though she was looking at my fingers, which were smeary, now I looked at them.
‘For heaven’s sake, Kathy,’ muttered Ray, then, ‘You can’t help yourself, can you?’
‘Is that your mother?’ Now she was pointing at Candy, and I don’t know what made me do it, but I nodded. ’Course I used to wish Candy was my mother, maybe because I saw more of her than any other lady, least since Dad took me out of Zion School — ’cause of all the claptrap, he said.
‘Kathy,’ the man sounded tetchy, ‘it’s none of your business. Have a break from it, will you?’
‘Why have you come to Zion?’ I asked, forgetting for a moment that we’d crossed the town line and weren’t in Zion at all.
‘We’re on our way to Wisconsin,’ said Kathy, ‘to visit my sister. She’s married to a farmer there. We’ve driven up from Chicago.’
‘Oh, I’d sure like to go to Chicago,’ I told them. Even though it’s so close to Zion we never went there, Dad and I, because Dad isn’t much of a traveler. Over the top of her beer glass Kathy widened her eyes like Candy can’t never do. Maybe she thought it was weird I’d never been. ‘I got no cause to go there, though,’ I added, because that’s what Dad says. Kathy pushed her glass towards her husband like she wanted another beer. He read the signs and went to the bar while the tuckie danced around on Pinkie’s nose.
‘Welcome to the family,’ said Pinkie. He doesn’t talk much and I was so taken up with listening to him I hardly noticed Kathy was talking again.
‘In Nyu Zillun I look after kuds like you,’ she was saying.
‘What’s a kud?’
‘Girls like you,’ she went on, ‘who might be having a hard time at home.’ She kept flicking her eyes over to the bar to make sure her husband wasn’t coming back yet, like she didn’t want him to hear.
‘The Welfare, you mean?’ I asked her. I checked on Dad. He was doing the usual thing, lining up his empties on the table, him and Bob and Chuck just sitting and staring at a spot above each other’s heads, like a fly was hovering there or something. He wouldn’t like me talking to Welfare.
‘You must spend a lot of time in here, eh?’ she said, ‘with your mother working as a barmaid.’
I nodded. It was interesting being Candy’s daughter.
‘When we get home at night she makes me a Chocomilk,’ I told her, and it was lovely, snuggled up with Candy on the sofa, sleepy and warm, Pinkie and the tuckie and Candy and me.
‘Have you got a father?’ Kathy asked, quickly. Her husband was nearly finished at the bar; he was paying Candy for the beers.
‘Christ, no. He ran off with a girl with false titties,’ I told her, ‘and not only that, but she’d had injections in her lips so she’d be better at kissing him and what all. That’s what Mom told me.’
Kathy’s eyes spronged out of her head.
‘But she doesn’t miss him at all, on account of him having the brains of a night-bug.’
Kathy laughed then, and all the skin round her eyes and mouth loosened up, like it was worry that had held it tight before. I smiled back at her and put the tuckie away in my jeans pocket. ‘Would you like me to write you a letter from Nyu Zillun?’ she asked.
‘What for?’
‘Here.’ She took a pen and notebook out of her bag. ‘You write down your address and I’ll send you a pretty card. How old are you, dear?’
‘Eleven.’ I used the back of Pinkie’s head to press on. He didn’t mind so much, especially now I’d put the tuckie away in my pocket. I guess he thought it was being disrespectful, jumping up and down on his nose like that.
‘That’s an interesting way to spell Ezekiel,’ Kathy said, ‘and Avenue.’
‘Spelling schmelling,’ I said. That’s Dad’s joke — he can’t spell neither. But the lady raised her eyebrows like a schoolteacher. The froth on the two beer glasses wobbled as Ray set them down.
‘Would you like a Coke or a limonade, young Whoosit?’ he asked.
‘No thanks,’ I said, straight away. Never accept anything from anybody, Dad says. There’s hardly anyone left who thinks this way now, everybody’s a charity case, he says, the world makes it that way, but we ain’t and never shall be Amen.
But my mouth watered.
‘Have you had your tea yet?’ asked Kathy.
‘Tea?’ I asked.
‘Your evening meal,’ she said, and her husband talked over the top of her, saying, ‘Here endeth the interrogation. We’re on holiday, for chrissake.’
‘Oh — do you look after kuds like me who might be heving a hard toime too?’ I asked him, all wide-eyed and innocent like I didn’t realize I was mimicking his old wife. I’m the best at that — I used to mimic our pastor and have Dad in stitches. Maybe I helped Dad lose his respect for him.
There was thunder in the air. I used to smell it when Mom and Dad were going to fight. Best thing is to tie Pinkie’s paws back round your neck and heave off someplace else.
‘See ya,’ I said.
I went to the pickup and lay down on Pinkie for a pillow and turned the tuckie over and over in the light. At the edges the green plastic was thin and glowing and tasty-looking. I put it in my mouth and sucked it like a candy.
After a while Chuck came out and tried all the doors but I’d locked them, of course. I only needed to wake up with him slobbering all over me once to learn that lesson.
‘You go out there at night, you lock all the doors,’ Candy told me afterwards.
