Ārama

Aunty Kat was in the passenger’s seat, and Beth and I were in the back. Tom Aiken’s car smelled like cow dung and warm cookies.

We were driving down to the Conway Flats to camp, and we were going to catch some eel. Tom Aiken would like to bring an eel back from our camping trip to smoke. He told us the only way to eat an eel was smoked, otherwise it tasted like water and mud. Beth said there was no good way to eat an eel because it tasted like S.H.I.T. Beth would eat a worm, so I trusted her opinion.

Lupo was at the window, his head out, his tongue wet, and the saliva ran off it in big thick globs. I ran my hand along his back. His fur was smooth and soft. I was so happy he was with us. I wanted him to sleep with me in my tent. But what I wanted more was for us all to sleep in one tent. Me, Beth and Lupo in the middle, and Aunty Kat and Tom Aiken on either side. Then I wouldn’t be scared at all.

At the river we pitched our tents under the trees a little way back from the river. The water was low, but we hiked upstream to a small waterhole, not much bigger than a paddling pool. Tom Aiken and Aunty Kat sat on the rocks, and me and Beth stripped down to our underwear and swam, our knees knocking the rocks on the bottom. We were eels, curling between the large rocks, scraping over the stones.

In the runover, where Aunty Kat and Tom Aiken couldn’t hear us, I decided to ask Beth something that had been bothering me.

‘Do you know what a redneck is?’

‘Yes,’ she said, but her eyes also shot up into her brain like she was scrambling for bits and pieces to put together for an answer.

‘What is it then?’

‘A person who tries to hide their bad thoughts, but their skin is so white. Like white, white like mine is. But their thoughts are so ugly, you can see them. Just in their neck, making the skin there all red and angry. ’Cause you know all skin is actually exactly the same and their neck skin has actually had quite a gutsful of keeping their secrets for them. So it shows the world. Sort of like Rudolph.’

‘You made that up.’

‘I made some of that up.’

‘I like it.’

‘Me too.’

We had two tents, one for Aunty Kat and me. One for Tom Aiken, Beth and Lupo. Beth and I were disappointed, we wanted to sleep together so we could talk. And I wanted to sleep with Lupo.

We were both peed off, so Tom Aiken said, ‘Fine, I’ll sleep with your aunty Kat then,’ and he winked at Aunty Kat, and Beth jumped up happy, but I didn’t like that idea either. I would be scared if it was just Beth and me. Aunty Kat gave Tom Aiken a little shove, and said she wouldn’t dare share a tent with him, he would probably fart and snore all night.

‘Nothing you’re not used to then, Kat,’ Tom Aiken said, and Aunty Kat looked sad. Probably because it reminded her she’d left Uncle Stu on the farm, and she was probably worried how angry he would be with her when we got home.

Her black eye looked darker with her face sad.

Tom Aiken gave her a little jab to the shoulder, ‘Cheer up, Charlie,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a word to him.’

Aunty Kat clapped her hands together, ‘Who wants a cookie then?’

Beth and I jumped up and down like we might not get one if we didn’t show her how much we really wanted it.

‘Me, me, me, me,’ we shouted. And we all ate the cookies under the trees, with Lupo watching us, wagging his tail.

‘I remember these,’ Tom Aiken said, ‘Colleen’s recipe.’

‘Who’s Colleen?’ I asked.

‘Nanny,’ Aunty Kat said.

I’d forgotten she had a real name. I always just thought of her as Nanny. ‘Where is Nanny, Aunty Kat?’

‘Gone to try bringing Koro home.’

‘But she doesn’t like to drive,’ I said.

‘I know. But Koro needs to come home.’

‘Where’s he?’

‘Rakiura.’

‘Why did he go there?’

‘Because Nanny was making him sad, and he was sad enough.’

‘What did Nanny do to make him sad?’

Aunty Kat didn’t answer, and we all chewed on our cookies quietly.

Then I asked: ‘She hasn’t gone looking for her earring, has she?’

Aunty Kat laughed. ‘Of course not.’

I felt the blood boil up into my face. It was a dumb thing to say.

Aunty Kat said, ‘You are right though. A magpie could have taken it. It really could be anywhere now. But I doubt Nanny’s looking for it. I mean, I hope not.’

‘It was my fault, not Tauk’s, that she lost it. I called Nanny.’

‘It was just a thing.’

‘Nanny said it was irreplaceable.’

‘She shouldn’t have.’

Then Tom Aiken stood up, and dusted the cookie crumbs off himself, ‘We’re going eeling, that’s what we’re going to do. And we’re gonna be warriors of the river.’

Beth and I followed Tom Aiken to the car to collect the things we would need for eeling. Beth grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear, ‘I know when he’s lying,’ she said. ‘He had much more to say than “we going eeling and river warrior, blah, blah, blah”. Ari, we gonna find out what it is he’s lying about.’ Beth squeezed my arm. ‘Don’t you worry, Django.’

