Ārama

Aunty Kat was taking me and Beth to town for school stuff. I told her we would need Duraseal, and she looked on the list and said it was an optional extra. Then she said we’d see.

She parked on the main street and we got out of the car. Outside the stationery shop there was a man with a shaven head and a long dark red outfit – sort of like a cape, but not. Sort of like a sheet. Like he was wearing sheets in the street.

‘Would you like to buy a wonderful book?’ he said, smiling at Aunty Kat. His skin was so warm and soft looking.

‘Not today,’ Aunty Kat said.

‘What’s it about?’ Beth asked.

‘World peace – how you can create world peace by creating it in your home.’

‘How much is it?’ Beth asked.

‘Whatever you can afford or you’d like to give,’ the man said. ‘Preferably about five dollars to at least cover printing costs.’

Beth elbowed me. ‘I reckon we could use a bit of world peace, huh, Django?’

I didn’t have any pocket money this time round and so I didn’t answer.

Beth looked at Aunty Kat. ‘Can you buy it for us and we’ll pay you back?’

‘I would. I just don’t have any change – or cash on me.’

The man reached into his pocket and whipped out a little thing that looked like a TV remote. ‘You can pay with Eftpos.’

Beth clapped. Aunty Kat’s face went a dull colour like a cloud had passed over and covered up the sun.

She rummaged in her handbag and started counting out coins. She held a handful to him. He unzipped a bumbag and took the money and put it in. He handed the little book to Beth. ‘Eternal blessings,’ he said.

‘Wow, look,’ she held it out to me. The book was shiny and it had a picture of a sunset and a small boat and the people in it were rowing to an island with palm trees. They looked like they were escaping, which meant the world was probably not peaceful.

‘Right,’ Aunty Kat said as we walked away, ‘I’m in charge now.’

‘Eternal blessings,’ Beth said.

We went to the stationery shop.

The Duraseal section was bigger than the last time. There were so many to choose from. I spotted one I’d had before with surfboards that Tauk had picked out for me.

I took a roll and ran back with it to Aunty Kat. She said it looked expensive and wanted to see the shelf it came from.

I took her to it and pointed – $4.99, the label said.

‘Then sorry, but no.’

On the way home we stopped for dollar mixes, which Beth said she would definitely pay for this time. I didn’t want to go into the dairy.

‘Get me one, though, and check for two Eskimos at least,’ I said.

I stayed in the car watching people walk by. Old ladies and old men. Mums. Dads. Families.

A little boy dropped his ice cream on the footpath when he came out of the dairy, and he started crying. A dog walked by, stopped to sniff the ice cream on the ground, licked it and snaffled it up. The little boy tried to kick the dog and fell over. I hadn’t laughed when the boy dropped his ice cream because I felt sad for him, but by the time he got himself round to kicking the dog and landing on his butt I couldn’t help myself. The little boy’s mummy saw me laughing and gave me a mean look through the window, then she picked the kid up and stormed off with him as he went at her with his tiny fist. Why didn’t she just go and buy the poor little guy another ice cream?

Aunty Kat and Beth were taking a long time in the dairy, but I was cool with watching all the people walk up and down the streets, in and out of shops, and my window was cracked down enough that I could hear people’s voices. I heard bits of things. Mashed potato and sausages for … Do we need milk? No. What about bread? Did you take the dog …

Then I heard a voice that I thought I knew.

It sounded like Taukiri. I sat up quick in my seat and looked out the window. But I couldn’t see him. I got out of the car and climbed up to stand on the car bonnet and get a better look. Turning into the park, over the street, there was a dude in a green hoodie carrying a guitar.

Could be, but I needed to get closer.

I jumped down from the car and ran over the road. A car screeched to stop for me. I didn’t look, I kept running. I ran into a lady who batted me with her handbag and grumbled something. I didn’t look. I kept running. The hoodie guy went into the park. There were a lot of trees and I couldn’t decide if I should turn left or right. I turned left, which brought me to a bridge crowded with people throwing bread to the ducks. I zigzagged, under and through them all, elbowing and pushing when I needed to. I heard the sound of music being played. Guitar. I ran up a small path to follow the music.

My running was too loud. I couldn’t hear. I started to walk.

The music was coming between so many other things now – ducks quacking, people talking, kids laughing, babies crying – that I lost where it was coming from. I stopped and closed my eyes. I heard it again. I opened my eyes and walked towards it. It got louder. My hands were shaking quite bad and I had a funny feeling in my tummy. When I turned the next corner I saw a group of older kids sitting together playing instruments. There were a lot of them. Some were smoking, some were lying in the grass. Two, sitting beside each other, had drums. A girl was singing. Three more were playing hackey.

Then I saw the green-hoodie guy, hunched over a guitar, with his back to me. I ran towards him. Ran like I never had before. Don’t know why, but I started yelling Taukiri’s name. My tummy was telling me I was right. The excited feeling in it was telling me I was right.