Chuck mouthed bad words at me through the glass but I just ignored him. Pinkie put his head up, though, and danced rudely around, back and forth. He allus does that until Chuck shuts up and goes away. Then Pinkie did a terrible fart on account of having had a whole mini-sak of Dunkin’ Donuts for supper and I had to wind the window down a crack. I’m mighty glad I did, because otherwise I wouldn’t have heard the Nyu Zillunites.
‘So she was lying?’ Kathy was saying, her voice all trembly.
‘Like a pro,’ said Ray. ‘Her father told me all about it in the men’s room. Mother died two years ago of cancer. Lot of it round here and
the locals think it’s because of the power plant. Leaks, apparently.’ There was a pause then. I could hear their car keys jangling.
‘And?’ said Kathy.
‘So the kud lives with her father. He drinks a lot — but I think he loves her.’ The car doors opened. ‘Doesn’t send her to school, though.’
‘I’ll ring them from Wisconsin,’ said Kathy.
‘Ring who? It’s none of your business!’
‘Ring whoever it is who takes care of cases like this —’ and maybe she kept talking then, but I couldn’t hear her, because the doors shut. They drove away.
I never got a pretty card from her and so far Welfare haven’t been on our case any more than normal. Might be because I never told her my name. I’ve still got the tuckie — I did what she said and tied it round my neck. Now and then I worry about those real tuckies and wonder if Kathy looks after them too. They can’t have much of a life, lying round with their useless legs and being shot at by the Mardis. This little guy has a much better time, right here in Zion, with me.
Oy Joy
Some nights I can hear him calling from out in the bay, from beyond the Big Rock. If I said that to anyone, like old Valmai down the beach; if I told her that after a few gins, or at least after she’d had enough gins to shut up and listen to me, she’d say, ‘It’s just the wind.’
Some nights when I hear him it is windy, but some nights it’s as still as the swamp, black, the sky showing starry in the sea. Besides, the call isn’t ‘Woo–ooo’ like in Pommy fairy stories or Yank cartoons; it’s not like a mermaid or a ghost or something; it’s more like a bark — a harsh, deep, double-shot ‘Au Au!’ I hear it like that, the first time anyway. The second time it might be clearer: ‘Oy Oy’. If it goes on after that he goes the extra mile and puts in the J: ‘Oy Joy!’
He used to call me a lot when he was alive — call me from down the beach if he wanted a knife or something, if he was gutting the fish, or if he wanted the sharpening stone. Or if he’d forgotten the scaler, or needed a clean bucket to bring the fish up to the house. He’d call me from down on the beach, below the pohutukawas, under the cliffs, ‘Oy Joy!’ He was a big man with a loud voice — not particularly deep, but the sort of voice that could carry through reinforced concrete or a strong offshore westerly, if he wanted it to. Penetrating is what you’d call it.
‘Joy!’ And I’d slap on my hat double-quick so’s not to annoy him, tie it on under my chin for the wind and hurry down to see what he wanted. He’d have all the catch in the bottom of the boat, pulled up on the hard sand, thirty-pound schnappers sometimes. He was a good fisherman, though I wouldn’t say he had a feel for it. When you have a feel for something you have a bit of compassion — you know, the fishermen who have a feel for it always knock a struggling fish on the head to put it out of its misery. The only time I ever saw Barry put something out of its misery it was an octopus he’d got in the net. By the time I got down to the beach he had it laid out on the hard sand and was bashing it with the gaffer. It didn’t wriggle around; it just lay there while he bashed its poor, heavy, shining, purple head, bloody on the sand.
‘Why’re you killing that, Barry?’ I asked him. We weren’t going to eat it — no need to, with all that schnapper. Besides, Barry thought octopus was wog food.
He’d looked up at me then — I’d broken his murderous concentration — and it was so pathetic, really, what the octopus did. It reached up with one of its clammy legs, reached up and softly curled around the hand that held the gaffer, like it was pleading for mercy. It was as if the octopus and I were thinking the same thing as we looked at Barry. He gave up then: stood and kicked the thing back into the waves. Don’t suppose it lived — they’ve got soft heads, octopuses, and he’d been at it a while before I came down.
Oy Joy. I’ve been hearing it a lot more lately, since my son bought me the remote for the TV, the thing you point at it to shut up the ads. Some nights I don’t bother with it. The TV’s around the corner from the kitchen, so I wouldn’t be able to hear the ads finish and I might miss a bit of my programme. That’s why I never put the mute on if I’m getting my tea. Tea usually takes two ad breaks if I put the kettle on in the first one. In the second one I have to move quickly, slap a bit of corned beef or luncheon sausage on a plate and a tomato or something. Never fish. I don’t eat fish any more and it’s a blessed relief. I was sick of the taste — all those ruddy schnapper and parore and kingis and flounder from over at the river. It wasn’t just the taste, though. There were other reasons for why I’d started to gag at the sight of it — the boat coming in laden, summer and winter, oh yes. I’d given it up before he died. Quite a while. Since the octopus. That’s why Barry had killed it, you see, because it had been eating his fish in the net. I decided it could have my fish, all the fish it wanted.