Tom Aiken had a big hook-looking thing called a gaff. And a Tilley lamp, and we were waiting until it was dark and then we were going to walk up the river, with our lamp shining. Tom Aiken said we would hook the eels with the gaff, and spin them around and then bang them into the rocks, and if we had to we’d bang their heads with sticks until they were dead. Beth kept asking if it was dark enough to go yet, and Tom looked up at the sky and said not yet, and I had a yucky feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want it to get dark. Firstly because we would go into the river with hooks, and secondly because it would be dark.

I wished Taukiri was here. He always made me braver.

Aunty Kat was stacking wood for our camp fire. Tom Aiken was chopping some of the pieces up. I heard him whisper to Aunty Kat: ‘I used to go eeling with Toko, for your dad. Your dad loves smoked eel.’

Aunty Kat didn’t look up. ‘I know, Tommy.’

‘Taukiri needs to come back, Kat.’

‘It’s too much anyway, though, Tommy. For Stu. They wouldn’t get along and I’d be in the middle all the time. I just don’t have the energy for it.’

‘Fuck Stu, Kat. Fuck him.’

I felt so happy to hear Tom Aiken say that out loud, and in my head I said, Yeah. Fuck you, Uncle Stu. Then I changed it to just, Fuck you, Stu. And I wouldn’t eat a worm for it, because it was only in my head and also, he deserved it. My aunty Kat, who looked more like my mum away from the farm, had a black eye.

Uncle Stu had punched Aunty Kat in the eye. I looked at her face, then just her eye.

I thought of the words he’d said and then I could hear his voice, and I heard him say those three words while I was staring at the ceiling, pee in my pants, and I had decided they were the worst words I’d ever heard and I’ve heard so many terrible things this very long summer, but now, as I looked at Aunty Kat I heard them again, just inside my head, like now he was walking around in my brain repeating himself over and over, saying those words, and he was making parts of my brain turn out their lights to pretend they were not home so he’d leave, and that he didn’t leave, that he was okay walking around in the blackness of my brain, made my body feel so yuck, so heavy and the world so terrible, like a swamp, because in my brain he was tailing Aunty Kat, and she couldn’t find her way in the dark, and she was falling, and sinking, and drowning, and he walked behind her saying those three words over and over again: ‘You black bitch.’

‘Fuck,’ I said, like I was letting one small bee out of my mouth.‘Fuck him, the cunt.’ Like I was letting out more small bees.

And because I’d let some out, more wanted out.

‘Fuck you, Uncle Stu, you shit fuck cunt bastard. I wish you were dead, you cunt. I hate you, you redneck bitch fuck.’

No one moved. Like they were afraid of the bees now, like the bees were hovering now. And the air went like boiled honey, thick, too sweet, hurting your teeth, like the bees were feeling afraid out in the world now, and what should they do? Should they find another mouth? Should they leave now? But they just hung in the air, almost like they hoped no one saw them, but prepared to attack just in case someone did.

Beth turned her head slowly, as if she was afraid to disturb the creatures in the air and looked at Aunty Kat to see what she was going to do to me for saying those bad words.

A tear ran down Tom Aiken’s cheek.

Aunty Kat’s hand twitched. She looked up at the bees in the air and dropped the wood she was holding, and put her hands around her mouth and tilted her head up towards the hills behind the river, and she let some bees out too.

‘Fuck you, Stu, you absolute cunt,’ she yelled, and then Tom Aiken yelled, ‘You bully dickhead,’ and Beth screamed, ‘There’s a bounty on your head, Stuart Johnson.’

And then we all stood in a row, with our hands around our mouths yelling, ‘FUCK YOU, STU!’ at the hills.

And our army of bees swarmed the river’s edge, the banks crumbling as they passed, and they swarmed over a sheep lying dead in the open field beside the river, and they turned and suddenly swung back around like a taniwha tail and came back to us, and we were not afraid. They buzzed around us, millions of them, their fuzzy bodies vibrating like they were giving us superpowered butterfly kisses all over our bodies.

Then they flew off.

And I wasn’t scared for dark to come anymore, because the darkness wouldn’t feel so lonely. We’d got some stuff off our chests. And the world felt less lonely when you got some stuff off your chests. The world felt less lonely with our army of bees in the world.

Dark’s here.

I carry the Tilley lamp. Beth and Aunty Kat are on each side of me. Tom Aiken has the gaff. We walk up the river. I am the river warrior, Tom Aiken keeps saying I am, and I’m not scared. We’ll walk up the river in the dark and hook eels by their mouths and then swing them onto the rocks. Tom Aiken says he’ll go first and then we can try. We can catch one each, he says, because Koro likes them smoked. When Nanny brings Koro back, he’ll be happy if we have smoked eel for him.

‘Watch the water carefully,’ Tom says. ‘Point if you see one.’

A bit of moon is high in the sky now, and the air is getting cold. Some water gets in my gumboot.