My brother had come here to get me but we hadn’t been home. We had been in town buying books and here he was now and luckily I saw him in town because he might have left altogether thinking I was gone and it was so lucky I had found him and he would be so happy.

As I was running I yelled his name again but he didn’t look up from his guitar. Tripping on my own feet I flew right into his back with a thud, his name flying out of my mouth. He turned and looked down at me. Everyone was quiet. Staring.

He had bum fluff and brown eyes. Pimples.

‘Ouch, punk,’ he said. ‘Watch where you going. Shit.’

He rubbed his back, frowned at me. One of the boys who had been playing the drum stood up and gave me his hand to help me stand.

‘Who’s Taukiri, little dude? You lost?’

I shook my head.

‘You okay?’

I looked down at my hands.

‘You here with someone?’

Kept looking down at my hands. Everyone was quiet.

Walked away, looked back though. Saw drum boy hit green-hoodie guy on the back of his head.

‘Hey. What’s that for?’

‘Being a dick. Just play, egg.’

The music started again. Drum boy was good, and nice, like Taukiri. Green-hoodie guy was shit on guitar. Taukiri was way better.

At the car Aunty Kat was looking around and stopping people walking by. ‘Have you seen a boy wearing a …’ Then she spotted me across the street, and she ran and hugged me real tight. It was the best hug she’d ever given me. Then she yelled. And that felt good too. I didn’t say anything, just let her carry on at me with her arm around my shoulders as she crossed the road. Holding me like I was a little bit special.

I gave Beth one of my Eskimos for the ride back to the farm.

Sometimes the excited feeling in my stomach is right, like it was with that bird Taukiri made me pray for.

Tauk put me in charge of getting the box. ‘A shoebox, or something.’

I found Mum. ‘Tauk needs another box for another bird.’

‘He must raid nests, the number of birds he’s found.’

‘And killed.’

Mum turned to me shocked then. ‘He doesn’t kill them. They die.’ She opened a cupboard, searched the shelves. No shoebox.

I remembered the chocolate box I gave Taukiri once. It had pictures of stuff Taukiri liked glued to it. Waves and sun and me and him hanging out.

I took it out to him.

‘Perfect.’

He wanted to leave the golden foil in, because birds were used to living high up close to the sun and might like the shiny foil. We put bits of hay, old grass and weeds into the box.

‘I have a good feeling,’ he said.

The pink bird looked pretty much dead in its new home.

Taukiri fed it with a dripper at first, then after a week – the longest he had ever kept one of our baby birds alive – he said to me, ‘Needs real food now.’

He took a yoghurt pottle outside and came back with it filled with worms and other crawling things.

‘You know what a mummy bird does?’ he asked. I shook my head.

‘A mummy bird would eat all this,’ he lifted the pottle, ‘and then spew it back up, into the baby’s mouth.’

‘Really?’ My mouth was already open wide, even before he lifted the worm and dangled it over his mouth, looking at me out the corner of his eye.

‘No. No. Please. No.’

He closed his eyes, ‘Sorry. Sorry. Don’t look.’

‘No. Don’t do it.’

He lowered the worm to his mouth.

Then laughing, dropped it on the counter, picked up a knife, ‘Look away if you want.’

I didn’t.

He lifted the pottle and shook out two little spiders, a worm, a moth and a caterpillar. Before they could get away he slammed the knife down flat on them then started chopping. He stuffed the bits through the little holes in Mum’s garlic presser. The caterpillar and worm oozed through. He shook the oozy bits – the crunchy bits stuck in the presser – and they oozed out onto a milk-bottle lid.

I spat into it. ‘Might help,’ I said.

Taukiri sang to the little bird. Just sang and sang. Every song I’d ever heard him sing or heard on the radio all mashed together like worms and spiders and bugs. The song about Alice, the one about gypsies, the rainbow one, waiata and Bob Marley ones, Justin Bieber and Tupac and ‘Jingle Bells’ and campfire songs.

The little bird opened its mouth. ‘Ha, look at that,’ Tauk said. ‘It worked.’

Tauk built a sort of cage so that the bird was a bit safer in the chocolate box, but he left the top open, which I said was a dumb idea, and I was right. One day I took up the squashed-up worms and spiders for breakfast, and it was gone.

Today, I felt that buzz, like I was right about something.

About green-hoodie guy being Taukiri, and that things were really going to get suddenly better. Better big-time. Maybe better big-time was still on its way.

Mum had put the chocolate box into the rubbish. I found it. I took it out, laid it on my window to get sun. I sprayed it with Mum’s perfume. The smell of hay and bird didn’t come out, though, and the pictures had gone blotchy in places. I glued new photos of me and him on the top and under the lid. More waves. More sun. A picture of a tūī from a National Geographic.

‘I saved it from the rubbish,’ I said to Taukiri when I gave it back.

‘Thank you, my man.’ He held the box up. ‘Wow,’ he said.