It’s when I’m sitting quiet, though, and using my new thing to shut off the ads, that’s when I hear it. Doesn’t matter which way the wind is, which side of the house the windows are open: ‘Oy!’ — impatient.
Barry, Barry! Sometimes I answer him, not out loud, just in my head, while the cleaning fluids and cars and kids in nappies flash on the telly. It’s better to answer him, I’ve found, then he shuts up for a bit. Otherwise he goes on and on, when I’m tucked up in bed at the other end of the big fibro house — ‘Oy Joy!’ I suppose I could ask him what he wants.
I’ve always been an anxious person, not the sort of person people are drawn to. The look of me gives it away — I look anxious: thin, pale, hunched over worse now the old bones have started to crumble. Always sickening for something. Drove Barry wild. I’ve been better since he died. Still not an ounce of flesh on me, though.
‘Christ, Joy,’ he said once, some time in the seventies, ‘you’ve got less flesh on you than a leatherjacket.’
Slept in the spare room after that, like I still do. Nothing would induce me to move back, even though he’s dead, though most would say the main room view’s a better one. It’s got the sea and Big Rock. From my room there’s a view of the brown hills, a line of pines and the front end of the farmer’s place, his boat and dogs, flash car. It’s the dry view I prefer. Besides, it stinks of fish in the main bedroom, like a bit of bait’s rolled out of his pocket, or a fish eye’s come unblobbed from his shirt and dropped under the duchess. Like it always used to smell, even though I scrubbed the room out after he died.
My son comes up here every few days from his place down on the beach, to mow the lawn on his little ride-on mower, and after he’s driven round and round on the lawn he comes inside and cleans his dad’s room. There’s nothing Rex likes more than cleaning a room that’s already clean, or mowing a lawn that’s already shaved nearly bare. He’s a good, clean boy, not afraid of soap and water, though he’s seeing too much of old Valmai and her gin bottle. I’ve seen him from up here, going into her place at eleven in the morning, staggering out after three to go home and sleep it off. Then he wakes up and makes his tea and watches telly, cleaning bits of his house during the ad breaks.
He’s come up today, Rex has, though I haven’t told him what happened on the beach this morning. He doesn’t even know I went down the beach when it was just light.
‘Oy Joy!’ It had been going on all night, so often that I stuffed the new thing down the cushions and let the ads blare. Barry got quite frantic — never sounded any closer, though. You’d think, if it was his spirit or whatever, it’d come in, it’d cross the bay and zoom in like his tin dinghy used to, laden, low in the water. Tried to tell myself to be with Valmai on this one, what she said, that it’s probably the wind, whistling through a hole in Big Rock; that it’s a trick of the wind, the wind being a clever dick — it’s not something it does normally, not loud enough to hear it from the other side of the bay. And if it was Barry, wouldn’t he come up to the house, stand invisible behind my chair, before leaning forward to whisper ‘Oy Joy’? I might even get a warning he was there before he said anything — get a whiff of him, salt or grog. If it was
him he’d come up here, wouldn’t he? If it was me he was calling.
Anyway, last night it kept up after I’d gone to bed, read a bit of my library book and turned out the light. Even though I told myself it was only the wind, it unsettled me. I was unsettled, tossed and turned, got up, went to the lav, went back to bed, turned on the light, read a bit more, listened out.
Oy Joy.
It was a thunderclap that woke me, between here and the hills, above the land, empty dry thunder. I went across the hall to the main bedroom to see if the weather was coming in from the sea. It wasn’t raining yet, but the sky had that heavy purple look like it might. It was more a night sky, more as if the sun was about to go down behind the hills in the west, rather than rise above Big Rock in the east; more like it was the end of the day than the beginning of one.
Barry’s gumboots were by the back door. After he popped them I wore them, usually with thick socks so they fit. Took me ages to get the fish smell out of them — baking soda, Chemico, Jeyes fluid, the sun — never thought I would, then suddenly, one day, it had gone. Barefoot inside them I slipped about a bit. Got my raincoat on over my nightie and went out past the goat and the loo block to the beach, down the sandy slipway, along in front of the houses. High tide this morning, a storm tide, so I had to walk on the pebbles where they were thrown up in a cyclone in ’93 and never drawn down again. I looked in Valmai’s window — there she was still in her chair, mouth open, TV a blue-gleaming blob through the salt frost on her glazing.
Along the beach it got louder — ‘Oy Joy!’ Couldn’t possibly be the wind, though it might be a noise come from waves forcing themselves between two rocks, slapping hard as planks of wood. Up the Maori end of the beach I stopped, by the cliffs. Thought I couldn’t get any further because of the tide. But I watched the surf and saw that the draw-back was so hard, it had a real suck to it, so I could time it, run across the wet sand in Barry’s boots, and climb the cliff rocks before the next wave came. That’s when I lost the boots, one after the other, coming off behind me. I couldn’t stop for them or it’d break over my head — I had to keep going. The wave loomed, grey as a kahawai curling above me, and I only just made it. The suck took the boots out.