Tom Aiken turns to us, then puts his finger to his lips. Beth whispers to me, ‘Can eels hear?’ and I shrug, and Tom Aiken is creeping up the bank. Then I see the eel, swimming just ahead of us in the same direction we are walking. Tom Aiken turns to us again and gives a big grin before he takes a different grip on the gaff. He lifts it up over his head and swings it, letting it cut through the water, hitting the eel’s head, then swinging it right up behind him and the eel is on the end of the hook, and Tom Aiken yells, ‘Yeeehhhaaa!’ and keeps swinging the eel around and around like a windmill, really fast, before he smashes it down hard on the rocks. The eel carries on moving a little bit, but not much. Tom gives it one harder hit on the head, while we watch, our mouths hanging open.

An eel has been hooked by its head and smashed onto the rocks, and I feel a buzzing in the bones of my hands because I would really like to gaff an eel too.

Tom Aiken puts the eel into the bucket Aunty Kat is carrying, and then lifts up the gaff, grinning, ‘Who’s next?’ And everyone looks surprised when I step forward and say, ‘Me.’

The gaff is really cold and more water gets in my gumboots, but I don’t care. Holding the hook I feel like the river warrior Tom Aiken says I am, and river warriors don’t care about water in their gumboots. And then I start to wonder about what shoes a river warrior would even wear, and without thinking I kick the gumboots off onto the side of the river, and I pull off my socks with one hand, the gaff still in the other. The socks have fire trucks on them. River warriors don’t wear socks with fire trucks on them. My feet are bare now, and no one is saying anything to me about taking off my gumboots and socks. I see out of the corner of my eye Tom Aiken nudge Beth and Aunty Kat. He might have shushed them up.

I am in the front, leading the way with the gaff in my hand, and the only reason I need the light that shines from the Tilley lamp is so I can see the eels I am hunting.

That is the only reason.

I see an eel swimming ahead. I turn around and put my finger to my lips. In the Tilley lamplight I see Tom Aiken smile, and Aunty Kat and Beth’s wide eyes. I turn back to the eel and start creeping, my feet getting all scratched up, and sometimes the way I step on the rocks hurts so bad I should cry or yell about it, but I don’t. I am a bare-footed river warrior.

I creep up behind the swimming-slow eel. He turns fast towards a dark deep part of the river and I almost stop, but I can feel Tom Aiken right behind me, so I don’t stop. I follow. I walk right into the deep dark part of the water. It comes up to the waistband of my shorts. Beth and Aunty Kat have stopped following us, and Tom Aiken has snatched the Tilley lamp from them, for me. To help me see. I search the dark water for the eel but I can’t see him. And for a second I think of my bare toes, but I just grip tighter on the gaff and the thought goes away. Tom Aiken points and we see the eel coming up the other side of the deep dark water back into the shallow part. We creep through the deep part. My belly button is wet.

The water gets shallow again, and we still have the eel in our sights.

‘There,’ Tom Aiken says. The wind chills my wet legs. Tom is pointing. I think the eel must only be another small step away from me. It seems stopped. Like a bird gliding on wind, not using its wings.

‘Lift slowly,’ Tom Aiken says in my ear, and for a second his arms are on mine as he pushes the gaff down hard and I feel it hit something very hard and very soft. Both at the same time. Tom Aiken pushes my arm into a swinging motion.

‘Keep swinging, buddy! Keep swinging! Swing all the way to the stones!’

I think I feel Tom Aiken’s hands push my arm into more of a swing and as I pull the windmilling eel down to thump it on the rocks, I think I feel Tom Aiken’s hands on mine, but when I look up, after I have smashed the eel hard, Tom Aiken is a few steps away from me with Aunty Kat and Beth, and his arms are folded.

Lupo was so excited when we got back to the tent. He licked all the eel blood from my fingers, licked the smile on my face, then went back to licking eel slime and blood.

We got warmed up by the fire. I warmed my feet and Tom Aiken gave me a pair of his big woolly socks to put on. His Swanndri too.

Aunty Kat pulled out a book. It was the one about Māui finding his mother. ‘I thought we should get into some of the ones in the bottom of that big box you have stashed away, Ari.’

She opened it and a dried flower fell out.

She paused on some words and she read it slowly, but she read it all, every word, and it sounded so magic, this other language. Ours.

I imagined me and my aunty Kat in the kitchen doing dishes or something, and Uncle Stu would come in and we’d say: ‘Hi there, ūpoko mārō.’ Right in his face, smiling.

Then in te reo we’d tell him we’d like to break his jaw, clean him up, and he’d say. ‘What are you saying?’

Me and my aunty Kat would be smiling and smiling, and she’d say, ‘We hope you enjoy your dinner.’

She closed the book. ‘My te reo might come back to me eh?’

I would sleep fine. After the eeling and the yelling out bad words and the story in the magic words beside the campfire. If I had to, I could sleep outside the tent on lookout. I was as big as the whole sky knowing what I knew now.